He got a three-pack of wine for Jenny and a Singapore souvenir T-shirt for Rachel. Then he got a bigger T-shirt too, for Sarah. They gave him his requested seat – 11A – on the Boeing 777 and the fl ight took off out of Changi at the scheduled time of 11.45 pm. He ate the meal and drank two glasses of red, and when he ducked into the lav he transferred his numbers from ‘phone’ to ‘SIM’, pocketed the SIM and chucked his Nokia in the bin. The hosties made up the airbed and he kicked his shoes and pants off and curled up under the sheet and blanket.
He’d made a call to Diane on his way from Halim Air Base to the embassy and they’d talked for twenty minutes. She was getting better although her father was a wreck, blamed himself and the diplomatic upbringing for getting her into the life. And because of the environment, he didn’t want Diane’s mother or Sarah in Jakarta.
Mac wondered if he’d played it right with Diane. He’d thanked her for her mum’s phone number in Sydney and then asked if he was allowed to be called Dad. Diane had hesitated, and Mac thought he’d blown it. Then he realised she was crying.
‘Yes, of course that’s okay,’ she sniffed. ‘She’ll need that – I need that.’
The lights were down in the cabin and as Mac dozed he thought intermittently about Freddi and Purni, Atkins and Garvs, and people like Danny Fitzgibbon, the MI6 stooge. He wondered why he couldn’t just take the easy way, as Garvs had.
The problem between the fi eld and the offi ce was one of focus: if you existed in an offi ce environment, your daily rationale became the accumulation of brownie points. It was a normal human response and good, smart people got sucked into it every bit as much as the born toadies. But when you worked in the fi eld, success had nothing to do with simply creating impressions. You got it wrong in the fi eld, you could die. You got it wrong in an offi ce, you had emails and memos to prove it was someone else’s fault.
Mac didn’t see himself as a bull in a china shop but he was stubborn and that formed part of his stamina. Blokes like Mac, Davidson, Freddi and Ari had the heart to keep on going through all the pain, tears and disappointments. It was stubbornness – and Hassan Ali and his crew were about to feel what genuine Queensland stubbornness was all about. Yes, he’d called Diane, but he hadn’t called ahead to Jen – because when he landed in Brissie, he wasn’t going home.
Not yet.
CHAPTER 49
The Toyota Aurion was new and the air-con worked well. Mac headed north on Highway 1, his backpack next to him on the seat as he slugged water and thought about his next moves. The Tony Davidson puzzle had now turned into a serious headache. With all the other things on his mind, getting hold of the guy hadn’t been his biggest concern. But a controller of Davidson’s experience didn’t simply go off the air, even if he was travelling in Europe or North America, getting more operators on board. Davidson was a believer, and once the wheels started turning he wouldn’t just switch his phone off for three days and he wouldn’t duck a voicemail from an operator who was active, as Mac had been in Jakkers. There was also the voicemail locking out. Mac couldn’t believe it would have stayed that way for three days, not if all Davidson had done was forget his PIN. If he was having phone dramas, his corporate front in Perth would have known and they would have been briefed to deal with Mac.
Having checked the Perth corporate front and Davidson’s mobile when he’d landed in Brisbane, Mac was now going to check out something for himself before he went home. Not a lot of people knew that Davidson had bought a place with his wife, Violet, in Noosa.
For some reason, old spooks from all over the world bought their retirement homes in Noosa, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, about two hours’ drive north of Brisbane. There were blokes from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, United States, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore. Not to mention a lot of Poms. Mac had no idea of the Davidsons’ address, so he would have to extemporise.
The second task was to catch Hassan on his way into Australia, or, if Hassan was already in Australia, fi nd him. He needed more than he had, which was nothing. If his own colleagues in Jakkers wouldn’t come across, then the chances of getting the AFP or Queensland cops interested were very low. Perhaps nil. In fact, Atkins’ decision to fl ick-pass the Hassan project to the Feds seemed strange given there were lots of trails you might follow as an intel guy that would not look at all promising to a cop. It wasn’t a refl ection on policing, it was just that cops had to have a case, and a person to prosecute. Cops had to appeal to lawyers. For an intelligence offi cer, it was more likely to be a situation that was developing, a set of conditions reaching a critical point. Passing intelligence to the AFP or the military was quite normal, mused Mac, what was strange was that Mac hadn’t been asked to write a report that would go to either of those organisations, and he had been excised from the loop, so he wouldn’t be briefi ng anyone.
Which meant it would fall between the cracks. Probably had already.
The turn-off sign for Mooloolaba loomed in green and Mac kept to the left lane. He had an idea for getting more info on Hassan, but it was his third task that was troubling him: telling Jenny about Sarah and integrating her into their lives.
Mac’s pie was hot and greasy and went down nicely as he monitored the shop across the street, a phone dealership specialising in several mobile carriers. Through the shopfront Mac watched the manager, a porky Australian who looked nosey, maybe even familiar.
Just along from Porky’s shop was a Vodafone outlet. Mac could see a blonde beach girl mucking around on the store computer and chewing gum. It was only 10.41 am and this clearly wasn’t rush hour.
Pushing into the Vodafone store, Mac smiled. ‘Hi… Melanie,’ he read off the name-tag, ‘just need a pre-paid starter pack, thanks.’
Waving her hand over her shoulder, Melanie rattled off the cap plans for the phones that were on the wall behind her.
‘That hundred-and-twenty-nine-dollar one, thanks,’ he said, with a wink and a smile.
Melanie rolled her eyes ever so slightly and bent down to the cupboard behind her, slid the door back and came up with a red box.
‘Know how to start it up?’ she asked, chewing furiously.
‘Yeah, sure. Thanks.’
‘That’s a hundred and twenty-nine dollars.’
Mac fi shed out a slab of notes and put down three fi fties and three twenties.
Melanie turned to the laptop on the counter, switched from Solitaire to the customer-ware, looked out on the street and said,
‘Name.’
‘Thorn – Bruce Thorn, no e. ‘
She typed it in and without looking up said, ‘ID?’
Slapping his pockets, he looked behind him, and turned back.
‘Shit, sorry, I think my wife grabbed my wallet to go and get some things…’
He slapped again. ‘Actually, we’ve just got off a fl ight from Singapore and I have a boarding pass with my passport number.’
He put down the boarding pass and pointed to the name and the passport number beside it. ‘That should do it. They just need a register of who I am, right?’
Unfortunately, Melanie wasn’t thick. ‘That’s not ID. You could have picked that up off any plane,’ she said. ‘People leave their boarding passes in those seat pockets all the time.’
The other phone shop was run by Spiro, who was sweating and smiling when Mac walked in from the heat. Mac selected the same pre-paid phone, pulled out the same amount of cash and did the same spiel with his boarding pass. Spiro didn’t fl inch, writing him up and getting him on the phone to the activation call centre right there in his shop. Mac had a new phone within three minutes, a receipt in his new name and, as a reward for good service, Mac also bought two-hundred-dollars worth of pre-paid credit and a car charger for the Nokia.
Capitalism worked best in the owner-operator model.