‘That been in you forty-eight hours?’ said the doctor, a young man who claimed to have been educated in Perth. ‘Amazing that you walking around.’
‘I wasn’t,’ said Mac. ‘I was kissing dirt by the side of the road.’
The nurse moved in with a trolley filled with bandages and immediately started on a bed bath for the wounded leg.
‘Yeah, well, you should have been to hospital when you are shot, Mr Davis,’ said the doctor. ‘Can die from the infection — especially you swimming in the river.’
‘I’ll be using mouthwash the rest of my life,’ said Mac, still tasting that foul river-swill in his mouth. ‘Where’re the kids?’
‘Kids are fine,’ said Jenny, moving into the curtained area as the nurse dried off the wound.
‘Great,’ said Mac. ‘What are you doing up here, anyway?’
‘Dodging bullets from the father of my child,’ said Jen, dark ponytail sitting on her right shoulder.
‘Sorry,’ said Mac, hoping the nurse didn’t speak English. ‘I had a big night. And you?’
‘Captain Loan is following a lead in Stung Treng,’ said Jenny, all her weight on her left hip, arms crossed. ‘I’m interested. You might be too.’
Pausing to assess the hidden trap, Mac proceeded carefully. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah — we searched Quirk’s apartment in the old BP com- pound in Saigon and came up with a laundry receipt from a place called the Water Dragon Guest House. It’s on the east side of Stung Treng.’
‘So it’s “we” now?’
‘Observing,’ said Jenny. ‘Chanthe spoke with the owner of the Water Dragon and she said she remembered a regular Australian visitor — called himself John Black but John Black looks just like the photograph we showed her of Jim Quirk.’
‘Jim — in Cambodia?’
‘He used to stay at the guest house every second weekend. He’d take a suite but would be in and out of the suite rented by what she called Turks.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. She later found out the Turks used to stay in a place out of town, across the Srepok, but had stopped going there after a room was blown up and some other Turks were assassinated.’
‘So why would I be interested?’ said Mac, as the bandages went on his leg.
‘Because I called Maggs, asked him about it,’ said Jenny.
‘Harley?’ said Mac.
‘I was wondering if he’d seen any Turks through Phnom and he tells me they’re probably Israelis — retired Mossad guys.’
‘Well, that’s interesting.’
‘He told me he’d seen you, Macca,’ she snapped. ‘I can’t believe you had a drink with Maggs and didn’t talk about the Mossad guys — that’s precisely what people like you talk about.’
‘Steady, my sweet,’ said Mac, trying to work out how many people were listening. The annoying thing about cops was how open they were.
‘Well?’
The nurse finished and left the curtained cubicle.
‘Yeah, he told me there was a bunch of ex-Mossad hard-ons charging around the place,’ said Mac. ‘So what?’
‘Maggs noted the ex-Mossad vehicle in Phnom — it matches the Turks’ LandCruiser at the Water Dragon Guest House,’ said Jenny.
‘Okay.’
‘This Israeli vehicle is a green LandCruiser Prado. A similar vehicle departed the scene of Jim Quirk’s murder in Saigon.’
‘Common car,’ said Mac.
‘Patrons at the Mekong Saloon saw a team of Turkish or Israeli men go up the mezzanine stairs that night,’ said Jenny. ‘They also saw a blond off-duty soldier — Aussie bloke. Know who that might be?’
The curtain was pulled back and Captain Loan walked in. ‘Mr Richard, so nice to see you.’
‘Thanks for the ride, Captain.’
‘I saw what the doctor pulled out of your leg,’ said Loan, smirking. ‘The bookselling must be tough — anything you’d like to talk about?’
‘It’s a Cambodian matter,’ said Mac, rolling over to sit upright on the edge of the bed. His leg was heavily bandaged, his head spinning with the airless hospital atmosphere and the new round of painkillers.
‘Agent Toohey, I really wanted to talk with you,’ said Loan.
‘Yes?’ said Jenny.
‘The children — I asked them where their village is and they say it’s gone.’
‘Gone?’ said Jen.
Loan nodded. ‘They were rounded up from their village in Chamkar forest two days ago.’
‘By who?’ said Jenny.
‘Slavers,’ said Loan. ‘Mr Richard got these kids off the ship, but there’s a hundred more in the hold.’
Mac’s backpack was waiting at the Palace Guest House reception when he wandered in. Picking it up, he saw the clock behind the desk — almost midnight.
Leading the way, Mac showed Lance and Urquhart up to his suite and told them they could share the second bedroom.
‘Bathroom’s down the hall, boys,’ said Mac, ducking out.
He’d seen the lights in Scotty’s room, and he knocked gently on the wooden door in case he woke him and gave him a fright.
‘Who?’ came the slurred question.
‘Davis — Southern Scholastic.’
The door swung inwards and Scotty peered out, his Glock along his leg, a cigarette in his mouth.
Taking a seat in the spacious living room, Mac accepted the beer Scotty dug out of the fridge.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ said Scotty, cracking a new beer for himself and chaining a new smoke with a trembling hand. ‘Christ, I thought we’d lost you.’
‘That you with the flash-bang?’ said Mac, enjoying the cold beer but not in the mood for drinking.
‘Nah, Li threw that,’ said Scotty, ciggie hand shaking as he gulped at the bottle of Tiger. ‘I was too busy shooting the sky and shitting my pants.’
‘Well, I’m glad you did,’ said Mac.
‘What happened back there?’ asked Scotty, sucking too hard on the smoke. ‘We could see Urquhart and Lance crawling up the bank — where were you?’
‘Found a couple of kids on board,’ said Mac. ‘Didn’t seem right to leave them.’
‘They can’t have been in more danger than you,’ said Scotty, polishing off the beer and standing to get another.
‘They were in bed,’ said Mac, fatigue pushing down on his eyelids.
‘Should have left them,’ said Scotty.
‘In bed with a grown-up,’ said Mac.
Shaking his head slowly, Scotty resumed his seat and gulped the beer. ‘What was the first thing I taught you, Macca, when you arrived in Basrah at the end of the war?’
‘You told me to make myself priority number one because no other bastard was going to do it for me.’
‘Not bad advice, right?’
‘It’s my eleventh commandment,’ said Mac.
‘So what the fuck are you doing putting your life at risk for a couple of kids you meet on a ship?’ demanded Scotty, stress tightening his lips. ‘You don’t think you’ve bitten off enough already?’
‘Well,’ said Mac, shrugging, ‘no other bastard was looking out for them.’
‘Don’t get old and sloppy, Macca,’ said Scotty, pointing with his ciggie hand. ‘Priority number one, okay?’
Looking at his G-Shock, Mac saw it had just hit midnight — there was an appointment he wasn’t going to make. Taking the Nokia from his backpack, he found a received-call number and pressed it.
‘Just a sec, mate,’ said Mac.
A satellite phone connection would normally take twenty seconds to start ringing, but Mac’s call connected immediately. Then the distinctive Hungarian-Israeli voice came on the line.