by Tim Ayliffe
McKenzie, hopeless and weak, nodded his head.
‘You can’t do this, you fucking barbarians!’ Bailey shouted.
‘Please, Mr Bailey. Such foul language from an educated fellow like yourself.’
Bailey had volumes of bloody images reluctantly stashed in his brain, but he’d never witnessed an execution. ‘Don’t do it. Don’t! This isn’t how you get what you want!’
‘Enough!’ The calm, polite tone of his captor’s voice was gone. ‘You’re here as an observer, Mr Bailey. Don’t make me change my mind.’
Nausea climbed from Bailey’s stomach into his chest and throat, burning acid that made him gag. He closed his eyes, not wanting to be in the room. Not wanting to see what they wanted him to see.
‘Go on, Douglas . . . we’re recording.’ The man behind Bailey instructed the shell of a man on the other side of the room.
‘The United States . . .’ Weak and despondent, McKenzie faltered as he began to speak. ‘The United States –’
‘Don’t do it!’ Bailey shouted at him.
‘The United States and its allies have the blood of the innocents on their hands. Women . . . children . . . ordinary Iraqis . . . wanting to lead a pure life, free of the decadence of western culture.’
McKenzie sounded like someone who had given up on life a long time ago, alone in the horror they had prepared for him.
‘I know now, Mr President. We came in the name of freedom, but it’s that very freedom . . . we’re depriving. I now know the wicked ways –’
‘Don’t do it!’ Bailey couldn’t listen any more. He yelled for McKenzie to stop. ‘They’ll kill you anyway! Don’t do it! Don’t –’
He was silenced by a punch to the stomach that forced the wind from his lungs. Just as he tried to take a breath, gaffer tape was slapped on his chin, across his lips and around the back of his head, round and round until he could no longer make a sound.
‘It’s America that’s doing wrong here . . .’ McKenzie’s vacant, faltering declaration continued. ‘And I pray to God for forgiveness . . .’
Bailey had closed his eyes, hoping the darkness would switch off the noise.
‘Do you hear him?’ the man whispered in Bailey’s ear. ‘You can close your eyes, John Bailey, but you can hear him. He knows the wrongs of his people. He knows what they have done. What he has done. He understands now, and he will pay a very high price.’
The room fell silent. Maybe Bailey’s wish to numb his senses had worked.
‘Watch!’ Someone was clawing at his eyelids, forcing them open.
He tried to look away, but he couldn’t. The man in black shoved a blade into McKenzie’s neck. Small like a kitchen knife, sharp enough to eventually kill him. McKenzie had enough time to scream, but all he could manage was a sickening gurgling sound.
Bailey sat up in bed, woken by a vibration somewhere in his room, sweat streaming down his face and stinging his eyes. An empty bottle of whisky was dumped, clumsily, on the bedside table.
He let out a deep sigh and turned his body until his feet hit the floor.
Fucking Fallujah.
Bailey recognised the vibrating noise – his phone. He walked around the room, trying to get a sense of where the sound was coming from. His pants.
Just as he reached into his pocket the phone stopped. He looked at the screen – twelve missed calls from the same number. A number he didn’t recognise. The phone started vibrating again.
‘Yeah?’ His voice was husky from the whisky.
‘John Bailey?’
He didn’t recognise the voice. ‘Yeah.’
‘It’s Michael Anderson. We need to meet.’
‘Who?’
‘Michael Anderson.’
Michael Anderson. Michael Anderson. Bailey knew the name but his brain was struggling to process information. Whisky will do that.
‘I want to talk to you about Catherine Chamberlain.’
Michael Anderson.
Bailey was wide awake now and the rush of adrenalin helped his brain to catch up. ‘I’m listening.’
‘Not on the phone.’
‘Mate . . .’ Bailey swallowed. His throat was so dry that he was struggling to speak. ‘Mate, I don’t even know you.’
‘Yeah, well, you’re just going to have to take that chance.’
‘Why?’
‘Because someone is setting me up . . . because I know things.’
‘What things?’
‘You’re just going to have to trust me.’
Bailey rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand. Fuck it.
‘Okay, when?’
‘Now. Palm Beach. South end, near the pool. Park your car there. I’ll find you.’
‘Palm Beach?’ Bailey looked at his watch, it was just after two o’clock. ‘I’m in the east. It’s going to take me a while.’
‘Shouldn’t be more than an hour at this time. See you soon.’
Anderson hung up.
Bailey put on his pants, grabbed yesterday’s shirt and rummaged around on the floor in the dark until he found his car keys. He wasn’t in great shape to get behind the wheel. But this guy had a story to tell and Bailey wanted to hear it.
CHAPTER 7
Sydney, Wednesday
Palm Beach was a good place to hide out in autumn. More than half of the houses nestled in the bushy hills were holiday homes, so when the cooler months arrived only the permanent residents remained.
The locals were a private bunch. Half of them were families who had been there since the days when Barrenjoey Road was still a dirt track. The rest were either running from the city hustle or eastern suburbs yuppies who just had to have a weekender.
Bailey didn’t know anyone who owned a holiday house at Palm Beach, but he knew the place well from the days when his parents would take him and his younger brother, Mike, there as kids. Sometimes, they would take a ride on a seaplane and, afterwards, the boys would chase crabs on the rocks and eat fish and chips by the ferry. Good times, happy memories.
The boys were everything to Ros and Jack Bailey. John didn’t make it easy for them. He was the wild one, always in trouble at school. Fist fights in the playground, chasing girls, drinking and smoking marijuana. Bailey had infuriated his father when he decided against going to university and instead slung a rucksack over his shoulder and headed overseas for an adventure. He loved watching and experiencing the world beyond the one that he knew. It was why he became a journalist.
Mike was only a year younger than Bailey and, even though they did most things together, somehow Mike had kept out of trouble. When he wasn’t surfing, he was playing rugby or studying. He was humble, and everyone, including his teachers, would say that he was destined to do something special with his life.
Mike had gotten into medicine at Sydney University and was out celebrating with his mates when their car lost control and hit a tree on a winding stretch of Mona Vale Road on the northern beaches, not far from the cemetery where he lies today. Three of the boys died instantly. Mike had hung on for two weeks. Bailey was working in a bar in Lagos when he heard the news. He came home in time to watch his brother die in hospital.
It had been almost an hour since Bailey had left Paddington headed for Palm Beach. He knew that he was getting close to the rendezvous point with Anderson when the traffic lights disappeared and Barrenjoey Road narrowed and started to wind through thick bushland along the edge of the Pittwater.
Driving past the ferry wharf, Bailey couldn’t stop thinking about Mike. Kicking a footy on Concord Oval after watching the Waratahs take down the Reds, and later, sharing their dreams about one day being good enough to wear a blue rugby jersey in that stadium. For thirty years Bailey had lived without his best mate, the guy who’d understood him, the one person whose advice he’d listen to. Maybe Bailey wouldn’t have been such a selfish bastard had his little brother not been ripped out of his life when he was still figuring out how to be a man.
Bailey rounded the bend past the golf cour
se on the surf side of the peninsula. He could hear the crunching waves of the Pacific smashing into the sandbank. The street lamps were dangling along the beachfront, beaming an orange mist of sea spray across the road.
He kept driving until he reached the dead end at the southern end of the beach that the locals called kiddies corner, and parked beneath one of the giant pine trees that lined the sand.
Bailey looked out the window. It was a clear night and, away from the smog of the city, the stars were burning brightly. The beach was empty, which wasn’t a surprise given it was three o’clock in the morning. This end of the beach was protected from the wind, and the sea was still, with only the slightest breeze licking the tops of the small waves that rocked into the little cove.
He got out of his car and walked towards the rocks by the pool.
There was no point looking for Anderson. He would find Bailey.
It didn’t take long. His phone vibrated – a text message.
Turn around and walk up the path behind you.
Bailey did as he was told. A street lamp showed the way to the start of a pathway that wound up the hill away from the beach and into darkness. He started walking, his eyes slowly adjusting to the night. Aided by the shimmer of the moonlight, he weaved around the branches reaching across the track.
‘Bailey!’ A loud whisper. ‘Over here.’
A man wearing jeans, a hooded sweater and a baseball cap stepped out from behind a bush and into the moonlight. As he drew closer, Bailey noticed the stubble on his chin.
‘Long way to come for a quiet chat.’ Bailey extended his hand and Anderson shook it.
‘Had to be this way.’ He sounded more nervous than on the phone. ‘I saw your article online last night and remembered your Iraq reports. Thought I could trust a bloke like you.’
‘You can.’ The compliment made Bailey rue the three years he had wasted. It didn’t matter because he was back at work. One day down. ‘Let’s talk.’
‘How much do you know?’ Anderson asked. ‘I presume it’s more than I read online.’
‘I always know more than I write. But you first.’
Bailey had driven a long way in the middle of the night and he wasn’t about to risk not getting anything for his trouble.
‘Okay.’
‘I’m listening.’ Bailey was surprised by how easy this was, although it was Anderson who had requested the meeting.
‘Catherine was murdered and I . . .’ He paused.
‘Take your time, mate.’
‘I think it . . . I think it was because of me.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘I’d been seeing her. Started as a call girl thing,’ Anderson said. ‘You know what it’s like in a job like mine – no time for real life.’
‘Not really.’ Bailey instantly regretted sounding judgmental.
Anderson didn’t seem to care. ‘She told me to stop calling her Ruby Chambers, call her Catherine, and stop paying for visits. I wouldn’t call it your conventional relationship.’
That’s one way of describing it, thought Bailey. But he kept his mouth shut this time.
‘For the past six months we went out from time to time. It wasn’t always about the sex, either.’
Bailey felt like a priest in the confessional and he was becoming irritable as he sobered up. ‘This is all interesting to know but –’
‘Wait.’ Anderson held up his hand. ‘It’s important for what happened next.’
‘Which was?’
‘Work stuff. Gary Page – he’s not all he seems to be.’
‘You mean an arrogant politician who’s had a lick of the power lolly and wants his own candy store?’
Anderson laughed. ‘Funny. Not untrue, either. Page is a very powerful man within the party. He’s also an ideologue. A man wedded to ideas.’
‘I know what it means.’
‘Sorry. Just trying to make the point that it’s not just about power for Page. He’s not one of those MPs who just wants to be prime minister.’
‘I’ve never met one who didn’t – and I’ve met a lot.’ Bailey also struggled to recall a politician that he liked. ‘But you know him better than I do.’
‘Page had been disappearing for regular meetings that he wouldn’t tell me anything about, the type of meetings that didn’t get recorded in his diary.’
‘Know who with?’
‘I’m getting to that.’ Anderson stepped closer. ‘I knew he was meeting with someone off the grid, not uncommon for a senior minister. It could be polling stuff, cabinet reshuffles – who’s in and who’s on the nose inside the party. I didn’t ever question him. Then one day after we’d knocked off the best part of a bottle of scotch in his office, he asks me what I think about allowing Chinese military exercises up in the Northern Territory, a permanent rotation to let them build support infrastructure to regularly move in and out.’
‘Boots on the ground? A permanent presence? Seems odd to me.’
‘Odd’s an understatement. We’re already copping shit from the Americans about leasing the Darwin Port to a company linked to Chinese Defence, given we’ll soon have two and a half thousand American marines training up there as part of a deal we struck with Washington.’
Anderson was good on the detail.
‘So, what’d you say?’
‘I thought he was joking! We’re America’s little brother in the region. An agreement like that would severely damage our relationship with the United States and send a fairly blunt signal about where our future priorities might lie.’
‘I’d say that would be a fair interpretation.’
‘Page wasn’t laughing. He said I needed to think about the geopolitics of the Asian century, and how Australia fitted in.’
‘What happened next?’
‘Not much, really.’ Anderson shrugged. ‘Never mentioned it again.’
‘I don’t get it. How does Ruby – I mean Catherine Chamberlain – fit in? And you haven’t got to these secret meetings yet. Off the grid or not, it doesn’t mean anything unless you know who these people are.’
‘Person – singular,’ Anderson said. ‘The Chinese Ambassador, Li Chen.’
‘Okay, now you’ve got my attention.’ This really was worth the two-hour round trip in the middle of the night. ‘Go on.’
‘Six private meetings in four months, and they’re the ones I know about.’
‘And?’
‘Since when does a defence minister meet with an ambassador without the knowledge of the PMO?’
‘Not often, I’d imagine.’ Official meetings are always recorded and sanctioned by the Prime Minister’s Office. Bailey had sifted through enough Freedom of Information documents to understand the protocols.
‘Never.’
‘What about Catherine Chamberlain?’
‘She’s the only person . . .’ Anderson’s voice changed whenever the discussion turned back to his dead girlfriend. ‘She . . . she was the only one I told about this.’
‘What’d you tell her?’
‘And now she’s gone.’
Bailey could see that he was losing him.
‘It wasn’t your fault, mate.’ He tried to sound supportive, but he needed more information. ‘What’d you tell her?’
‘Sorry.’ Anderson’s cheeks were glistening. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘This isn’t easy for me.’
‘It’s okay, mate, take your time.’
Anderson turned his back on Bailey to collect himself. They’d stepped off the track and were standing beside a thick bush that had been clipped back to keep the path clear.
‘Meeting with Li was one thing,’ Anderson said. ‘But hearing Page sound off about military exercises and the Asian century – I had to tell someone. I had to say it out aloud, just to check that it was as crazy as it sounded in my head!’
He paused again, this time to look up at the stars.
‘This next bit’s off the record. Actually, all this is off the record.’
He turned back to Bailey. ‘I just wanted to tell you in case anything happens to me.’
‘I’m in no hurry to print any of this.’ Bailey knew that he didn’t have a story. It couldn’t just be Anderson’s word against the world.
‘I presume you know your boss dropped me at Catherine’s flat?’
‘Yep. We talk, from time to time.’ Bailey couldn’t resist having a dig at Gerald, even though he was tucked up in bed with Nancy.
‘We were at the consul-general’s house in Bellevue Hill and Page pulls me aside, tells me I’m fired.’
‘He sacked you?’
‘As good as.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘He said I’d been talking too much. Tells me to take some leave and consider my position.’
‘Say anything else?’
‘Just that he couldn’t trust me and that I didn’t understand the future. So I’m thinking, is this guy bugging me? I mean, I hadn’t told a soul. Not one person! Other than Catherine, this stuff had been inside the vault.
‘And then I thought, no.’ Anderson was shaking his head. ‘He couldn’t have put a tap on me. No way – too risky. It had to be the Chinese.’
‘This is all pretty speculative, mate.’
‘Yeah, I thought so too. Then Catherine turns up dead and my house has been turned over like a bomb’s hit it!’
‘When?’
‘Not sure, exactly. I’m guessing it must have been at some point that night.’
‘You didn’t go home?’
Bailey was quick with his questions, leaving no time for Anderson to think about what to hold back.
‘No, not straight away. I walked up to the Cross, had a few more drinks. When I eventually made it home, the sun was coming up. After I saw the mess, I grabbed what I could and cleared out in case they came back looking for me.’
Bailey was still unclear about the they.
‘What’re you going to do now?’
‘What do you mean? Until the police realise I was the last person to try to see Catherine and put out a warrant for my arrest?’
‘I was getting to that. I would’ve been a bit more subtle.’