Free Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent by Mark Abernethy

his red plastic key ring with the number 92 on it. The desk guy moved down to 92, looking for a key on his chain. The boxes between 90 and 100 were painted black, the long-term hires that required both the client’s key and the hotel’s master.
    They both put their keys into the medium-sized door and turned.
    A brushed-steel enclosed tray lay inside. It was the size of four shoe boxes.
    The desk guy stared at it.
    Mac stared at the desk guy. ‘Thanks, champ - think I’ve got it now.’
    The desk guy smiled. Fucked off.
    Mac whipped the sheet over his head so it draped over his security box and down to his ankles. He pulled out the tray and opened the lid.
    Bundles of US, Australian, Malaysian and Indonesian currency winked back through a seal-lock plastic bag the size of a decent cushion. It was all used notes, perhaps US$40,000 worth in total.
    Mac riffl ed the rupiah, peeled off about US$5000. Trousered it, then resealed the money bag and dug around under it. There was a pile of Amex and Visa cards in various names, held together with a rubber band. There were also passports, drivers’ licences, a digital camera, a BlackBerry and a red Nokia that had seen better days. There were two handguns - a Heckler & Koch P9S with a black plastic stock grip, and an American-made Walther PPK .38 - both holstered in navy blue hip rigs. Mac had never used the Walther.
    There were four empty clips and several boxes of Winchester .45s and .38s. He couldn’t remember how much ammo each contained.
    He grabbed the Heckler, two clips and three boxes of .45s.
    Mac slipped the sheet off his shoulders. Turned it into a swag and put his booty in it. Then he left, walking backwards.

CHAPTER 6
    Showered and made up like a sales dickhead, Mac ate up large for breakfast: bacon, scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, toast, tea, orange juice and half a rockmelon. He was hunkered down in a corner of the Pantai’s huge tropical-themed restaurant, so he’d get a look at the whole room and everyone in it. He was surrounded by Anglo expats and Malaysians trying to cash in on the boom economy of Sulawesi.
    Shortly before eight am Mac was running through his day: he needed extra phones, he needed a car - and maybe a driver - and he needed to get on the Garrison/Hannah trail. The Service didn’t have employees or assets in Sulawesi. But they had Minky Bonuya, a local contractor primarily run by the CIA and a hub of the best intelligence on Sulawesi. His long, vulpine face was a real standout in round-faced Indonesia, and Mac wasn’t a great fan of the bloke. But Minky was allegedly the one with the Garrison drum.
    As he left the restaurant, Mac walked past a tourist at a fruit stand.
    She smelled of the soap that Diane used. Crabtree and Something.
    It annoyed him at fi rst but he fell into daydreaming about perhaps travelling with Diane, when he wasn’t working, when he was a regular university lecturer. When …
    He snapped out of it. Gave himself a quick tap on the head with the middle knuckle. Thirty-seven years old, and in love for the fi rst time. He didn’t know how people did it.
    Minky’s shoe shop was two blocks inland from the Makassar port area. Mac did a fi gure of eight around it, then did some overruns, double-backs and triangulated patterns, with his black wheelie case in tow. Just an overworked salesman looking for his clients. Only this salesman had a P9S handgun sitting slightly behind the front point of his right hip bone, hidden from sight by a safari suit jacket.
    Mac wasn’t big on guns, which was why he hadn’t even practised with the Walther yet. Didn’t read the magazines, didn’t have an emotional attachment to them. He had grown to like the unfashionable Heckler for practical reasons. At four inches, its barrel was nice and short, and it was lighter than the big semi-autos like the Beretta and Glock. Sure, it only had seven shots in the clip, but that meant it used a single-stack mag rather than the jam-prone double stacks.