by Tony Jones
‘Frank’s a good man,’ said Gietzelt. ‘I’m just amazed the ABC gave her a job. The Commission’s in the hands of reactionaries, starting at the very top. Duckmanton runs a very tight ship and he’s an out-and-out Liberal, an old mate of Menzies.’
‘We have plenty of friends in the ABC, Arthur,’ Murphy responded. ‘This Day Tonight’s not afraid to stir things up.’
‘I know that, Lionel. TDT is very trendy, but it’s not serious—just undergraduate stuff, pranks and what not. Private schoolboys trying to get attention,’ said Gietzelt, hitting a raw nerve with Negus, who harboured ambitions to join the TV show.
‘That’s not true, Senator,’ he interjected.
Gietzelt ploughed on, oblivious to dissent. ‘But hiring the child of a leading communist, that’s another thing altogether. I might even call it progress.’
‘She’s working for Peter McHugh,’ Murphy explained. ‘In the Talks Department.’
‘Right then.’ Gietzelt nodded. ‘That makes more sense. He’s one of us.’
‘Don’t make that mistake, Arthur,’ John Wheeldon said with unexpected passion. ‘I wouldn’t trust any journalist, ABC or otherwise.’
McClelland touched his friend’s arm. ‘You don’t have to trust them, John,’ he said. ‘Sniff the prevailing wind. Most of them want change in this country as much as we do. Right up to the election we need our arguments heard by a mass audience.’
Wheeldon turned to him and smiled. ‘Peter McHugh’s an old Trot, isn’t he, Jim? I imagine you have a bit of a soft spot for him.’
Negus wondered how Jim McClelland would respond to such a calculated slight. After the briefest pause, McClelland chose to laugh.
‘I’m a mug as a politician, John. I’ve always had this simple idea that we have to change the country. When I was young, I thought only radical change would work. So I became a Trot when I was at uni, and so did Peter McHugh. A lot of us swallowed Marxism whole and believed in it in the way others believed in God. There was no questioning any aspect of it.’
Negus liked McClelland’s self-effacing frankness. The senator was a handsome man with a sharp mind and a gift for words, a potential future leader. Lionel Murphy was beaming. He loved it that his office operated as a kind of political Salon des Refusés.
But Negus was growing impatient. This was all about to get self-indulgent and, sensing a McClelland speech was brewing, he tried to impose some discipline.
‘Senator, we should really—’
‘Hold on, George,’ McClelland cut him off. ‘This needs to be said. Back then, if you were a Marxist, you were a Marxist through and through. But there was no way a thinking human being could go along with the corrupted Soviet version of Marxism after the invasion of Hungary. So some of us were inevitably drawn to the dissident Trotsky. It’s true, John, that I do have a bit of a soft spot for Peter McHugh, but think about your own youthful indiscretions. You were a young Liberal, weren’t you? Same period. I imagine you must have had a soft spot too … between your ears.’
‘Come on, Jim,’ said Wheeldon quietly. ‘You know why I quit the Liberal Party.’
Against his better judgement Negus was drawn in, his curiosity aroused.
‘Why’s that, Senator?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never heard this story. I didn’t even know you’d switched sides.’
Lionel Murphy spoke. ‘There is some irony in this, George. John turned his back on Menzies when the old reprobate tried to ban the Communist Party. A great principle was at stake. The freedom to believe what you want, the freedom of association, the freedom to join whatever political party you like. The freedoms that make us what we are. Another reason we need a Bill of Rights.’
‘That’s all true,’ Wheeldon agreed. ‘And those freedoms are terribly fragile, especially if security agencies don’t respect them. You won’t know this either, George, but ASIO tried to stop my wife coming to Australia because her father was a prominent communist in America.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘That was a terrible story,’ Murphy explained. ‘The great spymaster Charlie Spry went to John Gorton with a file on Judith’s background and advised him to block her application. To his credit, Gorton sent him packing. A Liberal prime minister, but even he thought ASIO was a law unto itself.’
McClelland chuckled. ‘There’s more to that story. Gorton had a personal grievance. Spry had kept a secret file on him and made the terrible mistake of trying to tell him who he could and couldn’t fuck.’
This rang bells for Negus. ‘Was that about who I think?’
‘Far be it for me to besmirch a maiden’s honour,’ McClelland said wryly. ‘Though I can’t imagine what she saw in him.’
This was the kind of scuttlebutt that Lionel Murphy loved. ‘So you think it was true?’
McClelland shrugged. ‘Where there’s smoke,’ he said with a thin smile. ‘In that case it was billowing out of the PM’s office.’
Negus considered this. He knew his own boss was the regular subject of such gossip. He had been forced more than once to throw cold water on press gallery speculation about Murphy. Despite the senator’s homely countenance and the great snoz, Murph had an eye for the ladies. It helped his cause enormously that he also had unfeigned charm—a way of talking to women, of engaging with them as if they were the only interesting person in the room.
‘All in all,’ said Murphy, ‘it’s probably a good idea for a prime minister to avoid intimate relations with his own staff.’
‘Especially when big brother is watching,’ McClelland quipped. ‘Anyway, no need to worry about the next PM. Gough’s a strangely sexless messiah.’
‘Sexless?’ Murphy was dubious. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘I don’t think it even enters his head,’ McClelland responded. ‘He’s almost Christ-like.’
‘Except for the ego,’ said Murphy.
McClelland smiled. ‘Some things are beyond measure.’
When the laughter subsided, Negus seized the opportunity to get the conversation back on the rails.
‘Just returning to Anna Rosen and her radio program. I’d love to know how on earth she got hold of that Commonwealth Police document on the Ustasha in Australia. That’s something we were holding back for Question Time.’
Lionel Murphy shifted. ‘I can’t imagine,’ he said disingenuously, and Negus knew immediately that his suspicion was right. The boss had tried to impress another pretty girl.
‘She must have friends in high places.’ Negus sighed.
Murphy looked for all the world like a naughty schoolboy. ‘No doubt,’ he said. ‘In any event, it’s out there now.’
Negus decided to let him off the hook. ‘It’s lucky that even ABC News isn’t running with it. The Rosen program was on late, so it’s possible that Greenwood’s people haven’t even heard it.’
‘I expect you’ve made use of it in some of the questions you’ve drafted?’
‘I have, Senator, of course. We need to go through them now or you’ll be late for the Tactics Committee. If we handle this right, you’ll have Greenwood dancing around on hot coals from the first question.’
‘Thank you, George,’ Murphy said. ‘Let’s do that.’
So Negus opened the manila folder and began his briefing.
Negus was watching from the gallery at 2 pm when the president of the Senate halted debate and called for Questions Without Notice. The first was the one he’d written. It was asked by a Labor barrister—not Jim but Senator Douglas McClelland, no relation.
‘My question is for Senator Greenwood. Does the attorney-general still maintain that there is no organised Ustasha terrorist organisation or Croatian Liberation Movement in Australia?’
Ivor Greenwood stood up and strode to the dispatch box, looking dapper in a pin-striped suit, his dark hair swept back from his forehead. When he started speaking, there was no indication whatsoever that Negus could see of the pressure he must surely be feeling.
‘As to whether or not I st
ill maintain that there is no Ustasha terrorist Croatian Liberation Movement in Australia, I think the Honourable Senator is aware that I stated in late July, after intensive investigations had been made into allegations that there was a Croatian terrorist organisation in Australia, that the police investigations, State and Commonwealth, had revealed no credible evidence that such a terrorist organisation existed. As far as the incidents on Saturday are concerned, one must surely await the outcome of police investigations before expressing any judgement on whether or not that will alter a view. I think that is the prudent course to take. We do not know who planted this bomb.’
‘Bombs!’ Jim McClelland interjected loudly.
‘We do not know who planted those bombs,’ the attorney-general corrected himself. ‘We do not know what the motivation was and, until we have that report, I believe one should not pass judgement, one way or the other, on what happened in Sydney.’
Negus smiled grimly. He could have written Greenwood’s answer out in full this morning. He returned to his mantra.
Fucking Liars, Fucking Liars, Fucking Liars …
9.
On Tuesday afternoon Al Sharp, assisted by a police technician, set up a projector in a meeting room with raked seating. He stacked the carousel with slides from his intelligence file and turned on the projector, then he sat back and lit a cigarette while he waited for his audience to arrive.
He watched the smoke drift through the projector’s beam until it swirled in the light, film noir style. He clicked the remote control and the carousel shuffled around to the first slide. It was a black-and-white photo taken clandestinely at a closed meeting of Croatian extremists.
The subject was leaning forward, one arm holding the bunched weight of his heavy shoulders, the other raised up and ending in a fist. The face still held traces of the handsome man he must once have been, but it was now thickened with age and alcohol and contorted with a passion that might, in another context, be mistaken for hard, unyielding pain. In his dark, deeply recessed eyes there was a wildness that could easily inspire fear.
‘Who’s that dickhead?’
Sharp looked up in surprise, recognising the sardonic voice. It belonged to Bill Lonergan, the homicidal homicide detective.
‘Lonergan! I didn’t expect you to be the first one here.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up. I didn’t bring you an apple. So, who’s the dickhead with the crazy eyes?’
‘His name is Ivo Katich. Take a seat. I’ll explain who he is when we get a quorum.’
Other men were arriving now, filling up seats in the back of the auditorium, and Sharp called to them. ‘Move down the front if you can, fellows, so the latecomers can take those seats.’
Most moved grumbling to the front.
‘A quorum? Quor—umm,’ Lonergan mimicked a posh accent. ‘Never heard that one before. A pack, a herd, a bunch of cunts or whatever—but a quorum?’
‘A pack? That’s for dogs, isn’t it?’ Sharp said. ‘A bit disparaging. I suppose we could say a murder of detectives.’
Lonergan squinted at him. ‘What’s your fucken point?’
‘No point. Let’s go with a quorum of cunts. And we just about seem to have one.’ Sharp stubbed his cigarette out. ‘I think I’ll get started.’
The front seats were almost full now and the flow through the back doors had slowed. Sharp stood up, grimacing from a spasm of back pain.
‘Thanks for coming. Detective Lonergan here asked the obvious question a moment ago.’ Sharp gestured to the screen. ‘Who’s the dickhead with the crazy eyes?’
A few people laughed. Lonergan had slumped with his feet on the barrier between them. Sharp glanced down. The Balinese regard pointing your feet at someone as an insult. He assumed in this case it was mere coincidence.
‘His name is Ivo Katich and he’s definitely a dickhead, but make no mistake: he’s a dangerous one. This photo was taken at a secret meeting. The man who took it was working for us—an informer we had on a string for a short time after we picked him up with two pounds of heroin. He was one of the few ins we’ve ever had with these blokes. But he disappeared a few months ago; we assume he’s dead. They have a habit of murdering informers.’
Sharp hit the button once and the carousel clattered on to the next image. It was Katich again, but a younger version, wearing a black uniform with a peaked hat. The letter U was emblazoned on both the cap and the shoulder of the uniform. The young Katich was smiling into the camera, his right arm bent and holding a pipe, which he was about to light.
‘This is Ivo Katich in 1941,’ Sharp told them. ‘It was taken in the city of Sarajevo, which you may know is in Yugoslavia but which wasn’t called Yugoslavia at that time. Back then Sarajevo was part of the newly formed Independent State of Croatia.’
There was an audible groan from some detectives.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you too much of a history lesson. Just to say this: the new Croatian state was set up under the authority of Adolf Hitler. Historians describe it as a Nazi puppet state. And that black uniform young Katich is wearing tells us he was an officer of the Ustasha. That’s the military arm of the wartime Croat state, a force so brutal that even the German SS considered them to be inhuman killers. During the war Ivo Katich commanded a group called the Mobile Court Martial in the region of Bosnia. Their job was to travel the countryside and murder suspected enemies of the new state. This photo you’re looking at—of this happy, pipe-smoking fellow—was taken at an execution site where he had just hanged twelve people.’
There was a swell of angry chatter and Sharp paused. Many of the policemen in the room, like Lonergan, were homicide detectives, and he understood their outrage.
‘How did a monster like this get to Australia?’ a man called from the back of the room.
‘That’s a good question,’ Sharp said. ‘It’s a long story. To start with, our immigration authorities never looked too closely at good anti-communists. In Katich’s case, we know that he was indicted for war crimes by the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946; but he never stood trial and somehow his papers got cleaned up. He emigrated to Sydney with his wife, Samira, in 1953 and got a job as a rigger on the Harbour Bridge.’
‘You’re fucken joking!’ Lonergan exclaimed, swinging his feet back to the floor and sitting upright.
Sharp looked down at him, pleased to at least have his complete attention. ‘I’m not joking,’ he said. ‘He’s still there. He’s got a bigger job now, managing the bridge maintenance crews.’
‘That’s fucken sacrilege.’ Lonergan’s outrage was unfeigned. ‘A Nazi wog workin’ the Bridge. Shouldn’t be allowed. Are you telling us this is the bloke we want for the Sydney bombs?’
Sharp didn’t answer immediately. He pressed the remote control again and the carousel shifted, throwing up another slide.
This time three men were pictured together, inside a large nineteenth-century hall. Behind them were banners and tricolour flags with an odd chequerboard design. The man in the middle was Ivo Katich, older and considerably thicker set, but unmistakably the same man as in the Ustasha uniform. His arms were draped over the shoulders of the men who flanked him.
Sharp glanced back to the screen. Hard, ferocious faces; big bodies locked together like the three-headed dog, Cerberus, at the gates of hell.
He gave the audience a more prosaic assessment. ‘It’s Ivo Katich again in the centre. The big thug on his right is Branko Kraljevic and the scar-faced fellow on his left is Vlado Bilobrk. These three: Katich, Kraljevic and Bilobrk are revered among extreme Croat nationalists because they were actually there in 1941 when the Ustasha formed their first independent state. They had their own führer, who was called the Poglavnik.’ Sharp paused and pointed back at the screen. ‘See that portrait up high in the right-hand corner of the room? That’s him.’
He clicked the remote again and a close-up of the portrait appeared. A haughty, hatchet-faced man stared out from the screen, wearing a more elaborate black uniform wi
th the familiar U insignia.
‘The Poglavnik, Ante Pavelic,’ Sharp explained. ‘Another indicted war criminal, who escaped to Argentina with the help of the Catholic Church. Pavelic is dead now, but the reason this history and these connections are important is that the command structures of the old Ustasha are still in place in Australia.’
He clicked back to the shot of the three men. ‘Katich, Kraljevic and Bilobrk were all members of the Poglavnik’s Ustasha bodyguard during the 1940s. They were members of the Ustasha’s Black Legion. They are hardened warriors. Fought alongside the German Wehrmacht against the Soviet troops during the siege of Stalingrad. Today they make every new recruit take a blood oath of loyalty to the Ustasha and its permanent obsession, which is to overthrow Tito’s communist Yugoslavian government and create again an independent state of Croatia. They are fanatical believers in a cause that we can barely comprehend. This is what we have to deal with when we try to track down the Sydney bombers—fanatics who will remain silent on pain of death when we question them, and whose leaders don’t think twice about executing suspected traitors.’
Sharp paused again to let this sink in. ‘Now, I know this is a lot to take in at one time, so are there any questions before I go on?’
‘Was that photograph taken in Sydney Town Hall?’ called a man from the front row.
‘It was,’ Sharp replied. ‘They’ve been building their Ustasha networks for more than two decades right under our noses. The city council rents the Town Hall to them every year for their independence day celebrations.’
There was a palpable sense of outrage in the room and Sharp knew he had them. He clicked the remote again, and the carousel clattered around and threw the next slide up on to the screen.
It was a naked woman draped across a chaise lounge. She was busty, with rouged nipples and a dark triangle of pubic hair. She winked at the camera, blowing a lascivious kiss to the audience. A roar came up from the roomful of detectives—whistles and cheers.
