Mac followed Maggins’ nod and saw a manila envelope on the counter beside his right shoulder. The young barman must have put it there.
‘Anything I should know about?’ said Mac, picking up the package and opening it. There were three colour prints, two showing a green LandCruiser but with no view of the rego plates.
‘Intrepid put the word out, and these guys had been drink- ing here.’ Maggins lit a cigarette. ‘So getting pics wasn’t a hassle.’
‘Mercenaries?’ said Mac.
‘I’m guessing ex-intel guys.’
‘Who?’
‘They’re Israeli,’ said Maggins. ‘Could be Mossad, IDF, whatever. But definitely Israeli.’
The third picture showed a group of tanned men sitting at one of the Taberna’s outside tables. All wore sunglasses, generic shirts and slacks. Hidden slightly by a man leaning forwards in the group was the unmistakable profile of the man who’d killed Jim Quirk.
Chapter 23
The Ozzie Bar was filling with English-speaking tourists in the orange glow of the post-monsoon sunset. As a band sang about a woman who keeps no secrets, Mac held back in the shadows of a tourist T-shirt shop, peering over the clothes rack, trying to determine where the Chinese had their watchers.
His G-Shock said it was eleven minutes before he was due to meet Tranh and Lance for a drink. There were no obvious eyes on the street but, as he watched, a tuc-tuc pulled up outside the bar and Boo Bray eased his bulk out onto the drying tarmac and fished for money.
Wearing a South Grafton Rebels JRLFC polo shirt and pair of white pointy shoes under his jeans, Bray looked like the typical Aussie on the prowl as he ducked through the Ozzie Bar door.
Staying put, Mac let the street unfold, looking for new patterns and eyes. Two minutes went past and Mac was about to move when a young Chinese man stopped two doors from the Ozzie Bar and consulted a tourist map, while at the same time a tuc-tuc stopped almost in front of Mac’s position. The athletically built Chinese man sitting in the back of the tuc-tuc made no effort to get out and a flash of recognition crossed between him and the tourist across the street.
‘Shit,’ said Mac. Boo had been followed from Saigon?
Keeping his eyes averted, Mac slipped out of the T-shirt shop and moved through the gaudily lit street, away from the Ozzie Bar. The crowds were back after the torrential rain and he blended quickly with the tourists and traders.
It didn’t take more than thirty seconds of walking before Mac found who he was looking for. The woman sat cross-legged on the seagrass mat, her limp baby draped across her lap like old celery, its head almost inside the begging bowl.
Tearing a US fifty-dollar note in half, Mac showed her one half of the note, making her single good eye light up while the empty socket of the other crinkled with focus.
‘Other half — him there,’ he said, pointing back to the man waiting in the tuc-tuc. ‘You go now — money for you there.’
As the woman grabbed at the half-note and stood, Mac moved to the next beggar — a dark man with opium eyes and no legs.
‘You want fif’ dollar?’ asked Mac, showing the man his remaining half-note. ‘Chinee tourit — he got money for you.’
His eyes following the line of Mac’s pointing finger, the beggar snatched the note and started swinging his torso through his arms as he headed across the street, his eyes not leaving the watcher with the tourist map.
Giving the two beggars a ten-second start, Mac wandered into the street, casually weaving through the traffic as the woman started haranguing the man in the tuc-tuc. Moving on his rag-covered fists, the legless man covered a lot of ground very quickly and accosted the Chinese ‘tourist’. As the man looked around in a panic, not knowing what to do with this beggar demanding money, a trader came out of a shop and joined the argument. The trader poked the Chinese watcher in the chest, at which point the spy raised his hands in surrender, turned and walked away from the Ozzie Bar. As Mac neared the bar entrance, he stole a glance across the road where two portly women were yelping at the guy in the tuc-tuc. Their body language said, Well, what are you going to do for this poor woman?
As the watcher turned his back on the Ozzie Bar to face his accusers, Mac slipped into the bar where Boo Bray was throwing back a bottle of Tiger.
‘Buying, are ya, Boo?’ said Mac as he stood beside the ex-MP, casing the bar over the big feller’s shoulder. Lance and Tranh had a table in the corner, in the darkness, giving them a view of the entrance, the bar and the toilet doors — a classic piece of field craft. The bar was filling with Anglos trying to get drunk and find a bedmate.
Boo’s pale eyes scanned the crowd over Mac’s head. ‘What’s your poison?’
‘Tiger should do it,’ said Mac as the band opened with the first notes of ‘Friday on My Mind’.
Keeping Boo at the bar, Mac caught up with the gossip: the Foreign Affairs lifer in Hong Kong who’d become a victim of the casinos in Macao and had started raiding the chancery coffers to sustain his habit; the bright up-and-comer in the Los Angeles Trade Commission who’d fallen for the overtures of a foxy Frenchman who was actually a Belgian spy.
‘These people are amazing,’ said Boo, shaking his head softly as he asked for two more beers. ‘She cried all the way home. I said, “What were you thinking, love? The dip-sec told you he was no good.” And she says, “Yeah, but I love him.”’
‘Those Frenchies are bloody charming, mate,’ said Mac.
‘Sure,’ said Bray, handing Mac a fresh beer. ‘But nothing a slap wouldn’t fix.’
Acknowledging Tranh across the bar, Mac tried to keep things social with Boo while fishing for information. Boo and Mac had known each other for a number of years through the Jakarta and Manila embassy colonies, their personality differences always for- given because of the number of Aussie rugby teams they’d played in together. Boo was pushing fifty but he’d played in the most recent ANZAC Day footy match against the Kiwis and he’d apparently got himself into one of his traditional blues. Mac’s last encounter with Boo Bray and I-team had occurred a few years earlier in Makassar, where Boo and his sidekick Marlon had tried to retrieve Mac during the Golden Serpent debacle. Mac had busted Boo’s wrist and dislocated Marlon’s shoulder.
Mac couldn’t sense any hard feelings about the incident. ‘So, how’s Marlon?’
‘He’s still working,’ said Boo, looking around the room as if he’d never stopped being an MP. ‘He’s on this gig.’
‘Not around?’
‘Just looking into a matter,’ said Boo with a grin, knowing how that would annoy a spy.
Mac made to move to Tranh’s table. ‘Come and meet my friends.’
‘Nah, mate,’ said Bray, nodding across the room. ‘Thought I might say hello to the sorts.’
Two European women were laughing at a stand-up table and Mac chuckled at Boo’s optimism. ‘I’ll leave you to it, mate.’
Boo tested his breath. ‘Just ride shotgun — no follow-through, okay?’
‘Nah, mate — I’m sweet,’ said Mac.
Ordering a round of beers, Mac heard a phone ring and, turning, watched Boo answer. Bray’s head sank into his chest and then he was placing his beer on a table and walking towards the exit beside the kitchen. Standing, Mac felt his pulse rise as he hooked his finger at Tranh.
‘Stay in here, get eyes on any watchers,’ said Mac as Tranh and Lance moved to him. ‘Call me when they arrive — and no heroes tonight, okay, fellas?’
He was talking to Tranh, but he was looking at Lance. As he turned to go Tranh grabbed him by the elbow.