The draft final report of Taskforce Colmslie was brief and vague — so brief that Mac had read most of it before the taskforce chair, Alexander Beech, had finished handing out the copies and taken his seat at the head of the table.
‘Okay, we’re all busy,’ said Beech, a Defence Intelligence Organisation operative who was universally known as Sandy. ‘Let’s get this signed off and go to lunch.’
The draft mentioned Dr Lao and Ray Hu. It covered Lao’s knowledge of Raytheon’s AESA-defeat testing in Queensland and concluded that Lao’s Australian controllers had not been alerted to the top-secret project.
‘I suggest relevant DGs, commissioners and chiefs will be told as follows,’ said Beech, resting his thick forearms on the table as he read his draft. ‘We discovered a Chinese spy working on the SEA 4000 AWD program at Raytheon Australia; we intercepted his drops and identified his controller — a mortgage broker working in Logan City; we used a Singapore asset — Ray Hu — to masquerade as Lao’s controller and lure him to Singapore; Lao travelled with a Raytheon document that we fabricated; we planned to use this journey as a sting in which Lao would be caught red-handed and persuaded to work for Australia while not alerting the Chinese. What is known as a double agent.’
‘Sounds fair,’ said Grant Shannon, the AFP’s representative on the taskforce.
‘During the operation in Singapore,’ said Beech, clearing his throat, ‘Hu and Lao were murdered by two males. The operation withdrew from Singapore without being identified.’
Looking up from the draft, Sandy Beech eyeballed Mac. ‘This last sentence is crucial — can we claim, one hundred and ten per cent, that Lao waited until he was in that hotel room before mentioning the AESA-defeat testing?’
The taskforce members looked at Mac.
‘We were intercepting Lao’s drops, right, Mike?’ said Mac, looking at ASIO’s representative, Mike Donnell.
‘Sure, Mac,’ shrugged Donnell.
‘We had an agent on the plane, watching Lao, from Brissie to Singapore,’ said Mac, fatigue making his words echo in his head. ‘And there was no contact. He was double-tailed to the Pan Pac where he was met in the lobby by Hu. He told Hu that he’d been saving his scoop on the testing for when they met. I think we’re clean.’
Beech paused. ‘You think?’
‘We’re okay,’ said Mac.
‘We don’t want to be halfway through this testing and have the Yanks complaining that their telemetry is being sucked up,’ said Beech. ‘We can’t afford a Marshalls.’
The Americans had tested a new naval rocket series in the Marshall Islands two years earlier, in a joint exercise with Japan’s navy. One of the Japanese engineers was in the pay of the PLA, China’s army, and vast amounts of performance telemetry had been siphoned from the Pentagon’s hard drives before anyone could stop it. The Chinese liked to steal defence-testing telemetry because once they had the data they could accelerate their own programs without having to build and destroy prototypes, and they could plan their own counter-measures to what the Yanks were testing.
‘I’m confident that Lao kept the AESA testing to himself until he spoke with Ray in Singers,’ said Mac.
Dropping the draft on the table, Beech slapped his hand on it to signal the meeting over. ‘Okay, then.’
‘Actually, we’re far from okay,’ said Shannon, his thick ginger moustache failing to hide his sneer.
‘What’s up, Grant?’ said Beech.
‘With all due respect to the intelligence community,’ said Shannon, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, ‘we’ve got this prick Donny Koh down in Logan. Bloke’s begging for a shake-up.’
‘What did you have in mind?’ said Beech, doing a perfect job of showing no enthusiasm.
‘Get Koh in an interview room,’ said Shannon, crossing his arms like he was strangling his security lanyard. ‘Take his office apart, his house, the computers — you know, the whole bit.’
Silence fell and Mac could feel the old culture clash between cops and spies reappearing.
‘I think that’s outside our terms, Grant,’ said Beech.
‘Our terms?’ said Shannon, sitting up. ‘Fuck the terms. I’m talking about the law, mate. I’m talking about a list of charges longer than this table.’
‘I think Mr Koh should be left out of this,’ said Beech. ‘He’s probably worth more to us if he keeps operating.’
‘Oh, that’s great, Sandy,’ said Shannon. ‘We played that game already with Lao, remember? And now he’s brown bread, along with Hu.’
‘It’s the way these things work,’ said Mac, his heart not in it. ‘If the benefits are worth the risks, we let it play out. Often we get it right.’
‘Hey, Macca, I went along with the spooky fun and games,’ said Shannon, pointing at Mac. ‘I heard your plan and I went with it, right? But it went pear-shaped, mate. Now if you want a real benefit, think about a Chinese spy in a courtroom, being hammered with evidence and cross-examination for a week. We could still get something out of this debacle.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Beech. ‘But the time’s not now. If we get nothing, Koh is still there to be taken down later.’
‘What if he does the Harold?’ said Shannon. ‘The bloke’s a Chinese spy — it’s not like he doesn’t know how to disappear.’
‘Mike?’ said Beech, looking at the ASIO representative, who’d been ducking the argument.
‘No one touches Koh,’ said the officer, with middle-aged eyes that had seen it all. ‘No one even looks at him funny.’
Beech turned to Shannon. ‘You want a vote?’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Shannon, throwing his pen on the table. ‘You spooks are your own worst enemies, know that?’
They were just south of Beenleigh, on the freeway to the Gold Coast, when Sandy Beech broke out of the small talk.
‘Shit, Macca — you see Mike’s face when Shannon was talking about raiding Donny Koh?’
Mac laughed. ‘Looked like he’d swallowed a spider.’
Come morning, the Courier-Mail would run the story of the two Australian-Chinese men murdered in a Singapore hotel, and ASIO was going to be listening to Donny Koh’s phone calls, reading his email, bugging his offices and following him wherever he went. They’d even have a team on Donny’s children, since the Chinese had been known to use their kids’ school bags as drops. Beech would have military intelligence spooks inside Raytheon looking for anyone racing for the exits as the newspapers were unfolded. The idea of a bunch of cops stomping into Donny Koh’s offices and tearing down the ceilings was anathema to the intelligence community; putting Koh in a courtroom and reading out the charges was simply a waste of good talent.
‘By the way,’ said Beech, ‘sorry about Ray. You guys were friends, right?’
‘Yep,’ said Mac, looking out of the Ford Falcon’s passenger window as the new suburbs flashed by. ‘You could say that.’
Ray Hu was a Chinese-born orphan who had developed a passionate hatred for Communists. While completing his doctorate in economics at the Australian National University, Hu had approached ASIO to defect. Australia’s domestic spy agency had declined the offer and fast-tracked his citizenship, but when Hu was looking to apply for a job at a Singapore fund manager a few years later, specialising in equity investments in defence-related technologies, Australia’s SIS paid him a visit. Ray Hu was one of the smartest people Mac knew, and his wife Liesl got along particularly well with Jenny.
‘Any theories?’ said Beech. ‘About the murders?’
‘I have a lot of questions, but the theories aren’t exactly piling up.’
‘I start with the shooters and I come up with MSS or PLA,’ said Beech.
‘I start with the shooters, too,’ said Mac. ‘And I come up with questions: why are they outside the Pan Pac? Are they waiting for Lao to show up?’