The Mandarin Code (28 page)

News of the encounter reverberated through the gallery even before the crew had arrived at Parliament. The ABC's pool-sharing arrangement meant that its partner, Ten, would have access to the footage, but not Seven.

When word of the pictures reached Seven's chief of staff, Craig Sullivan, he sprinted across the corridor from his office to front the ABC's chief of staff, Simon Johnson.

‘Simes. I beg you. I beg you, mate. Let us have it.'

‘No.' Johnson was enjoying the rare opportunity of having something he knew Sullivan couldn't live without. Several long minutes of bartering ensued before Johnson relented.

‘Okay, but next time I want something from you, remember this moment,' Johnson said. ‘And we're bugging these shots.'

That meant the ABC logo would run on the pictures given to Seven, something the commercial channel's management hated. But Sullivan knew his bosses would love the pictures.

‘You're killing me, mate.'

Emily Brooks was also under siege. The initial response from her office to the outside world had been stony silence. Brooks was determined to follow the ancient political dictum: ‘Don't explain, don't complain and never resign.' But in the long run, saying nothing had not been an option.

The first step had been to issue a statement raising the possibility that the pictures had been doctored. Her footsoldiers were dispatched to sell this line, with disastrous results. No one believed them. Experts were paraded across every television and radio program, every print outlet, to testify that the images were genuine.

Next, the Opposition leader's press secretary, Justin Greenwich, had been urged by Brooks to spin the story.

‘How the fuck do I explain this away?' Greenwich had muttered to a colleague. ‘Houdini couldn't escape those images. They're keeping me awake at night.'

Greenwich was in awe of Brooks's toughness and calmness under pressure. Although she had forged a reputation as one of the hardest politicians ever to walk the corridors of Parliament, she rarely lost her temper with her staff, no matter how bad the day. She was not panicking now, refusing to resign and adamant that her party would have to sack her if it wanted her gone. Together they devised a plan that might save Brooks's political skin.

Brooks would make a statement to the Parliament. The advantage was that she wouldn't have to face questions from the media. The downside was that she would have to face the scorn of the House of Representatives. She could not lie. And she would be beamed live to the nation, as when she announced that she would seek the House's indulgence to make a personal statement, the networks decided to carry it live.

The chamber and its galleries were full when Brooks strode in with her carefully prepared speech. In the end she and Greenwich had decided that the best form of defence was attack. She would cast herself as the victim and only address the tricky question of her bondage session in passing.

Brooks began by theatrically turning on the press gallery, pointing her finger at representatives of each media outlet.

‘J'accuse you . . . and you . . . and you . . .' Brooks thundered. ‘You seek to stand in judgement of me: as judge, jury and executioner. Today I open my own court and you are indicted. You are charged with a criminal invasion of privacy and the gross abuse of your privileged role as journalists. Our democracy has been damaged by your desperation to damage me.'

Brooks put on her glasses and turned to her speech like a QC checking a brief.

‘Let's begin with the facts. I am a single woman in a relationship with a single man. We are consenting adults. I have broken no law. What was done occurred in the privacy of my own home. People can make their own judgement about what they have seen. All I ask decent Australians is to consider how they came to see it.'

Brooks's voice was strong and her hands steady as she turned the pages of her speech.

‘Someone broke into my home. That is a crime. Someone installed not one but two video cameras in my bedroom. That is a crime. Someone videotaped me without my knowledge and then distributed the images without my consent. All those things are crimes. I ask the Australian people: how would you feel if the same thing happened to you? How would the members of this House feel?'

Brooks's eyes wandered slowly around the chamber, searching out those with more interesting private lives.

There was a nervous shuffling. Some MPs who had been riveted by the Schadenfreude of Brooks's discomfort found pieces of paper that, all of a sudden, demanded urgent attention.

‘But those crimes pale beside the complete moral bankruptcy of the media.' Brooks eyeballed the journalists in the gallery just a few metres above her. ‘You trafficked these stolen goods and then you had the gall to demand that I, the victim, be made to stand trial.'

Brooks had memorised the final paragraphs of her speech and addressed the chamber with a confident air.

‘But I will not be lectured to about morality by the media or my opponents. I will not. And after today I will not be answering any more questions about my private life. If asked by the media about it, I have plenty of questions of my own about their role in a series of crimes. I have asked the police to investigate. Politics is a hard business and I play it hard. I expect no more or less than is expected of others.'

It was a bravura performance and a throaty ‘Hear, hear' followed Brooks as she gathered her papers and swept out.

After the speech the corridors rang with gossip as MPs of all political persuasions appraised Brooks's performance and her prospects. Even her enemies were impressed by the audacity of a speech aimed at morphing her from villain to victim. There was a grudging admiration, too, at her shifting the attack onto the media, something all politicians and most of the public enjoyed.

But some Coalition MPs told their Labor mates that they thought her leadership was doomed.

‘We'll let Brooks take all the hits on opposing the mental health bill and then we'll dump her and have a new leader for the dash to the election,' one Coalition plotter said. ‘Say what you like about her, she's tough. Elizabeth Scott would wave the bill through even though we can't afford it.'

For the first time in ages, Martin Toohey and George Papadakis looked forward to the evening news. The PM had ordered snacks and a good bottle of red. They were ready for showtime.

‘Hurry up, George; you'll miss the start,' Toohey hollered at 5.58pm.

Papadakis bustled through the door to the opening strains of the Seven News theme. The sting promised extended coverage of ‘Bondage-gate'.

Toohey and Papadakis rocked with laughter at the opening. Commercial TV news stories usually run for ninety seconds, but a staggering three minutes was devoted to Robbie's encounter with the ABC.

‘Stick that up your arse!' Toohey yelled at the television and then laughed himself red at his own wit. Wiping tears from his eyes he turned to Papadakis.

‘I've always hated that little shit and, no matter what happens to Brooks, this is the end of him. He'll never be able to set foot in the gallery again. The ABC just paid for itself. Let's give them more money.'

The next story, covering Brooks's speech, wasn't as good. The Opposition leader had shown steel and pulled off a great performance in the most difficult of circumstances.

The third was a collection of vox pops, and opinion was split on whether Brooks should go. But everyone agreed Robbie was a grub. ‘Like all journalists,' one woman added.

When the fun on Seven ended after ten glorious minutes, Toohey ran through the tapes of Nine and Ten. He switched to SBS live at 6.30. The entertainment only ended after the ABC's
7.30
devoted twenty minutes to the affair, including a side-slapping defence of Brooks by her deputy, the dour National Party leader, Charles Mayfield. The best exchange was, as always with Mayfield, unwitting.

‘It's you lot at the ABC that should be ashamed,' Mayfield raged. ‘You've been whipping this up into a frenzy.'

‘Would you like to rephrase that?' a poker-faced Leigh Sales replied.

7.30'
s last story examined the reaction of the Christian lobby and it was clear many were struggling to defend Brooks, although the word ‘forgiveness' was used a lot. Toohey was sorry when the program finally moved on to other news.

‘How do we keep this going?' The Prime Minister, the usual whipping boy for the nightly news, wanted to drag out the Coalition's pain.

‘We could have a few of the more crazy-brave MPs and senators drop some inflammatory remarks,' Papadakis said. ‘We'll get the Victorian Right's online stooge to post some really appalling stuff. Ah, and Martin, there are all those fake Twitter accounts the national secretariat manages.'

Toohey had been schooled in the art of union ‘shit sheets' since his early years in Labor and knew the best stuff needed imagination and flair.

‘Yes, yes, all that. But we need something that will really bite. I know, get someone to call Robbie Swan and get the Sex Party to come out and say it applauds Emily Brooks for making bondage acceptable. And that as a result of her good work he hopes to see the basics of it taught in high school. That kind of third-party endorsement will screw with her base.'

Papadakis frowned at his boss.

‘Sometimes you scare me, Martin.'

Toohey wasn't listening.

‘And Black Ops, George. We don't want our fingerprints on it.'

Honolulu

‘Thank you, Mr President. I will do that, sir. You have a good day.'

Aubrey W. Holland bristled with anger. His men, on a peaceful mission in international airspace, had been provocatively shadowed and put in harm's way.

The admiral's fury had been heard all the way to the White House.

From his base in Hawaii, the Commander of Pacific Command controlled an area spanning half the world: from the blue waters of the US west coast to the western border of India. From Antarctica to the North Pole.

Within an hour of the B-52s returning to their base in Guam, shaken after their run-in with the Chinese fighter jets, Holland had issued a robust statement. It was just after 9.30am in Honolulu.

‘The actions of those Chinese pilots were unnecessary, unprofessional and showed a lack of experience,' he'd thundered.

‘As a leader I find it impossible to believe that they were not acting under orders. China is growing more aggressive by the day. It now claims most of the South China Sea and is involved in territorial disputes there with Vietnam, India and the Philippines. In the East China Sea it is threatening South Korea and Japan. Most of the world's trade passes through these waters.

‘It has the posture of a country that is spoiling for a fight. It is now up to the leaders of all free nations to decide if they are prepared to let China rule the international waterways.'

Holland had personally briefed the President. He liked the steel that Earle Jackson had put back in America's spine. The admiral believed that it was overdue for the US to assert its rights of free passage on the high seas. Jackson agreed.

In a few hours time the President would hold a press conference. And he wasn't promising words, he was promising action.

Canberra

Soft turquoise wings sketched on satin skin, a pair of butterflies in hidden places, a stencil of forbidden delight. Pixie dust mingled with stars in tiny constellations across a smudge of black.

Harry Dunkley allowed his eyes to linger on the soft curve of her hip until every centimetre had been traced. Then he fell back onto a pillow, hands clasped behind his head, feeling guilty contentment after a night with his lover.

He mentally did the maths as she quietly lay on her stomach, her arms folded beneath the pillow.

You're in way over your head, Dunkley.

Celia Mathieson was gorgeous, feisty, whip-smart – and twenty-two years his junior.