Counter Attack

Chapter 54

The Nokia buzzed in Mac’s breast pocket as he maintained eye contact with Sandy Beech.

‘Wanna get that?’ said the military spook.

‘I want the card back,’ said Mac. ‘It’s buying two Aussies.’

Turning to Scotty, Beech gave him a look that Mac didn’t like.

‘Yep,’ said Mac, answering the phone before looking at Scotty and mouthing, ‘Dozsa.’

‘Listen, my Aussie friend,’ came the monotone straight out of Budapest via Tel Aviv. ‘You be at the main wharf in Stung Treng, at midnight.’

‘I haven’t got it yet,’ said Mac.

‘That’s why you have till midnight,’ said Dozsa. ‘And no eyes in the sky.’

The line went dead and Mac looked up from the phone. ‘Stung Treng — main wharf, midnight. No UAVs.’

The discomfort was obvious and Scotty cleared his throat.

‘What?’ said Mac.

‘Mate, we’re standing down on this one, okay?’ said Mac’s mentor.

‘This one?’ said Mac.

‘It’s not ours anymore,’ said Scotty. ‘It’s with Defence now.’

Mac couldn’t grasp it. ‘Hang on, Scotty — what’s now with Defence? The card? The wellbeing of Lance and Dave?’

Scotty’s throat bobbed. ‘Whole bit.’

‘Fuck that,’ said Mac, reaching for his waistband as Scotty’s hand slapped down on his wrist. Pulling back from Scotty, Mac heard the tapping of steel on the window beside his head. Freezing, he raised his hands — he knew that sound. Turning, he saw a set of eyes looking down the barrel of a Browning Hi-Power pistol. On the other side of the car, a blond soldier was also aiming at Mac.

‘I didn’t want it to be like this,’ said Beech, eyes flicking to the soldiers who simultaneously opened the rear doors of the Nissan and relieved Mac of the SIG Sauer. ‘I wish there was another way of doing this.’

Emerging from the car, Mac looked around and saw four soldiers dressed in the kind of civvies CIA paramilitaries wore: fatigue pants tailored like chinos, military shirts that passed for adventure travel wear and military boots made to look like yuppie hikers’ shoes.

‘You okay, Macca?’ said the soldier closest to him.

‘Couldn’t get any better if you paid me in beer,’ said Mac. ‘How you been, Maddo?’

Doug Madden was a team leader in a unit called CDT 4, a navy commando unit based out of Perth. Looking around the car, Mac saw faces he knew and greeted them.

‘Macca,’ they all mumbled, giving him a nod. During some of Mac’s assignments over the years, the boys from Team Four had inserted and extracted him, protected him from bad guys and made him look good. Now they were following orders — it wasn’t personal.

‘Thanks, guys,’ said Beech, closing the mini notebook as he stood beside the car.

‘You’re calling this wrong, Sandy,’ said Mac.

‘I’m following orders, Macca.’ Beech nodded at Maddo, who stripped the clip out of Mac’s handgun and threw it in the dirt.

‘Whose orders?’ said Mac, stowing the emptied SIG.

‘Ask Scotty,’ said Beech. ‘We got the same message.’

Beech moved with the commandos to a metallic blue Nissan Patrol parked behind Scotty’s car, touching his eyebrow briefly as they accelerated away.

Making it around to Scotty’s side of the car in three strides, Mac tore open the door where his mentor had his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

‘You’re a fucking wanker, Scott,’ said Mac, nostrils flaring in anger. ‘Know that? You’re un-fucking-believable.’

‘Sit down,’ said Scotty, calm.

‘Why, so you can shaft me again?’ said Mac, knowing he was losing it.

After three seconds glaring at each other, the two men broke from the intensity and started laughing. Slowly at first and then uncontrollably, until Scotty’s eyes ran with tears.

‘Wanker?’ said Scotty as he recovered. ‘You cheeky bastard.’

‘Yeah, well,’ said Mac, sitting on the car’s bonnet, wiping his eyes. ‘Working without notes.’

‘By the way…’ said Scotty, getting out of the car and offering Mac a water bottle.

‘Yeah?’ said Mac, closing his eyes and trying to relax.

‘I said we were standing down,’ said Scotty, lighting a smoke. ‘I didn’t say it was over.’

Grabbing the water bottle from Scotty, Mac gulped at it as they watched the window of Grimshaw’s room.

‘So, explanation time.’

‘Don’t know how much help I’ll be,’ said Scotty.

Mac was sick of being fobbed off. ‘What’s Operation Lampoon?’

‘I don’t know. Defence spooks have been keeping an eye on this Joel Dozsa for a while, and when I let slip that you were on the trail of an ex-Mossad guy, the next day Sandy turns up.’

‘And wants what?’

‘I think tonight about sums it up. That memory card is the last piece in a puzzle that Pao Peng’s people have been building for three years.’

‘What’s on it?’

Scotty looked around the backpacker bar. ‘You know much about routers?’

‘Puts a groove in wood?’ said Mac.

‘No, mate,’ said Scotty. ‘The other one — the junction box that digital signals go through, decides where the signal is going.’

‘Okay,’ said Mac.

‘Apparently General Pao Peng employed Joel Dozsa to find a way to read the Americans’ global traffic in emails, phone calls and signals.’

‘What? All of it?’ asked Mac.

‘Pao Peng provides the technology gurus from the PLA; Dozsa has been the deniable contractor, putting it together. This was his thing in the Mossad — putting together managed funds that bought intellectual property the IDF may have wanted. He was under the wing of a Mossad banker called Bernie Radoff.’

‘Has Dozsa done it?’ said Mac.

‘I don’t know,’ said Scotty. ‘What Sandy was looking at tonight — from what I’ve overheard — is the hardest part.’

‘Which is?’

‘A list of specifications from a company called Ormond Technik, a Dutch firm.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Ormond supplies a tiny component used in the routers that run the Milstar program — the Pentagon’s military satellite network.’

‘How did Dozsa get the specs?’

‘A system of front companies, held in a managed fund, bought Ormond Technik,’ said Scotty.

‘So?’ said Mac.

‘So, with those specs, the Chinese can listen in to everything going through the Milstar system — everything from a general’s warning order, to a Christmas Day call from a marines private to his child.’

‘Listen in?’ said Mac. ‘What, like hacking?’

‘No,’ said Scotty, moustache dipping in his beer. ‘The way it was explained to me is this: the tiny transceiver in the router is like the reed in a clarinet. It creates a signal. If you have good listening posts, and you have the algorithms for the transceiver, then you can monitor every piece of data and you can do it either by compromising the system or you can listen to the frequencies, pick them up like a radio tuner.’

‘If this is just the crowning glory, what else have they been assembling?’

‘It’s hush-hush and the guys at Defence are paranoid about it.’

‘Why?’

‘Too many questions, Macca.’

‘Tell me,’ said Mac.

‘I’m not supposed to know this,’ said Scotty, ‘but the Ormond sale was okayed by us.’

‘Us?’

‘A section of Aussie intel called the BLU — the Business Liaison Unit.’

‘Sure,’ said Mac, who had done surveillance and written reports in the past for the BLU. ‘What’s it got to do with us?’

‘Because it’s an Aussie-managed fund that bought Ormond Technik,’ said Scotty. ‘It’s called Highland Pacific and all the intellectual property transferred across a week ago, a day after our guy signed off on it.’

‘Signed off?’

‘Yeah, there were suspicions that Highland Pacific is controlled by the Loh Han Tong, in Saigon,’ said Scotty. ‘But he cleared it.’

‘Who?’

‘James Quirk,’ said Scotty.

Mac’s face froze: he thought of a computer terminal in the Mekong Saloon, the fear in Quirk’s eyes and the execution by Dozsa. And then a memory card falling off the table.

The implications were terrible. ‘This was about Quirk all along?’

‘Looks like it,’ said Scotty.

‘Why didn’t I know?’

‘Why didn’t I know?’ said Scotty. ‘I thought Jim was off the rails; there was talk about his marriage problems and I wanted you to spend a couple of weeks and clear him. I had no idea — I thought he was drinking, maybe hitting the brothels.’

‘So first we have Lance and Urquhart up here, claiming to work for the PM?’

‘I think they do,’ said Scotty. ‘McHugh’s involvement in that counterfeiting was really embarrassing and they wanted it hushed up — certainly didn’t want Washington catching wind of it via our leaky intel guys in Canberra.’

‘And then we get Sandy?’

‘There was nothing to be done about that, sorry, mate,’ said Scotty. ‘Tobin called and stood us down.’

‘So you’re sitting in the car and he tells you that if I come back with the SD card, he’s taking over?’

‘Almost word for word.’ Scotty chuckled. ‘Except he asked to be backed up if you wanted to fight.’

Looking into his drink, Mac pondered his options: there were two Aussies being held hostage, Jim Quirk was dead and Tranh Loh Han was missing, presumed dead.

He had several ways forwards, but he needed to get Scotty onside.

‘I have a confession,’ said Mac.

‘You’re not walking away from Lance or Urquhart?’

Mac nodded. ‘Can you look the other way? Let me stay here on holiday?’

‘I can do better than that,’ said Scotty. ‘Tobin was very clear — he said we were being stood down, not recalled.’

‘So we’re in business?’

‘What did you have in mind?’ said Scotty.

‘Talk to Sammy and follow up on a technology question of my own.’

‘Count me in,’ said Scotty. ‘Just go easy on the violent stuff, okay?’

Keying the phone, Mac got himself in character. The call was answered on the second ring and Grimshaw snapped his greeting, a man under pressure.

‘Charles — nice night.’

‘What’s up?’ said the American. ‘Dozsa shifted all that currency from his compound.’

‘Not much I could do about it,’ said Mac. ‘We need to talk.’

Grimshaw paused. ‘You’re back with the Aussies, aren’t you?’

‘I was,’ said Mac. ‘That’s what I have to talk about.’