Counter Attack

Chapter 31

The brown contact lenses were the final touch, the exclamation mark that took the black hair, dark moustache, wire-rimmed spectacles and chubby cheeks and altered the entire context.

It was 8.04 am and Mac had enjoyed a deep sleep. He felt recharged.

Peering at himself in the mirror of the hotel bathroom, he saw Brandon Collier. Collier was the non-sanctioned identity Mac had created a decade earlier when he needed an option for those times when people who were supposed to care about his welfare cared more for their upward ambitions. It was against the rules of Aussie SIS — you could only work with identities issued to you, and when the gig was done you had to sign them back in. Mac had a standing riposte to those rules: he who runs the risk of being tortured in a Zamboanga warehouse gets to choose his escape routes.

His baggy chinos and long-sleeved business shirt from Lowes matched the boat shoes into which he put twenty-cent pieces to make his gait more awkward. Amateur disguisers always focused on the hair and face; professionals did that too, but they took particular care with the gait and eyes. Once you’d been in the field for a couple of years, you scanned every room for eyes — their colour and intent became a beacon. As for gait, Mac could tell a soldier or professional sportsperson by the way they carried themselves, and the first thing he tried to do with his Brandon Collier creation was to take away the physically confident gait. Coins in the shoes took the emphasis from the torso and the hips and put the walking effort into the legs. If a spook or a cop or a soldier was on the lookout for Mac, they might find him but it wouldn’t be because he looked like trouble.

Peeling back the liner of his wheelie bag, Mac lifted a packet of IDs from their hide and slipped the rubber band off them. There was a Western Australian driver’s licence, a WA Health Department inspector’s ID and a security card of the type needed to work in restricted areas of airports and docks. The one he pulled out and pocketed was the International Red Cross medical accreditation — this classified him as an Australian with two science/medicine degrees and listed him as ‘Medical Doctor — general.’

The only part of the Brandon Collier act that didn’t add up was the Colt Defender automatic handgun that was tucked into the waistband at the small of his back.

The walk around the block was pleasant enough except for the growing humidity. Mac estimated the temperature at around thirty-eight degrees which, for someone who had grown up in Queensland, wasn’t too oppressive. It was the ninety-eight per cent humidity that sapped the energy.

Phoning the American Embassy, Mac asked for the chargé d’affaires. ‘What’s his name again? Jim or John…’

‘No, Clayton de Lisle is our chargé d’affaires. Just putting you through now.’

‘I’m losing you,’ said Mac, hanging up.

He walked both sides of the street, stopped at a street cart, where he bought a baguette with pâté and cheese, and spent some time looking in shop windows, looking for observers. There were none he could see, and having got his new gait in sync and bought a box of chocolates, he made for his destination.

The Calmette Hospital layout was explained in the lobby by a diagram of wards and Mac inspected them rather than approach the main desk.

Wandering through the corridors, he followed the blue signs that said Intensive Care, taking several doglegs and a flight of stairs to the first floor, and going through a set of heavy plastic curtains with Intensive Care Ward stamped on them below the Khmer version.

He headed for the nursing sister’s desk and casually pulled his IRC card from his pocket and tabled it.

‘Dr Collier — I’m here for Samuel Chan,’ said Mac with the condescending yet trustworthy smile of the medical doctor. ‘A nine o’clock, I believe?’

The nurse, a friendly local in her early thirties, looked down at a clipboard on her desk and nibbled her lip. Then she looked at her watch: 9.03 am.

‘There’s no record of a medical visit, Dr…’

‘Collier — Brandon Collier,’ said Mac. ‘Perhaps we should get Mr de Lisle on the phone. He’s the chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy.’

‘Umm, perhaps I should ask —’

‘I can get Clayton de Lisle down here right away, but he probably doesn’t want to be disturbed; he asked me to handle this with Mr Chan.’

The girl capitulated. ‘Okay, I take you.’

Few South-East Asian hospitals wanted to annoy the Americans. The USA gave away as much in humanitarian aid each year as the entire GDP of countries like Lebanon and Sri Lanka. There were hospitals and medical centres all over Asia and Africa that would not exist if it weren’t for the US taxpayer, a small point often ignored by the West’s Marxists.

Mac followed the nurse and, as directed, walked into the ward with the blue ‘D’ over the door. Sam Chan was propped up on pillows, the Economist open in front of him. He was peering over it at Mac.

‘Samuel Chan,’ said Mac, approaching and offering his hand. ‘The man they couldn’t root, shoot or electrocute.’

Chan looked confused and his hand slipped under the sheets.

‘Sammy, it’s me, McQueen,’ said Mac. ‘Don’t shoot, I only work here.’

Chan smiled and let the tension out of his shoulder. Whatever he’d grabbed beside him, he now let go of and shook hands with the palm grip — an almost total giveaway that his background was military.

‘McQueen — glad you showed.’

‘Why?’ Mac took a seat beside the bed and handed over the chocolates. ‘You miss me?’

‘Nope. I wanted to thank you for the… last night, you know?’

‘Yeah, no worries,’ said Mac.

‘A lot of guys would panic, not even think of the fire blanket.’

‘Thank my training,’ said Mac, surprised they weren’t talking about Phil’s demise.

‘Royal Marines, right?’

‘Originally,’ said Mac carefully. ‘A long time ago. And you?’

‘Army,’ said Sam.

‘You know John Sawtell — Green Berets?’ said Mac.

Sam looked away. Most special forces people neither confirmed nor denied that they knew other soldiers. It was professional courtesy.

‘Well, anyway,’ said Mac, ‘John is a great operator. He was in Mindanao, I worked with him in Sulawesi.’

There was a moment of silence. Mac had just wanted the American to know who to ask should he need a reference.

‘Wish we could have saved Phil,’ said Mac, looking at the lino floor. ‘It just happened so fast, and suddenly that rocket —’

‘Nothing we could have done differently, except stand back and let them go,’ said Sam. ‘And that wasn’t the deal.’

Sam showed Mac his burnt leg, which had copped less damage than it had seemed the night before. The rifle shot had passed straight through his right thigh muscle without touching bone.

‘I’m having one more test this morning, and then I’m out of here,’ said Sam.

Mac looked around at the other patients. ‘That’s what I wanted to discuss.’

‘What’s on your mind?’

‘You and I are the only ones to have tangled with this Israeli crew and lived to talk about it,’ said Mac. ‘So we should either buddy up, or you tell me all I need to know about these pricks and I’ll hunt ’em down myself.’

Sam laughed softly and looked at Mac. ‘Not working with the Australians?’

‘There was some internal shit,’ said Mac. ‘And when it hit the fan, I was standing downwind.’

‘Tell me all about it.’

‘I can’t,’ said Mac. ‘Get me seconded and we can pool the intel.’

‘It may not be that easy,’ said Sam.

‘Why not?’

‘Perhaps we’re on different sides.’

‘Really?’ said Mac.

Sam nodded. ‘Australia is part of the problem, not the solution.’

Mac tried to guess what the dispute might be. He realised he’d have to give something before the Americans would trust him. There was only one part of the puzzle that he’d witnessed and it might interest the Americans.

‘You and Phil wanted that memory card,’ said Mac.

‘Sure,’ said Sam, eyes shifting.

‘If I tell you the story about that card, would you tell me what’s on it?’

‘I can’t make that deal, McQueen,’ said Sam. ‘What I can do is hear the story and see where you can help. Then, if my bosses like it, we can talk more.’

‘That’s it?’

‘You know how this works,’ said Sam.

So Mac told the story of the Singapore gig and the slaying of Ray Hu and the subsequent tailing of Jim Quirk in Saigon. He admitted to carrying the memory card but having no idea of its importance, and then explained how it was stolen from his bag at the Cambodiana by the Israelis.

‘You were hauled in by your own people?’ said Sam.

‘They weren’t my people,’ said Mac. ‘They’re answering to a different level of government and they’re desperate for that SD card — they think there’s a traitor.’

Nodding slowly, Sam looked away, and then back at Mac.

‘I’ll have a chat — you got a cell phone?’

Grabbing Sam’s phone, Mac input his number and called his own.

‘I’ll call you tonight, regardless of how it goes,’ said the American, as a doctor and nurse came to Sam’s bed with their clipboards.

‘Make it quick,’ said Mac.

‘Okay — but it’s a pity you haven’t run across Geraldine McHugh,’ said Sam.

‘McHugh?’ said Mac, his heart quickening as he remembered — McHugh was the central concern of the Americans’ interrogation. It was the first thing they’d asked him after they grabbed him in the apartment building.

‘I need to talk to her,’ said Sam.

‘Well, you’re in luck,’ said Mac, smiling as he stood to leave.

Sam raised his voice at Mac’s back. ‘You told us you’d never heard of her.’

‘I fibbed — I thought I was going to die and I needed a bargaining position,’ said Mac.

‘Well?’ said Sam.

‘Well, I have to go,’ said Mac.

Sam struggled from the bed as the medicos closed on him. ‘No, wait, McQueen.’

‘Call me with the good news,’ said Mac as he walked away. ‘Don’t be a stranger.’