by Tony Jones
The elves roared out the chorus: ‘Fa la la … la la … la la la la…’
A short, stout man with a black bow tie stopped pouring beer and yelled: ‘Get your fucken cunthooks off my bar!’
‘Now It’s Time for Whitlam’s folly, Fa la la … la la … la la la la …’
‘Get stuck into him, Dick!’ cried one thirsty customer and Dick, sufficiently encouraged, took a run at Santa and stiff-armed him so hard that he toppled off the bar into the arms of three elves. A cheer went up as the elves skittered backwards under the weight of their fallen comrade. Tables tipped, drinks spilled, offended patrons pushed back against the burdened elves.
Anna took advantage of the confusion to push her way through to the bar, where she found herself next to a tall, lanky fellow with a long, straggly beard. She recognised him from Leunig’s frequent drawings of him in the Nation Review as the man everyone knew simply as Mungo.
Anna bent close to him and yelled over the hubbub. ‘Did I just have an acid flashback?’
‘It’s definitely worth checking with other eyewitnesses, unreliable as they are, but I’m reasonably confident that it really happened.’
Mungo MacCallum’s familiar drawl lingered over the final syllables of key words, stretching them out, savouring the very sound of them. It had the pleasing quality of slowing things down, as if to give proper consideration to each thought. Mungo’s voice had so often featured in radio commentary during the election campaign that Anna felt she knew him.
‘You’re a reliable enough witness for me,’ she said.
‘Incidentally,’ he said, ‘I think you’ll find that was the Parliamentary Librarians’ Glee Club.’
When Dick the barman finally worked his way over to Anna she bought Mungo a beer. ‘My shout,’ she said. ‘Anna Rosen. I’m at the Herald. It’s my first day.’
Mungo raised his glass. ‘It’s rare these days to meet a gallery virgin.’
Before Anna could even think of taking offence, Mungo punctuated his witticism with a smile that crinkled his eyes and raised his arched eyebrows, while his mouth, framed as it was by the bushy beard, opened wide to reveal long tobacco-stained teeth and a line of pink gum.
‘I saw the Herald mob here earlier by the way,’ he continued. ‘And I observed another Christmas miracle—Paul Barton was buying the drinks.’
‘I have to find them,’ said Anna, looking around the packed room. She noticed other familiar faces in the crowd. George Negus was breasting the bar, while the legendary correspondent Laurie Oakes, thick-rimmed glasses the shape of two small TV screens, pursed his sensuous lips as he bent in to listen to a man she believed to be the prime minister’s press secretary, Eric Walsh.
‘I didn’t expect such a scene,’ she said.
Mungo leaned back on the bar, shook out a smoke from a soft pack and lit up.
‘It does seem a bit more feral than usual,’ he agreed, pausing to suck the life out of the cigarette, his thin frame working like a bellows. ‘Remember, none of the journos have had a break since the election was called. Same for the pollies. This is like one of those Christmas truces on the Western Front. An unspoken agreement that everyone should get shitfaced for a week before they crawl back into their trenches and resume hostilities.’
‘So it’s compulsory to get pissed?’
Mungo smiled at her indulgently. ‘Let’s just say it’s recommended you go along with tradition.’
‘Anna! There you are!’
She turned, surprised to see Bruce McKillop elbowing his way through the crowd towards her. ‘Barton sent me to look for you. Oh, hello, Mungo.’
The bearded journalist raised his eyebrows with comic effect.
‘Bruce, still on your feet after last night? The miracles just keep coming.’
McKillop unconsciously straightened his drooping shoulders, pushed long strands of hair back behind his ears and fixed his interrogator with bloodshot eyes.
‘Don’t worry about me, mate, I’m piss fit.’
‘I’ll head off, Mungo,’ said Anna. ‘See you again, I hope.’
‘You know where to find me.’
She followed McKillop through the boisterous, jostling crowd, keeping her beer in his narrow wake to prevent spillage. He led her outside where she saw that the Herald team and a number of strangers had occupied a table under a huge maple tree. She was about to make her way over when McKillop grabbed her arm.
‘Anna, we got off on the wrong foot this morning. I wanted to apologise.’
‘Barton put you up to this?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
Anna caught McKillop’s eyes and noticed his pupils.
‘You’re stoned, aren’t you?’
‘No, no …’ he began. ‘Well, yes, a bit.’
‘Doing smack in Parliament House? You must be crazy.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Your eyes are pinned, mate.’
‘Oh shit.’ He fumbled to put on his sunglasses. ‘I just smoked a bit. Don’t say anything.’
‘Don’t worry, Bruce. I’m not going to dob you in.’
‘I’ve got some speed too,’ he said abruptly. ‘You want some?’
He put a couple of pills in her hand before she had a chance to reply, and she slipped them into her pocket. As McKillop stumbled down the stairs to join the others, Anna wondered what the little dopehead saw in her. She couldn’t imagine him slipping amphetamines into Michelle Grattan’s handbag.
When she reached the table Paul Barton jumped up and asked her what she would have, even though she was nursing an almost-full schooner. She decided to go with the flow.
‘Vodka and ice, thanks, Paul.’
Before Barton could set off, orders for a fresh round came from others around the table.
‘Got to get in quickly when Paul’s buying,’ Dave Olney explained as Barton made for the bar. ‘They’ll be closing here soon, then it’s off to The Wello. As soon as we leave campus, his pockets’ll get deep again.’
It was going to be a long night. Anna surreptitiously reached into her pocket for the pills and swallowed one down with a swig of beer.
Eventually last rounds were called at the Non-Members’ and someone yelled, ‘On to The Wello!’
As the only one even remotely sober enough to drive, Anna offered to transport as many of the party as could fit into the Smiling Ute. Some of them squeezed into the front while the others pulled off the tarp and clambered into the back, weighing down the suspension so much that she crawled through the empty streets, ignoring the drunken passengers whipping the side of the ute as if it were a slow nag on a racetrack.
When she delivered her rowdy cargo into the forecourt of The Wellington, its stately precincts had been taken over by an increasingly wild party. There was a dull roar from the bar. Her colleagues climbed from the ute and stumbled towards it. Bruce McKillop had latched onto a straitlaced Liberal staffer and twirled her in a slow dance in the car park. She looked so out of it that Anna thought to intervene until the young woman reared up, slapped McKillop hard and stormed off.
Anna noticed the silhouettes of randy couples groping in the darkened gardens and others pressed against the sides of parked cars. Argumentative drunks sat about on the front stairs and, as she was drawn up into the melee, a white-faced man in crumpled pinstripes rushed down past her and threw up in the garden.
Anna found herself separated from her companions as she entered the uproarious bar, the heart of the debauch. An aromatic admixture of tobacco and marijuana smoke hung in the air, and she also caught, she was sure, the resinous hints of burning hashish. There was an infectious quality to the exhaled drugs, and the high volumes of alcohol added to an edgy recklessness. Her own perceptions had been lent an icy clarity by the speed. Everywhere she looked, people seemed to be on the verge of passionate embrace or sudden violence. She would not have been surprised to see men taking bets on downing bottles of rum, or Pierre Bezukhov dancing with a bear.
‘Anna R-Rosen! F
ancy m-m-meeting you here.’
Anna was startled to find Tom Moriarty standing in front of her with a beer in each hand. She couldn’t stop a burst of laughter.
‘Something wr-wrong?’
‘No, not at all. I was just thinking of a different Russian. Is that for me?’ she asked, accepting the drink. ‘You got my message, then.’
If Moriarty was taken aback by the Russian reference, he concealed it well. His face was unreadable as he scrutinised her. A handsome face, she realised now. He had been too drunk when she met him in Eden for her to see past his dissolution. It was a narrow face with well-proportioned features and defined cheekbones—a bequest, she imagined, of his Slavic genes. His dark hair was cut short, with tiny ringlets fringing his high forehead. He reminded her of Brando as Mark Antony, though his long sideburns located him in the present.
‘Way too n-noisy to talk here,’ he said at last. ‘There’s a c-courtyard out back that no one uses. Shall we?’
She followed him to where the crowd thinned out, and he pushed through a pair of glass doors into a dimly lit alcove with a small garden and a single table. He was wrong about no one using it. They interrupted a couple in the middle of a passionate argument. The woman’s eyes were moist. The man looked up resentfully.
Moriarty turned to Anna. ‘Wait here,’ he said.
He walked over and whispered something in the man’s ear. The man froze; an expression of frustrated anger crossed his face before he took the woman firmly by the hand and pulled her back into the hotel. Moriarty sat down at the vacated table and lit a cigarette.
Anna sat. ‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him to p-piss off or I’d ring his wife.’
‘You know his wife.’
‘No, of course not.’
Anna nodded, took one of his cigarettes and lit it herself. ‘So, are you selling lawnmowers tonight, or security advice?’
‘I’d be happy to c-come around and c-cut your grass anytime.’
‘And I was just starting to like you.’
Moriarty’s eyes seemed to sharpen; his face tightened, changing subtly as if he’d removed a mask. ‘You’ve been speaking to Kerry M-Milte,’ he said. ‘He’s usually m-more discreet.’
‘You mean the Russian reference?’
‘The Spy was a R-Russian—that’s not a headline the organisation would w-welcome.’
‘Milte trusts me not to do that. You can trust me too.’
‘Do you think there’s p-power in the knowledge of s-secrets?’
Anna shook her head. ‘I was talking about trust,’ she said. ‘Not power.’
Moriarty left his cigarette burning in the ashtray, cupped his palms over his nose as if he were praying and closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them and moved on.
‘I heard on the grapevine that you got something out of Petar K-Katich, but then the little b-blighter disappeared off the f-face of the earth.’
‘The grapevine?’
‘Everything’s put into written reports.’
‘Do you know what happened to Petar?’
‘He’s either done a r-runner or UDBA got to him. If it’s them, he’ll probably be hauled out of the ocean in a f-fishing net. But you’re much more interested in his big b-brother, aren’t you?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘No, seriously. You know nothing about me.’
‘Your files, Anna. You must have known that, with your f-father’s pedigree, there’d be agents all over you when you joined the antiwar m-movement. Suddenly you start t-turning up everywhere with Marin K-Katich … F-Fucking the enemy. That really threw them for a loop.’
‘Why would anyone care about who I’m sleeping with?’
Moriarty produced a crooked grin, took up the burning stub of his cigarette, sucked it down to the filter and crushed it brutally into the ashtray.
‘Don’t be dim, Anna,’ he said. ‘Your f-father, his father, our enemy and our f-friend. All of a sudden there’s a Romeo and J-Juliet plotline going on with their ch-children. That certainly p-piqued their interest, I can tell you.’
‘You people are despicable.’
‘How were they to know your father wasn’t r-running you in some operation?’
‘That’s insane, like something out of Kafka. Did they get to Marin? Warn him off me? Is that what happened?’
‘You’ll have to ask his f-father.’
‘I did ask him. Ivo Katich is a fucking monster and, now I know for sure, he’s your monster.’
‘It’s not like that. He’s out of anyone’s c-c-control, a loose c-cannon.’
‘Milte says your people have been running him for years.’
‘He’s extrapolating from sc-scraps of information. Look, it’s true the organisation is full of Ch-Chinese walls. Ivo Katich may be r-reporting to someone and I wouldn’t know … But the thing is, Anna, you and I should not be enemies. We can w-work together. It’s vital we find M-Marin. You want that too, don’t you?’
‘Was he in Bosnia or not?’
‘I believe he was. Intelligence d-does indicate it. I know he wasn’t on the l-list of the dead or of those c-captured.’
‘Maybe he was there, maybe he wasn’t there at all,’ Anna said. ‘In any event those men trained under your noses, they raised the money here, they travelled to Europe on Australian passports and no one stopped them. No one in your useless “organisation” even raised an eyebrow. What’s so vital about finding him now? Why do you care where he is?’
‘Anna, you talked about t-trust. I have something to t-tell you, something that will inform your r-reporting, but you c-can’t put it in the papers. Not yet, anyway. Do you agree?’
‘Yes.’
‘In two months the p-p-prime minister of Yugoslavia is due to visit Australia. His name’s Dzemal Bijedic … Bee-yed-ich … After Tito he’s the biggest t-target for assassination in Yugoslavia. I’m t-telling you this because your boyfriend is the man most capable of k-killing him.’
‘What? Oh. Come on! I don’t believe you.’
‘Really, what do you think he’s been doing in B-Bosnia? P-P-Picking grapes? That little team of insurgents killed d-dozens of Yugoslav police and soldiers in firefights before they were run to ground. One of their snipers managed to k-kill the two officers leading the manhunt to track them down. If M-Marin was the only survivor of a mission like that, what does that tell you?’
‘I don’t know anything about his role, and neither do you. We don’t even know that he was there.’
‘You go away and think about it, Anna. I know you’ve been p-putting the jigsaw together. I’m b-betting that you learned something from P-Petar Katich before he disappeared. You’re an intelligent woman. It must be obvious to you, at the very least, that M-Marin was leading a double life when you were with him. Believe me, I know all about d-double lives. He would have put you in one c-c-compartment and locked the door to it. His father, his brother, his nationalist beliefs, his training, the blood oath to the c-cause—they were locked away from you in different ones. I don’t know you that well, but I’m p-pretty sure you’re trying to prise open those boxes.’
‘Like Kerry Milte, I’ve picked up scraps of information, but I’m a journalist, not a policeman and certainly not a spy!’ Anna felt her voice catch on a spike of emotion. She’d been so careful to remain composed but this man was strangely perceptive. Her eyes were hot, on the verge of tears, but she refused to give him that little victory. ‘There’s no way I’m going to help you put Marin in prison.’
‘I don’t want to put him in p-prison, Anna. I want to s-save him.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not ready to t-tell you that yet—you’ll have to t-trust me on that. If M-Marin really did survive the B-Bosnian mission, I believe he will c-come home sometime soon. Ivo K-Katich doesn’t care less about the lives of the men he s-sacrificed. It doesn’t matter to him that it f-failed. The dead are m-martyrs now. He’s b-brimming
with self-importance. He’s a m-murderer—you know that b-better than anyone. There’s intelligence that he was behind the assassination of Ambassador R-Rolovic in Stockholm. Now B-Bijedic. Can you imagine it, Anna? The assassination of a Yugoslavian p-p-prime minister would be Ivo Katich’s c-crowning glory. You know him well enough to know that he wouldn’t hesitate to t-turn his son into an assassin.’
‘Do you have ASIO’s authority to approach me like this?’
‘No, they have n-no idea about this.’
‘So, who the hell are you working for?’
‘I have my own r-reasons, Anna. Listen to me … If you m-made the same impression on M-Marin that he did on you, I think he will try to make c-contact with you when he comes home.’
Again it seemed as if Moriarty somehow had the ability to rummage around in her subconscious. She felt exposed, violated. Above all she yearned to see Marin again, if only to finally answer her questions, to explain why he had vanished. She took a moment to calm herself and stared at the spy, choking back revulsion.
‘And what do you expect me to do if he does?’ she asked.
‘It’ll be up to you and me to st-stop him.’
18.
20 February 1973
When Marin Katich returned to consciousness, he found himself slumped in the bow of his own tinny as it motored upstream. It was a still afternoon, no breeze at all. On the dark-green mirror of the river an inverted forest was cloaked in shadows. The little boat cut a neat wedge in the surface. The wake spread from shore to shore, rippling on the sandbanks. Rising out of the bush the parched white antlers of dead mountain gums bristled among the mass of ironbark on the ridge above the steep shoreline.
Marin saw this through the slits of his swollen eyes. His face was battered and blood dripped into his lap from the tip of his nose. His hands were tightly bound.
