Dead and Kicking (19 page)

Airline seat-pocket reading material can be pretty ordinary, even on a good day. The laminated safety card isn’t too engaging, with its cartoon passengers disembarking in an orderly fashion from a 300-tonne aircraft which the pilot has somehow managed to land neatly in one piece on the gentle bosom of an incredibly smooth ocean. The airsick bags sometimes have instructions like ‘Insert vomit through open end’, with a helpful arrow and thankfully no graphics.

And then there’s the airline in-flight magazine. I’ve been on airlines where the airsick bag makes for more entertaining and engaging reading. However, this magazine was of very superior quality as it contained a photograph of me, which must have been why I was getting the stares. It accompanied an informative article about the WorldPix International photographic agency and upcoming exhibition in Canberra.

WorldPix, the captive reader was informed, grew out of an idea from freelance photographer Alby Murdoch, who was pictured. The Alby Murdoch in the captioned photograph was looking remarkably handsome, if I may say so, and looking a lot more together than the slightly dishevelled bloke crammed into seat 37J. The press release the story was based on had left out the bit about the agency providing cover for certain government agents to carry out their nefarious tasks.

They’d used around a dozen pictures from the exhibition to illustrate the article, including a shot of mine showing a beautiful ten-year-old Balinese girl being taught the graceful and intricate hand movements of the Legong Keraton by an elegant older female dancer. There were actually some pretty confronting photographs in the exhibition, but the magazine’s editor had decided to go with the less disturbing ones.

One of these pictures was a shot of the American Ambassador to Australia posing uncomfortably with his three young grandchildren in the grounds of the US Embassy. My mate Harry Wardell had taken that particular picture a few months before getting shot to death in a Double Bay café. Harry had looked into the eyes of a lot of people over the years, it goes with the job, but after that assignment he’d told me he’d never seen a blacker, deeper, colder and emptier vista than the steel-grey eyes of Vaughan Crockett.

I flicked through the rest of the magazine and stopped at a story about Chinese New Year. The mention of
lai see
jogged my memory and I took out my wallet and found the red envelope inside. I caught the attention of one of the Asian cabin attendants.

‘Any chance you might be able to translate this for me,’ I asked, using my very best smile. I showed her the Chinese characters on the outside of the glassine envelope that held the negative.

She looked at the writing and shook her head. ‘Sorry, love,’ she said, ‘I can’t read Chinese. I’m actually from Wollongong, but maybe Maxine can help. Hey, Maxine, got a sec? 37J.’

Maxine was blonde and blue-eyed and as gorgeous as the rest of the cabin staff, including the blokes. She was holding a tray of small teacups in one hand and a large Chinese teapot in the other, and deftly managed not to fill my lap with chrysanthemum tea as she leaned over and studied the envelope.

‘I grew up in Honkers before the handover,’ she explained. ‘My Chinese is a bit rusty but my old man worked for Lloyds of London and I’m sure that symbol means something like “insurance”,’ she said, speaking with a slight English accent. ‘The other stuff looks like “light” and “cart”. Might be symbols phonetically representing a European name. Best I can do, I’m afraid. That help?’

I nodded. ‘Might do, thanks.’

She smiled. ‘Aren’t you a bit old to be getting lucky money?’

‘I take my luck where I can get it these days,’ I said.

‘Sounds fair enough. Would you like some tea?’ she asked.

I nodded. ‘Thanks.’

She filled one of the cups and I took it from her tray.

‘Anything else I might help you with, Mr Murdoch?’ she asked. ‘To make your trip more pleasant?’

I guessed she must have been reading the in-flight magazine. I shook my head.

‘Maybe later then,’ she said. ‘Just call me.’ She paused. ‘Anytime.’ She smiled. ‘The controls are in your armrest and you look like a man who knows the right buttons to press.’

She was gone before my addled brain could come up with a pithy response.

The aircraft lurched on some turbulence, splashing tea over the lip of the cup. I grabbed up the little red envelope and slipped it back into my wallet. There was no way I was going to let anything happen to Old Peng’s insurance policy.

The entertainment screen on the seat-back in front of me displayed updates on our flight time and ETA – seven hours to go. My plan was to do a bit of quick business in Sydney and then grab a City Flyer shuttle to Canberra for the opening of the WorldPix exhibition. There was a nice new dinner suit I wanted to show off and there would be someone at the show I really wanted to bump into.

Maxine was pushing the food service trolley in my direction as I scrolled through to a wildlife channel just in time to see a cobra the size of a python unhinge its jaw and make a meal of a still-twitching rat. For the first time in my life, I considered going for the vegetarian option.

‘Would you care for some lunch, Mr Murdoch?’ Maxine asked.

‘What are my choices?’

‘Yes or no, I suppose,’ she said with that dazzling smile.

I smiled back. I liked Maxine. Maxine knew what buttons to press, too.

Bondi was its normal late-summer gorgeous self, and even more welcoming after the long weeks on the film, multiple murder attempts and gruelling flight home. My top-floor apartment in Luxor Mansions on Campbell Parade overlooks the beach, but as much as I wanted to wander down and fall into the waves, I had a lot to do. After making a couple of calls, booking a priority courier pick-up and grabbing a quick shower, I took tea with Mrs Templeton, my elderly widowed neighbour across the hall.

Mrs T had a fresh batch of her oatmeal cookies, still warm from the oven, and we sat and chatted at the table in front of her bay window while I checked through the mail she’d been collecting for me. She grilled me on my love-life, with numerous subtle references to that ‘nice wee lass Julie’ – it was Mrs T’s mission in life to see Julie and me married. While she chatted away in her soft Scottish brogue, Dougal, her ugly, flatulent black pug, snuffled around our feet looking for crumbs. It was nice to return to some sense of normality, even with Dougal’s lethal farts polluting the atmosphere.

Normality doesn’t last long, especially when you fly into Canberra. The corridors of power in the nation’s capital can be a strange place after a change of government. The outgoing politicians are shell-shocked and morose, and even their well-tailored suits seem to hang listlessly on them as they shuffle out of office suites that once had their names on the door, past weeping and soon to be unemployed staffers.

In the weeks following the election, the incoming pollies are ebullient, drunk on victory and the possibility of payback. They delight in asking, ‘Aren’t you the former member for Woop Woop West who lost his seat in a 9 per cent swing?’ You figure if they thought they could get away with it they’d just unzip and piss on the walls to mark their new territory. Perhaps after changes of government the Parliament House caretakers put up temporary signs reading ‘You Represent the People of Australia: Please Do Not Urinate in the Hallways!’

Next in the moroseness stakes after the outgoing members come the senior public servants who had unwisely hitched their wagons to the former government’s star, and were now being sucked down with the sinking ship. The smarter ones read the signs early and subtly shifted to the middle ground, but the truly faithful found themselves reviewing their superannuation options, abandoning long-term love affairs with personal assistants or undiscriminating journalists, and contemplating buying newsagencies or coffee-shop franchises and the horrifying prospect of reconnecting with their families.

With a bit of time to spare before the exhibition opening, I wanted to get some background information on Detlef Fischer’s aquatic enterprise up north so I gritted my teeth and headed for my appointment with Eldon Craddock, the First Assistant Secretary to the new Minister for the Department of Aquaculture Enhancement and Arboreal Export Enterprises. This new department had been quickly nicknamed Fish & Wood Chips and Craddock, despite having worked for the previous Minister, had somehow managed to retain his position under the new owners.

He stood up and walked around from behind his desk as his secretary led me into the office. The room was functional and sparsely furnished, and I noticed a slightly lighter space on the wall where a picture had been recently removed – probably a signed and framed portrait of the former PM, which was now bubble-wrapped and discreetly tucked away under a bed.

Eldon Craddock was about my age, slim but with the beginnings of a potbelly. Disturbingly, rather than the usual suit and tie uniform of public-service apparatchiks, he was wearing a plaid shirt over a black AC/DC ‘Dirty Deeds’ T-shirt, black skinny-legged Diesel jeans and Vans ‘Johnny Ramone’ sneakers. A silver-studded black leather wristband completed the outfit.

‘Please have a seat, Mr …’ He glanced at the folder his secretary had handed him, and continued, ‘… Murdoch. How can I be of help?’

‘It’s good of you to take the time,’ I said.

‘No worries, mate. With any change of government there is always a honeymoon period when we’re forced to feign interest.’

No worries, mate?

‘We go through this “new broom, things will change, much more accountable, et cetera, et cetera” phase, and then after the appropriate passage of time everything returns to normal.’

‘Your honesty is refreshing,’ I said.

He nodded and smiled. ‘You should enjoy it while it lasts.’

‘And how long will it last?’

‘Just until everyone in Canberra figures out exactly where they stand.’

A couple of phone calls to Canberra insiders had filled me in on the background of Eldon Craddock. He was a legend in the public service because nobody knew who he was. Craddock had perfected the termite system of career advancement, keeping his head down, staying quiet and relentlessly gnawing away at his opponents’ support structures. This approach was combined with a chameleon-like ability to adapt to whatever surroundings he found himself in.

Craddock’s new boss was a former rock legend and his chief of staff was an ex-roadie. The Canberra Press Gallery were constantly pissing themselves at how the chief of staff came out before the Minister’s press conferences to tap the microphones and chant, ‘Two two. Two two.’ Craddock’s outfit was a clue to just how far some people in Canberra would go to ingratiate themselves with their new masters.

‘But let’s get down to tin tacks …’ he said, glancing at the folder again, ‘… Alby. Can I call you Alby?’

I nodded. ‘Sure, why not. Should I call you Eldon?’

‘Crash,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Crash,’ he repeated. ‘Crash Craddock. It’s a nickname.’

‘Like the sixties pop star? “Knock Three Times.” “Dream Lover.” “I’m Gonna Knock on Your Door.”’

‘That’s the man. An American, I believe.’

‘You’re looking for street cred with the Minister?’

He nodded. ‘Of course. Not trying too hard, do you think?’

I shook my head. ‘Nah,’ I said. ‘Go for it. Maybe you should put up some posters. Abba, Tony Orlando and Dawn, stuff like that.’

‘Barry Manilow?’

‘Sure, that could work, too.’

He smiled. ‘Groovy. Now, I’m a little pressed for time, so how exactly can I assist you? This is to do with Fischer Aqua-culture Industries, I believe.’

‘That’s right. I’m looking for whatever background information you have on something called barrana or JezzaBarrana.’

Craddock studied the folder on his desk. ‘A provisional licence was granted to import a test batch of barrana fingerlings for study and assessment, let me see, around six months ago under the former Minister. You may be aware that expansion of the level of sustainable intensive farming of edible aquatic assets is a priority of this government and this department. Over-exploitation of unregulated non-land-based edible aquatic assets means these assets will soon be approaching a level of non-viability.’

‘You mean that pretty soon we’ll have pulled all the wild fish out of the oceans, and battered lamb chops and chips isn’t going to cut it with the Australian public.’

‘Simplistically put, but yes. It’s hard to believe, but the oceans off the North American east coast were once jammed with so many giant cod it was thought they could feed the world for eternity. But in less than fifty years of highly mechanised harvesting they were driven almost to extinction.’

‘Didn’t we have a similar experience down here with the orange roughy?’

‘Exactly,’ Craddock said. ‘So we were pleased when Fischer Aquaculture Industries sought a licence to establish a secure research facility in the Northern Territory. They’re currently testing the viability of an aquatic product that may offer us many long-term advantages.’

Australia has a long history of importing plants and animals to improve the environment, beautify the garden, fill the stew pot or deal with pests, only to have those well-intentioned ideas go belly-up in a very nasty way. Rabbits, foxes, prickly pear, Scotch thistle, the European carp and the cane toad are just some of our ecological management triumphs.

‘And you have no concerns about these particular aquatic products escaping into the waterways and breeding with local fish?’ I asked.

‘Mr Murdoch – Alby, the imported fingerlings are all sterile, which was a condition of the licence. Besides which, the fish-farming facility has been assessed as being 100 per cent secure.’

‘Who does the assessing?’

‘You might be aware that under the previous government we moved to an extremely high level of self-assessment.’

‘So Fischer Aquaculture Industries have conducted a review of the security arrangements of Fischer Aquaculture Industries and Fischer Aquaculture Industries have decided everything about Fischer Aquaculture Industries is just tickety-boo.’