How I Became the Mr. Big of People Smuggling

by Martin Chambers

  ‘That’s our answer, then. Tell him Palmenter wants him dead and he’d best get outta here and lie real low for a very long time. Without the cash.’

  ‘Don’t you get it? It’s all bullshit. Palmenter made it all up. Or most of it.’

  ‘So don’t give them anything.’

  I shook my head. Newman had asked about the money with no sense of threat or extortion. A payment would normally be taken care of by Palmenter and if I was now station manager, it was something I ought to know about.

  ‘Must be one of those brown envelopes. They’ve got about fifty grand in them.’

  ‘Okay. Give him one of those. No more.’ Spanner looked away to the midday glare. ‘Fuck. Well, I’m not giving up my money.’

  Funny how we get to own things after such a short time. All he had done was help me shift a body. Bury a car. But I agreed with him because half of the money was mine and I had decided that a million was enough for me. So what if I had come about it illegally? Wasn’t that exactly how Palmenter got it? I felt no lesser attachment to that money than if I had worked years and years in this godforsaken place and saved the pennies out of each pay.

  ‘You’re better with words than me,’ said Spanner. ‘I’ll go get him, bring him in there. We threaten him, give him fifty grand for the work with the chopper. Let’s hope that’s the end of it. Better fuckin’ be, ’cause I’m outta here next week.’

  So that is what we did, and it went about how you’d expect, that is, not at all. Firstly the pilot was in on it and the two of them must have had wind of something, that Palmenter was going to do the nasty to them, because while the pilot stood guard over the chopper, Newman and a new guy who looked like a tattooed Viking came into the office together. The Viking stood by the door like a statue with his arms folded and a duffel bag at his feet with the handles rolled open like he might want to get something out quickly. Two things occurred to me. One was that Palmenter didn’t expect me to succeed and that he would not have minded if I had been shot instead. The second thing was that he had probably planned to coerce Spanner to knobble the chopper so it went down somewhere over the Gulf country. Private mustering choppers went down all the time and this one, flying low and unseen by coastal surveillance radar, would crash unnoticed. The crew would perish, if not in the crash, shortly after of thirst, or hunger, or crocodiles.

  ‘Palmenter wanted you dead,’ I said, ‘but I talked him out of it.’ Newman raised his eyebrows at that. Nobody ever talked Palmenter out of anything. ‘He’s left me in charge now, gone to look after other things. I promised him I’d sort things here. You wanna set up your own operation, fine. You wanna go to the Feds, fine. We’ve got things pretty well organised here and you can do what you like. But just so you know what you’re dealing with.’

  It was all bluff. I was thinking all I’ve gotta do is get them to leave, then we are outta here. If the statue went for the gun I thought he had in the bag I’d rugby-tackle him and we stood half a chance. I wished we hadn’t buried Palmenter’s pistol with him.

  The Viking statue didn’t move but they exchanged the smallest of looks, or rather, Newman glanced across. In that glance was my confirmation that they were in on something.

  ‘Like fuck,’ said Newman. ‘Anyone gunna be dead it’ll be that arsehole Palmenter.’ He looked at me, into me. Like he knew. ‘Why did you send these ones south again? I thought that was over.’

  Before I could answer Spanner spoke. Did he know what was going on? I sure didn’t.

  ‘New policy,’ said Spanner. ‘They are people too and we just want to give them a chance. He’s in charge now,’ he pointed at me, ‘so that’s the new policy.’

  ‘What about the hunters?’ asked Newman.

  Recently after each of the musters Palmenter had been bringing in groups of hunters and using the chopper to fly them out to far reaches of the station where they could hunt wild boar, water buffalo, or even feral camels. I knew how poorly the station finances were and this seemed a reasonable way to earn a bit of extra income. That Newman was thinking about that meant he had already accepted the new way with the imports.

  ‘Hunting is off for now,’ said Spanner. ‘So we won’t be needing the chopper again. We can pay you for the cancellation.’

  Newman made a dismissive gesture. He glanced again at the statue and there was a barely perceptible change, as if the statue was now of softer granite.

  ‘They won’t be happy. This Palmenter’s idea?’ he asked.

  ‘Not your problem,’ I said. ‘We’ll deal with it at this end.’ The groups that came hunting with Palmenter were tough-looking men but I was trying to appear tougher. Didn’t matter. Soon we would be gone.

  ‘So it’s back to the old way,’ Newman said. ‘Well, I don’t disagree. That was what we argued about.’

  When Newman said this it was like he pulled the pressure switch. The room defused. Suddenly I knew what this was all about. Palmenter, as usual, had only told what he wanted to tell. This was not about a rival operation or going to the cops or even about the money, this was about the chopper becoming redundant now that Palmenter met the imports somewhere near the coast with the vans. This was Palmenter finding out that Newman disagreed with him over something trivial and then realising that he no longer depended on Newman, so deciding to remove him.

  From the way that he dismissed Spanner’s offer of payment for the cancellation, I saw that this was not about money for Newman. For Palmenter it was about the money. Whatever way he could maximise the profit was fine by him and the human cargo was just that. Cargo. The vans hadn’t been going to the city because supplying the vans and maps and the trip to the city and then collecting and redelivering them to the station was a cost Palmenter saw as unnecessary. It was years later standing with Spanner above a tidal creek that he told me what had actually been happening, but for now I thought I understood. Newman and Palmenter had argued, and nobody won arguments with Palmenter. It was me who was supposed to deliver Palmenter’s final say. I never wondered how he planned to continue without Newman because I didn’t know then about the boats. I found out later that there are plenty of people willing to bring in boatloads but for now that wasn’t my problem and it wasn’t going to be.

  At Newman’s signal the Viking handed the bag over to me. It was full of cash. He and the Viking shook my hand.

  ‘Welcome on board. We’ll see you in ten days.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Next lot from Timor in ten days, then another coming from Indo already on the water.’

  ‘Oh. Sure. Okay.’

  After the chopper had left and before we went to join the others in the canteen, Spanner and I discussed what to do. Abscond with the cash immediately? How far would we get before someone came looking? There was a new chopper crew perhaps already in the area waiting for Palmenter’s signal. A new delivery in less than two weeks.

  ‘Fuck, what the fuck’s going on? Newman is paying Palmenter, yet Palmenter wanted me to get rid of Newman. And he’s got two more boats coming in. I can’t see how he’d do it without Newman or the chopper.’

  ‘Might have been a plan to remove you. You know he’d never make you manager.’

  The room went cold. Why did he say that? Did Spanner know Palmenter planned to send me out to the pit thinking I was armed when in fact I was going to my own death? Was that why Newman turned up with a bodyguard? Had someone told him something? No. Not Spanner. Spanner knew nothing about it, and anyway, the gun was loaded. Palmenter meant for me to shoot Newman and bury him at the pit and then run the thing without a chopper. Save money. It was no more than a test. A test that if I passed would bury me even deeper in Palmenter’s world. And if I failed?

  ‘You still think we need to wait around a while? We could take off now. Have a big party tonight. Get everyone drunk. Roll up some of Cookie’s finest. By the time they wake up we’ll be well gone.’

  ‘There’s no vans left. You can take Bitsy, but I’m waiting for Charles to bring back somet
hing decent,’ Spanner said. He turned to leave. ‘I need a beer.’

  ‘Then we can take off just before the next lot, when the vans come back but before anyone comes asking for Palmenter.’

  ‘Nup. If we do that someone will come looking for us. Place crowded and no Palmenter, no one to run the thing and you and me gone, having just told Newman you are in charge. Chopper in the air and us only a day ahead? They can hardly go to the police, but if they come looking for us, you know what will happen.’

  ‘You think we have to run this next one? Get the vans back, do the whole deal?’

  ‘No one else can do it. Charles is already on his way. Plus, we can’t abandon them out here. And if we do one, we’ll have to do both. If the second boat’s already on the water it will be less than a week later.’

  ‘You can drive a long way in a week.’

  ‘Not far enough.’

  He was right. We would have to deal with this next lot and then after that, or the same problem would arise. To not do so would have made a lie of all our talk of being the new managers and the plan to revert to the old way of business. Maybe we could have worked a way to get an extra serviceable vehicle but as soon as Spanner and I absconded with our cash we left the whole operation high and dry. We would be implicated as soon as it was discovered Palmenter had disappeared.

  One boat had left Timor and another was on its way from Indonesia. Spanner and I would hang around as the refugees on these boats landed and Newman flew all seventy-eight of them in from the coast. We didn’t know yet how much we could trust Newman. After all, Palmenter had said that they – Newman and his pilot Rob and now this Viking character – had threatened to set up a rival operation and although I’d believe anything over something Palmenter said, we had to be careful.

  Also, if we didn’t do these two imports, what would happen to the refugees? At best, they would wind up under arrest and in a detention centre where it would take years to process their claim. At worst? I thought of those five who had perished in the desert. None of them had any idea how harsh and remote it was and if they tried to get somewhere on their own they were sure to die. We owed it to them to get these last two boatloads to a new life.

  That was how Spanner and I became business partners. We would stay and run these next two arrivals.

  11

  It probably sounds to you now as you read my story that life at the station was pretty bad. But much of the time Palmenter was not there and we just got on with living and working and making our own fun.

  With Palmenter away, the place wasn’t too bad. You know, how the day to day can keep you busy and you don’t have to think about all the big stuff, all that is going on in the world that, of course, you’d rather not be happening, you’d rather there wasn’t war and famine and murder and rape and all the other stuff that humans do to each other. And all the stuff that the world throws at us. Floods, disease, drought. Earthquake. Isolated as we were, it was as if none of that stuff was happening and we were simply working on a remote cattle station that did a few more musters than usual. The bits when Palmenter arrived and strutted around, when Margaret and the girls were hidden in the homestead, they were a quirky sideline business of a difficult boss. And things like Arif, or those five dead men out on the track: if you didn’t think about it you could cope with it. It wasn’t as if we could do anything about it.

  Only Spanner and I knew that Palmenter was never coming back. We waited a nervous ten days for something to happen, each day a little less tense than the one before. We, I, had got away with it. The phone rang a couple of times but I didn’t answer it. Unless Palmenter was here it wouldn’t have been answered anyway because he never let anyone into the office.

  We told Cookie to get ready for another lot. I was pretending I was in charge so I tried to get Simms to help with the paperwork but he was hopeless, so I left him to clean the rooms and wander about. I couldn’t even send him on a bore run, unless we sent him in Bitsy and we didn’t want to do that. Spanner and I were keeping Bitsy fuelled and ready out behind the gene pool. We figured if it came to it we could escape overland, although that was something I didn’t want to think about because it brought back the terror of that time out on the road, with Palmenter roaring towards me in the car with a loaded gun on the dash, and that led to scenes of us in Bitsy being hunted down and shot at from the chopper.

  Spanner spent those ten days trying to do something with a gearbox. He had in mind some way of making Bitsy a bit faster. Quite often I’d go down to see him, to chat. I noticed he wasn’t drinking and it seemed odd, he had engine parts on his bench and no beer, and instead of muttering to himself or the metal he worked quietly on it. I told him that the reason he couldn’t fix it was that he didn’t have a beer.

  To maintain the charade of being in charge – who for, Cookie and Simms? – I spent the days in the office marking up the false papers and drawing sets of maps and directions for the trip south. I didn’t like to be in the office. I felt trapped. We would hear if a chopper or a car arrived but not with enough warning to escape. Spanner would get away from the shed but if I was in the office there was only the window to escape through if someone came in the front. Despite the midday heat I worked with the window open and planned to run and hide under the laundry if anybody came.

  But no one did. The phone rang out a few times, and then Charles arrived after a whirlwind trip to Melbourne. He had collected six vans on the truck. He told me the people at the warehouse had run out of money and had not heard from Palmenter. Until they got more cash there would be no further vans. I gave him the duffel bag with twenty thousand in it and told him to leave as soon as he could to collect another load, because the next import was hot on the heels of this lot and we would need transport for them all.

  Early next morning the chopper came in and then every two hours until the last trip late in the day. Newman arrived on that last trip and handed me another duffel bag. This one had a hundred and twenty thousand in it. He almost ran over to me where I was directing the imports to their rooms.

  ‘Getting late, gotta fly back before it gets dark. See you in two weeks. Tell Palmenter he better sort out his boys.’

  I had no idea who Palmenter’s boys were and I didn’t care. All we had to do was get through the next two weeks.

  Rather than send the whole lot off in a convoy that was sure to arouse suspicion, we sent them off over three days, one each morning and evening. There were thirty-two of them, so we filled all six vans. I put six in the first five and then chose four for the last van. I was going to go with them.

  Spanner was aghast when I told him I was heading to Melbourne to see my family and that I’d make sure I was back in time for the next, and final, muster.

  ‘You can’t do that! What if you get picked up?’

  ‘I’ll just say I’m hitching.’ I’d already thought about that. ‘Or I’ll drive and say I picked them up hitching, didn’t realise they were illegal.’

  He threw his hands in the air. ‘What are you going to do there anyway? She’s gone. Been sent home. You won’t be able to see her. Forget her, mate, she was just a holiday fling.’

  Spanner never called people ‘mate’. I was angry at him for saying she was just a holiday fling but his calling me mate distracted me. He had seen straight through me when I said I wanted to see my family. It was Lucy. But him calling me mate, there was something else. Spanner was furious. He thought I was doing a runner, that I was abandoning him and was never going to return. He’d be left alone on the station and eventually, when either the police or Palmenter’s ‘boys’ arrived, he would have to tell them that a bloke named Nick Smart had shot and buried Palmenter. When I left there would again only be Bitsy or the grader, or the dozer out at the pit. He would be trapped.

  ‘I will come back,’ I promised. ‘I’m not taking the money.’

  He looked at me angrily.

  ‘I wasn’t going to take it anyway. I can’t risk carrying that amount with a bunch of ref
ugees. I will come back and we will run this last one, then we take off. You go your way, I go mine. Charles will be back in a week. I gave him money to buy good vans. When he gets back, send him south straight away because he won’t fit enough on in one trip.’

  ‘Think you’re fuckin’ in charge.’ He was short. Then, calming down somewhat, ‘I guess I’ll have to go buy my fishing camp now.’

  Maybe that was the real thing. Spanner didn’t actually think I’d do the dirty on him. It was that I was forcing him to act. Without Palmenter and if you didn’t think too deeply, life was pretty good.

  We left early the next morning. I took a leaf out of Palmenter’s book by going quietly, before anyone was up. They would all soon learn I was gone, but only after the fact. I drove the east track, out across the spinifex country to Morgan’s Well, then south along the boundary. There were five of us. Their names were Zahra, Tariq, Noroz and Emma. They did not know each other before the boat trip and I have no idea if they have stayed in touch, but I will never forget them.

  We didn’t talk much, not at first. I thought perhaps they didn’t speak English. I drove for seven hours, eating Cookie’s sandwiches as we went and only stopping when I needed a toilet break. I made a joke about girls to the left, boys to the right. They looked at me puzzled.

  ‘Toilet,’ I said, pointing to the wide red plain in front of us. We were a few hours from the Stuart Highway. It was midafternoon but not too hot. The sky was cloudless blue. I mimicked peeing. There is nothing so glorious as peeing under the wide open sky, the beautiful relief of letting go out in the open like somehow that’s how it’s supposed to be. I miss that.