The Mandarin Code

by Steve Lewis

  ‘Oh! Very nice, Gangmei, very nice.’ He read over the article to be released through Xinhua again.

  China has advanced plans to sign a historic military cooperation agreement with the Democratic Republic of Fiji. The two countries are expected to formally enter the agreement within a month, allowing the People’s Liberation Army to conduct formal exercises with the Pacific nation.

  Fijian Prime Minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama is due to arrive in Beijing in a fortnight when he is expected to sign a pact with President Meng. China has also agreed to increase aid to the Pacific nation. This will reduce Fiji’s reliance on Western countries, like Australia, which have been increasingly hostile to the island nation.

  Jiang was satisfied. The evidence on the streets showed he had correctly read the mood of a people determined to see their country rise again.

  America’s decision to send the George Washington into Chinese waters was as predictable as the sunrise. Those fools in Washington had stumbled into the trap. Everything had been focused towards enticing the US to make an aggressive play. It had worked.

  Now the world was watching. If the superpower retreated, China would make that giant leap forward.

  And the world would shift on its axis. Forever.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Canberra

  The newspapers lay unfurled across the kitchen table. Harry Dunkley cradled a cup of tea and munched on a piece of toast. He was in his element – the familiar black stain of newsprint on his hands.

  His exclusive screamed from the front page.

  LABOR’S SECRET BAILEY POLL

  Martin Toohey’s leadership is under siege with Labor secretly road-testing Catriona Bailey as an alternative prime minister.

  Internal party polling, details of which have been obtained exclusively by The Australian, reveals the Foreign Minister could save a swag of marginal Labor seats.

  The polling confirms Ms Bailey – who made a triumphant return to Parliament last week – is far more popular with swinging voters than Mr Toohey.

  The Prime Minister’s grip on power was yesterday rocked by the collapse of his multi-billion-dollar Northern Territory gas deal.

  Critically, the polling shows that Labor could be returned if Ms Bailey was prime minister when voters go to the polls on 14 September.

  Labor has been testing Ms Bailey’s support in the key electoral battlegrounds of western Sydney and Brisbane.

  The journalist knew his splash would ignite the simmering leadership speculation and dominate today’s political drama. He’d already fielded calls to appear on Sydney and Melbourne radio.

  He glanced at the other front pages as the blare of the AM intro sounded on Radio National.

  Tony Eastley plunged into Dunkley’s story off the top.

  ‘We now cross to our chief political correspondent in Canberra. Sabra Lane, I understand there has been an explosive development in the story leading the front page of The Australian.’

  ‘Yes Tony, just minutes ago I took a call from Labor’s national secretary, Gerry Tighe, who demanded air time. He’s on the line now. Mr Tighe, good morning, I understand you say this story is an invention.’

  ‘Good morning. Yes it is. I admit Labor’s struggling. Our numbers aren’t good. But the story in The Australian, Sabra, is pure fabrication. I never usually discuss internal polling, but I can tell your listeners that Mr Dunkley’s so-called scoop is 100 per cent wrong . . .’

  ‘In what way, Mr Tighe?’

  ‘Well, The Australian reports so-called internal party polling on Catriona Bailey. I can say this: we have not done any such polling. Dunkley has simply made it up.’

  The online vultures started circling immediately, driven by a hatred of Murdoch and old media. In just a few hours, the press gallery veteran had become the Antichrist.

  The social media lynch mob was whipping itself into a frenzy, words laced with poison and relish. But the outrage spewed well beyond the twitterverse. Cabinet ministers were telling senior gallery figures that The Australian’s star scribe was a dead man walking.

  ‘Dunkley’s about as popular as Alan Jones at a Destroy the Joint meeting,’ one female minister told a Fairfax journo, eager to plunge the knife into the News Corp hack.

  In Parliament, the Toohey Government had suspended standing orders so its chief head-kicker, the Minister for Education and failed marriages, Xavier Quinn, could take a baseball bat to Dunkley. For fifteen ugly minutes, the South Australian MP laid out the case against the Murdoch employee, every word protected by parliamentary privilege.

  ‘Politics is a tough business and we, in the government, respect the role that the fourth estate plays in holding those in power to account,’ Quinn said. ‘But this so-called journalist – this Murdoch journalist – has crossed the line between reporting the news and being an activist.

  ‘One of my colleagues calls Dunkley “the player” – and it’s an apt description. For on this occasion it appears he was intent on sabotaging a democratically elected government.’

  Ease up, turbo. I got some polling figures wrong, okay? Toohey’s still fucked. And I was set up.

  The Greens and the independents were predictably linking the story with News Corp’s alleged persecution of the Toohey Government and the forty-third Parliament.

  ‘The “hate media” has overstepped the mark yet again in its unprincipled desire to bring about regime change,’ Greens’ leader Kiirsty Stanford-Long had told reporters.

  In his office, the journalist sat helpless as the assault on his reputation intensified. On the twittersphere, #DunkleyDoneFor was trending.

  He’d desperately tried to raise Brendan Ryan, the man who’d fed him the figures and later verified the thrust of his now discredited scoop. There was no answer and his office said the minister would be busy all day.

  His character was being shredded. Still, he could hardly complain. He’d built his career on being the hardest hitter in politics. He never shied from a tussle and worried about the diminishing pool of journalists willing to get their hands dirty.

  ‘If you want to play in the big league, you’ve got to be prepared to take more hits than Joe Frazier,’ was his advice to young guns arriving in Canberra.

  This was no boxing contest, however. It was more like a one-sided UFC bout – and he was on the ground taking whack after painful whack.

  ‘Hey Harry, how ya going? Want a coffee?’ Ben Wakefield, The Australian’s irrepressible online journo, was hovering.

  He liked Ben but it wasn’t caffeine he needed.

  ‘No thanks, comrade. Appreciate it, though.’

  Wakefield was one of the few colleagues to have sauntered over to see how he was faring. As if he should have been surprised. That was the nature of the press gallery. If you were on top of your game and filing scoop after scoop you received grudging admiration – but if you slipped up, look out.

  The bared fangs of jealous vipers were frightening.

  His phone buzzed. It was Celia, the first time she’d rung since the big fright. He was heartened to see her name flash on his phone, but now wasn’t the right moment to talk to her. He let the call go to voicemail.

  Dunkley’s mouth was dry and his head was pounding.

  Two minutes later, his phone rang again. And this time he had no choice about answering.

  ‘Harry . . .’

  His name rolled out of Deb Snowdon’s mouth. The Australian’s editor sounded as if she’d been lined up against a wall. As Dunkley would later discover, for the past thirty minutes she’d been camped on level five of the News Corp head office, trying to salvage the career of her political editor.

  Mahogany Row, as the executive suite is called, is not a place for the faint-hearted. It’s where Murdoch editors go to be executed – usually about a week after the mogul has left Australia.

  ‘Hey Deb, how ya going?’

  ‘Terrific, Harry, couldn’t be better.’

  ‘Well, that’s good.’

  �
�So, here’s the plan . . .’

  It wasn’t so much a plan as a defensive ploy, designed with one thought in mind – heading off a threatened media inquiry.

  ‘I want you to take extended leave, Harry, a long holiday. I’ll get Helen to look after the details. How much leave have you actually got?’

  ‘A heap, Deb. But—’

  ‘No buts on this one, Harry. The suits need a sacrificial lamb. And mate, just in case you’ve forgotten, we’re bleeding cash and don’t need to be picking fights with management – not unless we’re 100 per cent certain that we’re right. And on this . . . well, the phrase “overplayed his hand” springs to mind.’

  The reporter took a deep breath. He was about to be benched for the first time in a long and previously illustrious career – and it hurt.

  ‘Harry, I’m sorry. I truly am. But things are fraught with the government. And yeah, we’re not going to back off, but it will be bloody hard to prosecute the case against this lot if you don’t fall on your sword. This way, we can say that when serious mistakes are made we will act.’

  ‘Wow, Deb, that does sound like I’m being fed to the wolves. Guess all those award-winning scoops really count for something, hey?’

  ‘Don’t get started, Harry. You know I’m your biggest fan, but mate, these are fucking difficult times and none of us are . . . well, indispensable.’

  ‘So I’m dispensable?’

  ‘Yes Harry, don’t make plans to come back.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Canberra

  Harry Dunkley was alive, but only just. He lay sprawled on a mess of a bed, staring at an upturned tumbler.

  The day was half over, and he was trying to remember – through the dusty thud of a hangover – how he’d walked through these gates of hell. His mouth tasted of dirty copper and a faint scent of nicotine hung in the air.

  Strange. I don’t smoke.

  He leaned across to pick up his watch, glancing it off the table and onto the floor.

  Fuck, I just want the time.

  It was a Thursday, sometime in March. 2013. Beyond that, he didn’t have much of a clue. Then it slowly started to come back, thoughts he’d tried to drown in a lake of tequila. He sat up, a little too quickly, knocking his brain off its fragile mooring.

  The previous day he’d been thrown to the wolves. News Corp’s over-anxious management had discarded their gun political reporter.

  The fallout was spectacular. The Toohey Government, desperate and nearly friendless, had leapt on his gaffe with relish. And when they came hunting for Dunkley’s carcass, the brave company that he’d fought for had given him up without a moment’s hesitation. On yer way, cobber.

  Of course they’d tried to spin his sacking as something else. They’d toyed with the idea of Harry taking a ‘sabbatical’ or embarking on a ‘special project as part of a strategic realignment’. A ‘long and well-earned rest’ was considered, too.

  But the cold hard reality was that he had been turfed out by a bunch of back office pretenders who wouldn’t know a breaking yarn if it smacked them in the mouth.

  Like other newsbreakers, Dunkley had been under constant pressure to bowl up stories that would cut through, sell newspapers and lure punters to cash-starved websites.

  He did it better than most – but News couldn’t afford a wide-ranging media inquiry.

  ‘You want to know why fewer people are buying papers? ’Cause you bastards have got rid of all the decent reporters,’ he’d told one executive who spent his days watching his back.

  Bugger them all.

  He dragged himself into the kitchen, searching for something to ease the John Bonham tom-toms playing paradiddles in his head. Three Nurofen scratched at his throat as he reached for a chair, ignoring the mobile phone ringing somewhere in his flat.

  Christ, you don’t have the stamina for this anymore.

  He’d drunk himself into a stupor of self-pity and self-loathing and was paying the price.

  ‘All right, all right . . .’

  The phone was ringing. Again. Someone was determined to get through.

  Alcoholics Anonymous?

  He stumbled into the lounge room and retrieved the device from beneath a cushion on the couch. Eight missed calls.

  The SMH offering me a job?

  Not likely. They’d cut to the bone and the word was Fairfax management wanted another hundred editorial staff gone to balance the books.

  He flicked through the list. No Caller ID. No Caller ID. Celia. Jack, his brother. Celia again. He would talk to her, but his wounded ego screamed not yet. He continued to scroll down the calls. He stopped: Trevor Harris.

  Wonder what he knows?

  Dunkley eased himself into the shower, tilting his head as a tsunami rained down on his sorry skull. He stayed like that for five minutes, ignoring the nausea, until he felt half human.

  Moving gingerly, he wrapped a threadbare towel around his shoulders.

  C’mon sunshine, you’ll live.

  His head still hurt but he was determined to look the world in the eye. Kind of.

  After dressing in jeans and an unironed shirt, he picked up his mobile. He pressed redial on one of the calls and waited a few seconds.

  ‘Trevor. Harry Dunkley. How’re you going? Feel like a coffee? Great. Hansel and Gretel in thirty.’

  The cafe had attracted a decent lunchtime crowd, and Dunkley secured the last remaining table, next to a glass room-divider. He scanned a menu before ordering a double shot, his first for the day. His head still ached, but it was manageable pain. Like listening to Eminem with Celia.

  A couple at a nearby table shot him a glance, exchanging conspiratorial whispers.

  Yes it really is me. Mr Bring-Down-the-Government.

  Harris was running a few minutes late, but that was fine. He had all day, and the day after. The waitress had just delivered his coffee when the former DSD analyst strolled through the door, gazing around the busy cafe before spotting Dunkley.

  ‘G’day. How are you?’

  ‘Not bad, Trevor. Well actually, let me rephrase that. A tad dusty. Last night was a big one.’

  ‘Yes, you look a little worse for wear.’ Harris was not about to paper over the bleeding obvious. He signalled to a waitress, ordering a long black before turning back to Harry. ‘Have you registered at Centrelink yet?’

  ‘Hah, not yet. Thought I’d wait a day or two.’ Dunkley smiled with a not-a-care-in-the-world bravado. He hadn’t even contemplated the dole until Harris mentioned it.

  ‘So, you’ve taken the rap, Harry. Big time. I read about it in the Canberra Times – they seemed to quite enjoy writing about your . . . er . . . downfall.’

  ‘Yeah, you find out who your mates are when the chips are down. I was thinking about offering myself up for a public flogging, but just about every bastard in this town would want to take a swing.’

  ‘I guess that’s the unfortunate nature of your business, the political world. It’s tough and unrelenting. It’s very human to revel in the misfortune of others. You obviously did your job well, and there are plenty wanting to give you a whack now that you’ve . . .’ He stalled.

  ‘I know, mate. I fucked up. Overreached. Was fed a dodgy bit of polling. Wrote it up. Hard. Front page of the broadsheet that matters. It was wrong. I was set up by a trusted source. And I’ve been executed. End of story.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Harry.’

  ‘You don’t think what?’

  ‘That it’s the end of the story. For you, that is.’

  Dunkley appreciated the remark. Compassion had been in short supply.

  Harris fiddled with his mug of coffee. He looked anxious.

  ‘Harry, I need you to trust me.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can trust anyone anymore, Trevor.’

  ‘I can appreciate that, but I’m going to trust you.’

  Harris drained his long black and looked round for the waitress. He appeared to be struggling for words and Dunkley knew from long e
xperience that the best course was to stay silent.

  ‘Harry, when I came to you the first time I was simply handing over an email you were supposed to have. Then I said I would look at documents encrypted on Ben’s Cloud. At no stage did any of that break the commitments I’ve made to keeping this country’s secrets.’

  Dunkley prodded. Gently.

  ‘Has that changed, Trev?’

  ‘What’s changed is what I’ve found out. I’ve unlocked many of the documents that Ben hid on the Cloud. Harry, he stole some of this nation’s most sensitive files. That is a crime. Trafficking it is a crime too.’

  The shatter of glass on polished concrete made Harris swivel. An errant child had swept a cup onto the floor and a mother was fussing with the shards. Harris bore the look of a man who felt his every word could be overheard. He dropped his tone.

  ‘They are all top secret. AUSTEO: Australian Eyes Only. On top of that, Ben pieced together information from a host of classified sources to build a picture of the Alliance. If I speak to you about any of it, I am breaking the law.’

  The analyst’s face was agonised as he wrestled with his conscience.

  Dunkley understood better than most the fine line that people are forced to walk between what is ethically ‘right’ and legally ‘wrong’. He felt the public interest was best served by letting the sun shine on government. Folk like Harris thought secrets were essential to keeping the nation safe.

  ‘What’s the price of not telling me what you’ve found, Trev?’

  ‘I’m not really sure. Perhaps my soul. I don’t believe in God but I’ve always strived to do what I believe is right. I fear that if I stay silent, Harry, I’ll be protecting people who see themselves as above democracy.’

  ‘That’s a big call, mate. But I suspect you might be right.’

  ‘You already know part of the story, Harry. The Alliance was set up in the late 1960s when the Americans and our defence and intelligence establishment began collaborating, sometimes against the Australian government of the day. It had a hand in Whitlam’s fall. But it didn’t end there.

  ‘It’s alive and kicking. RIGHT. NOW.’ Harris emphasised the last words with two thumps of the table.