The Mandarin Code (34 page)

Dunkley leaned forward and clinked his glass of red against Trevor's tumbler.

‘Cheers to that, mate.'

‘I don't think you appreciate how this game works, Harry. I worked for the signals directorate. We scoop up information from everyone. We work with similar agencies around the globe. Mate, we have bugged the planet. If we get interested in you, you have to assume that every move you make is being logged. Your mobile phone is a tracking device. We can turn it into a listening device. Every time you send an email, use an ATM, splash out on a credit card or surf the net for porn, we know.'

Harris nestled his glass between his hands.

‘Harry, everyone marvels at what technology can do. They think it liberates them. But we've become slaves and chained ourselves to Big Brother.'

Dunkley thought of conversations he'd had with sources. How many had been monitored?

‘Trev, you're making me nervous.'

‘You should be nervous.'

Dunkley needed to delve into Harris's past.

‘So why did you leave DSD?'

‘As politicians say, mate, that is a very good question.'

‘Do you have a good answer?

Harris put his glass down. He thumped the arm of the lounge twice.

‘I was Ben's boss. He had access to some of the most highly classified material in the country. The means to tap into phones and computers. Usually if someone in that position dies in suspicious circumstances the intelligence community is all over it. That didn't happen.'

‘Are you saying it was a cover-up?'

‘I'm saying they didn't even do the basics. They didn't ask the usual questions. There was no inquiry. I kept pushing for one and was told the intelligence community was satisfied with the police report. It was made very clear to me that I should just let it drop.‘

‘But you couldn't, Trev?'

‘No. And in my own time, and in my own way, I began to look more closely at what Ben had been doing. He had been accessing deeply sensitive material on our system and was covering his tracks along the way. And he was very good at it.'

Dunkley smiled. ‘Kimberley always bragged that she was one of the best in the business.'

‘Almost as good as me, mate.'

‘So what did you find?'

‘I found myself on the dole queue. I was made redundant, with no explanation.' Harris paused. ‘So what have you got?'

Dunkley pulled out the plastic crypto card.

‘I've got this.'

A pair of iMacs purred into life.

‘I prefer to have two running, an old habit from DSD days,' Harris explained.

Dunkley perched on a leather dining chair he'd dragged across the room.

The page opened on a file of encrypted documents. Harris smiled in professional appreciation.

‘I trained that guy well. He put some serious effort into making this a hard nut to crack. I'm sure I can open them but that's going to take some time. Let's have a look at what your girlfriend discovered.'

The two read in silence. It was quite a tale.

It was the late '60s, the height of the Cold War. Vietnam was escalating and Whitlam was making inroads into the national consciousness as a would-be prime minister.

A small cabal of Canberra mandarins was fretting at the prospect of Gough winning the 1969 election. So they formed a group, the Alliance – its name a salute to the security pact that was their sacred text – and began to meet regularly with the serving American Ambassador.

Names that had long vanished from the public gaze came tumbling out of Celia's summary.

       
William Marshall, a former head of Foreign Affairs who'd served several stints in Washington during an illustrious career that stretched back to the agency's tenure as ‘External Affairs'. The Queen had gonged him for ‘public service leadership'.

       
Nathan Martin, a top-line spook, once the head of Australia's domestic spy agency, ASIO, and then its foreign cousin, ASIS.

       
Richard Althurst, who'd logged three decades at or near the helm of Defence, through to the early '90s. He'd been rewarded with a plum job as Australia's Ambassador to NATO.

       
Darcy Guinness, another mandarin with feet in the intelligence and defence camps. He was stationed overseas for a decade before his appointment as head of ASIO from 1977 until 1984. Howard had considered appointing him Ambassador to the US after his ‘96 victory but had apparently been talked out of it.

       
Gavin d'Alessio, a former paratrooper who'd turned Defence into a fearsome budget-gouging machine. The second-generation Italian courted controversy when he later snared lucrative contracts with several global ‘gunrunner' firms that he'd dealt with as head of the military.

       
Thomas ‘Bulldog' Charlton, an infamous public service chief who'd floated in and out of Foreign Affairs during a forty-year career. He was renowned for stonewalling when parliamentarians came snooping on even the most trivial matters.

‘Wow, quite a line-up, Harry. Very impressive. They would have sunk some dollars into the Commonwealth Club.'

‘Sounds like a cult, dreaming up coups over G-and-Ts, all very cloak and dagger. But how does it link to the present?'

‘That, my friend, is another very good question.'

Canberra

The first hint of dawn washed into the House of Representatives, a shimmer of light on a scene of parliamentary chaos.

For fourteen brutal hours the Toohey Government and Bailey Opposition had fought a war of attrition over the mental health reforms. The chamber, where the nation's laws were debated and written, may as well have been washed in blood. MPs were tired, emotional and impatient to escape the capital. A roster of speakers had struggled to keep order amid the pandemonium.

The previous afternoon, a successful ploy by the government's Manager of Business, Burt Crespo, to suspend standing orders had forced the MPs to stay. The Labor warhorse had delivered an impassioned speech, declaring, ‘no one in this place should sleep soundly in their beds until this nation lives up to its duty of giving justice to the mentally ill'. But while Crespo had the numbers and the guile to ensure the House kept sitting, he didn't yet have sufficient backing for the legislation.

Labor had pulled every procedural trick in the book and filibustered the debate to keep the chamber running. Behind the scenes the Prime Minister and his team fought to cobble together an alliance that would deliver victory. The Manager of Opposition Business was counter-punching, trying to terminate proceedings as Emily Brooks schemed to kill the final vote.

Frantic whips from both parties had struggled to keep their unruly teams in check. Dallas Bairstow had been dragged back from hospital and was under house arrest in his office, with a Liberal and a National MP assigned to escort him to and from the toilet.

Every Labor MP had been instructed to stay awake and within a brisk four-minute walk of the chamber, as failing to make a division before the doors were locked could spell disaster. Unfortunately it was harder to stop exhausted and homesick MPs drinking and some of the small-hour speeches had been train-wrecks.