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  Worst of all, she felt most comfortable speaking ‘academese’ and loved parading her intellect. So the simplest question to her would be met with a wall of sound littered with incomprehensible words.

  Recognising this as a problem, she had worked hard at contriving a common touch. ‘Call me Cate,’ she implored everyone she met. In casual conversation she would deploy words she imagined were in routine public use; unfortunately, since everything she learned came from books, much of her information was dated and she fell into a unique argot that one wit dubbed ‘wonk-strine’.

  It led to famously weird constructions like, ‘Come on, cobber, that’s a bodgie piece of analysis. I am fully seized of the need for China to engage with the councils of the world and, in due season, it will.’

  One colleague mocked her as a ‘human metaphor for the chasm between knowledge and wisdom’.

  A long-time member of the Labor Party, Bailey had ditched academia in the ’90s to have a tilt at a seat in Sydney’s west. Once elected, her relentless work ethic and fixation with being in the media every single day saw her rise further and faster than anyone had imagined possible, especially given few in Labor’s ranks liked her.

  ‘She is in the party but not of it,’ critics would say.

  But the public loved her, every card seemed to fall her way and, eleven years after entering Parliament, she became the country’s first female Prime Minister.

  As PM, she was Australia’s equivalent of Princess Di, feted like a rock star, every women’s glossy clamouring to dress her for their cover, a one-woman political phenomenon whose approval ratings soared into the stratosphere. For a while, at least.

  The descent was just as swift. A little over two years later her party abandoned her. She suffered the indignity of being the first Prime Minister to be dumped without being given the opportunity of recontesting an election. And that burned still, deep within. She became driven by revenge.

  Now she was Foreign Minister and believed she could climb back to the top … eventually. She would do it the way she did it the first time: bypassing the party and talking directly to the people – her people – every hour of every day. And she would not stop, no matter who stood in her way.

  It was 10.30 p.m. and, though she would have denied it, all the tiredness was catching up with Catriona Bailey. She had known it would be a gruelling media round and, the night before, had escaped the Midwinter Ball early, mercifully avoiding the Prime Minister’s attempts at humour.

  Her day had begun with a 6.30 a.m. interview on Sydney radio station 2GB, moving on to News Radio and a quick ABC News 24 spot, back to commercial TV, then an appearance on Sky. And now, a dozen interviews later, she was fronting up to Lateline.

  Curiously, she wasn’t feeling her usual level of total control, and that was upsetting. She had found the last interview on PM a trial and had rare trouble concentrating. She’d spilled a glass of water while being made up and had a headache from hell. This made it difficult to concentrate and write notes on her briefing papers. Naturally, she pressed on, and now was being beamed live across Australia.

  TONY JONES: Foreign Minister, what can you tell us about the missing Australians?

  CATRIONA BAILEY: Well, Tony, minutes before this interview I got off the phone to our Ambassador in Beijing who informed me that we have four embassy staff on the ground in Qinghai province. You will be aware that the epicentre of the quake was in Yushu, which is about 772 kilometres from the provincial capital, Xining. Which is about 2000 kilometres by rail from Beijing. So let’s be frank: it’s a long way, cobber, that’s just a fact. And the infrastructure and communications are badly damaged, so we haven’t yet been able to ascertain the whereabouts of the four Australians, but I can assure you we are sparing no effort.

  Bailey began to feel light-headed and her left arm was weirdly heavy. Maybe she should have had lunch, or dinner. She had to work hard to stay focused, and she feared tripping over some of the regional details.

  JONES: So you don’t have any new information?

  Bailey hated to admit that she didn’t – and wasn’t about to.

  BAILEY: Now, Tony, I said we are doing everything we can, employing every resource. I have demanded that the Chinese spare no effort in assisting us to locate our citizens.

  As soon as the words left her tongue, which now felt thick in her mouth, Bailey realised her mistake.

  JONES: You demanded? Foreign Minister, the Chinese have 400 confirmed dead, 10,000 injured, hundreds of thousands homeless. And you are demanding that they look for a few Australians?

  BAILEY: I mean … I said … I have asked, of course … but I …

  The television lights started to swirl before Bailey’s eyes and then everything went black. She fell face-down on the gleaming white oval-shaped desk.

  JONES: Minister? Minister? For God’s sake, someone at the Canberra end give her a hand!

  June 16, 2011

  Brendan Ryan’s plump figure lay propped up in bed with the remnants of a light snack scattered across his blanket – an empty Coke bottle, a packet of chips and three chocolate bar wrappers. The dietary habits of the Labor power-broker were as slothful as his brain was sharp.

  While most of Canberra’s population was relaxing in front of the television or reading steamy novels, Ryan had spent the last hour studying a photograph of the familiar hole in the Pentagon wall. It was there, according to the mainstream media, that American Airlines Flight 77 crashed on September 11, 2001. But Ryan was not convinced.

  ‘How does a plane 125 feet wide and 155 feet long fit into a hole that is only 60 feet across,’ he muttered aloud, echoing the words of one of his favourite books, 9/11: The Big Lie. ‘What were our friends thinking?’

  Ryan possessed one of the finest minds in politics and was considered the best Labor strategist in a generation. At thirty-eight he was already the party’s most powerful factional warlord and a grateful new Prime Minister had appointed him a junior Minister with some Defence responsibilities. But his immersion in the darkest arts of politics had triggered a strong fascination with conspiracies – JFK, the moon landing, the death of Elvis …

  Unlike most conspiracy theorists, attracted to the fringes of politics, Ryan was a Centre-Left patriot. The only place he loved as much as Australia was the United States. So the Americans must have had a good reason for allowing, or causing, the carnage of 9/11. But what was it? The only logical conclusion was an excuse to wage war in Afghanistan and then Iraq. But that jarred with his strategist’s brain.

  ‘Afghanistan, sure, but Iraq, for fuck’s sake … the enemy is Iran.’

  Ryan had always opposed the invasion of Iraq. First, because he predicted it would distract the West from the job in Afghanistan, but also because it would provide an opening for Iran to spread its malign influence through the region. Whatever you thought of Iraq, it acted as a brake on Iranian power. He didn’t much care how many Iraqis Saddam Hussein had killed because he’d killed a whole lot more Iranians. Not enough, mind, but more.

  The phone broke his train of thought.

  ‘Freak Show’s had a heart attack.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Freak Show … Bailey … The bitch just seized up on Lateline, halfway through an interview … it was brilliant. Turn on the television.’

  It was the familiar voice of Sam Buharia, the Don of the New South Wales Right, a fellow Senator who played politics with all the sublety of a Somalian warlord.

  Ryan reached for the remote, and flicked on the ABC.

  Tony Jones was scarlet-faced, reliving the moments before the Foreign Minister’s collapse. And then the ABC replayed her seizure.

  ‘Jesus,’ Ryan muttered as he watched the Minister slump forward. ‘I’ll call you back,’ he told Buharia, not waiting for a response. He dropped the phone onto the bed.

  Would Catriona Bailey die and finish the work that Ryan had started more than a year ago when he’d decided to kill her off as Prime Minister?

  ‘Pl
ease, God, be merciful, let the bitch die quickly,’ he entreated. He had long since lost any respect for the former leader who had all but destroyed the party he loved through her self-centred and anarchic use of power.

  Ryan had been instrumental in her downfall, just months before a general election. And she had not had the decency to go quietly, instead making a public show of recontesting and winning her seat.

  Thanks to Bailey’s shenanigans, their election campaign had been a debacle. In the end, the major parties had been locked on the same number of seats and Labor only clawed its way back into office by stitching together a shaky alliance of independents and Greens. With Parliament so finely balanced every vote was vital and Bailey had forced the Prime Minister to give her Foreign Affairs, threatening to sit as an independent if he refused.

  Ever since, she had used Australian foreign policy as a vehicle to promote herself, looking for high-profile crises to exploit, parading on the world stage and making statements without consultation – some as baffling as they were damaging to Australia’s international standing. She was a lone wolf, only interested in her own status; a publicity-seeking missile despised by her colleagues but still liked by the public.

  ‘I call it the Bailey paradox,’ Ryan would say. ‘The further you get from the cow the more you like her.’ Ryan’s capacity for hate was legendary, and Bailey rated top of the pops on his list of foes.

  Well, hopefully it would all be over soon. He began to ponder possible candidates to fill the inevitable Foreign Ministry vacancy. ‘Me, maybe.’

  Then his blood ran cold as a single word ricocheted through his brain: by-election!

  June 17, 2011

  Harry Dunkley rifled through his leather bag for his faded parliamentary pass, twisting it around his wrist as he swiped the security scanner and offered a cursory ‘G’day’ to the two uniformed attendants. He was in no mood for socialising.

  He considered it indecent for a journalist to be anywhere near a newsroom before ten. And yet on this Friday morning at the fag end of a long and eventful week, he was dragging himself into the office and it was barely 9 a.m.

  Dunkley had no choice this morning, though. He’d been on the receiving end of a vibrant phone call from the Australian’s chief of staff and told to haul his arse into work. A big political yarn was running and he was trailing the pack. Catriona Bailey had nearly snuffed it on national television the night before and the media had gone into overdrive. Everyone but Dunkley, who had gone to bed early and then slept in, switching his BlackBerry to silent as he tried to shake off an exhausting week.

  There used to be an unwritten political armistice about reporting national politics – Fridays would be light duties only, with most senior gallery hands retiring to the better restaurants of Canberra for a lunch that often stretched into the weekend.

  Those days were a distant dream. The rise of online technology and social media was changing the very fabric of journalism. Dunkley’s great love – print – was on the guillotine. Today’s media was full of bits and bytes of bulldust, digital opinion stretching as far as the eye could see. Decent long-range reporting had given way to instant, shrill sensationalism, while newsrooms – roaring on the high octane needs of a 24/7 product – were demanding more and more from their best reporters. The daily news now had no beginning and no end, just one continuous loop with every last gram of information shovelled into the machine.

  Christ, even Laurie Oakes and Michelle Grattan were on Twitter, feeding short missives to their followers.

  Dunkley could sympathise with politicians who grumbled about the incessant demands from the rapacious media. But he had no idea what to do about it, any more than they did. ‘Mate, there are no virgins in this, we’re all part of the one long daisy chain,’ he’d told a Minister who’d complained about rougher than usual treatment from the press gallery.

  Arriving at his desk, he punched the four-digit speed dial to the Sydney conference room of the Australian, located on level two of News Limited’s Holt Street head office. ‘Hate media central’ the Greens called it.

  A gruff voice answered. ‘Who’s that?’ It was the familiar bark of editor-in-chief Deb Snowdon.

  Harry tried to respond in a more moderate tone. ‘Dunkley.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad that our esteemed political editor could join us this morning. Just where have you been for the last eleven hours while our competitors towelled us with the story of the year? Even the ABC’s dopey political editor managed to file something before midnight.’

  ‘I turned off my phone. I missed it. So can we quickly dispense with the ritual flogging and get on with today?’

  Snowdon, the first woman to storm and then command the male citadel of the national broadsheet, wouldn’t let it go easily, but after a few more insults the conference call got back to business and the team hammered out a plan of attack. After a ten-minute discussion, Dunkley was given his marching orders. He didn’t bother to mention the potential story about Paxton. After all, he had little to go on – just a single black-and-white pic. With the Bailey story occupying everyone’s attention, the Paxton lead would be filed in the to-do list. Dunkley sensed it was a bigger story than that, but it demanded time. Plenty of it, and that, for now, was in short supply.

  June 17, 2011

  ‘I don’t care what you say, I am not fucking going!’

  Martin Toohey’s voice – agitated and defiant – could be clearly heard by staff in the corridor outside his office. By contrast, the response from his chief of staff was muted, but stern.

  ‘Prime Minister, this government hangs by a thread and a by-election loss to the Coalition would see it fall. I agree Bailey is a complete bitch who almost single-handedly destroyed our party when you let her run it. She then pissed all over our election campaign and all but handed power to our opponents. But we survived. That is our one piece of luck and genius. We survived by swallowing our pride and giving Bailey the ministry she wanted. We survived by putting together an alliance of Greens and independents to keep our fingernail grip on power. And if we survive another two years we might just win government in our own right again. For reasons best known to the sad bastards in Bailey’s electorate, she is still popular there. If we are to survive we must win that by-election. Which means you must visit Catriona Bailey in hospital.’

  Martin Toohey hated arguing with George Papadakis because he so often lost. The two men stared at each other as their wrestle for control fell into a silent battle of wills.

  The Prime Minister and his chief of staff had been friends for more than thirty years, harking back to their student politics days at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

  Toohey would readily admit that Papadakis outgunned him, and most people, intellectually. The first-generation son of Greek immigrants, Papadakis had toiled in the family’s grocery shop while he blitzed his way through school.

  He left RMIT to specialise in economics and public policy at the Australian National University. Entering Treasury as a graduate he had marched through the ranks to first assistant secretary level before leaving to become chief of staff to a newly elected Victorian Labor Premier.

  There he had helped replant Labor’s economic credentials in the wasteland of the Cain–Kirner era, and developed an unrivalled reputation for having that rarest combination of gifts: the ability to devise good public policy and the political nous to implement it. He had returned to Canberra, as a deputy secretary in Treasury, when Labor won its first Federal election in twelve years. It was his dream job. The hardest thing he had ever done was abandon it to guide the campaign of his old friend. And he did it for one reason only: because the party he loved stood on the precipice of electoral annihilation.

  Of medium height, Papadakis had begun to go bald early and now sported just a half-crescent of short black-grey hair. He was round-faced and his body was heading in the same direction, thanks to a love of fine food and wine, and a grim determination never to exercise. ‘God gave us brains
so we could make and take the lift,’ he would say.

  Although not physically imposing, Ministers quailed when he summoned them. His authority was unquestioned and his mission was simple: to protect the Prime Minister and drag Labor back from the abyss.

  He was acutely aware that sometimes in politics the best you could do was hold on, and he saw his party’s current circumstances in classical terms.

  ‘We’re standing in the pass at Thermopylae. In front of us are the countless Persian hordes and we are just 300. If they win then everything behind us, the society we built and nurtured to be one of the best and most decent in the world, will be levelled. We must fight here because we have no other choice. We cannot run, we cannot hide and we cannot advance. So we must stand and fight. We might all die here but we cannot let them pass. The Spartans hung on for three days; that was enough. They lost the battle but Greece won the war. We have to hang on for three years. If we can do that then I believe we can win this war. But we cannot make any more mistakes.’

  The Prime Minister knew Papadakis was right about visiting Bailey, but every now and then he had to make a stand just to remind himself that he was running the country. Though he lacked Papadakis’s intellectual firepower he knew his political instincts were often better and he loved nothing more than those rare times he was proven right at the expense of his friend.

  Toohey was tall, handsome and looked younger than his fifty-four years. He still had a hint of athleticism about him from his brief stint as a ruckman for Geelong West in the Victorian Football Association. He had learned to use his height and his deep baritone voice to great effect and was a passably good public speaker. He was no fool and knew his political strength lay in his union power base and his ability to get across a brief and sell it in the public market.