Sensitive New Age Spy (6 page)

‘Nice view,’ I said. ‘Must have been a bit of a scare this morning, though?’

Cristobel shook her head. ‘We saw the tanker and heard about the proposed evacuation order on the radio, but Daddy said there was nothing for us to worry about.’

That was interesting. While half the city’s emergency personnel were panicking about the possibility of a great big bang, the Priday clan were happily sipping their fruit juice and coffee without a care in the world.

‘You studying any part of the Bible in particular, Ms Priday?’ I asked.

‘I help Daddy with his sermons sometimes, and right now we’re looking at the story of Jonah.’

‘And the whale,’ I said.

‘Exactly! Did you know we had a pair of whales right here in the harbour this year, Mr Murdoch? I think whales
are the most wonderful of all God’s creatures.’

That pair of whales, like thousands of Japanese tourists, had chosen Sydney for their honeymoon. I’d photographed them getting hot and heavy in the waters near the Opera House, and WorldPix had made a stack of money syndicating the images internationally.

Cristobel stood up and tied a tropical-print sarong around her waist. ‘I’ll see what’s keeping Louise with your drink, Mr Murdoch.’

With that body and in that bikini I should have been thinking lustful thoughts, but she was just too damned wholesome. Plus I was wondering why the Reverend had dismissed the evacuation order. Was he just a father reassuring his daughter, a man of the cloth putting his faith in the Lord, or was there some other reason?

Louise and Cristobel wandered back out onto the terrace a few minutes later, side by side and smiling, their arms around each other’s waist. Louise handed me a tall glass full of ice and Cristobel filled it with Italian sparkling mineral water from the bottle she was carrying. She beamed at Louise. ‘Isn’t she beautiful, Mr Murdoch?’

‘What wonders God hath wrought,’ I said.

Cristobel stared at me. ‘Are you saved, Mr Murdoch?’

I shook my head. ‘Bit of a lapsed Presbyterian, actually. I was expelled from Sunday School for disruptive behaviour and I sort of lost interest in religion after that.’

‘You shouldn’t say something like that to Cristobel,
Mr Murdoch,’ Louise said. ‘She might just decide to take you on as a challenge.’

‘Is she making any headway with you?’ I said, and immediately felt a little embarrassed for saying it.

Louise smiled. ‘With Cristobel’s guidance, I have come to understand the reasons for some of my earlier indiscretions.’

I’d seen some of those indiscretions, as had anyone else who’d bought the June 2003 issue of
Bloke
. They’d also seen a whole lot more besides.
Bloke
wasn’t the kind of magazine anybody bought for the articles, and the pictures left nothing to the imagination. Apparently there were even some Macquarie Street gynaecologists who put their subscriptions down as tax-deductible research.

The Sunday gossip columns had had a field day when the middle-aged convicted fraudster and the spunky young centrefold party-girl became pen pals, in the truest sense of the word. And when Priday was finally paroled, Louise was waiting at the gate. The fact that the marriage had now lasted three years surprised everybody.

There was a melodic toot and the crunch of tyres on gravel, and we headed out to the driveway to greet the master of the house.

Back in Sunday School I was taught that when God talked directly to one of the faithful it was to ask them to help the sick or the lame, or to lead His people out of slavery. These days the first thing the Almighty appears to request is that His spiritual representative here on earth set himself
up with some really smooth wheels. And wheels don’t come any smoother than the sleek, silver-grey Mercedes-Benz Maybach 57S that the Reverend Laurence LaSalle Priday was driving. A particularly nice automobile, and one that got you very little change from a million bucks.

Priday climbed elegantly out of the Maybach’s leather seat. He was tall, tanned, fifty-ish and fit-looking, his carefully styled hair greying gently at the temples. His suit was beautifully tailored and when he smiled at the Priday women you could see why tens of thousands of people who really should have known better had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in his many and varied and – as it panned out – downright dodgy enterprises. The Reverend Laurence LaSalle Priday was as smooth as a rat with a gold tooth.

Surprisingly, though, he’d had the decency not to flee the country after the biggest financial collapse in Australian corporate history, and while doing his seven years in minimum security, with three off for good behaviour, Priday had discovered God.

The lovely Cristobel had shown her old man the Light on her twice-weekly visits to the country-club prison where he was doing penance, planting gum trees as part of a bushregeneration project. Priday had altered the Light slightly, and discovered his own special flock. Old money really didn’t give a damn about how wealthy they were, or where it all came from, but the nouveau riche could be a bit uncomfortable with success and its earthly rewards. Priday had
crafted the First Church of the Lord’s Bounty just for them, creating a haven for the aspirational and upwardly mobile middle class where making scads of money was God’s will, and actually a valid form of worship.

Priday’s faithful flock became rich
because
they were faithful, and this was the way it was meant to be. Of course they did good works and made modest donations to worthwhile causes, but the major draw was that they were under the care of a God who was glad they were rich and would be even happier if they became richer still. As the Internet-ordained Reverend Priday preached it, God was the chairman of their board and Jesus was His CEO. And generous donations directed to the church would be rewarded ten and twenty and thirty times over sometime down the track. It was a very sweet deal, and one with tremendous tax advantages.

The Reverend kissed his wife and his daughter, shook my hand and led me into the study, where the polished-oak shelving groaned under the weight of leather-bound first editions, the andirons in the walk-in fireplace were Toledo steel, and the whisky on the bar was a 21-year-old single malt at two hundred dollars the bottle. He offered me a drink, and though the sun wasn’t quite over the yardarm, no one in their right mind would say no to a lead-crystal tumbler full of Glenfarclas.

‘A splash of water?’ he asked, holding up a crystal decanter. ‘It’s melted ice from an Antarctic glacier. One hundred per cent pure and ten thousand years old.’

‘Who could resist?’ I said.

I took a sip. The amber-coloured liquid was almost as smooth as the Reverend.

‘Now, what can I do to help you, Inspector Murdoch?’

‘I’m investigating an incident involving members of the choir from the USS
Altoona
and I’m looking into their movements yesterday.’

‘I heard about the accident on my car radio,’ Priday said, sipping his whisky. ‘Don’t tell me any of those wonderful young men were injured.’

‘No, they’re all fine as far as I know. Can you tell me how they came to be performing at your church?’

‘Of course. One of my parishioners told me about the choir, Inspector. She heard them on a visit to San Diego and found them inspirational, and when we learned that they were coming to Sydney we invited them to celebrate Evensong with us. We held a little reception here last night as a way of saying thank you. It was a joyous night. Very uplifting.’

Their performance on the
Altoona
this morning had been pretty uplifting too – they’d uplifted a couple of nuclear warheads right out from under the nose of the US Navy.

‘Was there anything unusual in their behaviour last night?’

‘No, nothing at all. They sang beautifully for us, then mingled pleasantly with the guests. Why do you ask?’ He tried to make it sound like a casual question, but I could see he was edgy.

‘Just routine, Reverend.’ I ran my eye around Priday’s study and stopped at the signed Chagall etching over the fireplace. ‘I see you don’t buy into that
rich man and the camel through the eye of a needle
business?’

‘I’m just a simple man trying to do the Lord’s bidding, Inspector.’

‘Here’s to the simple life,’ I said, raising the glass and finishing my whisky. He didn’t offer me a refill.

‘Churches have to move with the times, Inspector. Hopes for a reward in the hereafter might have sufficed once, but life is more complex now and people expect to see a tangible return on the time and effort expended in worship.’

‘Isn’t that a bit more Milton Friedman than Jesus of Nazareth?’

‘Modern religion is all about niches. There is a particular spiritual need out there and I fill it.’

‘And in return you get all this.’

‘It’s about inspiration, Inspector, and aspiration. I lead my flock by example.’

‘So if Jesus came back tomorrow, your flock would be happier if he was less of a carpenter and more of a property developer in an Italian suit with a Rolex and a Beamer?’

Priday smiled. ‘These days, I’m afraid, it’s about whatever floats your boat.’

‘Which in your case would be a hundred-foot cruiser with a full crew and an indoor swimming pool.’

‘The good Lord provides, Inspector.’

I had a sudden urge to smack the smug bastard. Maybe the Sunday School incident had scarred me for life when it came to organised religion.

Priday glanced at the Tag Heuer Aquaracer on his wrist. It was a nice watch, but it definitely looked better on Brad Pitt. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’ he asked.

‘It doesn’t seem so, Reverend,’ I said. I thanked him for his cooperation and hospitality, shook his hand and took my leave.

At the front door of Jindivik, the two women in the Reverend’s life were waiting to say goodbye. Louise Priday was now wearing a bikini. It might not have been yellow polka-dot like in that song from the sixties but it sure as hell was itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny. I smiled at the Reverend’s spunky missus and equally spunky daughter and imagined them together in the pool downstairs, Cristobel frolicking like a dolphin while the tanned and toned Mrs Priday swam laps, cutting silently and purposefully through the water like a grey nurse shark.

On the long trek back up the gravel driveway to normal land, I made a special effort not to yield to residual working-class angst and key the immaculate paintjob on the Maybach. While I might not have found out anything useful about the choir, my visit to Jindivik hadn’t been a complete waste of time. When Cristobel had gone to check on my drink and left me alone on the terrace, I’d come across a beautifully restored antique brass telescope mounted on a set of polished wooden legs. Being the inquisitive type, I naturally took a quick squiz.
Bugger me if I wasn’t looking right at a nicely in-focus image of two blokes having an argument on top of the front gas storage dome on the LNG tanker.

One of the blokes in the shouting match I recognised as Chapman F. Pergo, Special Assistant to the Minister for Defence and a well-known political hard man, fixer and headkicker. The other was the CIA’s Carter Lonergan. You couldn’t miss that bloody shirt at a mile.

Back at the D.E.D. office, Julie had been working the phones hard. She updated me on the team’s progress. Lonergan had been out on the LNG tanker, but I already knew that. Peter Sturdee and Lieutenant Kingston had visited the
Altoona
, picked through the choirboys’ rubbish bins and lockers, questioned every single crew member on board and come up with nothing. Now they were on their way back from the hospital after interviewing the captain and the wounded sailors. The
Altoona
’s crew hadn’t given in without a fight, but who in their right mind would have expected the God Squad to pop up from below decks in flak jackets, guns blazing, and a couple of nuclear warheads in tow?

Julie buzzed Lonergan in through the front door.

‘That Scottish insomniac was right,’ he said, pulling a wad of papers from an impossibly thin stainless-steel attaché case. ‘Preliminary reports from Glasgow confirm the tanker
was mothballed around seven years ago. Her engines were totally overhauled recently, so she made it out here under her own power, and those gas storage tanks were partially filled with seawater for ballast, so that she’d sit low in the water, like she was carrying a full cargo. The anti-personnel mines are dummies, and the crew’s quarters have been recently used but swept clean. No food, no clothes, no books, not even toilet paper. Looks like they may have dumped all the incriminating evidence over the side before they came through the Heads.’

‘There’s harbour-surveillance footage from the Sydney Ports cameras showing the tanker cruising up the western channel around 3 a.m. and anchoring off Fort Denison at 3.45,’ Julie said.

‘So the surveillance cameras were working?’ Lonergan asked.

‘They were recording, but nothing was received in the tower because of the blackout. Apparently the tapes also show three people leaving the tanker in a Zodiac soon after she moored. Cops found the Zodiac at the Rose Bay wharf. Forensics have been all over it but it’s the same story as the tanker, clean as a whistle.’

‘Could have been the pilot going ashore,’ I said. ‘Pete said the harbourmaster reckons you don’t run something that size up the harbour in the middle of the night without bumping into things unless you really know what you’re doing.’

Julie, as usual, was one step ahead. ‘I’ve been onto Sydney Ports and they say all their pilots can be accounted for, including the ones on holiday or sick leave.’

‘What about RAN pilots?’ I asked. The Oz Navy has warships popping in and out of the fleet base at Woolloomooloo all the time, and has its own harbour pilots. One of them would have been on the bridge of the
Altoona
when she docked, making sure she was neatly parked between the white lines before slipping a couple of dollars into the meter.

‘I checked with a contact in the Defence Department in Canberra and your Navy guys are all accounted for too,’ Lonergan said.

How nice that the CIA had a direct line into Defence. I wondered if his contact was Pergo, but the barney I saw them having on the tanker didn’t look like Lonergan had been asking for a list of pilots.