The Twentieth Man

by Tony Jones

  ‘It’s hard to believe you’re Frank’s daughter,’ he said finally. ‘I was expecting someone as ugly as him. Your mother’s genes must be dominant. Lucky for you.’

  ‘Right, well …’

  ‘Tell him this from me: a man as ugly as him does not deserve such a pretty daughter.’

  Anna was momentarily lost for words.

  ‘And tell him he owes me a lunch.’ McHugh smiled for the first time. ‘Actually, you better say that first. It’s been a while. Sit, sit, sit!’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Frank says I should hear you out. Usually I fob off old friends when they contact me about their children.’

  Anna wondered if McHugh was a Party member. It hadn’t occurred to her until then. Her father hadn’t mentioned it; but, then again, he wouldn’t.

  ‘He tells me you’re after some advice,’ McHugh said. His tone was mild, but she was still intimidated by his exceptionally bright eyes. ‘You’ve been working in news for, what, a bit more than a year?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Anna.

  ‘So, tell me, did Charlie O’Brien give your group “the speech” when you started?’

  ‘You mean “geometric points”?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ McHugh laughed, switching to an imitation of O’Brien’s rasping voice with its tones of rural Queensland: ‘If you want to be a news reporter for the ABC, there’s one bloody rule you have to remember … You, you and you … You are geometric points … There follows a long pause, right?’

  Anna smiled and nodded, recalling the punchline: ‘You have position, but no magnitude!’

  McHugh laughed again. ‘Position, but no magnitude. You’ve got to hand it to him. No one ever forgets it.’

  Anna laughed too at the memory and McHugh’s perfect mimicry.

  ‘Charlie O’Brien,’ he went on. ‘He’s old school.’

  ‘He is that,’ Anna agreed. ‘He once told us to imagine ourselves standing on a soapbox in front of a million people, and then he asked how we’d feel about giving the crowd the benefit of our personal opinions. He said that’s the size of the audience for the national morning programs, and if you’re the kind of person who wants to tell the world what you think, you might as well bugger off now.’

  McHugh nodded. ‘Do you find that idea restrictive?’

  ‘No,’ she said carefully. ‘I’m not interested in my own opinions. I’m interested in stories and I’ve got a good one.’

  ‘Go on then,’ he encouraged her. ‘Tell me a story.’

  And so she began: ‘You’ll know from what’s already been reported that nine Australians were killed or captured in Bosnia by the Yugoslav Army in June. They were part of a group of nineteen or twenty men sent in as guerrillas to start an uprising against the communist government.’

  ‘Yes, well, Four Corners did a program about it.’

  ‘Last month the Yugoslavian ambassador sent the attorney-general an aide-mémoire on the Bosnian incursion, with a list of Croatians in Australia they claimed had orchestrated the raid and other terrorist acts.’

  ‘That’s right,’ McHugh said. ‘I know that a bunch of homes were raided in Sydney and Melbourne. We followed the story closely. Where are you going with this?’

  ‘I’ve found out that ASIO has advised the attorney-general that he should disregard the Yugoslavian document. But the Commonwealth Police believe it contains, and I’m quoting here, “a core of irrefutable fact”.’

  McHugh interjected. ‘Whoa! What’s your source for this?’

  Anna paused. ‘A Commonwealth policeman. Working in intelligence.’

  ‘How senior?’

  ‘He’s senior enough to read direct communications between the police commissioner and Attorney-General Greenwood.’ Then she added, ‘But I don’t want to identify him.’

  McHugh made a placating gesture with his hands. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Please continue.’

  ‘I should have said that the insurgents in Bosnia were killed by the Yugoslavs, but not all at the same time. Some of them were shot dead in running battles with the army and some were captured. I understand that those caught have all been executed. All of them were ethnic Croats living in Australia or Europe, but the Commonwealth Police believe the incursion was planned in Australia, the largest group was recruited here, they trained here, and most of the funding came from here.’

  McHugh leaned forward, engrossed now. ‘Did your source give you any Commonwealth Police documents about this?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Anna said. ‘But I think he will.’

  ‘Without a document it’s all unsourced and off the record.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed.

  ‘Easily dismissed by Ivor Greenwood.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I need some time to develop this. But there’s more.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The police know who the culprits in Australia are. They’re all part of a network of the wartime Croatian fascist movement, the Ustasha. They have a clear leadership structure here—’

  McHugh interrupted again. ‘This has all been speculated on in the press.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna curtly. ‘What hasn’t been reported is that the Commonwealth Police believe these Croatians are being protected by ASIO. If that’s true, it’s outrageous. The Ustasha are a protected species of terrorists able to plot and plan unhindered, while our security services look the other way.’

  ‘Your source has told you this?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the point. The police are ropeable, absolutely incensed by it, at daggers drawn with ASIO.’

  McHugh stared at her, considering the implications. ‘Well, if you can make this stand up—and that’s a big if—then it is a serious story with significant political repercussions. Before we go on: how did you manage to put all this together while working for News?’

  Anna had thought about how to answer this. ‘I got to know about the Ustasha when I was at university.’

  ‘Frank tells me you were editor of The Tribe.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure that’s why they took me on here.’

  ‘Now you’re impatient to get on with things?’

  ‘You said yourself: this is a big story.’

  ‘Potentially,’ he emphasised. ‘Only if you can stand it up.’

  ‘They won’t even give me a chance to do that in News. Charlie O’Brien thinks I’m some kind of radical upstart. That’s why I came to you. You’re not afraid to upset the government.’

  McHugh smiled at the implicit flattery. ‘What’s ASIO’s supposed motive in protecting these people?’ he asked. ‘Just because they’re anti-communists?’

  ‘It’s more complicated than that.’ Anna drew a breath. ‘It goes back in time.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘To the end of World War II.’

  ‘I’m still listening.’

  ‘After 1945 Western intelligence agencies started recruiting agents among the war criminals hiding out in DP camps in Europe. They already knew the next big conflict would be with the Soviets. No one knew then if that was going to be a hot war or a cold war. They were just preparing for the coming conflict. They wanted anti-communists who already had networks in communist countries. Who better than Nazis and fascists from puppet regimes like the Ustasha in Croatia? Many of them had been indicted for war crimes, but the spies decided it was better to make use of them than hang them. In many cases their crimes were covered up; they were given clean papers and safe haven in countries like Australia. And once they were here they set up their own fascist networks.’

  ‘People have been making allegations like this for years, your father among them. Do you have any proof?’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘I do.’

  8.

  George Negus jogged up the stairs two at a time. Lionel Murphy was the leader of the Opposition in the Australian Senate, but that still didn’t entitle his press secretary to a proper suite of rooms in the rabbit warren of Canberra’s Parliament House. It rankled Negus that he w
as housed in a basement office that was little more than a cupboard. It was blatant disrespect, not just for him personally but also for the Labor Party.

  He thought about this every time he ran up and down the stairs. He ran because everything was urgent now. There was an election coming!

  The born-to-rule Libs and their oafish country cousins would soon get their comeuppance. Their long ride on Pig Iron Bob’s coat-tails was over. McMahon was a fuckwitted prime minister. The whole country was on to him. There were some things you just couldn’t hide in front of a TV camera.

  The smarter Libs knew they’d made a monumental mistake giving him the leadership. Halfway up the stairs Negus got his mantra going: Fucking Liars, Fucking Liars, Fucking Liars.

  He turned down the corridor, accelerating now. Under his arm was a manila folder full of the parliamentary questions Murphy had demanded he prepare. They were good questions, a bucketload of hard questions, a bucketload of shit to tip on Greenwood’s head.

  The attorney-general had locked himself into a series of lies. The Ustasha? They’re just a myth. Organised terrorism? My word, there’s no evidence of that! Bombs in Sydney? It’s an inconvenience, to be sure, but let’s wait and see what the police say.

  Fuck me dead! What choice did the man have but to lie and lie and lie again? All the way up to election day.

  Fucking Liars, Fucking Liars, Fucking Liars.

  The office door flew open and Negus strode in. Daphne Newman stopped typing and looked up. She imagined that Negus had styled himself on Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, without the slouch hat. But he did have the long hair, the drooping moustache, even the tasselled suede jacket, plus a kind of wild-eyed Hopperian madness that the senator seemed to appreciate. All of it played in a lower antipodean key.

  ‘Morning, George.’

  ‘G’day, Daphne. Where’s Maureen?’

  ‘She just took tea and bickies into the meeting.’

  ‘Oh, right. Who’s in there with him?’

  ‘Senators McClelland, Gietzelt and Wheeldon.’

  ‘The Three Musketeers.’

  ‘You can put it that way, George.’

  ‘That’s what Arthur Gietzelt calls them, anyway. That kettle still hot?’

  ‘Have a look, you might need to heat it up. Have you got something for us there?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Negus took a sheaf of carbon copies from the folder and handed them to Daphne. ‘These are the questions Lionel wanted for today, still unallocated. I did them in a bit of a hurry. Could you check for mistakes and type them up properly for the tactics committee?’

  ‘He’s expecting you in there,’ said Daphne. ‘Should we wait until after the meeting for changes?’

  Negus was annoyed at the question. ‘I wrote these. They won’t change.’

  He was waiting for the kettle to boil when another door opened into the narrow office space and Maureen Barron appeared carrying a big teapot on a tray. Lionel Murphy was behind her. When he spotted his press secretary, he held the door open.

  ‘George, you’re here,’ he said with a smile. ‘Will you come in and join us?’

  ‘Sure, I’ve got today’s questions. I’ll just grab a cuppa.’

  ‘Don’t leave us waiting,’ Murphy said and pulled the door closed.

  ‘God forbid,’ Negus replied.

  Armed with a tea mug, a biscuit and his sheaf of papers, Negus entered Lionel Murphy’s office to find the four senators engaged in passionate discussion. John Wheeldon was talking. The man didn’t like being interrupted, so Negus quietly took a seat at the side of the room.

  ‘Someone needs to stop that bloviating buffoon Billy Wentworth.’ There was cold anger in Wheeldon’s voice. ‘Did you see that rubbish in the Herald? He wants us to believe this was all the work of communist agents provocateurs.’

  ‘Tito wouldn’t do that,’ said Arthur Gietzelt. ‘Blow up his own people? No way. Yugoslavia is a model of tolerance. Have you seen their nude beaches?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Arthur—nude beaches?’ John Wheeldon had the ascetic look of a clever priest and the manner of a professor. He turned to his friend, not unkindly. ‘Leave off with the hero worship. Tito holds that damned country together with an iron fist.’

  Gietzelt adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses. ‘He’s a maverick,’ he said. ‘We should look to him as a friend. That’s all I’m saying.’

  Negus regarded Gietzelt with caution. The man looked like an old-fashioned shop steward, but his bumbling manner concealed the hard core of a zealot. These senators, who gathered here regularly, constituted Murphy’s political brains trust. Arthur Gietzelt couldn’t match the intellectual firepower of the others, but he was a tough left-wing factional operator and Lionel Murphy’s numbers man.

  ‘We need to be careful who we declare as friends, Arthur,’ Jim McClelland counselled. ‘Whatever else he might be, Marshal Tito is an out-and-out dictator.’

  Gietzelt shrugged, but refused to let the issue go. ‘Do you know my great-grandfather was a corporal in the Austrian army? He told his son that there’ll always be wars in the Balkans, they’ll never stop. He said to him, “You must leave. Find a place to live where there are no wars.” That’s why my grandfather came to Australia ninety years ago. Whatever you think about Tito, he stopped the wars. While he’s in power Yugoslavia won’t be torn apart again.’

  McClelland sighed. ‘And how do you think he keeps all the nationalists in check? Why do you think so many of them ran away to Australia? They’re still coming.’

  ‘You’re both right,’ Lionel Murphy pronounced, bringing the discussion back to the matter at hand. ‘Tito stamps on nationalist dissent, and some of those who ran away and ended up here are extremists, prepared to do acts of terror. But here’s the political reality. We are months away from an election and the government has left itself seriously exposed by the way it has responded to the Sydney bombs. They will carry this albatross around their necks all the way to polling day. We must be relentless. We can’t give them an inch.’

  John Wheeldon jumped back in. ‘That’s exactly what I was saying before we spun off on to the Tito tangent. There are dangerous ratbags in the ministry, right up to the prime minister himself. They refuse to accept there’s a problem, and that idiot savant Billy Wentworth has modelled himself on Joseph McCarthy!’

  ‘That’s a bit strong, Senator,’ Negus blurted out. ‘He seems like such a duffer.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate him, George,’ Wheeldon retorted. ‘Wentworth’s on an anti-communist crusade. Do you know he went privately to ASIO and convinced them to give him a list of every communist on the Vietnam Moratorium Committees? Then he persuaded them to conduct warrantless searches and surveillance on all those people. They tried to pull the whole anti-war movement apart. Of course, he’ll be out on his arse after the election. The ones we really have to worry about are the unelected spies who’ll still be there. Our real unfinished business is with ASIO.’

  Lionel Murphy stood up behind his desk, a theatrical gesture. He walked to an old bookcase and pulled from it a legislative document—the ASIO Act, 1956.

  ‘Well, John, I agree we should be angry about that,’ said Murphy, flicking through its pages. ‘But if you’re suggesting that laws were broken, they were not. Under its own Act, ASIO does not require warrants for searches and surveillance, only for telephone intercepts. It’s all in here. We’ll never be able to prosecute them for putting our friends under surveillance or breaking into their houses. That was all legal. What we must do is to make them accountable to government, to our government. That will be our priority when we win. We’ll make them transparent. I’ll force them to open all their secret files on anti-war protesters and politicians. The Sydney bombs will focus the minds of voters. Why did ASIO devote so many resources for so many years to chasing peaceful anti-war protesters while dangerous terrorists were left free and unmolested to plot and plan their next outrages?’

  Arthur Gietzelt could barely contain himself. ‘John’s
right!’ he interjected loudly. ‘ASIO is run by our ideological enemies. It is literally riddled with them. They operate as a branch of conservative politics; they collect information on us for our political beliefs—on everyone who’s against the war, for God’s sake. Even the mothers in Save Our Sons! We can’t leave them be. Heads must roll. Why should they even continue to exist?’

  Murphy put up a hand to stop him. ‘We had that debate at the party conference, Arthur,’ he said evenly. ‘You have to let it go. ASIO must be reformed. But we need it to exist precisely to stop the kind of events that happened in Sydney on Saturday. Our priority right now is their political masters—the attorney-general, in particular.’

  ‘That’s right, Lionel, but we need to consider our approach to Greenwood.’ McClelland spoke judiciously, his brain calibrated to the courtroom. ‘Greenwood’s constructed an elaborate legal argument. Simply put, he’s saying that no facts can be asserted until the police complete their investigation into the bombing.’

  ‘He’s just a bullshitter!’ Negus cried out. ‘That must be obvious to everyone by now.’

  ‘George, I disapprove of everything Ivor Greenwood stands for. Of course I do,’ McClelland countered. ‘His argument is a charade, but he does have a point. We believe the bombs were set off by Croatian extremists—all logic points us in that direction—but where is the proof? No one has been caught. No one has confessed. There is no concrete evidence.’

  ‘We do have the material from the ABC last night—Anna Rosen on Agenda,’ said Negus. ‘The mainstream press still haven’t picked up on it yet.’ He turned to Murphy. ‘She’s the one I arranged for you to talk to on Sunday, Senator.’

  ‘She is indeed,’ said Murphy. ‘Anna Rosen. Frank Rosen’s daughter.’

  Arthur Gietzelt looked up in surprise. ‘Frank Rosen? Really? His daughter works for the ABC?’

  Murphy nodded. ‘She says she’s not a Party member. I believe her.’

  ‘I didn’t know that she was part of the Rosen dynasty,’ Negus said thoughtfully. ‘I might have thought twice about sending her to see you.’