Plugging his recharger into the wall, he powered up his Nokia and waited for the envelope icon to tell him if there was voicemail. Three came up: two from Urquhart, one from a Singapore number, probably Benny Haskell.
The first call, from 4.43 pm, was just Urquhart wanting a reminder about whether Mac was back in Saigon that evening.
The second was agitated: Urquhart demanding to know what the fuck was going on. What was this about Boo Bray and why was Lance left alone?
Seething, Mac dialled Urquhart’s number. One of the hardest things to teach a new field guy was the need to hold radio silence when a gig went bad, and adhere to the fallbacks as agreed. Once you started picking up phones and telling tales to your higher-ups, you put other people at risk, not just yourself. Having that discipline was the big delineator between the naturals for field intelligence and the people who should be writing research at head office.
‘Urquhart — Davis,’ said Mac as the call was connected. ‘You called?’
‘Fucking hell, mate,’ said Dave Urquhart, losing his oily finish. ‘Do you ever check your phone?’
‘Why would I do that when your snitch can do all the phone-ins for me?’
Urquhart almost hissed. ‘For God’s sake, he’s a newbie, all right? He’s been in for eighteen months and here he is in Cam-fucking-bodia, fending off detectives in the hospital while he watches Boo Bray die. And where the fuck are you?’
‘He knew the gig,’ said Mac. ‘He had his orders — no phone calls. The people tracking us have probably hacked our phones and calling you has not just endangered Lance, it’s probably made life more difficult for you and me too.’
Urquhart sighed and took a breath. ‘No doubt. But we have one of ours running around out there not knowing what to do.’
Mac could barely believe what he was hearing. ‘What? Having a beer and staying out of bed with stray women? That’s so hard?’
‘Of course not,’ said Urquhart. ‘But we’re not all like you. Not all of us like this stuff.’
‘Well, that just shows how little you know about me, mate,’ said Mac, more disappointed than angry.
At Nudgee College in Brisbane, Mac had once gone down to Pat Lenihan’s cube and tried to get back the fifty-dollar note he’d stolen from a young Dave Urquhart. Pat Lenihan was the dorm bully and his older brother, Jim, was in the cube with him that evening. Mac had to fight them both for the money.
He’d brought the fifty back to Dave with some bark missing, but he’d done it because it was the right thing to do, not because he liked it. Even in adulthood Mac was often surprised at how the back-office guys justified their own lack of activity by labelling anyone who endured hardship as a different class of human. And then they wondered why people like Mac felt more comfortable with their counterparts from rival agencies than they did with the lunchers in Canberra.
‘Sorry,’ said Urquhart. ‘But I want you back at base camp by midday, okay?’
‘What about Bray? What about Tranh?’
‘Bray’s got an embassy girl assigned,’ said Urquhart. ‘Tranh? You mean that Vietnamese boy? What’s he got to do with this?’
‘He’s thirty-one,’ said Mac, massaging his temples to stop the stress driving him mad. ‘And he’s either dead or they’ve got him.’
‘They? What are you talking about?’
‘I can’t talk on these lines,’ said Mac. ‘I’ll call tomorrow morning from the embassy.’
‘Look, I don’t care what’s going on with the local kid,’ said Urquhart, a whole new tone in his voice. ‘Lance is the priority — retrieve him and get back to Saigon.’
The line went dead. Listening to the third message, Mac heard Benny’s nasal growclass="underline" ‘Mate, some more on that matter we’d been negotiating. Something very, very interesting. Call me when secure. Cheers, mate.’
Grabbing a Tiger beer and a bag of nuts, Mac ate and drank seated on the floor, thinking about what had started with the simple tail-and-report of a wayward trade commissioner.
His jaw muscles were setting like concrete and his growing headache was an official splitter; his knee ached and his eyeballs, after the trauma, had settled into a throb of pain which alternated between sandpaper-dry and watery.
Eyeing his backpack, he pulled it towards him. Putting his hand into the outside pocket, there was no sign of the SD memory card that he’d picked up at the Mekong Saloon; the same card that Mac had asked Lance’s opinion of as they’d raced eastwards across Vietnam.
Staring into the empty pocket he tried to put the pieces into place. What was on the card? What did it have to do with Jim Quirk and Geraldine McHugh? They’d killed Quirk — done it in front of Mac. They had McHugh, didn’t they? What was on the SD card that it warranted so much carnage?
Sipping on the beer and chewing the peanuts, Mac looked for a thread but couldn’t see it.
Checking his watch, he rose and resumed his surveillance of the hotel driveway, cursing his knee as he struggled to find a comfortable stance. After ten minutes he decided there were no watchers and, finding Boo Bray’s Colt Defender in Sam’s bag, shoved it into his waistband and put on a black baseball cap.
The evening was warm and alive with bats and crickets as he walked the street from the Holiday International. He ignored fourteen cyclos until he found one resting and not looking for work. They went south along the riverfront road of Sisowath and stopped a block beyond the boat-hire area.
Mac paid and walked through the trees lining Sisowath and onto the parallel docklands road that — if he kept walking north — would bring him to the burnt-out truck and Phil’s charred corpse. Moving through the trees and undergrowth, he found a hide from which he could observe Red Fallback while also getting a line of sight up and down the dock road.
Sitting in silence, Mac smelled the fish curries wafting on the breeze and listened while a monkey spoke to itself above him. There were a few cars parked on the dirt road, but most didn’t seem occupied; those that did probably contained horny salarymen with their mistresses, thought Mac.
At 11.58 a white man in casual clothes skipped across Sisowath and walked directly into the meeting area. It was Lance, on time and with a gait far cockier than his apparently anxious state should have allowed. Had Urquhart exaggerated about Lance’s nerves, or had Lance talked it up to his mentor?
Deciding to keep the telling-off for the following morning, Mac took a last look down the lane and wandered into the meeting.
‘You’re early,’ said Mac, walking up to the youngster.
Lance stopped. ‘So are you.’
Mac saw something in his eyes as he got to him, and then realised Lance was wearing long sleeves despite the heat. It was all wrong but before he could get his hand on the Colt, Mac was looking at a seven-shooter Glock with a suppressor attached — the standard issue to Australian intel operators with an S-2 classification. An S-2 was a licence from the relevant minister to carry firearms.
Raising his hands slowly, Mac stayed calm. ‘Didn’t know you were armed, Lance.’
‘Drop it,’ said Lance, nodding at Mac’s belt. ‘It’s in your waistband.’
Behind Lance, a car moved towards them, the lights firing up. Wincing into the high beams, Mac turned side on, removed the Colt and let it drop on the dirt road.
‘Wanna talk about it?’ he asked, adrenaline pumping.
‘Talk about it?’ said Lance with a snigger. ‘You’re not need-to-know, believe me, champion.’
‘Need to know what?’ Mac squinted into the headlights which were now directly behind Lance.
‘Shit, you’re a dumb-arse, McQueen,’ said Lance. ‘Haircut — fucking haircut! Are you high? Where does some dumb-shit assassin get off telling me to cut my hair?’