Now the place had been upgraded but he demanded his usual room — a two-bedroom colonial suite in the old wing looking over the river.
Plugging his phone into the power jack, Mac took off his shoes and padded across the living area. Standing beside the doorframe of the main entry, he listened. Holding that position for two minutes, he heard the hallway creak and what he thought was a whisper. And then there was the sound of a fire door opening at the end of the hallway, and swinging shut.
Sitting back on the bed in the room nearest the river, Mac sipped at the water bottle. He’d barely slept the night before, wondering how to proceed with Liesl. Had she been abducted or just bolted? He would wait twenty-four hours and talk to Benny again. He needed time, and he didn’t want to blow the whistle on Liesl — not if Urquhart was right and there was a traitor in Aussie intel.
Mac would have to trust Benny — a person he’d met in his induction year when the accountant was teaching the youngsters about how bad guys hid behind banking domiciles and front companies. Benny had then showed the inductees how they could use the same techniques when they were in the field.
Right now, Mac needed a nap. Then he was going to have some lunch and go to work. As he dozed off he thought about his first trip to Saigon and how the night manager — Mr Skin — slept on a stretcher inside the front doors of the Hotel Dong Khoi. One night Mac had staggered back to the hotel after a big go at Apocalypse Now bar and Mr Skin had answered the door. The first thing Mac had seen was a bare-chested bloke, built like a jockey and holding a billy club at shoulder height. Right at the point when Mac thought he was going to be clobbered, Mr Skin had stopped, smiled the big Vietnam welcome, and ushered him in.
That was the enigma of Vietnam: the friendliest violent place on earth.
Chapter 11
Walking with the one-way traffic flow of Dong Khoi Street, Mac kept his pace to a relaxed tourist stroll. Wearing the Aussie traveller uniform of boardies and surf T-shirt, he could also be mistaken for an Aussie soldier on leave if the political police were being nosey.
The temperature had climbed over thirty-five degrees by Mac’s estimation as he crossed Dong Khoi Street at the riverfront lights and walked into the Hotel Majestic. Maintaining his languid pace, he crossed through the vaulted foyer and into a cafe before spilling out onto the riverside boulevard on the other side of the building.
Walking to the tourist information pillar, he grabbed a visitor’s map and positioned himself to see who or what would follow. Seven seconds later, two men on a Honda step-through accelerated around the corner with the rest of the traffic, the pillion passenger anxiously looking into the Majestic’s wide windows. When he hit the driver on the shoulder to stop and started getting off the bike, Mac walked towards them, map in hand.
‘Excuse me, fellers,’ he said, coming alongside the motorbike’s driver, a late-twenties Khmer wearing a Yankees cap and aviators. ‘Looking for the ANZ bank — it’s around here, right?’
The driver shrugged and pointed to the pillion passenger, who swaggered towards Mac, the minicam in his left palm disappearing into the pocket of his windbreaker.
‘Xin chao,’ said Mac with a smile and quick bow. ‘I’m from Australia, looking for the ANZ. Name’s Richard.’
The pillion guy waved away the hand Mac offered. ‘You want bank — go down to round ’bout, then left,’ he said carefully, like someone who didn’t want to miss the ‘ft’ sound that so many Asians couldn’t quite reach. ‘Bank there, okay?’
‘Thanks, champion,’ said Mac, turning and crossing Dong Khoi Street again.
Casing the Black Stork tailor shop in a small side street off Dong Khoi, Mac took his time. It was a little after two pm when he entered the shop. Moving into the cool darkness, he walked towards the stooped old man behind the huge cutting desk but caught sight of Tranh peering through the fitting-room curtains.
Mac followed Tranh into the hall of mirrors of the fitting room.
‘Get eyes?’ said Mac, looking around the musty old space. ‘On Apricot?’
‘I did what you say,’ said Tranh, keeping his shades on.
‘Stayed back?’
‘Yes, Mr Richard,’ said Tranh. ‘He left the consulate at eight past twelve, I followed him along Ton Duc and he got cyclo.’
‘Return?’
‘Yes, mister — he come back one-forty.’
‘Same cyclo?
‘No — he change.’
Mac wanted a local’s view of Quirk. ‘How’s he looking?’
‘He not so young no more,’ said Tranh with a shrug. ‘Maybe too much the coffee or the wine?’
‘Okay, let’s have a chat,’ said Mac.
He followed Tranh up a flight of stairs and through an old door into a reminder of French-colonial Saigon. The twelve-foot ceilings and the slow fan created an eerie theatre for the tailor’s dummies and old bolts of cloth. Pushing open large wooden French doors, Mac eased into the heat of the day beneath a veranda and glanced up and down the street.
‘Show me the back,’ said Mac, and they moved through the storage area and onto the rear patio where a table and chair were set up on the tiled slab, overlooked by several new skyscrapers.
‘Good,’ said Mac, walking back into the room. ‘From now on, you don’t come here, okay, Tranh?’
‘Sure, boss.’
‘We change the meet each day — we’ll rotate four venues. But you don’t come to this one, got it? This is the fallback meet.’
‘Okay,’ said Tranh.
Leaving the Black Stork, Mac eyed a white Toyota Camry he recognised from before he went into the tailor’s. It was parked on the other side of the road. It wouldn’t have been odd that it was still there, except this time it had two people sitting in it.
Raising his hand, he stopped the first cyclo rider and got on.
‘Ben Thanh market, cam on,’ said Mac, putting on his sunnies as he pulled the sunshade over his head. Mac liked cyclos for counter-surveillance because the cyclo rider sitting at the rear of the vehicle gave him an excuse to turn in his seat and talk, allowing him a view of the tail.
‘Nice day for it,’ said Mac with a smile. ‘Rain held off.’
As they turned right and headed for Le Loi, Mac looked past the rider’s legs and saw the white Camry pull out of its parking space and follow slowly.
Sitting back, he let the middle-aged rider work up a sweat as they pedalled along Le Loi and up to the sprawling market building with the clock tower.
At the rear of the market, Mac hopped out and made his way into the building as the white Camry stopped a hundred metres back. He had no idea who was in that car, but in South-East Asia a Camry pulling out five seconds after you left was usually the wrong kind of attention. Maintaining a brisk pace through the crowd, he navigated the tiny aisles, heading for one of the far corners where men’s shirts hung thirty feet in the air. The noise was deafening — Ben Thanh was the biggest and most central market in Saigon, and it was so chaotic that he could barely hear himself think.
Pushing diagonally across the teeming space, Mac finally got to the men’s section. Catching the eye of the bloke with the black money-belt and the thirty-foot pole with the hook on the end, Mac pulled out a small wad of US dollars.