Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike (25 page)

- it was one of the reasons for having female spies - and she was a natural at keeping up the patter of married couples. It would really pay off when they got into public with their ease and momentum, but Mac felt she was playing with him. And playing with men was something she was very, very good at.

After Mac’s debacle with Garrison - a supposed VX nerve agent attack that had really been a massive gold heist - Joe Imbruglia had told him a story about Diane. During a stint in Thailand in the early 1990s, she’d apparently sparked a strange bit of ethnic cleansing. She’d been posing as a journalist and had joined a plutey Bangkok tennis club to get close to a general in the government. She’d done a little too well, the bloke had fallen for her and the wife had gone mental -

so mad that she’d talked the tennis club into passing a by-law limiting the number of pale-eyed members. The wife had delivered the letter of expulsion to Diane personally, or so the story went. Diane had just smiled at her and said, ‘You can have him back now - I’ve had my turn.’ The members had still been trying to restrain the screaming wife as Diane drove her Audi out of the club’s car park.

Mac’s suit, dark blue and single-breasted, was draped on the sofa when he got into the living area of the suite. Diane had also polished his shoes, there was a new pair of socks that he recognised from the incredibly expensive men’s store underneath the lobby and his blue shirt was hanging off the curtain rail with the hotel’s iron cooling on the table beside the window. She’d ironed his shirt.

He felt grateful, touched; this wasn’t the service he got in Broadbeach. Then he could hear Jenny saying,
She’s playing you, Macca,
you great big goose!

Mac walked to the windows and watched the city lights going on outside as Jakarta fell into one of its plush tropical twilights. Moving over to the huge mirror he looked into pale blue eyes and a rugged face that was wide at the top and tapered in to a solid jaw. He still had all of his blond hair although it was thin, and he brushed it back straight off his face. His belly was still reasonably fl at and he had shoulders and arms.

He pulled on a clean pair of undies, pulled on the new socks and then slipped into the ironed shirt. He thought things through, allowing each piece of clothing to put another layer of cover on him.

When he was fully dressed, he was no longer Alan McQueen from Rockie; he was Richard Davis, professional fi xer for anyone trying to fi nd their way through the maze of EFIC and the land of taxpayer-backed export loan guarantees.

He was happy with the look and was glad for the advice that his ASIS mentor, Scotty, had given him when he fi rst started. Scotty had recommended Mac get a ‘real’ suit as soon as he could afford one. ‘In the world you’re going into,’ the intel veteran had told him, ‘you have no idea how far a good suit will take you. Trust me on this.’

When Mac had some spare coin, he’d gone down to a well-known tailor in Sydney and ordered their most conservative suit: dark blue, single-breasted, with spare pants. It had cost twice as much as the next cheapest, but he was still wearing it twelve years later and it allowed him to circulate among senior bureaucrats, bankers, barristers and wealthy businessmen without giving off a whiff of the pretender.

After shooting his cuffs, he fastened his dress watch. He felt cold and on edge - he wanted a fast turnaround.

They grabbed their name plates at the desk as they entered the Shangri-La’s ballroom on level two for the opening-night reception. It was huge and noisy, perhaps two thousand people yelling above the jazz quartet. Waiters in white tunics and black pants or skirts circulated with silver trays of booze and food, navigating between the crowds of animated Malaysians, Filipinos, Indonesians, Indians, Chinese, Australians, Thais, Japanese, Americans and Koreans.

Diane and Mac kept to the edges, moving slowly, fi nding the topography of the reception, scanning faces for the Bennelong duo and perhaps the NIME principals. It was classic Asian networking, where politicians, bankers, businesspeople, bureaucrats and military came together to see who could spread infl uence, and for whom.

When guidebooks for foreign business travellers said Asia was all about protocol and formality, they were only half right. Tomorrow at the sessions there’d be a lot of bowing, card-swapping deference and people using full titles. But tonight it was about booze and making jokes, jockeying for popularity and establishing social connections. As he looked around him Mac knew there’d be an unfortunate karaoke bar in Jakarta tonight where a bunch of drunk Koreans and Chinese would insist on each doing their own version of ‘My Way’. He’d been there, sung that. It was Seoul ‘01, with bottles of Chivas Regal, a Korean Air Force grandee, a Taiwanese shipping magnate and a bunch of hangers-on. By the time it was Mac’s turn to sing the Sinatra standard he was so drunk that he sang the whole thing with a Korean accent, right down to
too few to rention
. His hosts had almost died laughing.

He sensed Diane beside him, not looking too hard yet seeing everything. She was very good. Eyes fell on her as they strolled even though she’d dressed to play down her looks, wearing a simple white linen dress and blue and white sandals. She wore no jewellery and held a small silk clasp that was so discreet it was almost hidden by her left hand.

Eventually they paused and two waiters converged on them at once. Mac grabbed a beer and Diane asked for a glass of champagne, which both of the blokes wanted to get for her.

‘At my ten o’clock,’ smiled Diane, grabbing Mac’s beer and taking a sip. ‘The Bennelong boys, and no wives,’ she said, giving the beer back.

Mac turned slowly, making it look like a scan of the room. They were fi fteen metres away and surrounded by yelling Malaysian and Thai men and their wives. Vitogiannis had his back to them but Mac could see he was a man who took pride in his appearance. Their conversation looked intense and Grant was pointing at his partner, poking the air.

Diane’s champagne fl ute arrived and Mac gave her a wink. ‘The pants-man cometh.’

Alex Grant looked up as Mac virtually walked into him. Mac feigned surprise. ‘Alex Grant,’ he said, as if sifting through his memory. ‘Not the Thomas Technology Alex Grant? The controls guru?’

Grant peered at him for a split second and then burst into a modest smile. ‘That’s me, although I don’t know about the guru bit, er, Mr …?’ He looked at Mac’s name plate ‘… Davis. Pleased to meet you, Richard.’

‘G’day, Alex - meet my wife, Diane,’ said Mac, bringing Diane into the circle between Vitogiannis and himself. As they greeted each other Mac sized it up. Grant was tall and lean, in an off-the-rack suit and cheap shoes. His skin was pinkish and his teeth au naturel. He had come up in the world but in his heart he was still an air force engineer.

It wasn’t hard to separate Grant from his business partner because Vitogianni had leapt straight into the Diane web. About fi ve-ten and fi t-looking, Vitogiannis was well-dressed. His silky black hair was swept back off his face and his teeth were expensively maintained.

‘So, Richard,’ asked Grant, grabbing a new beer from a waiter,

‘what does Davis Associates do?’

‘A bit of lobbying,’ said Mac. ‘Facilitation, making ends come together.’

‘Sounds like a broad brief,’ said Grant.

Mac went for modesty. ‘Well, I guess facilitation sounds a bit grand.’

‘What do you facilitate?’

‘Technology transfers, cross-border JVs,’ said Mac, swinging his beer bottle in a casual arc, ‘you know, big projects up here that need a little shoehorning from the Canberra end.’

‘Shoehorning?’

‘Well, yeah - blokes in Canberra hate that term, but you know, the Ministers are busy, the bureaucrats are busy. I just put the case for a deal, for jobs, balance of payments. You know,
that
shit.’

Grant looked around him and moved closer to Mac. ‘Well,’ he smiled, ‘tell me more.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, how does … What kind of background would someone like you have?’

Mac shrugged. He wanted this fi rst meeting to be a teaser, and was projecting reluctance. ‘Well, I suppose my previous lives seemed fairly boring at the time, but it seems Aussie companies need a guide through the exporting labyrinth, huh? And you know, Alex, not all exports are simple. Some are services and often they’re strategic services. It’s complex, mate, and that usually means some shoehorning.’

Mac grabbed a spring roll, keeping the napkin for wiping his fi ngers. He looked away, looked back. ‘But this is all probably boring for you -‘

‘So, you were a diplomat?’

‘No, no,’ laughed Mac. Grant was hooked - the tease had only taken ten seconds and he was about to lift his skirt. ‘Actually I used to work in a place called EFIC, heard of it?’

Grant’s eyes went wide and he nodded. Mac continued. ‘Terrible name, but interesting work. I was on the risk side and then on the deals side - due diligence, debt pricing, that sort of stuff.’

‘Really?’ asked Alex Grant, transfi xed.

‘Yeah, it was great, fascinating. But I ended up in Canberra as a specialist adviser to the Minister for Trade.’

‘Advising on what?’ asked Grant, looking Mac up and down.

‘Oh, well, you probably wouldn’t have heard of it,’ said Mac, looking away.

‘Try me.’

‘Deals that come under a system called NIA - it’s not well known but they can be really big, really complex deals.’

Grant stared at him like he’d seen a ghost.

Mac went on, ‘That’s National Interest -‘

‘Yeah, yeah. I know what it is,’ snapped Grant. He looked around him, obviously frazzled. ‘Tell me, Richard, is that what you facilitate?

NIA?’

‘Well, yeah - that’s most of it actually. If the loan guarantees are written by Sydney, then it’s all fi ne, right? You’re in.’

Grant nodded.

‘But it’s when it’s knocked back and you’re lucky enough to get a second chance with NIA - that’s when the fun starts,’ chuckled Mac,

‘because then it’s going political.’

‘Shit!’ said Grant, looking at the ceiling.

The bloke was hooked and Mac affected a chortle. ‘I perhaps shouldn’t tell you this, Alex, but once it gets into a minister’s offi ce, if you’ve got no one to walk you through it, you’re fucked, mate.’

Grant turned sullen. ‘Don’t need you to tell me that.’

‘Shit, Alex. Sorry mate,’ said Mac, feigning disappointment in himself. ‘I had no idea - I shouldn’t have said any of that. I take it back.’

‘No, no, it’s okay,’ sighed Grant. ‘That’s the fi rst honest thing I’ve heard anyone say about this entire fucking process.’

Mac waited, something catching his eye in the background.

‘I have breakfast at seven,’ said Alex Grant. ‘Can we meet?’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Mac, handing over his card before his attention was taken by a waiter on the other side of the ballroom.

The lights of Jakarta seemed to sprawl forever as Mac stood in front of the vista window at the end of the living area, briefi ng Tony Davidson from his Nokia. It was 9.16 pm local, which meant it was 11.16 pm in Perth, where Davidson worked from his corporate front offi ces.

Once an op was underway, Davidson and Mac totally lived it and were considered Old School in that regard. If getting it right meant taking calls when you were lying in bed or drinking with your wife, that’s what you did.

Intelligence outfi ts often ran themselves low on good fi eld guys, not because the recruits didn’t have the smarts but because they didn’t have the stamina for an infi ltration operation that could last two days or two months. Those people were routinely reassigned to a desk, to management or SIGINT analysis - something with a forty-hour week.

People like Mac and Davidson weren’t the world’s smartest people, but they had the ticker for getting immersed in something for months at a time.

‘That’s great, mate,’ said Davidson after Mac fi nished his briefi ng on the Alex Grant meeting. ‘Bloke can almost smell the money - a bit of greed goes a long way.’

‘I’m meeting him tomorrow morning, but I don’t think I’ll crunch him - he’s already coming along,’ said Mac.

‘Your call, Macca,’ said Davidson. ‘But remember: the old ways are the old ways because they work.’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ said Mac.

Under the old ways, Mac would not have allowed Alex Grant to name the meeting time and place. If you wanted to draw a person closer and eventually own them, you always changed the meeting slightly. Mac should have told Grant he’d meet him in the lobby lounge at seven before they went in for breakfast, saying,
I have something I
want you to see
, or some bullshit like that. But Bennelong was really the Trojan Horse for NIME, and if Bennelong was going to come across with a tease and a fl irt, then Mac was inclined to go with that.

‘Another thing,’ said Mac, not quite knowing how to raise it.

‘I clocked some surveillance tonight, at the reception. Primrose saw it too.’

‘Friends of ours?’

‘None of the usual,’ said Mac, ruling out spies from BAIS, BIN, CIA, MI6 and the Philippines’ NICA. ‘I’m not sure they’re locals - bit too intense.’

‘How many?’

‘Two - that we saw. Males; Malay, Indian perhaps.’

‘Who was the subject? You or Bennelong?’

‘Can’t be sure. We weren’t tailed into the lobby or up to our room so I’m thinking that Bennelong has some minders?’

‘Sounds right,’ said Davidson. ‘If NIME are doing what we think they’re doing, then they’ll be keeping tabs, see who’s sniffi ng around.’

‘That’s why I don’t want to crunch the bloke. He thinks I can help him and I’m going to play to that.’

‘It would help to know who these watchers are.’

‘Well, yeah. I need something more on NIME,’ said Mac. ‘Those profi les in the fi le were fronts, I’m sure of it.’

‘Reckon?’ said Davidson.

‘Yeah, and I’ve only got library-level access on the fi rm’s intranet

- can you get me something more?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Davidson.

As Mac put down the phone he saw Diane take a bottle of wine from the mini-bar and head for her room.