by Peter Cotton
‘I understand why you did what you did,’ said McHenry, treading carefully. ‘A proactive approach is generally the best preventative. But if Sheridan didn’t have what they wanted, wasn’t he always going to come undone if he waded in too deep?’
‘We were careful,’ said Stacey. ‘The last time Sheridan saw Bynder, Bynder told him that an unnamed group had an unspecified operation underway that would — quote, unquote — “bring white Australia to its knees”. Our risk assessment for Sheridan went off the scale at that point, and I took him out of the field, and we thought he was safe.’
‘How did it turn to shit for him, then?’ I said.
‘Thanks for your sensitivity, Detective,’ said Stacey, rounding on me. ‘You’re talking about the death of one of my best people, you know.’
‘I’m sorry. But how did he allow himself to become so vulnerable?’
‘For all his talents,’ said Stacey, ‘Shero had certain proclivities. We found his diaries. Turns out he fantasised about fictional secret agents. And the girls they, uh, attract. Living out his dreams, he disobeyed a direct order and went to Murrays Beach on the promise of sex.’
‘Jade,’ I said.
‘That’s right. It was the promise of Jade that lured him there. Despite being Bynder’s niece, we’d judged her to be a cleanskin, so he wouldn’t have seen her as a threat. And we’re not sure how the hostiles saw him at that stage — as an unproductive informant or as a double agent, who knows — but they went to some trouble to get their hands on him, so either way, they were going to milk him dry.’
‘Why didn’t you grab Bynder much earlier?’ I said. ‘Surely some of your people were screaming for it.’
‘When we looked at him originally, some of his associations set off alarm bells. New Land Rights and the like. And, given the nature of his requests to Shero, he clearly had an alarming agenda. Later, after Shero disappeared, we figured Bynder was involved in some way and were going to bring him in. But then we hoped that we’d get closer to his controllers if we waited, so instead we kept him on a slack-ish line and maintained a close eye. Though not close enough, obviously.’
‘Should we assume Australia’s acquisition of Trident was more than a mere suspicion for the hostiles in this?’ said McHenry.
‘Not at all,’ said Stacey. ‘The attack here was a probing exercise. If they knew what they were after, they would’ve come with an altogether different force. As I said, given the number of people who knew about it, Trident remained a remarkable secret. Most of our top brass were in on it. And the Americans. And I’m sure they told the British. But our enemies only ever had their suspicions.’
Stacey looked at his watch. ‘That says it all, I think. Can I suggest we resume our conversation in six hours? By then, I’d hope to have a report on our search of Bynder’s house. Until then?’
As if on cue, the lights on Murphy’s set died and the historian crumpled over as if he were totally exhausted. Stacey and Peterson hurried over to congratulate him on his performance, despite not having heard a word of it, and Trainor walked McHenry and me out of the hangar complex and through the building to McHenry’s car.
When Trainor left us, McHenry leant against his vehicle and issued the expected directives: I was to keep him informed, he said, and I had to stay out of trouble as best I could. Then he told me that Trainor had asked him how she could get the best out of me.
‘I told her to respect your instincts,’ he said.
‘That’s good,’ I said, bemused by this apparent loosening of the reins on McHenry’s part.
‘So, what do your instincts tell you?’ he said.
‘The question that still resonates deepest is, why did Bynder do everything he could to keep Daisy and Jade out of Jervis Bay? As it’s turned out, they’ve both come to grief, but what did he fear would happen to them if they stayed here? And did his fears for them tie in with the weapons we’ve just seen unveiled?’
21
I slept at Creswell that night, in a room Trainor had organised for me.
I woke early, sore, but basically on the mend, took some painkillers, and checked my phone. There was a missed call from Jean, and a text. She’d been about to board her plane for KL and she’d messaged to say that she loved me. By now, she’d be in the air, and while I hated not being able to talk to her for eight hours, with all that was going on around me, I knew the time would pass quickly.
I had breakfast in the officers’ mess, and while I drank a second cup of coffee, I texted Trainor. She nominated the foyer of the administration building for an immediate rendezvous. She was waiting there when I arrived.
She said Daisy Rawlins had tried to discharge herself in the middle of the night. They’d managed to get her back to bed, but she’d continued to demand that the navy fly her down to see Jade. Peterson’s office had finally okayed the flight on compassionate grounds, and a doctor and a nurse had flown down with her just in case her health went bad on the way. The plane was due at Creswell air base within the hour.
‘We’ll take Daisy to see Jade,’ said Trainor, ‘and then get her into a room and press her on a few things. If she knows more than she’s already told us, this is a likely time for her to spill it. With her brother lost in the bay, her daughter at death’s door, and her own fragility, I expect it’ll all make her much more pliable.’
‘The only problem with that scenario,’ I said, ‘is that Daisy might be too distressed to talk to us after she’s seen Jade. One way around that is to have Father Radcliffe at the hospital to support her. It might help keep her emotions at a manageable level.’
Trainor agreed, and I phoned the priest. The call went through to his voicemail, so I left him a message telling him of Daisy’s imminent arrival and offering to pick him up in thirty minutes so he could be there when her plane landed. We had a bit of time up our sleeves, so Trainor opted to drive out to Steeple Bay on the off chance the priest was at home but not answering his phone.
When we got into Trainor’s vehicle, I reclined in the passenger seat, closed my eyes, and tried to clear my head of the sense of dread taking hold of me. I couldn’t tie the feeling down to anything solid. Essentially, it amounted to a strong feeling that Bynder was right, that worse was to come, but as we had no idea what form that ‘worse’ might take, or how we’d be affected by it, we couldn’t head it off, and we certainly had no way of preparing for it.
When we crested the rise overlooking Steeple Bay, Trainor eased off the accelerator, and we rolled gently down the hill. The same kids were playing cricket, this time on a strip of dirt between two lines of houses. They stopped their game and stared at us. A guy mowing his verge stood and stared at us as well. Bits of debris flew from under his machine and pinged us as we passed.
A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of Radcliffe’s place. His old Holden still sat low in the drive. Dead weeds stood erect in the cracked concrete all around it, indicating that the vehicle hadn’t moved since I’d first seen it. I stayed in my seat and watched Trainor cross the bare yard to the front door. She knocked and waited. She knocked again and put her ear to the door. She knocked a third time, and after a few minutes, she walked back to the car and slumped behind the wheel.
We sat for a moment and stared through the windshield. She started the car and eased it into drive. I took a last look at the priest’s house, and as I did, the front door opened just wide enough for Radcliffe to stick his head out and see us. I alerted Trainor, and she turned off the engine. The priest stepped back inside and re-emerged moments later, pocketing a key in his cassock.
He opened the rear door on Trainor’s side, said hello, and got into the back seat. Trainor started the car, and we drove off. I eased myself around in my seat to chat to the priest, but he was totally engrossed in a text he was composing. When I turned around a few minutes later, he was staring out the window and he looked so caught up in his thoughts that
I decided not to disturb him for the moment. Then he sighed in such a mournful way, I figured he couldn’t be aware of how it sounded.
The second time he did it, Trainor shot me a glance and raised her eyebrows. It was as though the priest was transfixed by some unbearable thought he couldn’t shift. Maybe he dreaded seeing Jade. Or maybe he was anticipating Daisy’s reaction to seeing her daughter. Whatever it was, there was something eating away at Radcliffe.
‘You okay, Father?’ I said, turning and waiting for the priest to make eye contact.
‘Me?’ he said, as though surprised I was asking. ‘Fine. Never better.’
‘You seem a little distracted is all,’ I said.
‘No, not distracted,’ he said. ‘Just worried about Jade, and how Daisy will deal with what’s happened. That’s all.’
He shrugged and turned back to the window.
The King Air taxied across the tarmac and gradually slowed to a stop. The pilot cut the engines, and when the propellers were finally still, the door opened, and the steps slowly descended. Daisy appeared in the doorway looking fragile and a bit confused. A female in an Air Force uniform appeared at her side. She took Daisy’s forearm and helped her down the steps.
Trainor started walking towards Daisy, Radcliffe followed her, and I brought up the rear. When Daisy finally stepped down onto the tarmac, she took a moment to regroup before she headed towards us.
Trainor stopped as Daisy drew near, and Daisy walked straight past her and fell into Radcliffe’s arms. After a few moments, she gently pushed the priest away and headed for me. I put my hands out to direct her to my ‘good’ side. Even so, her arms made contact with my broken ribs as she hugged me, and the resulting pain took my breath away.
‘How is she?’ said Daisy. ‘How’s my baby?’
We’d called ahead to the hospital, and I had a small piece of good news.
‘She’s stabilised,’ I said, holding Daisy at arm’s length. ‘So, still critical, but stable.’
‘She is going to be alright, isn’t she?’ said Daisy, demanding an answer in the affirmative. ‘She’s strong. Stronger than anybody I know. She’s got to be alright.’
‘Too right, she’s strong. And she’s a fighter, so if anyone can make it, she will.’
‘Oh, Jade,’ said Daisy, and her body shook as she doubled over. ‘Poor Jade. What did they do to you?’
Radcliffe put his arm around her and, with me and Trainor in tow, he helped her across the tarmac towards the car. He eased her into the back seat, secured her seatbelt, and went around to the other side of the vehicle and got in next to her. I got into the front passenger seat, and Daisy leant forward and put her hand on my shoulder for a few seconds. When I looked around at her a short time later, she’d stopped crying, but she still held a tissue pressed to her mouth as she stared out the window.
A young Aboriginal guy in a fluoro vest waved his stop sign at us as we approached the roadworks. We were the only car waiting, so he stood facing us, bored and partly embarrassed at the forced interaction. Then, seeing Daisy, a concerned expression transformed his face. He came around to her window, which she wound down, and he said it was good to see her and he hoped Jade would be alright. He also offered his condolences for Bynder — in pretty much those words. Sentiments conventionally expressed, but heartfelt. It set Daisy off again. The young bloke leant in and touched her arm. She looked up and nodded at him, and he returned to the front of the vehicle and pressed some buttons on his two-way.
A convoy of SUVs with Western Australian plates came towards us. They moved off the loose gravel onto the fresh blacktop and picked up speed. The lollipop guy’s radio crackled with the word ‘Clear’, he reversed his sign to ‘Slow’, and we moved off.
Trainor had slotted her phone into the vehicle’s hands-free cradle. Using voice control, she called Creswell’s intensive-care unit and a nurse answered. Trainor asked for two nurses to be on stand-by when we got to the base. Then she phoned intensive care at Nowra Hospital to check on Dave Calder. The nurse there said that Calder was ‘still drifting in and out of consciousness’ and his condition remained ‘grave’. Next, she phoned Peterson’s office. The commander himself answered, and when Trainor identified herself, he simply said he was ‘ready’ and hung up. Ready for what? Something he’d already discussed with her, no doubt. The obscure nature of the exchange underlined the fact that these spooks were still a long way from fully sharing with us.
We passed JB general store and the cluster of houses around it. As we approached the naval base, Trainor slowed the car and stopped in front of the checkpoint guarding the outer fence. Two female sailors came out and studied us for a moment, their rifles cradled at the ready. One of them scanned Trainor’s ID and mine. She inspected Radcliffe’s driver’s licence and Daisy’s. She ordered us out of the vehicle, and one of her colleagues ran a scanner over all of us. Other sailors searched the vehicle inside and out, including underneath.
Satisfied, one of the guards thanked us for our cooperation and invited us to get back into our vehicle. The guards at the second checkpoint were just as thorough. As were those who manned the checkpoint on the inner cordon. Three low-loaders and a dozen big semitrailers were lined up against the wall of one of the bayside hangars. It seemed Trident would soon be on the move.
We pulled up in front of the hospital, and Radcliffe and Trainor helped Daisy out of the car. A nurse had Daisy sit in a wheelchair and wheeled her into the building with the priest close behind.
‘Peterson’s got some vision for you to look at,’ said Trainor, getting back into the vehicle. ‘He wants us there, now.’
She drove to the administration block and parked in a visitor’s bay. We mounted the steps to the building and entered the foyer, where we submitted to yet another security check. I followed Trainor along the corridor to Peterson’s office, and his receptionist waved us through.
‘Sit down, sit down,’ said Peterson, closing a folder he’d been reading. ‘Detective Glass, Mr Stacey’s people have assembled vision of known Indonesian agents who operate in these parts. We’d like to see if any of it triggers a memory for you. Can you look at it now?’
‘Of course,’ I said.
Peterson placed a laptop on the coffee table in front of me and hit a button on the keyboard. The screen lit up with black-and-white footage of two Asian men talking as they walked along a deserted suburban street. The footage was grainy and indistinct and lasted about a minute. The screen faded to black and lit up again with shaky vision of three Asian men fishing from a jetty.
‘Jervis Bay?’ I said.
‘Correct,’ said Peterson.
Shot from a boat out on the water, the footage would’ve been difficult to capture. The men on the jetty were having a great time, laughing and joshing and swigging from their water bottles as they fished. Each had a bag of crisps.
The next clip featured an Asian man and an Asian woman sitting at a table in a restaurant. The table was loaded with enough food for a dozen people.
The final clip had been shot at night and featured eight Asian men in casual dress sitting around a boardroom table. The meeting had taken place high in an office building. The camera that had captured it had been set up in a neighbouring building. Only two of the men spoke. The rest listened intently.
‘Any of these guys ring a bell?’ asked Peterson.
‘There was something about the fishermen,’ I said. ‘Can I see them again?’
Peterson swung the machine around, jabbed the keyboard a few times, and turned the machine back towards me, his eyes gleaming with anticipation.
This clip of the fishermen was much longer than the first. The two guys on the outside were teasing the one in the middle. They prodded him and ruffled his hair. All in good humour. The teaser on the left leant in and spoke for a minute or so. The other two smiled as they listened. Then the three of them burst out laughing.
The joke must have had a great punch line, because they laughed for a very long time.
The guy in the middle and the joke-teller looked at each other as they laughed, enjoying the sharing as much as the joke itself. The one on the right didn’t look at the others as he laughed. Rather, he threw his head back and moved it from side to side with his mouth wide open, like a laughing clown in a sideshow. It was a peculiar mannerism. One I’d seen on display recently. When the head goon had laughed at something an underling said to him on the boat. I flashed back to the night before last and my stomach contracted.
‘Replay the joke,’ I said, my eyes locked on the screen.
Peterson leant over and pressed rewind. The footage of the men went into reverse. He tapped a key. The vision froze. He tapped again, and the silent joke was repeated.
‘The guy on the right,’ I said, suppressing an involuntary tremor. ‘That could be him — the top dog from the boat. The way his head goes back when he laughs? And moves from side to side? The open-mouth thing? I can’t be certain, but I think it could be him.’
It was a flimsy identifier, which wouldn’t pass muster with a judge or a jury. And no decent prosecutor would take it to them, anyway. But I knew what I felt. The laughing guy on the right of the screen was probably the top goon from the boat. I’d got a sense of him in our short time together, and the ID felt right.
Peterson jabbed the keyboard. An index appeared. He scrolled through it and highlighted a name. Nasutian. He hit enter. Another index appeared. He hit the first entry: a line of numbers. The screen flipped to viewer mode again. Peterson hit play and a piece of footage lit the screen showing a car pulling into a wide concrete driveway. The single-storey house was stylish and angular. Nasutian got out of the vehicle. In his early thirties, his hair parted in the middle, he looked smooth and almost elegant in his dark suit. He paused for a moment and scanned the street, keeping his hand on the open driver’s door. He closed the door and went around the vehicle and opened the back-passenger door. He retrieved a briefcase from the back seat, walked to the front door of the house and let himself in.