‘You think the Habibs are still after you?’ Bec said. ‘Right now?’
‘I’m sure of it. Where are we going?’
She sounded suddenly tired, as though the conversation had exhausted her. Removed the sunglasses and her eyes were red and full of pain. Whatever her emotion might be—and Bec just didn’t know—it was intense. As they approached the St Peters end of the long line of shops, Zames gasped. Bec checked the rear-view mirror and saw a bike, a big machine, five cars back with two riders in black leathers.
‘Oh shit,’ moaned Zames.
‘It’s okay.’
The bike was so convenient, so clichéd, that Bec smiled. Was still smiling when the road opened up into another lane and the bike accelerated until it was right behind them. If this is a movie, she thought, I know what will happen next. The bike will speed up again and come alongside, but on Zames’s side, where it shouldn’t be.
The bike accelerated up the other side of the car. The passenger’s right hand should have been gripping bike or rider but it was not, it was coming out of his jacket, holding something, must be a gun. Bec jerked the wheel, swinging violently to the left, felt the impact as they made contact with legs and metal, heard cars honking as she accelerated away.
‘Oh fuck,’ said Zames.
Bec turned left off the Princes Highway and pushed the car fast. By the time she had a micro-second to glance in the rear-view, the bike was out of sight.
Zames began to cry again, more big sobs. They had five minutes to get as far away as possible, before the uniforms piled in and started searching the surrounding streets. Bec accelerated and they screeched around corners, along an industrial road, heading east.
The Habibs must have a contact inside the force, as Zames had said. Part of her mind had accepted this while the rest was concentrating on the bike. Knight? Harris? Probably someone else. All she could do was call Vella, get help. They’d be surrounded by armed men in fifteen minutes. She pulled up near the university and took out her phone.
‘Don’t,’ Zames said.
Bec felt angry. The smell coming off Zames was stronger. Realised she’d allowed herself to be too influenced by the other woman, it was time to follow procedure. The anger was replaced with assurance. She knew what had to be done, would restrain Zames by force if necessary.
‘We need to get safe,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry but I am going to call my boss now.’
Zames slumped in her seat and for a moment Bec thought she’d gone unconscious. Then her eyes opened.
‘I’m an undercover police officer,’ she said.
Bec put the phone down, slowly. Felt sceptical, incredulous. Waited for meaning to emerge, but there was just fog. ‘You’re not.’
‘So was Jason.’
No. ‘We would have been told.’
‘Depends how big the op is.’
Bec shook her head, keyed in 0404.
Zames said, ‘I’m Sharon Cole, detective constable from Western Australia. You don’t like smokers, do you?’
While Bec’s finger hovered over the phone, Zames spoke. Details of training and work, pension plans and phone procedures, and names, lots of names of officers in Western Australia. None Bec knew. The details poured out and Bec couldn’t stop them, Zames was breathing heavily, almost panting so that she had difficulty with some of her words. Bec grabbed her upper arm and told her to be quiet. Told her to talk about the Sydney operation. Zames got herself under some sort of control, and began again.
It was the story of Strike Force Condor, and Brian Harris. Zames knew everything.
‘They would have told us,’ Bec said again. ‘It’s a murder trial, for Christ’s sake!’ Talking mainly to herself now, starting to believe but not wanting to. Feeling utterly betrayed.
Zames said, ‘Maybe they should have. But there’s something so big going on they made a decision, Harris did.’
‘What’s bigger than murder?’
‘Jace had found out something amazing.’ Her voice was different, calmer now, professional. Bec realised she was indeed a cop, and felt slightly sick. ‘A coca plantation in Indonesia, his stuff was coming from there, a flood of it. Bec, we found a new source for cocaine.’
This was ridiculous. ‘You can’t grow coca outside of South America. Everyone knows that.’
‘In the 1920s, Java was the coca capital of the world. Did you know that?’
‘No.’
Bec picked up her phone, Googled while Sharon talked.
‘It could happen again, we had to stop it. That meant keeping the operation hidden, even when Jason was killed. We need more, I’m still out there. Your lot were told, at a senior level. They agreed to keep it quiet.’ Bec had it now, on Wikipedia. The Dutch had razed their coca plantations at the request of the League of Nations, to help suppress the cocaine trade. But until then, coca had grown plentifully in Java. ‘It was the biggest new threat in the drug war in years. Potentially bigger than ice.’
She was beyond professionalism now. Her eyes had gone bright, they were burning, and as she spoke these words Bec was sure they came from someone else. Brian Harris. It was like Zames was repeating a lesson. Bec asked her some more questions, put the phone down and ran her hands through her hair.
Then, ‘This has nothing to do with Rafiq Habib.’
‘Nothing. Jason was so unlucky. We had this big international thing going on, and he got himself killed by some stupid little dealer he met just as part of his cover.’
‘Knight must have been told about the UC stuff?’
‘No. Brian says you always need a Plan B. Plan A was he told you guys about Jace after he died, but the knowledge stayed at a senior level. Knight did not know.’
‘I think he suspected something was wrong.’
‘Plan B was that Brian has some sort of pull with Knight, they go back. He knew if Knight ever did get suspicious, he could haul him in.’
A little bit of the fog cleared.
‘I’m going to call my inspector and ask him, I need some sort of confirmation.’
‘Do me a favour, call Brian. He’ll ring the right people and sort this out.’
‘You said our senior guys were told.’
‘Yeah, but maybe not inspector level. I don’t know how far down the news travelled.’
Bec’s mind raced. She recalled how Knight had replaced the original OIC on the first morning of the investigation. Maybe Harris had engineered that for the reason Sharon had just given. The fact Knight had rammed through the charge against Habib, and kicked her off the investigation when she questioned this, suggested Plan B had been activated. All of which would explain Harris’s abiding interest in the trial.
So why had Knight abandoned it? And, even if his presence in Adelaide was genuinely necessary, why had he chosen Bec as his replacement? Of all the Beldin detectives, she was the one least able to deal with a crisis of the sort that had erupted on Friday. Also the most sceptical about Rafiq Habib’s guilt.
Bec said slowly, ‘I shouldn’t be here. It should be Knight.’
‘Of course. Knight would never have spoken to me. Brian thinks he might be up to his old tricks. Assumed he had a hold over him, but maybe Knight’s in with the Habibs.’
‘Knight locked up Imad.’
‘A lot of cops weren’t happy with that. They thought he should have gone down for murder, not just conspiracy.’
Bec wanted to tell her not to be stupid, but she couldn’t say that. She didn’t know Russell Knight well enough. She didn’t know him at all.
Sharon said, ‘I didn’t use my phone this morning. So to find us back there, they must have known which car you were driving, maybe followed it from work. Who knew you were there?’
Bec recalled the phone calls she’d made and received, the guys across the floor. You didn’t want to be paranoid, but you had to consider the possibilities.
Sharon grabbed her arm. ‘I’m sorry I can’t give you all the answers you want, but please do not call anyone before you talk wi
th Brian on a safe phone.’
Bec drove around until she found a payphone and rang Harris, got his voicemail and left a message. Called Wallace, explained about hitting the bike and asked him to go to the crash site, said there’d been a gun. Didn’t use Sharon’s name, told him his phone might be off and referred to her as a witness. No mention of the undercover stuff.
It might be Wallace who was talking to the Habibs. It might be anyone. Once you opened your mind to this sort of thing, the whole world became uncertain.
‘Let’s meet in town,’ he said.
Bec looked at Sharon, bent over now in her seat, sobbing. Definitely in shock. She didn’t want Wallace to know their movements.
‘Not there,’ she said, ‘somewhere else. I’ll call you.’
‘You’ve told Vella?’
‘Not yet. I will.’
‘I’ll ring him.’
‘Fine.’ She couldn’t stop him doing that. ‘Call me when you’ve found out about the crash.’
‘Mate—’
She hung up.
Began to drive again and Sharon stopped crying. Bec said, ‘How could Harris let this happen to you?’
‘No alternative. We’d been under eighteen months and were about to come out when Jace made this great contact, the Indo guy who was arranging the coke. Rich bastard, very well connected with the government up there in Jakarta. We planned to pick him up next time he came to Sydney, I was the contact so I had to stay under. We thought that’d be soon and we could get everything out into the open before the trial. But there was a delay. He hasn’t come yet.’
‘So you’ve been under for two and a half years?’
That was too long, but Bec knew it happened. Undercover officers became obsessed, complicit in the enthusiasm of their handlers. It was up to those managing them to do the right thing, sometimes they didn’t. Even now, after all the scandals, police forces got it wrong and were sued, paid out large sums for psychological damage. Bec felt angry. ‘Why didn’t you call Harris this morning?’
‘I tried, no luck.’
‘That’s not very professional, for a handler?’
‘Usually he’s real good, available all the time. Just unlucky after all these years, it happened this morning.’ Still looking in the side mirror every few seconds.
‘You must have a backup number?’
‘There’s Marsden, one of the sergeants—he’s the only other one who knows our identities. But he’s on leave, overseas. Honestly, it’s never been a drama before.’
Bec was appalled. ‘It’s all wrong, you know that?’
‘I agreed to it, okay? I’m a big girl.’
‘Except—’
‘You can’t picture my life, but please try. Things don’t go tickety-tock. We take risks you can’t imagine. But we’re good at what we do, and what’s happening right now is just a fluke. If you and I keep our nerve we can sort this out and protect the integrity of the op. We just wait until Brian calls back in a few hours and then he’ll decide what to do.’
She took Bec’s arm again but further down, at the wrist. Her fingers were hot.
Bec said, ‘Your cover’s blown. Someone just tried to kill you.’
‘That was the Lebs. They’ve got nothing to do with the Indos or the UC stuff. If you call your boss now, you’ll fuck up the most important drug op in this country’s history. What if it’s Vella who’s on the take? Or he calls Knight and it’s him?’
Bec’s phone rang and she took the call hands-free. Hoped it was Harris but it wasn’t.
‘The locals are all over the place,’ Wallace said, ‘but not the victims.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘They pissed off.’
‘Witnesses?’
‘Yeah, a car swerved and hit a bike, failed to stop. That you?’
‘They saw a gun?’
‘They did not, but they weren’t close when the accident occurred. They ran up, helped the rider and passenger, picked up the bike. The rider hopped on, the passenger hobbled across and off they went. To everyone’s surprise. The sergeant here wants a word.’
‘Tell him I’m taking my passenger to hospital. She’s in shock.’
‘RPA?’
‘I think so.’
‘Vella wants you to call him.’ Zames was crying again, quite loudly. ‘What’s that sound?’
Bec turned off her phone.
She would do what Zames asked, wait for Harris to get back to her. The danger was over, she was sure they hadn’t been followed since the bike attack. It was Sunday afternoon, and technically she wasn’t even at work. When she handed Sharon over to Harris, she would insist she not go back undercover. If Harris objected, she’d make a formal complaint to Vella. It was a plan.
Bec had dealt with people in shock before and knew water was good, so she drove to Coogee. Parking was a problem and she cruised the beach for ten minutes, finally finding a spot at the southern end up by the playground. Neither woman spoke during the journey. They took the steps to the sand, where they removed their shoes, carried them towards the water, picking their way between families on towels and running children. The day’s heat was modified by the breeze coming off the sea, and as they laboured through the sand, Bec felt calmer. Maybe she was in shock too.
At the edge they stopped and she paddled, enjoying the water’s soft grip on her ankles.
‘Where are we?’
She named the beach, finding it hard to believe Sharon didn’t know. But the other woman seemed almost catatonic. They began to walk through the sloppy sand, towards the flags and the crowd further up the beach, and Sharon looked around, the tears at bay. The surf was pretty flat, the water shallow for a long way out. Kids dashed around them with buckets and spades, people of all sizes ran in and out of the water or just stood staring out to sea, with that vacant look you get.
‘You got family?’ asked Sharon.
Family is overrated, she was about to say, but suddenly she was talking about Tiny, how he’d been attacked on a train to Wollongong by a gang who’d wanted his Nikes. There might have been a racial element—Tiny looked much more Indigenous than she did—but the details remained hazy. He’d been found the next morning lying by the railway track, with a broken back and leg, serious head injury. Now he lived in a wheelchair in a nursing home for old people, thanks to some glitch in the welfare funding arrangements, and hated it.
When she reached the end, she wondered why she’d told Sharon things she’d never told anyone else. ‘You?’ she said. There was no reply. ‘Talk.’
Sharon did, but not about her family. She spoke of Papua, part of the big island just to the north of Australia, shared with New Guinea. It had the right climate for growing coca, lots of huge mountains, and was an undeveloped place containing tribes still living in huts. Also many Indonesian logging and mining ventures, not all of them legal.
‘There’s this guy, Sony Kalla, in Jakarta, very rich, in with the military. His father was a general, made a packet. The army up there has to earn a lot of its own budget so it’s corrupt as, and Sony does business with them. Basically they provide protection for his ventures.’
Kalla was early forties now, had been a playboy and took over the family business when his father died a few years ago. He was bored and greedy, came up with the idea of growing coca in one of his logging concessions in Papua. Had a personal interest in the drug. After a bit of trying they got their first good crop, processed it back on Java, sent it to Sydney where Kalla often travelled because his kids were at university here.
It sounded like something out of a thriller.
‘How’d he meet Teller?’
‘Kalla likes to socialise when he’s down, without the wife. Takes women to clubs, pretends he’s twenty-five again.’
‘Prostitutes?’
‘Not technically. He took a few to Java—the nightclub—when he was pissed, because of the name, met Jace. They liked each other, and a week later he popped the question.’
‘Which was?
’
‘Asked Jace if he’d move a very regular supply of cocaine in Sydney for him. Brian couldn’t believe it. He got Jace a contact at the airport, Kalla arranged for Garuda to fly it in. So a month later this big parcel arrives and it was amazing, top-grade stuff. From bloody Indonesia. Brian was stoked. We all were.’
Bec looked around the bright beach, covered in attractive bodies. The people here were built for nakedness, not like the fatties at Liverpool and Campbelltown; it worked out convenient that the rich lived next to the ocean.
She wanted to reject what Sharon had told her, say it couldn’t be true. But it most likely was. The drug industry opened doors into a sort of parallel world where things were possible that you’d never dream. It was the money, most people didn’t realise how much money was involved, had never thought about what it might do to your life. They didn’t want to see through those doors, wanted them kept closed. But like a lot of cops, Bec knew what was on the other side.
‘Harris let him buy drugs?’
‘Controlled buys and sells, all recorded. It was huge, the AFP were working on the importation angle but they had to move slowly because they didn’t trust the Indo police. Their people in Jakarta said Kalla had protection at a very high level. So we’d have to arrest him here, which meant a lot of secrecy and patience. Harris was going crazy, here we were, sitting on the biggest thing in years. And the stuff was still being grown up there, maybe going out to other markets while we waited. Brian didn’t like that at all. In the end they got it together, we were ready to arrest Kalla the next time he came to Australia. Then Jace was shot, and if his UC identity had come out it would have scared off Kalla, we’d never see him again in Sydney.’
‘You really thought he’d come back?’
‘His kids are still at uni here.’
Bec stopped walking and stared out to sea. Things shifted. ‘How big is it?’
Drive By Page 27
