Mark Abernethy - The Contractor

About The Contractor

I fix things. I can build you a house or remodel your bathroom. I can also make bad situations and bad people disappear.

Meet Mike. The Contractor. Runs a building site, drives a ute, likes a beer, loves his nail gun. Friends know him as the Big unit.

But Mike is hiding in plain sight. When the call comes hes another kind of contractor, one as handy with a Colt M4 as he is with a hammer and nails.

In these six action-packed true stories we follow a real Aussie spy retired to a life on the tools, only to find a bad world still needs good guys like... The Contractor

Brilliant, The Contractor is James Bond in Blundstones.

Contents

For the men and women of the intelligence community,

who make our world a safer place and accept that they

will never be acknowledged for their service.

Authors Note

The following is a collection of true stories. They describe episodes in the life of an Australian contractor who works for foreign and domestic security agencies. Mike is an alias but The Contractor is 100 per cent real. I have used novelisation techniques to protect identities of individuals and organisations but what you will read is Mikes voice. Remember: sometimes fact is stranger than fiction ... and a tradie is not just a tradie.

Mark Abernethy

The heat came early to Melbourne that year, pushing the building site temperature to thirty-five degrees in October. I worked through it, trying to duck my baseball cap into the afternoon sun while I nailed wall frames into the joists, but sweat ran down my face like rain.

Hoodie, one of my offsiders, read from his smartphone, updating me on the temperature in the hope that when it hit forty Id send everyone home. I just punched nails with my rattly old Paslode, giving it a bang and a shake between nails, hoping it would hold out for another ten minutes. I wanted the place tarped down by 3 pm with all the frames up. This had been a big catch-up week after days of rain and my schedule for this house meant finishing the frames and the roofing trusses well before Christmas. But Hoodie and my labourer, McKenzie, were overheating, it was a Friday and they just wanted their cash and a cold beer so they could go feral for the weekend.

Thirty-six, boss, Hoodie told me, holding a brace in one hand and his phone in the other.

I ignored him and checked the loose nail-feeder in the Paslode, my hands slipping on the metal slides as the sweat poured down my forearms. Id recently seen a new Makita nail gun kit on sale in the Gasweld catalogue; the special offer was a big green site radio along with the gun, but Id decided to save the 500 bucks, so here I was relying on a nailer that no one could operate except me. I hated being wrong about tools I hated stopping because they failed. But with a few of my patented whacks and slaps, I got the old girl working again, slammed ten final nails into the frame and stood up.

Thirty-sixs a working temp, I said, breaking my rule that if its over thirty, and youre over thirty, you put down the tools. Now brace that frame and lets get this tarped. Could be a beer in it for you.

I left the boys to it and drove across town to the bank. I could have used the Westpac in the Glen shopping centre, but I dont like covered shopping centre parking. You see convenience I see one large choke point. I see a perfect place for a snatch or a hit. Parking buildings are a fact of life in the city, but if theres an alternative, Ill take it. Westpac had another branch in a nearby high street, so I parked the ute with open skies above me, withdrew $2000 in cash and tucked it into my bumbag. That was $1000 for Hoodie and $800 for McKenzie. He had a first name but Hoodie never used it so neither did I. It hardly mattered since I paid these guys in cash and I never begrudged it. I dont have a problem with paying someone to start at 7 am and keep up with me all day if you can do that, youve earned your dough.

I walked into the cold room of the Bottlemart and the sweat under my orange hi-vis turned cold. I could have pulled up a poolside recliner and taken a little holiday in that cold room, I dont mind telling you. Fucking bliss.

Grabbing a carton of VB I made for the checkout. A couple of concreters were in the queue ahead of me so I propped the carton on a wine stand and checked my messages. I use a Nokia 6110, which in phone terms is prehistoric, but it suits me and my lifestyle. No internet, no metadata, no nosy bastards getting into my business.

There was an envelope icon on the top of the screen which, for those youngsters whove never used a Nokia, means theres a message. I clicked on my messages and saw a number that started with a +. Always promising, and when I recognised the first few numbers as a London code, that was even better. Even as the centre of the world has moved away from the UK, London is still one of the capitals of the insurance industry, in particular the underwriters who write the life policies for executives in foreign territories policies that cover things like kidnap, ransom and emergency evacuations.

I dont take my interesting calls in a public place so I stowed the phone and bought the beers. When I got back to the site, the tarps were on and the tools sat in a neat stack. We drank in the shade and talked about footy and women and money. I heard about Hoodie and McKenzies nightmarish girlfriends and thanked God that Id chosen well on that front. And then I paid them for the week and let them take most of the stubbies with them.

Me? I headed for home, glad for the progress on the house but thinking about London, and my other contracting job.

I dont make a big thing of what I do. I wear a hi-vis shirt and drive a tradies Ford Falcon ute. Im a chippie by trade, from back in my teens, before all this international drama began. I left school early, I drink beer, support the Manly Sea Eagles and I take shit from the missus like any working man. Therere only a couple of things that set me apart. One of them is obvious: I stand around six-foot-three and weigh 125 kilos. Im a former rugby league front-rower, and when I first came to Sydney from the bush I worked on the doors of some pretty heavy venues in Kings Cross, and was bodyguard for some people youd recognise if I named them. So I can take care of myself.

Thats the part you see. The part you dont see is that I fix things for people. I can build you a house or remodel your bathroom, but I can also make bad situations and bad people go away. Some people make money from shares, some from hard work and some from technology. I make a living from threat: I identify it, neutralise it and manage it. I see it where you dont even know to look, and I move on it quickly, matching the threat with my own equal and opposite reaction. And if I get it right, the threat never makes another pass. Ever.

This neednt be sinister or spooky. Sure, when I worked for governments as an intelligence operator it could be those things, but I went private a number of years ago, and as the Contractor I no longer have to scan the radar every hour of the day, watching for the bad guys. When youre working for governments, youre in what we call The World, and that kind of life burns you out, wears down your circuitry. It isolates you, pushes you further into a spiral of work-related friendships and away from real life. Thats why we refer to it as The World when you live inside it thats all you live and not much else.