Hammerhead

by Peter Nicholson

  And then Anton ran in on the scene.

  He quickly pushed me back against a wall, checking me over for injuries. Absurdly enough, I read some strange graffiti nearby as he did so.

  Just some bruising, it seemed. I had been lucky.

  He took me by the arm after straightening up my clothing. I turned and looked in the direction my attacker had escaped.

  We went back to the main street, making our way as inconspicuously as possible, before we got to my hotel suite.

  ‘Who knows about us?’ Anton asked himself. He was worried, but I was too preoccupied just now to think about anyone else. I was being trailed by—someone.

  In self-defence, when you were fighting to save yourself, it was natural to act as I had done. But the suddenness and violence of the attack on me, and my equally violent response …

  Meanwhile, Anton let Charles know what had happened. Perhaps there would be a new set of instructions. The description I gave didn’t register with our files. My assailant remained a stranger.

  While I showered Anton ordered some food.

  My psyche resembled one of those shredded tyres you see lining the edges of highways, all used up, discarded. When you have suddenly had to fight for life, you realise how survival instinct operates. I’d recommend one such experience for anyone who thinks we can solve the world’s problems with peace marches or diplomatic papering-over of cracks.

  No-one had seen us, we hoped. Imagine if some journalist had managed to get hold of this story and blurt it out to the rest of the world.

  But Anton was concerned, even though he tried to hide it from me.

  There were eleven million children orphaned by AIDS in Africa. I heard the newsreader’s voice trickle through. Oh hell.

  I knew what the world was like. I understood the political motives underscoring the movement of billions of dollars into accounts in strange places. Before I’d joined The Hammer I was familiar with the questionable trading policies of the bank I’d worked for, and if I’d wanted I could have brought down many a household name. Here I was almost strangled, and I was still thinking of the future, not with a golden glow, to be sure.

  Graham Greene would have found me a puzzle. I wasn’t Catholic, and my beliefs were genuine.

  Dame Enid phoned me the next day to commiserate. I appreciated her call, and she told me everyone in Munich was thinking of me.

  My formerly warm relationship with Anton though appeared to have freeze-dried. I couldn’t see why, because we were only trying to carry out one of our operations carefully. I guessed he must have got the jitters after Vienna, and he seemed to lack confidence in me now. But he was the one who was too slow yesterday. I hadn’t even thought of blaming him for what had happened until this moment.

  Vella was important. Firstly, he was selling illegal diamonds. Secondly, he knew essential strategic information. Charles wanted him interrogated so we could get to the top people. We decided, after recent events, that we should act immediately. It would be easy enough since I had already contacted Vella. I rang again and invited him to my suite for a preliminary discussion. He seemed unaware of recent events, and appeared eager to come. There would be no diamonds, and no exchange of money, but we could discuss the transaction.

  It was at this moment Anton chose to tell me we had a secure house in the Victorian Alps. That was where Vella would be taken. It would have been nice if I’d been told this earlier on.

  Vella came on cue, immaculately dressed, as I was. When he entered my room it reminded me just how much travelling I’d done in the last few months, measuring out my wandering life in the doors of planes, automobiles and even a castle.

  We exchanged greetings before settling down to business. He stroked the side of his face as we spoke, his brow creasing as he explained margins and such matters he thought I needed to know.

  I had to pull off the tricky act of putting the sleeping draught into Vella’s drink and then getting him downstairs into one of the cars Anton had acquired.

  ‘I have several grades of diamond available. And I can get you a discount price if you buy a certain number.’

  He smiled at me in a sinister fashion.

  I thought I had better not waste time. I placed the prepared drink in front of him. He drank it quickly.

  Not too much later, I accompanied Vella in the lift—he thought to the entrance foyer—but actually to the basement car park. As soon as the doors opened Anton came forward and quickly bundled Vella into the boot of a car right next to the lift doors. It was easy enough as the drink had already taken some effect. Anton said he’d see me tomorrow.

  I went back upstairs and cleaned up. How easy it was to make someone disappear.

  It would be a banal observation to say you could be here one moment and gone the next. But if people could get pushed out of helicopters by drug cartels or buried under mudslides, why shouldn’t someone like Vella go easily too. You sometimes woke after a deep sleep and didn’t know who you were or where you were, and in those few moments you rediscovered your own strangeness. There was no-one else in the world quite like me. No clone yet, and I was certainly not like Vella.

  I lay on the bed.

  I had been told to wait at a corner the next morning where I’d be picked up and taken to the safe house Anton mentioned.

  I had gotten myself into this situation and now it was too late to do anything about it because, as Charles intimated, once in, never out.

  I waited at the requested street corner. Others would get hold of the hotel’s security videos and destroy them.

  ‘Get in,’ Thérèse smiled at me.

  We didn’t even have time to kiss.

  ‘But …’

  ‘I’ll explain it all to you afterwards.’

  I threw my suitcase into the boot of the car and we were off.

  As we left Melbourne, I felt there was someone behind us. I kept turning around, but there was nothing to see. I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Thérèse got annoyed and told me to relax.

  The countryside finally worked its spell on me and, since I wasn’t driving, I managed to snooze as we sped to the highlands.

  I woke as we pulled up outside a large country house, very imposing, an avenue of trees, a rose garden, and Anton there to greet us. The sun was setting, the twilight glow giving the surrounding purple hills a surreal appearance.

  ‘Come in and have some tea.’

  Three against the world …

  This was one of Charles’ residences. Since he owned many properties he had plenty to spare.

  ‘Vella is resting comfortably downstairs,’ Anton gestured, ‘and we will visit him soon.’

  Then we discussed recent events.

  ‘You are targeted, I am targeted and Thérèse is targeted. It is no good thinking otherwise.’

  This time, Anton managed to be pleasant while imparting the most disturbing information.

  ‘Yes? Well, I kind of worked that out. What are we going to do about it?’

  Thérèse had a rather amused attitude to my seriousness and often made fun of it. On one occasion, for example, when I was trying to find out about some of The Hammer’s history, she refused to tell me anything and started singing snatches of a Piaf song she liked instead, making faces at me as I grew more frustrated with her cavortings.

  Thérèse thought the person we’d encountered the other day could have been an illegal immigrant. His identity might have been known by one of our intelligence agencies.

  Perhaps, but they certainly wouldn’t want the citizenry to know we had imported professional criminals operating in Australia. That kind of information had to be kept from the public.

  ‘Now, I think it’s time we paid Mister Vella a visit. I hope he will tell us what we need to know without any further difficulties.’

  We went down into a large stone-lined cellar that housed an impressive wine collection—I noticed some 1990 Grange Hermitage. This was a front for an area set aside for The Hammer. Charles had been
planning all this for years. Roy would have been helping too.

  There were two other men Anton told me would be helping us. They had brought Vella here. They were introduced to me, but I really didn’t take much in because at the far end of the room Vella was seated, tied up.

  Thérèse and I stayed where we were while the other three went to Vella.

  Suddenly, Anton shouted in a threatening voice I had never heard him use before.

  ‘You will tell us where those diamonds came from, who you are working for, and give us the other names we want.’

  As he said this he swung his fist across Vella’s right cheek. A little blood trickled onto his lips. I could see he had already been roughed up. Vella bent his head and said he didn’t know anything.

  So Anton then hit him on his left cheek, this time even more violently.

  ‘You had better tell us what we want. We have discovered you have—how shall we put it—a difficulty with water.’

  Anton had found out about one of Vella’s particular phobias. At the mention of water Vella looked terrified.

  Another dire half hour passed before Anton’s ultimatum.

  ‘Now what is it going to be?’

  ‘Alright. I’ll tell you what you want to know!’

  It hadn’t taken them long at all, and Vella sounded desperate.

  And with that out came a stream of information, some very strange stuff—yacht sails, the Sydney Opera House and so

  forth.

  However, after he calmed down, we finally got the financial information we wanted.

  ‘It appears they use the standard triple pass method for getting money to where they need it. You know, you siphon money into one account and then distribute it to another one and finally it’s dispersed through some innocent-looking account where it can settle comfortably until needed. That doesn’t surprise me at all. The number of people involved though … It’s a much bigger network than we thought.’

  The triple pass was standard practice in the business world. There it was largely a matter of tax avoidance, but here it was also a device for the funding of terrorism.

  Vella kept on talking; fear made him unstoppable. Then he fell back in his chair, exhausted.

  ‘He needn’t worry,’ Anton declared. ‘He’s headed for a nearby lake.’

  Anton said this with seeming indifference. I knew we couldn’t muck about, but did it have to be like this? I felt myself resisting, my feeling for the world curdling.

  I looked at Vella. He knew his time had come. The other two gave him an injection to calm him down before he was taken outside.

  It was after midnight, and the lake wasn’t far away. Anton and the others took Vella to the edge, pushed him out waist-high and held his head under the water. It only took a few minutes, and he was dead. Then the others, dressed in diving gear, dragged the body out to the middle of the lake and weighted it with stones. I felt nauseous, but didn’t want Anton to know.

  I must have been kidding myself.

  Anton didn’t look pleased, and before I could say anything he launched a harangue at me.

  ‘Look, I know what you’re thinking. But we’ve got important work to do. You know that. There is no time for the—how do you put it—softly-softly approach. Thérèse understands. We are not participating in one of those banal stories where the hero wins through and then smiles to himself in a self-satisfied way.’

  I listened as the invective flowed. He was upset with me. I couldn’t work out why. Perhaps he was annoyed with himself. I didn’t think I could become like him.

  However, I was now blooded. Any shreds of political innocence had gone to wherever it is that political innocence dies. Only diamonds, and some ideals, it appeared, were forever.

  Stars glittered. Trees swayed in black rhythms, light reflecting on the lake, blurring in fragments as a wind blew off the mountains.

  We had to leave tomorrow. The whole place needed to be emptied of evidence, thoroughly cleaned, and then we would drive back to Sydney. The two other members of our group were going to fly to Europe from Melbourne.

  Death, departures.

  At morning we said goodbye to the others who had helped us and who now had to return to Melbourne. And then we left too, agreeing to take it in turns to drive back to Sydney.

  As we drove off I turned and stared behind me. The sun was rising as we headed north, kookaburras cheering the morning with their absurd laughter.

  We travelled through eroded hills, leaving behind what could not yet be a remembrance of things past. It may have been for Anton and Thérèse; it couldn’t be for me. Such violence as I had seen, or taken part in, clung to me. I was sticky with it. Conscience didn’t make a coward of me, but I had reached the lonely place where you take action that leads to harm for someone else.

  For Anton this was old-hat ethical rubbish. He’d moved beyond that point a long time ago. I looked at him from the back seat as we travelled along. Apart from what I’d heard from his mother, what did I really know about Anton? If I asked about his background or personal life he immediately turned into a hieroglyph.

  All my recent experience had been like a movie going wrong, with the editing askew, the sound distorted, the acting over the top. I was breathless and then, by turns, exhilarated, fearful, adrenaline running on high or empty. I’d become stronger physically and mentally, more alert, but more jumpy too, suspicious, and quick to find fault. Even so, I hadn’t yet reached Anton’s mindset.

  Thérèse was more self-possessed, but just as determined in her own way. However, she was more sensible in her judgments, more careful than either Anton or myself.

  The Ford we were driving ran quietly along back roads to avoid any possible encounters with the police. Spumes of dust were thrown up by the wheels as we travelled west of the Great Dividing Range, the shadows of gum trees patterning the ground, an enclosed world of sudden bends, kangaroos and swooping birds.

  At times the road opened out and you could see vistas of the mountains we would soon have to cross.

  I thought of Vella. What would happen to his company now? We now had plenty of information to consider. Surely Vella’s sudden silence would be proof enough to those higher up the food chain that we too could be uncompromising.

  As we began to climb the ranges the air grew cooler, the light sharper too, everything rinsed clean. At the top of one spectacular range, after four hours of travel, we decided to stop and stretch our legs, taking in the view below us. Down in one of the valleys we could see evidence of habitation, but the unnerving thing about travel in Australia was that you very soon left behind signs of urban population. You were then left confronted by blocks of broken sandstone, the eerie swishing of eucalypts and brilliant bush flowers marking the landscape with splashes of vivid colour.

  Australian cities hugged the coastline. The interior could seem malevolent, unyielding, lying in wait, like the black snake that manages to wrap itself underneath your car. Living there wasn’t for the faint-hearted, as any number of farmers could tell you, confronted as they were by successive cycles of extreme weather. People drank. Sometimes heat and loneliness sent them troppo.

  We ate a little fruit and some seed bars, allowing ourselves to enjoy the silence. We stood there listening into a distance millions of years old.

  We had been less than ants, leaf litter, diminutives in the gigantic scheme of things. Our planet’s strange orbit of oxygen and water had then brought forth—us? We humans, always with a baton in the knapsack, with our harsh justifications and solemn self-importance. What had made us lesser than the gods, yet aspiring to be gods? The Dreaming of the Aboriginal people seemed close just now, reconciling the difference between what must be with what could be.

  But what could be was up to us. We made the difference, and if civilisations were to end, it would be our fault.

  What would destroy had to be crushed, and then good might prevail.

  I stepped nearer the edge of an eroded precipice and brought my hands level
to the horizon.

  Anton chewed a piece of grass. Thérèse came to me and laid her head on my shoulder.

  And then rude technology intruded. My mobile.

  It was my mother. Dad was fading fast.

  Just when the pattern settles, the rupture comes.

  We drove on through the ranges in silence and then down the other side, eventually onto the plains with their waving grasses and one-street country towns. Finally we reached the coast road for the last section of our trip, back into the city’s looming haze. Thérèse would stay with me a while; Anton had to get back to Munich. He was leaving through Sydney rather than Melbourne. Charles called it spreading the risk.

  I spoke to Mum and asked how things were. I told her I’d be home as soon as possible. I was tired after such a long trip and I knew I’d need all my wits about me to hold everything together over the next few days.

  Back in my unit, I listened to my message bank calls as I hurriedly changed. There, abruptly, was the voice of my old tutor, Nicholas Vansittart. He wanted me to phone him. He was still in Oxford, retired and in good health. I was taken aback by this sudden intrusion from the past.

  Travelling across the city, the Harbour Bridge looked like a promise, its grey curves leading on to some kind of hope, which I needed just now, the water beneath moving forward with insistent enquiries.