The Twentieth Man

by Tony Jones

  When he saw the plane touch down, Negus climbed out of the car. He was anxious about the meeting, worried about the bond of trust between himself and Murphy. He still couldn’t get over the fact that both the boss and Milte had kept him in the dark. He was going to have to deal with that sooner rather than later.

  A single policeman held back a large jostling media pack, bristling with cameras and microphones behind the terminal gates. They were anxious because there was still time to feed footage into the evening news bulletins. Negus knew this was just a taste of what was to come.

  The raid on ASIO had been the most radical move so far by the new government and there was no question there’d be political damage. Murphy had overturned the chessboard when the government was in a dominant position. He’d scattered pieces all over the place and now it was time to put them back. The trouble was that no one would ever agree on how the board was set before he’d done it. All the careful plays they’d made had been lost. They’d have to go back and start the game again.

  When the plane finally came to a stop, stairs were rolled up to it. Lionel Murphy was out first. The two cars moved to the foot of the stairs. Negus looked over to the media pack and saw two photographers push through the barrier.

  ‘We’ve got to move, Senator!’ he called.

  With the first two snappers already sprinting across the tarmac, there was a mass breakout of TV crews and reporters. Murphy was quickly hustled into the back of the car as the first of them arrived but Negus was caught outside the vehicle.

  ‘The attorney-general will not be making a statement at this time,’ he said to the phalanx of cameras. As he climbed into the car he noticed Ian Leslie from Channel 0 News.

  ‘Senator Murphy, why’d you raid ASIO?’ the reporter called.

  Negus slammed the door shut, but he realised he’d forgotten to wind up the window.

  When Leslie stuck a microphone through the opening as the car began to move, Negus yelled at him: ‘Ian, I’ll wind the window up on your hand if you do that!’

  As he withdrew his hand from the rapidly closing window, Leslie let go of the microphone and left it dangling inside, tapping on the glass. Ahead of them the police driver hit his siren and the pack scattered. As the Comcar accelerated into the gap, Negus saw that the microphone was still attached by a long cord to a cameraman who was now running alongside, screaming at them.

  ‘Stop!’ called Negus as the cameraman fell back. The fellow was either going to have to let go of his precious equipment or get dragged along like a man tied behind a horse in an old Western. At the last second the driver hit the brakes. Negus unwound the window and threw out the microphone, and the car took off, illuminated by the multiple camera flashes.

  Lionel Murphy watched through the back window as the media pack receded into the distance, before turning back to Negus. ‘I thought that went very well,’ he said, pushing his ruffled hair behind his ears. ‘It’s good to have you back, George.’

  It was 11 pm when the locksmith parked his van, as directed by Marin Katich, across the road from a plain house in a quiet street in Yarralumla. Marin had followed Barbara Dunning here to her home one afternoon after she had shown a group through the carillon. She lived in a modest three-bedroom cottage with a well-tended garden in one of the suburb’s less fashionable streets.

  Over three days he had followed her from a distance. At the island, he’d observed her through his binoculars as she locked up the carillon’s entrances and then dropped the bunch of keys into her handbag. While watching her house he had gauged her habits and got a read on her life. He stole some of her mail, steamed it open and discovered that she was a widow. Her husband had worked in the Treasury Department. She had no mortgage and lived modestly on the spousal pension she inherited when he died. It appeared that Barbara was childless. She had a Persian cat she lavished affection on, but mercifully no dogs or lovers. She got four pints of milk delivered each week and he assumed the cat drank most of that. There had been no visitors to her home over those three nights, and Marin had watched all the lights go out in the half-hour period between 9.45 and 10.15 pm. Each morning at 6.30 am she took a walk to the lake.

  Her social life revolved around St John’s Church in the nearby parish, and she seemed to be close to the vicar and his wife. She played the organ there on Sunday and practised twice a week. And, of course, there was her volunteer work at the carillon two days a week, which must have seemed wildly exotic when she first began learning to play the bells.

  He had no reason to think that she would change her habits on a Friday night, and so he had met the locksmith at the agreed location and driven to Yarralumla in the man’s covered van. The locksmith’s name was Ante Jurjevic. He was no relation to the merchant seaman Marjan Jurjevic in Melbourne, the devoted enemy of Marin’s father.

  ‘I have everything we need to make a new set of keys,’ Jurjevic told him. ‘I only need the originals for a short time to make duplicates.’

  When they arrived, Marin saw that he had been wrong to make assumptions about Barbara Dunning. A car was parked in her driveway. The lights were still on in her living room and he heard faint music through the closed windows. He told the locksmith to stay put, pulled on a balaclava and crept into the front yard. He crawled through the garden bed to a large hibiscus below the window and peered inside.

  The blinds were drawn, but through a gap at the bottom he saw two figures gently writhing on the couch. Barbara’s skirt was hiked up to her waist. A pair of hands moved inside her knickers, gripping her arse. There was a bottle of whisky and two glasses on the coffee table. The cat was stretched out on the back of the red couch, licking its paws. A soprano sang in German. A Bach cantata, he wasn’t sure which one. As the two figures shifted position, pulling apart for a moment to look at each other, Marin recognised the vicar’s wife.

  Some time elapsed before the music stopped and he heard the arm on the turntable retract. Barbara stood up from the couch, bending to kiss her lover. She went to the sideboard, flipped the record and set it going again. Marin noticed her black handbag on the sideboard.

  Barbara pulled the vicar’s wife gently to her feet and embraced her. Pulling apart to murmur something in her lover’s ear, she took her by the hand and led her from the room. The cat followed them a moment later.

  Marin moved in the shadows to the back of the house, where he found the door unlocked. Once inside, he heard the sounds of lovemaking and moved quickly to the living room. The carillon keys were in the black handbag.

  He left the house swiftly, pulled off the balaclava and found the locksmith dozing in the van. He opened the door and shook the man’s shoulder.

  ‘I have them,’ he said.

  They climbed into the back of the van and Jurjevic tugged a dark curtain across the driver’s compartment before switching on a small working light. He worked fast, carefully matching each key to one of his large stock of brass blanks and applying his skill to filing perfect duplicates.

  ‘The lights are still on,’ Jurjevic said as he worked. ‘Can you get these back safely?’

  ‘They will be busy for some time.’

  Jurjevic paused, a sly expression distorting his plain face.

  ‘I should have brought the camera,’ he said. ‘We could make a little money on the side.’

  Marin stared at the man but gave nothing away. Of course it made sense that the locksmith would have a side business in blackmail. He suppressed the impulse to throttle the rodent.

  Jurjevic bent to his work without another word; it took him twenty minutes. He threaded the duplicates on to a ring and handed them over.

  ‘Wait here,’ said Marin.

  He was back in the kitchen when he heard the bedroom door open and bare feet pad into it. He moved silently into the living room as the kitchen light went on. The vicar’s wife, her back to him, naked and vulnerable, poured a glass of water at the sink.

  ‘Bring the whisky, darling!’ Barbara called from the bedroom.

/>   Marin heard the light get switched off in the kitchen. He crept ahead of the woman, sliding past the partly open door to the main bedroom and into the kitchen where he heard the woman padding down the corridor behind him, the bottle and glasses clinking in her hands.

  ‘Come back to bed,’ said Barbara, as the woman entered the bedroom and pushed the door shut with her foot.

  Marin’s heart was thumping. He moved fast, replaced the keys and left the house.

  Anna filed her story on the raid for the first edition well ahead of the 11 pm deadline. Barton read the copy and congratulated her. It was a first-hand account, crisply written and full of material he hadn’t seen anywhere else.

  Tom Moriarty had come through for her in the end, with vivid detail of the events inside ASIO Headquarters. She was still upset at the compromise she’d been forced to make, though, which meant she left out the story of how he had handed over his briefcase to Murphy. She would definitely come back to that. There were secrets within this story that she was determined to get to the bottom of.

  ‘Great work, Anna. This will be front page for sure,’ said Barton. ‘Did you see those late pictures of Murphy dodging the press at Sydney Airport?’

  ‘I did. George Negus was with him, but he wasn’t in Melbourne.’

  ‘I know, that’s really strange,’ said Barton. ‘Why did Murphy go to Sydney?’

  ‘His wife Ingrid was moved down there this morning and put under police protection.’

  ‘That’s not in your story.’

  ‘She’s heavily pregnant. Due to give birth any time now. I thought it was enough to say they’d received death threats. Why tell the enemy where she is?’

  ‘Just put in a par near the end saying that his pregnant wife is under police protection at an undisclosed location.’

  ‘If you insist, Paul, but—’

  ‘It’s part of the story, Anna. Nothing like this has ever happened before.’

  She went back to her desk, rolled a cigarette and smoked it as she added the extra par.

  Olney had already gone on to Friday drinks. McKillop and Tennant were finishing a joint story on the political fallout from the raid.

  ‘You coming for a beer?’ McKillop asked her.

  ‘I’m pretty buggered, Bruce,’ she said. ‘I was up at 5.30. I’ve got to get some sleep.’

  Anna headed back to her room at The Wellington. As she climbed between the fresh sheets and pulled up the covers, she recalled the saying about falling asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow. It was her last conscious thought before it happened to her.

  31.

  Marin Katich approached The Wellington Hotel from the unlit gardens to its south-east. It was close to 2 am and the place was quiet; there was no activity in the forecourt. He scaled the single-storey annexe and paused to get his bearings in the moonlight. Then he crept around the concrete edges to avoid the loose gravel laid on its roof.

  At the main building, he climbed into one of the front-facing balconies. He moved stealthily to the other side of it, climbed around into the next one and then repeated the action until he was in the dark landing of the last balcony. He went to the pair of doors and found they were open.

  He crept over to the bed in the centre of the room and looked down at the sleeping figure. He bent over the bed and whispered, ‘Anna.’

  She stirred and he spoke again, a little louder. ‘Anna, wake up.’

  She was startled awake by a blinding light, red then white as the bedside lamp came on. She felt herself clamped to the bed, her head pushed back into the pillow by a hand pressed over her mouth. Her heart was thumping. Over the top of the hand, she saw him with a finger pressed to his lips.

  ‘Don’t shout,’ he said.

  Anna’s eyes widened, full of disbelief. Could it really be him? She must be dreaming.

  ‘It’s me,’ said Marin. ‘It is. I’m so sorry to have scared you. It was the only way. I’m going to take my hand away now, okay?’

  Anna nodded.

  The moment he released her, she sat up with a flurry of movement. She punched him as hard as she could in the side of the face. He reeled back as she struck again and again. Then she was up on her knees in such a fury that she knocked him backwards on to the bed.

  He didn’t resist her as he lay there, except to block the worst of the blows aimed at his face, his chest and arms. He covered his face with his forearms until her blows began to subside. Then she pulled his arms apart and cried into his face. ‘How dare you! How fucking dare you!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Anna. I’m so sorry.’

  She was kneeling over him, both hands on his ribs. He flinched in pain as she pressed down on the fractures, but she didn’t notice. Her own body was heaving as tears spilled out and ran down her cheeks, dripping on to his chest.

  Finally she slumped against him, quietly weeping, her head buried in his neck. She could feel the drumbeat of his pulse against her cheek. After a while he wrapped his arms around her and they lay there, clinging to each other.

  Then her hips began moving in a slow rhythm, and he responded.

  ‘This won’t work. I can’t lie here with you, Marin,’ said Anna, removing herself from his embrace. ‘We have to talk, and we can’t do it in bed.’

  She threw off the sheet and got up. Suddenly conscious of her nakedness, she pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. Marin climbed out the other side, retrieved his clothes from the floor and dressed himself without a word.

  Anna sat on a chair, pulled her legs up to her chest and held on to them. Marin took the chair opposite her and she began.

  ‘Why did you leave me?’

  ‘I had no choice.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that.’

  ‘It’s the truth, Anna.’

  ‘Not one word from you in two and a half years. That’s a choice.’

  ‘I had to let you get on with your life. I couldn’t be with you anymore. I was given no choice. That was taken away from me.’

  ‘And from me!’

  ‘From both of us.’

  ‘Except that you know why and I don’t have a clue. I woke up in hospital and you were gone. Disappeared without a word. Do you know what that feels like? You talk about truth. You owe me the truth, Marin.’

  ‘I did something that day that put me in their debt.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. They had me by the throat—’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘—They still do.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘The sort of people that you can’t talk about …’

  ‘Fucking spies?’

  ‘I can’t say any more.’

  ‘Then why the hell are you here? Why did you come?’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘One last fuck—’

  ‘Don’t!’

  ‘—before you go and destroy your life forever?’

  ‘Anna, it’s not like that. There’s not a single day—’

  ‘What? Not a day you don’t think of me?’ She laughed derisively. ‘Do you really expect me to believe that, Marin? Is that meant to be some sort of consolation?’

  Marin dropped his head, bringing both hands up to his face. ‘It’s all the things I never got the chance to tell you,’ he said quietly. ‘I go over and over it in my head. And now I’m here, I can barely come up with the words.’

  ‘You can make love, but you can’t talk?’

  ‘You felt the connection the same as I did. It’s still there.’

  ‘So what? It’s just a fantasy, Marin—there won’t be any connection at all if you go ahead with whatever crazy plan you’ve come up with.’

  Marin stared at her for a time before answering. ‘They murdered my brother, Anna.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They killed Petar. They kidnapped him and they killed him.’

  She stared at him in disbelief, but a shiver of fear ran through her.

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ she ask
ed quietly.

  ‘UDBA murderers. On orders from Belgrade.’

  ‘I met up with Petar at your place near Eden. He was a heroin addict and an alcoholic. I saw him almost kill himself, Marin. He had the rifle under his chin. How do you know he didn’t go ahead and do it?’

  Marin shook his head. She saw it then in his eyes.

  ‘Petar was tortured, Anna. He was tortured, horribly tortured. God only knows for how long, and then they executed him.’

  Anna was so shocked she could barely comprehend what he had said. She reached for her tobacco and rolled a cigarette, to give herself time to think. When she was done, she lit the smoke and drew on it to steady herself.

  ‘What proof do you have?’ she asked at last.

  ‘The two killers, they told me what they did to Petar. They were proud of it. They boasted about it. They thought it was funny that he called out my name over and over. They had nothing to lose, because they were about to do the same thing to me …’

  ‘What? How did you—’

  ‘I escaped from them, don’t ask me how.’

  ‘What about them? Where are they? Have you told the police?’

  When Marin responded, his voice was cold and emotionless. ‘They’ve paid for their crimes.’

  Anna jumped to her feet, an involuntary movement.

  ‘Does that mean what I think?’ she demanded.

  ‘Anna, these men strung me up by my hands and beat me senseless. They took me out, deep into the bush. They were going to kill me, exactly as they killed Petar.’

  ‘You killed them?’

  ‘I’m still alive. They were on a mission, I told you, under orders from Belgrade. It’s not a game. The life I was dragged into—it’s nothing you can imagine.’

  Anna was in no mood to accept a rationale for whatever he planned to do. She was sickened by his story; it was a primitive tale of blood and revenge.

  She had just made love to this man. She believed she still loved him. But did she really know him? What had he done? How much blood was already on his hands? She had no idea how much it had stained his soul.

  ‘Please sit down,’ he said. After a moment she did, again drawing her legs up to her chest. She felt absurdly like a child, an innocent in a violent world.