Free Counter Attack by Mark Abernethy

people, and hadn’t been doing anything shady. Interagency reports – probably from AFP or Customs, via FBI or New Scotland Yard – had picked up Vincent Loh Han, through their informants, referring to Quirk in conversation or email. And if Loh Han was a wheeler-dealer in the booming Vietnam, he’d be dropping names like a socialite at the races.
    Mac remembered Jim Quirk from Manila. He’d seemed smart and friendly and was entertaining with a couple of beers in him. It was obvious that DFAT thought the bloke was shady, but Mac had an open mind.
    ‘So just us, right?’ said Tranh, keeping the speed up through the hundreds of motorbikes on the roads.
    ‘Yep, Tranh,’ said Mac. ‘No travelling circus.’

    Mac was relieved that Scotty hadn’t insisted on a bigger team of the type he’d used in Singapore. He preferred working in small teams for security reasons and because it didn’t attract the attention of the local cops.
    ‘Also, I have message from Paragon,’ said Tranh.
    ‘Yep?’
    ‘He saying you have your fun at Singapore, now it time for Dragon.’
    Mac laughed. ‘Cheeky bastard.’
    ‘What is that?’
    ‘Nothing – bloke’s taking the piss,’ said Mac.
    ‘Begging the pardon?’ said Tranh.
    ‘You know, pulling my leg,’ said Mac, playing with his new phone. ‘Anything else?’
    ‘No,’ said Tranh. ‘But this would be normal?’
    Mac drank some water. ‘For what?’
    ‘If Paragon pissed on your leg?’
    Opening the double French doors of his suite at the Grand, Mac cased the building across the road before walking onto his Juliet balcony and looking over the Saigon River. The Grand was at the higher end of the mid-level hotels, not obvious like the American chains and not too far from the centre of the city. The hotel was on Dong Khoi Street, a busy cafe-lined avenue that ran from the river to Notre Dame Cathedral downtown.
    When Mac had first rotated through Saigon in the early 1990s, the Grand was called the Hotel Dong Khoi – which translated as ‘general insurrection’. In those days it featured toilets that you flushed by tipping a bucket of water into the bowl and showers that had no cubicle – the sprinkler head stuck straight out of the wall and the cold water splashed all over the black and white tiled floor. It had an ancient grille elevator that didn’t work and a staircase that climbed to the fourth floor by wrapping around the elevator shaft. It also had an open-door policy towards Hanoi’s spies and police – the Cong An – so that every time Mac left, he was logged by the desk manager and his bags were routinely searched when he was out.

    Now the place had been upgraded but he demanded his usual room – a two-bedroom colonial suite in the old wing looking over the river.
    Plugging his phone into the power jack, Mac took off his shoes and padded across the living area. Standing beside the doorframe of the main entry, he listened. Holding that position for two minutes, he heard the hallway creak and what he thought was a whisper. And then there was the sound of a fire door opening at the end of the hallway, and swinging shut.
    Sitting back on the bed in the room nearest the river, Mac sipped at the water bottle. He’d barely slept the night before, wondering how to proceed with Liesl. Had she been abducted or just bolted? He would wait twenty-four hours and talk to Benny again. He needed time, and he didn’t want to blow the whistle on Liesl – not if Urquhart was right and there was a traitor in Aussie intel.
    Mac would have to trust Benny – a person he’d met in his induction year when the accountant was teaching the youngsters about how bad guys hid behind banking domiciles and front companies. Benny had then showed the inductees how they could use the same techniques when they were in the field.
    Right now, Mac needed a nap. Then he was going to have some lunch and go to work. As he dozed off he thought about his first trip to Saigon and how the night