The Shadow Game

by Steve Lewis

  Silence. Nothing but the faint hum of the air conditioning.

  Then a calm voice spoke.

  ‘Walk away from the AWD audit, Mr Hadid. Walk away and don’t look back.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Canberra

  ‘Let there be no doubt. This is one of the most significant cyber attacks in the history of the Commonwealth.’

  Jack Webster towered over the lectern in the theatrette on the bottom floor of R1, the epicentre of the Russell Offices Defence complex.

  ‘We are still assessing the damage. Usually the government would make no comment, but this attack has compromised Centrelink’s database. As you would be aware, the agency holds highly sensitive personal and financial details of many Australians.’

  The Australian’s defence correspondent, Brendan Nicholson, fired a question.

  ‘Can you tell us how many Centrelink files are involved?’

  ‘I’m sure we can get you all the numbers, Brendan, but do the maths. From memory, there are two and a half million aged pensioners and almost a million people on Newstart and Youth Allowance . . .’

  Five kilometres away, Harry Dunkley took an air swing at the television screen. He was angry, but not surprised.

  ‘This is total bullshit.’

  Jack Webster was sounding like the pompous knight that he was, detailing a cyber attack that had hit almost every Commonwealth agency, including Defence.

  He had been sent out by a weak defence minister to try to explain the magnitude of the attack and minimise damage to the government.

  Dunkley didn’t buy it for a moment. Webster was ramping up the attack for his own political ends. Dunkley had seen this shell game before and that time he’d been the dupe.

  It had been his path to ruin. He had written a series of front-page exclusives detailing multiple Chinese cyber attacks on Australia. Each one had been fed to him by Charles Dancer. And each one had been launched from Canberra on Webster’s orders.

  The operation, dubbed the Lusitania Plan, had been designed to force the Australian government to lash out at China. Martin Toohey had taken the bait. When Beijing retaliated by pulling out of a multi-billion-dollar resources deal, it was the straw that broke his government’s back.

  Now Dunkley watched helplessly as history seemed to be repeating itself.

  ‘Brendan, yes it bears the hallmarks of a state-sponsored attack.’ Webster’s jaw was set like an Easter Island statue as a half-dozen reporters vied for the follow-up.

  Mark Kenny from Fairfax got the nod.

  ‘CDF, the Chinese apparently stole millions of files in their recent cyber attack on the US government. Did this attack come from China?’

  ‘It’s a good question, Mark. I don’t have a precise answer for you yet. What I can tell you is that we will find out and pursue whoever committed this act of war.’

  ‘War?’ Kenny shot back.

  ‘What would you call it, Mr Kenny? Millions of dollars’ worth of damage has been done, sensitive information stolen. An attack on a nation, be it through conventional weaponry or cyber warriors is an act of war, at least in my eyes.’

  The defence chief leafed through a sheaf of papers before continuing.

  ‘As you know,’ Webster intoned, his words carefully chosen for the television audience, ‘I have long pleaded for more investment in cyber security. There are many agencies using the ICON network that don’t encrypt their files. Perhaps more than half. That is unacceptable.’

  The ABC’s Jane Norman interjected.

  ‘Are you criticising the government, Sir Jack?’

  ‘That is your commentary, not mine. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me I have a meeting to attend and the prime minister does not like to be kept waiting.’

  Dunkley slapped his right fist into his open left hand.

  ‘Trevor, this is laughable. Webster’s about as credible as a street market hawker. I can’t believe he’s getting away with it. Again. We can’t let him—’

  ‘Harry, for fuck’s sake, shut up. Please.’

  Slumped on a lounge chair, Trevor Harris raised his hands in supplication. An hour earlier he’d been told of Benny Hadid’s admission to Hyson Green, the private mental health facility at Calvary Hospital. Details were sketchy, but Harris believed the breakdown was linked to his dealings with Dunkley.

  ‘Come on, Trev, you don’t buy that China cyber bullshit – do you?’

  Harris was in no mood for a Dunkley lecture. The former journalist had reverted to type: everything revolved around him. The chase, the story, the scoop – no matter how much collateral damage he caused.

  Hadid was just another body on the pile.

  ‘Harry, for once, just once, think of someone other than yourself. Seriously, mate, Hadid has been admitted to a psych ward. You . . . me . . . we helped to push him over the edge.’

  Dunkley felt a twinge of remorse, but rallied.

  ‘C’mon, that’s unfair. Benny was already chasing Webster and wanted him to answer for his crimes just as much as we do.’

  ‘No, Harry. As you do. You pushed Benny, just as you’re now pushing me. Your return draws a target on everyone you meet.’

  Harris stood and took a few paces before turning to face Dunkley.

  ‘Mate, you leave a trail of destruction and broken relationships every time you get involved with Jack Webster. Look at the tally. You asked Kimberley Gordon for help; she gets murdered. You enlisted your former girlfriend and she gets death threats. Bruce Paxton lost his seat and now Benny Hadid is in the nuthouse.’

  The torment was written on Harris’s face as he dropped his head into his hands.

  ‘And me.’ His voice quavered as he spoke. ‘Since I helped you my life has collapsed. I’m entombed in this fetid little hole. I know they’re hunting me. I defend myself as best I can, barricade the doors, spend my days peering through the curtains.’

  When Harris looked up his eyes were moist.

  ‘Harry Dunkley, you are a dangerous friend.’

  They fell into silence as Dunkley looked around at the clutter, the piles of books and unwashed dishes, the flotsam and jetsam of a once vibrant life. When he spoke it was with quiet resolve.

  ‘Webster started this war, not me. There were no conscripts on our side; we were all volunteers. Webster used me. And he used you too, right down to you telling them where to find Kimberley on the night she was murdered. That was why you reached out to me. Remember? It was your call to help.’

  Dunkley stood and grabbed Harris by the shoulders.

  ‘If we don’t fight this guy, we lose. There is only one way for this to end. For you to escape this shithole and for me to get my life back. We either get this megalomaniac or we die trying. We owe it to Benny Hadid, we owe it to Kimberley Gordon, and mate, we owe it to ourselves.’

  Harris met Dunkley’s gaze, slowly shook his head and sighed.

  ‘If we’re going to do this, we’ll do it properly. Get that bloody phone of yours.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Qingdao port, China

  The sky was livid red along the carpet of clouds lined up to greet the sunrise and Yu Heng didn’t like it at all.

  ‘Sailor take warning,’ the rear admiral muttered to no one.

  He’d picked up the old English naval superstition while studying at the British Joint Services Command and Staff College in London.

  Yu stood on the open deck above the bridge of the Liaoning, gripped the rail with both hands and breathed in the bustle as the port came to life.

  Like so much of the new China, the naval base, on the south side of the Shandong Peninsula, had grown rapidly. In the space of a year, three and a half thousand people from six villages had been relocated to make way for the North Sea Fleet, which patrolled the waters surrounding Japan and the Korean Peninsula. The base was also the home port of the nation’s only aircraft carrier, strategically located less than two thousand kilometres from the US overseas naval base in Yokosuka, Japan.
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  Even from his vantage point, Yu could see only a fraction of the sprawling base which ran from the waterfront to mountains hollowed out to house missiles, chemicals and armouries.

  The admiral shook his head. ‘Too much, too fast.’

  Yu was a proud member of the Communist Party, but had begun to question the wisdom of his leaders as he watched China’s breakneck development. He dreaded his regular trips to Beijing where he could not find the sun in the smog-heavy sky and the stink of the air nauseated him. The oriental beauty of the old city had been buried beneath gleaming Western-style glass-and-metal towers. And, as in the West, the streets were choked with traffic.

  It was all a gilt facade that papered over the many blemishes that arose when ambition outran wisdom. As with the ship he commanded, looks were deceptive.

  The Liaoning had been transformed in 1998 from a rusted Soviet hulk into its present configuration, under the bizarre pretext of it becoming a floating casino. Probably no one, and especially not the US, had swallowed the deception, but it had allowed the Ukrainian vendors to turn a blind eye to their ship’s real refurbishment.

  Now the carrier was conventionally powered by four 50,000-horsepower steam turbines that combined to push it along at a top speed of 32 knots over a range of 3800 nautical miles.

  It had a crew of 1960 and an air group of 626 who serviced twenty-four ‘Flying Shark’ warplanes. The carrier bristled with other weapons too: four air-defence missile systems, each with an 18-cell launcher, and a pair of ten-barrel, 30-millimetre cannons, both fed by dual ammunition boxes holding a combined one thousand rounds.

  The Liaoning was the hub in a mighty circle of steel designed to project China’s power far into the blue waters of the Pacific. When it sailed it was flanked by four Luyang-class guided-missile destroyers and two 054A frigates. A Shang-class nuclear-powered attack submarine glided beneath it.

  Yu commanded a carrier group that China had declared was a match for American naval might. Two years earlier, the communist power had boasted to the world that the Liaoning had forced the retreat of the USS George Washington in the Taiwan Strait.

  The admiral knew that it was a public relations stunt. His group could not threaten the Americans. The trick had been to lure the enemy into a deadly bottleneck.

  Once inside the Taiwan Strait there had been no room for the George Washington to manoeuvre and what it feared was not the Liaoning but the sophisticated array of area-denial weapons that lurked a hundred kilometres away on the Chinese mainland.

  Weapons like the Dong-Feng 21D anti-ship ballistic missile. US intelligence dubbed it the ‘carrier killer’ and painted a disturbing picture of its capability to shift in flight while moving at hypersonic speed. It carried a conventional warhead large enough to destroy an aircraft carrier in one hit, and America had no defence against it.

  That explained the George Washington’s retreat. The American president hadn’t been prepared to risk the loss of a carrier strike group with all hands. That would have forced him to declare war on China, a war he couldn’t hope to win without a massive loss of life.

  The experienced sailor instinctively ran his eyes along the ship’s deck, looking for any sign that something was amiss. He knew every line and every limitation of the Liaoning, which was why he was so troubled.

  He had been commanded to sail the strike group deep into the South China Sea as a warning to the US and its lackeys that Beijing would repel any move to test the twelve-nautical-mile exclusion zone around the Nansha Islands. His superiors were gambling that the Americans would rattle sabres but they would not fight.

  Yu reached into his pocket, pulled out a packet of Zhonghua cigarettes and lit one with a deft flick of the Zippo lighter he had bought on a trip to Washington. He inhaled deeply and blew a long line of smoke into the still morning air.

  The light on the clouds was fading from red to pink as the sun rose, but the warning had been writ large and he would heed it.

  This time the Americans would be ready. He could feel it. They were wounded and angry and that made them dangerous. This time they would meet on blue water where all the players in this deadly game knew his group was no match for even a fraction of the US Pacific Fleet.

  He took another long draw on his cigarette.

  Once the only reason for charting the Nansha Islands had been to warn sailors to avoid their dangerous shoals. They were much more dangerous now.

  The admiral knew the islands had many names. The Americans called them the Spratlys. Another name for the largest island was ‘Storm’.

  It was apt. A tempest was brewing and Yu was sailing right into it.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Canberra

  It was a gleaming billion-dollar shrine to the truth that Big Brother was actually watching you. Born in an era when fear was driving a national security boom, the ASIO headquarters rose six levels to form a sleek crescent on the edge of the Russell Offices Defence complex.

  It was the heart of Australia’s domestic spy network. More than two thousand carefully chosen and highly trained agents fed their intelligence into this building to be analysed, dissected and acted upon.

  For a spy movie junkie like Brendan Ryan, this was Shangrila. The Labor MP felt a schoolboy’s excitement as his COMCAR pulled up in front of the brand new edifice. Despite massive cost overruns – and rumours it had been compromised by the Chinese – Ryan had ensured that Labor’s support for this state-of-the-art spy headquarters never wavered.

  As Ryan approached the glass front doors a handsome woman in her early thirties emerged. Dressed in a public-service-grey pants suit, she offered a winning smile and firm handshake. ‘Mr Ryan, good morning. I’m Amy. The DG is expecting you.’

  Despite his VIP status, Ryan still had to undergo ASIO’s security check. He was asked for photo identification before receiving a lanyard holding a temporary pass, then a blue-tagged key for a locker in which to store his mobile phone.

  ‘And your Fitbit, if you have one, please,’ the guard added.

  Ryan snorted, the idea of wearing any kind of device designed for a fitness regime was abhorrent to him. As was the idea of fitness.

  It turned out to be just the first layer of security. Ryan followed Amy to another glass door where she swiped her pass then held her thumb to a wall-mounted scanner. The door slid slowly open, left to right, and they entered a transparent holding pen. Amy turned to Ryan as the door closed.

  ‘Welcome to the Tiger Trap.’ The spy opened her arms to embrace the twenty-first-century drawbridge. ‘The far door can’t open until the one behind us closes and I swipe and have my thumbprint checked once more.’

  Emerging into a long corridor they passed a display case that offered a glimpse of the agency’s chequered past. Cold War relics included the iconic photo of the Russian defector Evdokia Petrova being dragged across the darkened tarmac of Sydney Airport by two Soviet goons.

  Ryan paused and laughed. Either side of this memento of a dark chapter from Australia’s past were displays that could have been props in a B-Grade ’60s spy movie: a camera hidden inside a hollowed-out book; and a quaintly described ‘defection kit’ that included a torch and a pair of striped flannelette pyjamas.

  Amy touched his arm to remind him he was there on business. He followed her to a bank of lifts where she swiped her pass again and a short time later a disembodied female voice intoned ‘Sixth Floor’.

  Exiting the lift, Ryan noted that a vast atrium stood at the centre of the building, anchored by a ground-floor cafe. An array of security cameras was set into the ceiling, monitoring his every movement.

  Amy led him to a heavy metal-set door designed to withstand a bomb blast. It opened to a boardroom that looked across Lake Burley Griffin to the High Court and Parliament House.

  ‘The DG will be with you shortly,’ she said, closing the door securely before leaving.

  Ryan scanned a room dominated by a light-coloured timber table with a dark rectangle contrast at its centre.
He counted fourteen white leather chairs.

  ‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’ Ryan turned at the familiar voice of Richard Dalton, his long-time friend and director-general of this vast palace of intelligence.

  ‘It is, Richard,’ Ryan said, effusively shaking the spymaster’s hand. ‘It’s great to know you’re keeping an eye on us.’

  ‘As you know, Brendan, we don’t need to see you to keep an eye on you. This isn’t a building, it’s a platform from which we operate in the physical and virtual world.’

  The two men pulled up chairs facing the window, exchanging small talk on the current list of security concerns. The rise of homegrown terrorism was number one.

  Suddenly Dalton’s demeanour changed and he swung around in his chair so that he was facing Ryan.

  ‘Brendan, I called you here for a reason.’

  His shoulders slumped as he seemed to shrink into his chair.

  ‘What I am about to tell you I have confided to no one else. You are never to breathe a word unless something happens to me.’

  ‘Like what?’ Ryan was bemused by the abrupt turn in the conversation.

  Dalton’s face was anguished and he looked searchingly at Ryan, as if trying to impress upon him the gravity of his words.

  ‘If I should die. Unexpectedly.’

  ‘Mate, you’re freaking me out. It’s not like you to play stupid games. What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about the leader of the Australian end of our little project. Air Chief Marshal Sir Jack Webster.’

  Dalton’s voice dropped as if he feared being overheard even in this most secure point of a secure fortress.

  ‘Forty years ago, good men on both sides of the Pacific lost faith in the political class to look beyond the next headline. These men of vision, drawn from intelligence, the military – and rare political figures, like you – foresaw an ever more dangerous world. So they forged the Alliance to ensure the long-term security of both nations.’

  The ASIO head paused as if he was trying to convince himself of the righteousness of his extramural cause.