The Shadow Game (16 page)

‘I want the ONA to look at this from every possible angle,' she said. ‘I want every risk to trade, defence and security thoroughly assessed.'

This was a significant power shift which Webster knew would be noted by everyone at the table. The ONA had been set up in 1977 by Malcolm Fraser, on the advice of the Hope Royal Commission into the intelligence services. Justice Hope had come to the conclusion that the nation's defence and intelligence establishment was too close to its US and UK counterparts and thought the prime minister could use some independent thinkers.

‘I want you to play devil's advocate,' Scott said as the ONA chief nodded and took a note.

The prime minister put the palms of both her hands on the table and spoke directly to Webster, emphasising every word. He listened like a dutiful servant, seething in silence.

‘Let me make this absolutely clear: the decision of this meeting is that the committee is still considering its options. We are not saying “yes” yet. I am not going to be stampeded into action.'

She slowly gazed around the table.

‘I don't have to remind any of you of the gravity of this. Remember, all decisions of the NSC are unanimous, no matter what disagreements we might have in this room.

‘I do not expect to read about this in a newspaper.'

At first glance, the townhouse's exterior looked sleek, tidy and identical to its manicured neighbours. The only point of difference was the metal garden setting pressed into the corner of a small courtyard, while a planter box of natives offered a green contrast to the building's neutral tones.

Up close there were hints that not all was shipshape. Cobwebs covered the outdoor chair legs and the table badly needed a clean.

Harry Dunkley pressed the doorbell and waited. Nothing. He rapped hard on the glass panel next to the security screen, straining to hear any sound from inside. Silence.

For the past hour, he'd been telephoning on a constant loop, but the mobile phone number had rung out. No message bank. Nothing.

He scanned the street for some sign of life. It was empty: a mute confirmation of the outsiders' view that Canberra was a suburban ghost town.

Dunkley knew looks were deceptive and turned back to the townhouse. There was a slight rustle of a heavy curtain covering a window. Someone was home.

He stepped up to the front door and rapped again.

‘Trev, it's Harry . . . Harry Dunkley. Just need to chat with you, mate.'

For a long moment nothing stirred. Then, from inside, the muffled sound of footsteps approaching the door. It opened a few centimetres, but the security screen remained shut.

Dunkley took a moment to focus. The face he could glimpse was roughened by a three-day growth and sallow cheeks, and the man's eyes held genuine apprehension. He recognised something of himself in Harris: the sunken look of a man who'd nearly given up. He spoke in a reassuring tone.

‘Trev, how are you? Can I come in? We need to talk.'

Harris eyed him suspiciously, not moving.

‘Please mate, I just want a few minutes of your time. It's just me; there's no one else here.'

Harris motioned to Dunkley's mobile, clutched in his right hand, and pointed to the car. Dunkley got the message, walked to the passenger-side door and put the phone in the glove box.

Harris said nothing as he unlatched the security door. Dunkley walked into an apartment in disarray. A stale smell hung in the darkened lounge room, where heavy drapes covered windows he guessed had not been opened for months. Papers were piled in drifts, unwashed plates sat on every flat surface.

They shook hands without conviction. Harris went to an ageing audio system and pressed play: the Bee Gees burst from the speakers in a slightly too loud rendition of ‘Nights on Broadway'.

He finally spoke.

‘Coffee?' he asked half-heartedly. ‘I don't have milk, though.'

‘Sure, black's fine. Mind if I sit?' Dunkley moved some books from a lounge chair. Engaging Harris wasn't going to be easy, but Dunkley had nowhere else to start.

‘Go ahead.'

Harris crossed the lounge room to the open plan kitchen.

‘So how was jail?' he called over the sound of a man making enough space in the sink to get a jug under the tap.

‘Actually, it was the most comfortable digs I'd had in a while. Better than a park bench.'

Harris turned and offered a stiff smile, the first crack of a connection.

‘I thought you might be dead until I saw that small piece online. Jesus, you cost News Corp a few grand in repairs.'

‘Petty cash for Rupert.'

‘Yeah, I guess.' Harris gave up looking for clean cups, pulled two from the sink and rinsed them.

‘Harry, you shouldn't have come back to Canberra. You're in danger. You being here puts me in danger.'

Dunkley dropped his gaze, looked at his feet then glanced around the unkempt apartment.

‘Unfinished business,' he said. ‘I know it's a risk but I couldn't let it drop.'

Harris shook his head as he placed two cups on the Caesarstone bench with a clunk. His expression was a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.

‘So, what is it you really want?'

Dunkley contemplated the question for a moment. He needed Harris's help and was worried that he would get no more than a cup of appalling instant coffee. He decided the best approach was to get straight to the point.

‘To bring down Jack Webster,' he said. ‘To show the world what he really is.'

Harris laughed, a loud cynical rattle that unsettled Dunkley.

‘You might as well try to remove Jesus Christ from the Trinity.' He theatrically thumped a clenched fist into his hand. ‘He'll crush you. Again. You have no fucking idea how powerful that guy is.'

Dunkley stifled a mirthless laugh. ‘I think I have some idea, mate.'

‘You . . . that was nothing. Webster's influence stretches all the way to Washington. And people who are a nuisance to him seem to have a nasty habit of dying.'

Dunkley shifted on the lounge chair. ‘Who?'

‘You know one. Kimberley Gordon, when she stumbled into his little war. But she was a minor player, a pawn. This guy rubs out knights and castles.'

Harris picked up the full mugs and set them down among the clutter on a coffee table. He pushed some papers off a chair, sat down and dropped his voice.

‘Something happened in Defence, something big, about the time that Martin Toohey was rolled as prime minister. My mates in DSD – they call it Australian Signals Directorate now – told me that the director, Matthew Whelan, was hauled into a meeting with Webster and the heads of ASIO and DFAT.'

Harris glanced at the windows and the doorway to the entrance hall.

‘Whelan returned from that meeting a changed man. Immediately afterwards, Defence started spending up big on IT.'

Harris stood and began pacing the room, his face creased in a frown that emphasised his gaunt features. He was clearly torn, as if he needed to talk to Dunkley but was wrestling with his fears.

‘I know someone, Harry, someone who goes looking for missing treasure. He's told me a few things . . .'

Harris's voice trailed off, as if he'd changed his mind. He moved to the curtains covering the window and tugged at a tiny crack that was letting in light.

‘Go on,' Dunkley urged him.

Harris rolled back his shoulders and let out a gusty sigh.

‘My contact tells me that the entire Defence computer system was replaced – every server, every PC, every keyboard. A massive job. But, and this is the extraordinary part, it was apparently all done off the books. They hid it from government, burying the spending in big procurement projects.'

The former analyst turned around, his face a mask of anguish.

‘Then people started dying.'

‘Who?'

‘Whelan, of a heart attack. Aged forty-six. Forty-six! He was a fitness fanatic, had just finished a run, Friday evening out at Stromlo Forest cross-country track. Left a wife and three kids.'

Harris was pacing wildly and speaking rapidly.

‘Six months later, DFAT's David Joyce ran off the highway near Murrumbateman. He was alone; the police put it down to fatigue. He'd driven back from Melbourne.'

Harris stopped in front of Dunkley and marked off the body count on his fingers.

‘So, that meeting I told you about, there were four people present – Webster; Richard Dalton, the head of ASIO; Joyce and Whelan. Only two are alive – Webster and Dalton.'

Harris sat down, breathing heavily, as if the effort of telling the story had exhausted him. He reached out to grip Dunkley's arm.

‘Remember when we first met, two and a bit years ago? I told you how the signals directorate scooped up information from everyone. How we had bugged the planet. The technology is getting better all the time. There's nowhere to hide. Absolutely nowhere.'

He took a sip from his coffee before continuing.

‘That mobile phone in your car will be traced. Child's play. So they will know you're here. If you'd brought it in they would be using it to listen to us now. If they're really keen and have put a detail on you, they could have listened to our conversation at the door . . . well, your conversation.'

Harris looked over his shoulder and then waved his hand about, as if encompassing the room.

‘I regularly sweep this house for wires. I have a lifetime of experience in surveillance so I know what I'm doing and this room is clean. But I also know what they can do.'

He pointed to the curtains.

‘A tiny opening would let them listen to us with a laser microphone picking up the vibration of our voices off the glass. I could rig up that kind of unit on my kitchen table with twenty bucks' worth of electronics. They spend billions. Now they have “through-the-wall” spying systems that use radio waves. The signal is weak, so they use cleaning tricks developed by NASA to decode signals from space.'

The pressure was etched on Harris's face. Clearly, he saw threats in every shadow.

‘Don't think they haven't come after me either. After helping you. I still have enough friends in the service to tell me when I'm on the watch list and I know the signs. My communications were tapped. My movements online followed.'

Dunkley noticed a slight tremor in Harris's hands and a twitch in his cheek. He felt guilty.

‘I'm sorry,' Dunkley said. ‘But this won't end unless we end it. I have to talk to your mate about what's been going on in Defence.'

Harris shook his head.

‘Harry, let me think about this. Please. I don't want to drag more people into your messes. You have a habit of leaving a trail of collateral damage . . .'

Dunkley put his hand on Harris's shoulder.

‘If we give up, he's won. And you will be a prisoner in here forever.'

Harris didn't speak.

‘I can't do this without you, Trev. You're an insider. You know how these people think, how they work, how they plot and scheme. I know how to pull the pieces together, provided I have a little help. Only you have the skills to get us inside.'

The front page screamed a single word: BETRAYED.

It hung over an unflattering portrait of Elizabeth Scott, her mouth curled in a sneer and her fist raised as if she was preparing to strike the photographer. The story under the headline left no doubt as to the sympathies of the Adelaide
Advertiser.

The paper's Canberra political correspondent, Tory Shepherd, had been leaked details of Cabinet's decision to abandon South Australia as the hub of the nation's naval ship-building industry, by purchasing submarines from Japan. The leak was an extraordinary breach of Cabinet confidentiality. It was also political sabotage.

The reporter didn't hold back as she tore into the prime minister.

Thousands of local jobs will be jettisoned and the state's economy torpedoed under a secret deal to buy Australia's next generation submarines from Japan.

Elizabeth Scott's backhander to South Australia is likely to see the closure of the ASC shipyards at Osborne. Furious senior government sources say it will also trigger a public backlash that will threaten every Liberal electorate in the state.

One Liberal Party elder familiar with the clandestine plan said it would see the party routed at next year's federal election.

‘The prime minister is our very own suicide bomber. This is unbelievably stupid,' he said

‘“Pig Iron” Scott has killed us in South Australia. The Labor Party will have a field day.'

Inside, the paper devoted four pages to dissecting the ‘captain's call', while the editorial thundered that it had been made ‘in total secrecy by a prime minister who lacks empathy with the working men and women who have made this nation great'. It encouraged voters to wield their axe at the ballot box.

Multi-millionaire Elizabeth Scott just doesn't get working people. This decision reinforces the view that the prime minister's silver-spoon upbringing clouds her ability to act in the interests of ordinary folk.

In her office, the prime minister slowly read through the online version of a paper that had near saturation coverage in South Australia. She reached for a tumbler of water, noticing a slight but discernible tremor in her hand as she lifted it to her mouth. She took a quick sip, then another, conscious of the small group of advisers gathered in her office.

Her primal instinct was to scream and rant, but common sense and the desire for survival said this was no time for hysterics. The prime minister was finding it difficult to know who to trust, and an outburst could trigger another story.

She should have anticipated that the decision to buy the Soryu subs would be leaked. It was the latest in a long thread of strategic drops, from Cabinet and the party, that were a gift for the cartoonists who drew Scott at the helm of a listing life raft.

The acts of sabotage were coming more often, her authority eroded with every strategically placed article, every piece of bastardry.

What was so concerning about the
Advertiser
's scoop was the level of detail provided by the minister, or ministers, who didn't seem to care that her fall would drag them down too.

Disunity is death: the maxim had never been more resonant as she contemplated which of her eighteen Cabinet colleagues was responsible. She stopped counting at nine.

Scott had never felt more isolated or less able to pick up the phone for a chat with a colleague. Her status as the nation's leader, as the most powerful person in the land, was illusory.

She scanned the room of hardened professionals, hoping for sympathy, encouragement, a thought. Instead she was met by wall-to-wall bemusement.

In the hours before her meeting with the Japanese prime minister, a month earlier, Jack Webster had convinced her of the merits of the Soryu submarines, the ‘Blue Dragons' of the water.

They were a new class of diesel-fuelled attack submarine, powered by a Swedish stirling air-independent propulsion system. The Soryu was much larger than the earlier Oyashio-class boat and able to stay submerged for longer. The boat ticked two crucial boxes: Australia's geography demanded long-range subs and its politics demanded that they couldn't be nuclear powered.

Just as critically, the Soryus were furnished with American military and anti-surveillance weaponry, the latest in technology, which meant they were like underwater stealth bombers. It also meant that the subs would be interoperable with the US fleet, something her brass coveted more than gold.

Finally, the fact that the subs could be ordered ‘off the shelf' meant they would save billions on construction costs. So the disaster of the locally built Collins class – a ship buried forever under a single tabloid headline: DUD SUBS – would not be repeated.

Webster said it was a no-brainer, but Scott had underestimated the depth of community support for local manufacturing, irrespective of the cost to the public purse. She'd ignored the advice of her industry minister who'd previously warned her that the protectionist streak ran deep in the Australian psyche.

‘We might have torn down tariff walls, Elizabeth, but the punters still like the idea that we can actually build something here,' he'd counselled.

‘Right, let's get down to business,' Scott said now to her despondent band of advisers. ‘We can sell this. For starters, the story is wrong. The ASC will not be closed; there will actually be more maintenance jobs there in the future than there are now. We need to get the message out that we are getting a better sub while saving billions of taxpayer dollars. This is a good decision. It makes economic, strategic and military sense.'

Scott's principal media adviser raised her hand.

‘Yes,' Scott said, hopeful of some useful input.

‘Then why did you make it in secret?'