by Peter Cotton
My eyes went to the screens. The first low-loader was approaching the end of the causeway. Then an ugly thought occurred to me. What if Calder had put sensors under the road to trigger the bombs when something big and metallic passed over them? Or maybe he had a dead man’s switch built into the system that’d blow the lot if he didn’t login to it regularly.
I searched Calder’s pockets. Along with his wallet and a set of keys, I found a thin phone. I called Creswell and asked for Peterson’s office. I told his receptionist who I was and asked to speak to Peterson directly. I said it was a matter of life and death. When Peterson came on the line, I gave it to him straight up in the most neutral voice I could muster.
‘Detective Darren Glass here, sir,’ I said. ‘I’ve uncovered a conspiracy to attack the Trident convoy currently on its way to the air base. The danger zones are the new causeway and the cutting at the southern end of the air base. Repeat. The danger zones are the causeway and the cutting. Stop all forward movement of machinery across the causeway immediately, sir. And get all material and personnel out of that zone. Repeat. Stop all machines from going forward into that zone and get everything and everyone out of that zone, immediately.’
‘Who is this?’ said Peterson.
The low-loader was closing in on the end of the causeway.
‘It’s Detective Darren Glass, sir. You must believe me. There’s a Grade-A emergency about to unfold, unless you reverse that material off the causeway. Now, sir! Put the convoy into reverse, or it’ll be blown up! There are explosives planted under the causeway and in the walls of the cutting. They’re ready to blow, sir. Clear all personnel and hardware out of the area. Send the machinery backwards out of there, not forward.’
After a short silence, he blurted two words.
‘Onto it,’ he said, and the line went dead.
I hit redial, but by the time I heard the ringtone for Creswell, the convoy had shuddered to a halt.
EPILOGUE
Calder had only had a week or so to live when he died. Late-stage lung cancer. He’d presented as barely conscious for most of his time in intensive care — the perfect place for him to hide. Did he fake his collapse when Trainor and I had interviewed him? I had no proof, but I didn’t doubt it. In collapsing, he’d killed two birds with one stone: the ruse had provided him with a sanctuary — the intensive-care unit where we couldn’t bother him — and the incident threw us off the scent for a short while.
The cutting and the culverts under the causeway had been packed with slabs of explosive gel, as Calder had said. And, as I’d feared, his detonation system did have a dead man’s switch, and vehicle sensors had been built into the road to trigger the system. Neither the switch nor the sensors were activated at the time Calder had planned to strike. It was thought that Bynder must have decommissioned them after he got out of the water, and Calder had been too distracted to check them.
Calder and Bynder had bonded in the cancer clinic at Nowra Hospital. They were the same age, both were black, and they’d sat together for hours while getting treatment. Bynder had not only radicalised Calder during their time on the drip, he’d unleashed a creative mass murderer.
Calder had an informant at Creswell. A gardener named Jimmy Burton, who’ll spend the rest of his life in gaol. Calder had inducted Burton into his conspiracy by paying him for information on vehicular movements on and off the base, and for anything of general interest he might observe.
Burton, an Aboriginal man, eventually became a true believer in Calder’s cause and he proved to be an acute observer with great hearing. His supervisor later expressed regret at allowing Burton to develop and maintain a large feature garden in front of the administration building at the naval base.
Burton was one of the few people to visit Calder while he was in intensive care — which allowed us to finger him. In the interview immediately after his arrest, he confessed to being Calder’s source of information on Trident, though he refused to speak during subsequent interviews, or in any of his court appearances.
Three of Calder’s senior people will also do serious time for their part in their boss’s crimes. All devout Catholics, any one of them could’ve spilt the conspiracy story to Radcliffe in the confessional, though they all denied it.
The explosive that Calder and his people had packed into the culverts had been supplied by a shotfirer from Western Australia. The guy lost his licence to run a magazine storage for high explosives and was lucky not to be charged as part of the conspiracy.
Father Michael Radcliffe was honoured with an impressive memorial plaque, and The Blessing got its own cabinet, both of them prominently displayed in the sailors’ dining room at Creswell. Without Radcliffe, I’d have been dead, along with thousands of others, yet he would’ve dismissed the idea that anyone owed him for his actions. His life had been devoted to service, and in the end he’d performed a bigger service than he could’ve imagined.
The other person who’d saved my life was also dead, Lieutenant Stella Coombs. The navy erected a simple stone memorial on the highway near where Coombs and Bain had died. I attended the unveiling.
Jade spent a week on the critical list, she then stabilised and slowly recovered. She’s already had lots of plastic surgery on her torso, with more to come. She lives in Bynder’s old house in Steeple Bay with her boyfriend, Adam, and mum, Daisy.
I never met Kylie Stevens, of course — the part-time good-time girl, part-time foot soldier whose murder kicked off the case. It was her great misfortune to run into Nasutian, the laughing clown from Jakarta. Once Creswell was burning, Nasutian’s job was done, and he took off. They haven’t caught up with him, yet, but no doubt our spooks know something about his circumstances, and they’ll be doing everything they can to find and deal with him.
The intelligence community’s failure to protect Trident gravely embarrassed the Australian government. As with all such debacles, the matter was the subject of a thorough review, though the report that resulted has not seen the light of day.
Australia’s relations with Indonesia remain perilously poised. A wrong move could tip things over. Indonesia is set to sell mountains of illegally harvested logs to buy bigger and better arms, mainly from China. Australia’s US-built arms are funded by iron ore and bauxite exports, which go mainly to China.
Peterson took plenty of heat in the final report of the Royal Commission that examined the whole affair. His decision to transfer Trident so soon after the attack on Creswell came in for particular criticism. Despite that, the Prime Minister still describes him as a ‘valued advisor’, though he didn’t reappoint him to the National Security Council.
Most Australians, black and white, were shocked by the nuclear turn of events. Some Aboriginal Australians wondered out loud why it had taken so long for a true radical to emerge from their ranks. Government efforts to reduce the disadvantage endured by Aboriginal Australians compared to other Australians remain woefully inadequate and generally ineffective.
My head took a serious buffeting during the course of the case. As soon as I got back to Canberra, McHenry put me on six months leave, and I saw various specialists who all advised the same thing: avoid blows to the head for the foreseeable future.
Jean and I took a holiday a few weeks after I got back to Canberra — Hawaii. We relaxed, ate well, and spent lots of time alone together. We’re still assessing our respective careers, but we’re both certain of one thing: we’re meant to be together, and that’ll happen soon. For now, I’ve got a book to write, and I’m well into it. Thankfully, I won’t have to compete with Rolfe this time.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to all those who supported and encouraged me in the writing of this novel. Particularly my wife, Claire Tedeschi, and our children, Charlie Cotton and Ruthie Cotton.
Thanks also to Kel Robertson for his counsel and friendship, Robert Gott for the hurry-up and his generous assistance,
and to my agent, John Timlin, for his wisdom and encouragement. And to Scribe publisher, Henry Rosenbloom, for his confidence in this project, and to Scribe editor Anna Thwaites for her unerring ear and eye.
I’d like to thank the many specialists who contributed to this effort: Dr Michael McKinley for the hard information and the context he provided; the former head of ACT Policing, Detective Superintendent Ray Sweeney, for his generous advice on police procedures; Darren Flanagan for his invaluable information on all things explosive; Professor Colin Simpfendorfer of James Cook University for a chilling chat about sharks; Professor Judy Atkinson for being an honest agent and a great sounding board; Mark Tedeschi, QC, for his insights and advice; Mel Baker of Ride-Tek Motorcycle Training Academy for his advice on the crash scenes; Amy Harris of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service for explaining bird behaviour; Martin Fortesque from Booderee National Park; Lieutenant Marc Lawrence, prosecutor, Office of the Director of Military Prosecutions; Biddy Adams and Frances Clements from the Jervis Bay Marine Park; and Vince Arce of Peter Stevens Motorcycles.
Other people in various offices and agencies also assisted. They include members of the Jervis Bay Police Station, Marine Rescue New South Wales, and the Port Kembla Water Police.