‘The Chinese knew Lao had been compromised by the Firm?’
‘But they whack him rather than allow the meeting to go ahead?’ said Mac, looking at Beech. ‘Doesn’t make sense, Sandy.’
‘No, mate — they could have just stopped using Lao and Koh. Or they could have acted dumb and used the situation to misinform Aussie intelligence.’
Mac smiled. ‘It’s what we’d do.’
‘It’s what we’d do, sure, but just so we’re clear: I won’t be dropping this,’ said Sandy, his tone changing. ‘I don’t want the word getting around that the Chinks can just whack one of our guys and walk away from that.’
Mac turned sideways and looked at the DIO man. Sandy Beech had served in the SAS before going back to the intelligence staff. During the peacekeeping phase of East Timor a political war between the intel staffers in the field and the DIO pointy-heads in Canberra had raged out of control. It had culminated in a clever-clogs in Canberra denying field access to the intelligence database when a team of intel staffers in East Timor needed it. The first inquiry into the scandal had been a cover-up, which led to a second inquiry. Sandy Beech had been elevated to DIO after that snafu, as a ‘healing’ exercise, but now he was signalling to Mac that he was still an SAS-trained field guy.
‘Okay, Sandy,’ said Mac, ‘let’s keep the file open — but, you know, Ray was my friend, okay?’
‘It’s okay, Macca,’ said Beech, chuckling. ‘You have the honours.’
Mac got out of Beech’s car on Cavill Avenue in Surfers Paradise and walked a route south to the house, using a couple of zigzags and double-arounds to shake any nosey bastards. He’d always been careful, but the events of two years earlier, when a Pakistani hit man and a rogue MI6 agent had kidnapped Jenny and one of his daughters, had made him anxious about inadvertently leading the wrong people to his family home.
As he walked the five blocks to the Broadbeach house, Mac got himself into character. He didn’t like lying to his wife, but she’d worked out most of the truth about Mac’s life and he didn’t want her knowing any more.
It was almost seven pm as he turned into the small front yard and pulled the mail from the letterbox, casing the street for eyes as he did so. He was exhausted, feeling guilty as hell about Ray, and he wondered if there was any way he could postpone the assessment he was due for the following morning. When employees of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade turned forty, they were required to undergo a detailed assessment.
Mac had never thought he would turn forty — hadn’t prepared for it or talked to anyone about it. He’d upgraded his DFAT life insurance policy and he’d drafted his will after Jen had nagged him to do so. But he’d basically kept the Big Four-O to himself. There were a few regrets, he admitted to himself, as he dragged his wheelie suitcase up to the front porch, but his marriage and his two daughters — Sarah, with Jenny, and Rachel, with his old girlfriend, Diane — were his crowning achievements. With those three people at the centre of his life, Mac found it easy to shrug off the career angst that so many Commonwealth employees of his age were consumed by.
The key turned in the heavy German lock, and he pushed into the cool of the house. A horn sounded and something flew at his face. Ducking and crouching into a counter-attack, Mac heard a crowd roar, ‘Surprise!’ and then a tall brunette had him pinned to the wall.
‘Happy birthday, hon,’ said Jenny, and planted a wet kiss on Mac’s mouth.
Chapter 5
Feeling better after the second beer went down, and having managed to blow out forty candles in one breath, Mac put the girls to bed.
‘I hope your skin feels better, Dad,’ said Sarah in a serious tone as he tucked her in and gave her a goodnight kiss.
‘I think it’s his bones, Sassa,’ said Rachel, fourteen months older than her three-year-old sister, and clearly confident that she had a lifetime more wisdom about facial injuries.
‘Don’t you girls worry about old Dad,’ said Mac, winking as he switched off the light. ‘I’m doing fine.’
Pausing outside as the girls yelled goodnight, he leaned his forehead on the bedroom door. Making himself breathe, Mac felt the spasms in his facial muscles that always came with fear and worry. The journey from the murder at the Pan Pac to his daughters in their sun frocks giving him their presents had been too short. He’d needed another day, perhaps a big bout of drinking or some lone surfing. When Jen’s work got too close to her family, she lashed out, got angry, got in someone’s face. But Mac internalised it, tried to swallow it down, where it festered and came back as facial twitches and nocturnal teeth-grinding.
‘Okay, love?’
Looking to his right, Mac faced his mother, Pat McQueen. The party raged down the hall, his friend Anton Garvey shouting for Mac to rejoin the drinkers.
‘I’m fine, Mum,’ he said, cracking a smile.
‘This doesn’t look fine,’ she said, grabbing him by the chin and poking at his injury. ‘Been fighting?’
‘Walked into a door,’ said Mac, twisting out of her grip.
‘That book company has a lot of doors,’ said Pat.
‘Yeah, well,’ said Mac, heading off in search of a beer.
Mac shared a cab with Garvs to Brisbane airport to catch the 5.10 am Qantas flight to Canberra.
‘Shit, mate,’ said Garvs, his bull-like body awkward as he read the Australian Financial Review in the back of the cab. ‘How’re we gonna do on the assessment with three hours’ sleep?’
‘You too?’ said Mac, as they slid over Southport Bridge in darkness.
‘I’m forty just before Christmas, mate — they’re still checking for cocaine and ecstasy.’
‘As long as they don’t breathalyse me,’ said Mac, regretting that the party had finished with rum shots and dirty limericks.
Handing the Fin to Mac, Garvs shook out the Courier-Mail and scanned the front page. Good intelligence operators were supposed to read at least one newspaper a day, cover to cover.
‘Shit,’ said Garvs, as Mac started reading about the Chinese using intermediaries to buy into Australian iron-ore miners.
‘What?’ asked Mac.
‘Oh, interest rates,’ said Garvs, distracted.
‘When they’re low, you’re supposed to borrow; when they’re high, you’re a fool for having borrowed so much,’ said Mac. ‘Prime Minister wrote a whole essay about it.’
‘Yeah, mate,’ said Garvs, slapping his leg with the paper and staring out the window as they got out of the suburbs and onto the freeway north.
Mac and Garvey had entered the Firm in the same intake and quickly become friends. They’d both gone to big St Joseph’s boarding schools — Mac at Brisbane’s Nudgee, and Garvs at Joey’s in Sydney. They’d played First XV and shared a sense of humour and a love of beer. But on entering ASIS Mac had been singled out to undergo training with the Royal Marines in the United Kingdom while Garvs had moved into Karl Berquist’s office clique — Berquist was the director of assessments who’d recently taken John Gleeson’s old position as deputy director-general.
As their careers advanced, Mac had moved further from the Firm’s centres of power in Canberra and Jakarta, and found himself spending time alone in the field. Some of those deep-cover stints in South-East Asia had made Mac thin-skinned and cranky, prone to accusing his higher-ups of motives that they didn’t always hold. At the same time, Garvs had moved seamlessly up the ASIS tree, always remaining loyal and sensible around the right people. Garvs was now the deputy to Jakarta station chief Martin Atkins, while Mac found himself with a roving commission — technically a ‘manager’, but in reality an officer assigned the tough gigs.