by Steve Lewis
He stroked her arm encouragingly.
‘I’m walking along, trying to get my bearings, thinking I was heading the right way. Then, all of a sudden, the lights went out.’
She shuddered. ‘Then he was there. Right beside me in the dark. His voice was . . . so . . . so calm and evil, as if he did this for a living. He told me if I screamed again it would be the last sound I made. I believed him.’
Celia reached for a whisky. It seemed to fortify her a little.
‘He knew about what I’d been doing, Harry. The Cloud. The download. Everything.’
She was looking straight into his eyes.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘I was petrified. I saw an exit light down the hall, but he was blocking my way – he had a calm fury that scared me to pieces. He came right up to my face and that’s when he mentioned the Nungurrayi. Oh Harry, I nearly . . . I mean that painting . . . he knew my family . . . I can’t . . .’
Celia began a quiet sobbing again. ‘I’m sorry. He knows too much – about me, us, my dad. I can’t go on. Not with this. Not with you.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Canberra
Emily Brooks dropped her head into her hands and ran her manicured nails through her coiffured hair.
‘I hate the fucking National Party.’
She had once said that nothing a politician could do would surprise her, but eighteen months as Opposition leader gave lie to that boast. The astounding news from her press secretary had again recalibrated her tragically low expectations of her colleagues.
‘So he checked himself into hospital. Which hospital?’
‘Canberra Hospital.’ Justin Greenwich had taken a call moments earlier. ‘He claims he’s suffering nervous exhaustion and won’t be able to vote.’
Dallas Bairstow was a New South Wales National Party MP who had spent his tender years as a boarder at Sydney’s St Joseph’s College. That was two strikes against him before he swung a bat in Brooks’s eyes.
Bairstow had all the afflictions that came with both his creeds. He was an agrarian socialist who was deeply suspicious of markets and foreign investment. He never saw a government dollar that couldn’t be spent on subsidies for the bush. And he was a bleeding heart. In Brooks’s eyes, his only redeeming feature was that his years in a Catholic boarding school had given him a pathological fear of homosexuality and he was vehemently opposed to gay marriage.
‘So, Justin, why is he really in hospital?’ Brooks made a note to ensure the Trade portfolio was taken from the Nationals, should she ever become prime minister.
‘The Nats tell me his electorate has the highest rate of mental illness in Australia and that his people love Toohey’s bill. He says he can’t vote against it.’
Brooks grabbed her mobile, searched its contacts and punched the name of the Nationals’ leader.
‘Charles? Emily. Don’t talk, just listen. Get your deputy and get a private car. Drive to Canberra Hospital. Find that weasel Bairstow. Bring him back. Then don’t let him out of your sight until after the vote.’
Brooks paused as the National leader’s protest could be heard through the earpiece of her phone.
‘I really don’t give a rat’s arse how you do it. Just do it.’
She hung up and threw the mobile down in disgust.
‘Okay, let’s assume all our own numbers hold on this vote. Who else have we got?’
Greenwich stared at his dog-eared notebook and chewed the end of his pen.
‘Well, the Manager of Opposition Business assures me that, if pushed, the Speaker will use his casting vote with us on this one. But it won’t come to that. Counting Bailey’s pair, no matter how you cut it, I reckon we come up one vote short.’
Brooks drummed her nails on the desk.
‘Pull the pair,’ she spat.
Greenwich pleaded with her. ‘Boss we can’t. We were crucified in the media the last time we did that. You had to make a grovelling apology. And if the vote is tied, the Speaker might still rat on us. So we’d lose twice.’
Brooks shuddered at the memory; she hated having to apologise for anything.
‘Justin, let me make this clear. I am not opposing this bill just to make Martin Toohey’s life a misery. I’m doing it because the nation can’t afford it. Toohey’s racking up the national credit card and the bill will fall due when he’s well out of politics. What is proposed is far worse than just an attempt by Labor to buy itself another multibillion-dollar indulgence in luvvie heaven. I would oppose the breathtaking stupidity of ceding Australian territory to China even if the billions it raked in were being used to build the landing pad for the second coming of Christ.’
Greenwich added one to his column.
‘Well boss, if we do that, and if the Speaker holds, we win. But at what cost?’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Canberra
It glistened in the warm evening, this keeper of dark secrets, an artificial waterway neatly dividing the capital.
Canberrans either lived north or south of Burley Griffin, and too many, for Harry’s liking, argued pointlessly over the merits of their postcode.
Dunkley played with the volume on the car radio as he gazed out at the troublesome waters. The night was quiet, but far from relaxing. The songbirds had gone silent; a few night creatures rustled in the bushes.
The memory. Two decades ago, he’d watched as an English tourist was hauled from the lake at this very spot. The man had become entangled in wire netting that fenced in the swimming hole used during Canberra’s warmer months.
While the lifeless form was being dragged from the enclosure, Dunkley had peppered an irritated constable with questions. He’d just been doing his job, a reporter on the make. But as he’d driven away in a photographer’s car, he’d realised that he’d barely paused to think about the poor dead Brit.
That’s when it had struck him like a thunderbolt: he had lost his compassion, his empathy. He’d become a hard-nosed scribe, caring only for the story. Callous and selfish. He’d lost his soul.
Here, at this lake. The devil’s lake.
NewsRadio punctuated the night air. Parliament had descended into full-throttle chaos as the government and opposition traded kidney punches.
‘Mr Acting Speaker, the Honourable Member is a grub . . .’
‘Order! Order!’
It was closing in on midnight and Dunkley gazed past the pontoon and across the sheet of uninviting water. Having seen the damage to Celia’s apartment, he wasn’t in a hurry to go home. He needed to make sense of the past few hours, of the violence that had been unleashed. He felt alone, rushing headlong into danger.
His fists pushed against the vehicle’s roof, his body tense.
Think mate, think.
He needed to put together the pieces of the puzzle. The ones he could see.
Eighteen months earlier they’d been working on a story about Bruce Paxton. Dunkley had been following leads that pointed to the Chinese. Kimberley had apparently uncovered another strand. Then she was killed.
Now Celia had been threatened after she’d unlocked some of Kimberley’s secrets.
This was a story people were willing to kill for.
He needed to delve deeper into this murderous affair. He owed it to Kimberley, Celia, even to the unfortunate Englishman.
He also needed help. He checked the time. It was late, but the fearful never sleep.
He fumbled for his phone, scrolled through his contacts, and punched on a recent addition.
It was a ramshackle apartment on the edge of the Yarralumla shops. Trevor Harris had been forced to downsize when his marriage collapsed. It was still lawyers at ten paces, but she’d kept the house and he’d taken refuge in this man cave.
It was spacious and messy: a trio of surfboards in baggy covers leaned against a wall while some serious-looking hiking equipment was heaped in a corner. Two leather lounges fronted each other and a coffee table was layered in magazines – Men’s Health, GQ, Esquire,
FHM.
Harris selected some tunes on the MP3 as he explained that his oldest son, Drew, was using the apartment as part-home, part-storage shed. ‘I’ve told him to come and go as he pleases, which he does.’
Dunkley nodded. He only wished Gaby would visit occasionally.
‘Beer, Harry? Oh wait on . . . looks like Drew’s taken the last one. Bugger.’
‘No problem. I’ll take whatever you’ve got.’
Dunkley had arrived ten minutes earlier feeling self-conscious. Harris was hardly a best mate.
‘Sorry to barge in at this time of night.’
‘That’s okay. I don’t sleep that well and, anyway, I’m running behind on a consultancy job.’
‘Look, I appreciated our little chat the other day. In truth, I’m not sure where to go with this, Trev. But before we go any further, can I ask why you contacted me?’
‘I thought long and hard before I did. I didn’t know how much I could trust you.’
‘Yeah, I felt the same way.’
‘Well Harry, maybe it’s time we both took a risk.’
Dunkley leaned forward and clinked his glass of red against Trevor’s tumbler.
‘Cheers to that, mate.’
‘I don’t think you appreciate how this game works, Harry. I worked for the signals directorate. We scoop up information from everyone. We work with similar agencies around the globe. Mate, we have bugged the planet. If we get interested in you, you have to assume that every move you make is being logged. Your mobile phone is a tracking device. We can turn it into a listening device. Every time you send an email, use an ATM, splash out on a credit card or surf the net for porn, we know.’
Harris nestled his glass between his hands.
‘Harry, everyone marvels at what technology can do. They think it liberates them. But we’ve become slaves and chained ourselves to Big Brother.’
Dunkley thought of conversations he’d had with sources. How many had been monitored?
‘Trev, you’re making me nervous.’
‘You should be nervous.’
Dunkley needed to delve into Harris’s past.
‘So why did you leave DSD?’
‘As politicians say, mate, that is a very good question.’
‘Do you have a good answer?
Harris put his glass down. He thumped the arm of the lounge twice.
‘I was Ben’s boss. He had access to some of the most highly classified material in the country. The means to tap into phones and computers. Usually if someone in that position dies in suspicious circumstances the intelligence community is all over it. That didn’t happen.’
‘Are you saying it was a cover-up?’
‘I’m saying they didn’t even do the basics. They didn’t ask the usual questions. There was no inquiry. I kept pushing for one and was told the intelligence community was satisfied with the police report. It was made very clear to me that I should just let it drop.‘
‘But you couldn’t, Trev?’
‘No. And in my own time, and in my own way, I began to look more closely at what Ben had been doing. He had been accessing deeply sensitive material on our system and was covering his tracks along the way. And he was very good at it.’
Dunkley smiled. ‘Kimberley always bragged that she was one of the best in the business.’
‘Almost as good as me, mate.’
‘So what did you find?’
‘I found myself on the dole queue. I was made redundant, with no explanation.’ Harris paused. ‘So what have you got?’
Dunkley pulled out the plastic crypto card.
‘I’ve got this.’
A pair of iMacs purred into life.
‘I prefer to have two running, an old habit from DSD days,’ Harris explained.
Dunkley perched on a leather dining chair he’d dragged across the room.
The page opened on a file of encrypted documents. Harris smiled in professional appreciation.
‘I trained that guy well. He put some serious effort into making this a hard nut to crack. I’m sure I can open them but that’s going to take some time. Let’s have a look at what your girlfriend discovered.’
The two read in silence. It was quite a tale.
It was the late ’60s, the height of the Cold War. Vietnam was escalating and Whitlam was making inroads into the national consciousness as a would-be prime minister.
A small cabal of Canberra mandarins was fretting at the prospect of Gough winning the 1969 election. So they formed a group, the Alliance – its name a salute to the security pact that was their sacred text – and began to meet regularly with the serving American Ambassador.
Names that had long vanished from the public gaze came tumbling out of Celia’s summary.
William Marshall, a former head of Foreign Affairs who’d served several stints in Washington during an illustrious career that stretched back to the agency’s tenure as ‘External Affairs’. The Queen had gonged him for ‘public service leadership’.
Nathan Martin, a top-line spook, once the head of Australia’s domestic spy agency, ASIO, and then its foreign cousin, ASIS.
Richard Althurst, who’d logged three decades at or near the helm of Defence, through to the early ’90s. He’d been rewarded with a plum job as Australia’s Ambassador to NATO.
Darcy Guinness, another mandarin with feet in the intelligence and defence camps. He was stationed overseas for a decade before his appointment as head of ASIO from 1977 until 1984. Howard had considered appointing him Ambassador to the US after his ‘96 victory but had apparently been talked out of it.
Gavin d’Alessio, a former paratrooper who’d turned Defence into a fearsome budget-gouging machine. The second-generation Italian courted controversy when he later snared lucrative contracts with several global ‘gunrunner’ firms that he’d dealt with as head of the military.
Thomas ‘Bulldog’ Charlton, an infamous public service chief who’d floated in and out of Foreign Affairs during a forty-year career. He was renowned for stonewalling when parliamentarians came snooping on even the most trivial matters.
‘Wow, quite a line-up, Harry. Very impressive. They would have sunk some dollars into the Commonwealth Club.’
‘Sounds like a cult, dreaming up coups over G-and-Ts, all very cloak and dagger. But how does it link to the present?’
‘That, my friend, is another very good question.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Canberra
The first hint of dawn washed into the House of Representatives, a shimmer of light on a scene of parliamentary chaos.
For fourteen brutal hours the Toohey Government and Bailey Opposition had fought a war of attrition over the mental health reforms. The chamber, where the nation’s laws were debated and written, may as well have been washed in blood. MPs were tired, emotional and impatient to escape the capital. A roster of speakers had struggled to keep order amid the pandemonium.
The previous afternoon, a successful ploy by the government’s Manager of Business, Burt Crespo, to suspend standing orders had forced the MPs to stay. The Labor warhorse had delivered an impassioned speech, declaring, ‘no one in this place should sleep soundly in their beds until this nation lives up to its duty of giving justice to the mentally ill’. But while Crespo had the numbers and the guile to ensure the House kept sitting, he didn’t yet have sufficient backing for the legislation.
Labor had pulled every procedural trick in the book and filibustered the debate to keep the chamber running. Behind the scenes the Prime Minister and his team fought to cobble together an alliance that would deliver victory. The Manager of Opposition Business was counter-punching, trying to terminate proceedings as Emily Brooks schemed to kill the final vote.
Frantic whips from both parties had struggled to keep their unruly teams in check. Dallas Bairstow had been dragged back from hospital and was under house arrest in his office, with a Liberal and a National MP assigned to escort him to and from the toilet.
Every Labor MP h
ad been instructed to stay awake and within a brisk four-minute walk of the chamber, as failing to make a division before the doors were locked could spell disaster. Unfortunately it was harder to stop exhausted and homesick MPs drinking and some of the small-hour speeches had been train-wrecks.
Around 4am there’d been a near disaster when the bells rang for a division and an eagle-eyed whip told Crespo that one of his charges was missing.
‘Who?’
‘Xavier Quinn.’
Crespo rolled his eyes.
‘Of course.’
There were no prizes for guessing what the over-sexed Education Minister was up to, but the question was where? He should be able to hear the bells from anywhere in the building. Except . . .
‘The Meditation Room!’ Crespo yelled, unnerving nearby MPs as he sprinted from the chamber.
Crespo had been a useful rugby league centre in his youth and he hit full pace as he dashed along the glass-walled corridor that led to the marble-floored Members’ Hall. He fixed his eyes on the call buttons of a little-used lift.
He hit ‘UP’ like an Olympic swimmer ending a race as he counted down the moments he had left to capture the errant minister and drag him back before they were both stranded on the wrong side of locked doors.
Elephant 200, elephant 199 . . .
Once inside, he pressed the ‘M’ button and moments later a soothing recorded female voice intoned ‘Mezzanine’. The next female voice he heard didn’t sound so relaxed.
‘Yes! Yes! Xavy . . . ohhh!’
Crespo recognised the voice as belonging to Quinn’s twenty-something press secretary, the latest in a long line. Happily they were so overcome with lust that they were disporting themselves within reach of the lift doors. Equally conveniently, the position they had assumed made it relatively easy to disentangle the MP.
‘Hey! What the . . . I’m busy!’
It must have been the adrenalin. Somehow Crespo managed to manhandle Quinn into the lift before the doors closed, leaving a startled press secretary hitching up her knickers in their wake.