The Mandarin Code

by Steve Lewis

  Within an hour of the B-52s returning to their base in Guam, shaken after their run-in with the Chinese fighter jets, Holland had issued a robust statement. It was just after 9.30am in Honolulu.

  ‘The actions of those Chinese pilots were unnecessary, unprofessional and showed a lack of experience,’ he’d thundered.

  ‘As a leader I find it impossible to believe that they were not acting under orders. China is growing more aggressive by the day. It now claims most of the South China Sea and is involved in territorial disputes there with Vietnam, India and the Philippines. In the East China Sea it is threatening South Korea and Japan. Most of the world’s trade passes through these waters.

  ‘It has the posture of a country that is spoiling for a fight. It is now up to the leaders of all free nations to decide if they are prepared to let China rule the international waterways.’

  Holland had personally briefed the President. He liked the steel that Earle Jackson had put back in America’s spine. The admiral believed that it was overdue for the US to assert its rights of free passage on the high seas. Jackson agreed.

  In a few hours time the President would hold a press conference. And he wasn’t promising words, he was promising action.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Canberra

  Soft turquoise wings sketched on satin skin, a pair of butterflies in hidden places, a stencil of forbidden delight. Pixie dust mingled with stars in tiny constellations across a smudge of black.

  Harry Dunkley allowed his eyes to linger on the soft curve of her hip until every centimetre had been traced. Then he fell back onto a pillow, hands clasped behind his head, feeling guilty contentment after a night with his lover.

  He mentally did the maths as she quietly lay on her stomach, her arms folded beneath the pillow.

  You’re in way over your head, Dunkley.

  Celia Mathieson was gorgeous, feisty, whip-smart – and twenty-two years his junior.

  He wondered what the social media wowsers – the Twitter mullahs who loved to stand in judgement – would make of this liaison.

  They’d hand me to the lynch mob.

  But fuck ’em. This was 2013 and if he wanted to sleep with a 32-year-old then the self-appointed morality police could go take a running jump.

  Besides, he’d made enough sacrifices as he’d pursued his career. A marriage that had never got out of second gear had broken down; his ex, Belle, had taken refuge from the national capital, escaping to Sydney, then Byron. She had never come to grips with his selfish commitment to political reporting, his ‘fucking obsession with that fucking paper’.

  His relationship with his daughter had also turned fractious. He’d all but ignored Gaby during the difficult final year of her degree, a double arts major at his alma mater, Sydney University. He’d nearly missed her graduation, arriving half an hour late and with the academic jamboree in full swing.

  He wondered how she would respond to her dad having an affair with a woman a handful of years older than she was. He could hear her reproach in his head.

  Disgusting!

  Maybe it was better to keep his beautiful sleeping muse a secret. Besides, the only people who counted in this arrangement were the two of them. He was fifty-four and Celia was several months shy of thirty-three.

  So she was perfectly capable of deciding whether to throw herself, butterfly tattoo and all, into this relationship.

  She isn’t Lolita, for Christ’s sake.

  He checked his watch: 7.56am. It was a Wednesday and there was plenty to get on with. If only he could drag himself away from Ms Butterfly Wings.

  He slipped out of bed and into the kitchen, filling the kettle. He was contemplating listening to AM when his mobile rang, and he swiftly answered it before it woke Celia.

  ‘Good morning, Harry.’ It was a voice he didn’t know.

  ‘Hello. Who is this?’

  ‘Someone who’d like to meet with you. Alone.’

  ‘I usually like to know who I’m meeting.’

  ‘I can appreciate that, but I think you’d find our conversation interesting – and useful. Let me just say, I think Ben Gordon would probably appreciate it too.’

  The mention of his friend’s name triggered a familiar surge of emotion in Dunkley. Remorse. Guilt. Sadness.

  Then there was a different feeling as a deft hand teased his lower torso, urging him back to bed. He turned to Celia, putting his index finger to his mouth.

  ‘Okay Mr Anonymous. Where and when?’

  ‘Hansel and Gretel Cafe in Phillip. I’ll meet you there in, say, forty minutes, around 8.45.’

  Dunkley felt a soft tug on his arm, a whisper of encouragement.

  ‘Yep, okay . . . but can we make it an hour please?’

  ‘Certainly, Harry. I’ll be wearing a blue-and-white checked shirt, glasses, sandy hair. Look forward to meeting you then.’

  The Mazda 3 was a sporty number with leather seats and a sound system to die for.

  Dunkley loved revving Celia’s vehicle around Canberra’s quiet streets, although he was careful to avoid the city’s myriad speed cameras. He squeezed the car into a parking space in Prospect Court, just around the corner from the coffee shop.

  He was a few minutes late, checking his watch as he weaved past three ambling tradies. It had been a while since he’d visited Hansel and Gretel. As he entered, a harried-looking woman was helping an elderly man struggling to grip a coffee cup with arthritic hands. ‘Dad, it won’t bite,’ she said with a hint of annoyance.

  He spotted the sandy-haired man with the checked shirt, his head buried in a copy of that day’s Australian.

  Carefully, the man folded the broadsheet before offering Harry a cautious smile, beckoning the reporter to join him.

  ‘Harry, nice to finally meet you in person. Trevor Harris.’ A freckled hand stretched out with a firm grip.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Flat white, thanks.’

  As Harris motioned to a waitress who’d just emerged from the small kitchen, Dunkley struggled to place him in Kimberley’s circle of friends.

  ‘Let me make it easy for you, Harry. I was Ben’s immediate boss at DSD when he died . . . was killed. What was it? Eighteen, twenty months ago?’ Harris shook his head with genuine regret written on his face.

  ‘Kimberley’s boss? What’s your role at DSD?’ Dunkley probed.

  ‘So you call Ben “Kimberley”? I never really got the hang of that.’

  Harris placed their order and continued.

  ‘Well, my former role was head of the Scientific and Technical Analysis branch. I spent quite a bit of time there, at DSD. About ten years all up. But I’ve been out of the agency coming up to six months now.’

  There was a hesitancy in Harris that hinted at a larger story.

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  ‘Variety of reasons, a touch too complicated to discuss right now. You know the agency’s in the process of being reorganised and will be integrated into the broader intelligence framework?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve heard some stuff about it, although the secret society of spooks isn’t really my speciality.’

  ‘Really? I’ve read several of your recent pieces in The Australian. That article about the “Challenge of the Dragon” was quite perceptive, I thought. And well informed.’

  Harris was fishing for his intelligence sources and that was something Dunkley never discussed. He drew on his flat white, smiled and took a moment to soak up the cafe’s ambience.

  The dark chocolaty aroma of freshly roasted arabica hung in the air, blended with the scent of nuts and the glacéd fruit that Hansel and Gretel was renowned for. He and Belle had been regulars at the company’s original outlet in Manuka, introducing Gaby to the pleasure of frothy milk when she was tiny. The memory brought on a momentary pang of nostalgia.

  ‘So why am I really here?’

  Harris clasped his hands and shifted his gaze to his coffee before looking directly at Dunkley.

  ‘Harry, fir
st things first. I don’t want to get into trouble, I don’t want to breach the Secrets Act. I am most definitely not a whistleblower. But you need to know some things about our dead friend.’

  He stole a quick glance around the cafe. No one was close enough to hear them over the background clatter. Still, Harris was taking no chances, and leaned further towards Dunkley.

  ‘You only have part of the story of Ben’s death. When I was informed of it, I assigned a colleague to close down his IT profile. It’s usually a straightforward task – access the person’s files, download any unfinished business to a common user hard drive, provide a report to management. To me. That sort of thing. But Ben’s profile was stubbornly hard to access. That’s when I took over the task. Personally.

  ‘Some interesting stuff came floating out. I found a gmail address that he’d set up. You recall the email that Ben sent you, the one that referred to “shades of ’75”?’

  Dunkley looked blank. ‘No, can’t say that I do.’

  ‘Really, Harry? Ben sent you and another of his friends a very similar email – about twenty minutes apart – on Thursday, August the fifteenth, 2011.’

  ‘Sorry, but I honestly don’t recall receiving any email like that. I mean, I get literally dozens of the buggers each day, but I reckon I’d remember something Kimberley sent me, particularly so close to when it happened. She was killed three days after that.’

  Harris shifted in his seat, seemed to reflect for a moment, and then reached into a green shopping bag. He took out an A4 sheet and placed it between them.

  ‘Here it is.’

  Dunkley was about to pick up the document when a shrill voice interrupted. ‘Another coffee for you two?’

  The waitress, wearing a black dress with a silly-looking apron embroidered in lace, stood with pen poised. She was just doing her job, but Harris shot her a dark look.

  ‘Yes, same again.’

  Ms Gretel took the hint and scurried away, allowing the reporter to read the succinct email.

  Harry

  Starting to look like shades of ’75. We really need to talk.

  Call me

  Kimberley

  The two men looked at each other. Harris spoke.

  ‘Well, Ben sent it. I found it and made a copy. He meant you to have it and he sent it from a private account, so I’m not breaking any rules by giving it to you.’

  Dunkley read the note several times before speaking.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Well, Harry, maybe it means you’ve been looking in the wrong direction.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Canberra

  A film of dust confirmed that the box had been undisturbed for a while, dumped in a corner of Harry Dunkley’s cluttered garage. He’d all but forgotten this carton filled with bits and pieces recovered from Kimberley’s apartment. As the executor of her estate, Dunkley had settled her will and filled the box with the items left to him. None had appeared to be of much value.

  Had he, in his absent-minded grief, sought to consign its contents to history? Maybe. But now, eighteen months later, Dunkley had a reason to prise the box open.

  Shades of ’75? What was that about?

  He carried the box into his flat and sliced the tape sealing it with a sharp kitchen knife.

  ‘Open Sesame!’

  Celia had brewed a fresh pot of filter coffee and joined him at the dining table with two mugs. Dunkley worked his way through the top layer of job-related letters and files, a public service manual – Ethics in the Workplace – and piles of Christmas and birthday cards.

  He examined each item in turn and continued digging till he reached the layer of books lining the bottom of the carton. Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion was there, and a couple of tomes on Asian art. Wedged tightly in a corner was a paperback version of Paul Kelly’s The Dismissal.

  Dunkley turned to Mathieson who had picked up a bundle of Kimberley’s old birthday cards.

  ‘She was obsessed with the Whitlam Government and hated John Kerr and Malcolm Fraser with a passion,’ he explained.

  Celia had found a couple of cards from Dunkley and was smiling at the inscriptions.

  ‘Malcolm Fraser’s not so bad; he’s the only Liberal I like.’

  ‘Believe me, in 1975, you would have hated him.’

  ‘Waaay before my time, grandad.’

  Dunkley tensed at the reminder of the difference in their ages and looked more closely at the well-thumbed book. It had been bookmarked with an old plastic pass card at the opening page of a chapter titled ‘The Security Crisis’. Mathieson gently kneaded Dunkley’s shoulder as they both leaned in to read two words scribbled in the page’s margin.

  Reg Withers.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Reg Withers? He was the leader of the Senate when the Coalition blocked supply. Fraser’s upper house henchman during the crisis in ’75.’

  Celia opened up her MacBook, keen to find out more.

  ‘He was a minister under Malcolm Fraser but apparently got the bullet and never forgave him for it. Surly-looking type, if you ask me. Harry, pass me that card . . .’

  Dunkley pushed the plastic bookmark across the table as he began to read the chapter’s opening paragraphs. Like most political animals he found the Dismissal intriguing and somewhat unbelievable. But he’d forgotten the questions raised at the time about the role of the CIA in Whitlam’s downfall.

  ‘In the days preceding 11 November there were two major upheavals in Australia’s system of government. The first was the political and constitutional crisis which covered the newspapers and engulfed the country,’ Kelly wrote.

  ‘The second was a security crisis that centred on the United States’ communications base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs and the cover of American CIA agents operating in Australia. Only the tip of the security iceberg was ever apparent.’

  Dunkley shivered.

  ‘“Shades of ’75.”’

  Then, it hadn’t been the Chinese accused of meddling in domestic politics. It was the Americans. And they’d been charged with helping to bring down a democratically elected government.

  ‘Harry?’

  Dunkley looked up from the book. Mathieson was turning the card over in her hand.

  ‘This is a crypto card. It’s one part of a series of keys that you need to get into a highly secure Cloud archive.’

  ‘A what? Can you speak slowly and in words of one syllable?’

  ‘Sorry old man, I forgot.’

  ‘Okay, that’s twice now. You don’t need to be nasty, miss.’

  ‘The Cloud is a huge memory bank. Anyone can store documents in it. It means that you don’t have to put everything on a hard drive and can access it from anywhere in the world. It’s dead simple, Harry. Even you could do it on Google.’

  Mathieson chuckled and Harry narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Three times.’

  ‘But this is much more secure. It plugs into the side of the computer and I’m pretty sure it works with Amazon Web Services. But I’ll need the other keys – a username and a password – to get into it.’

  ‘Well, let’s have a look, Cel.’

  Mathieson pulled a card reader from her computer bag and plugged it into one of her MacBook’s USB ports. Then she pushed in the card and called up the Amazon Web Services page on her browser.

  Dunkley was always amazed at the speed with which this digital native could navigate a world he found alien.

  A few moments later a page opened with two empty boxes in it. The cursor blinked in the top one. Mathieson looked pleased with her handiwork.

  ‘Okay, so far so good, but we don’t know the username.’

  Dunkley pointed at the handwritten words on the page. ‘Yes we do.’

  Mathieson typed ‘Reg Withers’ into the box, and hit the tab. The cursor jumped to the lower rectangle.

  ‘Any idea of the password?’

  ‘Not a clue.’

  ‘Well, you don’t
get too many chances.’

  Dunkley rifled through the book to see if Kimberley had left another handwritten key. There were none.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Kimberley! I’m not Miss Marple.’

  He turned to the front cover.

  ‘Try “‘dismissal”.’

  Mathieson typed in the nine-letter word. ‘The password you entered is incorrect’ flashed in red.

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘Next?’

  ‘What else could it be?’ Dunkley slapped his thigh as he rose from the chair. ‘1975? Kerr? Gough? Try “Whitlam” . . .’

  Again, the computer flashed ‘The password you entered is incorrect’ and this time it added ‘You have one more attempt before this account is locked’.

  ‘How long will it be locked?’ Dunkley looked anxiously at Mathieson.

  ‘I don’t know, depends on how secure Kimberley wanted it to be. Could be five minutes. Could be an hour. Could be a day. Could be forever.’

  Dunkley looked skyward. ‘Jesus wept, Kimberley! You could have given us a few more clues.’

  ‘Well, short of divine intervention, we better make this one work.’

  Dunkley tried to put himself in Kimberley’s shoes. She knew everything about the Whitlam Government and its dramatic fall.

  He turned and went back to the computer, staring at the two boxes that stood between them and Kimberley’s trove. ‘Reg Withers’ filled the first. A Liberal senator who’d eventually fallen foul of Fraser. A West Australian tough guy. Loved to throw his weight around . . .

  Dunkley’s face lit up.

  ‘Cel, try “toecutter”.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She tapped out the letters carefully.

  T-O-E-C-U-T-T-E-R.

  The computer whirred for a second. And then the gates opened.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Canberra

  The six ceramic panels sparkled in the artificial light. The ode to an ancient landscape now marked by the furrows of agriculture and scarred by industry ran the width of Parliament’s Mural Hall. ‘The River’ was Martin Toohey’s favourite piece of art in this democratic cathedral, and he found it both humbling and inspiring.