The Twentieth Man

by Tony Jones

  ‘You mean the memo?’

  ‘Of course! This goes further than neglect. It is quite serious when such a decision is made behind my back. Especially when the government’s position is so well known. I should instead have been getting material which quite clearly showed the existence of terrorism.’

  ‘We are preparing such a document for you, as Mr Elliott said, and you will have it at 4 pm today. I have had relevant files brought in, which you can read for yourself, if you wish.’

  ‘Do you accept that there has been strong recent evidence concerning people with a tendency to go overseas to engage in unlawful terrorism activities? Has it ever been taken into account?’

  ‘There is a lot of evidence. It should have been taken into account.’

  ‘But it was not taken into account in this memo. The evidence was ignored and I am not interested in the opinions of the previous government, who showed tolerance. My desire is to produce the evidence of terrorism and I wish to show it to the Senate. The previous attorney-general said there was no evidence of organised terrorism, but I have seen up to a hundred documents refuting this assertion. I must not be put in a position where I receive reports that smother this proof. There is so much evidence that I am astonished by it. Has somebody put together a document saying that there is an organisation of Croats and referencing the evidence supporting it?’

  ‘Senator, I can only repeat, that is what we are doing and we will have that document for you later this afternoon.’

  ‘That only begs the question as to what ASIO has been doing about this threat until now.’

  As Murphy relentlessly pursued this line of questioning the director seemed to be drawing on his meagre cricketing skills, playing a dead bat to every ball. It would be typical of the silly fool, thought Behm, to imagine himself putting in a gritty innings for the team.

  Jack Behm didn’t bother with metaphors. Barbour was quite simply a coward who had quailed under Murphy’s bullying. His predecessor, Colonel Spry, would have sent Murphy packing and demanded an audience with the prime minister. Spry would have barred the doors to the Commonwealth Police in the first place. He would never have allowed it to get to this point.

  Inspector Harry Harper, for his part, sank deeper and deeper into his chair, not only from exhaustion but also from embarrassment for his own disciplined force. It had become clear to him that this whole mad odyssey had misfired.

  The smoking gun memo had turned out to be a fizzer, a damp cracker. The charge of deception had been thrown out. The memo was essentially the work of one relatively junior officer, rather than a direction from the top; in fact, it seemed unlikely the director himself had even seen it before today. If ASIO had been protecting Croatian terrorists or running them as agents, the evidence of that would now have been buried so deep that it would never resurface.

  In pursuit of phantasms, Murphy had alienated his own security service. When details of the raid became more widely known, he would almost certainly have made enemies at the highest levels of US intelligence. And for what? The clock ticking down in Harper’s head told him he had eighty-four hours before Prime Minister Bijedic touched down in Canberra—and they were no closer to finding the would-be assassin.

  Harper was going through this depressing checklist when Price passed him a note from Al Sharp. He unfolded it surreptitiously and read:

  Get us out of here, boss!!

  30.

  Marin Katich followed strict procedure and rang his father at the agreed time from the designated phone box in the rotation. He knew the home phone was intermittently tapped—Ivo was usually tipped off when that was the case—but the practice in recent years was to assume that the tap was always in. Secure communication was critical, so Marin had a schedule of times and phone boxes that his father had the numbers for. The first call in the rotation was at 8 am from the designated box, the second at 11 am from a different phone, the third at 1 pm. This was the third time he had rung, so his father would be waiting by his phone for fifteen minutes every day from 1 pm. It was shortly after that time now. Marin let the line ring three times and hung up.

  He stood in the phone box with the receiver to his ear and his finger on the disconnect button. Anyone wishing to use the phone would assume he was on a long call. It would take some time for his father to get to one of his designated boxes. Marin’s jaw was clenched hard and he felt the familiar griping, nervous tension in his stomach that reminded him of sitting in the changing room moments before running out on to the football pitch.

  He had no desire to speak to his father and, if it were not for the fact that he needed the Brotherhood’s network, he would not be doing this. If anything, his feelings about Ivo had hardened. They had festered in his solitude as he dwelled on his father’s past lies and manipulations, slowly working back through time. In Bosnia, his mother had finally been able to give him, one by one, the missing pieces of the jigsaw. But none of this altered his determination to avenge Petar’s death. His brother’s murderers must pay in blood and he intended to ensure they paid dearly. Bijedic would have to satisfy the butchers’ bill.

  This was now Marin Katich’s single obsession. Fate had led him to an inflection point: the hawk was above him.

  The phone rang and he lifted his finger to take the call.

  ‘Marin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I need the locksmith here tonight.’

  ‘I can make it happen. What is mission?’

  ‘I need to break into a house and find a set of keys, and he will need to make copies of those keys so that I can return them.’

  ‘What are keys for?’

  ‘You don’t need to know that. Send the locksmith to the meeting place. I will be waiting for him from 11 pm.’

  ‘He will be there.’

  ‘One other thing.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The newspapers are saying there will be a big demonstration against Bijedic outside Parliament House on Tuesday. If that is so the police will take him around to the Senate entrance on the other side and all this will be for nothing.’

  ‘I thought of this already. I was about to tell you we are moving demonstration, bringing forward to Sunday. This, the police have requested. So we are being good citizen.’

  ‘Good,’ said Marin. ‘You must make sure that any stray demonstrators who come on Tuesday morning go to the Senate entrance. Then they will be forced to bring Bijedic to the front door.’

  ‘I will organise small protest outside Senate.’

  ‘Good. Unless there’s an emergency the next contact will be an 8 am call.’

  ‘Yes … Marin?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My son …’

  ‘I have nothing more to say to you.’

  Marin Katich hung up. He left the phone box, put his hands on his knees and threw up on the nature strip.

  Anna Rosen got to Tullamarine Airport well ahead of her flight. During the long wait in St Kilda Road she had roughed out a story narrative from what she knew, along with the little she learned from her call to Arthur Gietzelt. The senator had been cagey at first, but he finally gave her some strong quotes, backing Murphy’s ministerial authority to visit ASIO and holding the Organisation to account for withholding from him—or distorting—vital intelligence.

  Shortly before 1 pm Murphy and his team had left ASIO Headquarters, departing from the underground car park in two vehicles. They didn’t stop to make a statement of any kind, nor did anyone from ASIO.

  Anna picked up her boarding pass and headed to the bar, where she found Bruce McKillop nursing a beer. The prime minister, he explained, had gone on to an event at Geelong, where he intended to stay the night. Like her, McKillop had been called back to Canberra to work on tomorrow’s coverage of the Murphy raid.

  He was annoyed at the decision. ‘I’ve got fuck-all to add to this,’ he said morosely. ‘Maybe I could have got something out of Whitlam tonight.’

  ‘Wha
t happened at the Press Club?’

  ‘Gough made a perfectly boring stump speech. Labor had a mandate to change the country. This is what they’d done, this is what they planned to do. Blah, blah, blah. He must have thought it was a receptive audience because the place was absolutely packed. Then he asked for questions and ninety people jumped up. “What was Murphy doing in St Kilda Road?” Whitlam said, “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.” I saw him look across at Eric Walsh, and Walsh just shrugged his shoulders.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Anna. ‘So, it’s true, Murphy did this without warning the PM.’

  McKillop threw up two hands in a gesture of amazement. ‘Gough’s a good actor, but no one’s that good. He didn’t have a clue. After the event I overheard Walsh saying that he was being sent back to Canberra to shut this down.’

  ‘I spoke to Arthur Gietzelt this morning,’ said Anna. ‘He didn’t tell me much, but one thing’s for sure: he certainly knew about this in advance.’

  ‘So Murphy told his mates in the left, but he didn’t bother telling Whitlam. That’s a fucking joke.’

  ‘What’s Whitlam doing in Geelong?’

  McKillop laughed. ‘That’s another joke. He’s got a dinner at the Geelong footy club. They’re making him the Number One ticket holder.’

  ‘He’s got a political crisis breaking and he’s doing that?’

  ‘No crisis is bigger than footy.’

  ‘That won’t be true by tomorrow.’

  ‘I did get one quote from Eric Walsh, but I think it was off the record. He said: “Gough wouldn’t even know what sort of racquet to hit a football with.”’

  Anna was still laughing when she saw Al Sharp enter the bar with the three plain-clothes policemen she recognised from this morning’s raiding party. Sharp saw her at once and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Not now, we don’t know each other, it said. They found a table away from the bar, and the straight-backed, hard-faced fellow she took to be their senior officer went to the bar and bought a round of drinks.

  Inspector Harper carried four beers back on a tray. He plonked the tray on the table, spilling the overfilled glasses.

  ‘Most ungracious waiter I’ve ever seen,’ said Sharp.

  ‘That’s what beer mats are for,’ Harper replied, flipping one over to Sharp.

  ‘And that’s exactly what we are,’ grumbled Price cryptically.

  ‘The hell you on about, Bob?’ said Ray Sullivan.

  ‘Murphy’s beer mats, we are,’ said Price. ‘Soaking up his fucken mess.’

  Sharp laughed and raised his glass. ‘To the mighty beer mats!’ he said, and they clinked glasses.

  ‘You keep that notebook of yours safe, Wally,’ Sharp continued. ‘That’s contemporaneous history, that is.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Sullivan. ‘None of the ASIO blokes were taking notes.’

  ‘That conference room was probably miked up to the yin yang,’ said Price. ‘They’ll be transcribing it right now, to send on to Langley.’

  ‘Shut it down, boys,’ said Harper. ‘That’s enough loose talk. We’re going to be carrying this day around like an albatross for the rest of our lives. Every crazy thing we say will end up as part of the mythology. Al’s right about those notes, Wal. That’s the true history of this. But first we worry about Bijedic. Then we write up a full report for the higher-ups. And then we shut up about this.’

  Price couldn’t suppress a derisive laugh. ‘Try that in front of a Senate Committee,’ he said.

  ‘We write it up and it’ll be the commissioner who fronts any committee,’ said Harper. ‘That’s how it works. You got more to say about this? Say it to me. Because, if we all start telling tales about what happened in there today, we’ll never hear the end of it. You got me?’

  Price blinked, took a drink of beer and started rolling a cigarette. He turned to Ray Sullivan. ‘Who do you like in the pre-season?’

  ‘Manly and Saints, I reckon.’

  Anna watched the policemen do their toast. She would have given her right arm for a seat at that table—or even for a place within earshot.

  She tuned out when McKillop moved on to his usual list of grievances against Paul Barton. The bureau chief, he was certain, had no respect for him. She decided to go for a walk and wandered along the line of storefronts until she found a chemist, where she was buying a packet of Disprin when a familiar voice came from over her shoulder: ‘The b-b-boyfriend giving you a headache?’

  She spun around to face Tom Moriarty.

  ‘You really need to get some squeaky shoes or something,’ she said. ‘You’ll give me a heart attack.’

  ‘Come over here a m-minute, will you? I n-n-need some advice on hair products.’

  Moriarty led her to the back of the chemist, behind the high shelves.

  ‘What the hell happened in there today?’ Anna demanded. ‘I can’t get anyone to talk.’

  ‘Our flight’s b-boarding in a few m-minutes,’ said Moriarty, handing her a slip of paper. ‘Call me on this n-number later. I’ve joined M-M-Murphy’s staff.’

  ‘What? Has ASIO sacked you?’

  ‘No, n-nothing like that. It’s a k-kind of s-s-secondment.’

  ‘What was that thing with your briefcase this morning? Handing it over to Murphy?’

  ‘Look, that’s why I c-c-came to f-find you now. You c-can’t write about that. Okay?’

  ‘That was one of the strangest things I’ve seen—why wouldn’t I write about it?’

  Moriarty’s eyes narrowed; he took her by the shoulders and leaned in close. ‘Because it’ll f-f-fuck everything up if you d-do, and I’ll n-never talk to you again.’

  ‘Hands off,’ she said, and he dropped them to his sides.

  ‘C-Call me and I’ll give you p-p-plenty to write about tonight,’ he said. ‘Just not that.’

  George Negus stood beside the white Commonwealth car on the tarmac at Sydney Airport, waiting for Lionel Murphy’s flight to land. He was pissed off with Murphy for leaving him out of this. That is to say he was publicly ropeable, but privately relieved he wouldn’t have to wear the consequences. At least he was off the hook with the media.

  He could honestly say he didn’t know what had gone on at St Kilda Road. Had he been asked for his advice ahead of the event, he would have told Lionel: Don’t do it, you mad bastard! Sure, that was 20/20 hindsight, but you didn’t have to be a political brain surgeon to see there was no proverbial light at the end of this tunnel.

  Negus had been in Sydney for a long weekend, but there were plenty of journos who had his Balmain number, and calls had started coming through by mid-morning. That was how he’d first heard of the ASIO escapade.

  Then came a call from Daphne Newman at the office. She sounded uncharacteristically rattled. ‘George, I can’t find the attorney-general,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘Can’t help you there, Daphne. But when you find him, tell him to give me a call.’

  A few hours later the phone had rung and it was Lionel, all breezy and ironic. ‘Where were you, George? You missed all the fun.’

  That’s rich, thought Negus. ‘Well, you might have warned me.’

  ‘Things got their own momentum last night,’ said Murphy. ‘I don’t have much time. I’m flying up to Sydney, on the TAA flight at 3 pm. Can you be there? There’ll be a Comcar and a police escort to take me to Ingrid.’

  Negus had been surprised. He’d thought Ingrid was bunkered down in Canberra for the last weeks of her pregnancy.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ he said. ‘Ingrid got herself to Sydney, did she?’

  ‘Protective services brought her to Darling Point. She’s under police protection …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve had some death threats, George. I’ll explain when I get there. Maureen’s coordinating transport; you should give her a call.’

  Negus had sat in his kitchen and made a series of calls. First to the office, where Maureen gave him the news that Murphy had taken
her along on a midnight visit to ASIO’s Canberra offices in the West Portal. By her account Lionel had cross-examined the local ASIO boss, Colin Brown, as if he were a defendant on criminal charges. That meant that first, the gloves were off, and second, there’d been two ASIO raids. At least the press hadn’t got on to the first one yet.

  A few more calls and he’d learned that the prime minister was down in Melbourne too. That Whitlam was there on the same day as the raid meant he’d obviously known nothing about it. Not good. Apparently Gough had sent Eric Walsh back to Canberra to staunch the blood. Walsh was still en route, so who on Whitlam’s staff was doing damage control in the meantime? Negus soon found out it was the PM’s political advisor, Jim Spigelman, but it wasn’t until the afternoon that he’d been able to get a call through to Speegers and the news wasn’t good.

  The public servants had their knickers in a knot. Murphy’s own department head, Clarrie Harders, had first heard of the raid when journalists started calling him in the morning. A meeting of police and security men was split down the middle as to whether to cancel the Bijedic tour, with the pessimists arguing Murphy had damaged security for the visit.

  To top it off, Bob Ellicott, the solicitor-general, was now looking into whether the raid was illegal and what offences Murphy might have committed. Bloody Ellicott! The man was a diehard Liberal and the cousin of another diehard Liberal, the chief justice of the High Court, Garfield Frigging Barwick. That was all they needed—entrenched conservatives destabilising them from the inside.