Golden Serpent

CHAPTER 44

It was 8.36 am. Mac had a few hours up his sleeve before he had to make for Halim on the outskirts of Jakarta. He dialled the number Paul had left and waited. It went to voicemail. He rang off and checked on the ovies to see if they were dry.

Mac’s Nokia rang as he was looking for a wayward sock in the dryer.

Jogging into the kitchen, he leaned over and grabbed the phone.

‘Davis.’

‘Hi sweetheart, get the fl owers?’ It was Paul.

‘Oh those were fl owers? Sorry, just wiped my arse with them,’ said Mac, thinking Paul was sounding alert for a guy with a gunshot wound.

‘Mate, thought you might like to come down and have a chat with a new addition to the team?’ said Paul.

‘Voluntary new addition?’ asked Mac.

‘Haven’t decided yet, mate. Come down, have a natter.’

The address was four blocks from Jenny’s. Paul had a subject in what they called a ‘cabin’. It was like a safehouse, except in a cabin you generally interrogated people. There was nothing safe about it.

Mac stretched out as he walked. He had his ovies and Hi-Tecs on but no Heckler.

The address was a duplex on a quiet, tree-lined sidestreet away from the main boulevards. Mac knocked, saw an eye fl ash over the peep hole. Someone had been standing or sitting right there.

The door opened. A burly bloke with a holster pouch around his middle stepped out and gestured for a pat-down. Mac submitted.

Bloke checked in and behind his ears too then ushered him through.

‘They’re in the living room, sir.’

Mac clocked Paul and two other men: trop shirts, hip rigs. Clean-cut, athletically built. Sitting on coffee tables and chairs, they were gathered around something of interest. Not a TV, but a blonde woman wearing jeans and a pale blue polo shirt. Very good-looking, curvy.

Big black eye. Bruised neck.

All eyes turned to Mac, his eyes on Diane.

She smiled up at him, embarrassed, then looked away. It was obvious she hadn’t had much sleep last night. He wondered if the lads had been taking turns winding her up, getting her to slip in her story.

Paul stood, hooked Mac by the arm. ‘Time for a cuppa, yeah?’

‘What’s the story?’ asked Mac after Paul closed the kitchen door.

Paul’s nose strap was new, the black eye was subsiding and he was moving freely despite the rib wound.

‘Her name’s Diane,’ said Paul. ‘Been working for us on the Garrison thing. Allegedly.’

‘What’s she doing here?’

Paul gave him the look. The don’t shit me look. ‘This is the bird you were asking me about, right?’

Mac shrugged.

‘You asked me if our side had someone infi ltrated to Garrison, remember? I said I didn’t know,’ said Paul.

‘Yeah, got ya,’ said Mac.

‘That’s her, mate,’ said Paul, jigging his thumb over his shoulder.

Paul and Mac looked at one another. At every meeting of even friendly intel types, there was a point where you had to decide if you were going to divulge, or bullshit.

Mac’s brain spun. He decided to half-divulge, see what it would fl ush out. ‘You know, I thought she was a double,’ he said.

‘For who?’ asked Paul.

Mac smiled at him. The Poms knew Mac had been sleeping with her. Must have. They had him logged going into the British compound, they had Carl to debrief, they had tapes logged of Mac’s night in the cottage. They had prints and DNA, if that’s what they wanted.

‘Well, put it this way, mate,’ said Mac. ‘She was enlisting me but actually working with Garrison.’

‘Coincidence. I mean, you’re gorgeous. Not that you’re my type.’

Mac sniggered. ‘She was enlisting me while I was being stalked by Garrison and Sabaya.’

Paul nodded. ‘She was driving that BMW, too, right?’

‘Didn’t see her struggling to escape her captors,’ said Mac.

‘And according to Wylie, she was driving the tender craft that took Garrison and Sabaya and the Canadian hostage to Brani.’

Mac had said enough, now he wanted answers. ‘So she’s working for you lot? What capacity?’

‘Then I’d have to kill ya.’

‘Where’d you pick her up?’

‘POLRI found her wandering around on the road to Bogor. She was disoriented.’

‘Beaten up you mean? You guys do that?’

‘Nah, mate. Sri – the big one with the white shirt – he reckons it’s scopolamine. Something like that.’

‘That’s what they did to Judith Hannah,’ said Mac.

Paul poured the tea. ‘Thought you might like a chat with her?’

‘Why?’

‘She might open up to you.’

‘Why? She was just playing me.’

‘Never know, mate.’

The fact Paul had even got him down to another outfi t’s cabin was a big fi rst step. The way it worked was Mac was supposed to reciprocate. Show good faith.

Mac jiggled his tea bag. ‘What are we trying to fi nd out?’

Paul shrugged. ‘Usual. Is she one of ours? Is she doubled? What does she know about Garrison and Sabaya’s plans that we should know? Just a reminder that that’s what she was sent out to do.’

‘What do we know so far?’ asked Mac.

‘You’re right about Brani Island and that ship. Something is going on there. She said they called it ‘the stuff’. She doesn’t know what they’ve taken off with. But they did take off with something from Golden Serpent, according to her. They called it the insurance policy.’

‘She’s telling the truth in one regard. The US Army has lost a VX bomb during the hostage drama.’

‘Okay. That’s one tick for her. She says she was a hostage after that.’

‘She didn’t look too scared in that BMW,’ said Mac.

‘Well this is it, mate. She reckons they injected her with the scopolamine and interrogated her on the road to Bogor. The goons wanted her dead. Garrison saved her. Had some theory about how he doesn’t kill his lovers.’

‘Man of integrity.’

‘Real gentleman.’

‘Sounds like you got it all, mate,’ said Mac.

‘It’s not adding up for us. Have a crack?’

‘Can I do it without an audience?’ asked Mac.

‘Sure. We’ll be on the patio.’

Diane curled her legs under herself and turned to Mac on the sofa beside her. ‘So, don’t tell me – you’re the good cop, right?’

Mac looked at her, stony-faced.

‘This is shit. I should be in a hospital, Richard. Not putting up with this sexist crap!’

She yelled it so the blokes on the patio could hear. The one called Sri turned, looked in through the glass and went back to his tea.

Mac realised he still liked her. ‘Sexist?’

‘They train us up, just like the blokes. They assign us, just like the blokes. They even pay us the same. But when it comes down to it, as soon as they ask you to infi ltrate a man’ – she curled her fi ngers over, making inverted commas – ‘then you’re a slut.’

Mac raised his eyebrows.

‘But wait, there’s a catch,’ said Diane. ‘You’re this special breed of slut who’s actually virginal and innocent. So you sleep with a man once and you’re so overcome by the amazingness of the experience that you become a double agent just to be with him forever.’

‘Didn’t know I was that good,’ said Mac.

Diane laughed, shook her head. ‘Not you. Bloody hell! You were a mistake.’

‘A mistake?’

‘I didn’t know you were who you were, okay?’ she said.

‘Until when?’

Diane gave him the look. ‘Don’t get cheeky.’

Mac looked into his tea. ‘You telling these blokes everything?’

‘I’m doing what I can. You ever been doped up?’ she asked.

Mac thought about it. ‘No. Don’t think so.’

‘Well it blots things out, leaves some things clear. That’s why I’ve been telling them I need some medical care, get detoxed from this stuff. But I’ve been up all night going over it. I need rest, not interrogation.’

‘What can’t you remember?’

She rolled her eyes, like duh!

Mac thought about it. ‘Let’s see if I can jog your memory. That souvenir Garrison and Sabaya took off the ship?’

‘Yeah. The comms gear?’ she said.

Mac shook his head. ‘They’ve got a VX bomb. Took it from the container.’

Her hand went to her mouth. ‘Why? Why would they do that?’

‘I need you to tell me.’

‘Shit!’

‘Well, yes. It’s a hundred-pound bomb, so it can be lifted by one strong man. You can drive around with it in the boot of a car, walk it onto a train, hide it in a sports stadium, leave it in a mosque…’

Diane was silent, a blank.

‘So where are they headed?’ asked Mac.

She shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’

‘Diane, you have to think about this. Where are they going?’

She shook her head. ‘North? Maybe? I don’t…’

She was synthesising, trying to please him. In Mac’s experience, when an interrogation got to this point you either went straight to the hard stuff, or you let them rest. He’d try to get something from her, maybe spare her the unpleasantries.

‘Okay, what do they want with the VX bomb?’ he said.

‘I didn’t even know it was a bomb until you told me,’ she complained. ‘Stop trying to trick me, okay? I’ve been up all night with that shit.’

He couldn’t tell if she was lying. She was tired, there was a drugs component and Sabaya and Garrison were not the kind of people to tell their secrets to a fl oozie. There was no reason to tell her they had a VX bomb or where they were taking it. On the other hand, Diane may have been turned by Garrison and been planted back in the British camp to keep an eye on things. It had happened thousands of times before – it was the basic building block of counter-espionage.

He went for the easiest question of the day. ‘Diane, what’s on that ship?’

Her eyes sparked up. ‘Gold!’

‘Gold?’

She nodded. ‘Thousands of tons of the stuff.’

Mac continued on for a while but didn’t get any further. He was a pro, she was a pro. They both knew the game and they weren’t getting anywhere.

He wanted to talk about them, work out the real stuff. The cabin was wired for sound and Mac knew the boys from Six would have a great old laugh about McQueen grovelling to a bird. But he didn’t give a rat’s. ‘I thought you were the one. You know that, don’t you?’

She shrugged, offhand, her beautiful pale eyes suddenly looking cruel.

‘That it?’ asked Mac. ‘A shrug?’

Diane gave him an impassive look. ‘Guess it’s wrong girl, wrong number.’

Mac didn’t get females sometimes.