‘That haircut suits you much better.’ Mac pulled a bottle of water from his pack and handed it to the novice. ‘Drink that — keep your fluids up.’
As Mac knocked his backpack against the console, a set of keys and the SD memory chip he’d found at the Mekong Saloon fell on the floor in front of Lance. Ignoring the keys, the youngster picked up the memory card. ‘What’s this?’
‘Memory card,’ said Mac, gesturing at his keys.
Grabbing the keys and handing them back, Lance held on to the chip. ‘What’s on it?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Mac. ‘Plug it into the laptop.’
‘No slots,’ said Lance. ‘Where did you say you got it?’
Mac caught sight of the Patrol trying to jockey closer to the van as they closed on the border crossing. ‘Can’t remember.’
Mac took the memory card back and turned to Tranh. ‘Our friends in the Patrol — they with us from Saigon?’
Tranh nodded.
The Chinese never left home without a backup crew or some kind of electronic measures, and as the taupe arches of the customs and immigration gates rose in front of them, Mac thought about the choice between playing it safe and pretending not to notice the MSS, or flushing them out and seeing if they declared their intentions.
The manual said to act as if nothing was wrong, to go to fallbacks and then switch to counter-surveillance. Such techniques could be useful but they were usually taught by people who didn’t live in the field and whose experience was confined to being a declared intelligence officer at an embassy or consulate.
In Mac’s world, where you lived an undeclared corporate cover, never ventured near Australian consular premises, and could be tried as a spy if caught, the rules were different. In Mac’s world, to react to surveillance by the book amounted to an admission of espionage.Besides, thought Mac, as they joined the non-truck queue into Cambodia, if these Chinese blokes had held off in Vietnam, who knew what they felt licensed to do in Cambodia?
‘Tranh, where would you rather deal with the MSS: here or Cambodia?’
‘Cambodia is no good,’ said Tranh, turning his mouth down. ‘Chinese do what they want over there.’
‘Can we lose them in this queue?’
Looking in his mirror, Tranh focused and lit another cigarette. ‘Maybe — see who we have on the gate.’
The queue edged forwards, the Vietnamese border guards asking for passports or registration at every fourth or fifth car. The guards nodded Tranh through and they joined the queue across a tarmac courtyard to go through Cambodian customs.
‘They behind us?’ asked Mac, as the Cambodian customs officer walked towards Tranh’s window.
‘Yep — one car, then it’s them.’
The Cambodian officer counted the occupants, said something to Tranh and put his hand out. Collecting the passports, the guard took his ten-dollar greenback from the top booklet, stamped the passports on his little shaded lectern, and returned them to Tranh.
Joking with the guard, Tranh got him laughing, handed him the rest of his pack of Marlboros and gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. Mac liked Tranh’s style: the man was an enlister.
As they eased out of the customs area onto the highway into Phnom Penh, Mac heard the official who’d stamped their passports yelling into the guardhouse and an overweight senior guard staggered out into the heat.
Hitting the gas, they accelerated to full speed and, through the back window, Mac and Lance saw a group of guards descend on the red Nissan Patrol.
‘Nice work,’ said Mac, as the Nissan’s driver was hauled out of the car. ‘What did you tell them?’
‘I said the cases of Johnnie Walker we taking into Phnom are all in the red Patrol — tell him our friends got a case for the guards.’
‘Ha! You hear that, mate?’ said Mac.
‘Yep — that’s pretty cool,’ said Lance, wide-eyed and gulping.
Crossing the Mekong at a little after four pm, they followed the famous river north from Banam into Phnom Penh, keeping pace with the trucks that plied National Highway One between the two former jewels of French Indochina. Circling the Hawaii Hotel, they stopped one block away and Mac asked Tranh to check in and pay with cash.
When Tranh re-emerged they headed across town, the clouds weighing heavy in the late afternoon, and booked into the Cambodiana Hotel under Tranh’s name and passport. When the MSS bribed a night manager to have a look at the guest manifest, Mac wanted them scanning a whole pile of names native to the Mekong Delta.
Parking around the back, they headed for their rooms with Mac calling for a meeting in fifteen minutes in his suite. As the doors shut, Mac turned immediately to Tranh, who had a room in Mac’s suite.
‘I’ve got someone to see tonight,’ said Mac, handing over five US ten-dollar notes — a small fortune in Phnom Penh. ‘I want you to take Lance out for a drink and a look around.’
‘You want me to talk with him?’
‘I want you to shut up about anything to do with Captain Loan, the Mekong Saloon or Jim Quirk. I think he’s reporting to someone.’
‘Okay, Mr Richard.’
‘So, just go to all the Aussie bars and be seen, eh?’ said Mac. ‘I want to get an idea of the Chinese, see how many there are.’
‘Okay — but look after Mr Lance?’
‘Yeah, mate, let’s get him drunk and see what he’s about. I’ll meet you at the Ozzie Bar at eight.’
Briefing Lance to stay close to Tranh and obey his instructions, Mac gave him the location of what he called Red Fallback: the boat-hire precinct on Sisowath Quay, at the end of Hassakan.
Leaving by the laundry entrance at the rear of the Cambodiana after slipping an American one-dollar note to the duty manager, Mac strolled down the alley behind the hotel and waited at the intersection with the street. Hailing a cyclo, he asked the rider to head across town. Approaching the river, they ducked into a side alley that connected with a rear service lane. Paying him four US dollars, Mac asked him to stay where he was for half an hour. Mac wasn’t going to use him again — he just didn’t want any surveillance teams to see the cyclo emerge from the lane without the passenger.
Hitting the buzzer at the rear of the Taberna, Mac presented his face to the camera. ‘I’ve got a package to pick up,’ he said, looking up and down the alley as the first spits of rain started. Miles up in the atmosphere, a thunder clap shook the air, making Mac flinch.
Cambodian voices ummed and aahed.
‘You can bring it out if you want,’ Mac shouted at the speaker as the thunder bellowed and the cyclo rider pulled his plastic poncho from under his seat and put it on.
Around them the roar of the monsoon drowned out all other sound as the rain started in earnest and increased its volume to such an intensity that Mac couldn’t speak without his mouth filling up with water, raindrops bouncing chest-high off the concrete laneway that until thirty seconds ago had been dusty.
‘Let’s go around to the front entrance,’ he said to the cyclo rider, easing himself back into the seat which was now a pond.
As Mac spilled out of the cyclo and hobbled on his dicky knee for the bar entrance, the rainfall boomed like a naval battle. Walking to the counter, dripping, Mac saw the source of the vagueness — a middle-aged local.
‘You the mister on speaker?’ the man asked, confused but benign.
‘Yep,’ said Mac, holding his arms out as a puddle formed around him.
The man gave him a towel. Taking a seat at the bar as he clocked his surrounds, Mac saw someone he recognised — a heavily built man in his fifties, sitting at a table.
‘Macca!’ said Boo Bray, standing and laughing as he took in Mac’s drenched form. This was not Calhoun.