Mac thought he saw an eye tremor, wondered if Garvs was dissembling.
If he was, Garvs rescued it quick with a laugh. ‘Don’t tell me, Macca – a mole, right?’
Mac didn’t let the stare go, even though Garvs was laughing at him. ‘Mole sounds very Cold War, doesn’t it, Garvs?’ he said. ‘Let’s say there’s another kind of black operator who’s no mole, not a double and maybe isn’t even behaving illegally?’
‘Okay.’
‘Might be a good man, asked to do something. Something he’s not completely comfortable about, but which gets him into the Big Boys’ Club.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Might not know the whole picture. Only be told the outcome or only told about the benefi ts.’
Garvs shot his eyebrows up too quick. ‘How would someone work that?’
‘It’s an old move. If blackmail and threats don’t work, try some reverse fl attery.’
‘Really?’
Mac was taking Garvs into areas he hadn’t been into. Truth was, Garvs wasn’t very good at the things Mac excelled at. Thought he’d give a glimpse of himself in operational mode.
He altered his voice, got into character. Did what he’d done a thousand times, all over Asia. ‘You know, “Garvs, it so amazes me that you’re still only an IO after so many years. You’re so smart. So much smarter than these smarmy pricks who are getting paid twice as much as you and deciding your future. Don’t know who the halfwit is who’s been passing you over, but you know, I see you as director material. Fair dinkum, Anton, you’re the type of person we need for these new taskings. No one else knows what the fuck’s going on.
But hey! Here’s an idea! I’m having lunch with the DG next week in Tokyo, it’d be great to know I had your permission to put your name forward… ”’
Garvs was embarrassed. Had broken the stare. Put his hand up.
‘Okay, okay.’
Mac pushed on. ‘How it works, mate. Only, as an afterthought, I’d say something like, “You know, Anton, we’ve been having this little problem. Been working on it with the American side. Hush-hush, classifi ed, of course, but thought you’d like to sit in, lend us a hand while we get you in front of the DG, huh?” ‘
Mac didn’t know if he’d hurt Garvs. Or if he’d struck something else. The big guy exhaled, looked through the venetians at the heat shimmers now coming off the concrete of Halim. He shoved a hand in his pocket, brought something out, popped it in his mouth. It was chewing gum.
The front doors fl ew inward and a bloke Mac knew entered the building, bandage across his nose, black eye – one of those ones with an egg yolk in it. A black cap on his head, he was dressed in grey ovies. He had a man and a woman in his wake as he stormed along the entry corridor.
The party went down the hallway and the MI6 guy called Paul suddenly reappeared. He’d reversed up, didn’t miss anything. Paused at the door, smiled at Mac and entered the room.
‘You’re up early. You shit the bed?’
Mac laughed. ‘Nah, that was your missus. You can have her back now.’
Paul came forward, shook Mac’s left hand. Mac did intro ductions with Garvs.
Paul turned back, kept the musical Pommie accent going. ‘You could be the man we’re looking for, McQueen.’
Mac looked at Paul, looked at Garvs. ‘Yeah?’
‘Got a small thing in Singers this morning. Need a bloke who’s all over it.’
‘Short-staffed?’ asked Mac.
‘All at a conference. They pulled me out of MMC.’
Mac thought about the IMO security bash at Raffl es City and realised that that’s where the Service would always have deployed him.
Natural fi t: his turf, his specialty. The penny dropped. They wanted him out of Singers too.
Garvs cleared his throat. He seemed nervous around Paul.
‘Mate, you didn’t see the ankle bracelet. Makes him look like a tart, if you ask me,’ said Garvs to Paul.
Paul looked down. ‘He’s right, McQueen. It’s tarty. Lose it and let’s get going.’
Garvs stood, looked at Paul, chewing furiously. ‘He’s in custody, mate. Understand?’
‘Sure,’ said Paul. ‘But we’ll be needing him.’ He walked to the door.
Turned back to Garvs. ‘Have him ready in two, thanks mate.’
Garvs shook his head, like this Pommie was going to get a word in the shell-like. Paul put up his hand. Yelled ‘Anthea’ over his shoulder.
Garvs and Paul eyed off for eight seconds. Something colder than hate.
A medium-height brunette came through, a clipboard in her hand. Paul said, ‘Can we get a copy of that executive order? And bring a requisition for Mr McQueen to sign, okay? It’s McQueen, Alan.’
Anthea dashed out of the room. Paul stood his ground and Garvs straightened up, a bead of sweat on his top lip.
‘ Davis is going nowhere, ‘cept on a plane into Darwin. Townie, if he’s lucky,’ said Garvs.
‘Ten days ago your government resourced us to requisition from all coalition partners as part of our joint CT sweep. So I’m requisitioning,’ said Paul.
Garvs tried to stare him down. But Paul didn’t seem to mind. He stared straight back.
Anthea came back, gave Paul a piece of green paper, the last or second-last sheet on a triplicate form. The whites, reds and blues were sitting somewhere else, probably in Canberra and the British Embassy.
The green paper had a man’s handwriting in the tasking section. Some boxes were ticked, N/A was written in other places. The signature was looping but you could read the name: the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Mac had never seen an EO before, but he remembered the low-level circular that had accompanied the agreement between the UK, Australia and the US to share intelligence and assets in the latest CT operations.
Mac handed the order to Garvs, whose breathing was stiff as he went all out on the chewing gum.
‘We’ll see about this,’ said Garvs, heading for the other side of the room, where he grabbed at a phone and hunched over it.
‘What made you cotton?’ said Mac to Paul, keeping his voice soft.
Paul looked over at Garvs remonstrating into the phone, whispered
‘I was walking around the long way to get to Hasanuddin Airport, and I realised something. In all the years I’d been observing you, writing fi eld reports on you, I’d never seen you anything except cool.’
‘Thanks.’
‘So when I fi nally got to speak with you in that van, and you’re a wreck, I thought I should assume something was genuinely up and try to work it through.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Realised that the CL-20 that Sabaya had -‘
‘You knew about that?’
‘Came from a US Army bunker in Guam. I’d been trying to get a handle on what it was for. So I’m walking along with a bleeding face and remembering that Sabaya had spent a week in Manila. I put that with the VX heist. Realised why you looked so stressed.’
Garvs turned with the phone at his ear and the order in his hand, said, ‘Hang on just a minute, you two.’
Garvs rabbited on to whoever was listening in Canberra. But nothing trumped an executive order. Garvs put the phone down, sullen, handed the sheet to Anthea and shrugged. Then he called Nigel through.
As Nigel loosed the irons, Mac signed a British government form, freshly printed out with his name on it.
Mac checked his backpack. The Heckler was still there, so were the passports, cash and visa.
As they left, Mac couldn’t work out what saddened him more; Anton Garvey’s dejected state, or the chewing gum wrapper that lay on the desk.
Special Mint. Bartook.
CHAPTER 33
Mac sat in the back of a civilian-marked Gazelle helo as it fl ew in to Singapore at one hundred and eighty miles per hour. It was 9.16 am.
Clear skies, medium humidity.
Next to him was an MI6 contractor called Weenie. Despite the crap name, Weenie was the comms version of a safe-cracker. Between them sat two cases with the capacity to lock on to restricted or scrambled frequencies such as those used by the Port Authority, the Singaporean Police or the armed forces. Weenie couldn’t promise he’d be able to jam into the Americans’ bandwidths, but he’d try.