Counter Attack

Chapter 12

The phone rang just as Mac got under the shower. Capping the water, he walked into the living area of the suite and answered.

‘You called?’ came the snippy voice of Chester Delaney, the Aussie consul-general, whose offices were around the corner from the Grand.

‘Nice to hear from you too, mate,’ said Mac, water dripping off him in the sticky heat of late afternoon. ‘Thought we could catch up for that beer.’

Delaney sighed. ‘Where?’

‘Majestic roof, seventeen hundred?’

‘I think we can dispense with the army affectations, can’t we?’

‘Just testing, Chezza,’ said Mac.

‘And why the Majestic?’ said Delaney. ‘Can’t you come up for a coffee?’

‘I don’t approach consular property when I’m in the field,’ said Mac. ‘Protects me, protects you.’

‘Okay,’ said the diplomat. ‘Five it is.’

Throwing a towel on the parquet floor, Mac started with fifty push-ups, followed by a hundred crunches and then forty lunges with each leg, finishing with five minutes of basic ballet exercises.

Letting the warm shower water run off him, Mac decided on minimal involvement from the consul-general. It was courtesy for someone in Mac’s position to touch base and announce to the chief what he was doing, but in embassies and consulates the community was more like a colony — people didn’t always like a blow-in from Australia spying on one of their own. Instead, he was going to pump Delaney for background, and then have little to do with him. There was a building behind the Hotel Rex where the Australian government kept serviced offices, one of which featured the shingle Southern Scholastic Books Pty Ltd. It had secure computers and data connections, and a phone line that was virtually impossible to hack. That would be Mac’s base in Saigon, and would double as a crib should the Grand prove too open to the Cong An. The Black Stork would be the fallback.

Drying off, Mac placed his new clothes in a paper bag and screwed it up before dressing in his chinos and polo shirt. The new clothes might trigger someone’s memory, so they’d be in a dumpster before he ventured out.

Dialling a Singapore number, Mac walked onto the balcony, hoping that by talking outside the room he’d defeat the political police’s listening devices. His bag had been expertly looked through and his diary and book sales catalogues had been read — just as he’d wanted. But you never really knew about bugs.

‘Benny,’ said Mac, as Haskell came on the line. ‘How we looking?’

Benny didn’t waste time. ‘Can you talk?’

‘Listening is better.’

‘Okay, mate — it’s good news and bad. She’s fine.’

‘But?’

‘But she’s left the house and fucked off.’

‘Where to?’ asked Mac.

‘Our friends say she’s jumped a plane to Melbourne.’

‘Screw them,’ said Mac, who’d tell a lie like that to rival spooks as a knee-jerk reaction. ‘What do you think?’

‘She’s done the Harold,’ said Benny. ‘But if she’s worried about Aussie intel then I agree. Why would she be flying to Melbourne?’

Mac rubbed his face.

‘There’s something we should talk about,’ said Benny, ‘and not over the phone.’

‘What?’ asked Mac.

‘Our friends’ involvement,’ said Benny.

‘What about it?’ said Mac, thinking the ISD had circled back after Ray’s death and kept an eye on Liesl.

Benny’s voice lowered. ‘You’re assuming our friends became curious after a certain incident.’

‘What?’ said Mac.

‘I can’t stay on this line — I’ll call later,’ said Benny, and hung up.

Looking at the handset as if for an answer, Mac was astonished. Singapore’s ISD had been watching Ray Hu? Had he been made as an Aussie SIS agent? That would explain why Liesl had been asked to open Ray’s safe, been taken for a long ride, had the facts of life explained before being put on a plane. It was standard procedure for intelligence services when they were clearing up a spy network: give all associates the no-tears option before moving to interrogations and lengthy trials for espionage. If that was the scenario Benny had been talking about, then Liesl would have spilled her guts and taken the fast way out. But if she was really worried about Canberra, she would have stayed in South-East Asia.

‘You’re not going to get me drunk, you know, McQueen,’ said Chester Delaney as the waiter deposited two more ice-cold Tigers on the table.

They were sitting on the rooftop of the Majestic as the sun set on the Saigon River, the lush green of Vietnam’s former battlefields evident in the distance.

‘Don’t worry, Chezza,’ said Mac. ‘Just a couple of looseners.’

‘Okay, but can we drop the Chezza? It’s Chester, actually.’

Mac raised his glass. ‘Okay, Chester.’

Slumping slightly, Delaney removed his wire-framed glasses and massaged his eyeballs, his long fingers reaching around his bony nose.

‘I’m sorry, Alan,’ he said, cleaning his glasses and replacing them over piercing grey eyes. ‘I seem to get on the wrong foot with you, without ever intending to.’

‘Wouldn’t worry about it,’ said Mac.

‘I wanted to debrief, after Kuta,’ Delaney said, referring to the night of the Bali bombings, when he had been flown down from Jakarta to run the DFAT response and Mac had been sent in to control the media output. ‘I said some things that I regretted.’

‘Like what? Jenny Toohey has a great arse?’

‘No!’ said Delaney, blushing. ‘No, when you were running around trying to find — what was it? — Pakistani terrorists, when you were supposed to be running the media side for us. I needed you, Alan, and you’d palmed it off onto those kids.’

‘Yeah, I did.’

‘I was cranky with you but, as it turned out, you were probably chasing something far more important.’

‘They weren’t really kids, mate,’ said Mac, remembering the young DFAT and AFP staffers who’d run the media operation under Mac’s aegis. ‘I thought they were up for it — that bird Julie was basically running the show when I got there.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Delaney, relaxing some more. ‘She jumped a couple of grades pretty quickly after that. Made director, last I heard.’

‘Let’s talk about Jim,’ said Mac.

‘Let’s.’

‘Like, what’s not in the brief?’

‘Okay,’ said Delaney, taking a swig of the beer. ‘The absences from his desk, the rather loose diary, and something I didn’t want to put in writing.’

‘Okay.’

‘The Saigon chamber of commerce put on a big mining expo ten days ago, in the convention centre.’

‘Yes?’ said Mac.

‘And Jim wasn’t there.’

‘Not there? I thought he was the trade guy for us in Saigon?’

‘So did we,’ said Delaney. ‘I covered for him but it was embarrassing. We had some big companies come up here and we like to have a few beers, do a barbie and invite other nationalities over — it’s a big networking event, and Jim Quirk was AWOL.’

‘You must have an idea,’ said Mac, trying to work out what wasn’t being said. ‘I’m not exactly the soft option.’

Delaney laughed. ‘No, you’re not. That wasn’t my call, but I’ve come to agree that we should keep it in-house, hence the Firm.’

‘So, what’s the theory?’

‘Well, people have seen him in Cholon — Chinatown,’ said Delaney. ‘It’s not damning but he’s been looking terrible and there’re fears about who he’s hanging around with, I suppose.’

‘Think he’s spying?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Delaney.

‘Any top-secret access?’

‘He’s TS-PV,’ said Delaney, meaning Jim Quirk had Australia’s highest non-codeword security clearance, with a PV or personal vetting. ‘But he’s no longer seeing anything sensitive.’

‘What’s this about the divorce?’ said Mac. ‘He on the sauce?’

‘Definitely,’ nodded Delaney. ‘He split with Geraldine recently and it went downhill from there.’

‘The drinking followed the divorce, or the other way around?’ said Mac, trying to set the scene.

‘Can’t remember,’ said Delaney. ‘I wouldn’t want to get that part wrong. What I do know is that I’ve been waiting two weeks to get someone up here. We kept being told to let Jim run, that we’d have a team soon.’

‘Is he stealing anything?’ said Mac. ‘I mean, illegal downloads or files tucked down his shirt?’

‘Our dip-security guy’s been keeping an eye on him — hasn’t caught him doing anything.’

‘Where does Quirk live?’ said Mac, wondering if he should be having this chat with the first assistant secretary, diplomatic security — also known as the dip-sec.

‘At An Puh,’ said Delaney. An Puh was the expat compound across the river in District 2. ‘The BP compound. He’s got an apartment near the supermarket, I’m told.’

‘He drives?’

‘A red Corolla.’

‘What time does he get in to work?’

‘Eight-thirty.’

‘Okay,’ said Mac, slugging at the beer. ‘But tell me — why am I up here? What happened to the resident in Hanoi?’

Delaney smiled. ‘Can’t use any of the Firm’s people down here if they’ve been in Hanoi, Hong Kong, Shangers, Beijing or Seoul.’

‘No?’

‘No, Alan,’ said Delaney. ‘The Chinese know exactly who they are. If we used them on Jim, the Chinese would have an insight we don’t particularly want to share.’