The Son Page 12

  ‘You like pushing people around, don’t you,’ she said. ‘You like to have things your own way.’

  ‘Only when I know I’m right. Sometimes it’s the only way to get things done.’ She turned, and looked at me steadily. I should have seen the signs. The deep shadows under her eyes, the air of strain – selfishly I’d been more concerned about myself and my little plots than her welfare, but she looked on the edge of exhaustion.

  ‘Let’s not fight, Hao,’ I said pleadingly. ‘It’s been a bad day, we should be helping each other, not quarrelling.’ I made to put my arm around her waist but she pulled away.

  ‘Don’t!’ she snapped.

  ‘I’m sorry!’

  ‘You think that – that because I crawled into your bed last night you can treat me like some – some kind of bar-girl–’

  ‘Hao, of course not!’

  ‘What happened last night–’

  ‘Nothing happened last night! Don’t you remember? You were lonely and miserable and you came to me for comfort! What do you think, that I was going to take advantage of that? What kind of a monster do you think I am? I love you, Hao!’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  ‘But it’s true! Why, don’t you believe me?’

  ‘You don’t know me – you know nothing about me–’

  ‘So you keep saying. But what you told me last night, didn’t that tell me anything?’

  ‘There are other things – things I haven’t told you–’

  ‘Well tell me now then!’

  ‘I can’t–’

  ‘Why not? Oh, let me guess. You don’t like men, is that it? Well, that’s hardly surprising, after what happened to you.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘So what is it? Have you got someone else, is that it? Is there a man, a lover, waiting for you in Leeds?’

  She looked down.

  ‘There – there is someone–’

  ‘Oh Christ! Now you tell me!’ I sat down, suddenly deflated. To think that I’d been so naïve, so self-absorbed as to imagine I was the only one who mattered to her. ‘Who is it? Is it that man, who rang the other day? George?’

  ‘I – I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘No. Of course not! Why should you! It’s not as if we had something going between us, is it!’ I suddenly felt very bitter.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ I asked. ‘Go back to him?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ she cried. ‘Stop asking me all those questions! I have to go back anyway! My visa’s going to run out soon.’

  ‘You could get an extension.’

  ‘No I couldn’t. They told me in London when they gave it to me that I wouldn’t be able to extend once I came here. If I want to stay longer I’d have to go back to England and reapply from there.’ She looked despairing. ‘Anyway, what does it matter. Another month or two, I’ll still have to go back in the end.’

  It matters to me! I wanted to cry out. Instead I burst out angrily.

  ‘Well, don’t let me stop you! I’ve told you how I feel, but if you want to go back to your friend go ahead. I’m not holding you prisoner here. You came to my help, you’ve been very good to me, but I’m better now, thanks, I can look after myself from now on.’

  I stood up. She looked almost unbearably beautiful, her face pale and drawn, her eyes lustrous with intensity. I thought if I didn’t get a grip on myself I’d break down in front of her.

  ‘Now if you don’t mind, Hao, I have a phone call to make. Don’t worry. I’ll look after Eric, I’ll make sure nothing happens to him.’

  She looked about to say something else, then changed her mind and went out.

  It was now nearly seven. I waited until I’d got myself under control, then rang Roger Bentinck, my former colleague in Canberra. I caught him at home in Red Hill, one of Canberra’s premier suburbs. He had just come in from work and sounded glad to hear my voice.

  ‘I was about to give you a call,’ he said.

  ‘Roger, I need to see you urgently.’ I started to tell him what had happened, but he cut me off when I mentioned Loc’s visit.

  ‘I know about that,’ he said quickly. ‘I can come up tomorrow afternoon–’

  ‘It’s better if I come down. I can be there early.’ I needed to get away from that flat.

  We made arrangements for ten, and I hung up. I thought of eating, but I’d lost all appetite. I went and stood for a moment outside Hao’s door. I could hear her moving, and what might have been her blowing her nose. I thought bitterly of how much things had changed over the past twenty-four hours. I went to my room and tried in vain to sleep.

  When I left early the next morning her door was still shut. I wanted to go in and say goodbye, but thought better of it. Instead I left a short note on the kitchen table to say I’d be out for most of the day. I walked out on tip-toe.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Australian Secret Intelligence Agency – ASIA – had its headquarters in one of the wings of the Edmund Barton Building on King’s Avenue, half-way between Lake Burley Griffin and the new Parliament House on Capital Hill, on Canberra’s south side. The EBB, as it was called, was built in the shape of a hollow square, the office wings suspended above ground and held aloft by a series of round towers which also served as lift wells. I entered one of these and took the lift to the first floor, the only one marked with a button. There I emerged into a small lobby painted in muted pastel shades, where an elderly guard in a blue uniform studied me from behind bullet-proof glass. Apart from the guard nothing much seemed to have changed over the years. I filled in a form, received in exchange a Visitor’s badge which I clipped to my lapel, the guard picked up his phone. A moment later a side door opened and Roger Bentinck came out, smiling in welcome. He gave my face a critical look.

  ‘Christ!’ he said. ‘You look as if you’ve run into a wall!’

  ‘You should see the other fellow,’ I quipped back, not very originally.

  ‘Good to see you anyway. Come on in.’

  We shook hands and I followed him inside. He hadn’t changed much either since we’d last met, a neat fair-haired man about my own age, with watchful eyes in a youthful boyish face. He led me along carpeted corridors lined with closed office doors. Here and there red lights winked, to warn of my presence. When I was still working there the doors would have been open and no lights would have winked. But it was an iron rule in the Agency: once you left you lost all access, no matter how trusted you’d once been or how polite they were about it.

  ‘I’ve arranged a meeting in our small conference room,’ he said as we turned another corner. ‘A couple of people want to see you.’

  We went up a flight of stairs to a large waiting area, with more shuttered doors. Here the carpet felt thicker, the silence even more secretive. This was the senior directorate, where the top brass sat. Bentinck had been a desk officer when I’d left the Agency, but he’d climbed fast and was now Deputy Director-General in charge of operations, second only to the D-G.

  Roger opened one of the doors and ushered me into a narrow windowless room with wood panelling and sliding maps along one wall, and a conference table with chairs along both sides. At the far end of the table stood a tray with cups and milk and sugar and a small percolator. ‘Help yourself to coffee. I’ll get the others.’

  He closed the door behind him, returning a moment later to let in three others.

  ‘You remember Bill Forsythe,’ he said, introducing the oldest of them, a tall fleshy man in his early fifties with hooded eyes and the beginning of a stoop. ‘Our new Director-General.’ Forsythe smiled and held out his hand.

  ‘Of course we were all much younger then,’ he said in a rich actor’s voice. ‘How long’s it been? Ten, twelve years? You haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘Neither have you, Bill,’ I lied, remembering the lean hawk-faced man of my youth. But I also remembered those eyes, which gave him a faintly menacing air, and that politician’s ready smile. Forsythe had always been a smooth
operator.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘I saw your appointment in the papers.’

  ‘The price of fame,’ he said. ‘You can’t stay hidden in this job.’ Forsythe introduced the others: Keith, a tall man in his mid thirties with a sombre face, and Samantha, a leggy and very pretty brunette with intelligent eyes and a slightly wicked smile. No surnames. Another routine precaution.

  ‘Keith’s head of our South East Asia Branch and Sam runs the Indochina desk. We’ve had a few changes since you left, and one of them is a number of women coming up through the ranks. They make damn good case officers.’

  ‘Paul’s one of the old guard,’ Bentinck cut in jovially. ‘He’d probably be in my job if he’d stayed.’

  ‘Don’t believe him,’ I said. ‘He always was a flatterer.’

  The others made appreciative noises and helped themselves to coffee, then Forsythe took a chair near the end of the table and the rest of us grouped ourselves around him. Samantha produced a note pad. Forsythe asked how I was doing in Sydney, then got down to the business in hand.

  ‘So, Paul, tell us what’s been happening lately,’ he said, with another smile. ‘And how you came to get in that state. Roger’s briefed us but there’s a lot we don’t know and we’d like to hear how it looks from your end.’

  ‘Of course. That’s why I’m here,’ I said, returning his smile. I had come there at my own request, not to ask for help but to offer it, and I didn’t want anyone to pretend otherwise. These people were arch-manipulators, skilled at exploiting a situation. I took a sip of coffee and looked at them all.

  ‘It’s probably best if I start at the beginning,’ I said. ‘It’s not a long story but there are several angles to it. Do you remember David Harper?’

  ‘Harper? Of course,’ said Forsythe. ‘He was that young officer who was killed in Vietnam. The only man we ever lost in the field.’

  ‘Right. And I took his place in the embassy.’ I turned towards the two youngsters, who would have been at school at the time. ‘Saigon, 1975.’ I looked again at Forsythe and Bentinck. ‘I’ve spent the past fortnight getting to know his son.’

  Forsythe’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything, and I told them the story, much as Hao had told it to me at our first meeting – of Hien, and Eric, and how Eric had grown up in Britain with his adoptive parents, and how he had come to end up in Cabramatta with a group of Vietnamese anti-communist fanatics. Everything leading up to Quang’s death, bar a few details about Hao and Hien’s kidnapping, which was none of their business. They listened quietly, like the trained listeners they were, while Samantha took notes. When I finished there was a moment of silence. The youngsters looked at Bentinck and Forsythe, and these two looked at me. Finally Forsythe spoke.

  ‘Thank you, Paul,’ he said. ‘It’s a very moving story. You’re certain that Eric is David’s son?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember David very well, but you only need one look at Eric to know it. And she wouldn’t have made up a story like that.’

  ‘She? Mrs Tran?’ asked Roger.

  ‘Yes. His aunt. She’s totally reliable, believe me.’

  ‘Where is he now? At that house in Cabramatta?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Mrs Tran? Is she staying there too?’

  ‘No. She’s staying with me.’

  Roger gave me a quick look but neither he nor Forsythe said anything, and I let it hang there. The other two kept quiet. Standard group behaviour: when the top brass was around you kept your mouth shut unless you had something worth saying. Except that I hadn’t always had the sense to shut up.

  ‘Presumably she knows you’ve come here?’

  ‘Yes. I told her I wanted to speak to someone in Canberra. I didn’t go into details.’

  ‘But she’ll have put two and two together.’

  I shrugged. ‘I couldn’t very well avoid it. I had to give her some reason why I didn’t want to go to the police straightaway, as she wanted me to.’

  Forsythe nodded. From his point of view, the less people knew the better.

  ‘So, tell us why you’ve come to us then, Paul,’ he said. ‘What you’d like us to do.’

  See what I mean? When I’d spoken to Bentinck the night before he’d been very keen for us to meet, and so it seemed had Forsythe and the others. But now they were trying to make it look as if I was the one who’d come for help. It was time to set the record straight.

  ‘What you do’s up to you, Bill,’ I said gently. ‘I’ve only come to you for one thing, and that’s to tell you what I know.’

  They looked at me in silence and I went on.

  ‘Until Quang’s death I wasn’t sure what to do. My main concern was getting Eric away from that bunch of crazies, the Mad Buffaloes. But Quang was starting to get suspicious, that there was something else behind it all, something more sinister perhaps, and when he died it struck me that he might well be right. If so, I don’t think it’s something the police can handle. All they’ll want to do is find his killer, but if there is something else behind it I doubt they have either the resources or the skills to find out. That requires intelligence work, of a fairly specialised kind. That’s why I asked Eric to go and attend that training camp in the hills, and report to me afterwards. You’re the only guys I know who can handle that sort of knowledge.’

  ‘It’s really ASIO’s job,’ cut in Keith. ‘Anything to do with security–’

  ‘I know. But I’ve never had much dealing with ASIO. Whereas I know you guys. This is right up your alley. You’ve got the knowledge, of Vietnam, who’s who there, of the whole situation, or if you haven’t you should. I don’t know much about this man Loc, but from what Quang told me he’s one of the good ones, and if something nasty happens to him it could affect the whole future of the country. Now you can tell me that’s no longer my business, and you’d be right. My aim is still to get Eric out from under. But it is your business, or should be. That’s why I’ve come to you.’

  ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, whose offices were across the lake, had prime responsibility for anything to do with security in Australia, and ASIA in theory had to hand anything in that line over to them. But there had always been some leeway, and ASIA was allowed to run its own sources inside Australia, provided they didn’t cut across ASIO’s tracks. This case, if it became one, probably belonged best to whichever service first owned it.

  But there was another reason why I didn’t want to deal direct with ASIO. At a pinch Eric wouldn’t mind working for his father’s old firm, in fact he’d probably get a kick out of it. But he would balk at anything to do with ASIO, and Hao even more. Where they came from, security services only spelt trouble, repression or worse, the secret police of authoritarian states. ASIO wasn’t like that, but they would never accept it.

  ‘I could have gone to the police,’ I went on. ‘That’s what his aunt wanted. But they’d trample all over it, and no one would ever know what that bunch is really up to. Especially that man Ho Xuan Bach. And they probably wouldn’t catch who did it anyway. Whereas this way, there’s a good chance of finding out, and maybe catching Quang’s killer as well. In fact I can probably guess who it is, but it wouldn’t do any good without proof, and there’s no way the police will get it, not the way the Vietnamese work. They won’t say a thing to the cops.’

  I must have spoken with some heat, because they all stared at me for a moment, while I simmered down.

  ‘If you’re not interested of course I will have to go to the police,’ I went on more calmly. ‘They won’t thank me for holding out, but I can probably talk my way out, in terms of protecting Eric. So it’s up to you to decide. I’ve only come to give you first option. If you don’t want it I’ll just go to the cops as soon as I get back. Ring Detective Sergeant Emerson, and take it from there. It’s up to you.’

  Forsythe had heard me out, pursing his lips slightly. He and I both knew, and so did Roger, that I’d had my brushes with senior m
anagement in my day, when I had insisted on speaking my mind. That had been another reason for leaving.

  ‘You say the aunt’s reliable, but what about the boy?’ Bentinck said. ‘How steady will he be if the going gets rough?’

  ‘He’ll be OK. Of course you never know until you try it. But he’s got a lot of strength in him. And he’s totally sincere, just like his aunt. He hates injustice. He was really upset by Quang’s death. He’ll be alright. In any case there shouldn’t be any need for him to play that role much longer. As soon as he comes back and tells me what he knows, then he can pull out.’

  ‘That might be a little premature.’ Bentinck again.

  ‘Meaning?’ I knew what he meant. This was Bentinck the operator speaking.

  ‘Assuming there’s something sinister going on, and he finds out during this training session, it’s unlikely to stop there. There’s still two weeks before Loc’s visit, if they’re thinking of organising something nasty – we’re not talking just demos here – it’s unlikely he’ll find out everything in a couple of days. Or who’s behind it. That man Bach for instance. Is he going to be at the camp?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. What are you getting at?’

  He looked at Forsythe for a moment, as if seeking approval. Forsythe gave a nod and Bentinck turned back to me.

  ‘This is just between us, right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The aunt, you say she knows you’ve come here today?’

  ‘Yes. And so does Eric. But all I told them was that I knew someone in Canberra who would be interested in all this, and I wanted to get his advice before going to the police. That’s all. Come on guys. I had to tell them something! They’re not going to talk. Besides, she already knew your name, Roger, you’re the one who spoke to her that day, when she rang the Department to get hold of me.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘I also told Eric that you knew his father. I did that deliberately. He’s never known his father, he’s desperately searching for something of him, that’s really what’s driving him, and that’s what I’ve been working on. Hell, you can’t ask a young man like that to betray people he thinks are his friends, without giving him some pretty strong reasons!’