Golden Serpent

CHAPTER 4

Mac was forty-two thousand feet over north Queensland when he pulled Judith Hannah’s fi le from his briefcase. He was in business class on the late-afternoon Qantas fl ight to Jakarta. Executives were sprinkled around the upstairs deck of the 747. Still in his interview suit, Mac sat alone by the window.

Judith Hannah had a fi rst-class honours degree in law from the University of Sydney and an MA in history from the same place. Mac ran his fi nger down her bio: Protestant. Perfect credentials for the Foreign Service. But she had applied to ASIS and she was accepted on the fi rst go. Must have had a calling or something.

Many people didn’t realise that ASIS was part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its operatives belonged to the same Commonwealth stable as the diplomats and were identical employment conditions and pay scales. The real difference was that ASIS offi cers had individual contracts with the Director-General which made it easier to sack and isolate them. But they all operated out of Australian embassies and consulates. In the parlance of diplomats, they were part of the same mission.

If you really wanted to go places in the public service, you applied for a place in the elites of Treasury or the Foreign Service. That’s how you’d get to graduate to PMC – the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet – where all the real glory happened for ambitious public servants.

If you wanted to get to PMC, you didn’t generally set out to be a spook.

Mac worked through the pages. Judith Hannah had joined ASIS straight out of university in ‘01, then trained in Canberra. She’d had deployments in London, DC, LA, Manila and Jakarta. The Jakkers posting told Mac that Hannah was being groomed for interesting things. Jakarta was to the Australian intelligence community what DC was to the diplomats: where the action was; where the Americans and Chinese collided on a full-time basis within the enigmatic context of Indonesia – the world’s largest Muslim nation and one which had never fully committed to the US-Australian view of the world. Jakarta was the centre of the Western world’s counter-terrorism activity and Judith Hannah had been given a shot at it just two years into her ASIS career.

He kept fl ipping. It seemed to be a largely uncensored fi le, a rare thing in intelligence circles, where someone was always trying to exert their right to keep information secret from someone else. There were performance reports with the expected conclusions: Hannah was a fast learner, earned people’s trust quickly and had very good ad hoc negotiation skills. A cool cucumber.

There was a list of her specialist rotations: decryption with the British, maritime with the Indonesians, Sinology at the Australian National University, transnational fi nance with AUSTRAC, fi eld craft and interrogation in Canberra, telecommunications units in Singapore and counter-terrorist secondments to Langley and Tel Aviv. It was a full fi le. The Service had done well. Mac found what he wanted down the back. Every ASIS offi cer operated in a team known as a ‘desk’, a sort of specialty they were expected to develop during their career.

There were desks for whatever it was that affected Australian interests, so there was an Indonesia Desk, an America Desk and so on. But a desk team was not confi ned to the embassy posting. You could be deployed in Singapore, but if you were on the China Desk, you were working with other offi cers who were in Jakarta, KL, Manila, DC and Beijing. You’d probably have overlaps with AFP, Australian Customs and Austrade – the Australian trade legation. And if you happened to be on the China Desk or the Terrorism Desk, you would almost certainly be working in some capacity with the CIA and Indonesia’s BIN and BAIS, and probably Mossad and MI6.

Mac sipped on his Pellegrino and allowed his thoughts to wash over him. He was trying to see the scenario of this bird and her story. Because Judith Hannah, according to her fi le, worked on the China Desk.

Too good to be true.

Certainly too good to be missing.

The steward led Mac to a meeting room in the intelligence section of the Australian Embassy and asked if he wanted anything.

‘Coffee, thanks, champ.’

It was past nine pm local time and after two checkpoints of physical search and biometrics Mac was back in a place he knew well.

He felt like shit: needed a shave and a fresh shirt. It was muggy and hot in Jakkers and he wished he’d made better use of the Brut 33 when he’d had the chance.

Mac paused at the threshold of the meeting room out of habit.

Jakarta was a mean town for people in his profession, and even in the lockdown of the Aussie Embassy, he wanted to scope the room. There were four men around a large timber table. Mac knew two: his Service colleague, Anton Garvey, and a US Army Special Forces captain called John Sawtell.

Anton Garvey stood from his place at the head of the table and walked around to Mac.

‘G’day, mate,’ said Garvey, big face lighting up. ‘How was the fl ight?’

‘Piece of piss,’ smiled Mac, ‘once you get used to the shit food, bad air, crap service and the fact you’re only ever a split second away from disaster.’

Garvey laughed. He was a solid, bull-like guy with big arms and a deep tan that included his totally bald head. He dressed in the spook uniform for Asia: polo shirt, khaki chinos and a pair of boat shoes.

He’d done a lot of jobs with Mac and they liked each other. Now that Garvey was moving into management, Mac wondered if the relationship would change.

‘Mate, glad you could make it at such short notice.’ Garvey gestured to a chair. ‘Dave briefed me on the assignment; sorry about all the rush.’

Mac’s mind raced: Garvey had been briefed by Urquhart, not Tobin? So Garvey was answering to the political liaison arm of the Service, not the operational. Puzzled, he threw his briefcase on the table and eased into leather.

‘Quick introductions. You know Charlie from Manila?’ Garvey indicated a dead-eyed guy in his early forties who looked like a tired businessman. He had short, greasy salt ‘n’ pepper hair and slack jowls that rattled around his long face. Mac knew him by reputation: Charles Dunphy, who last time Mac had checked was overseeing the Service’s China Desk. Dunphy inclined his head in greeting, a veteran of meetings that took place in bugged rooms.

On the other side of the table, Garvey introduced Philip Mason, CIA. Mason could have been anywhere from forty-two to fi fty-fi ve, a round-faced Anglo male, shortish, out of condition, navy blue suit, cotton Oxford shirt, no tie but collars buttoned down. Mac had him fi gured as a luncher. Mason leaned across the table, went for the fi rm handshake. Mac took it, smiled. Watched the guy wince.

Only offi ce guys tried the gorilla grip.

The fourth guy, Mac knew: Captain John Sawtell, US Army Special Forces – counter-terrorism. He was based out of Zamboanga City in Mindanao. Neither of them made an attempt to shake hands. They nodded.

‘G’day, Captain.’

‘Evening, sir.’

Sawtell was dressed in grey sweats and Nike runners. There was nothing to suggest his rank or job, except the haircut and the worked physique. No one would mistake this bloke for a luncher.

Mac’s stomach churned. Sawtell’s presence meant Mac was going into the fi eld again, and he wouldn’t be directing the operation from a hotel room. They wouldn’t fl y a major-leaguer like Sawtell all the way from Zam to fi nd a missing girl, just as they wouldn’t bring Mac up from Sydney. Sawtell was a hardened counter-terrorism soldier whose command was called US Army Special Forces, but was better known to the world as the Green Berets.

‘So, Garvs, we’re looking for a wayward girl,’ said Mac, keeping it civil while he boiled inside, ‘and you bring in the cavalry. Must be some girl.’

Sawtell smirked and Mac clocked that he wasn’t in the loop either.

The suits all stared. Too many years of having their every thought bugged to let loose even a hint of off-message communication.

‘Look, Mac,’ said Garvey, smiling nervously, getting into reasonable-guy mode, ‘you were probably told one thing in Sydney…’

‘Damn right.’

‘And now you walk in here and things have changed a little.’

‘Spare me, Anton. Since when did you need the Green Berets to fi nd a girl recruit?’ said Mac, reaching for the water jug, his head buzzing slightly. It had been a long day and he was hungry and tired.

His mind was still competing for space on the Hannah and Diane front. One bird goes walkabout; another dumps him via voicemail.

Somewhere in there was also a worry that the Sydney Uni job was a trick, like Lucy and Charlie Brown’s football.

Garvey cleared his throat. ‘Okay, mate, I don’t know the whole story either,’ he lied. ‘We’re just the Indians, right?’

Mac caught Sawtell raising an eyebrow. Maybe a black American reacting to the racial bit, or maybe just a special forces hard-head with no fuse for this crap.

Mac wasn’t up for this shit either. His mind was in overdrive: why was Sawtell here? Why was Hannah so important? And why was an Agency guy in the meeting?

Mac eyeballed Charles Dunphy. The intel lifer’s face was expressionless.

Looking at Garvey, Mac said, ‘Okay, mate, spell it out.’

Garvey’s face hardened as he adjusted himself forward and rested his forearms on the Australian hardwood table. ‘Mac, we have a problem with this Hannah bird. She’s missing but the word we’re getting is that she’s on the lam with an American.’

Mac shrugged.

‘Ah, yep,’ continued Garvey. ‘It’s not so much an American, but which one…’

Mason pitched in. ‘One of ours, I’m afraid, Mr McQueen. Peter Garrison – he’s Agency.’

No one said anything for what seemed like ten seconds.

Garrison was a problem.

And so was the fact that Dave Urquhart had briefed Garvey on the missing girl. Urquhart was intel liaison with the Prime Minister’s offi ce. He wasn’t operations.

It had turned political. A snake picnic.

In Mac’s Royal Marines days, the handful of intel people who got through the initial training found themselves in a world of revelation.

The Royal Marines were probably the foremost trainers of intelligence people required to do paramilitary work. And foremost among them was Banger Jordan, an NCO who was not technically running the section but was the person who had a lasting impact on the candidates.

On their fi nal day of training, Jordan took the candidates out to a pub and told them how it really was. ‘The most dangerous animal you’ll ever face,’ said Banger, ‘is an offi ce guy who wants a bigger offi ce.’

Mac had never forgotten that. Not a week of his career had gone by when Banger’s words weren’t vindicated in either small ways or large.

The crap that had just gone down in the embassy was a classic offi ce-guy shit-blizzard where ambitious pen-pushers jacked up some mad adventure to please the political masters. An adventure where the bad guy gets nailed and the girl is saved. Always so clean on a whiteboard but incredibly dangerous for the people who carry it out.

Mac seethed about it as he walked along the largely deserted streets of the expat district of south Jakarta. Police 4x4s and military escort cars cruised the oversized boulevard. There were no sidewalk vendors or hawkers in this part of town. No local lads on Honda scooters crawling the kerbs offering foreigners special deals at the local whorehouse. If those guys showed up they’d be treated as if they had a bagful of C4 over their shoulder. The only locals on the street around here wore their embassy photo ID around their necks on lanyards – an international sign in the brown and black world that said ‘don’t shoot’.

In a strip of Western-style shops not far from the Aussie compound, Mac found a red and white illuminated sign that said BAVARIA LAGERHAUS. He walked past it to the corner. Turned left and kept walking. He stopped after twenty paces, turned and waited. Nothing.

No cars, no people.

He walked back to the corner, paused. Head out, head in. Looked around. Walked to the Lagerhaus, pushed through the swinging doors into the air-con darkness. A polka band played in a corner and European backpackers dressed like dairy maids carried large glass beer steins to tables. Germanic tack hung low.

Mac went to the end of the bar nearest the wall, leaned on it, ordered a Becks and made himself inconspicuous. He had showered and was wearing jeans and a polo shirt. His suit was back in the compound motel room, along with his dodgy phone. He felt tired yet jacked-up on adrenaline, his mind racing in an exhausted body. He wanted out, he wanted respectable, he wanted Diane. He wanted to fl y into a foreign city once in his life and not have to remember if he was Richard Davis or Thomas Winton, depending on whether he was coming into Jakarta via KL or Singers.

The drink arrived, the bierfrau gave him a smile. He gave her the wink, then positioned himself so that a corridor in the corner that led to the toilets was in his peripheral vision.

The clientele were expat. It was after eleven pm and most of them were bombed drunk. Lonely, overworked, overpaid whiteys stuck in a part of the world that was never going to accept them. Somehow the zero-taxation and cheap servants just didn’t cut it. He saw himself as lucky – a bloke with a woman. Then he checked that. He had had a woman. Now he had some running to do to get her back.

Halfway through his beer, Mac saw a Javanese man emerge from the lavatory corridor. He was early forties, full head of hair and very thickly built through the neck, chest and arms. An orange tropical shirt hung loose, covering what Mac knew to be a chromed Desert Eagle . 45. Saba’s bodyguard.

The man cocked his head slightly at Mac and turned away, scanning the room with casual menace.

Mac left his beer at the bar, walked to the corridor. The bodyguard let him go past and followed him down the hallway. They stopped in front of a door at the end. The bodyguard moved in front of Mac, unlocked the door from a key chain, pushed through and waited for Mac to enter.

The room was an offi ce, large and cool. There was a wide oak desk at one end, a bank of screens along the wall and a white leather sofa suite set up around a low coffee table in the middle of the room. The place belonged to a man called Saba. He was ex-BAKIN, Indonesian intelligence from the Suharto days. Now he ran a bar which doubled as a safehouse. All spies had safehouses where they kept spare guns, unoffi cial mobile phones, contraband passports and emergency Amex cards in bogus names. It was no refl ection on the Service, it was just that spies needed to work untriangulated at times.

Mac never paid Saba. He owed him ‘favours’, and so far, the ex-BAKIN man had only wanted the occasional fi le and some telecom logs. But that would change.

The bodyguard patted Mac for weapons. Felt him for wires.

Scraped his fi ngernails over the area just behind the ears and under the hair, looking for the tick-sized fl esh-coloured transmitters that were now being used.

Mac put his arms down. The bodyguard moved to a door on the opposite wall. Opened it, gestured.

John Sawtell walked in, still in grey sweats. He was built like a brick, yet athletic. Mac remembered a detail from the fi le: Sawtell had played for Army as a running back. Mac wasn’t sure how that translated to the rugby codes but it was probably a position requiring high correlations of speed and power. Sawtell was built. And he moved smooth.

The bodyguard saw himself out.

The two men looked at one another. Sawtell broke the silence.

‘The fuck was that shit?’

Mac chuckled, took a seat on the sofa. Sawtell sat opposite in an armchair. ‘That was a mutual secondment,’ said Mac. ‘That’s what that shit was.’

‘Can we speak English, McQueen?’

Mac spelled it out: the Australian intelligence apparatus had statutory sanctions on performing paramilitary work. The US intelligence community had similar laws making it illegal for them to conduct assassinations. It suited both DC and Canberra to ‘mutually second’ agents from one another’s intelligence operations to do certain things for one another that the politicians back home would crucify their own nationals for. Certain things that you may not want the military implicated in. Politicians and intel people called it

‘deniability’.

‘So you get to tap this Garrison dude?’ snarled Sawtell, not convinced. ‘And some Agency dickhead gets to do a job for the Australians? That it?’

Mac shrugged. ‘I don’t have many more answers than you, mate.

I was told to be in Jakarta this evening to hunt down a missing girl.

Now we have Peter Garrison pissing into the tent.’

‘You what?’

‘I assume he’s going to be a nuisance.’

Sawtell was up, moving to a water jug on the coffee table. Mac nodded, Sawtell poured two glasses, handed one to Mac.

‘So excuse my ignorance,’ said the American as he settled into the chair, ‘but who the fuck’s Garrison?’

Mac had a choice: clam up and play it tight, or let the American in on the joke. The smart way was to say nothing. Military guys with snippets of information could go off and actually start thinking for themselves. Not always a good idea. But Mac spilled. After all, that’s why he’d called Sawtell here, away from the full-time listening posts at the embassy. ‘Peter Garrison is a rogue CIA man. Very smart, very dangerous.’

Sawtell paused, looked at Mac, neck muscles fl exing. ‘And you know this, but the Agency doesn’t?’

‘Sure they know,’ shrugged Mac. ‘But he’s been useful, I guess.’

Sawtell looked away. Mac could see he was disgusted with the whole spook thing.

‘Look,’ said Mac, ‘he was stationed for a long time in northern Pakistan and then northern Burma. He’s pulled a lot of real freaky stuff. He’s been on our radar for years. Now he’s in Jakkers and he’s with one of ours.’

‘Freaky? Like what?’

‘Remember the bombing of that Pakistani police compound in ‘03?

CNN ran with it as “The Taliban still strong in northern Pakistan”?’

‘Sure.’

‘It wasn’t a truck bomb, champ – it was US Navy Hornets. An air strike.’

Sawtell cocked an eye at the Australian, like he was challenging that version of events.

‘You’ve called in strikes?’ asked Mac.

Sawtell nodded.

‘There were more codes, grids and passwords than The Da Vinci Code , right?’

Sawtell nodded. Looked away slightly.

‘We knew who called it in about two hours after the air-to-grounds painted the joint – about an hour after the Agency told their stooges at CNN that it was a Taliban truck bomb.’

Sawtell’s nostrils fl ared. ‘Why?’

‘The Pakistanis were fi nally pulling their fi ngers out and shutting down the heroin-for-arms trade.’

‘Was Garrison part of it?’

‘Sure, and more than just Garrison – remember, the Agency kept him on the leash. They sent him to Burma after the fi reworks.’

Mac watched the soldier’s jaw muscles bulge. Your average special forces guy lived in fear of a friendly-fi re incident since it was one of those things you could never train for, couldn’t control. The idea of some slippery pen-pusher calling in friendly fi re on purpose was the kind of thing that made soldiers talk about calling in their own personal head-shot.

Mac didn’t want Sawtell distracted. He just wanted him to know the calibre of the person they were hunting.

‘So where does the girl fi t in?’ asked the soldier, fi nally breathing out.

‘Don’t know,’ lied Mac. He looked at his civvie watch. ‘Gotta go, mate – we’re on a plane at fi ve.’

Sawtell stood and turned for the door he’d come through, then stopped and fi xed Mac with an X-ray look. ‘That was some shit in Sibuco, huh?’

Mac’s heart sank. He wasn’t close enough to touch wood. He hated talking about missions where someone carked it. ‘Yeah, those are some boys you got there.’

‘They call you the Pizza Man, by the way,’ Sawtell winked. ‘Just thought I’d warn you.’

The street was even quieter now than an hour ago. It was almost midnight and Mac sauntered the three blocks to the Aussie residential compound. He concentrated on relaxing from his feet to his head, breathing hibiscus fumes deep and slow and trying to concentrate on pleasant things.

But he couldn’t clear his mind. Sawtell had asked, ‘Where does the girl fi t in?’

The fi le on Garrison said he’d been seen with Chinese agents. In Jakarta. He was believed to be fronting at least two identities in Chinese intelligence’s preferred banking domicile of the Cook Islands.

Now Garrison had inveigled himself into the Australian China Desk, the Hannah bird was missing and their last known sighting was a place Mac had vowed to never visit again.

The morning fl ight was landing them in Sulawesi – land of a thousand nightmares.