‘I need a red shirt, for dance club,’ said Mac. ‘Black pants — nice pants. A belt, black shoes, and…’ He turned and searched across the sea of Vietnamese faces until he saw the hat store. ‘A hat,’ he said. ‘Big white hat, okay?’
Eyeing the money, the trader handed his hook to a sidekick and started yelling orders at his people, pushing, jostling and cajoling. In Australia it would be called harassing an employee; in Saigon it was called service.
Mr Hook pushed forwards the young fellow who’d arrived back with a couple of red shirts and a selection of black pants. Taking the combo that made him look least like a pimp, Mac slipped into the makeshift changing room that sat between the racks of knock-off polo shirts and the shelves of counterfeit Billabong boardies.
Emerging, Mac let Mr Hook manhandle him, turning him around, pulling at the seams of the shirt, running his tape across Mac’s shoulders and all the time yelling at his cohorts. One got on his knees and started fiddling with Mac’s pants, but they didn’t need fixing. Whoever Mr Hook was, he’d nailed Mac’s fitting card with one look.
‘You are like movie star, mister,’ said Mr Hook, his smile glinting with gold. ‘I give you best, sir, and you can be in movie. My guarantee for this.’
Another youngster arrived with three hats and two shoe boxes under his arm. Snatching them, Mr Hook snapped his fingers and a pair of black socks was placed in his hand. The first pair of shoes fitted well, and Mac took the hat that gave him a Miami trumpet-player look.
As Mr Hook looped a belt through his pants, Mac peered between the racks of the clothing section to see if he was still being followed.
‘What’s the damage?’ said Mac from the side of his mouth.
‘For you, sir, eighty dollar,’ said Mr Hook.
‘Ma qua,’ said Mac, as a sidekick handed him a paper bag with his old clothes and shoes in it.
‘What?’ asked Mr Hook, his face confused. ‘Ma qua?’
Mr Hook started laughing and grabbing his employees, telling them what Mac had said, all of them doubling over. In Saigon, ma qua was old haggling slang that basically translated as ‘too much’. If you had the guts to try ma qua on a market trader, and do the whole shrugging and eye-rolling song and dance, they’d reward you for it.
‘Uc, okay,’ said Mr Hook.
‘Saigon, okay,’ said Mac, giving him the thumbs-up.
‘Okay, forty dollar,’ said Mr Hook, smile suddenly gone.
Giving him fifty, Mac grabbed his bag and moved along the menswear aisle, trying to sense where the tail was now. Adjusting his sight line, he glimpsed a person in aviator shades moving down one of the main aisles towards him. The tail hadn’t shifted his aviator sunnies since Mac had first met him on the back of the surveillance motorbike.
Moving in the opposite direction, towards the south exit, Mac tried to make time through the mass of haggling women without attracting attention and without breaking into a sprint. He was slightly claustro at the best of times, but the tide of locals in such a confined space was messing with his breathing.
Bursting into the heat of the early afternoon, he almost walked straight into the side of the white Camry.
Skirting the car’s left headlight and keeping his head down, Mac averted his eyes as the person in the front seat turned to look at him. His heart thumping like a steam engine, Mac kept a steady course through the shadow of the market building as he prayed that his change of clothes had created a sufficient diversion and that no one was going to yell for him to stop. He’d have to make a decision about that: would he run, or stay and fake it out?
The choice was clear: he wouldn’t be running — they already knew where he was staying and he had a gig to manage. That meant he’d be faking it if the cop in the car called him back. Under normal circumstances, Mac would talk a load of turkey for as long as it took. He was comfortable with his cover of Richard Davis from Southern Scholastic Books, and he’d keep it simple: he was on holiday between Singapore and Honkers, with three go-see appointments with officials in Saigon’s education board and the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cholon — appointments that the political police could see for themselves in his diary when they searched his room.
But as Mac walked around the rear of the market building and hailed a cyclo, he realised that things had just become more complex. The government seemed to have a team on him, never a good sign; and this wasn’t going to be about confusing some dumb-arse cop. He knew that because the cop in that car wasn’t a he — it was a she, and that was never good news for a man who lied for a living.
Chapter 12
The phone rang just as Mac got under the shower. Capping the water, he walked into the living area of the suite and answered.
‘You called?’ came the snippy voice of Chester Delaney, the Aussie consul-general, whose offices were around the corner from the Grand.
‘Nice to hear from you too, mate,’ said Mac, water dripping off him in the sticky heat of late afternoon. ‘Thought we could catch up for that beer.’
Delaney sighed. ‘Where?’
‘Majestic roof, seventeen hundred?’
‘I think we can dispense with the army affectations, can’t we?’
‘Just testing, Chezza,’ said Mac.
‘And why the Majestic?’ said Delaney. ‘Can’t you come up for a coffee?’
‘I don’t approach consular property when I’m in the field,’ said Mac. ‘Protects me, protects you.’
‘Okay,’ said the diplomat. ‘Five it is.’
Throwing a towel on the parquet floor, Mac started with fifty push-ups, followed by a hundred crunches and then forty lunges with each leg, finishing with five minutes of basic ballet exercises.
Letting the warm shower water run off him, Mac decided on minimal involvement from the consul-general. It was courtesy for someone in Mac’s position to touch base and announce to the chief what he was doing, but in embassies and consulates the community was more like a colony — people didn’t always like a blow-in from Australia spying on one of their own. Instead, he was going to pump Delaney for background, and then have little to do with him. There was a building behind the Hotel Rex where the Australian government kept serviced offices, one of which featured the shingle Southern Scholastic Books Pty Ltd. It had secure computers and data connections, and a phone line that was virtually impossible to hack. That would be Mac’s base in Saigon, and would double as a crib should the Grand prove too open to the Cong An. The Black Stork would be the fallback.
Drying off, Mac placed his new clothes in a paper bag and screwed it up before dressing in his chinos and polo shirt. The new clothes might trigger someone’s memory, so they’d be in a dumpster before he ventured out.
Dialling a Singapore number, Mac walked onto the balcony, hoping that by talking outside the room he’d defeat the political police’s listening devices. His bag had been expertly looked through and his diary and book sales catalogues had been read — just as he’d wanted. But you never really knew about bugs.
‘Benny,’ said Mac, as Haskell came on the line. ‘How we looking?’
Benny didn’t waste time. ‘Can you talk?’
‘Listening is better.’
‘Okay, mate — it’s good news and bad. She’s fine.’
‘But?’
‘But she’s left the house and fucked off.’
‘Where to?’ asked Mac.
‘Our friends say she’s jumped a plane to Melbourne.’
‘Screw them,’ said Mac, who’d tell a lie like that to rival spooks as a knee-jerk reaction. ‘What do you think?’
‘She’s done the Harold,’ said Benny. ‘But if she’s worried about Aussie intel then I agree. Why would she be flying to Melbourne?’