Keeping a brisk pace along National Circuit, Mac glimpsed the lake down the cross streets and smelled the rotting winter leaves on the ground. Crossing the street twice to case a slow-moving Ford Falcon that had doubled back, he walked south to John McEwen Crescent and approached the DFAT building entrance from the side and behind the trees in the forecourt. Showing his passport to the security guard at the entrance, he signed for his DFAT lanyard and wandered across the foyer, lost in thought.

‘Nice morning for it,’ came a deep male voice.

Turning, Mac saw his boss, the director of operations for the Asia-Pacific, Tony Davidson, reading the Australian Financial Review on a leather sofa.

‘Tony,’ said Mac, walking over and shaking Davidson’s hand.

‘Macca – thought we’d have a quick chat on the way up, eh?’

Walking through a series of corridors until they reached the secure SIS section, Davidson kept it light as he put his card into the designated elevator.

‘Gleeson wants to see us – no biggie,’ he said, as the doors opened to reveal two SIS officers locked in terse conversation. They shut their mouths as they saw Davidson looming – it may have been thirty years since he opened the bowling for Western Australia, but at six-five and still built like a country boy, the man had a way of grabbing people’s attention.

‘So it’s hardly related – I mean, shit, Tony, what’s the opening of the Olympic Games got to do with our constitution?’ said Mac as a verbal veil, but his mind was spinning: John Gleeson was a deputy director-general at the firm – an executive position second only to the DG – which meant Mac was in serious trouble.

The operations floor of SIS was already humming as Mac followed Davidson towards Gleeson’s office. The crisis in East Timor and the wider ramifications of the Australia-Indonesia relationship had created a panicked demand for intelligence product from departments such as Prime Minister & Cabinet, Foreign Affairs, Trade, Defence, Treasury, Customs and the Australian Federal Police. East Timor was a tiny province with a Portuguese colonial history, but it occupied an island between Flores and northern Australia, and if its ballot for independence from Indonesia disintegrated into a slaughter of civilians, then Australia had to decide not only how to respond, but whether it would agree with Jakarta’s wishes or insist on a universal concept of human rights.

Murphy’s Law of intelligence held that the specific intel required by government was never available when they needed it, and the reports that so many officers had worked so hard to create were used to prop up computer monitors. There were forty or fifty people on that floor, many of whom had been going all night, synthesising reports and briefings out of known intel and working the firm’s field officers to plug the gaps. And there was still a fortnight until the East Timor ballot. There were times Mac was happy to be a field guy.

Following Davidson into Gleeson’s corner office suite, Mac smiled at the secretary as they were shown into an office that looked north so that the jet which fired water out of Lake Burley-Griffin in the distance seemed to be pumping it straight out of old Parliament House’s roof.

‘Alan,’ said John Gleeson, approaching around the hardwood desk.

‘Sir,’ said Mac, obeying Gleeson’s gesture to take a seat on the sofa.

‘We’re pretty busy up here so I’ll come straight to it,’ said Gleeson, a trim guy in his early fifties who sat on the edge of his desk with one foot on the ground. ‘How did we get ourselves into that fuck-up in West Papua?’ He looked pointedly at Davidson, who sat in a chair against the wall.

‘It was one of our provocations,’ said Davidson in his deep WA drawl.

‘The OPM operations? That it?’ said Gleeson, annoyed but not losing it.

‘That’s it, John. It was my call, it’s not -’

Raising his hand, Gleeson blinked for two seconds as if managing his stress. ‘Spare me the Clarence Darrow act, okay, Tony? What happened? From the top.’

‘We have an asset in OPM,’ said Davidson. ‘We encouraged him to lead a hostage-taking scenario at the Korean-owned Lok Kok mine in the highlands of West Papua while it was in a maintenance cycle.’

‘So it was shut down?’

‘Correct,’ said Davidson. ‘About thirty maintenance engineers were staying in the workers’ quarters – mostly Korean but also some Americans, Australians and French.’

‘And?’

‘And the Koreans sent me along with their mercenaries – a company called Shareholder Services – to deal with the crisis,’ said Mac, handing his report to Gleeson. ‘They worked out that I had a military background, and since I was consulting to the company with local issues -’

‘They thought you could sort this for them?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Mac, gulping slightly.

‘But what happened?’

‘When we got to the mine, the mercenary commander didn’t want to negotiate – which is the usual way to handle these things in West Papua.’

‘Yes?’

‘He wanted to use a flamethrower and I argued with him, but he… The upshot was that I fought with some of the mercenaries.’

Gleeson’s hand went up again as he leaned back on his desk and grabbed a letter. ‘This is a diplomatic letter of protest from the Korean legation in Jakarta. They pouched it the day before yesterday, and I had to recall you – which isn’t a cheap exercise, right, son?’

‘Right, sir.’

‘The letter states that Korean economic interests at the Lok Kok mine were sabotaged by a Papua New Guinean national and an Australian national; two security workers in the pay of this mine company were killed – one of whom was set on fire,’ said Gleeson, looking up at Davidson and then Mac. ‘Several maintenance engineers sustained gunshot wounds but, miraculously, they’re alive.’

‘Look, it was just one of those things -’ started Mac, but Gleeson’s eyes shut again and this time he massaged them with his hand.

‘No, McQueen, it was not just one of those things. Certainly not the kind of thing that most of us in this building ever get up to.’

‘These operations give us invaluable insight into the terror group operating closest to our borders,’ said Davidson. ‘No other nation – not even Indonesia – has the links we have into the heart of OPM. And we’re usually very careful.’

‘Oh, really?!’ said Gleeson, eyes bloodshot from stress. ‘Careful? Then why is there a Korean consular officer sitting in a hospital in Makassar with a cracked skull?’

‘A consular -?’ said Mac, confused. Then it dawned. ‘Oh shit, you mean Pik?’

Holding the letter closer, Gleeson squinted at the name. ‘Piet-Marius Berger, a security attaché in the Korean legation to Indonesia.’

Mac laughed, he couldn’t help it.

‘This is funny?’ said Gleeson, shaking the letter and returning to his chair behind the desk.

‘No, sir – it’s just that Pik Berger might be one of those rare blue-eyed Koreans we’ve heard so much about,’ said Mac.

‘Tony,’ said Gleeson to Davidson after a pause, ‘is your officer laughing at me?’

‘No, John – probably just surprised that a South African merc is claiming consular credentials with the Koreans. It got me too, I must admit.’

Sighing at the ceiling, Gleeson slid down in the chair. ‘Okay. McQueen, luckily I need everyone on the Timor situation for the next few weeks so I want you around. Tony’ll brief you – but promise me something, son?’

‘Sure,’ said Mac.

‘Stay out of trouble, okay?’

‘Can do, sir,’ said Mac, following Davidson’s lead and standing. As he walked through the door, he heard Gleeson’s voice again.

‘Oh, McQueen?’

Turning, Mac came face to face with the DDG, who waved the field report he’d received five minutes before.

‘Rule Number One for young field officers,’ said Gleeson, as he tore up the report and passed the pieces to Mac. ‘Always wait till after the DDG has kicked the crap out of you before writing your report. Over to you, Tony.’