The Enemy Within

by Tim Ayliffe

  IRAQ, UNKNOWN LOCATION, 2004

  They were moving him again.

  He didn’t know where. He didn’t know why. He’d stopped asking questions a long time ago. Stopped wondering why he’d been taken. Why they were keeping him alive.

  ‘Get in.’

  Now they were ordering him to share the boot of a car with a dead man.

  Bailey shook his head, his shackled hands gripping the edge of the car, refusing to budge.

  He knew the butt of the rifle would come. He didn’t care. It was the only thing that made him feel alive. Like he still had control over what was happening to him.

  Crack!

  He fell to his knees, the blow making him unsteady, splitting his cheek, warm blood trickling down the wrinkle in his cheek and into the corner of his mouth. The metallic taste another signal that he was a person. Not just someone’s prisoner.

  ‘Get in!’

  Bailey shook his head again, spitting a glob of blood into the sand.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  The vacant stare of the dead guy in the boot had put Bailey in a defiant mood, giving him a rush of power he hadn’t felt for a long time. The power of being.

  Crack!

  This time the rifle butt found Bailey’s gut, knocking the wind from his lungs, leaving him gasping for breath.

  ‘You want to be like him?’

  The guy with the gun pointed at the crumpled, lifeless body lying face-up in front of them. White vacant eyes frozen in fear.

  ‘Fucking animals.’

  The rifle butt was airborne again, arm cocked for one more go.

  ‘Okay. Okay.’ Bailey held up his arm, knowing he’d made his point. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Go!’

  Bailey climbed in, catching a whiff of his travelling companion. The man they’d killed with a single bullet to the head. A neat hole right between his eyes. It had happened only hours before. The smell engulfing the boot of the car wasn’t decomposition. It was a mixture of sweat, piss and shit. The poor bastard’s final shame.

  This was how Bailey got around in Iraq in those days. In the boot of a car. Only he was more used to being alone. Not breathing in the odours of a dead guy.

  The car bumped along the road for an hour or more before it skidded to a stop.

  He heard car doors opening. Footsteps crunching sand. Keys jiggling. The boot clicking open. White light momentarily blinding him.

  ‘Where are we?’

  No answer.

  Colours started to emerge through the white.

  Blue. Yellow. Orange. The colours of Iraq.

  The guy from earlier was standing over him, a second man at his side.

  They were talking to each other in Arabic, arguing about whether to leave Bailey inside until, finally, they agreed they would.

  ‘There! Stay! Stay!’

  They pushed Bailey to one side, dragging the dead man out of the car, pausing when they had him at the tailgate, each grabbing an arm and a leg, swinging him into the air.

  Bailey leaned forward to see where they’d discarded the body, the smell of rotting corpses slapping him in the face, burning his nose. He climbed onto his knees, peering between the two men at the horror in front of them. A pit filled with bodies piled on top of each other. So many it was impossible to count.

  Men. Women. Children.

  Murdered.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  The sound of Bailey’s voice made the two men turn around.

  ‘This is what happens when you try to escape.’

  The guy who’d hit him earlier lifted his rifle again, spinning it around so that the butt was inches from Bailey’s head.

  ‘Go to sleep, dog!’

  Crack!

  Darkness.

  CHAPTER 29

  SATURDAY

  The air was so thick with moisture that Bailey was dripping with sweat by the time he finished his second lap of Centennial Park with Campo. Beads of smoke-laced water were stinging his eyes, making his t-shirt cling to his body, accentuating the little gut that refused to flatten no matter how much bloody exercise he did. Meals like last night’s chicken and chips obviously didn’t help.

  Rain had been bucketing on bushfire zones in Victoria and the south coast of New South Wales and now it was edging further north. The elusive rain that was finally putting an end to the bushfire summer was forecast to hit Sydney tomorrow and the clouds looked like dark grey balloons ready to burst.

  Tomorrow was Australia Day and you wouldn’t find one person who would complain about the rain coming down on their annual public holiday. Everyone and everything had had enough of the blistering dry, along with the smoke that had become the torturous scent of summer. Despite the rain, the citizenship ceremonies, barbecues and Change the Date rallies were expected to go ahead. People were just being advised to pack raincoats.

  Bailey had decided to walk a second lap of the park this morning so that he could clear his head from the nightmare that had interrupted his sleep. Bloody Iraq. His first nightmare in a while. He’d forgotten how violent and unsettling they could be.

  They walked slowly up the hill towards Paddington Gates, allowing Campo ample time to sniff the brown grass and the gaunt, shrivelled trees as they went. The dog was just as tired as Bailey was and she was loudly panting, her tongue drooping out the corner of her mouth. Greyhounds were bizarre animals. They could sprint one hundred metres faster than any other dog on earth but ask them to walk a few kilometres and they nearly shut down.

  When they finally arrived outside Bailey’s local café he knelt down, steering Campo towards the bowl of water that was always kept full on the footpath.

  ‘There you go, Campo. Have a drink.’

  The dog greedily slurped back water as Bailey stepped towards the café’s takeaway window.

  ‘Two long blacks, thanks.’

  Bailey tapped his card and ignored the eye roll from the waitress who didn’t bother reprimanding him about the fact that he had – again – turned up without a reusable cup. Instead, she seemed only interested in the change in his usual order.

  ‘Get some company last night, did we?’ She smiled and winked at him.

  Surprised by her cheekiness, Bailey couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Yeah. He’s probably still snoring in my spare room.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked disappointed.

  It had been late when Bailey had arrived home the night before but he knew the big Oklahoman was staying over because of the cigar stub and pizza box in his kitchen.

  He thanked the girl for the coffees and commentary and headed towards his house. It was just after 7 am when he opened his front door. The lights were on inside, which wasn’t surprising because, like him, Ronnie was an early riser.

  ‘Big fella, you here?’

  ‘Out back!’

  Ronnie was sitting in Bailey’s courtyard, thumbing through the newspaper with a plate of toast beside him.

  ‘That for me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Bailey handed Ronnie his coffee.

  ‘You’re a good man, bubba.’

  ‘Anything in there about Walker?’

  ‘Nothing. Story about racism on the front page linking that Matthew Lam kid to Augustus Strong.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘No different to what we knew yesterday. Print playing catch-up.’ Ronnie licked his finger, flipping through the pages. ‘Nice little piece about you though.’

  Ronnie held up the paper, revealing a photograph of Bailey underneath a headline that read: AFP TO PROSECUTE VETERAN REPORTER DESPITE CASE BEING DROPPED.

  ‘What’s this veteran reporter crap? Makes me feel like an old man,’ Bailey said.

  ‘You’re no spring chicken, bubba.’

  ‘Piss off, Ronnie. Anyway, I couldn’t give a toss about that now. Good luck to them.’

  ‘You must have really annoyed this Harding fella,’ Ronnie said. ‘Clearly doesn’t like you.’

  ‘Yeah, well. You didn’t expect me to roll out the
welcome mat when he decided to rip through my house, did you? And what do you mean, he doesn’t like me? You spoken to him?’

  ‘No.’

  The last time Bailey had seen Ronnie they were standing outside the Randwick home of the corrupt customs agent they’d found sitting on his sofa with a bullet hole between his eyes and his brain splattered all over the wall. Liam Callaghan had allegedly waved through a shipping container packed with Californian oranges and guns. Ronnie was supposed to have been chasing information from his contacts in Australian intelligence and law enforcement circles. He may not have spoken to Harding, but he’d spoken to someone.

  ‘Get anything from your sources?’

  Ronnie munched on his toast. ‘Not yet.’

  Ronnie Johnson had a long history of working closely with Australian intelligence agencies. ASIO. ASIS. ASD. AFP. They were just the organisations that people knew about. There were so many arms of Australian intelligence that you needed the entire alphabet just for the acronyms and initialisms. Ronnie knew how to navigate that exhaustive list and get what he wanted. Bailey was surprised that he didn’t already have something to share.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Bailey took a chair beside Ronnie, placing his cup on the table. Campo appeared beside him and started turning in circles, looking for a place to lie down. She shunned the doggy mattress by the door and settled for the cool bricks in the courtyard, resting her head on Bailey’s shoe, closing her eyes.

  ‘Never picked you for a dog person.’

  ‘Neither did I.’

  The two men went quiet and Bailey was hoping that Ronnie might eventually pipe up to tell him that he had, at least, found a skerrick of information that might be interesting. But he didn’t. So it was left to Bailey to share what he had discovered the evening before.

  ‘I think I know who killed Augustus Strong.’

  Ronnie stopped chewing his mouthful of toast. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Benny Hunter.’

  ‘The Freedom Front guy?’

  ‘Yeah. He may not have done the deed himself, but he was part of it. Possibly organised it.’

  ‘Theory, or fact?’

  There was a tone in Ronnie’s voice that annoyed Bailey. He let it slide. ‘Fact.’

  Bailey told Ronnie about the Roundtree sisters and how Benny Hunter had paid them to tell police that a group of Black men had attacked Augustus Strong on George Street. About how Hunter had threatened the girls, telling them he had a friend inside the police. He told him about the soup kitchen down by St Mary’s Cathedral, the Surry Hills smack house, and the fact that Jules and Margie were now being looked after by an old priest in Redfern.

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ Ronnie said, finishing off his toast. ‘Not sure it changes things right now though.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ Bailey had raised his voice and Campo’s head shot up, wondering whether something was wrong. ‘What do you mean it doesn’t change things? It changes everything. We’ve got a witness who has implicated Benny Hunter in Strong’s murder.’

  ‘The same witness who told police it was someone else.’

  Ronnie was right. The girls’ evidence was rubbery at best and although it should inevitably lead to Benny Hunter being hauled in and questioned, it wasn’t enough to risk asking the girls to amend their statement. Especially if there was someone inside the force close to Hunter.

  Bailey hunched forward, frustrated by Ronnie’s assessment, knowing that he was right. ‘But this information could be useful, right? Surely, you’ve got someone in the feds who’ll throw you a bone? You’ve been working with these people for bloody decades.’

  A fresh cigar was sitting on the table and Ronnie picked it up, lighting a match, his head disappearing in a white cloud as he puff-started the stump. Eventually, he let his hand and the cigar dangle by his side. ‘I’m not trying to be a downer here. I’m just processing this in my head. Playing both sides. This lead on Hunter’s good. I might be able to use it.’

  ‘Might?’

  ‘We need to get a handle on Walker’s investigation. Find out who else was working it, how far they’d gotten. Who they were looking into.’

  ‘Hunter,’ Bailey said. ‘I’m pretty sure the Freedom Front was on her list. We talked about him when I met her at the Lindt Café. She had something for me, I’m positive about that… something so good it got her killed.’

  ‘Tell me, what’s the motive for killing Strong?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that ever since the girls told me about Hunter.’

  ‘And?’

  Bailey reached down and pulled on Campo’s ear, giving her a pat. ‘Stick with me, this is going to sound a little out there.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘You said something to me yesterday about a race war. How the FBI reckon the leader of The Dawning was preparing for a race war. You said Donald Sampson had been running training camps, building support all over the world through online forums. And he’s the guy who shipped the guns to Sydney.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, making it look like a bunch of Black guys were responsible for killing Augustus Strong is surely going to rev up far right extremists. Bring more people to the cause. Possibly even provoke a response. I mean, Strong was the pin-up boy for the alt-right. I know it sounds far-fetched, but it’s possible, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  Ronnie stood up, his chair screeching across the bricks.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To make a trade.’

  ‘Hang on.’

  Ronnie stopped at the door. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t forget, if these guys have someone on the inside, it could be more than one. Careful who you trust.’

  ‘This is my world we’re playing in, bubba. And I’ve been doing this a heck of a long time.’

  The expression on Ronnie’s face made it clear that he didn’t appreciate the advice. But Bailey didn’t care. ‘One more thing, Ronnie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Keep the girls out of it.’

  Ronnie left without saying another word.

  CHAPTER 30

  Bailey had reached the point in his investigation when he needed to get writing. Plot the story he had so far, his cast of characters and incidents of crime. He knew that he wasn’t just writing about Augustus Strong and the rise of far right nationalism in Australia any more. He was on to something bigger and now was the time to get some words down while he waited for the police to do their job and lead him to the places he didn’t already know.

  He flipped the lid on his laptop, boiled the kettle and got to it.

  Apart from a ‘check-in’ call from Gerald and a message from Annie Brooks to thank him for dinner the night before, Bailey’s phone stayed unusually quiet for most of the day.

  Fuelled by coffee from the plunger in his kitchen, he had managed to write almost five thousand words by evening. It wasn’t exactly poetry, but it was a good start on the article that Neena had commissioned him to write. Bailey had spent most of his career racing to meet tight deadlines and although he was writing a much longer article, he was enjoying the extra time to think and chase. Today’s writing session meant that he was on track. The cover story for Enquirer Magazine’s debut issue was destined to be a cracker.

  The chicken and chips from the night before had provided him with enough fuel to make it through most of the day without needing more than the piece of toast he’d eaten for breakfast. But by 7 pm, just as the computer screen was starting to hurt his eyes, he was starving. Most of the contents in his fridge looked questionable and there wasn’t much to choose from in his pantry, either. He managed to find a tin of baked beans with a respectable use by date and some bread that could be improved in the toaster. It would do.

  Two mouthfuls in and he was interrupted by his vibrating phone. Jonny Abdo’s name flashing on the screen.

  ‘Jonny, how are you?’

  ‘I think I might be in tr
ouble.’

  Bailey sat up, holding his phone to his ear with one hand while rubbing his eyes with the other.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘My personal details are out there. Someone has published all of my details on social media. Facebook. Twitter. I’m everywhere.’

  Abdo was clearly rattled but Bailey was struggling to get a handle on what he was talking about. ‘Your personal details?’

  ‘I’ve already told the police. They did bloody nothing, of course. Just took my details and said they’d look into it.’

  ‘Look into what?’ Bailey still didn’t have a clue what Abdo was talking about. ‘You need to slow down, Jonny. Explain to me what’s going on.’

  Abdo sighed heavily into the phone. ‘Do you know what doxing is?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘It’s when someone posts your personal information on the internet without your consent. Both my home and work addresses were put out there this afternoon by a white nationalist group that calls themselves the Blokes Brigade. They even posted the licence plate and model of my car!’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘They must have seen me talking about racism on the news last night,’ Abdo said. ‘This is what these groups do. Try to intimidate you. Shut you up.’

  Bailey walked into the kitchen while listening to Abdo, flipping the lid on his laptop, putting his phone on speaker and placing it beside him so that he could start typing. ‘Where’d you say they published your info? I’m sitting in front of my computer.’

  ‘Just type in the words Blokes Brigade and my name. You’ll see.’

  Bailey did as he was told and he was directed to a Facebook page where there was an image of Jonny Abdo beneath the words, GO HOME TRAITOR! Abdo’s name and addresses were published there too, along with a short article quoting some of the things that he’d told Annie Brooks on Inside Story. The last line of the article sent a chill up Bailey’s spine.

  Maybe someone should pay this guy a visit. Over to you, patriots.

  ‘This isn’t good, Jonny. This isn’t good at all.’

  Bailey was speaking while reading some of the comments below the post about Abdo. There were at least a dozen or so, mostly unimaginative racist sledges from people with odd pseudonyms like ‘Gate Crasher’ and ‘Mountain Goat’. But some of the comments were more extreme, with one person calling for Abdo to be ‘dangled from a tree’.