by Roland Perry
‘You’ve got to understand,’ she said, ‘he put me under a lot of pressure. He said I had to contact him if you got in touch.’
‘And will you?’
She eyeballed me for the first time.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I won’t.’
‘Thanks.’
‘But you mustn’t stay here,’ she said, ‘it’s a wonder you weren’t spotted in Lawson Grove.’
‘I came the back way, from Darling Street, the route I took after seeing you here that night.’
Cassie stepped to a drinks cabinet and poured us both brandies.
‘I’m worried,’ she said, handing me a glass, ‘maybe you should consider giving yourself up.’
‘I’m thinking about it. It’s my first night back.’
‘You have the best criminal lawyer in town. I believe you didn’t murder Martine. The killing here, well, again, I would give you the benefit of the doubt.’
‘I want a day or two,’ I said, ‘then we’ll see.’
‘I would take my chances in court, if I were you,’ she said, ‘you could overcome Benns if he is corrupt. You could prove your innocence.’
I sat down and sipped the brandy. It warmed me.
‘I would tell them what you’ve said to me and how you behaved,’ Cassie went on. Her eyes widened. ‘And the tape I did with you in Paris. You could use it!’
Cassie took the tape from her study and gave it to me.
‘And Freddie May,’ she said, ‘could he help?’
‘Only in spirit.’
‘What?’
‘He’s dead.’
Cassie went pale.
‘At least,’ I said, ‘I think he is. I saw his grave in a Paris cemetery.’
‘How did he die?’ she asked. I could see she was frightened. I was again going to have to justify the grim reaper being my travelling companion. I told her how I had found the grave.
‘I’m certain he was murdered,’ I said.
Cassie took some brandy.
‘You treated him for lymphatic cancer, didn’t you?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘No brain tumour?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I was told he died suddenly of a brain tumour. I don’t believe it.’
I went through the events in Paris. Cassie listened, or at least appeared to. She was uncomfortable.
‘The point is,’ she said when I had finished, ‘that it would be best in the long run if you . . .’
‘Surrendered?’
‘Went to your lawyer. He could protect you with Benns.’
‘I don’t think that is the point,’ I said. ‘If I do what you say, Martine’s killer will go free.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘the court case would clear you. Then the hunt would be on for the real killer.’
We both happened to look down at the photo. It made my point before I said it.
‘Do you seriously believe this creature is going to hang around to be picked up after a court case acquits the number one suspect?’
‘Isn’t it more important that you clear your own name?’ Cassie said. ‘You can’t seriously believe you can track down a murderer. You’re not trained to do it. Benns is!’
‘Cassie,’ I said, coming close to her once more, ‘were your files stolen?’
‘No.’
‘They were in a pile in your study on the computer table?’
‘Yes, they were.’
‘Just imagine for the moment,’ I said, holding her gaze, ‘that this Michel has been in Melbourne, and he is after your files.’
‘You’re not suggesting Michel is still operating?’
‘If he has a new face and ID, why not?’
‘I had no idea he could still be in practice.’
‘I’ve found at least one outlet of his in Meudon,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t caught in France. If I become the patsy, he won’t be caught here! He’ll go on slaughtering patients, whether he steals your drugs research or not.’
I thought I’d gotten through to her.
‘“Slaughtering . . .”?’
‘As good as. Everything at Meudon points to Michel experimenting on people with various cancers using drugs formulae stolen from God knows where!’
‘Most of my files were on drugs which hadn’t been clinically tested!’
‘Right. Under the guise of helping the patients who are sent from Tahiti, he has used them as guinea pigs. Most will never go home. They are buried at Meudon. Of course, some of the drugs will succeed. They will then marketed by Vital.’
Cassie was shocked.
‘That’s why I’ve got to stay on the run a little while longer,’ I said speaking calmly but with conviction. ‘Michel has to be caught.’
TWENTY-FOUR
THE MOSQUE OF IRAN in East Coburg, one of Melbourne’s less affluent inner suburbs, was small and shabby, and from the outside it looked as if it could have been a derelict building. Farrar had told me that it was one of about sixteen mosques he knew of in Melbourne, which ranged from the high-domed, richer Mosque of Omar, built by the Saudis, to the poorly maintained Libyan and Iranian buildings.
Fazmi and his fellow Libyans had been monitored by ASIO since their arrival, and they had developed a random schedule of worship, always at night and never at the same mosque two nights in a row. It was one of the few times Fazmi ventured from his fortressed residence in North Melbourne.
This Iranian mosque had one wall under repair and scaffolding ran the length of it.
Just before midnight a three-car convoy of two early-model Mercedes sedans and the white stretch limousine with darkened windows crawled up to the kerb. Fazmi, wearing dark glasses as he had at Martine’s funeral, jumped from the limousine and moved hurriedly into the mosque as four other Libyans distributed themselves along the street. One, wearing glasses similar to Fazmi’s, sat on the bonnet of the lead Mercedes and lit a cigarette. Another perched on a seat at a tram stop. A third sat on steps leading into an apartment building, and a fourth strolled, hands in pockets, to some shops about one hundred and fifty metres from the mosque.
‘That’s our boy,’ Farrar said to me as the man entered a Lebanese restaurant. We were sitting in Farrar’s car equidistant from the mosque and the restaurant. He got out.
‘You wait here,’ he said, ‘while I go and see what the deal is.’
Farrar entered the restaurant and about three minutes later came out with the Libyan. Farrar stopped at his car and we watched the Libyan enter the mosque. A minute later he came to the door and waved to us. Farrar and I hurried across Nicholson Street and inside. We were followed by the Libyan who had been sitting on the car bonnet.
‘Lift,’ he said, indicating our arms. ‘Please face the wall.’ The two of them then searched us for weapons. Satisfied, they led us into the mosque’s interior.
Inside, an aroma of burnt meat caught us. To the left was the wall under repair, against which rested sheets of corrugated iron. On the right was a small cafe, in which kebab snacks and tea in small tinted Turkish-style cups were being served. In front was a glass-walled prayer room and to the right of that, a wash room. An Iranian Imam in a white cape was leading a prayer group of ten, including Fazmi. They stood on a green carpet under a chandelier. On the front wall was a blood-red embroidered tapestry depicting Mohammed’s mosque. The Imam’s chant and the worshippers’ response were loud enough to be heard in the cafe where we were asked to wait.
We sat on stools next to a fat Iranian who talked to himself. Next to him was a long-haired Australian. He kept staring at Farrar.
‘Come to pray?’ the man asked.
‘No,’ Farrar said, ‘ten-pin bowling.’
‘Never seen you in here before.’
Farrar’s eyes had dissolved into slits in dark caves as he scrutinised him from his unwashed hair to his leather scuffs. It was Farrar’s pre-explosive look. An Iranian cook behind the counter offered us some kebab and our Libyan escorts appeared at the entrance to the cafe.
‘I found God her
e,’ the long-haired man said.
‘God in East Coburg?’ Farrar said, winking at me. ‘Sounds like a book title.’
The long-hair looked blank while the fat Iranian nutter giggled.
A half hour slipped by and I had second thoughts about Farrar’s insistence on meeting with Fazmi. The long trip from France had tired me and I felt the extra pressure of venturing out again in public. Farrar had heard that the police and ASIO were about to pull the Libyan in for questioning, and his judgement was that we should get in first, in case Fazmi was deported.
Even though I was wearing smart framed spectacles, a hat and beige gaberdine overcoat left for me by Oliver, I felt vulnerable. It needed just one person to recognise me, and I would be apprehended. There had been numerous media stories about me in the time I had been on the run. My face would be engraved in most people’s minds.
The chanting in the prayer room stopped and Fazmi appeared at the door wearing a white robe and under it the same safari suit he had worn to Martine’s funeral. He was tall, lean and fit. He had a curly hair, a beak nose and small dark eyes set too close to his nose to be handsome. His face was pock-marked. He shook hands with me and Farrar, replaced his darkglasses and sat on a stool between us while his guards bustled the long-hair and the nutter out the front door. Fazmi began munching a kebab. ‘Who do you think killed Martine?’ Farrar said.
‘It wasn’t Mr Hamilton,’ Fazmi said with a grin that came and went with the same rapidity, ‘and it wasn’t me.’ His English was good and reflected his British military training, which had included four years at an army base in Salisbury.
‘Who then?’ Farrar said.
‘Perhaps you should speak with French Intelligence.’
‘That’s not easy.’
‘No? Australian Intelligence found it easy enough.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘Australian Intelligence and French Intelligence have always had a cosy arrangement, and it pertains particularly to my presence here,’ Fazmi said, his grin dissolving into a sneer, ‘but ASIO and ASIS got a shock when they found that the agents they were dealing with had, shall we say, “misrepresented” themselves?’
I glanced at Farrar for edification. He took a breath.
‘Cochard and Maniguet were feeding ASIO data about the Libyans,’ he said, sounding uncomfortable, ‘but ASIO decided to check on them. Colonel Fazmi is right. They had once been French agents, but had left its security operations several years ago.’
‘What about Benns and the Homicide Squad?’ I said.
‘ASIO unwittingly misled Benns and O’Dare into thinking that they should co-operate with Cochard in the search for Martine’s killer,’ Farrar said.
‘And now?’
‘Benns wants to interrogate Cochard again and Danielle Mernet, if they ever reappear in this country.’
‘Mernet too?’
‘She is a French agent,’ Fazmi said with certitude.
‘How do you know?’ I asked.
‘I came across her in Chad before the trouble,’ Fazmi said. ‘There she was known as Joelle Riffaud.’
I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Fazmi sensed my scepticism.
‘Have you noticed her walk?’ he said.
‘She seems to have a dislocated hip.’
‘I wouldn’t be sure about that,’ he said, ‘but I can tell you that she was injured in a helicopter accident in Chad in 1978 while operating as a commando for DGSE – Direction Générale de Sécurité Extériere – my country’s worst enemy!’
I felt a now-familiar spear of terror.
‘You’re saying she’s still a Commando?’ I said.
‘In the 1970s and 1980s she was a trained infiltrator who saw action in Chad, the Middle East and the Pacific, where since 1970 the French have run about a hundred operations not unlike the Rainbow Warrior mission.’ He paused to sip some tea. ‘Mernet has made the Pacific her favourite playground. More recently – I believe – she has acted as an assassin.’
‘You believe?’ Farrar said. ‘Who told you?’
A cunning expression crept over the Libyan’s face.
‘I have my sources,’ he said, ‘for which I must pay.’
‘The Mossad?’ Farrar said.
‘Very good,’ Fazmi said, with the arch of an eyebrow.
We were distracted by the Libyan guard at the door. One whispered in Fazmi’s ear.
‘Police patrolling the street,’ Fazmi said to us. He gabbled orders at his guards, and they scurried out of the mosque.
‘Does Cochard work for French Security too?’ I asked Fazmi.
‘He is ex-DGSE,’ he replied, ‘but I suspect that when it pleases the French government he is not quite ex. You see, he is part of a maverick element in French Intelligence. The type used to blow up the Rainbow Warrior, murder a few troublesome Kanaks, and sell Exocet missiles to Argentina in the Falklands war. The group he comes from is also reckless. Its members make mistakes.’
‘They’re on a payroll?’ I asked.
‘No. They have front jobs,’ Fazmi said, glancing at the door. ‘They may be asked to do a little spying on “enemies of France”, such as me, or Greenpeace in the Pacific. Or they work freelance.’
‘Freelance?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Fazmi said, as the cook offered him another skewer of kebab, ‘perhaps these assassins are doing some dirty work in the Pacific for people not connected with the French government or military.’
‘Colonel,’ Farrar interrupted, ‘we want to know if you employed Martine to . . .’
‘Spy on the French?’
Farrar nodded.
‘On the contrary,’ Fazmi said, taking off his glasses to make his point, ‘the French were using her to spy on me.’
Farrar was bewildered.
‘That suggests you had a motive for killing Martine Villon,’ he said.
‘No. There is such a thing as disinformation.’
‘You fed her disinformation?’
‘When it suited us, yes.’
‘So you don’t think French Intelligence murdered her?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ Fazmi said with a shrug, ‘I can’t see any reason they would.’
A Libyan came through the front door and reported that police were outside.
‘I must go,’ Fazmi said as he headed for the door.
‘You go that way,’ Farrar said to me, looking at his watch, ‘I’ll bring the car round in three minutes.’
I pulled aside the sheets of corrugated iron and slipped down a side alley. Uppermost in my mind was the trigger-happy nature of some police. It was dark and I didn’t like the idea of running into one of them.
Farrar’s car came round the corner and stopped. I waited. He flashed his lights and I marched to the car and got in. Farrar drove off fast.
‘Want to catch Fazmi,’ he said turning into Nicholson Street and heading towards the city, ‘I think the cops are up to something.’
He fiddled with a radio selector until he came to a police frequency. A voice said, ‘The Libyans have to come down Beaconsfield Parade. All is in readiness. Over.’ There was static and the voice came on again. ‘All cars in exercise Drunk. Proceed to Beaconsfield Parade and Pickles Street. Over.’
‘Exercise Drunk?’ Farrar said with a nervous chuckle. ‘What are they up to? Should we check it out?’
‘Be careful. I should steer clear of police.’
The car radio crackled again.
‘Set to go on Beaconsfield, over,’ the voice said.
We reached Kings Way, and headed straight for the beach at Port Melbourne. Just before Beaconsfield Parade, which ran along the beach front, we caught Fazmi’s convoy. It turned left into the Parade. We followed some one hundred and fifty metres behind. Farrar pointed ahead.
‘There’s Operation Drunk,’ he said. ‘A booze bus!’
The police radio said, ‘Limo coming up fast. All alert. Commence exercise. Repeat, commence exercise.’
&
nbsp; ‘Shit!’ Farrar hissed. ‘We can’t turn off. We’re going to get breathalysed!’
There was a police check ahead. All drivers in the one-way traffic were being stopped by police standing on a thin island in the middle of the road. Drivers were being forced to pull over for a blood-alcohol-level breath check.
We slowed to a crawl as a line of cars veered left. Police were everywhere. Some moved forward to speak with drivers and direct them to other police holding breathalysers. Drivers over the alcoholic limit were being directed to a bus for booking.
‘I’m getting out,’ I said, reaching for the door handle. Farrar threw his left arm across my chest.
‘Don’t be crazy,’ he said, restraining me, ‘they’re not after you!’
The radio announcer’s voice was tensed for the first time.
‘Drunk ready,’ he said.
Fazmi’s limousine was approached by a big cop holding a breathalyser. We were about ten cars behind the limousine and with a clear view of proceedings. The radio was quiet. Then the voice of the big cop could be heard on the frequency.
‘Stop there, driver,’ he said.
The limousine kept rolling. The big cop put his hand on the bonnet. The limousine’s brakelights went on. The driver’s automatic window lowered and the Libyan poked his head out.
‘We haven’t been drinking,’ he said. The cop handed him a breathalyser. The limousine driver looked over his shoulder for guidance from Fazmi in the rear, took the instrument and put it to his mouth. Fazmi’s voice could be heard on the radio.
‘We are Moslem,’ he said, ‘we never drink alcohol.’
‘That’s what they all say,’ the big cop said, still cool. He examined the breathalyser and handed it back to the Libyan driver.
‘This time try blowing,’ the big cop said, ‘not sucking.’
The limousine was isolated from other cars in the line.
The big cop examined the driver’s second effort.
‘That’s better, sir,’ the big cop said. ‘Could you get out of the car? All of you. Out please.’
The driver turned to Fazmi. He wasn’t budging.
A car careered along the road and spun to a halt in front of the limousine as the booze bus disgorged police like a dealer fanning a deck of cards. A volley of shots followed and the tyres on the two Mercedes hissed flat. Smoke danced eerily in the car headlights as the Libyans began climbing out of the two Mercedes.