‘Well, are you okay?’
‘Yeah, mate,’ said Mac, looking at his leg.
‘Don’t lie to me, Macca — are you okay?’
‘We had a small bingle, but we’re good.’
‘Bingle?’ said Scotty. ‘Sorry, can I have the non-Queensland translation for that?’
‘Well…’
‘Did you beat up anyone?’
‘Yep,’ said Mac.
‘Get in a gunfight?’
‘Ah, yeah.’
‘A car chase?’
‘We were on a bike.’
There was a new tone in Scotty’s voice. ‘Shit, Macca!’
‘Everything okay down there?’
‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ said Scotty.
‘Look, I want to work on this.’
Scotty’s voice rose in intensity. ‘No, mate — you’re not working on anything.’
‘You sure everything’s okay?’
‘I’m sure you’re a fucking headache,’ said Scotty. ‘Here’s my direct order: no more operations. You pick up the new recruit tomorrow and then we talk again after I read your report. Fuck’s sake.’
‘Okay, Scotty.’
‘Stay out of trouble — that’s an order,’ said Scotty and the line went dead.
Getting Tranh to drop him around the corner from the Grand Hotel, Mac hobbled the half-block to the double doors.
As he limped through the tiled lobby, the night manager called out, ‘Mr Richard?’
‘Yeah, squire,’ said Mac, his left knee not wanting to bear weight.
The bloke handed over an envelope. ‘Message for you, sir.’
‘Thanks. Can you send up a bucket of ice, cam on?’
Pushing off his shoes in the living area of his suite, Mac cracked the tab on a can of 333 from his fridge and looked at the envelope. The porter came in with an old-fashioned ice bucket and Mac tipped him with dong.
Pouring the ice into a plastic laundry bag, he fashioned it into an ice pack and eased it onto his knee, which was stretched out on the coffee table.
Opening the envelope, he saw Captain Loan’s business card. On the reverse side it said, Please call asap.
‘Jesus wept,’ he said, shutting his eyes and slumping back into the sofa as the ice took some of the pain out of his knee.
Regardless of how spies were portrayed in books and movies, the central factor in their success was the ability to move within and between countries without attracting the attention of the local gendarmes. It was one of those boring requirements of the job and Mac should have been able to operate in a foreign city for thirty-six hours without a police captain — a detective, for Christ’s sake — asking him to call.
He felt stupid, amateurish. And he felt exposed: the death of Jim Quirk was just sinking in. He couldn’t get the eyes of the killer out of his head and at the same time he knew the shooting was going to make him a person of interest to Captain Loan. She had him where she wanted him; so long as he was in Saigon, she was going to watch him like a rat in a maze…
Keying his phone, Mac waited for Tranh to answer.
‘Tranh,’ said Mac, ‘sorry to bother you, but I was thinking about our chat about Captain Loan.’
‘Yes, Mr Richard,’ he said. ‘I thought I tell her we were in Vung Tau tonight.’
Mac smiled. ‘Great minds, mate.’
‘It will be easy for her, and for you.’
‘Okay,’ said Mac, liking this guy. ‘Where did we stay?’
‘Didn’t, Mr Richard. We drove back, arrived few minute ago.’
‘Who saw us in Vung Tau?’
‘My cousin, he has noodle bar — he serve us at quarter past nine, right? No way we can be in Vung Tau and at Mekong Saloon.’
‘Thanks, Tranh,’ said Mac. ‘And you’re picking up Lance tomorrow morning at the airport. He’s staying at the Rex, okay?’
‘I’ll call you when I get him,’ said Tranh.
Tapping the phone on his teeth, Mac thought about it. He needed to call Canberra, have a quick chat.
Dialling the number for the Saigon consulate-general, Mac was put through to the duty guy, who called himself Justin.
‘I need a secure patch to the Casey building, thanks, Justin,’ said Mac, meaning the Aussie SIS headquarters in Canberra. Most Asian intelligence services monitored phone calls out of their country, so Mac liked a secure line for offshore chats.
‘Um,’ said the bloke, flipping through his manual, ‘I haven’t done this… I…’
‘Just give me the connection,’ said Mac, friendly. ‘If they think I’m a fruitcake, they’ll cut me off, trust me on that.’
‘Okay,’ Justin said.
The line went blank for five seconds, and then it was ringing.
A person called Samantha picked up in the secure-comms section of RG Casey and Mac identified himself as Albion, giving the code to say he wasn’t sitting there having his fingernails torn out.
‘What can I do for you, Albion?’ said Samantha, when she’d cleared him.
‘Can you run a VIN for me, please?’ said Mac, reading out the VIN sequences from the green LandCruiser.
Ninety seconds later, Samantha announced she had the data.
‘Okay,’ said Mac. ‘I need you to query the JPJ database in Malaysia and see if you can match that VIN to either a first owner, or the buyer of the vehicle through Cameron Toyota in KL, okay?’
‘Cameron Toyota,’ said Samantha. ‘This a stolen vehicle?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mac. ‘If Cameron Toyota doesn’t come up on the JPJ, you’ll have to do a company search to find the entity behind Cameron, and then do an ownership match from there. Can do?’
‘Can do, Albion,’ said Samantha.
‘Then we need to match that VIN against new registrations in Ho Chi Minh City — I think we query the Traffic Police Department.’
‘Sure, Albion — what are we looking for?’
‘Ownership, I think, perhaps compliance paperwork for an imported vehicle,’ said Mac, kicking himself for not knowing if the rego was Malaysian or Vietnamese.
Having a fast, hot shower, Mac plundered his toilet bag for painkillers and came up with his last two Panadeine Fortes. Washing them down with the beer, he gasped as he got his leg into position under the bedcovers and adjusted the ice pack on his left knee.
Drifting off, he tried to get the image of Jim Quirk out of his head and attempted to fit Geraldine McHugh into Captain Loan’s thinking. Why was a cop asking about Quirk’s wife?
As sleep took him the phone rang, waking Mac with a start. Picking up, he croaked his hello to Samantha and fossicked for a pad and pen on the bedside table.
‘Yeah?’ said Mac, sitting up.
‘The VIN was registered to a company in Kuala Lumpur in August 2006,’ said Samantha.
‘Name?’ said Mac, his head swimming.
‘Highland Surveying. It’s listed as a provider of surveying services to the logging and mining industries.’
‘Okay.’
She continued, ‘Ho Chi Minh Traffic Police has no record of the VIN or rego.’
‘Okay, what about Hanoi?’ said Mac.
‘Vehicle rego is national in Vietnam,’ said Samantha.
Thinking about it, Mac wondered if he had the wrong VIN — but it couldn’t be that because the VIN had already been paired with Cameron Toyota’s spare key under the seat.
‘Can we try Cambodia?’ said Mac, knowing how much traffic flowed between the two countries.
‘Can you give me five minutes?’
‘I’ll wait,’ said Mac, limping into the bathroom on the hunt for more painkillers.
As Mac wondered if this call counted as staying out of trouble by Scotty’s definition, Samantha came back on the line.
‘Royal Government of Cambodia registered that VIN in February of this year.’
‘To whom?’ said Mac.
‘A company called Bright Star Consulting,’ said Samantha. ‘Listed as infrastructure consultants for inbound foreign investors, specialising in forestry, mining and resources processing.’