The Shadow Game

by Steve Lewis

  ‘. . . and now please welcome the Chief of the Defence Force, Sir Jack Webster.’

  As Webster stood to walk the short distance to the lectern, Toohey touched his sleeve.

  ‘Give ’em hell, Jack.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll do that, Mr Toohey, I promise you.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Canberra

  Canberra South Motor Park was the kind of downbeat joint unlikely to trouble the folks at Luxury Travel.

  A mishmash of red-brick units, caravans and camping sites, the facility on the outskirts of Fyshwick was home to a roll call of transient tradies, errant husbands and battlers addicted to welfare.

  And one former federal minister of the Crown.

  On a morning threatening to soar into the thirties, Bruce Paxton swung a threadbare towel over his shoulder as he packed toothbrush, Rexona and razor back into a small toiletry bag.

  In a nearby cubicle a shower spluttered as its occupant murdered a Cold Chisel tune, the melody dampening the click of Paxton’s thongs as he emerged from the small concrete-and-brick bunker. He held his breath as he passed the urinals and made a mental note to have words with the owner.

  Still, it was a crystal-cut morning and the warmth of the sun eased his annoyance over the cleaner’s inefficiency.

  He nodded to a couple of young bucks who looked as if they’d given the sauce a decent nudge the night before as he trudged the hundred or so metres to his flash castle. A mate from the building union had loaned him a caravan with a canvas annexe. That came for free.

  The site rental was thirty-eight dollars a week, which was about as much as he could afford given that he was in dispute with the pen-pushers in Finance over access to his parliamentary pension. To keep the wolf from the door he’d been forced into battle with Centrelink to secure a modest disability pension as compensation for the left hand that he’d lost many years ago in a mysterious industrial accident.

  He wasn’t bothered by the simplicity of his digs, mind. Paxton had enjoyed the many perks of his parliamentary career, but he hailed from a poor background and had loved, as a kid, travelling to similar caravan parks during the few holidays his family could afford.

  Anyway, the ’73 Franklin Regent had more character than the glass-and-metal palaces being built along Mugga Way, Canberra’s version of Park Lane. He’d rolled up the sides of the annexe so it served as shade for his outdoor setting: a small plastic table, two plastic chairs. There he read and reminisced most hours of most days.

  He danced a small jig to dislodge a pebble trapped in his thong, then stopped. A well-dressed man was seated in his annexe, and visitors had brought little in the way of good news recently. Most likely it was a bailiff serving a court order or a bureaucrat trying to explain why he had again failed to recover his parliamentary entitlements.

  Paxton approached warily until he recognised the visitor, his initial surprise quickly turning to anger.

  ‘Well, fuck me, the last time I saw you I was being banished from the parliament and you didn’t lift a fat finger to help.’

  ‘It’s good to see you too, Bruce.’ Martin Toohey extended his hand as he rose from the chair.

  ‘What do you want?’ Paxton asked aggressively as he ignored Toohey’s greeting. ‘It can’t be to ask how I am; you had months to do that after you dumped me from the ministry. Oh, and that nice call after I was punted and my reputation trashed. Nothing. Fucking nothing. So you can’t be here for my benefit.’

  Toohey didn’t blink during the tirade and offered no defence. Eventually he spoke.

  ‘It’s true. I hated you because you were just another burden on my government. Once you were gone I was too busy trying to keep the ship afloat to worry about the drowned. And when it sank the only survivor I cared about was me.’

  Toohey eased himself back into the plastic chair and entwined his fingers across his chest.

  ‘But that ship didn’t go down on its own. We made plenty of mistakes, but the torpedoes that sank it were fired by those who were charged to defend it.’

  Paxton glared at Toohey.

  ‘Bravo on finally working that one out. The journalist Dunkley and I tried to tell that story. I didn’t see you in the trenches when we got smashed. It was a cracker. I reckon we lasted all of fifteen minutes before we both had the shit blown out of us. We were firing muskets against their ballistic missiles. I was drummed out of parliament and ended up here. Fuck knows where Dunkley is; turns out he’s a bit of a pisshead and he’s hit it hard.’

  Toohey put up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, then remembered he had Ray-Bans in his jacket and put them on.

  ‘I found Dunkley in jail, in Surry Hills.’

  Paxton pulled up the other plastic chair and sat down.

  ‘Really, what did he do?’

  ‘Smashed up The Australian’s head office with a cricket bat.’

  Paxton laughed, a long loud belly laugh. He was wiping tears from his eyes as he spoke.

  ‘Dunkley. That guy was a real prick, tortured me for years, eventually cost me my ministry. But once you get to know him, he’s actually pretty decent. And I tell you, he’s got some cojones.’

  Paxton paused for a moment and took stock of his visitor.

  ‘Didn’t have much time for you, though. Told me that he tried to warn you that your government was under threat, and that you told him to piss off.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘So, he’s working with you now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he found we have a common enemy.’

  Paxton leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

  ‘And who would that be?’

  ‘Sir Jack Webster.’

  Paxton whistled and slumped back in his chair.

  ‘Well that makes three of us.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Canberra

  The rap on the door was louder than it needed to be; not a request but a demand for entry.

  Charles Dancer had been yanked from a tedious meeting in the Foreign Affairs building by an encrypted text message.

  Your place. 15 mins.

  The spy had excused himself then driven the short distance to his Manuka home. Now he opened his door to a thunderous Jack Webster who marched into the lounge room before speaking.

  ‘Just what the fuck is going on, Charles?’

  Dancer shrugged, genuinely puzzled.

  The Chief of the Defence Force threw his hat onto the coffee table and slumped into a lounge chair, motioning for Dancer to do the same.

  ‘Guess who I bumped into?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Martin Toohey, that’s who. I was seated next to him at a dinner at the War Memorial.’

  Dancer had made a plunger of coffee and poured two mugs. He offered milk to Webster before taking a generous sip himself. Black, the way he liked it. He savoured his latest blend: Brazilian beans for a good mouth feel, some Papuan for aroma and Mexican Altura for a satisfying aftertaste.

  He hoped it would have a meditative effect on the agitated Webster. It didn’t.

  ‘He fronted me about Lusitania, would you believe, right in the middle of the dinner. That lightweight, spineless dropkick.’ Webster spat out the insult.

  Dancer was used to Webster’s foul moods and said nothing. It was pointless to interrupt and the fire would burn out quicker if it wasn’t stoked. Webster gulped his coffee and examined the mug for a moment, before lifting his gaze to his underling.

  ‘How does he know about Lusitania, Charles?’ Webster’s voice held a hint of accusation, as if it was Dancer’s fault that this precious secret was known to the enemy.

  ‘Chief, my guess is he cottoned on to it through the ravings of Bruce Paxton in parliament. Harry Dunkley’s also aware of it, and he and Toohey are now an item, are they not?’

  Webster snorted. ‘Yes, seems they are.’

  The defence chief waved his finger as if he’d just lit upon a compelling insight. ‘Charles, if he know
s about Lusitania, what else does he know? And what are he and Dunkley up to . . .’

  Webster’s voice trailed off, leaving Dancer to fill the void. ‘I don’t know.’

  The CDF gulped another large shot of coffee before placing the cup on the table. ‘Well, I want you to find out. Find Dunkley then track everything he does; trace everyone he meets.’

  Dancer didn’t nod, didn’t blink; he just held the military man in his gaze for several long seconds before he broke the silence.

  ‘It’s been nearly four years.’

  Webster looked nonplussed. ‘Four years?’

  ‘Since you sent me into battle, remember? That picture of Bruce Paxton, planted so that Dunkley would become our dupe and do our handiwork by removing a meddlesome minister.’

  ‘Yes,’ Webster said, ‘I took out Paxton but that was necessary. He was a threat to our national security.’

  ‘There were other . . . casualties. Innocents. And the guilty, the most dangerous game, is still at large.’

  Webster caught the note of reproach in his minion’s voice. His eyes narrowed.

  ‘Leave Bailey to me.’

  ‘With respect, the last time Bailey was left in your hands the job was botched.’

  Webster reached for his coffee cup.

  ‘That dose should have killed her. And forgive me, but I do believe you assured me it would before I took her to lunch.’

  ‘I underestimated her,’ Dancer said. ‘Her capacity for physical and political survival is utterly remarkable.’

  The spy didn’t usually argue with Webster, whom he regarded as the one true leader in a nation led by harlots. He couldn’t understand, though, why the defence chief didn’t share his growing alarm at the possibility of Bailey’s resurrection as prime minister. That was a threat that vastly outweighed any posed by Dunkley and Toohey.

  ‘She’s still in touch with Beijing. With the Coalition in disarray there is a very real chance that Bailey will be prime minister next year. We have to finish the job. That is the only game I want to track.’

  Webster stood, signalling the audience was at an end.

  ‘Bailey will never be prime minister. I will see to that. Your mission is to find out what Dunkley and Toohey are up to. If you believe they are a threat to our operation, you will eliminate that threat.’

  The chief scooped up his hat and positioned it at the most flattering angle on his head.

  ‘And that’s an order.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Canberra

  Emily Brooks scanned the private dining room and shook her head. The hard-right warrior hated dining with these so-called Liberal Party powerbrokers as much as she despised toy poodles and children with food allergies. These limp dicks served only one purpose: they controlled numbers.

  To her left, the Tasmanian God-botherer was saying grace, as he did before every meal. Scratch the surface and he was a card-carrying creationist, but he delivered a solid block of votes from the Apple Isle.

  Next to him wallowed the Fat Man, a morbidly obese property developer from her home state of Queensland. The Liberal Party’s merger with the Nationals meant she was forced to share the LNP stable with agrarian socialists. It was a brand, not a union. During sitting weeks in Canberra, half the Queenslanders caucused with the Liberals, the rest with the Nationals. The Fat Man was the worst of the lot, an old-school protectionist who believed the job of government was to grease the wheels of Big Business. His, in particular.

  To the Fat Man’s left sat a South Australian minister, the most dangerous of all. He had the face of a Botticelli angel and the heart of the anti-Christ. A Machiavellian mischief-maker deeply versed in the black arts, he often moved against his many perceived enemies on suspicion alone, metaphorically burying them in the shallow bush graves for which his state was infamous. One would-be assassin had been warned off with a cherubic smile and a blunt, ‘Touch me and I’ll make Snowtown look like a punchbowl at a kiddies’ birthday party.’

  A Victorian blueblood sat opposite, a former corporate bagman who’d gorged on privatisation deals to buy a string of properties and pay off several disgruntled wives. His tentacles into the Melbourne Jewish establishment had earned him the sobriquet ‘the Member for Circumcision’.

  Brooks flicked her gaze to her right. The NSW senator had been keeping a low profile following several embarrassing appearances at the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Another former high-flying spiv, he’d had trouble explaining a covert recording of an outlaw bikie boss declaring, ‘He might be a grubby lobbyist, but at least he’s our grubby lobbyist.’

  To his right was the junior frontbencher from Western Australia, a former mining executive known around parliament as ‘the Minister for Big Dirt’.

  They were a motley group and Brooks held each and every one of them in contempt. But she needed the votes they corralled.

  The self-appointed patron saint of the Liberal Party’s ‘harden-the-fuck-up’ faction had lost the leadership after a videoed bondage romp with a twenty-something-year-old journalist had mysteriously found its way onto the internet. She’d been forced to resign despite mounting a credible case that what happened in the bedroom should stay in the bedroom – even if it involved an increasingly reluctant accomplice.

  From that moment Brooks had plotted her revenge: this clutch of charlatans was pivotal to her success.

  She’d chosen one of Canberra’s better restaurants, Wild Duck, for this gathering of the Tory bloodline. Tonight there was much to discuss. Elizabeth Scott’s faltering leadership meant the government was listing badly, and showing every sign of being a one-termer.

  ‘Pass the duck pancakes and let’s get started,’ Brooks ordered.

  Deftly she plucked up one of the restaurant’s specialties with her chopsticks, using a napkin to dab a smudge of sauce from her lips.

  ‘So who wants to go first?’

  The Fat Man jumped in. ‘Emily, things are bad when Bolt’s turned on us.’

  The Herald Sun’s firebrand conservative had turned feral, warning Scott that she’d signed her own ‘death warrant’ after the Australia Day knighthood debacle.

  ‘Alan Jones has jumped out of his tree over our support for coal seam gas too,’ chirped the South Australian. ‘I rang to complain last week and he gave me the biggest flogging I’ve had in years. I told him I would fix it, but I don’t think he listened to a single word.’

  The Victorian produced a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. ‘Have you read today’s editorial in The Australian? Jesus, what have we come to when even the Oz reckons we’re toast?’

  The national broadsheet had been sinking the slipper into the Coalition for months, deriding Scott as ‘worse than Whitlam’ – a particularly telling jibe given the role the paper had played in Gough’s 1975 dismissal.

  ‘Yeah, some days I reckon they hate us as much as the ABC,’ the Fat Man said.

  Brooks fixed him with eyes of ice, pointing her chopsticks menacingly.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ she said.

  The Fat Man looked downcast and the room fell silent, save for the sound of feverish eating.

  As she lifted another morsel to her mouth, Brooks looked at them with despair and scorn. The Liberal Party’s best brains and brawn and not a single fucking leader among them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Washington

  Mikaela Asta laughed long and loud.

  The forty-sixth president of the United States of America had stolen a moment to glance at the morning newspapers on her iPad. The reading was delicious.

  America’s liberal media was befuddled. The White House had its first female occupant and that should have been cause for celebration. But she was Republican and their disappointment was palpable.

  An article in the New York Times particularly tickled her. The Gray Lady typified the confusion of the chattering class: giving lip-service compliments to a woman who had finally reached the peak of American power, while being enraged a
t Asta’s hardline stance against abortion.

  The poor dears had got the wrong kind of woman. What they wanted was Gloria Steinem, but instead they were stuck with Boudicca. Just like the ancient warrior, Asta would lead America into battle. She needed a fight to prove her steel and was convinced America needed one to show it still had a spine. As the Israelis had told her on one of her many visits to that besieged land, ‘Strike first and pretend you are sorry later.’

  The president’s most trusted adviser was Morgan McDonald. The former speaker had been sworn in as her deputy and the two met daily without staff. Unlike George W Bush, who’d been less of an iron-ass than Dick Cheney, Asta was as hawkish as her vice president.

  ‘Is there anything in the assassination of Jackson that links it to a state?’ Asta asked McDonald, agitated at the lack of progress in the investigation of the former president’s death.

  ‘Alas, no.’ Big Mac shared her irritation. ‘It was pitch perfect. We have nothing beyond the bullet that killed him. It’s a specialist sniper’s round but one that is commercially available. Every terrorist group on Earth has claimed credit, none of them credibly.’

  Although Jackson had been sliding towards electoral oblivion, the American people were outraged by the killing. Asta knew that was an opportunity. She could usefully direct the anger at a real or imagined enemy so long as she had a vaguely plausible chain of evidence. Bush had used the cover of 9/11 to attack Iraq, even though there was nothing to link the terror attack to that benighted state.

  Asta wanted to strike while public anger was still red hot, fearing that it would cool as the days turned into weeks.

  Big Mac swiped a donut from a teetering pile before him, halved it in a single bite and didn’t pause in his analysis. Asta winced as he brushed crumbs from his jacket onto the Oval Office carpet.

  ‘The laser strike on our military satellite blinded it temporarily, but did no major damage. It could have been a test and, in any event, we can’t trace the source.’

  Asta pushed a plate towards the vice president in the hope he would take the hint.