The Marmalade Files Read online

  Zhou Dejiang and Bruce Paxton – what was the link? Was there a hidden meaning?

  Gordon kept on searching, urging his machinery to spit out something that would offer a hint on a relationship that led – where?

  And the mystery third face in the photo? That would need another kind of software: face recognition technology. Australia’s intelligence community – flush with funds after 9/11 – had invested heavily in this software breakthrough. The Australian Federal Police, ASIS, ASIO and even some of the States had rolled it out. Gordon had been impressed when shown how it worked and had managed to persuade a contact at the AFP to ‘lend’ him a shadow program.

  Now it was time to put this sucker into action. Harry Dunkley, he knew, had been making inquiries of his own about Zhou Dejiang, but the two had made little headway on the third face, and that was hurting like hell.

  The original pic lay on the table before him. He scanned it and highlighted the face of the unknown third man, before revving up the application. The minutes ticked by, the software refusing to give up the man’s identity.

  ‘C’mon, my friend,’ Gordon coaxed.

  Yet another fill of coffee – and the screen had frozen on two images. The scan of the original photo and a match.

  Zheng Wang. The name meant nothing to Gordon and, irritatingly, the program had spat out only those two words. He keyed them into another database, and an immediate jumble of information appeared. ‘My God, there are a lot of you.’

  He scrolled through page after page of Zheng Wangs, none with accompanying photos. After a fruitless thirty minutes, he made a note of the file before closing down his computer network.

  He made for his hall cupboard, a splendid seventeenth-century French piece crafted from solid oak, to grab a scarf and his favourite cashmere jacket.

  A walk in the brisk Canberra air was called for, to clear the head and get the circulation flowing in feet which had been cramped by a new pair of Tods.

  He would deliver the name of the third man to Dunkley, let his friend take on the quest to find the meaning in that, while he focused on the more pressing task of chasing down the link between China’s top spy and Australia’s Defence Minister.

  March 31, 2011

  She had nipples like bullets and was not afraid to flaunt them.

  Emily Brooks was a warrior of the hard-Right whose hatred of the Greens was surpassed only by the contempt she had for moderates in her own party. The self-appointed patron saint of the Liberal Party’s ‘harden-the-fuck-up’ faction, Brooks was a disciple of Thatcher and Reagan. But when it came to the bedroom, she knew no ideology.

  ‘So, how was your day, my little meister of spin?’ she asked of tonight’s conquest, a smallish man with an extended ego.

  They had arrived separately at her mock-Tudor apartment – a five-minute drive from Parliament House – saying little before shaking off their clothing.

  ‘Very productive, Emily. We managed to get the 6 p.m. yarn away in record time.’ He poured another glass of pinot gris, studying her form in the semi-dark, seduced by her evil ways.

  Brooks was nearly fifteen years his senior. But he cared not a jot. What she lacked in nubile touch, she more than made up for in guile and experience. And she brought plenty of experience with her.

  They had made love on the rug in front of her fireplace, careful not to stain a lovely handwoven piece that had been transported back to Australia after one of her jaunts to the third world. It was now approaching 10.30, nearly time to turn on that communist broadcaster, the ABC, for the nightly dose of Lateline.

  Brooks nonchalantly checked her Cartier watch. ‘I had a productive day too. That leader of mine, what a wonderful political talent she is, don’t you think?’

  Her words dripped with sarcasm. Brooks, a Queensland Senator, was known to bear a deep hatred of her leader, the very small-l Elizabeth Scott, who she considered had sold out the Liberal’s ‘tough love’ philosophy for a limp-wristed pandering to inner-city elites. It was sending the party base feral – the Federal director had recently shown Brooks deeply distressing secret focus-group polling. In the minds of ordinary voters there was now little discernible difference between the government and the opposition.

  Martin Toohey might be hanging on by a thread as Prime Minister but Scott was also failing to make any inroads with the swinging voters the Coalition needed if they wanted to feel the familiar touches of the executive ministerial suites. Something had to give and Brooks, arch-conservative and master plotter, had her sights on the weakest link. It was the Darwinian way, after all. But she needed a loyal lieutenant – or better still, a gullible member of the fourth estate – to carry out her dirty work.

  Stretched out on her Assyrian rug, his fingers clasping the stem of an expensive wineglass, looking cute and too buff for his own good, Brooks’ lover would come in handy, in more ways than one.

  March 1, 2011

  Forty-three pages of crap, every single fucking word. Bruce Paxton was furious with his top brass, incensed at being stuffed around by a Defence hierarchy that was used to getting its own way with Ministers too easily dazzled by expensive military toys.

  Two weeks ago – just before jetting out of Australia – Paxton had given his Departmental Secretary, Hugh Trounson, strict instructions to prepare an interim savings plan for the coming Budget. He wanted fair dinkum cuts too, not the cosmetic bullshit that Defence was used to serving up. He had hoped the bureaucracy would play ball. He needed help to find the considerable reductions required to meet the government’s strict fiscal targets. Its grim determination to return to surplus by 2013 was not negotiable.

  There were just nine weeks till the Budget, and Paxton was preparing for a showdown. The Budget razor gang had given him an ultimatum: either come forward with $15 billion in savings over the next four years, or we’ll do it for you.

  And, for once, those fiscal goons in Treasury and Finance, those economic nazis who pranced around Canberra pretending they owned the place, were in the driver’s seat – and they weren’t about to take their foot off the brake.

  All Ministers had been ordered to perform heroics with their portfolios. Savings, savings, savings – that was the mantra flowing through the bureaucracy as the Toohey Government tried to dig itself out of a big hole by preaching the virtue of economic responsibility. And the Greens and independents were letting all their newfound power go to their heads, telling the Prime Minister that he should wind back some of the extravagant spending in Defence, which had been off-limits since 9/11. ‘Overblown balance-of-power shitheads,’ Paxton liked to call them.

  He leafed through the document again, took a gulp of his tea and grimaced, not for the first time today. Defence had shirked it, big time.

  ‘Jesus, Rhys, this really is kindergarten stuff. Do those bastards think I’m going to buy it? And the Cabinet?’

  Unlike his boss, Paxton’s chief of staff, Rhys Smyth, combined street smarts with a tertiary education and had emerged as a valuable backroom operator in a portfolio that had chewed through eight Ministers in fifteen years.

  If he wasn’t careful, Smyth sometimes thought, Bruce Paxton would end up as number nine. Smyth had been with Paxton from the day he was sworn in as Defence Minister. He’d been brought in as a troubleshooter, at the direct request of the PM, to help out Paxton, who many thought was in over his head. Since then, Paxton and Smyth had forged a close and trusting relationship, Paxton surprising Smyth and other senior players in the government by getting on top of the tough portfolio. Together they’d seen through the military bullshit, even insisting that the Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Jack Webster, and his three-star companions revert to economy class for short-haul domestic flights. The brass had hated it. But this – this was their toughest fight yet.

  A knock on the door interrupted the two men. ‘Minister, the CDF and Secretary are here to see you.’

  ‘Thanks, Sharon. Let them … ah … could you ask them to wait for a few minutes? I wa
nt to keep them on edge a little longer.’ Paxton stood up from his desk and loosened his tie. He knew the next thirty minutes would be ugly, but he wanted to show the two men that he meant business.

  Both would be dressed impeccably, Paxton knew, Webster in four-star military splendour and Trounson – well, he took his fashion advice from his former boss, Paul Keating, that poser from Sydney who now spent his time ripping into the party he had once led.

  ‘Fuck ’em,’ Paxton said with resolve. He removed his black-gloved prosthesis and pulled his favourite hook from the desk drawer.

  More and more it was clear to him that the defence of Australia was not just about life and death or protecting the citizenry from hostile foreign forces … no, on many occasions, it seemed to be more about protecting a multi-billion-dollar industry that relied on gullible governments being sweet-talked into supporting massive projects and equipment deals. In the time he’d been in the portfolio, Paxton had marvelled at the ability of the military to sound convincing as they laid out their arguments on why the taxpayer must stump up for the latest hi-tech gadget, the latest weapon to kill. The two men about to enter his room were among the very best – true veterans who had been trained by some of the finest to either capture or destroy their Minister.

  Paxton was fed up with the excuses from Defence on the latest cost blow-out, the latest equipment cock-up, the latest delay in rolling out some multi-billion-dollar program of marginal value to national security. It had to stop, not just because the razor gang was jabbing his arse searching for big savings to bring the Budget back into surplus, not just because the Greens were demanding a halt to the endless increases in military spending – someone had to stand up and declare ‘enough is enough’. After all these years in the civility of Parliament, Paxton still felt the best way to negotiate came from his days as a union standover man – hit ’em hard from the opening bell, and don’t relent until they are on the canvas begging for mercy. And when they start begging, start kicking.

  The Defence regime had been out of control for years – Bruce Paxton was about to seize back the levers, for the sake of the Budget … Jesus, for the good of Australia.

  ‘Gentlemen, take a seat, let’s get down to business.’ Paxton’s gleaming hook caught the light from the window as he beckoned them in.

  The CDF and Secretary were quick to notice that the Minister had dispensed with the usual pleasantries, offering them the barest of greetings. It went downhill from there.

  ‘I gave you firm orders to deliver a savings plan to me by the time I got back from OS – a serious savings plan outlining how Defence could deliver on the government’s intention to shave half a per cent from Department outlays over the course of the next year. Simple, right? A down payment, gentlemen, on what will be a much bigger return to the taxpayer. I wanted real savings, a sign from you that Defence is serious in meeting what the government is demanding of all departments.

  ‘Instead, you deliver this crock … well, I don’t want to call it a pile of shit but it ain’t much better …

  ‘Am I filthy? Yep. Will I stand for it? NO. NO. NO. Do not underestimate my resolve to extract a great big dividend from the Defence Department. Do not, for one minute.’

  Paxton slammed his hooked hand down on his desk, and a small chip of wood arced over the heads of his guests. He paused, picked up the Defence document and flung it across the room. The two Defence men sat poised, unflinching in the face of this ministerial tirade. Their expressions never faltered. Paxton was on the warpath and in a foul mood, as they had anticipated. They were copping plenty of flak but had expected that; as with most skirmishes, the enemy would soon run out of ammunition.

  ‘I wanted more than a rehash of previously announced plans. Yes, I know that when Bailey was PM she led the charge for a big increase in military spending. Yes, I know the White Paper called for – what? – a $130 billion expansion of our military capability. But that was two years ago and you knew then – and I certainly know now – it was just bloody unrealistic.

  ‘Gentlemen, we are in a new fiscal ball game. I was going to use “paradigm” but that word gives me the shits. I’m not going to let those bloodsuckers at Finance tell me where to find the savings in my own Department – that job is for you and me to deliver on. Understand? Rhys …’

  Smyth rose and handed two short documents to the CDF and Secretary.

  ‘Okay, fellas. Here’s the plan …’

  Air Chief Marshal Webster and Trounson read quietly and slowly, carefully avoiding any display of emotion. They were, after all, masters of the art of camouflage. But as they digested the words laid out in front of them, in twelve-point Verdana type, their internal thermometers rose towards boiling point.

  What the Minister was proposing was preposterous, a major cutback to the $8 billion program to build three air-warfare destroyers and, even worse, the first serious hint of cuts to the $16 billion purchase of up to one hundred F-35s through the Joint Strike Fighter program.

  Eventually they looked up, the CDF clearing his throat before carefully speaking his mind. ‘Minister, you can’t be serious. What you are proposing would, in my view – and I am sure Secretary Trounson would agree – it would compromise Australia’s national security. And that, Minister – well, that is a very big call.’

  ‘That’s bullshit and you know it, Jack.’ Paxton rarely called the CDF by his first name, but he was clearly fired up. ‘The bottom line is this. Budget cuts are inevitable, you know that as well as I do. I was trying to get us – Defence – on the front foot, hoping you would see merit in laying out some strategic savings to appease those bastards in Treasury.

  ‘Let’s face it, you’ve had it too good for too long. The build-up of defence and security assets since 9/11 has been extraordinary, fuelled by that warmonger John Howard and those patsies who hung on his every word as if he was fucking God. Well, he wasn’t – and I’m not fucking Satan. But I am about driving change in this arena, fellas, you’d better believe it.’

  Trounson spoke up. ‘Minister, what about the build-up by China of its military assets in the Pacific? It’s off the charts. It will have three aircraft carrier groups by 2025. It will control our trade routes. And Beijing is ploughing billions into the region, buying favour, trying to act as a kind of pan-regional financier. We don’t want to leave ourselves exposed. The Americans are nervous, as you know, and so should we be.’

  Paxton fixed the Secretary with a hard stare. ‘Why? Why should we be nervous? Maybe it’s time for some … er … strategic realignment. China is our biggest trading partner now, or soon will be. It makes more motor cars in a day than our fucking industry makes in a whole year. It has a middle class of – what? – some 200 million people and they are growing like topsy.

  ‘Our future lies far more with China, with those 1.3 billion people to our north, than it does with America and who it wants as its dancing partner.’

  He was warming to a theme now. ‘Perhaps the time is right for a subtle shift in our thinking about the Chinese. The Americans have their hands full with Afghanistan, and Obama, for all his rhetoric, has shown scant interest in the Pacific. The Stars and Stripes ain’t what it used to be, fellas.

  ‘What I’m suggesting makes not only good sense from a Budget point of view, it will also send a clear message to the region – particularly to Beijing – that Australia is no longer interested in playing the deputy sheriff to the US, to being its fucking lickspittle in the Pacific. Do you understand?’

  Paxton waved his hooked left hand menacingly as his words ricocheted around the room, so extraordinary the CDF and Secretary could scarcely believe them. Was Paxton, Australia’s Minister for Defence, really suggesting Canberra cosy up to Beijing at the expense of Washington? Was he suggesting ANZUS, that proud strategic compact that had served the Americans and its two south Pacific partners so well for sixty years, was reaching its use-by date? For nearly forty minutes, they listened as Paxton, their Minister, offered the first outline of a plan
that, if it was allowed to proceed, would overturn Australia’s military alignment.

  Shaken, the two men rose from their seats and collected their briefcases. Paxton had offered a gruff farewell, but if he wanted to be rude, well, that was not the Defence style. They left the Minister’s office, delivering a courteous nod to the receptionist on the way out. They were too professional to show emotion but both men were livid. They were used to the occasional dressing-down from a Minister but Paxton’s diatribe had gone too far. This was, they both agreed, an unofficial declaration of war.

  Their surprise at the bollocking gave way to something else – a firm resolve to save the realm, to stop that meddling Minister from destroying Defence. Most importantly, they would fight to protect the great US alliance.

  If Bruce Paxton wanted a fight, they were holding pretty good artillery of their own. If he wanted a full-scale battle, well, that was fine too – the Minister would discover soon enough he was dealing with trained killers.

  April 1, 2011

  It was like writing a haiku.

  Jonathan Robbie pondered his script. Every word had to count, and every word was counted. A small box at the top of the INews template on his computer screen remorselessly ticked off the seconds.

  A word had to add something because it stole a fraction of a second. So none could be wasted, inappropriate or out of place. Those print profligates don’t really appreciate words, Robbie thought; they have the luxury of too many of them.

  Robbie worked in the most punishing place in media, as a senior political reporter for Channel Nine, one of Australia’s three commercial TV news stations. The 6 p.m. bulletin was still where most Australians got their news and each night 1.2 million of them tuned to Nine. The competition was fierce; more so now that advertising dollars were hemorrhaging to cable TV, free digital stations and new media. Everyone’s profits were down, nobody knew what the future held and so the pressure for an ever bigger, attention-grabbing splash grew.