Trying to control his nervous panting, Mac stretched his right thumb over the cocking hammer of the Beretta and drew it down as slowly as he could, the clicking sounding louder than a drum solo to his ears. He assumed there were two MPs, perhaps a dog. He brought his handgun down level with the headlights, ready to take out at least one of the soldiers if he heard a rifle being cocked or footsteps getting too close.
The adrenaline pumped inexorably, and then came relief as one door slammed, muffling the military radio, and then another, before the 4×4 was put into gear. Finally, Mac exhaled as the engine tone changed and they were accelerating away.
Mac waited until he could no longer hear the 4×4 before sticking his head up over the grass. The night had returned to tropical stillness, a faint breeze from the Banda Sea gently touching the trees and scrub.
Working himself into a kneeling position, he unhooked his belt from the bolt that had a large washer on the end of it, and crawled into the drainage ditch. Standing straight, he tried to breathe deeply and calm his nerves – he wanted to have his shaking hands under control before he presented at the UN’s airport depot.
Mac made his way to a canvas hammock seat inside the C-130 and put the two bags between his feet. Trying to sleep, he sat back and let the events of the past four days roll over him while the Dutch aircrew loaded the cargo plane. There was a story somewhere in all that information, he thought, but he had to sleep before he could put it all together.
Voices sounded at the rear of the plane, and a tall Anglo man and a Timorese woman holding a baby in her arms approached the seating area.
‘G’day,’ said Mac, taking his hand off the Beretta. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Not bad, if we get out of here before the Aitarak arrives,’ said the man. ‘Ansell – Ansell Torvin,’ he said, offering his hand.
‘Richard Davis,’ replied Mac, shaking Torvin’s hand as he tried to place the familiar name.
‘What’s your story?’ asked Torvin, helping the woman belt herself into the opposite hammock seat.
‘Businessman in Dili, threatened by the militias,’ said Mac. ‘And you?’
‘I run an NGO – Rural Rehabilitation International – in Lospalos.’
‘Dangerous part of the world.’ said Mac. ‘What’s happening out there?’
‘The militias lure poor young men with money that comes from Jakarta,’ said Torvin wearily. ‘They hold big rallies in the soccer stadiums where they indoctrinate these youngsters against independence and give them automatic rifles and cash – it’s disgusting.’
‘You reported this?’ said Mac.
‘Yes, we’ve told DFAT about it,’ said Torvin.
‘And what do they say?’ asked Mac.
‘Ha!’ said Torvin, looking down at the woman, who smiled back. ‘They tell me I’m too close to the East Timorese.’
‘Discredited you?’ asked Mac, sleep coming on him.
Ansell Torvin laughed. ‘They’re such cowards, those Foreign Affairs bastards. They know the Prime Minister won’t hear a word against a Catholic NGO like ours, so they smear me politically.’
‘How?’ asked Mac, a little embarrassed.
‘They said I’m a mouthpiece for Falintil,’ said Torvin. ‘Can you believe these people? They called me a commie!’
CHAPTER 29
Waking to the smell of bacon, eggs and coffee, Mac stretched and glanced at the Timor Sea through the window of his apartment. Breakfast usually finished at 9 am at Larrakeyah Army Base in Darwin, so he showered and shaved quickly, trying not to dwell on his battered face when he looked in the mirror.
Registering at the mess, Mac waited to be assigned a table as an athletic woman in civvies was leaving.
‘Macca,’ she said softly, as she came alongside.
‘Badders,’ said Mac, disappointed he’d missed the opportunity to have breakfast with Gillian Baddely, one of the few female officers in Australian military intelligence. ‘My timing sucks.’
‘As usual,’ said the cute brunette, giving him a look as she walked away.
Perusing the Australian while he ate toast and nursed a plunger of coffee, Mac pondered on how his life could have taken a different course. Gillian Baddely was the woman who’d told the Australian Army to go screw itself after it agreed to an Iraqi demand that the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors should all be male. Gillian had dug her heels in and won the appointment, which had not made her many friends among the diggers.
Mac liked her and thought the whole feminist thing was quite funny. They’d got very drunk one night in Amman after her IAEA rotation, and the poor timing she referred to was his falling asleep before anything could be consummated.
Looking up from his paper, Mac saw the steward approaching.
‘Phone call for you, sir.’
Looking to see if any of the stragglers in the mess were taking too much interest, Mac wiped his mouth with the napkin and went to the wall-mounted phone beside the steward’s station.
‘Davis,’ he said.
‘Catnip, please confirm,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘Repeat, Catnip, please confirm.’
‘Catnip, this is Albion,’ said Mac, looking away from the other diners.
‘Albion – status,’ said the voice.
‘Status Masquerade,’ said Mac, referring to the name given to the operation to find Blackbird. If he was in danger or under duress, he would’ve given his status as ‘Limelight’.
A click followed and a powerful voice boomed down the line. ‘McQueen – Davidson,’ said Tony Davidson.
‘Hi, Tony,’ said Mac.
‘Can’t speak for long, mate – walking for a plane.’
‘Where are you?’ asked Mac.
‘En route – I’ll be there about midday, okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Mac quietly.
‘Meet you at the office, right?’ said Davidson. ‘Bring everything you’ve got – and let’s keep this between us, okay, Macca? The section can wait.’
As he finished his breakfast, Mac thought about the call and Davidson’s rush to Darwin. It was probably an attempt to intercept Mac before he was recalled to Denpasar to debrief with Atkins and maybe Tobin.
There was an ongoing power play between Davidson and Carl Berquist, the ASIS director of analysis, over the key messages contained in the weekly ASIS reports that went to the Office of National Assessments before being synthesised into the intelligence advice the Prime Minister’s security committee received. Technically, Davidson controlled the field officers who collected raw intelligence, while Berquist controlled how the intelligence was interpreted. Both had the power to skew an argument, but Davidson only retained his edge with timing: controlling the reports from officers like Mac before they were written. Once a report got to Tobin in Jakarta and Davidson in Canberra, Berquist’s analysts could pull what they wanted from it and develop their own narratives.
Needing a wake-up for his battered body, Mac bought some swimming trunks and goggles from the base store and made for the swimming pool. Starting slow, he numbered off thirty laps of the twenty-five-metre outdoor pool, feeling his back and shoulders stretch out, letting his face relax and his lungs fill up.
Once he’d hit his rhythm, Mac thought about how he was going to play Davidson: straight down the line, probably. When Davidson said he liked clean product, he meant it. He thought an intelligence outfit should simply do its job as best it could, and he’d long hated the lie that there was no credible link between Indonesia’s army and the East Timorese militias.
Walking to the poolside seating, Mac grabbed a towel and dried off, wondering where Lee Wa Dae came into the equation and why Rahmid Ali had whacked him. Mac wanted to be sure of what he told Davidson. If he wavered, an office guy would be assigned to help him write the report – a scenario Mac had always avoided.