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

wanting to talk. Mac said he’d see him in fi ve.
    Ari was sitting in a blue Toyota Camry sedan, about two-thirds along Poppies Gang. It was dark and Mac walked the north side of the street fi rst, getting eyes on Ari, seeing his stance, looking for clues.
    Anxious? Alone? Nondescript van nearby? Mac came back on the south side of the street.
    There were few people around, locals mostly. Most of the Aussies and Kiwis were at Bali International Airport in Denpasar where AFP, Foreign Affairs and ASIS were debriefi ng and processing every one of them before they could get on a plane. According to Jenny they had thirty AFP agents with computer servers and a massive internet connection doing nothing but downloading pictures and video from the tourists’ cameras before they made immigration.
    Unarmed and cagey, Mac walked towards Ari’s car and then walked past, looking for anyone who might be hiding. He kept going, stopped behind a palm tree, cased the area and walked to the Toyota, opened the rear door and got in.
    ‘Kuta Puri,’ said Ari without preamble, nodding his head across the road. ‘You might be interested.’
    Mac smelled stale cigarettes and saw a six-pack of large Evian bottles on the fl oor behind the reclined driver’s seat. It was a stake-out car. Mac had been there, done that. He looked across the road to where the Kuta Puri Bungalows sat dispersed among stands of palms and frangipani trees. There were strategic lights in the bushes and he could see some citronella fl ares burning further into the compound in what Mac knew to be the pool and communal barbecue area.
    ‘What are we looking for, mate?’
    ‘Hassan,’ mumbled Ari, not taking his eyes off the Kuta Puri.
    ‘Hassan Ali - Pakistani intelligence.’
    Mac looked at him, trying to recall Hassan. He’d never worked in the subcontinent and some of the names weren’t familiar.
    ‘This Hassan,’ said Ari, ‘he’s in here with the - how you say? -
    the crew.’
    Mac looked through the side window to the Puri, but couldn’t see anything except trees refl ecting a purple sunset. ‘Pakistani intelligence.
    So you mean ISI?’
    ‘Nah, nah, nah,’ said Ari, nodding. ‘He was, and then no more.’
    Mac felt a creeping sensation up his neck and spun sideways to see where Ari’s backup was coming from. ‘Where’s your backup, Ari?’
    asked Mac, grabbing the door handle.
    ‘He’s following these other crews,’ shrugged the Russian. ‘In Java, yes?’
    Mac paused, intrigued. He wanted the story before he did the Harold. ‘Ari, why were you following me this morning?’
    Ari shrugged, grabbed his smokes.
    ‘Okay, let me put it this way,’ said Mac. ‘Why did you stand out there like a beacon, wanting to get made?’
    ‘Because,’ said Ari, putting a cigarette between his teeth, ‘I wanted to stay close.’
    ‘Why me?’
    Ari exhaled a plume of blue smoke, picked something off his tongue. ‘Because the very small bird tells me you were coming in from Manila. I thought we could cooperate.’
    Mac could feel his adrenaline rising. ‘Don’t screw with me, mate -
    I’m only a second away from going,’ he said, pulling the door handle up.
    Ari put up a hand. ‘Okay, okay.’
    ‘Spill. Now,’ snapped Mac, at the end of his fuse.
    Ari sighed. ‘My controller told me you were the IAEA. The coincidence was too great, yes?’
    Mac’s mind raced. A couple of years ago, he’d done a rotation at the International Atomic Energy Agency - a UN-backed authority that controlled the use and misuse of fi ssionable material, including enriched uranium and plutonium. Mac’s rotation had occurred at a time when two things were attracting major interest from the IAEA: fi rstly, Japan had developed a uranium-enrichment facility and ICBM
    technology, and had signed on to the US-Australian Theatre Missile Defence system. At the same time, the infamous Doctor A.Q. Khan
    - the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist - had been busted selling uranium-enrichment