Priday climbed elegantly out of the Maybach’s leather seat. He was tall, tanned, fifty-ish and fit-looking, his carefully styled hair greying gently at the temples. His suit was beautifully tailored and when he smiled at the Priday women you could see why tens of thousands of people who really should have known better had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in his many and varied and – as it panned out – downright dodgy enterprises. The Reverend Laurence LaSalle Priday was as smooth as a rat with a gold tooth.
Surprisingly, though, he’d had the decency not to flee the country after the biggest financial collapse in Australian corporate history, and while doing his seven years in minimum security, with three off for good behaviour, Priday had discovered God.
The lovely Cristobel had shown her old man the Light on her twice-weekly visits to the country-club prison where he was doing penance, planting gum trees as part of a bushregeneration project. Priday had altered the Light slightly, and discovered his own special flock. Old money really didn’t give a damn about how wealthy they were, or where it all came from, but the nouveau riche could be a bit uncomfortable with success and its earthly rewards. Priday had crafted the First Church of the Lord’s Bounty just for them, creating a haven for the aspirational and upwardly mobile middle class where making scads of money was God’s will, and actually a valid form of worship.
Priday’s faithful flock became rich because they were faithful, and this was the way it was meant to be. Of course they did good works and made modest donations to worthwhile causes, but the major draw was that they were under the care of a God who was glad they were rich and would be even happier if they became richer still. As the Internet-ordained Reverend Priday preached it, God was the chairman of their board and Jesus was His CEO. And generous donations directed to the church would be rewarded ten and twenty and thirty times over sometime down the track. It was a very sweet deal, and one with tremendous tax advantages.
The Reverend kissed his wife and his daughter, shook my hand and led me into the study, where the polished-oak shelving groaned under the weight of leather-bound first editions, the andirons in the walk-in fireplace were Toledo steel, and the whisky on the bar was a 21-year-old single malt at two hundred dollars the bottle. He offered me a drink, and though the sun wasn’t quite over the yardarm, no one in their right mind would say no to a lead-crystal tumbler full of Glenfarclas.
‘A splash of water?’ he asked, holding up a crystal decanter. ‘It’s melted ice from an Antarctic glacier. One hundred per cent pure and ten thousand years old.’
‘Who could resist?’ I said.
I took a sip. The amber-coloured liquid was almost as smooth as the Reverend.
‘Now, what can I do to help you, Inspector Murdoch?’
‘I’m investigating an incident involving members of the choir from the USS Altoona and I’m looking into their movements yesterday.’
‘I heard about the accident on my car radio,’ Priday said, sipping his whisky. ‘Don’t tell me any of those wonderful young men were injured.’
‘No, they’re all fine as far as I know. Can you tell me how they came to be performing at your church?’
‘Of course. One of my parishioners told me about the choir, Inspector. She heard them on a visit to San Diego and found them inspirational, and when we learned that they were coming to Sydney we invited them to celebrate Evensong with us. We held a little reception here last night as a way of saying thank you. It was a joyous night. Very uplifting.’
Their performance on the Altoona this morning had been pretty uplifting too – they’d uplifted a couple of nuclear warheads right out from under the nose of the US Navy.
‘Was there anything unusual in their behaviour last night?’
‘No, nothing at all. They sang beautifully for us, then mingled pleasantly with the guests. Why do you ask?’ He tried to make it sound like a casual question, but I could see he was edgy.
‘Just routine, Reverend.’ I ran my eye around Priday’s study and stopped at the signed Chagall etching over the fireplace. ‘I see you don’t buy into that rich man and the camel through the eye of a needle business?’
‘I’m just a simple man trying to do the Lord’s bidding, Inspector.’
‘Here’s to the simple life,’ I said, raising the glass and finishing my whisky. He didn’t offer me a refill.
‘Churches have to move with the times, Inspector. Hopes for a reward in the hereafter might have sufficed once, but life is more complex now and people expect to see a tangible return on the time and effort expended in worship.’
‘Isn’t that a bit more Milton Friedman than Jesus of Nazareth?’
‘Modern religion is all about niches. There is a particular spiritual need out there and I fill it.’
‘And in return you get all this.’
‘It’s about inspiration, Inspector, and aspiration. I lead my flock by example.’
‘So if Jesus came back tomorrow, your flock would be happier if he was less of a carpenter and more of a property developer in an Italian suit with a Rolex and a Beamer?’
Priday smiled. ‘These days, I’m afraid, it’s about whatever floats your boat.’
‘Which in your case would be a hundred-foot cruiser with a full crew and an indoor swimming pool.’
‘The good Lord provides, Inspector.’
I had a sudden urge to smack the smug bastard. Maybe the Sunday School incident had scarred me for life when it came to organised religion.
Priday glanced at the Tag Heuer Aquaracer on his wrist. It was a nice watch, but it definitely looked better on Brad Pitt. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’ he asked.
‘It doesn’t seem so, Reverend,’ I said. I thanked him for his cooperation and hospitality, shook his hand and took my leave.
At the front door of Jindivik, the two women in the Reverend’s life were waiting to say goodbye. Louise Priday was now wearing a bikini. It might not have been yellow polka-dot like in that song from the sixties but it sure as hell was itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny. I smiled at the Reverend’s spunky missus and equally spunky daughter and imagined them together in the pool downstairs, Cristobel frolicking like a dolphin while the tanned and toned Mrs Priday swam laps, cutting silently and purposefully through the water like a grey nurse shark.
On the long trek back up the gravel driveway to normal land, I made a special effort not to yield to residual working-class angst and key the immaculate paintjob on the Maybach. While I might not have found out anything useful about the choir, my visit to Jindivik hadn’t been a complete waste of time. When Cristobel had gone to check on my drink and left me alone on the terrace, I’d come across a beautifully restored antique brass telescope mounted on a set of polished wooden legs. Being the inquisitive type, I naturally took a quick squiz. Bugger me if I wasn’t looking right at a nicely in-focus image of two blokes having an argument on top of the front gas storage dome on the LNG tanker.
One of the blokes in the shouting match I recognised as Chapman F. Pergo, Special Assistant to the Minister for Defence and a well-known political hard man, fixer and headkicker. The other was the CIA’s Carter Lonergan. You couldn’t miss that bloody shirt at a mile.
NINE
Back at the D.E.D. office, Julie had been working the phones hard. She updated me on the team’s progress. Lonergan had been out on the LNG tanker, but I already knew that. Peter Sturdee and Lieutenant Kingston had visited the Altoona, picked through the choirboys’ rubbish bins and lockers, questioned every single crew member on board and come up with nothing. Now they were on their way back from the hospital after interviewing the captain and the wounded sailors. The Altoona’s crew hadn’t given in without a fight, but who in their right mind would have expected the God Squad to pop up from below decks in flak jackets, guns blazing, and a couple of nuclear warheads in tow?
Julie buzzed Lonergan in through the front door.
‘That Scottish insomniac was right,’ he said, pulling a wad of papers from an impo
ssibly thin stainless-steel attaché case. ‘Preliminary reports from Glasgow confirm the tanker was mothballed around seven years ago. Her engines were totally overhauled recently, so she made it out here under her own power, and those gas storage tanks were partially filled with seawater for ballast, so that she’d sit low in the water, like she was carrying a full cargo. The anti-personnel mines are dummies, and the crew’s quarters have been recently used but swept clean. No food, no clothes, no books, not even toilet paper. Looks like they may have dumped all the incriminating evidence over the side before they came through the Heads.’
‘There’s harbour-surveillance footage from the Sydney Ports cameras showing the tanker cruising up the western channel around 3 a.m. and anchoring off Fort Denison at 3.45,’ Julie said.
‘So the surveillance cameras were working?’ Lonergan asked.
‘They were recording, but nothing was received in the tower because of the blackout. Apparently the tapes also show three people leaving the tanker in a Zodiac soon after she moored. Cops found the Zodiac at the Rose Bay wharf. Forensics have been all over it but it’s the same story as the tanker, clean as a whistle.’
‘Could have been the pilot going ashore,’ I said. ‘Pete said the harbourmaster reckons you don’t run something that size up the harbour in the middle of the night without bumping into things unless you really know what you’re doing.’
Julie, as usual, was one step ahead. ‘I’ve been onto Sydney Ports and they say all their pilots can be accounted for, including the ones on holiday or sick leave.’
‘What about RAN pilots?’ I asked. The Oz Navy has warships popping in and out of the fleet base at Woolloomooloo all the time, and has its own harbour pilots. One of them would have been on the bridge of the Altoona when she docked, making sure she was neatly parked between the white lines before slipping a couple of dollars into the meter.
‘I checked with a contact in the Defence Department in Canberra and your Navy guys are all accounted for too,’ Lonergan said.
How nice that the CIA had a direct line into Defence. I wondered if his contact was Pergo, but the barney I saw them having on the tanker didn’t look like Lonergan had been asking for a list of pilots.
‘I’ve already put in a request to Sydney Ports for the surveillance tapes,’ Julie said. ‘And for the names of every harbour pilot who qualified in the last thirty years. Since it’s a public holiday, it might take a while.’
‘If the bad guys just kept banker’s hours like the rest of us,’ I said, ‘things would be a whole lot simpler.’
It was after two when Peter and Clare got back from the hospital and they had very little to report. The ship’s choir had been formed in San Diego earlier in the year and they pretty much kept to themselves. Expressions of interest from other members of the crew had been politely but firmly rebuffed, which seemed a bit unchristian to me, and the ship’s company had become used to having a choir whose members were as thick as thieves, which is quite literally what they turned out to be.
I was just figuring out a plan for a late lunch when I saw Julie staring up at one of the security-surveillance monitors. She glanced at me. ‘Ducks on the pond,’ she said quietly. That meant trouble.
I walked across to her desk and watched on the monitors as three white Commodores rolled onto the pier, the trailing vehicle neatly blocking the main entrance to our office. Two men in dark suits climbed out of the first car and another seven, also in dark suits, emerged from the other two. Even on our surveillance monitors you could see that the Hugo Boss threads on the bloke in the lead car would have cost twice as much as the other eight suits combined.
‘Well, well, well,’ Julie said. ‘Chapman Fucking Pergo.’
Jules sometimes has a problem with authority, but since she’s an unerringly accurate judge of character and consistently shoots the tightest groups on the pistol range, she gets away with it.
Pergo was standing in front of the surveillance camera, waiting.
‘Shall I buzz him in?’ Julie said.
I shrugged. ‘Guess so.’
Julie’s fingers moved rapidly over her keyboard, then she reached across and pressed the button that opened the security door. As Pergo walked into the office she looked at me and said, just loudly enough for him to hear, ‘So I guess this means our no-arseholes policy is out the window then, Mr Murdoch?’
One of Pergo’s heavies accompanied him into the office while a second stationed himself outside the front door. On the surveillance monitors, I could see the others take up positions along the pier. They were all about two axe-handles wide across the shoulders, had their suit jackets fitted loose to hide a pistol in a shoulder holster, and appeared to be wearing earpieces and tiny microphones. Their body language suggested ex-Special Ops, and their bulk said almost certainly steroids. A dangerous combination, definitely not the kind of dudes you wanted to mess with.
The thug who accompanied Pergo into the office had bleached white hair and wraparound sunglasses with mirrored lenses. He kept the glasses on, which was a good thing since I was damn sure he’d have seriously creepy eyes.
Chapman Pergo was just a little taller than me, forty-ish, lithe, and he carried himself like the amateur boxer he claimed to have been. He flashed an icy smile at Julie.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Danko, always a pleasure. Enjoying the weekend?’
‘Up until quite recently,’ Julie said, deadpan.
‘And Alby, how are things with you?’ Pergo was using his best Sloane Square drawl. He liked to play the superior Pom slumming it out in the colonies, and he was rather good at it.
‘That’s Mister Murdoch,’ I said.
He smiled again, with the practised insincerity that only working in Canberra can give you. ‘Of course, of course, you do outrank me – slightly. You’re acting department head now, aren’t you?’ He put a lot of emphasis on the ‘acting’ part.
‘And maybe you should starting acting like it,’ I said. I hadn’t pulled rank since being promoted, and it was surprising how much fun it was.
‘My apologies, Mister Murdoch.’
‘Apologies accepted,’ I said, ‘but let’s not be so formal. You can call me sir.’
I could see him making a mental note to break me in half at some later date.
‘So tell me, Chapman,’ I went on, ‘what brings you out of your burrow on such a fine afternoon?’
Pergo was a fixer for the Defence Minister, and his methods, while they suited the tenor of the current government, had made him few friends. Pergo’s style could best be described as a steel fist in an iron glove, clutching a set of brass knuckledusters and an electric cattle-prod just for good measure.
The rumour was he’d been serving with the British paras in Iraq – a gung-ho defender of Queen, flag and country – until he was chucked out after being sprung by a BBC news crew while conducting an over-enthusiastic, boots-and-all interrogation in a back alley in Basra.
Things being what they were in Iraq, Pergo was immediately recruited at ten times his army salary to head the Black Falcon Group, one of the many dubious private security companies running mercenaries in Baghdad, and it wasn’t long before things really got nasty. So nasty in fact that after six months, with a dozen different government factions and terrorist groups offering big money for his head on a stick, Pergo was forced to flee the country.
He shipped out one evening covered head to foot in a burkah, reportedly leaving close to a million bucks in US dollars in his private safe. If he hadn’t got himself married to the Defence Minister’s daughter, he’d probably have been unemployable.
‘Perhaps you might like to introduce the rest of your associates, Mister Murdoch,’ Pergo said. He looked at Clare, Carter and Peter. ‘I’m Chapman Pergo, Special Assistant to the Minister for Defence.’
I made the introductions and Pergo shook hands and did the ‘very pleased to meet you’ bit with each of them, including Carter Lonergan. This seemed a little strange, given the barney I’d seen
the two of them having not three hours earlier.
‘You still haven’t mentioned what brings you and the heavy cavalry down to this neck of the woods, Chapman,’ I said when all the insincere gladhanding was over.
‘I am the bearer of good news,’ he smiled. ‘By mutual agreement, the investigations into this morning’s awkwardness on the harbour will now be handled by the Department of Defence. You are relieved of any and all involvement in this operation and are free to enjoy the rest of the holiday.’
‘On whose authority?’ I said, and from the corner of my eye I saw the bleached-blond heavy unbuttoning his jacket. It looked like Pergo wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
He took a single sheet of A4 paper from his pocket, unfolded it and held it up. ‘You may read this, but you may not retain the original or a scan or photocopy. In essence it says you are to turn over all files, notes, recordings, and any other pertinent data on this investigation collected thus far. You are to retain no copies of said files, notes, recordings or data. The letter is signed by the Defence Minister, both in that role and in the role of acting Minister for Homeland Security. It is countersigned by the Ambassador of the United States of America on behalf of the US Director of Homeland Security and the US Secretary of Defense.’
He smiled once more. ‘The letter further advises that the people in this room are forbidden to reveal any details of this morning’s events to anyone, under penalty of any or all secrecy acts and security regulations that pertain to their particular jurisdictions. And by anyone we mean anyone. I am also authorised to use deadly force in ensuring compliance with this directive. Are there any questions?’
No one spoke. When you’re screwed you’re screwed, and we were well and truly screwed. But Pergo wasn’t finished yet.
‘Lieutenant Kingston is to report to her ship within thirty minutes or she will be listed as AWOL, and Mr Sturdee I believe has an urgent meeting with the Commissioner of Police.’
Sensitive New Age Spy Page 5
