The Enemy Within

by Tim Ayliffe

  ‘I’m enjoying the fresh air at the moment,’ Bailey said, eyes stuck on Ronnie. ‘What do you think’s going on then, Ronnie? I’ve got my own theories, but I’d like to hear yours. With you here to help, and all.’

  Ronnie’s head rolled back as he chuckled. ‘You’re a grumpy bastard, Bailey. Always so bloody sceptical.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Bailey was sounding the part. ‘Give me a reason not to be? You said it yourself, you had a call about Strong before the guy’s body had even had a chance to get cold. My name get a mention?’

  ‘From our people?’

  Our people. American intelligence. CIA.

  ‘We knew you interviewed him. I told you that already.’ Ronnie answered his own question. ‘Strong’s an interesting cat. You wouldn’t be surprised to learn we were keeping tabs on his visit down under. His talks. Who he’s been meeting in his spare time. The guy had good access, by the way. He was down in Canberra yesterday meeting a couple of redneck senators from Queensland.’

  ‘Mal Rustin and Sally Paul. I know about that,’ Bailey said. ‘And he also met with the Home Affairs Minister, Wayne McMahon.’

  Ronnie raised an eyebrow, fleetingly, before his face dropped. ‘Good access for a guy who built a career on tweeting.’

  ‘Any idea who killed him?’

  ‘I was going to ask you the same question.’

  ‘Cops saying it was a group of Black guys.’ Bailey shrugged. ‘I’m not so sure.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Bailey thought about telling Ronnie what he’d just learned from the homeless woman outside the State Theatre, but it was a little too early to be sharing. ‘A hunch.’

  Ronnie stared at Bailey, like he was willing him to change his mind. ‘I was sorry to hear about Walker. Good operator. Always liked her.’

  Ronnie had known Harriet Walker even longer than Bailey had because of the time Walker had spent in Ronnie Johnson’s Middle Eastern playground in the late 1990s and early 2000s. People trafficking. Drug smuggling. Counter-terrorism. The AFP would have worked with people like Ronnie Johnson on all kinds of operations.

  ‘Cops are saying she was killed during a robbery. You buy that?’

  Bailey was seeking a rare moment of straight-up honesty from Ronnie.

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  And he got it.

  ‘The timing of all this, Ronnie… as you say, it’s all too coincidental,’ Bailey said. ‘I met with Hat on Wednesday. I left with the feeling she was looking into the same people that I’d been investigating for the story I’m writing about Strong and far right nationalism. By the end of the day she’d lined up another meet. We were supposed to catch up down on the Glebe foreshore yesterday morning. She never turned up because she was lying dead on Maroubra Beach. Then I arrive home to find the AFP on my doorstep.’

  ‘Tell him about the video,’ Gerald cut in. ‘There’s something not right about the reason the feds were searching Bailey’s house all day yesterday. Tell Ronnie about the video. The video they deleted off your phone.’

  ‘What video?’ Ronnie said.

  ‘I took a video of the crowd at Strong’s talk the other night, trying to capture some of the faces of his supporters. I shared the video with Hat to see if there was something, or someone, in the crowd that stood out. The fact she got back in touch so quickly made me think that she’d found something. Something in the video, maybe.’ Bailey coughed, clearing his throat. ‘The AFP warrant has this extraordinary line in it, something about granting police the powers to delete or change my files and data.’

  ‘Here it is.’ Gerald had stepped back inside while Bailey was talking, re-emerging with a piece of paper in his hand, holding it out for Ronnie. ‘Have a read of that.’

  Ronnie took the slip of paper, squinting his eyes, taking a moment to read.

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ Gerald asked.

  Ronnie found the offending paragraph, reading the words out aloud. ‘To add, copy, delete or alter other data in the computer or device found in the course of a search.’

  ‘It’s bullshit, Ronnie,’ Bailey said. ‘Utter bullshit. They deleted that video I just described. Gone. No backups. And it has nothing to do with the purpose of the raid, which was chasing my source for a story I broke about the ADF covering up the deaths of civilians in Afghanistan a bloody long time ago.’

  Ronnie was nodding his head, staring at the page a moment longer before handing it back to Gerald. ‘Walker was leading an investigation into several far right nationalist groups. She’d talked to some of our people about how these groups were connected to white supremacists back in the States.’

  Bailey was taken aback by Ronnie’s candour. ‘Our people? Are you including yourself in that? Is this what you’ve been doing in Canberra?’

  Ronnie tilted his head, raking his tongue along the inside of his cheek. Thinking. ‘I was in Canberra doing what I told you I was doing. Tying up loose ends on your boy Mustafa al-Baghdadi. Checking to see what’s left in the web now the spider’s gone.’

  It was thirty-five degrees outside yet the mention of Mustafa’s name made Bailey shiver. He looked across at Gerald, glimpsing the scar on his neck. Another person damaged by that ruthless bastard and his band of fundamentalist followers.

  ‘They’re not much different, y’know.’

  Ronnie had guessed where Bailey’s mind had wandered to.

  ‘What?’

  ‘White supremacists. Islamic terrorists,’ Ronnie said, leaning his elbows against the railing, back towards the water. ‘They all start out from the same place. Disillusionment. Anger.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Ronnie?’ Gerald said.

  ‘The people the political establishment and mainstream media either ignored or pissed off are now part of a mass movement that our eggheads at State like to call rising populism. Hungary. Turkey. Brazil. We’re seeing it in the US and the UK too. It’s growing and morphing into –’

  ‘Here we go,’ Bailey said, slightly miffed about Ronnie’s sledge at the media. Even though he was partly right. ‘Doctor Johnson’s here to tell us how the world would have been a better place if only we’d done our jobs better.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying, Bailey, and you know it,’ Ronnie said, shaking his cigar and causing a lump of ash to fall on the ground. ‘I’m just talking about the path that got us here and where it leads.’

  ‘Keep going then,’ Gerald said. ‘I’m always interested in America’s view of the world.’

  If Ronnie was offended by the sarcasm in Gerald’s voice, he didn’t show it. ‘All I’m saying is that, just like we saw with Islamic terrorism, there’s a bunch of angry people out there being drawn to a cause. People who’ve lost faith in how democracies have been run and they’re looking for something different. Someone different.’

  ‘And someone to blame,’ Bailey said.

  ‘Exactly. It’s a skip and a jump from rising populism to far right extremism. But it’s happening,’ Ronnie said. ‘And these people don’t carry placards. They carry guns.’

  ‘The people willing to burn down the house in order to save it.’

  Bailey’s comment hung in the air for a moment before Gerald chipped in. ‘Do you think this is what we’re dealing with here? Some kind of attack?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ Ronnie said. ‘The FBI busted a bunch of Neo-Nazis in Maryland recently –’

  ‘The Dawning?’ Bailey interrupted him.

  ‘That’s them. The FBI has been investigating The Dawning for some time. Highly organised, they’re growing in size. Not just in the States but around the world. Their leader, Donald Sampson, is an old man now but he was an active member of the Ku Klux Klan during the seventies and eighties. For a long time, he appeared to be just your average American racist. But in recent years he’s upped the ante, running military-style training camps and preaching in dark web chatrooms about the need for an armed uprising. A race war.’

  ‘How c
ome it took so long to arrest him?’

  ‘I can’t answer that question, Bailey. I’m new to this too.’

  ‘Why are you telling us about Sampson and The Dawning?’

  ‘Because Sampson had been talking to people in Australia. Something’s being planned here. Something soon. It was one of the reasons why the FBI moved on Sampson. People planning an attack of some kind usually need guns and, as you know, it’s not hard to get your hands on an arsenal of high-powered weapons in the United States. Sampson organised a shipment of guns to Sydney. Fuck knows how they got in, but they’re here. At least, we think they are.’

  ‘You lost them?’

  ‘The FBI doesn’t control Australia’s borders, bubba. We told our counterparts here when we knew the guns were on the way, then they disappeared.’

  ‘Umm, boys?’

  Marjorie was standing in the open door of the balcony, mobile phone in her hand, with a perplexed look on her face.

  ‘Everything okay, Marjorie?’ Gerald said.

  ‘I’ve just had a call from the Australian Federal Police. They’ve dropped the case. They’re no longer investigating the ADF leak. Case closed. Harriet Walker was their suspect, with her dead they don’t have anyone to prosecute.’ Marjorie paused, gesturing her chin at Bailey. ‘But you’re still on the hook for not complying with the search warrant, Bailey. The gentleman I spoke to on the phone was clear about that. But we’ll fight it. And win.’

  Bailey didn’t care about the charges against him. He was more worried about what Ronnie had just told them about a shipment of guns that had gone missing in Sydney and about how Harriet Walker had managed to get tangled up in something so serious that she ended up dead.

  ‘Fuck the charges,’ Bailey said, ‘they want to push ahead, good luck to them.’

  ‘What are you going to do, Bailey?’ Gerald said.

  ‘I’m going to find out who killed Hat.’

  Ronnie cleared his throat, stabbing his cigar into an empty coffee mug on the outside table. ‘You want to find out who killed Walker, you need to look into those guns.’

  ‘Any suggestions?’ Bailey said.

  ‘Those guns didn’t just fall out of the sky. They arrived at Port Botany four days ago in a shipping container alongside pallets of Californian oranges. The container somehow made it through customs with the guns inside and then it was loaded onto a truck and delivered to a supermarket produce centre out at Eastern Creek.’

  ‘What are we waiting for?’ Bailey said.

  ‘Hold on, I’m not finished,’ Ronnie said. ‘Two nights ago there was a break-in at the produce centre. Bunch of guys in masks tied up the guard at the front gate, busted open the container and took off with the guns. The van they used for the pick-up was found burning in a nearby park. These guys are ghosts.’

  Bailey took a few steps towards the railing, gripping the top of the glass, staring out across the harbour, allowing his mind a moment to think. He turned back around. ‘When containers are taken off ships, each and every one of them gets scanned with an X-ray machine. It’s not a random process. I’ve been down there. I saw it in action for that story I wrote years ago about crystal meth coming in from China,’ Bailey said, nodding his chin at his former newspaper boss. ‘You remember, Gerald?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘There are three ways a container can bypass the X-ray machine,’ Bailey continued. ‘One: it mysteriously falls off the ship. Two: through an act of incompetence, the container gets waved through without being scanned. And three –’

  ‘Someone gets paid a wad of cash to let it in.’ Gerald finished the sentence for him.

  ‘You don’t happen to know the name of the ship and the company that unloaded it, do you, Ronnie?’

  ‘I can go one better than that.’ Ronnie smiled, patting the pocket of his jacket. ‘I’ve got the name and address of the customs agent who waved it through.’

  CHAPTER 21

  ANNIE

  The wooden bench across the road from Redfern Police Station was coated with the same dust and ash that was clinging to the rest of Sydney like glue. The city, like the state, was in desperate need of a bath. If the weather report that Annie had heard that morning was right, drought-breaking rain was on its way. So much of it that there were already warnings about flash flooding. Fires to floods. Only in Australia.

  Annie dusted the bench with the palm of her hand before sitting down, placing her half-finished coffee beside her. It was her fifth for the day and she had lost interest in finishing it. The caffeine was starting to give her the jitters, much like the feeling she used to get the morning after a bender before she evened herself out with a breakfast juice laced with vodka.

  ‘I’ve only got a few minutes, Annie.’

  Annie hadn’t seen Detective Greg Palmer approach and before she had a chance to get to her feet, he was standing on the footpath in front of her.

  ‘Thanks for seeing me.’ She stood up, knocking over her coffee in the process. ‘It was cold anyway.’

  ‘Bench could do with the rinse.’

  Palmer offered a fleeting smile before his face turned serious again. He looked tired. Stressed. Probably wondering what the hell he was doing meeting a reporter on the footpath. The thing that was so urgent that Annie had texted him to request five minutes of his time.

  Annie had watched the footage of the police media conference down on George Street earlier that morning at the scene of Augustus Strong’s murder, when senior figures from both state and federal police had announced a new taskforce to investigate hate crimes. Annie had noticed Palmer standing beside them. He was a homicide detective who was investigating the murder of AFP Commander Harriet Walker. Annie wanted to know what the hell he was doing there.

  ‘I’ll get straight to it. I’m not going to mess you around,’ Annie said, ignoring the coffee that was now dripping onto the concrete. ‘This new taskforce that’s looking into Strong’s murder and possibly related hate crimes, is it also looking into who killed Harriet Walker?’

  ‘Taskforce Juniper?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  Palmer hesitated. ‘At this stage, no.’

  It sounded like a lie. Why else would Palmer have been present at the media conference?

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Look, Annie. I know John Bailey’s a friend of yours –’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Palmer’s face hardened. Annoyed. ‘And here was me thinking you meant it when you said you wouldn’t mess me around.’

  ‘Okay. Okay.’ Annie raised her hands. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. There’s just a lot of unanswered questions here, Greg. A lot of things not adding up.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like why are police sticking to the line that Walker was killed in a robbery? She was as good as named in an AFP warrant as the source of Bailey’s stories about Afghanistan. On the same day she gets murdered, the AFP raids Bailey’s house. C’mon, Greg… something’s not right here. A mugging on the beach at dawn?’

  Palmer was distracted by something over Annie’s shoulder. A flurry of pedestrians, including two uniformed officers, crossing at the lights on Redfern Street. Palmer watched in silence as they walked past where he and Annie were standing and into a burger joint a few doors up.

  ‘Homicide Squad no longer has control of this investigation, Annie,’ he said, eventually.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means what it means. Someone else’s in charge.’

  ‘So Walker’s murder is being investigated by Taskforce Juniper?’

  Palmer paused, knowing that what he was about to say next could have serious ramifications for him down the line. ‘That’s what I’m expecting. But it’s early days.’

  ‘It wasn’t a robbery, then.’

  A statement not a question.

  ‘No.’ Palmer stepped into Annie’s personal space, lowering his voice. ‘We found her with her keys, phone and cards. Watch. Even the silver chain around her
neck. Whoever killed her wasn’t interested in hocking her jewellery for drug money.’

  A rush of adrenalin shot through Annie’s spine, tingling her neck. The feeling a reporter gets when they know they’ve got a scoop.

  ‘We off the record?’

  Palmer huffed, turning his head. ‘You know damn well we’re off the bloody record.’

  ‘Calm down, Greg. I’m just asking the question. At some point, this is going to get out. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t want to be the one to break the news. I’d also add that this is well within the realm of public interest. There’s a murderer out there, for chrissake!’

  ‘Lower your voice, Annie.’ Palmer was looking around again, undoubtedly regretting having this conversation on the footpath so close to Redfern Police Station. ‘I need to get back inside.’ He pointed at the little blue neon sign stuck to the side of the building across the road.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Annie was regretting pissing off the best source she had on the story. The only source she had. She needed to get him back on side. ‘I didn’t mean to push. I won’t be running with anything until you give me the green light.’

  He bent down and picked up the empty coffee cup from the bench, scrunching it in his hand. Thinking. ‘I should book you for littering.’

  ‘I was going to pick that up.’

  They laughed together. Tension defused.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ Palmer said. ‘And don’t worry, we’re good. You’ll get your story. I wouldn’t be talking to you otherwise.’

  ‘Can I just ask you one more question?’

  ‘Make it quick.’

  ‘Why did you guys suggest it was a robbery in the first place?’

  The question made Palmer uncomfortable and it took him a few seconds to contemplate his answer. ‘Not my call.’

  ‘It just seems odd to put out the wrong –’

  ‘As I said, it wasn’t my call. The feds have been with us on this from the start. Read into that whatever you like. I’ve got to go, Annie.’ He made to leave then stopped, turning back around. Hard eyes. ‘I didn’t know Walker. But she was a copper. A good one, apparently. Nobody gets away with killing a cop.’