He put his backpack in front of him on the counter to shield the transaction,
put his blue chinos and white shirt in the pack. His old clothes went into
a shop bag. He sauntered out into the giant mall that Soekarno-Hatta had become
and walked straight up to his tail, an Aussie Vietnamese girl in a red Nike
T-shirt, blue jeans and runners who was pretending to read the Economist.
Mac sat down beside her. She was mid-twenties, just learning her stuff. ‘Don’t tell me – too smart for the federal cops, too good-looking for the diplomats, huh?’ he said.
She looked up from the magazine, said, ‘I’m sorry?’
‘The spying thing? Thought about the cops, thought about foreign service, but settled on this. Can make a real difference, right?’
The girl feigned confusion. She was good at it. ‘Umm, sorry – think you got the wrong person.’
She had a nice voice. Low register, good long vowels. Smart but sensitive.
‘Your mum doesn’t get it, right? You can’t tell her what you do, but you can’t get engaged to that lawyer she’s lined you up with. Holy shit! Not the lawyer.’
Mac was going for the mum connection. When he’d first seen her he’d noticed a slight pronation of the left ankle. In gait psychogenics the Israelis would say she had an ongoing dispute with her mother. Mac guessed it was to do with having some bullshit corporate cover yet a total lack of interest in suits.
The girl turned to him slightly, said, ‘Like I told you, mister, you got the wrong person.’
Mac was almost there. ‘By the way, the worst thing you can do in this business if you’re a girl? Sleep with a colleague. Doesn’t matter how profound it was, the blokes will call you a slut.’
Mac let it hang. He waited. Waited. The girl looked into the distance, she turned back. ‘Like I said . . .’
She trailed off. Looked away.
Mac shook his head. ‘Even if he said he loved you.’
He watched her eyes refocusing.
‘Wasn’t Matt was it?’
She kept looking away.
‘Okay,’ said Mac. ‘Gimme the mic. I’ll have a chat to the bloke.’
He pretended to be going for the ear device that Mac was guessing was hidden by her hair. The girl pulled back, put her hand to her ear.
Bingo!
‘Don’t worry,’ said Mac. ‘I’ll tell him what’s what.’
The girl was on her feet. ‘Like I said, sir, I think you have the wrong girl.’
She picked up a blue backpack and walked away. He watched her walk across the mall area, down past the Gucci and Vuitton stores, along the cafes and up to the toilets. She looked into shop window reflections to check on him, then she disappeared into the ladies.
Mac had one minute before she finished her conversation with Matt, was yelled at for losing eyes, and then came back out.
Mac turned, unzipped his backpack and took out the Nokia, while heading across to a Swiss watch emporium where the hockey players were ogling the price tags. He had a look at something that cost $5200, looked closer, dropped his clothes bag, bent to pick it up and deposited his Nokia in a mesh water bottle holder that sat on the side of one of the hockey boys’ bags.
Had another look at the $5200 watch – was happy he had a G-Shock habit.
Scooting over to a garbage bin, he dumped his old clothes out of the plastic shopping bag, put his backpack in the bag, then sat back down where he’d been with the girl.
The conversation he’d had with Garvs the night before was too pat. His one-time friend had made a point of giving the Nokia back to him, which Mac took to be a decoy gesture – it meant Garvs was going to microdot Mac’s clothes. Microdots were the size of a very small bindi and they stuck to clothes just as easily. You couldn’t guarantee you’d get conversations off one but they were a great location device. The good thing about them was you could place them on a person by touching them on the sleeve or patting them on the back.
Now Garvs was going to be tracking Mac to the local dump.
The girl came back into sight. Mac’s flight was called. He stood, walked past her, winked. Smiled. Stopped.
‘The worst thing about spooks?’
The girl said, ‘What?’
‘All twenty-second wonders, mate. Are they coming? Are they going? Who can tell?’
He thought he saw a smirk, made a wiggling sign with his little finger as he moved off.
The girl laughed, looked away.
Good-looking bird, thought Mac. Shame about the circumstances.
© copyright Mark Abernethy 2008. All rights reserved. No use may be made of any of the material on this site without the written permission of the owner.
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