Secret in the Clouds

by Christopher Cummings

  With that Annalisa turned and walked away. Stephen waited a minute, then crept out and studied the homestead. No-one was visible but he still had to take the risk of moving out of the front of the shed and over the fence. Fear of being seen got his heart rate shooting up again. He hesitated until he saw that he only had five minutes. With a gulp of air as though he was leaping off the high diving board into cold water he scuttled out of the shed and over the fence. He then scrambled in behind the shed and lay flat in the grass.

  Nothing happened. After recovering his breath he set off crawling along the back fence. Every few metres he stopped and looked around for any sign of old Karl or the housekeeper. Seeing no sign of anyone he crawled on, behind the rear of two greenhouses full of orchids and flowers, then around the corner of the fence. That was harder going as now he was exposed to anyone in the two houses to his left front. These seemed to be deserted but the shrill calls of children from behind one warned him that there were people there.

  It was hot work crawling in the afternoon sun and he was sweating profusely by the time he edged up beside the garage in the corner of the homestead yard. Dry grass stuck to his sweaty skin and the dust and grass seeds made him want to sneeze. Hearing noises at the front of the garage he used the trick he had been taught in cadets of pushing up hard with his thumb at the base of his nose. It hurt and made his eyes water but he lost the urge to sneeze.

  Suddenly a car started up inside the garage. A white Commodore of the latest make reversed out, turning so that it hid him from the houses. Crouching low in case it was Potts or someone else Stephen peered at the car. To his enormous relief he saw Annalisa’s head. She turned and nodded to him and, as he crawled quickly forward, he saw her lean over and open the back door nearest to him. After a pause at the end of the garage to check no-one was watching he slithered into the back seat, heedless of the bumps and scratches.

  As soon as he was in Stephen reached back and pulled the door shut. Then he lay as low as he could in the footwell.

  “Good!” said Annalisa. “We are just waiting for Daddy to lead off.”

  Stephen glimpsed her waving and then the car was moving, driving north along the gravel road. He shuddered with relief and almost cried aloud. His heart still hammered and his throat was parched but he was intensely glad to be moving.

  After a minute Annalisa said, “OK, you can sit up now.”

  Stephen did so. He saw that they had left the buildings behind and were driving slowly through open savannah dotted with cattle. Ahead was a trail of dust left by Mr Potts’s car.

  Annalisa pointed ahead. “This road goes to North Gap,” she explained, “But I will drop you off on the airfield road. The road goes down into a little dry creek and I will stop and let you out there. That way no-one should see you.”

  As she said this the sound of aero engines came roaring overhead. Stephen looked up and saw a low-wing, twin-engine monoplane; a ten or twelve seater type. It went around in a wide curve and turned back to let down. As it descend below the level of the tree tops Stephen said, “Who’s in the plane?”

  “Four people. There’s Dr List, he’s Daddy’s Personal Secretary, and there is David Symington, his Public Relations Officer, and two more Federal Police,” Annalisa explained.

  The mention of the Federal Police made Stephen feel sick with apprehension. ‘We are going to be in deep trouble if none of this is true,’ he thought ruefully.

  A moment later the car slowed and turned left, still driving through dry bush. Directly ahead a couple of kilometres away loomed the steep rocky face of the Hodgekinson Range.

  “The dry creek is just ahead, on the edge of the open country,” Annalisa called.

  Stephen licked dry lips and said, “Is there any water in that creek over to the right? I don’t want to have to go near the lagoon if I can help it.”

  “See that bit of a gorge where Pandanus Creek comes out of the mountains?” Annalisa asked. “There are a few pools up there. The gold miners back in the Nineteenth Century built a couple of small dams. OK, get ready. Here we are.”

  The car slowed as it went into a small dip. As it stopped Stephen opened the door. As quickly as he could he crawled out and then crouched to close the door. As he did their trailing dust enveloped him.

  “Good luck!” Annalisa called. The car accelerated forward into the dust. Stephen glanced around, noting that the dip was only a metre or so deep and that the dry creek he was in was a mere runnel amidst tufts of dry grass. The surrounding country was almost bare of grass and thinly dotted with spindly eucalypts.

  As Stephen was about to move off his ears detected another vehicle coming from the same direction. As he threw himself flat among the dry grass in the washout he glimpsed a brown Toyota Landcruiser emerging from the drifting dust. As it went through the dip he heard a man cry out and then, to his horror, he heard it begin braking to a stop!

  CHAPTER 33

  GHOSTS FROM THE PAST

  As Stephen flattened himself in the dust his heart began to pound with fear. ‘Caught!’ he thought. The brown Toyota Landcruiser squealed to a stop only metres past him. Its dust enveloped Stephen for a moment, providing false hope. This was instantly replaced by the desperate fear that he was going to sneeze. Although every instinct screamed to lie still he had to move his left arm to pinch his nose.

  He heard one of the doors slam and glanced fearfully in that direction. Jorgenson’s voice came to him above the sound of the engine. “The silly old bugger!” he snarled. “I’ve told him a hundred times not to go there!”

  Jorgenson sounded angry and Stephen wondered what he was talking about. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jorgenson appear at the front of the vehicle. Jorgenson then shouted, but not at Stephen. “Karl!- Karl, you get over here now!”

  Old Karl? Stephen slowly screwed his eyes around and peered sideways through the sparse grass. Jorgenson then said to the driver, “I thought the old bugger might come over here when we couldn’t find him at the house.”

  “Why’s that?” asked the driver.

  “Aw, he’s not right in the head,” Jorgenson replied. “He likes to walk along Pandanus Creek.”

  Old Karl now came into view walking slowly up the long gentle slope. He looked haggard and exhausted. As he reached the vehicle Jorgenson snapped at him, “You’ve been told not to go there Karl! Now get in the vehicle and don’t give me any more trouble.”

  Another problem now assailed Stephen. The dust was tickling his throat and he was seized by a compelling urge to cough. With all the will power he could manage he tried to resist it. That was difficult as his mouth was so dry that he could not summon up any saliva to swallow. While Jorgenson and Old Karl walked around to the far side of the vehicle and climbed in Stephen bit his lip and tried not to breathe.

  He just managed to hold on until the vehicle accelerated away. Then he was convulsed by several muffled coughs. Luckily the sound of these was lost in the roar of the engine and he lay gasping in the fresh cloud of dust, tears watering in his eyes.

  ‘That was too bloody close for comfort,’ he thought as he watched the vehicle drive off west towards the mountain. To Stephen’s surprise it did not turn left to join the two vehicles he could just see parked near the aeroplane. Instead it went on along some other dirt track which ran directly to the base of the mountain near where Pandanus Creek issued out of a rocky gorge. Off to his left he could see people loading luggage into the cars at the aeroplane.

  “I’d better be gone from here before they drive past,” he muttered. “And I’d better find water fast,” he added. His throat was now so dry he was croaking and he could not form any saliva. Despite that he was still perspiring and salty sweat was stinging his eyes.

  Fearing both discovery and heat exhaustion Stephen turned and began to crawl down the dry gully. This was fairly easy going but the sand stuck to his sweaty skin and got into his clothes. The runnel got slowly deeper and he could move at a ‘monkey run’ by the time he was near the
trees which lined Pandanus Creek.

  Reaching the larger creek he at once saw why it had been given that name. Every ten or twenty metres were pandanus palms, either singly or in clumps of two or three. They grew out of the sandy soil among more numerous paperbarks. The creek was similar to the others in the area, a sandy bed a few metres wide with a scattering of rocks and, to Stephen’s immense relief, a trickle of clear water.

  He found a small pool and thankfully drank his fill, then washed the sweat off his face and arms. As he did he heard vehicles and by standing he was able to see up over the bank towards the airfield. As he expected it was Annalisa and her father driving the new arrivals to the homestead.

  Having watched them out of sight Stephen considered his next move. The North Gap Outstation had been his original objective but he now determined on a short detour. ‘I wonder why it was that Old Karl has been ordered not to come here?’ he mused. He had a suspicion and he now acted on that, his skin prickling with primitive fear as he did.

  Twenty metres further up the creek he found what he sought. A faint track came down one bank and went across and up the other. That it wasn’t just a cattle pad was evident by the boot prints in the sand. On seeing them Stephen experienced a fit of shivering and took several deep breaths before moving. Taking care to step only on tufts of grass or on deadfall he made his way across the bank and up the other side.

  Beyond the creek extended a wide, gentle slope. The paperbarks gave way to scattered ironbarks. The soil was sandy and the grass covering so sparse that there were more bare patches and leaf litter than grass. The boot prints led to a bare sandy clearing about fifty paces from the creek. When he saw what lay in the centre of the bare patch Stephen was gripped by icy chill which started at the base of his skull, then spread up to grip the top of his skull, then down his back to envelop him in goose bumps.

  Lying on the bare sand were two tiny bundles of bush flowers, tied with string. As soon as he saw them Stephen realised what he was looking at. “Bellamy and his driver are buried here,” he told himself. A feeling of absolute certainty was reinforced when he noticed several other flower bundles, now dead and withered, which had been blown by the wind to lodge against the tussocks of grass at the side of the clearing.

  “Poor Old Karl,” he muttered. “No wonder he’s not right in the head. The poor bugger has to live with ghosts every day! I wonder if he had a hand in killing them?” It seemed to Stephen a reasonable supposition. Karl was old enough and had been in the area at the time. A feeling of intense sadness now replaced the fear of being in the presence of death. Stephen sighed and stood with bowed head for several minutes while he speculated on exactly what might have happened. He looked around and shook his head. The place was so ordinary that a hundred people could have walked past and never noticed anything unusual.

  He was brought out of his sombre thoughts by the sound of a vehicle engine. Remembering his own parlous position he moved behind a tree to watch. The vehicle was on the other bank of the creek and heading away from the mountain towards the homestead. Through gaps in the line of trees Stephen saw that it was the brown Toyota. It vanished eastwards towards the homestead and the sound died away.

  ‘I wonder where they went?’ Stephen pondered. He made his way back to the creek bed, glancing to his right as he did. Dominating everything now was the steep escarpment of the Hodgekinson Range. This close it looked steep, black and forbidding. The impression of blackness was exacerbated by the afternoon shadows. The mountainside was a steep slope covered with grass and scattered ironbarks, shot through in many places with outcrops of rocks. Nowhere was it a true cliff but it was certainly very steep and rugged.

  Still wondering why the men might have driven to the base of the mountain Stephen remembered Annalisa mentioning that miners had build dams in the gorge in the 19th Century. ‘What sort of miners?’ he wondered. ‘And what were they mining for: gold, silver or tin?’ There was, he knew, a large goldfield in the valley of the Hodgekinson, which he reasoned had to be somewhere on the other side of the range. Further to the west under the massive bulk of Mt Mulligan on the western side of that valley was a coal seam which had once been worked for many years.

  Memories of the ‘Hiking Team’ finding a gang of crooks using an old mine to hide their loot in two years before at Stannary Hills got him thinking. “I wonder?” he muttered. With that he decided to have a look at the mountain first, then head for North Gap.

  His watch told him it was 1645 by then. “Still nearly three hours to dark,” he noted. Looking at the type of savannah woodland extending northwards made him feel quite confident he could walk through it as easily by night as by day. That settled it. He began making his way cautiously up the creek, estimating he had about a kilometre to go and planning to take about half an hour to do it.

  His estimate was quite close. It was just after 1720 when he arrived near a low concrete weir which spanned the creek bed right at the mouth of the small gorge. This close to the mountain it seemed to loom threateningly over him. All its western face was now in shadow, giving the black granite boulders and outcrops a sinister effect. The escarpment was so steep he knew it would be a real struggle to climb as the loose rocks would keep slipping under his feet.

  After listening for several minutes and assuring himself there was no-one around Stephen made his way up the bank to the dam wall. He saw that the wall was made of rough concrete, now stained by lichens and dried salts to a mottled black, streaked with white and grey. The wall was only about five metres high and held back a refreshing pool of clear water. The sides of the pool were studded with rocks, some as large as a small building, which had rolled down the mountain over time.

  Next to where Stephen stood was a flat square of weathered concrete, like a building foundation. Next to this, on the left, was the dirt road. At this point it ended in a turning circle about fifty paces across, hemmed in on two sides by large boulders and the lower slope of the mountain. Trees and rocks shielded him from any view in the direction of the airfield or homestead. Stephen now noted a rusty steel trapdoor set in the concrete slab.

  He moved over to study this. ‘Does that lead to a tunnel?’ he wondered. To his intense disappointment he noted that it had a strong bolt holding it down, held in place by a padlock- a shiny new padlock which a moment’s examination showed him had been recently and frequently opened. For several minutes he tried to find a way to open the trapdoor.

  Frustrated in this he stood and looked around. A half-buried water pipe indicated that the trapdoor probably led to nothing more mysterious than a water pump. “Even so, it would make a good prison,” he thought. Were Graham and Peter under that steel door? Once again Stephen looked around. Jorgenson had just driven up here for some reason. What was it? Where did he go? If he didn’t come here, what else was there?

  With that in mind Stephen again looked in all directions, then decided to climb up on the boulders at the base of the slope to his left to see if there was anything else Jorgenson might have visited. Climbing up was no problem. Most of the slope seemed to be loose gravel and chunks of rock with tufts of grass and a few trees growing on it, all studded with boulders of various sizes. ‘This stuff looks like it has been crushed or blasted,’ Stephen thought as he noted many pieces of jagged rock. ‘Well, it had been an old mine. This is probably the mullock heap.’

  But where was the mine entrance? Puzzled, Stephen stopped and looked at the side of the mountain. No scar to indicate blasting or tunnelling was evident. Shrugging with mild puzzlement he clambered up around some more large rocks to a large boulder. Seeking a way up he moved around it. The boulder appeared to have been split and had an overhang with dark shadows underneath. Being the sort of place Death Adders- and similar reptiles- liked to hide Stephen rested his hand on the warm rock for support and bent to check none such was in fact lurking there.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the shadows, and then another couple before his brain could work out exactly what
he was looking at. Instead of a small cavity full of dusty brown earth he found himself staring into what looked like a cave. Then realisation hit him and he gasped with shock.

  “Concrete!” he muttered. It wasn’t a boulder at all! It was a misshapen lump of hollow concrete. The outside was rough and irregular and contained real rocks but just inside was smooth, level concrete. “A pill box!” Stephen gasped. “A pill box made to look like a rock.” Now that he studied it carefully there was no doubt. The dark shadow he was looking in through was one of the firing slits. He could make out two more on the other sides. All had a smooth ledge inside designed to rest weapons on, or spare ammunition and grenades. At the rear was the square shadow of an entrance passage coming up from underground.

  “An underground fort!” he muttered in shocked amazement. “This must be their secret base!” He was now gripped by intense excitement. This must be where his friends were being held prisoner. Stephen now looked around for signs of watching enemy. ‘If they’d had a sentry here I would have been a dead duck!’ he thought with a shudder. From there he had a clear view down to the top of the concrete slab at the end of the dam. ‘If that’s their front door they have it well covered from up here,’ he decided.

  Then what he called his ‘military brain’ clicked in. As a Cadet Under-Officer he had no formal training in military tactics but he had learned a lot just from reading military history and from visiting army establishments and taking part in exercises or watching displays. “If they have one bunker there will be another covering it to give mutual support,” he reasoned. His eyes went on up the slope and almost at once detected the camouflaged slit up against the base of a cliff.

  Taking the risk that there was no guard in the second bunker (and the dust on the floor of the one he was at seemed to indicate it was unlikely) Stephen made his way up from rock to rock, all the while looking around for more, or for signs of the enemy. He reached the second pill box, panting with excitement and exertion, to find it also deserted. It was overgrown with weeds and full of spider webs and dried wallaby turds.