Greater Good

by Tim Ayliffe

  Bailey knew the area well. The hospital was attached to the University of Sydney campus, where he’d signed up to play rugby but had spent most of his training sessions at the little student pub called The Alfred less than a hundred metres away. It was tempting, but he wanted to see Dexter.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be inside?’

  Bailey turned and saw Ronnie Johnson lighting a cigar on the footpath.

  ‘Visiting hours are over, mate,’ Bailey said.

  A cloud of smoke floated around Ronnie and he puffed until the tightly rolled leaves began to simmer.

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that, bubba. They wouldn’t let me in.’

  Bailey stared at him, wondering what he was up to.

  ‘I presume this is a self-checkout?’

  ‘How’d you know?’ Bailey was slightly unnerved by Ronnie’s ability to know more than he should.

  ‘Checked your chart.’ He took another puff of his stogie. ‘You’re fine, by the way.’

  Bailey couldn’t stop himself from laughing.

  ‘Drink, bubba?’

  ‘Can’t. Got somewhere I need to be.’

  ‘Your special detective friend?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I’ll drive you. Car’s over there.’ Ronnie pointed at the Toyota Corolla parked in the No Standing zone up the street, hazard lights flashing.

  ‘That my car?’

  Ronnie shrugged. ‘You weren’t using it.’

  They didn’t talk much during the short trip to Dexter’s house. Old friends don’t mind the silence.

  But Bailey did want to know one thing. ‘Are you going to retire for real this time?’

  ‘What do you mean? I am retired.’ Ronnie kept his eyes on the street.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, so you’ve been saying. But we both know it’s bullshit.’

  Ronnie cleared his throat, as if he was going to say something else. Then stopped.

  ‘Ronnie? What?’

  ‘Here we are.’ Ronnie pulled the car over by the white picket fence outside Dexter’s little grey cottage in Leichhardt.

  ‘What were you about to say?’

  ‘Ask me again, bubba. Maybe in a few months.’ That was the closest to the truth that Bailey was ever going to get.

  ‘Okay, mate.’ Bailey clicked open his door. ‘You staying at my place tonight?’

  ‘That okay?’ Ronnie tapped his half-ashed cigar through the open window. ‘I’ll sleep on the couch, just in case.’

  Bailey was surprised that, right now, he actually liked having Ronnie around.

  Bailey was still standing on the street after his car had disappeared around the corner. He hadn’t given much thought to what he would say to Dexter when she opened the door, or whether he’d say anything at all.

  He opened the gate and walked the short distance from the fence to the patio steps. Another few feet, he could knock on the front door. Dexter would appear, she’d be happy to see him, they’d go inside and all would be okay.

  Bailey stopped walking and started looking for reasons to turn around. It was late – almost ten-thirty – too late for a pop-in. It had been a traumatic few days for Dexter, too. She probably wanted to be alone.

  Bailey turned and began to walk back towards the gate. Maybe he’d go and get that drink at The Alfred, after all. The old university pub, for old time’s sake. A whisky – two-finger pour. Maybe a few beers to wash it down. Maybe. It’s not every week that you almost get killed. Although, if you were John Bailey, the chances of it happening were higher than most.

  Click.

  There was a noise behind him.

  ‘Bailey? Is that you?’ Dexter was standing at the front door.

  He turned around, embarrassed, looking for a reason to be walking the other way. ‘Hi Sharon, I thought I saw the lights off. Didn’t think it was, you know, didn’t know if –’

  ‘You’re an idiot, John Bailey.’

  In the semi-darkness, Bailey couldn’t tell if she was smiling, or scowling.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m an idiot.’

  ‘Are you coming in, then?’ It was a smile, not a scowl.

  Bailey reached into the pocket of his coat and withdrew a small – no, a tiny – bottle of red wine. ‘I didn’t come empty-handed.’

  ‘Did you steal that from the hospital?’

  ‘Well, it depends on your definition of stealing,’ Bailey said. ‘Technically, it was provided.’

  ‘And aren’t you due out tomorrow?’

  ‘How’d you know?’ It seemed to Bailey that everyone was better briefed about his condition than he was.

  ‘I visited you today. You were asleep and I didn’t want to wake you. How else do you think that bag of clothes made it beside your bed?’

  Bailey’s heart sank into his chest. There was so much goodness in Dexter that he was frightened to step inside. She deserved better than him. She really did.

  ‘Sharon?’ He didn’t know what he was going to say next. ‘What . . . what are we doing?’

  ‘You tell me, you silly old fool?’ That was Dexter – strong, confident and willing to take a chance.

  ‘I mean,’ Bailey stumble ‘are we, are we doing this? What do you want?’

  Dexter sighed and stared at the complicated man standing in her front garden. Hopeless and brilliant. Full of love and full of shit. But the most just man she had ever known.

  ‘What do I want?’ Dexter paused. ‘I can tell you what I don’t want. I don’t want to look past tonight. But tonight, I want you to come inside.’

  ‘I won’t argue with that.’

  He walked through the door and handed her the tiny bottle of shiraz.

  ‘You might want to give that some air.’

  EPILOGUE

  Matthew Parker loved the ocean. He loved swimming in the big blue pond, the waves and the creatures that thrived beneath. He loved the smell of salt and the cleansing layer of crust it left on his skin after the breeze blew it dry. The ocean was nature’s bathwater, and the prime minister visited the beach whenever he could. To run, swim or surf. It didn’t matter. The beach relaxed him. Helped him to rationalise his thoughts and sort through the crap.

  Parker had spent most of his childhood on the sand at Manly Beach. His father had bought him his first surfboard when he was barely old enough to carry it from the car to the shoreline. That Aloha twin fin was his pride and joy and it was shaped to last. He was never much of a surfer and, as he grew older, the boards got longer. The longer the board, the easier it was to stand up. These days he surfed a ten-foot Malibu.

  The problem with Manly was that it was always crowded. He couldn’t put his foot on the esplanade without being stopped by someone with ideas about how he should run the country. He had always listened, or at least he had mastered the art of pretending.

  When Parker had something serious on his mind he would find a beach further north where he could be alone with his thoughts. And so it was on this humid January morning when he climbed in his car, he headed for Palm Beach. He didn’t care that his security detail had to make the forty-kilometre journey from Kirribilli House at five o’clock in the morning. They were paid to do a job – to protect the prime minister, no less – and they should have been used to it by now. This was Parker’s sixth trip to Palm Beach in two weeks.

  With parliament in recess, he was taking an extended summer break and he had a lot to think about. He parked his car on the thin strip of peninsula at the northern end of the beach that separated the surf from the Pittwater. This morning he would stick to the routine he had developed this summer and run the sand dunes below the lighthouse before taking a swim.

  ‘Stay here. I want to be alone,’ he told his security detail. Rob and Chris, or Paul. He could never remember their names. He didn’t need to. It was his time and he didn’t want anyone ruining his sunrise.

  The sand crunched and squeaked beneath Parker’s toes as his feet pressed into the track that led to the bottom of the sand dune. The sun had started to move on the ho
rizon, bathing the top of the dune in a warm orange light.

  The sand was still cool underfoot. By lunchtime, under the full rays of the sun, it would be piping hot. Today was supposed to be a scorcher.

  Parker knew that the secret to running sand dunes was making sure your footprints were evenly spaced to create a natural staircase. You had to pound the same holes on the way up, while avoiding them on the way down. Eventually, the sand would stop shifting underfoot and you could get a rhythm. If you messed up your foot holes it wouldn’t be long before your muscles ached and, at Parker’s age, brought on a cramp.

  Exercise helped him clear his head. But after a tumultuous seven months his trusted remedy wasn’t working, and the stress was keeping him awake. Bo Leung was dead and Ambassador Li Chen had disappeared. The People’s Republic was yet to provide an official explanation about Ambassador Li’s absence, other than to say that he would not be returning to his post in Canberra. Corruption was not well received in the new China, and Parker knew that State Security had its own way of fixing problems outside of the judiciary.

  He was also furious at Gary Page’s stupidity and even angrier about the fact that he needed to protect him, if only to keep his prime ministership intact.

  The evolution of Operation White Dragon from an ideological fraternity to a powerful reality was to be his crowning achievement in life. He was going to be the man who changed the world. There was nothing corrupt or treasonous about it. The re-balancing of the globe away from the idea that there could be only one lone super-power was a moral imperative.

  The United States had inherited its throne through the ashes of the wars of the twentieth century. Now there needed to be a new world order, a genuine uniting of nations that could only be achieved through the creation of new partnerships – military, diplomatic, economic. One nation should not lecture the world about the merits of a capitalist system that has allowed bank CEOs to get paid fifty million dollars a year, while a cleaner is paid seven dollars an hour. The United States of America was faltering and failing its people. The world needed better leadership and more leaders.

  But the mission had changed.

  Page had broken the pact they had made back at Princeton. Matthew Parker’s ambitions were stalled, but they weren’t dead, unlike his old friend, Bo Leung. The only way back was to hold on to power, keep his government together, and wait.

  America’s new president was spending another fifty billion dollars a year to maintain his nation’s military supremacy, even though the United States already had more nuclear weapons than every other nation combined. But global power wasn’t about nukes any more. It was about territory and trade – two areas where Washington was floundering, and Beijing was growing.

  Matthew Parker was preparing to do something no Australian prime minister had ever done before. He was turning his back on America.

  He would not be supporting joint military exercises with the US and its allies in the disputed waters of the South China Sea. For China, this would amount to a declaration of war. And if America’s president wanted to be the bully and follow through on a threat to make Australia choose, Parker would choose Australia’s largest trading partner, China.

  He climbed the sand dune for the twentieth time, his legs achy but strong, the sweat pouring down his back. He looked at his watch. He’d been running for thirty minutes, faster than yesterday.

  He stopped at the summit, the dune all to himself, and looked down at the stairs in the sand. The foot holes were perfect. It was a shame that by day’s end they would be blown away by the southerly.

  Parker could see a group of runners heading along the track towards him.

  Fuck off. The little voice in his head was snarling at them. This is my mountain.

  The runners would want to talk to him as soon as they realised that the person building a staircase in the distance was the prime minister. Why wouldn’t they?

  Parker wasn’t in the mood for small talk, not even at a moment like this when he knew they would be impressed by his athleticism. Find him another world leader who had just run twenty sand dunes at six o’clock in the morning.

  He took off his singlet and began jogging slowly down the side of the hill towards the water. The big January swells were yet to arrive and the waves were small. North Palm Beach could be a dangerous place to swim because of the strong currents that pushed the water along the shore before pulling it back out to sea like an escalator alongside the rocky headland. Parker knew this beach well and, in a two-foot swell, he wasn’t worried. He spotted his two security guards hurriedly walking along the beach towards him. They didn’t miss a thing.

  He dropped his singlet on the sand and ran into the sea. The initial chill of the water tightened his skin and mellowed the warm fuzz of the endorphins from his run on the dune. He dived through the shallow water until it was deep enough to start swimming and it wasn’t long before he was out past the breakers.

  He swam towards the horizon, rolling over his arms in a freestyle stroke, the water getting deeper and darker the further he went. There were no shark nets at this end of the beach. He wasn’t worried about that, either. There had never been a shark attack at Palm Beach and the thought that he might become a statistic hadn’t even crossed his mind.

  He stopped swimming about two hundred metres from the shore and turned onto his back so he could float and look up at the sky. He was truly alone now. The glassy water had relaxed his muscles and he was enjoying the moment, closing his eyes, listening to the gentle lapping around his body. Even if he had opened them, he wouldn’t have seen the shadow lurking below. It was too deep. And the shadow was moving quickly.

  Rob and Chris – and those were their names – were standing on the sand next to the prime minister’s singlet. Both had their right hands raised to shield their eyes from the sun that was now shining brightly from the east. The glare on the water made it impossible to monitor their boss floating on the surface. It was so bright they missed the splash when he was pulled under.

  It all happened so quickly that Parker didn’t even get a chance to scream. In one lethal manoeuvre he was spun around and driven to the bottom of the sea, arms pinned by his sides, rendering him helpless. He could feel a heavy weight on his back holding him down, his face pushed into the sand. His lungs were burning, the saltwater stinging his throat. Parker kicked his legs and tried to wriggle free. It was no use. He could feel the water entering his lungs. Exhausted by the futility of the struggle, he stopped resisting. Through the darkness, he could see a pair of large hands locked together across his chest. Those big hands were the last things that he saw.

  He pulled himself up onto the rocks at the back of the headland. He didn’t have much time.

  It had taken fifteen minutes to swim back from the beach and he knew the helicopters would soon be in the sky searching for any sign of the prime minister. They’d find him, unless the sharks got to him first.

  He disconnected his oxygen tank and lifted it into the small dinghy that he’d jammed between two boulders at the base of the cliff. He tossed in his flippers and goggles, and unclipped the hunting knife from the holster on his wetsuit. Luckily, he hadn’t needed it. They wouldn’t find a scratch on Parker’s body when they pulled him from the water. It was perfect.

  He surveyed the rocky ledge to make sure he didn’t leave anything behind. Tins of food, water bottles, tracksuit, the small bottle of whisky and the plastic survival blanket he’d brought in case the nights were cold. All were packed in the small bag that was fixed to a cable inside the dinghy.

  He had prepared for a quick exit once the job was done. There could be no traces.

  He reached down and picked up the cigar he had stubbed into the rock the day before, threw it into the boat and splashed seawater to wash away the ashes. Then he removed the steel peg he had hammered into the rock to secure the dinghy, tossed in the rope and climbed in.

  The engine started with the first pull of the cord. He turned it to full throttle a
nd headed northwest towards Lion Island. The tide was coming in. He should be able to make it back to Pearl Beach inside an hour, load up the boat on the trailer and keep heading north. After all, he was supposed to be on a fishing holiday.

  There was nothing else on the water at the mouth of the bay. The fishermen had headed out to sea hours ago and he was too far north for the kayakers. He was alone out there, which was exactly how he had wanted it to be.

  When his dinghy rounded the western side of Lion Island, he reached into his bag for a fresh cigar, sparked up and took a few deep puffs to calm the adrenalin.

  Ronnie Johnson was a professional and he had taken an oath. Even so, this job had shaken him to his core. It was a shadow operation – an order straight from the president’s desk. He’d done them before.

  Ronnie had been watching Matthew Parker for months, looking for an opportunity to take him down. The Australian Federal Police didn’t protect the prime minister in the same way the Secret Service guarded the president’s every move. The heightened threat posed by radicalised Islamists had led to tighter security around Parker, but he was still exposed to danger from someone who knew what they were doing. Someone like Ronnie Johnson. He just had to make sure that it looked like an accident.

  By the time Parker had made his third trip to Palm Beach, Ronnie was up on the headland watching him. Parker kept the same routine each time. A run on the dune followed by a swim.

  Ronnie had spent seven nights sleeping on a rocky ledge before he made his move.

  It was a targeted assassination, ordered by a new president with a new way of doing things. For Ronnie Johnson, it was cold-blooded murder, whichever way he reasoned it. But he didn’t care. He wasn’t worried about being judged, because he didn’t believe in God. He had nothing to fear but life itself. Raised by Oklahoma Baptists, he had heard all of the arguments about faith. The added richness in life and a ticket into heaven when you’re done. He never bought any of it.