by Steve Lewis
Need to talk. My place.
Harris’s message was promising, but Dunkley was in Canberra’s deep south on an errand for Martin Toohey.
He punched in a reply: Give me an hour.
It was an easy drive from Canberra’s south and Dunkley followed an ACTION bus as he cruised the last few kilometres to Yarralumla, a smudge of smoke drifting to his west.
He veered off Adelaide Avenue towards Hopetoun Circuit, the bleached white walls of the Saudi Arabian embassy looming into view. He slowed as he approached a pair of speed bumps at the local school, then turned into Harris’s street and a scene of pandemonium.
A pair of police cars, their lights flashing, cordoned off the street, one at either end of a hundred-metre strip. Three fire engines were parked in a ragged row, their tentacles in a tangle as they ran from nearby hydrants. An ambulance sat quietly in a driveway.
The townhouse was gutted, smoke stains vivid around windows cracked by heat. The roof had partially collapsed and its charred wooden rafters looked like broken black fingers clawing at the sky.
‘But he was a friend of mine . . .’ Harry Dunkley’s face was creased with grief.
He’d watched the ambulance doors close on a black body bag.
A police sergeant was sympathetic, but firm.
‘Sir, we don’t discuss investigations, particularly when a deceased person is involved.’
A small crowd had gathered in the quiet street, their voices lowered in respect for the dead. Dunkley scanned the faces, but they were all unfamiliar.
The sergeant was still talking.
‘So how did you know Mr Harris?’
‘We worked on a few projects together,’ Dunkley said as he walked away.
The emergency services had managed to protect the surrounding townhouses and were mopping up. A fireman who had been watching Dunkley’s conversation with the sergeant wandered over.
‘Was he a mate of yours?’
‘Yes.’ Dunkley nodded as he wiped his face with his hands.
‘Sorry mate,’ he said. ‘We did our best.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, it’s hard to say . . . there’ll be an investigation. But . . . and I don’t mean any offence . . . the place was filled with old newspapers and other rubbish. It was a fire trap. That’s how accidents like this happen.’
Dunkley looked at the blackened townhouse.
‘This was no accident.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Northwest Pacific Basin
Frank W Vinson felt the cool, salty breeze wash over him from an opening in the ship’s hull. He was exercising alone in the hangar-deck gym of the USS George Washington, just twelve feet above the waterline.
It had taken the rear admiral some time to gain confidence on the Woodway Curve treadmill, but he could now sustain a cracking pace. He was in the groove and this was his meditation. A punishing fitness regime had been the commander’s salvation following the humiliating retreat of his carrier strike group in the Taiwan Strait.
Congress and the press had demanded a scapegoat. He’d been hauled before the House Committee on Armed Services and all but labelled a coward.
Despite being cleared of misconduct, Vinson was damaged goods and his health had deteriorated.
‘Get fit,’ a naval doctor had urged him. ‘You need to do something that you can control. The fitter you are, the better you’ll be able to cope with the pressure.’
So Vinson had promised himself two things: he’d get in the best shape of his life, and he’d never retreat again.
He’d resisted offers of a quiet desk job in DC. This sailor would not fade away.
Besides, atonement might lie over the horizon that he was running to catch. His orders were to sail to the Philippines.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Canberra
His eyes were haunted, stone-grey blank instead of blue.
Martin Toohey sat down beside Harry Dunkley, who sat hunched over a cafe table, pondering a half-eaten slice of cake and the death of Trevor Harris.
Toohey motioned to the waitress. ‘Short black, thanks. Harry?’
‘Nah, I’m right.’
They sat in silence until the espresso arrived, then Dunkley leaned closer to Toohey.
‘We are in fucking danger.’
The former prime minister nodded. He was the ringleader of this circus and was again experiencing the heavy burden of leadership.
‘What do you know, Harry? What did the police tell you?’
‘Nothing,’ Dunkley responded, his voice quivering. ‘I got a message from Trevor, telling me to come to his home. That’s it. In the space of an hour his house burned to the ground and he was dead.’
‘But the police say there were no suspicious circumstances.’
‘They also said Kimberley was the victim of a gay bashing. What the fuck do you reckon?’
Dunkley ticked off a list.
‘Celia, my former girlfriend, is frightened off. I’m threatened with a gun. You are punted from office. Benny Hadid is in an asylum.’
Toohey searched Dunkley’s face as he contemplated his response. He could see how vulnerable he’d become and worried that he might return to the easy embrace of alcohol and despair.
‘Say what you suspect is true, that Webster had Harris murdered. So, do we run?’ Toohey asked.
Dunkley stabbed the table with his fingers.
‘We can’t win. This fucking madman commands an army and he is ruthless. He’s beat us to every turn and his henchmen found Trevor before he’d had a chance to tell us what he’d discovered.’
Toohey shrugged.
‘You might be right. Maybe we can’t win. You run back to Sydney and leave all this behind. But could you live with yourself? You could hide from Webster but you couldn’t hide from your conscience.’
Toohey searched for a reaction, for a sign that his words were having an effect. There was nothing but the hopeless stare he’d confronted when he’d found his unlikely friend in a prison cell.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Beijing
She slept serenely, effortlessly embracing the night. He nestled into her back, careful not to wake her. She had what he craved. Peace.
Jiang Xiu and his wife lived in House No. 2 in the middle of Beijing. The ultra-exclusive enclave was heavily guarded, but the propaganda minister did not feel secure. He had drunk several whiskies to calm his growing trepidation. He lay restless, overtired and far too wakeful.
China was forging ahead under President Meng, but the satisfaction that Jiang once felt had been extinguished. Where there once was elation, he now sweated fear.
‘China is bigger than you are, Mr President,’ he had warned his mentor. Now he regretted the words.
He gently stroked his wife’s hair, longing to share his concerns. But that would only frighten her.
The state can only be strong when it’s in harmony with the will of the people, Meng often said. In truth, the president had marginalised and usurped the state. Such men arise in all cultures when they are allowed. And such men are lethal.
Meng had marginalised him too, despite Jiang’s loyalty and wise counsel. He had misread his leader and now feared he was out of favour. Worse, that he was dispensable.
His wife stirred and he sensed her momentarily opening her eyes. He hushed his breathing. The night fell quiet again.
Silently he stretched out under the covers, seeking a comfortable position. He needed to wake fresh and alert, not fatigued by insomnia’s curse. In the weeks and months ahead he would need all his strength.
‘Xiànzài jiù chuānzhou.’ The shrill demand to rise was accompanied by a sharp jab to the ribs, puncturing the groggy ruin of his mind.
Rough hands grabbed his shoulders, but he shook them off. They came back, rougher than before, and his body took another blow.
He panicked and threw out his right arm. A warm crease in the linen marked where his wife had been lying.
‘Wher
e is she?’ His demand was met with a slap to the face.
He was hauled from the bed, hitting the tiled floor hard. Pain jarred his shoulder. A bright light shone in his face. Strong hands lifted him from the ground, holding him firmly as his hands were cuffed together.
‘Where’s my wife?’ he screamed, but there was no reply, just the jab of cold steel on his neck as they dragged him from the room.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Canberra
Brendan Ryan could sniff the change of season in the crisp morning air. The national capital was edging towards winter and the temperatures were tumbling.
The Labor MP hugged a cup of coffee as he took in the view across the parliamentary precinct from the balcony of his comfortable unit in Deakin.
Today was set to be a tangle of high-level meetings, including a confidential briefing with intelligence chiefs. Being deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security ensured his access to some of the nation’s most important secrets.
Tomorrow, Australia would commemorate the centenary of the Gallipoli landings and Ryan had used his shadow ministerial muscle to grab a privileged position for the service at the Australian War Memorial.
He was looking forward to the commemoration, the massive crowds with heads bowed in quiet reflection, and the haunting pitch of the Last Post.
A whiff of something burning shook him from reflection.
‘Oh shit . . .’ He’d forgotten the toast. He shuffled into the apartment and eased two blackened corpses from the toaster.
ABC NewsRadio was reciting the morning’s headlines. ‘. . . survived by his wife, Judy, and three children . . .’
Ryan froze. He pumped up the volume but it was too late, the host had moved on.
‘Fuck!’ His iPhone, where had he left it? He raced to the balcony but it wasn’t there. He ran into his bedroom and found it on his bedside table. He picked it up, hands shaking, and rang his friend.
‘You’ve called Richard Dalton. Leave a message.’
But it would be futile.
The nation’s most powerful spy was dead.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Canberra
Elizabeth Scott gazed at the solemn mass of humanity spilling from the lighted parade ground into darkness.
It was one hundred years since the Gallipoli landing. Record crowds surrounded the War Memorial and edged along Anzac Parade towards the lake.
On the one day that united the nation, the prime minister had never felt more alone, more captive to her precarious tenure, which had forced her to cancel her long-anticipated trip to Anzac Cove.
The VIP enclosure had been full for an hour, jammed with the nation’s political and military elite. In the front row, Scott looked over a plinth in the Memorial’s forecourt, with its words etched in stone: Their name liveth for evermore.
More than one hundred thousand hardy souls were expected at the service, each wanting to pay homage to the men and women who had made the ultimate sacrifice. In the pre-dawn, many held candles as their ancestors had held the hopes of a young nation.
What was it about Anzac Day that resonated so deeply? Why did the nation pause with such reverence to recall distant blood-soaked beaches where young lives had been sacrificed for an uncaring imperial master?
When Scott was a teenager this day had been mocked and some had even forecast its demise. But in recent times Australia’s youth had embraced this piece of history with a fervour that stirred the prime minister’s pride.
This resurrection had not been driven by authority. Instead, young people had gone in search of a foundation story that defined them and the country they loved.
What particularly touched Scott was that Anzac Day commemorated a defeat. There could be no triumphalism in such industrial-scale death.
What endured was hope, the notion that there was life and light beyond defeat, that it was not the end. Many of those who survived Gallipoli had been ordered to the killing fields of France, where their spirits never bowed amid the carnage.
Yet Scott had all but given up, and that shamed her.
A single tear slowly trickled down her cheek as a lone bugler played the haunting melody of the Last Post.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Canberra
The beast had been unleashed and had Martin Toohey in its sights. The glare of lights and whirr of camera drives, the snapping of reporters and the hovering boom mics brought back painful memories to the former prime minister.
He now regretted agreeing to a door-stop after launching a tome, written by an old seminary mate, on the history of the Australian Imperial Force. The impromptu press conference had quickly degenerated into a melee as reporters jostled for a quote.
‘Will Elizabeth Scott survive the killing season?’ someone barked.
‘If you lot get off her back it might help,’ Toohey shot back. ‘And one of the privileges of retirement is that I don’t have to answer those questions anymore. Have a nice day.’
The beast pursued him to the lift. He smiled as the doors closed, emerging to an empty Members’ Hall and the soothing wash of its reflective pool.
He was running late. Toohey turned into the glass-and-steel corridor that led to the House of Representatives. He thought of the numerous times he’d raced through here on his way to Question Time, his mind a blur of lines rehearsed for the theatre of parliament.
He turned right into the opposition members’ private anteroom.
‘You’re late.’ The voice held the tang of mock irritation.
‘I had to shake the media and needed time to ponder whether I should show up.’
Brendan Ryan had once been a close ally, but his loyalty had turned with the polls. Eventually, the Labor numbers man had been instrumental in rolling Toohey as prime minister. That was nearly two years ago and they had not spoken since.
‘It wasn’t personal, it was politics,’ Ryan explained.
‘I was prime minister. You betrayed me. It doesn’t get more personal than that.’
Ryan put out his hands, imploring Toohey to understand.
‘I was trying to save the party. If you’d stayed on we would have been routed.’
‘So you put a psychopath in the Lodge.’
‘For a heartbeat, Martin, a couple of months. Anyway, we have more pressing issues.’
‘Like what?’
‘Jack Webster.’
Toohey didn’t trust his former ally but he caught a hint of fear in his voice and noted the glistening of sweat on his upper lip.
‘Why?’
‘Because my life depends on it.’
For old times’ sake, Martin Toohey wandered along the corridors of the House of Representatives. A place he’d last haunted in 2007 before he was elevated to the ministerial wing. He’d arrived an optimistic neophyte, determined to change the nation for the better. And he had done great things but everything had been overshadowed by his fall, which left him broken and embittered. Toohey paused outside the office he’d occupied when he was first elected and eyed the latest nameplate.
That dickhead.
He backtracked along the photo gallery of former speakers, their faces immortalised in black-and-white and, more recently, colour.
‘Mr Toohey.’ A timid voice called from the Clerk’s Office. The former PM recognised the face, but couldn’t place the name.
‘Cobber, how are you?’ he replied enthusiastically.
‘Good, Mr Toohey, good, I didn’t think you’d remember me. Anyway, I’m glad I caught you. I was just about to forward a letter to your Melbourne office. Hang on, I’ll get it.’
The attendant emerged with an Express Post envelope. It was addressed in neat blue ink.
Harry Dunkley
c/o Martin Toohey
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Toohey turned it over. There was no return address.
‘Probably just a nuisance letter,’ the attendant said. ‘But you know what they say: “Ne
ither snow nor rain . . .”’
Harry Dunkley turned up late and reluctant. He’d caught a taxi to the Australian National University and, typically, the driver had got lost in the campus maze, which did nothing to lift his already bleak mood.
The death of Trevor Harris had sent him perilously close to tumbling back into the hole he’d crawled from just a few months ago. The hope of progress had been crushed by another tragedy. Only Martin Toohey’s energy and determination was keeping him in the game.
He slung the driver his fare then entered the National Security College, another building that owed its existence to the post-9/11 security boom.
A woman pointed the way to the conference room. ‘You’ll need a locker key for your phone,’ she explained.
‘Didn’t bring it.’
He pushed open a heavy metal door and stumbled into a space that looked as if it had been conceived in the vivid imagination of a Bond movie scriptwriter. The oval-shaped room was fitted with honeycomb-relief patterned walls, and a massive elliptical light hovered like a flying saucer over a conference table that could seat thirty. A microphone rose in front of each high-backed white swivel chair.
There was a huge screen at one end and at the other a curtain divided off a section of the room.
Sitting at the head of the table was Toohey.
‘Very theatrical, Martin. How did you score this?’
‘Only cost the taxpayer twenty million bucks.’ Toohey grinned. ‘The dean is a mate. She claims spooks need somewhere to hold secure conferences. ASIO sweeps this place every month and the walls are electronically secure. In trade talk it is a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility”. In English that means we can talk here. Safely.’
Dunkley slumped down next to Toohey, suddenly exhausted.
‘Not much to talk about, Martin. We’re screwed.’
Toohey’s smile evaporated.
‘Don’t quit on me, mate. I can’t do this without you.’
Dunkley rubbed his hands through his hair.