Mole creek, p.1
Mole Creek, page 1
For all those who lose when politicians play games.
Soul Alley, Saigon, 1969
The movement of the bed as the girl rolled off the skinny mattress was almost imperceptible, but the motion and the rusty squeak of tired bedsprings was enough to wake the young officer from his fetid sleep.
Sensing he was somewhere he shouldn’t be, he defied the hammering inside his head and opened his eyes. The room seemed to be swimming in shades of brown and grey, muted tones, but for a determined strand of pale sunlight that had squeezed itself through a crack in a weather-warped wooden shutter.
The girl searched for her clothes, tiny fingers lightly lifting scraps of cloth and lace from the floor. Their eyes briefly met. Focus. There was no smile. They always smiled, but this time there was just a look of … what? Sorrow? Pity? Contempt? As she dressed unselfconsciously in front of him, he realised that she was young. Fuck! How young? They all looked young, the local girls, but she … Holy Jesus Fuck!
‘Honey,’ he said, as he reached for her wrist, but she turned and tripped away, nimbly, balletically, and left him clutching at air – a dance she’d clearly performed many times before. Light poured through the door, acid in his eyes, when she opened it to leave. The skinny Vietnamese man who entered cast a shadow as narrow as a clock hand.
‘Wake up!’ he said, shaking him by the shoulder. ‘You wake up now!’
‘I’m awake,’ the tall white man said, sitting up, a movement that seemed to make his brain clunk against his skull and his throat rise to the root of his tongue. He felt rather than looked for his shirt and pants. Fuck. His wallet. His side-arm. Fuck! His side-arm? Everything else was there except his pistol and chunks of memory, gaps in his recollection of the previous evening as he zipped and buckled himself into sweat-damp clothes, lifting the mattress, throwing aside the sheets, checking his pockets one more time.
‘Come,’ the local commanded. ‘Bad men here.’
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ said the blond soldier, catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror stained brown by lost patches of silvering. The imperfect reflection permitted him to see that he looked as rough as he felt. Splinters of memory seemed to seep out of the glass as he hopelessly patted down the mattress, knowing it had no secrets to reveal. Someone’s demob party. Officers mess. ‘Let’s hit the city.’ More drinks at the Rex and the Caravelle, then a Black voice says, ‘Soul Alley’.
Soul Alley, a couple of miles from Tan Son Nhut airport, and a no-go area for white men – at least those on their own. Good ol’ boys with no Black comrades to watch their backs ended up in doorways and gutters, bruised and bleeding, still breathing if they were lucky. A couple of streets and their connecting veins of twisting lanes housed cafes, bars and brothels populated by the disaffected, the pushers and grifters, many of them deserters, trained and armed by a country that they now declined to serve. Run by local pimps and mama-sans, the military police wouldn’t venture there because it would all turn to several shades of shit very quickly. Even the press corps, who would go anywhere for a drink, steered clear. And as for cameras? Vision of white American on Black American gun battles would not play well on TV back home. At least, that was before the American Army realised it was becoming too much of a magnet for young Black men for whom having an arm shot full of heroin was better than having a body shot through with bullets.
‘What goes on here?’ the newly arrived recruit had asked his escort, a gym-toned Black sergeant from Baltimore.
‘Anything you want, my brother,’ the sergeant had said, passing him a fat, fully lit joint, as they squeezed behind a rickety wooden table in a bar where an ancient jukebox seemed to be stuck between Marvin Gaye and The Doors.
Now, hours later – maybe days for all he knew – he was being herded, pushed, nudged, pulled and enticed down a series of twisting laneways, some of which he was sure he’d been along just minutes before. Who were the bad men he was running away from? What bad men? How bad were they? For fuck’s sake, he was a soldier. A trained killer. Why was he running away?
A soldier with one sleeve rolled above the elbow looked him up and down balefully then closed his eyes as a local girl, dressed only in panties and tank top, pressed the plunger of a syringe to release the essence of sweet freedom into his vein.
Abruptly, they stopped at a slatted green door set into a wall just where the laneway took a dramatic twist to the right. The local guy rapped on it twice, then once.
‘Come,’ said a loud but reedy male voice, demanding authority rather than projecting it.
‘Go in. He your friend. He help you,’ the escort said as he opened the gate.
The blond man stepped inside to find a skinny white man in his late thirties, sweating his way out of a dark suit fashioned from material thinner than a doss house bedsheet, sitting at a grey metal desk, scribbling on a notepad. The soldier tried to guess the man’s nationality from his appearance, but his rodent features gave nothing away.
However, the red ring around his neck, etched by the remnants of cheap detergent in his collar being dissolved by sweat, suggested he hadn’t been in Saigon long enough to find a good laundry. It also suggested he wore a tie to work every day, as he did now.
Was he American, British, French? Did it matter? The young soldier didn’t need a friend. He just needed to get the fuck out of there. He turned to leave just as the man in the suit looked up, opened a drawer, and pulled out a gun. His gun.
‘Are you looking for this, Lieutenant?’
The soldier tentatively reached for the weapon and the man behind the desk gestured for him to take it.
‘Thank you for joining us,’ he said, flicking through a clutter of monochrome eight-by-tens on his desk. ‘It seems we have so much to talk about.’
His heavy Eastern European accent sent a chill through the soldier, who was instantly transfixed by the shuffle of blurred images slipping and sliding under the stranger’s bony fingers. A trickle of memories is turning into a flood.
***
Fifty years later, two men sit at right angles to each other in an extravagantly upholstered booth in the Romeo and Juliet restaurant in the Reverie hotel in Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City – though mostly to loyal Communist Party members, civil servants and tourists. The restaurant’s Italianate décor might be considered extravagant in any other context but here it provides subtle relief from the overly opulent red and gold, black lacquer, and white marble of the reception areas, designed to make rich Chinese visitors feel they have Arrived.
The men are speaking Russian, which would not normally have caught the attention of passers-by. Russian oil men are extracting black gold from the Eastern (formerly South China) Sea and have replaced American and Australian soldiers in the girly bars and beaches of the former R&R haven of Vung Tau, two hours to the south. However, a young Vietnamese waiter pauses as he passes the table.
‘Can we help you?’ the older man asks, still speaking Russian.
The waiter smiles. ‘Just practising my Russian,’ he replies haltingly in that language. ‘I’m studying it, but I don’t have chance to speak or hear it too often. Everyone speaks English.’
‘Good luck with that,’ the younger Russian says with a warm smile. ‘Now, if you don’t mind …’
The waiter takes the hint and scurries off.
‘I cannot over-impress you with the importance of this mission,’ the older of the two men says in a voice that barely rises above a whisper. ‘This is a fifty-year project that’s about to come to fruition. Decades of careful nurturing mean we are about to achieve something beyond anything our predecessors would ever have dared to dream.’
‘Don’t worry, comrade,’ the younger man says, then slips into a convincing Australian accent. ‘She’ll be right.’
The older man looks at him and shakes his head. ‘Your great-uncle recommended you for this. I hope he hasn’t allowed family loyalty to cloud his judgement.’
‘My great-uncle proposed me for this because he knows I am the best man for the job, comrade,’ the younger man says, having reverted to Russian.
‘Comrade, again? A word from my past, not yours.’
‘My present and future, perhaps.’
‘Perhaps. But remember, our leader is watching. He is taking a personal interest in this project. Failure is not an outcome that you will easily survive.’
Later that night, the Russian-language-student waiter is retrieving his scooter from a sidewalk parking area, three blocks away, where dozens of motorbikes are slotted together like two-wheeled sardines. He feels something slightly sticky inside his riding mitts but there’s nothing to be seen when he checks his hands.
It’s about twenty minutes later, when he is in the midst of a shoal of homeward-bound commuters, that he starts to feel dizzy. Five minutes after that, he falls off the scooter, submerged by the pile-up he causes. He dies that night, apparently from his injuries. It’s the next day before the passing nurse who held his hand while they waited for an ambulance also succumbs. Panicked medics, fearful of a pandemic, test for viruses but find nothing. They never think to look for Novichok, the deadliest nerve agent known to man.
***
Seven thousand kilometres away, just outside the tiny Tasmanian village of Mole Creek, legendary but long-retired cop Pete McAuslan is dealing with an unfamiliar feeling of indecision, having reached a conclusion to which he’s not sure he wants to lead anyone else. He is staring a
He types a name then hits the backspace key as if he’s tapping out a call for help in Morse code, the name disappearing from his screen, letter by letter. Outside the cabin, trees sway and rustle in the breeze. Darkness has rolled down from the hill in front of the brick-and-timber holiday home, enveloping everything in a starless night. Starless and bible-black. He pours himself a generous measure of Laphroaig from the litre bottle that had seemed bottomless when he opened it but looks sadly inadequate barely a day later.
‘Is it you?’ he says. ‘Are you making me weak and afraid?’
He looks at the empty space on the screen, the flashing cursor, and a name occurs to him that makes him smile as he leans into the keyboard once more. But doubt floods in again. What if this falls into the wrong hands – or the right ones? What’s to be gained by even allowing this to exist? Hasn’t a crime committed half a century ago been eroded if not expunged by the waves of guilt that he knows the perpetrator will have felt over the years? Delete the whole damn thing and let it lie. Someday karma may allow someone else to do the same for his crimes of the heart and misdemeanours of the flesh.
A timber creaks outside on the deck. Was that the wind or a careless footfall? Stray wildlife in search of edible garbage?
He types laboriously into the gap between words previously occupied by the real name, then allows his finger to dally again over the backspace key. Pete takes another smoky, burning sip of his whisky and considers the page of bullet points on his screen. This isn’t writing, not like Xander would do. It’s not a narrative, it’s a list, but it tells a story he wishes now he’d never uncovered.
Search and replace. Search and replace. Search and destroy.
There’s a movement at the window. Or was it just the reflection of his reach for the bottle? Viewed through its flawed lens, Pete imagines he sees the door handle turning slowly and thinks he may have had enough whisky for one night.
A harbinger blast of cold air lifts the corner of a two-day-old newspaper and, through dimmed, distorting eyes, he sees the familiar features of someone who shouldn’t be there – if for no other reason than she’s been dead for more than fifty years.
Chapter 1
Xander McAuslan realises he’s done it again – walked into trouble from which he should have been running. To be fair, he’s been threatened. A hollow-eyed scumbag with misspelled inspirational tattoos on his neck and bad prison tatts on the backs of his hands and forearms, has sidled up to him at the bar in his local, the Terminus Hotel. The man, otherwise distinguished by fading, spiky orange hair, simply stands, looking. His face is a vacant lot awaiting renovation, his eyes darkened by some long-forgotten pain, or whatever he took to help him forget it. His skin is damp parchment stretched over a jumble of loosely connected bones. His ripped and faded clothes might have cost a fortune in a fashion store, were they not bearing a patina of grime. Eventually Xander turns, his head tilt asking the unspoken question: ‘Are you looking at me?’
‘Trackie says to shut the fuck up or you’re a dead man,’ Ginger Man says.
‘Oh, does he now?’ Xander replies in a tone of confected mild surprise.
‘There’s already a contract out to give you a kicking. And I’m first in the queue to collect.’
‘Hey, don’t let fear hold you back,’ Xander says, as if he were encouraging this not-very threatening presence to try hang-gliding or abseiling. ‘I’d hate to deprive you of an earner.’
Ginger Man’s furrowed brow tells Xander his response has found its mark. Bravado and bullshit are being replaced by confusion and concern. How come this little bloke in his smart chinos and office shirt isn’t shitting himself? What does he know? What does he have in his trendy computer bag? What Ginger Man couldn’t possibly appreciate is that Xander could dismantle him like a badly constructed Lego robot. But Xander does know this and it shows in his eyes.
‘Just don’t start anything in here,’ Xander says. ‘I don’t want to get barred … again.’
‘You’re a fucking dead man,’ Ginger splutters as he turns away, witty banter clearly not his forte.
‘Not yet, obviously,’ Xander replies and looks at his watch. ‘But I’ll be out in about half an hour if you can wait.’
‘Fucking dead man,’ Ginger shouts from the door, briefly silencing the hubbub of chatter in the bar as he exits.
The Terminus, known affectionately to its denizens as the Terminal, is a fine old pub that’s been spared the worst excesses of beer-barn modernisation or faux speakeasy décor inflicted on some of its contemporaries elsewhere in the city. Its clientele has, however, been minimally upgraded over the years from commercial travellers and railway workers to computer geeks and journalists, many from the nearby outpost of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
But there are still a few old codgers around who’ve seen more fights than Don King and know instinctively when to shuffle to the side and protect their drinks. To them, Ginger Man’s outburst is no more alarming than a passing police siren; someone else’s problem. That’s one of the reasons Xander likes the Terminus. That, and its proximity to his flat and Sydney’s not-particularly-grand Central Station.
‘You all right, Xander?’ Sam the barperson asks. ‘Never seen him before. I’ll take great pleasure in bouncing him down the street if he comes back.’
‘No worries, Sam,’ Xander replies. ‘Could I possibly have another schooner of your finest summer ale?’
‘You’re too cool for your own good,’ Sam says, shaking her head. She is stunning: six foot two without her stilettos, and perfectly formed. She doesn’t so much look too big as make everyone around her look Lilliputian.
Chugging his beer like a late arrival for the six o’clock swill, Xander briefly considers his dilemma. He has received a credible threat, albeit via someone who is a barely credible source, and he knows why. On the other hand, Trackie Vella knows what Xander’s capable of, and if he wanted to frighten him he’d send an emissary who was more dangerous than a badly drawn matchstick man. Xander is curious but unfazed. At the very least, if he were to go missing he knows enough cops who would start tugging Trackie Vella’s chain. Or he could decide to lay low for a while. Or he could call his ex-cop grandad, Pete, for advice.
A couple of hours later, riding the clunky lift to his apartment in Surry Hills, Xander takes stock. The scuffed fake-timber interior of the lift looks as worn as he feels and the eight floors take an age, which gives him plenty of time to consider the evening’s events. The source of the threat in the pub, Trackie Vella, is a former minor-league thug who’s transformed himself into dubious respectability as a developer of cheap and cheerless apartment blocks. His nickname stems from the fact that, before he graduated to Armani, he wore nothing but tracksuits. Xander is writing a story about how the supposedly reformed enforcer hasn’t quite left his past behind him. Vella’s PR flacks will deal with any fall-out from the story – at least the parts Xander’s written so far – so it is unlikely to do his legit business any harm. But his standing as a serious businessman and his reputation as a once-ruthless gangster are in direct conflict and Xander has squeezed a story from the cracks in between.
It was Pete who’d first suggested Vella may not be as squeaky clean as he purported to be, a thought that reminds Xander of an email he received earlier that day.
Xander, I’m at Mole Creek. I’ve started writing my story, yeah, I know, like you’ve been telling me for ages. Anyway, I’ve hit a roadblock. There’s part of it that I’ve never told anyone, and I need to talk to you about it first. It goes back to Vietnam. Can you get down here, maybe this weekend? It’s something we need to do face to face.
