Sensitive New Age Spy

by McGeachin, Geoffrey

  ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘Tas Johnson.’

  ‘Oh, is he one of yours? I met him in Kabul.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a good operator. It’s unusual for him to get himself in a jam.’

  ‘Happens to the best of us,’ Lonergan said. ‘Sometimes a man can open up a can of worms and find himself knee-deep in snakes in the grass.’

  Suddenly I had the feeling we weren’t talking about Tas any more. I prefer my mixed metaphors shaken, not stirred, but there was no doubt Carter was making a point.

  ‘Found those pesky nukes yet?’ I asked.

  ‘You know I can’t discuss that with you, Alby. You’re off the investigation.’

  ‘Yeah. Why is that? You’d think with two nukes on the loose in these dangerous times, they’d want every man and his dog on the case. Instead they’re shutting people down.’

  Lonergan considered this. ‘Okay,’ he said after a pause. ‘Totally off the record, we believe what we have here is a hijacking for ransom – that the crewmen from the Altoona have the warheads stashed somewhere, and when we pay up they’ll head for Brazil with the cash, then tell us how to find them.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  Carter took a sip of tea. ‘It’s happened before.’

  Jesus. This was something I hadn’t heard about.

  ‘In 1996, a Russian mobile ICBM launcher disappeared while on exercises in Georgia in the former USSR. It was carrying an SS-25 Sickle missile armed with a nuclear warhead. A week later, the transporter vehicle was located on the bottom of a lake with the crew still inside. The warhead from the ICBM was missing. A week after that, a spokesman for a dozen Russian ex-Spatnez commandos contacted the US embassy in Moscow and announced they could tell us where the warhead was – for a fee, naturally. The asking price was 36 million dollars, twelve US green cards and total immunity. If the offer was rejected, the spokesman hinted that the warhead would find its way onto the open market and go to the highest bidder.’

  ‘But the US government doesn’t negotiate with terrorists,’ I said.

  ‘No, of course it doesn’t,’ Carter agreed. ‘However, a private company did transfer funds into a number of Swiss bank accounts, a series of visas were issued, and the warhead was recovered from a warehouse in Tirana.’

  ‘And you think you’ve got a similar scenario here?’

  He nodded. ‘We’ve been informed there will be an offer on the table by Monday at the latest, and the matter will be resolved by the end of the week.’

  ‘So you’re absolutely sure there’s no terrorist angle?’

  ‘There’s still been no demands, no chatter, and we’d have got a whiff of something by now.’

  ‘So you’re suggesting it’s just that good old American entrepreneurial spirit at work?’

  ‘It would seem so.’

  I decided it was time to throw a cat among the pigeons. ‘So with all this going on, do you think you’ll still be able to keep the lid on Operation Chester?’

  Lonergan was good. I saw him flinch but he didn’t take the bait.

  ‘A word of advice, Alby,’ he said. ‘Keep your head down and stay well clear of all this. The situation will work itself out, trust me on that.’

  ‘Right. If you can’t trust the CIA, Carter, who can you trust?’

  He checked his watch. ‘I have to be somewhere,’ he said, reaching for his wallet.

  ‘I’ll get lunch. But tell me, those Russians who nicked the nuke, did they wind up living happily ever after in the US of A?’

  Lonergan folded his napkin beside his plate. ‘A very sad story. They arrived in Portland, Oregon to start their new lives, and apparently fell asleep in a rented minivan on their way from the airport. Jetlag, I suppose. The van was parked in the middle of a railway crossing at the time and a freight train hit it before the engineer could put the brakes on. There were no survivors.’

  ‘Too bad,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. Shit happens.’

  ‘Certainly does. They’ve got trains in Brazil too, right?’

  Carter smiled. ‘I believe so, Alby.’ He stood up. ‘Thanks for lunch. Always a pleasure, and regards to Julie. I hope she gets Tas out okay – we can’t afford to lose good guys.’

  A couple of minutes after Lonergan had left, Boxer dumped his backpack on a spare chair and reached for the chopsticks. Just then my phone, now fitted with a fully charged battery, played the opening bars of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’.

  ‘Very subtle,’ I said.

  Boxer grinned. ‘Press ∗1984#,’ he said. ‘That code disconnects the microphone in your handset when you connect,’ he said, ‘so you can just listen in and nobody knows you’re eavesdropping.’

  I held the phone to my ear. Boxer does good work and the connection was clear as a bell. I could hear both ends of the conversation and Lonergan wasn’t wasting any time. He was on to his office and wanted a complete rundown on anyone who’d had access to the Chester file in the past week.

  When the call finished I pressed END, put the phone on the table and poured some more tea.

  Boxer picked up my phone and fiddled with it for a couple of minutes. ‘Okay, I’ve dumped “The Star Spangled Banner” for you. When Lonergan turns his phone on or makes a call, you’ll get a single tone and the display will read OUT. When he gets a call it’s a double tone and it reads IN. Plus you’ll get exact copies of every text message he sends or receives, and notification if he changes Sim cards, including the new number. I’ve also beefed up the memory so you can record the conversations if it’s not convenient to eavesdrop. Just bluetooth the info across to your computer to archive it.’

  This was all very impressive. ‘Any chance he’ll spot the bug in his phone?’

  Boxer took another dumpling. ‘Nah, nothing to spot, it’s all done with software. Whenever he uses that phone, he’s actually making a conference call, only he doesn’t know it. I cloned his Sim card, by the way, so I can give you a copy of his private phone book if you want.’

  Who wouldn’t want a copy of a CIA station head’s private phone book? I knew Chapman Pergo’s number would be in there for sure.

  A trolley laden with plates of barbecued pork and roast duck was passing and Boxer flagged it down.

  ‘Since I’ve just broken every telecommunications law in the country and hacked in to the private conversations of the world’s most powerful spy agency, I think the condemned man deserves a hearty lunch,’ he said. ‘And you’re paying.’

  ‘Work up a bit of an appetite with one of those Scandawegian waitresses, did you?’

  Boxer grinned as he dipped a sliver of crispy-skinned roast duck into a small dish of plum sauce. ‘What makes you think it was just the one?’

  SEVENTEEN

  My afternoon spent eavesdropping on Carter Lonergan’s phone revealed that the day-to-day life of a CIA station chief was pretty routine, even with two nuclear warheads on the loose. Perhaps it was just the life of a station chief in Australia, or maybe Lonergan was much too smart to spill his guts on a mobile phone and all the serious chat would be over an ultra-secure satellite link routed back through Langley.

  I was studying the flowchart, trying to make sense of a dozen different possible scenarios, when Julie burst in the front door, pulled her laptop from her Crumpler bag and fired it up.

  ‘I think I’ve got something,’ she said. ‘I just had lunch with Damien Rothwell.’

  ‘From the Fin Review?’

  ‘Yep. It seems that over the past few months the good Reverend Priday has been quietly liquidating the assets of the First Church of the Lord’s Bounty and using the cash to buy gold. The vaults of the old Rural Colonial Bank are stacked to the ceiling with bullion.’

  ‘Sounds like the Reverend is preparing for a bit of a downturn in the stockmarket,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what Damo reckons. But if Priday’s buying gold hand over fist, he’s got to be expecting more than just your average cyclical dip in the market, right?’

 
‘So what has the potential to cause an economic downturn serious enough for someone to want to dump their property and share portfolio and buy up big on gold, do ya think?’

  ‘The news that a couple of nuclear warheads are on the loose might do it,’ Julie said.

  ‘That would definitely do it. But how the hell could someone like the Reverend Priday be involved in all this? There has to be a connection here we’re missing. What the hell is it?’

  When you’ve run out of answers the rule is to go back to the beginning and start digging again. I walked to my office computer and opened the file of Max’s pictures from the Jindivik soiree. ‘Let’s take another look at this happy band of Christian soldiers.’

  Julie was looking over my shoulder as I clicked through the images. ‘No surprises there,’ I said. ‘The Reverend and Mrs Priday, Cristobel, the choirboys.’ I spotted a fetish necklace. ‘That’s Artemesia Gaarg talking to Priday. I didn’t recognise her before.’

  I kept clicking through the shots. Just more of the same – party guests, waiters, and those close-ups of the canapés. Then something caught my eye. One of the close-ups showed a man’s hand reaching for a thin slice of beef fillet nestling on a toasted ciabatta square topped with beetroot relish. I couldn’t blame him – it looked like Wagyu beef, nice and rare and exactly the piece I’d have gone for.

  But that wasn’t what had got my attention. What caught my eye was a familiar-looking cufflink in a French cuff – diamonds set in gold in the shape of the letters CFP

  ‘Well, well, well,’ I said to Julie. ‘Our old pal Chapman Fucking Pergo.’

  All roads might lead to Rome, but right now all the evidence was pointing towards Chapman Pergo and the Reverend Priday being in this up to their necks, and that particular road led directly to a church in Sydney’s CBD.

  I headed downstairs and made a big show of hailing a cab on the beach side of the Parade. By the time we stopped at the lights at the top of Bondi Road, the Astra had dropped in behind us, two cars clear. I gave the taxi driver ten bucks, walked back to the Astra and climbed into the rear seat. The driver and passenger turned round and stared at me.

  ‘Sorry about losing you guys all the time,’ I said. ‘I’m heading for the city, and you know what Thursday afternoon traffic is like. If we car-pool you won’t have any trouble keeping up. Martin Place is good for me, I’m off to church.’

  The driver and passenger looked at each other. There was a long blast on a horn from somewhere behind us.

  ‘Light’s green,’ I said. ‘My bet’s the expressway, down Ocean Avenue and then New South Head Road and William Street.’

  ‘What about we take the Cross City Tunnel and get off at Macquarie Street?’ the passenger suggested, and the driver glared at him.

  ‘I’m easy,’ I said, fastening my seatbelt. ‘Gwenda got you boys on eight- or twelve-hour shifts?’

  The passenger turned round. ‘Sixteen,’ he said, and the driver glared at him again.

  ‘You poor bastards.’ So they were definitely Gwenda’s boys. ‘Next turn on the right’ll get us down to the tunnel.’

  It took us twenty-five minutes to get to Martin Place, which was a pretty good run, all things considered, and the conversation for the rest of the trip was minimal, to say the least. The last I saw of the Astra was the driver trying to talk his way out of a ticket for stopping on a clearway to drop me off.

  The First Church of the Lord’s Bounty is a well-built and imposing edifice, as were the two men in suits standing guard outside. One of them quickly sized me up and said he would need to take my gun. I sized him up and asked him how he intended to hold it with ten broken fingers. It was a bit of a stand-off till the other bloke murmured briefly into his cuff, tilted his head to listen to a response that crackled in his earpiece, then indicated I could enter the building unfrisked.

  The bank was built around a three-storey atrium with massive stone columns, marble facings, and wrought-iron and polished-oak railings running around the walkways on the upper levels. There was a pulpit on the mezzanine and underneath it a string quartet was setting up on a small stage. Several women were lining up chairs in neat rows in front of the pulpit.

  The Reverend Priday was waiting for me, and having the Sauer wasn’t much joy since I realised I was heavily outgunned. Half a dozen goons were standing with the Reverend, as was my old pal Lothar.

  Lothar owned the Double-D-Luxe Motel, a decrepit fleapit down a dismal back alley in Kings Cross. He rented rooms and girls by the hour, sold pills by the handful, and did a nice little sideline in sidearms. Lothar was so sleazy that the local junkies, pimps, dealers and brothel owners regularly complained to the Kings Cross Chamber of Commerce that he was lowering the tone of the neighbourhood.

  I hadn’t seen Lothar since last March, when I’d needed to get a gun and some money in a hurry. He’d handed over a geriatric Beretta and fifty bucks, but only after demanding my watch as collateral. Fifteen minutes later, the bastard tried to sell me out to the highest bidder. A week later, I picked up my watch and gave him back his gun and his money, along with a knuckle sandwich for interest.

  Lothar smiled nervously, all bad teeth, sallow skin and what looked like a pathetic attempt to grow a moustache. Always scrawny, he’d lost weight since I’d last seen him and right now he’d make a medical school skeleton look positively obese.

  ‘Hello, Mr Murdoch,’ he said. ‘How are you keeping? Good?’

  ‘Excuse me for not shaking hands, Lothar,’ I said, ‘but I don’t have any disinfectant wipes on me.’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ the Reverend said, ‘this is a house of peace and goodwill.’ He turned to me. ‘My friends are simply gathered together here in preparation for our evening service.’

  I looked down at the two bulging sports bags on the floor at Lothar’s feet. ‘I’m a big fan of peace and goodwill, Reverend, but I’ve got a feeling if I unzip one of those bags I’m not going to find any hymn books. My money would be on something that delivers a nine-millimetre sermon at five hundred rounds a minute.’

  ‘Six hundred,’ Lothar said defensively, and then slammed his mouth shut with a snap that echoed around the marble-clad walls.

  ‘Si vis Pacem, Para bellum, Inspector Murdoch,’ Priday said.

  Lothar looked confused.

  ‘It means, those who desire peace should prepare for war,’ I explained. ‘You could put it on your business card, Lothar.’

  ‘Perhaps we need to go someplace where we can speak privately,’ the Reverend said, and ushered me across to a set of stairs leading to the first-floor walkway that surrounded the former banking chamber. Well-heeled worshippers of the Lord’s Bounty were starting to arrive and the string quartet was tuning up.

  ‘No electric guitars, Reverend? Or choirs of blond, blue-eyed maidens who’ve pledged to save their virginity for the marriage bed?’

  He smiled. ‘We leave that to the more populist evangelicals.’

  Priday’s office was on the mezzanine, just behind the pulpit which jutted out over the stage and dominated the cavernous hall. The pulpit reminded me of Father Mapple’s in the Whaleman’s Chapel in Moby Dick. While Mapple climbed up to his pulpit via a rope ladder, I was sure that if he wanted to the Reverend Priday could pop down to the vaults in the cellar and build himself a stairway out of gold ingots. And there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that his congregation would bloody love it.

  The Reverend must have been an old romantic, since there was a framed photograph of his wife on his desk. Sure, Louise was naked, and it was what some of my less-than-couth work colleagues might have called a beaver shot, but you have to admire the sentiment. It made me a touch uncomfortable knowing I’d seen both the Reverend’s wife and his daughter as naked as the Lord had made them, but I decided if there was a prize for God’s handiwork it would have to go to Cristobel.

  Priday took a bottle of whisky and two glasses from the impressively stocked bar. Glenfarclas again, but this time it was the 25-year-old stuff.

&n
bsp; ‘Can I offer you a drink, Inspector Murdoch?’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m getting a bit choosey about who I drink with,’ I said. The Glenfarclas was seriously tempting, but right now I figured I needed my wits about me.

  As the Reverend poured himself a very stiff drink his hand shook slightly. Something was definitely putting the wind up him, judging by the firepower he was acquiring from Lothar.

  ‘That’s a lot of muscle you’ve got standing around downstairs,’ I said. ‘You worried someone might do a runner with the collection plate?’

  Priday smiled. ‘You’re a little behind the times, Inspector. We provide a direct-debit system for our parishioners to donate to the church.’

  ‘Of course you do. So it must be all that gold bullion stacked up next to the cases of sacramental Grange in the cellar that you’re worried about?’

  Priday’s smile froze for a brief moment, then he recovered. ‘I’ve found both the Grange and the gold to be excellent long-term investments for the church, Inspector Murdoch.’

  Bugger me, I’d only been joking about the Grange.

  ‘But yes, we do have some security concerns in that area,’ the Reverend continued. ‘And Lothar, as a recent member of my flock, is assisting us with resources.’

  I figured the church must have one hell of a community outreach program to turn up a bottom-feeder like Lothar. Or maybe they’d met when the Reverend was detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure – Lothar had done more than a few stretches himself.

  ‘Surely you’re not here to scrutinise the investment strategy of the church, Inspector Murdoch? There’s nothing illegal about buying gold.’

  ‘It’s the timing of your gold acquisition that interests me, Reverend. It’s almost as if you’re expecting a sudden downturn in the stockmarket – one might even say banking on it.’

  The Reverend finished his whisky and poured another. His hand was shaking again and the neck of the bottle rattled against the lip of his glass. I decided to ramp up the pressure.

  ‘Is Chapman Pergo also a member of your flock?’ I asked.