‘That’s what I wanted to talk about, Tony,’ said Mac, pushing the black Adidas bag across the table. Pulling out one of the cash-cushions, Davidson held the US dollars in front of him and looked down at the logo on the bag. ‘We know what this says?’
‘Vacation Palace Hotel and Casino, Poi Pet.’
‘Oh really?’ spat Davidson, throwing the cash on the conference table and looking at the ceiling. ‘Poi Pet! That’s great, that really is.’
The Vacation Palace was a Cambodian money-laundering operation run by the North Korean generals. Their heroin money came back from the United States, Canada, Australia and France and was exchanged for chips in their own casinos. Having been laundered, the subsequent US dollars paid out by the cashiers were used to buy real estate, gold and businesses all over the world.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ whispered Davidson, reaching for the phone and dialling.
‘Judy,’ he said into the phone, ‘I need a priority work-up on Lee Wa Dae – Korean or North Korean – and I need it yesterday, okay?’
As he spelled the name Mac could imagine Judy Hyams scrawling on her notebook, putting her ego aside to deal with Davidson’s demands. A part-time lecturer at the Australian National University and a full-time head of research at ASIS, Judy suffered Davidson’s demands in a way that women weren’t supposed to in the 1990s. Still, she always got the leave she wanted and Davidson religiously remembered her birthday.
‘Thanks, Jude…’ he barked, but didn’t put the phone down.
‘We do?’ said Davidson, addressing the phone with a new tone in his voice. ‘Let’s have it.’
He listened and then, putting the phone down, took off his glasses and massaged his eyeballs with his left hand.
‘Lee Wa Dae is known to us, apparently,’ he said, peering out from now-bleary eyes.
‘Who is he?’ asked Mac, troubled by Davidson’s demeanour.
‘He’s a bag man for the North Korean Army’s drug business.’
CHAPTER 31
The doors to the gents flapped and Davidson was back in the public bar of the Victoria Hotel. Outside, tourists meandered along Smith Street mall in the tropical heat.
‘So I guess I don’t need to say this, Macca,’ said Davidson, checking his watch. ‘But when you debrief with Atkins, why don’t we leave out the Rahmid Ali involvement? For the time being, eh?’
‘You mean that the President’s office tried to speak to me direct?’
‘Yes, that,’ said Davidson, looking around the pub. ‘I’m thinking there might be another way to move on this. I’ll tell him about it later, when we’ve explored it.’
‘Another way?’ said Mac.
‘Trust me – do your meeting with Atkins in Denpasar.’
‘What if he takes it, tries to write it himself?’ said Mac.
‘Do nothing, Macca, just call me,’ growled Davidson. ‘If Atkins really wants to step up a weight division, then it’ll be me writing the CX, okay?’
‘Okay, Tony. But…’ started Mac, before trailing off.
‘Get your phone charged and call me as soon as you’ve looked at Rahmid’s phone logs,’ said Davidson. And then he was out of the air-conditioning and into a cab parked at the kerb.
Sipping on the remains of his beer, Mac thought about his evening flight to Denpasar and what awaited him there. Martin Atkins would be uncomfortable with too much intelligence that slandered the Indonesian military and possibly messed with his own corporate advancement plan. Mac would have to be particularly careful about the Canadian: Bill Yarrow was connected with Atkins and any bad news about the Canadian’s true loyalties would have the potential to hurt Atkins’ career. If that looked likely, Atkins would do what all good office guys did: blame the field guy.
The tail didn’t stay hidden and didn’t make any of the standard gestures that would blend him into the streetscape: no magazines or newspapers, no caps pulled down over dark glasses, no ostentatious tourist maps. Judging by the chinos, polo shirt and Annapolis ring, he was American, and as Mac left the Victoria the tail simply rose from the park bench and followed.
Keeping a normal pace, Mac walked through the afternoon sunshine of Darwin, down Smith Street towards the Civic Centre and then around in a loop past Parliament until he was walking northwest down Mitchell Street through all the tourists and backpackers. The crowds gave him a chance to think about what was going on. Was the tail a remnant of the East Timor operation – had Jessica debriefed with the Defense Intelligence Agency and inadvertently made Mac more interesting than he wanted to be? Or was this tail the CIA, tailing an Aussie in Darwin?
Whatever species of Yank it was, it was a tad fucking cheeky.
It was also inconvenient. Sally had him on the 11 pm flight into Denpasar, and he’d wanted to catch a bite to eat with Jessica before heading for the airport. Cloak-and-dagger didn’t fit into the schedule.
Mac dived into a backpacker’s hostel built around an arcade and sped up, shooting through the cool alley lined with shops and tour-booking agencies, coming out the other end. Walking across the car park behind the arcade, Mac checked the tail in a van window’s reflection – he was still coming.
Crossing the Esplanade, Mac scoped plenty of joggers, mothers pushing prams and tourists strolling under the trees at Bicentennial Park. Lacking a firearm, he wanted some kind of disincentive to someone pulling a gun.
All of the park benches faced away from the street, over the Timor Sea, which was starting to chop up with the afternoon breeze. So Mac walked to the wall around the naval gun, leaned against it facing the Esplanade and waited, his hand tucked down in the small of his back to intimate that he was armed.
The American slowed but kept coming. Mac had him as six-one, late thirties, former athlete, probably tennis.
His heart beating up in his throat, Mac stiffened as the tail got to twenty metres away, stopped and put his open palms out sideways. It was the first time he’d seen the bloke without a black baseball cap.
Exhaling, Mac brought his hand out and showed his own empty palm.
‘Wouldn’t usually do this, McQueen,’ came the educated American voice.
‘Man’s gotta do,’ replied Mac. ‘How you been, Jim?’
They strolled south along the pathways of the park, then walked around Parliament and the Supreme Court building. Mac was always on edge with another intelligence outfit, even with Australia’s other intelligence agencies. When they first trained intelligence officers, the firm gave lessons on cellular information sharing, conducting exercises showing how easily those cells could be broken, secrets compromised and human lives with them. But Mac’s relationship with the Pentagon’s DIA had always been cordial.
‘Notwithstanding my charismatic personality and good looks, Jim,’ said Mac as they stopped and sat down at a park bench overlooking Frances Bay, ‘what the fuck do you want?’
Laughing, Jim pulled a soft pack from his chinos and lit a smoke. ‘Thought we might do an old-fashioned swap.’
‘Intel?’ asked Mac.
‘Sure,’ shrugged Jim, ‘’less you got the Aussie version of Cameron Diaz.’
‘Okay, wise guy,’ said Mac. ‘Shoot.’
‘Someone told me you’d infiltrated Lombok AgriCorp, had eyes in Damajat’s office?’
‘Nice story, Jim.’
‘Interesting place they got up there,’ said Jim, sucking on the smoke.
‘Lots to think about.’
‘I said to a colleague of mine that if McQueen actually got in there – if he managed to get into Damajat’s office – then I’d bet twenty to one that he came out with a little souvenir.’
‘Jim – I need you as my PR man,’ said Mac. ‘What do you want, mate?’
Pausing, Jim flicked the cigarette. ‘If you got a sample from Lombok – anything, man – then we need to take a look. It’s important – maybe urgent.’
‘And I get?’