Walking along the riverside boulevard, Mac tried to recall everything about the man he’d seen waiting outside the Mekong Saloon. Euro in looks, but not in dress: 1980s sunnies, the Sansabelt trousers and the shoes just short of nerdy. As if someone had tried too hard to dress down, or had never lived with a woman.
And it wasn’t just that man: Mac had seen another two, just the same, acting casual around the Mekong. They weren’t cops and they weren’t Asian.
Mac wandered into the shade of the Cyclo Cafe and slumped in a wicker armchair. He needed a cold beer, and then he needed to work out why another team was tailing Jim Quirk.
Chapter 14
Finishing his Operation Dragon update on the codeword-secure computer at Southern Scholastic Books, Mac hit ‘send’ and watched the intranet system issue a log number and time/date/location stamp for the filed report. Then, having made a pot of coffee at the small kitchenette at the back of the first-floor office suite, he picked up the secure desktop phone and dialled.
‘Scotty, it’s Mac,’ he said when the phone was picked up.
Intelligence officers sent reports in the Firm’s format, not unlike the way newspaper stories had a certain structure. But if it wasn’t going to endanger the operation, Mac also liaised directly with his case officer.
‘Macca, how are we doing?’
‘In place, made contact with Apricot today.’
‘Route?’
‘Into Cholon, to a nightclub that’s open during the day.’
‘The Mekong Saloon?’
‘You know it?’
‘It’s a Loh Han property. You read the file, right, Macca? They’ve got places in Vung Tau, Nha Trang and around Saigon.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Mac, distracted. ‘I read it.’
‘You all right? Drinking heaps of fluids?’
‘Yeah, mate,’ said Mac, pushing the coffee aside and reaching for the water bottle. ‘Any further intel on Quirk?’
‘No. We asked Chester and his security guy to hold off on the questions. Why, what’s up?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mac, trying to form the thought. ‘It was just… there was this guy outside the Saloon this arvo. I didn’t like it.’
‘Surveillance?’
‘Probably, but I couldn’t be certain.’
‘Asian?’
‘Euro,’ said Mac. ‘Mediterranean Euro.’
Scotty scoffed. ‘That’s it?’
‘I didn’t like the set-up.’
‘You’re hinky,’ said Scotty.
‘Don’t start that paperback detective stuff,’ said Mac.
‘Got a pic?’ said Scotty.
‘I didn’t want to use the camera,’ said Mac. ‘The Cong An’s been hanging round the hotel and following me in the street.’
‘Okay,’ said Scotty, knowing that a camera full of surveillance photos had been the downfall of too many intelligence officers. ‘I might send up this whiz-kid from Bangers.’
‘Oh really?’ said Mac, reluctant to have someone foisted on him. ‘Who?’
‘Lance Kendrick — one of the new guard.’
‘Shit,’ said Mac. Aussie intelligence had been finding it harder to recruit youngsters from university who hadn’t used drugs, who didn’t have tattoos and who didn’t lie in interviews. ASIS was recruiting so many women because they didn’t seem to lie as much as the young blokes, and ‘new guard’ was code for men who ten years earlier would never have made it past the second interview.
‘Yeah, his thing is technology,’ said Scotty, as though it was shameful. ‘Knows about BlueBerries and Tweetering — all that shit.’
‘Can he use a telephoto?’
‘Yep.’
‘Run a concealed video? Wire a car for sound? Won’t get me light beer when he goes to the bar?’
‘Yes, yes, yes, mate,’ said Scotty. ‘He does cyber counter-measures, and he’s a whiz with getting data out of phones and making phantom chat sites or whatever they’re called. He’s done rotations with the NSA. He’s one of these modern spooks, mate — gonna put us out of business.’
‘I don’t care how modern he is,’ said Mac. ‘Don’t send me some spinner.’
‘Thought you might like to hear some post-modern theories about how the Vatican is worse than Hitler’s —’
‘Watch it, mate,’ said Mac.
‘— Third Reich, or how the White House is the same as al-Qaeda.’
‘I’ll give him a first-hand demonstration of what al-Qaeda’s internal security people do to defectors,’ Mac said. ‘And it’s a little meaner than outing some diplomat’s wife as CIA.’
Scotty turned serious. ‘Look, he’s an individual but he’s smart and he’s trained.’
‘I don’t care if he’s one of a kind,’ said Mac. ‘If he’s got a pierced tongue and he’s taking ecstasy, then he’ll come back to you in a diplomatic pouch, minus a few teeth. Got that, mate?’
Scotty laughed. ‘Sure.’
‘Deadset, Scotty,’ said Mac, looking around him. ‘Saigon is no place for a spy who wants to stand out.’
Locking up the offices, Mac skipped down the stairs and into the brightness of the street. Squinting, he reached for his sunnies and decided it was time to buy a couple of trop shirts before he started swimming in his polo.
The shop owner folded the green, black and sky-blue trop shirts on a large piece of brown paper, and then put Mac’s polo shirt on top.
‘That twenty dollar, mister,’ said the man, giving Mac a wink as he sellotaped the brown paper parcel and slipped it into a plastic bag.
Handing over two US ten-dollar notes, Mac grabbed the bag and adjusted to the loose fit of the dark blue trop shirt he was wearing. With the pre-monsoon humidity he needed something that ventilated itself, although he usually avoided wearing them: fifty years of CIA men charging around South-East Asia dressed like Ferdi Marcos had made many Asians think that a white man in a trop shirt was armed.
‘I like that colour,’ said a woman’s voice, close enough that Mac jumped slightly.
Turning to his right, Mac came almost eye to eye with a tall Vietnamese woman, her long black hair pulled back in a ponytail.
‘Guess the humidity makes our visitors dress local,’ she said, an Aussie accent evident in her English. ‘My dad always wore the ones with the silk-cotton blend this time of year.’
‘Yeah,’ said Mac, trying to make light. ‘I think mine’s a —’
The shop owner interrupted, running around the counter and grabbing Mac by the collar. ‘See, it silk, it silk,’ said the owner, nodding furiously at what Mac assumed was the tag of his shirt.
Tensing as he realised the owner was scared, Mac heard the woman rattle off a Vietnamese phrase that sounded something like, It’s okay, no trouble.
‘Wow,’ said Mac, looking for her backup at the glass entry. ‘Making sure I’m not overcharged, eh? This must be the tourist police?’
‘No,’ said the woman. ‘Just the police.’
‘Okay,’ said Mac, keeping the smile on his face.
‘Let’s talk,’ she said, and led Mac to the door of the shop, her black slacks swishing.
Mac thought about running out the back door and into the alley, making a dash for it. But he knew that if he went out that door there’d be more Cong An and perhaps a long stay in the basement of some shithole.
Pushing the colonial door back on its spring hinge, the woman pulled down her sunglasses and waited for Mac. Walking past her, his heart pounded up into his chest as he emerged onto Dong Du Street and looked around, feeling like a tin duck on a sideshow rail.
‘Tea?’ said the woman, perhaps enjoying Mac’s discomfort.
‘Well…’ he said, making a show of looking at his watch.
At the kerbside the Cong An from the back of the motorbike sat in the passenger seat of a white Camry, chewing gum.