Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike by Mark Abernethy Page A

the pouch.
    ‘Lotta thieves round here, champ - good money for a handgun,’
    added Mac.
    They looked into one another’s eyes through their sunnies. The tail was Mac’s height but had another fi ve kilos on Mac’s one-oh-fi ve. He was a front rower to Mac’s centre. Mac glimpsed a POLRI on the other side of the barrier and looked back at the tail. The bloke’s eyes darted to the POLRI, and then Mac saw the tension run out of that thick neck as he smiled, showing lots of small teeth and a ton of gum.
    ‘Ah, Australian!’ said the bloke with a thick Russian accent.
    ‘Einstein, right?’
    The Russian threw his head back, laughed at the sky. ‘You weren’t supposed to be seeing me, fuck the mother!’
    They sat at the window table of a bar on Legian Street, Ari - the Russian - with a Tiger beer, Mac with a glass of Pellegrino and a chunk of lime.
    ‘So, Ari, you’re a little out of your way?’
    Ari chewed on gum, looked out at the diminished tourist fl ow on Legian, did one of those Russian shrugs that Mac always took to be the start of a fi b. The Russian intelligence services had an enormous presence in East Asia and the subcontinent, but their activities out of Jakarta were usually confi ned to countering the Chinese, Japanese and Indians along with shadowing the Americans and British. Mac and his peers from Indonesian intelligence and the CIA knew that the Ruskies were around but weren’t used to confronting them.
    ‘Indonesia is such an interesting country, don’t you fi nd, McQueen?’
    Ari had used his real name but Mac let it go, since for this investigation he was operating under Alan McQueen, his card the standard DFAT goods with the gold bunting and the south Jakarta address of the Australian Embassy. In the general run of things, intelligence people honoured each other’s aliases and to use their real name unbidden could be seen as aggression.
    ‘Bali got very interesting last night,’ said Mac. ‘Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
    Ari paused, allowed the translation to sink in, then laughed. ‘I see, I see.’
    Mac fl inched as Ari reached for the holster-bag so the Russian slowed his hand, turned his fi ngers into a pincer and pulled the side fl ap open. Mac saw a packet of cigarettes and Ari pulled them out along with a cheap red plastic lighter.
    ‘Guess what I’m saying, Ari, is that you’re here for the bombing.
    And since it looks like my country is going to be in a joint investigation with the Indons, I’m going to be getting a lot of information you’d like to get your hands on.’
    Ari nodded as he took his fi rst draw and then held the cigarette upright between his thumb and index fi nger. He had a wide face with big slabs of cheekbone and a surprisingly childish mouth that moved constantly into new emotions. His eyes were ice-pale and he had a medium-sized gold crucifi x dangling beneath his trop shirt on a tanned hairless chest. Mac saw the crucifi x had the Orthodox Church titulus of INBI across the portion where the short plank crossed the upright. On a Catholic cross it would be INRI .
    ‘We might have to be talking, yes?’ said Ari, smoke drifting out of his nose. ‘You are scratching my back and I then am scratching your back, yes?’
    Mac hesitated, and then put his hand out. They shook and swapped mobile phone numbers before Mac got up to leave.
    ‘If you’re working with the Indonesian police,’ said Ari, ‘perhaps you can tell me: are they checking passports?’
    Mac was about to say, Why the hell would they be checking passports? But he just shrugged, said he’d fi nd out.
    Walking into the heat, Mac buzzed with what he’d just found out.
    The Russians didn’t believe the bombers were locals either.

CHAPTER 7
    After changing into clean civvies, Mac headed downstairs and Julie grabbed him as he walked into the hotel lobby. For someone who never seemed to rest, she had a clean, fresh look. Her dark drill skirt was pressed and her white short-sleeved