The Twentieth Man

by Tony Jones

  ‘I can’t even begin to understand the violence in your life, Marin,’ she said. ‘But I don’t want any part of it. My mother’s whole family was murdered, and your own father was on the side of the murderers. You know that now, don’t you? That knowledge is what drove your brother into madness. He told me as much when I met him.’

  ‘You know Petar was a harmless boy. Those men tortured him and, while they did it, he was crying out my name. Then they blew his brains out. I can’t live with that knowledge. This was all about Bijedic coming to Australia. They were sending a message in blood. I was meant to be part of that message. Do you really think I should turn the other cheek?’

  Anna felt nauseated; she thought she might throw up. Tears spilled on to her cheeks.

  ‘This is just one horror after another,’ she said, struggling now to control her quavering voice. ‘The Petar I met was a weak and damaged person. I’m trying to tell you where that sickness came from, Marin. After I saw him, I went to meet your father. I felt I had to tell him that his son needed help, that he was suicidal. I was alone with Ivo for only a short time, and yet he made me fear for my life. Do you know what he called me?’

  ‘I didn’t even know you’d met him.’

  ‘A dirty Jewish whore. I told him things he didn’t want to hear. I told him how sick Petar was, how damaged he was, how lonely—and that was your father’s response? You’re a dirty Jewish whore!’

  Marin lowered his head into his hands again and, when he lifted it up, she saw despair in his face.

  ‘I met my mother when I was in Bosnia … I finally found her after all these years, and she told me her version of my father’s story. Anna, I know what he is, I know it now!’ he said with sudden passion. ‘Look, when you told me just now what he called you, those disgusting words … It felt like my blood was boiling. It made me want to throttle the life out of him! Please, don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like you see something of him in me.’

  ‘I don’t. It’s just …’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m trying to be honest.’

  ‘Your father has poisoned everything. Now Petar is dead, and all you can think of is some bloody act of revenge.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with my father. Nothing. Ivo and I are finished.’

  Anna drew on the last of her cigarette. She found herself longing for something stronger.

  ‘Marin, I need to tell you something,’ she said. Then she stopped, as if the words had caught in her throat. She looked down at her hands, full of uncertainty.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t even know if there’s any point in telling you.’

  ‘You’ve started now.’

  She gathered herself and began again. ‘I think you know that I was badly beaten by the police at the last Moratorium rally. After being unconscious for a time, I was hospitalised for a week. My father publicly claimed that I had been targeted because I was his daughter.

  ‘Anyhow, they did all sorts of tests on me when I was in hospital. After what happened, they were worried I might have internal injuries. One morning a doctor came in to see me and told me I was pregnant. I can still remember his face. He had good news. He told me not to worry. He told me the baby was safe. That was your baby he was talking about, Marin.’

  Marin slumped in his chair. The vitality that enlivened his every action suddenly seemed to have drained away. He found he could barely ask the question. ‘What happened?’

  ‘What do you think happened? I waited. I even reached out to your father for the first time, but he refused to talk to me. I waited as long as I could, Marin. But you had disappeared into thin air ….’

  Marin got up slowly and came to her, moving like a sleepwalker. She saw that his face was racked with grief. His father, his brother, his future—they were all gone. He knelt on the ground before her. He put his arms around her, his head in her lap.

  Anna held his heaving body. He was sobbing like a child.

  Then the door burst open.

  A man with a gun ran into the room and Marin sprang to his feet. The gun was pointed at Marin’s chest, but it was not steady. The man was drunk.

  ‘Don’t move, Marin!’ he yelled.

  ‘Moriarty!’ Anna cried. ‘What are you—’

  ‘Shut up, Anna, stay out of this. You sit back down, Marin. N-nice and quiet.’

  ‘Get the fuck out of my room!’

  ‘Oh, Anna,’ he said. ‘C-come on, p-p-please.’

  Moriarty sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and kept the wavering gun trained on Marin.

  ‘Shut the d-door, Anna,’ he said. ‘You’re in n-no position to argue. Harbouring a f-f-fugitive.’

  ‘He’s not a fugitive, as far as I know,’ she said. But all the same, she got up and closed the door.

  ‘This is the day of the f-fucken J-jackal, and your boyfriend here is the fucken J-j-jackal.’

  ‘You’re drunk, Tom,’ said Marin. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Moriarty. He looked at the unmade bed, pulled up the sheet and sniffed at it with a lecherous smile. ‘You kids had t-time for a little f-f-fun before Uncle Tom came home, did you?’

  Anna dismissed him with a disgusted shake of her head, but there was something she still didn’t understand.

  ‘How is it that you know each other?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re old f-f-friends, Anna, enough said.’

  Moriarty got up and walked unsteadily over to the bar fridge. He knelt with care, uncertain of his balance, keeping the gun trained on Marin as best he could. He pulled from the fridge a handful of miniatures and checked his watch.

  ‘We’ve got a few m-minutes. Time for a last d-d-drink.’

  He handed a gin bottle to Anna and she set it down.

  ‘A few minutes until what?’

  ‘’Til my fellas arrive.’

  ‘If you’re planning to arrest me, what’s the charge?’ Marin asked.

  ‘Conspiracy to commit acts of t-t-terrorism, for starters,’ said Moriarty. ‘We’ll think of something to k-keep you behind b-b-bars, at least until Bijedic is safely out of the c-c-country.’ Moriarty continued his scrutiny of the mini-bar. ‘No slivovic, Marin, how about plain old b-b-brandy? I’ll have the Scotch.’ He tossed the little bottle to Marin and unscrewed the lid on his.

  The moment Moriarty put it to his mouth, Marin was in motion. He threw the brandy bottle back at Moriarty’s head as hard as he could, cracking him between the eyes.

  ‘Marin, don’t!’ Anna shouted.

  But he was already on his feet. He took two steps towards Moriarty. He pinned the man’s gun hand down, but Moriarty managed to squeeze off a shot. The explosion was deafening in the still night.

  Marin drove his forehead into Moriarty’s face. The spy reeled, made a convulsive effort to get up and fell back on the bed, unconscious.

  Marin then heard car doors slamming, men shouting. He ran to the window and saw two men running towards the hotel entrance. Moriarty’s reinforcements had arrived. He looked at Anna, who was still frozen in her chair.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said.

  He stepped out on to the balcony. The moment he saw the men beneath him rush inside the hotel, he climbed over the railing and crabbed fast along the front of the building, one balcony after another, back the way he had come.

  He jumped down on to the annexe’s roof and ran across the gravel, careless of the noise. He heard shouting behind him, but he didn’t stop. He leapt to the ground and sprinted into the darkness.

  Anna was still sitting in the chair when the door flew open and two armed men rushed into her room. One, a rangy, wolfish type, took in the scene and ran through the open door to the balcony, peering either way over the edge of the railing, pointing his pistol and shouting, ‘Stop! Stop or I’ll fire!’

  The other man was overweight, red-faced and breathing hard. He holstered his weapon and leaned o
ver the prone body on the bed. His first thought was that Moriarty had been shot, but he couldn’t see a wound. He rolled him over. Nothing. He shook Moriarty’s shoulders, undid his tie and fetched water and a towel.

  The wolfish man came back inside.

  ‘No bullet wounds,’ said the fat man. ‘Not that I can see. What happened out there?’

  ‘He’s gone. We’ve got Buckley’s chance of catching him.’ He then turned to Anna, as if noticing her for the first time. ‘Who fired the fucken shot?’

  ‘He did,’ she said, pointing at the still unconscious Moriarty. ‘There was a fight and his gun went off.’

  The wolfish one turned back to his companion. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘That’d be up to Tom,’ said the fat man. ‘But he’s out for the count.’

  The whisky bottle had leaked its remaining contents on to the bedsheets. The fat man picked it up, sniffed it and put it on the bedside table.

  Anna heard sounds in the corridor. A man in a dressing gown appeared in the doorway, but stopped when he saw the activity around what looked to him like a dead man on the bed. He stared suspiciously at the two men bent over the body and the young woman in the chair.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked. ‘Should I call the police?’

  ‘We are the police,’ said the fat man, moving to block the man’s entry. He produced a warrant card from his breast pocket. He and his colleague, Anna would later discover, were detectives from the ACT Police.

  ‘But what happened here?’

  ‘Please go back to your room, sir,’ said the fat detective. ‘This is a police matter. There’s nothing to see.’

  He closed the door in the man’s face and turned an accusing gaze on Anna. ‘What the fuck happened here?’

  ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘There was a fight. Moriarty came off second best.’

  When the other detective splashed water on to Moriarty’s face, the body stirred at last—still alive—spluttering, groaning on the bed. The fat man continued his interrogation.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Anna Rosen, I’m a journalist.’

  ‘How did that fellow come to be in your room?’

  ‘Do you mean him?’ she asked, indicating Moriarty, who was being helped into a sitting position. ‘He broke in, uninvited.’

  ‘Don’t be smart,’ said the fat detective, standing over her now in a clumsy attempt at intimidation. ‘I mean the bloke who did the runner.’

  ‘He’s a contact of mine. I told you I’m a journalist. He came to talk to me. Woke me up.’

  The fat one leered at her. ‘Is that all?’

  Anna stared at him with contempt. ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what my business is, missy.’

  ‘Missy?’ echoed Anna. ‘Really? Do you have a warrant to be in my room?’

  He didn’t answer, but she saw doubt spread across his face.

  ‘Do you have an arrest warrant for the man who was here?’ she persisted.

  No answer.

  ‘Do you even know his name?’

  ‘Don’t t-t-talk to her,’ said Tom Moriarty. He struggled to his feet, swayed, then collapsed back on to the bed.

  ‘We better get him to hospital,’ said the other detective. ‘He might have cracked his skull.’

  The fat one picked up Moriarty’s pistol, turned it over in his hands—some kind of foreign job. He put on the safety and pocketed it without a word. He and his partner hoisted the spy to his feet and half-walked, half-carried him from the room.

  Anna followed them to the door and watched as they hauled Moriarty down the corridor. They looked, for all the world, like two mates helping a drunken friend to bed.

  She shut the door and bolted it. She felt a debilitating lethargy come over her, as she’d seen in accident victims when their bodies shut down. She climbed, exhausted, back into the bed, still in her clothes. She switched off the light and pulled the covers over herself protectively. The sheets smelled of sex and cheap whisky.

  The flesh-and-blood Marin Katich—his green eyes, the hard planes of his body, his soft insistent voice, his delicate touch—had dissolved again into a shadow, disappearing into the night. A would-be assassin; there could be no doubt of that now. He had said as much, hadn’t he? The tears for his brother had been unfeigned, and so too his fierce anger. She thought about Petar and the incomprehensible idea that he had been tortured to death.

  Her imagination conjured up the young man’s ravaged body, sticky with blood. The air above his lifeless remains speckled with moving black dots—a humming cloud of bush flies that hovered low over him, before descending in ones and twos to crawl into his wounds to lay their eggs. And all around this terrible scene there arose the throbbing song of the countless cicadas hidden in the trees, the very pulse of the bush, rising and falling and rising again, until it became the deafening sound of oblivion.

  Anna was woken at dawn by the discordant, keening cries of currawongs. Nature itself was in mourning. Marin was lost to her, lost to the history of violence that was his birthright. It had lurked in his body like cancerous cells until they found a reason to multiply. She felt resentment and a hard core of anger. He had come to say goodbye, as if she were a loose end that needed tying up. When she began to weep it was with a bitter grief.

  Eventually she roused herself. It was not over. She imagined Tom Moriarty rising, concussed, from his hospital bed, to gather up his henchmen and return to interrogate her. Recalling how the spy had forced his way in and the timing of his arrival, she began a methodical search of her room. She pulled apart the bedside lamps, dragged off the mattress, examined the base and both ends of the bed, pulled the pictures off the wall, checked the backs of the furniture—and every nook and cranny she could think of.

  She found it in the overhead light. The bug was concealed in the shade with a thin, dark wire running up to the ceiling inside the metal tube that held the central power cable. She cut the microphone off with a pair of nail scissors and put it in her pocket.

  She imagined Moriarty sitting in a nearby room with a bottle of whisky, a set of headphones clamped over his ears, the spools on the tape recorder revolving slowly as he listened to them fucking. She packed a bag, left the hotel by the rear entrance and found the ute waiting for her with its usual ironic grin.

  Somewhere along the highway that tracked the escarpment’s edge above the parched plain of Lake George, a big storm came surging up the valley. She saw it coming in the distance, behind Governors Hill. It seemed to have brewed up out of nothing. The sky above her was blue and cloudless, and the same to the west; but over Governors Hill it boiled dark as doomsday and began to spit lightning into the dry earth.

  Anna could have outrun it, but instead she pulled off the road, climbed out of the car and stood on the escarpment watching it come. It began with large drops drumming the tarp at the back of the ute and tapping her head like an impatient hand. Then it descended fast in a torrent, whipping and buffeting her with cold winds.

  A lightning strike rent the sky in front of her, a jagged branch of electricity, merciless and elemental, searching for something or someone to earth itself on. Go on! Take me! she wanted to scream. Take me!

  Anna stood there shivering, her teeth chattering as the storm swept over her. When it passed to the west and left her alive, she did not feel cleansed but emptied. She got back into the car and drove on.

  32.

  On Saturday morning, 17 March, the Commonwealth Police Bijedic team, still exhausted from the long hours they’d pulled accompanying the attorney-general on his ASIO raid, gathered at headquarters for a briefing from Inspector Harry Harper. Several of them were damp and bedraggled, having been caught outdoors by the fierce storm that had swept through the capital.

  ‘Morning, Wal, you look like a drowned rat,’ said Harper when Price entered the squad room.

  Wally Price pulled a soggy ruin from his pocket to confirm the extent of the storm’s damage
.

  ‘Yeah, caught in the bloody downpour. It soaked through a whole pack of smokes.’

  ‘Take a seat,’ said Harper. ‘I’ll duck out and organise a pot of tea.’

  Sergeant Ray Sullivan and Al Sharp were already in the room.

  ‘You get any sleep, Wal?’ asked Sullivan.

  Price threw the cigarettes in a bin and hung his wet jacket on the back of a chair.

  ‘Yeah, I was knackered,’ he said. ‘Woke up to a nice morning. Made the usual mistake of walking here and ended up in a fucken tempest.’

  Al Sharp looked up at him. ‘Are you not moved, Wal,’ he intoned, ‘when all the sway of the earth shakes like a thing infirm?’

  Price stared at him, wondering if he had a screw loose. ‘The fuck you say?’

  ‘It’s Julius Caesar, boofhead.’

  ‘Oh, shit, and I left my annotated copy behind.’

  Harper returned with a large pile of documents. ‘This is all the research you’ll need for today, Wal,’ he said, taking up a bundle of telexes. ‘This is what’s accumulated in the past twenty-four hours. If anything, the threats are multiplying. We’ve got a shitload of reports to go through, and then I’ve got to write a brief for the commissioner for his meeting with the prime minister this afternoon.’

  ‘I heard that Peter Barbour’s coming up from Melbourne today to meet Whitlam,’ said Sullivan. ‘Is he going to make a formal complaint about our role in the raid?’

  ‘That’s beyond my pay grade, Raymond,’ said Harper. ‘We’ve just got to concentrate on keeping Bijedic safe. So, listen carefully.’ The inspector picked up the top telex and began. ‘Last night a bomb exploded in the Department of Supply Light Transport Depot at Woolloomooloo. It went off next to the Rolls-Royce, which was to be used to transport Bijedic during the visit.’

  ‘Jesus wept!’ cried Price.

  ‘It was a small device and there was only superficial damage,’ Harper explained. ‘But there’s speculation they might have been trying to plant it in the car.’

  ‘Suspects?’ asked Sharp.