Garvs had stopped smiling, stopped playing with the pen. He looked at a spot on the desk, his head shaking back and forth.
‘Shit, Macca.’
‘Garvs?’
‘Mate, what happened? Huh? Why couldn’t you just get old gracefully, get with the program, huh?’
Mac shrugged.
‘I mean, why am I feeling bad about this? This is what happens to old spooks, Macca! Look at me!’
Garvs threw his hands out at the desk where there were fi les, an in box, an out box, and a big appointment diary.
‘This is grown-up life, McQueen. Okay?’
Mac was silent, cold.
‘So don’t come in here with all this shit about people being brave as. Fuck’s sake, Macca – you have no idea what’s been just above your head all these years. I had no idea. You think a spy agency is about brave?! Oh, come on, mate!’
Mac shrugged.
‘Well it’s not. It’s about politics, and that’s who we answer to. They call the tune. You’re in denial.’
‘Just doing my job,’ said Mac. ‘That’s what they pay me for.’
Garvs was through with it, and he waved a hand.
Mac got up, turning for the door.
‘You know, Macca, I told Dave that trying to delay you in Sulawesi would backfi re. Would just get your blood going,’ said Garvs.
Mac felt sadder than he’d felt for a long time. One friend was dead before he got the chance to be a friend, now his old mate was discarding him like a toothpick. For what? A chance to suck up to a professional toadie like Urquhart.
Garvs shook his head, like he couldn’t believe this whole thing.
‘You know who you’re like? It just occurred to me.’
‘Who?’
‘Your old man. That whole last-man-standing bullshit.’
Mac walked out, glowing with the compliment.
Mac watched the endless buildings fl y past, looked through the brown smog of the late afternoon heat. Felt the cab swing onto the freeway to Soekarno-Hatta and watched the turquoise Java Sea chopping up to his right.
The chat with Garvs had gone about as bad as it could have. But it had clarifi ed once and for all that he was fi rmly in the boy scout camp.
In his twenties he’d tried to affect the cynical approach, thinking that the cynics had all the best jobs. But he couldn’t make it work. He’d always be the guy trying to do the right thing, the last man standing, and he’d always skew towards others like him. People like Paul, like Sawtell.
People like Jenny.
He remembered being in the embassy in Manila one afternoon, catching up on paperwork. He’d come into one of the kitchenettes for a cup of tea and interrupted a conversation between a Customs intel bloke called Sammy Weston and a group of younger blokes.
Mac had made his cuppa while Sammy held forth about the possible sexual orientation of a woman Mac was just getting to know and like: Jenny Toohey.
Mac was going along with Jen’s request for discretion about their new relationship, so he kept mum in the kitchenette while Sammy’s round face sweated with the joy of his malicious bullshit.
Mac let him fi nish, and said, ‘Sammy, she’s not gay, mate.’
Sammy came back with some crap about how he had a mate who had a mate who had seen something in a washroom.
Mac hated that kind of rubbish. Sammy was the same bloke who referred to the Transnational Sexual Servitude Taskforce as ‘the Dyke Squad’, on account of the number of women working that detail and the fact that some of them lost their boyfriends because they’d gone off sex.
Mac tried to keep it light. ‘She likes blokes, champ. Pretty simple.’
The younger blokes had stared at Sammy.
‘Not what I hear, Macca. Bird’s done nothing to show she’s into blokes.’
Mac smiled at him. ‘Thing about a girl like Jenny, mate. If she wants you to know, she’ll let you know.’
Sammy’s face went deep red. Mac heard laughter from the young blokes as he walked out.
Mac chuckled at the memory of that exchange and realised something: Jenny wanted him to know, and Jenny had let him know.
And she’d been doing it for almost six years.
He leaned back, jammed hands in pockets. Checked he had his passport and cash. Pulled it out. Counted it. Found the piece of paper from Garrison’s chinos. Looked at the nautical coordinates. Thought about it. Then he scrolled down his ‘dialled calls’ list in his Nokia. Hit the long number, with the Sulawesi prefi x.
A man answered in two rings. Mac said, ‘Mr B. It’s McQueen.’
Cookie was in a good mood and Mac asked how Lastri was doing. Then told him a few of the basics of what he had for him. ‘You were right, Mr B. Put Sabaya together with the Chinese and it equals money.’
Cookie asked where.
‘You put a dive team together quick-smart?’ said Mac.
‘Bear read porn in the woods?’ Cookie shot back.
‘Got a pen?’ said Mac.
He read him the coordinates. ‘Don’t know exactly where it is, but their fi nal destination was an island in the Sulu chain, so it’s around there somewhere.’
‘There’s a fi nder’s fee, of course,’ said Cookie.
‘Give it to Lastri. School, uni, that shit,’ said Mac.
‘You ever want to set up in Indonesia, let me know,’ said Cookie.
‘Good as gold,’ said Mac.
EPILOGUE
One year later
A light breeze blew across Surfers Paradise beach, powder-blue skies over the Pacifi c Ocean. It was almost eleven am, late November, three weeks before the tourist season. Mac pulled on his Proserpine Brahmans rugby league polo shirt – the one he’d bought from Frank to raise money for the club.
Closing the door gently, he made his way across the park at Broadbeach, through the trees and down onto the beach. He pulled his runners off as soon as he hit the sand, pushed them off with the opposite foot. Held the pair in one hand and walked up the beach to Surfers.
He went into a shopping mall off Cavill Avenue in the heart of Surfers Paradise and walked to the post offi ce past milling Japanese tourists and Malaysian surfers. After doing the double back twice, he paused at the post offi ce door, checked for eyes, checked for tails, half-hearted.
There were seven letters in the PO box. Mac scooped them and left.
He stopped on Cavill Avenue and bought a couple of blocks of Caramello chocolate and a banana and chocolate smoothie. Asked for extra malt and extra honey. Pausing at the newsagency, a puff across the top of the Australian caught his eye and he bought the paper.
He felt eyes, kept moving.
Sitting on a public bench at the Esplanade he watched youngsters surfi ng, oldies catching the sun. He followed the newspaper’s puff to the international pages where the lead item was the talks between China and Singapore over closer military ties. Mac scanned the article, found the MSS-driven mention of a ‘security relationship’ between the two nations. It was followed – further down the story – by the opposition politician’s comment about ‘a secret deal to put Chinese warships in the Singapore Strait’. Which was a well-worn CIA talking point. He wanted to be interested, but the thought of Urquhart, Garrison and friends actually succeeding just made him feel jaded.
Tossing the paper aside, he sorted through the letters. The one from Sulawesi caught his eye. Bani was doing well at the Brothers’ school in Makassar, seeing his family fi ve or six times a year, preparing for university in Surabaya. English was going well, along with sciences, soccer and girls.
A photograph fell out and Mac picked it up. It showed a soccer team of teenage boys in red shirts, Bani one of them, kneeling on a paddock. In the front-centre was a black macaque monkey, wearing one of the red shirts and holding hands with the boys on either side.
Mac fl ipped the photo and saw a message in Bani’s hand: Do you like our mascot? We call him ‘Makka’ – ha! ha!
Mac threw his head back, laughed at the sky. ‘You cheeky bugger!