The Twentieth Man

by Tony Jones

  Jadorovski paused. Tried to bring the image back.

  ‘No,’ he said at last, putting both hands to the sides of his face. ‘I can’t remember anything like that. I was so shocked.’

  The detective nodded. ‘That’s normal. Don’t worry. We’ve called the bomb squad, but who knows if they’ll get here before it blows.’

  They heard a siren returning. A police car, at speed, skidded to a halt next to the unmarked vehicle.

  ‘Stay here,’ the detective instructed. ‘I’ll need to speak to you again.’

  Two young constables threw open their doors, ran to the back of the car and opened the boot. They began hauling out heavy sacks, which they each hefted on to their shoulder before jogging into the lane. Jadorovski realised that the sacks were 30-kilogram bags of potatoes.

  ‘Sent ’em to Paddy’s Markets,’ the detective explained, before running over to help the others.

  The policemen stacked the potato sacks around and over the shopping bag with panicky haste and ran back around the corner to safety.

  ‘There’s no way I’d ever do that again,’ said one, breathing hard. There was no bravado. Their faces were drawn and bloodless.

  ‘No, mate, no way,’ his partner agreed. ‘I was sure it was gonna blow. Nearly shat meself.’

  ‘Go and have a smoke, fellas,’ the older detective told them. ‘Forget the rules.’

  A fire engine arrived and the police stopped it short of the entrance to Parker Lane.

  The two detectives were hovering at the lane’s entrance when the bomb exploded. Smoke and flames erupted as they dived behind a car. Jadorovski, ducking behind the fire engine, heard chunks of shrapnel clanking on its roof. Windows in the nearby buildings and on the other side of George Street shattered, showering the footpath with glass.

  As light flotsam rained down on him, Jadorovski heard a woman screaming. He felt winded. His ears were ringing again. There was something wet on his face. Blood? He wiped at it, looking at his hand. Mashed potato was smeared across his fingers. In spite of everything, he laughed.

  When he stepped out from cover, the shopping bag and the sacks were gone, and smoke drifted over a blackened crater. Along with the chemical stench of the explosives, the homely smell of cooked potatoes lingered in the air. All around him people were moving again. Firemen unrolled a hose and sprayed water on the gaping hole in the ground. Police entered the rear doors of buildings in the lane to check on the safety of anyone inside.

  It was over.

  2.

  Earlier that morning Anna Rosen had woken in a strange bed in a strange room. A warm body lay against her, back to back.

  The fog in her mind cleared as if whipped away by a strong southerly.

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  She turned to look at the man. The old rogue was smiling in his sleep.

  Daylight did him no favours. It picked out the white stubble on his hawkish face, the tangled salt-and-pepper mop, the long grey hairs curling on his chest.

  She sat up carefully and searched around until she found her knickers hiding under the covers at the foot of the bed.

  Had they crept down there in shame? She pulled them on and moved around the room on her tiptoes, collecting her other garments from where they’d been thrown, and retreated silently from the bedroom.

  The apartment had high ceilings and tall windows. The living room was full of light. It was elegant and spacious, lined with bookcases. She remembered it differently—lit by side lamps and stubby aromatic candles, two of which now sat, hollowed out and extinguished, on the low, beaten-copper table that squatted in the centre of the room on a large Afghan carpet.

  Beside the candles were discoloured glasses of different sizes, along with two empty wine bottles and a depleted decanter of Armagnac. A brown resinous lump lay in a crumpled nest of tinfoil next to an engraved brass pipe. It was a tableau of debauchery.

  Anna had partaken willingly, of course, caught up in the flow of his entertaining discourse. Even as she had observed his little ritual—the heating of the hashish over the candle’s flame and then crumbling its outer edges into tobacco before packing the pipe and offering it to her—she had understood the likely consequences. She had watched the reddening glow as she inhaled and felt the familiar easing of the mind, the soft stone that enhances desire.

  Now she dressed quickly.

  ‘You’re leaving?’

  She looked up. McHugh was in the doorway, wrapping a Balinese sarong around his waist.

  ‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ she said.

  He rubbed his face, smoothing his pouched eyes, or attempting to. ‘Stay. I’ll make you some breakfast.’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘I do, Peter.’ Anna looked down, shook her head. ‘This is crazy. I really don’t know … what was I thinking?’

  ‘We weren’t thinking, either of us,’ he said. ‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Screwing the boss?’ Anna scooped up her old leather bag and slung it over her shoulder before meeting his gaze. ‘We’ve just turned the gossip into reality and, honestly, I wouldn’t blame them for looking down their noses at me.’

  ‘Let them think what they like, they don’t need to know.’

  Anna moved in, kissed him on the cheek, and stepped back. ‘But I know. That’s the problem.’

  McHugh made a plaintive expression. ‘It was nice, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You were great, boss.’ She gave a brittle laugh and turned on her heel. ‘I’ve really got to go.’

  Anna felt a spasm of sadness as the door closed behind her, and then relief. She left the building, walked out into morning sun and headed home.

  Anna lived under a witch’s hat in a turret with bay windows overlooking Glebe Point Road. It was a big room with a brass bed, an immense colonial wardrobe, overflowing bookcases and an old cedar desk with a creaking captain’s chair.

  The windows were open and the noise of Saturday traffic filled the room. Anna lay on top of the duvet, restless. She watched the rice paper lantern shift in the breeze, an inverted dirigible, tethered not to the earth but to the plaster rosette in the ceiling. She was angry with herself.

  Anna was not much given to regret, but now she dwelled on her poor judgement. McHugh was not only her boss, he was her mentor, having plucked her from the newsroom to join his team. Even worse, his long friendship with her father gave the night a faintly incestuous edge. Then there was the nagging sense, quite unreasonable under the circumstances, that she had betrayed the one man she really wanted to be with.

  She hated that feeling most of all because he was no longer part of her life. She knew that Peter McHugh was no answer to her longing. But so what? Yes, she’d made a mistake; but in the end no one had died, just let it go …

  Anna jumped from the bed—time for a coffee. She found Pierre in the kitchen watching the Atomic spurt steam from its release valve.

  ‘Ah, the kwaken wakes,’ he said. ‘I heard you come in this morning. Holding your shoes when you cwept down the hall, were you?’

  There was something disarming about her friend’s mild rhotacism that made his intrusions seem more acceptable. Anna ignored him nonetheless.

  ‘I’d love a coffee, thanks.’

  Pierre raised his eyebrows, quizzical.

  ‘The silence of the sphinx then,’ he said and turned his attention back to the juddering machine. ‘Lucky I made enough for two.’

  Housemates in the ramshackle old place had come and gone, but Pierre Villiers had been her constant companion for three years. He had found the house and was her co-signatory on the lease. For two years he had been Anna’s deputy editor at The Tribe until she left to become a trainee at the national broadcaster. Having now succeeded her as editor, Pierre showed every sign of becoming a permanent student.

  The Atomic reached maximum pressure and quivered over the gas flame, as sinister as an unexploded bomb. Pierre shoved a steel pan under the spou
t and released the roaring steam into the milk. He poured the frothy liquid into his coffee and passed Anna a long black.

  He sat down and pushed a copy of The Tribe across the table. ‘Latest edition,’ he said.

  Anna scrutinised the front page. The artwork showed the FBI Headquarters with J. Edgar’s head as a bas-relief. Emerging from multiple apertures in the building were swivelling TV cameras and men with hats and trench coats carrying Tommy guns. The headline was intriguing.

  ‘Total surveillance?’

  ‘Yeah, I bought the piece from The Daily Cal,’ Pierre explained. ‘It’s about how the toys the Pentagon made for Vietnam are now being used against civilians back home. Orwell saw this coming. Hundweds of camewas feed images into a single control centre where a computer scans each one at thirty sequences a second and compares the feeds to images stored in its memowy circuit.’

  Anna read the article, sipping her coffee while Pierre made them eggs and toast.

  ‘Great piece,’ she said eventually. ‘The ABC should be doing stuff like this.’

  ‘You should.’ Pierre nodded. ‘And get me in to do it, don’t you think?’

  ‘We can try, but it’s a miracle they let me in.’

  ‘You’re the vanguard.’

  ‘They think I’m an anarchist.’

  Pierre gave her a stern look. ‘Come off it, Anna! An anarchist? You’re just a social democwat with a Marxist dad. On that twajectowy, your childwen will vote Libewal.’

  ‘Fuck you too,’ Anna muttered, flicking through to the entertainment section. ‘Hey, we should go to the movies tonight.’

  ‘What’s on?’

  She ran a finger down the page. ‘Ballad of Joe Hill at the Valhalla? The French Connection is on at the Academy. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Pierre shrugged. ‘Joe Hill gets shot by a fiwing squad and Gene Hackman busts a dwug-smuggling syndicate … So they both have unhappy endings.’

  Anna rewarded him with a laugh. ‘Let’s see Joe Hill.’

  ‘Sure, why not?’ But then Pierre returned to gnawing the old bone he never managed to bury. ‘Where did you get to last night?’

  Anna was about to tell him to mind his own business when the phone rang. She jumped up to answer it, her face flushing when she heard Peter McHugh’s voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘Anna. Thank God you’re there.’

  She caught her breath.

  ‘I’m not ringing about last night,’ he said quickly.

  ‘I didn’t think …’

  ‘We can talk about that another time.’

  ‘Okay,’ she agreed cautiously. Maybe he accepted it had been a mistake.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You haven’t heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘You need to turn the radio on right now!’

  ‘Pierre!’ she called out to the kitchen. ‘Quickly. Can you put the radio on? What is it, Peter?’

  ‘There’s been a huge explosion near the Town Hall,’ he exclaimed. ‘Dozens of people down on George Street. Someone blew up a bloody Yugoslavian travel agency.’

  ‘God, that’s unbelievable.’ Anna’s mind was racing. ‘Is anyone claiming responsibility?’

  ‘Not yet …’ McHugh paused. ‘But you’d have to think it’s your Croats, wouldn’t you?’

  From the radio in the kitchen she heard snatches of high-tension reporting from the scene.

  ‘Peter, let me go listen to this,’ Anna said. ‘I’ll make some calls and get back to you.’

  ‘Good, do that as soon as possible. I’m going in to the office.’ McHugh hung up.

  She walked back into the kitchen where, despite the volume, Pierre was leaning in close to the radio speaker. He looked up. He was well aware of what Anna had been working on over the past two months.

  ‘I guess the movies are off,’ he said.

  In Canberra, Inspector Harry Harper was putting his golf clubs into the boot of his car when Helen hailed him from the doorway.

  ‘Harry? A call for you.’

  Harper put his hands on the rim of the boot and dropped his head. He looked at the clubs lying there expectantly, the irons shiny and clean, the woods neatly capped with numbered leather covers.

  ‘It sounds urgent,’ Helen said. ‘Headquarters.’

  He sighed, pushed the boot shut and went back inside.

  ‘Harper,’ he said emphatically into the receiver.

  ‘Colin Reynolds, sir.’

  Reynolds was the weekend duty officer.

  ‘What is it, Sergeant?’

  Reynolds spoke fast. ‘Big flap in Sydney. A bomb’s gone off at Town Hall, multiple casualties. Just got a telex, marked urgent, for your attention.’

  ‘Read it to me, please.’

  ‘Jesus, Saturday morning!’ Reynolds babbled. ‘George Street’d be full of women and children. I took the wife there just last …’

  ‘Sergeant,’ Harper interrupted, ‘the telex!’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  Harper didn’t think twice about tugging the reins on his subordinate. He was a stickler for protocol, British military police pedigree, Northern Rhodesia, known to take no prisoners.

  The telex spelled out that a large bomb had exploded inside a Yugoslavian travel agency on George Street, causing dozens of casualties. The exact number, the nature of their injuries and the question of fatalities were still to be confirmed. Ray Sullivan had sent the communication within half an hour of the explosion. Harper was grateful Sullivan was on duty in Sydney. The detective sergeant was one of the sharper knives in his drawer.

  There was more. An unexploded bomb had been found in another Yugoslavian travel agency a short distance away on the other side of the street. Police had contained that device.

  Sullivan’s assessment: a high degree of certainty the bombing was politically motivated.

  As head of the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence, Harper was at the top of the list for notification of a suspected terrorist attack. He thanked Reynolds and hung up.

  Helen was lingering in the hallway.

  ‘Sounds bad,’ she said.

  ‘It is, darling, but I don’t have time to explain,’ Harper said. He walked past her into his study, closed the door, flipped open the teledex, found the commissioner’s home number and dialled it.

  ‘Harper here, boss.’

  ‘What is it, Harry?’ asked Jack Davis. ‘I’ve got people here for lunch.’

  Harper briefed him.

  ‘Christ, it’s the Croats again,’ Davis summed up. ‘A terror attack. There’s no real doubt, is there?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘State police’ll have operational control. What can we do?’

  Harper paused. Time to jump in.

  ‘Intelligence and extra manpower, to start with. Offer them all our available resources in Sydney. On the intelligence side, I’d like to send Al Sharp straight down.’

  ‘Righto, Harry. I’ll ring the NSW commissioner. He’ll be grateful for the help, I’m sure. But we can’t tread on their toes. You liaise directly with CIB. I’ll make that clear.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Harper. ‘And Sharp?’

  ‘Send him by all means but he’ll have to operate under their authority. I’ll make the call straight away. I want a full briefing at the end of the day.’

  Harper hung up and rang Sharp.

  ‘Al, sorry to interrupt your weekend.’

  ‘The bombs?’

  ‘Where’d you hear?’

  ‘It’s all over the news. I just lit the bloody barbecue.’

  ‘And I was about to head off for a round of golf.’

  Sharp chuckled at this familiar trope. ‘That’ll never happen, Harry. You should know that by now.’

  ‘Why do I bother? I don’t even like golf. Did they name the targets on the news?’

  ‘Two Yugoslavian travel agencies. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harper confirmed. ‘Sounds like your old mates are at it again.’

  S
harp was Harper’s senior intelligence officer. He’d once been an ASIO agent, now he was the best analyst of Croatian extremist groups in the BCI. Harper rated him highly. His threat assessments were a thing of joy. Despite the disparity in their ranks, he tended to treat Sharp as an equal.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Harry?’

  ‘Quick as you can, put together your files on the Croats. I want you on the first plane to Sydney. You’ll be my eyes and ears on the investigation. The NSW coppers will run it, but they’re way behind us on intelligence. You’ll brief their investigators on the likely suspects. Sorry about your lunch.’

  Sharp sighed. ‘I had a few mates coming to watch the grand final.’

  ‘I’d completely forgotten about that.’

  ‘Typical Pom.’

  ‘I don’t even know who’s playing.’

  ‘Seriously? Manly and Easts, you heretic—battle of the silvertails.’

  ‘Right,’ said Harper. He’d stopped listening and was mulling over the timing. ‘Imagine planning a bombing on grand final day.’

  ‘The bloody Croats don’t give two hoots. Soccer fanatics, all of them,’ Sharp said. ‘I might make the 2 pm flight if I get a wriggle on. Anything on the bomber—anyone taking credit?’

  ‘Nothing yet.’

  ‘I don’t get it. Bombs in the middle of the city … That’s a major escalation. Got to be a new group, hasn’t it?’

  ‘You know these mad bastards better than anyone. They’re going to need you in Sydney.’

  ‘Do I have to stay in that same crappy hotel on Castlereagh?’

  ‘Don’t complain,’ Harper said. ‘It’s a short walk to the bombsite and a few blocks away from the CIB. Go straight there. They’ll be expecting you. Call me at the office.’

  The venetian blinds were all closed to the light except for one broken slat, which was twisted against the grain and allowing a single beam of sunlight to burst through the opening. It landed between a pair of legs shrouded by a sheet.

  Tom Moriarty, whose legs they were, was lying on his back, watching the beam climb towards his groin.

  In his fevered imagination it was the laser in Goldfinger, accompanied by a loud soundtrack.