The Marmalade Files Read online

  It was Rambo-style, over-the-top, and Brent Moreton, the newly arrived United States Ambassador to Australia, loved every GI minute of it. He checked his Seiko Velatura – a personal gift from the President – and stepped out into the brisk Canberra air. ‘Good evening, sir.’ The concierge at the Commonwealth Club was unerringly polite.

  It was a Monday night, June 6, and Moreton was meeting with the Alliance for the first time.

  Ambassador to Australia was a mid-level posting by Washington standards, a chance for Moreton to work with one of America’s closest and most trusted allies – even if it was a country that most Americans had never visited and knew little about. Moreton had accepted the job with little hesitation, viewing it as a stepping stone to a more exciting and important posting – or possibly as an entree to a seat in Congress.

  He’d struck up a firm friendship with the British High Commissioner and found the work satisfying but hardly intoxicating. Relations between the superpower and its Pacific cousin were in good shape, despite the occasional flare-up over trade and business issues. Until now.

  Moreton walked briskly along a thickly carpeted corridor before entering a discreetly luxurious sitting room overlooking the club’s garden, with views through to the lake. Three men were waiting, one in military regalia, the other two in crisp business suits, each of them cradling a beer or glass of wine.

  ‘Ambassador, so very nice of you to come to our little gathering.’ Jack Webster, Chief of the Defence Force, ushered Moreton into the private room and offered him a drink. Air Chief Marshal Webster, a thirty-year veteran of Defence, had met the Ambassador a number of times over the years, mostly in Washington where the two would sometimes cross paths during the Australian–American Leadership Dialogue and other bilateral talkfests.

  They were both men of patrician bearing who shared a mutual love for their flags; both were dyed-in-the-wool patriots for the cause.

  ‘Ambassador, I think you know Tom …’

  Thomas Heggarty, Director-General of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, offered an outstretched hand. ‘Good evening, Ambassador, glad you could make it.’

  ‘Hello, Tom, you’re looking prosperous as always.’

  The two men smiled, as if sharing a private joke.

  David Joyce, Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, stepped forward. ‘Mr Ambassador, you look well, this Canberra climate is obviously agreeing with you.’

  ‘I don’t mind these sub-zero temperatures, David, although Janet is finding it tough to maintain her Texan tan.’ There were laughs all round.

  ‘Okay, let’s get down to business.’ Webster spoke firmly. ‘I’ll call Fred and we’ll get the dinner orders happening; after all, we don’t want to be disturbed too often.’

  ‘Correction, Jack, we don’t want to be disturbed at all.’

  The Ambassador fixed the three men with a look so serious, he could have been announcing a death in the family.

  The four men took their seats, brushing away a waiter. Moreton clasped his hands and studied them, confident they could be trusted with the intel he was about to deliver.

  Webster, Heggarty and Joyce had started meeting regularly at the Commonwealth Club some five years ago, drawn together by a common desire to protect – indeed nurture – the relationship with the United States amid a worrying trend on both sides of politics to forge ever-closer ties with China. Within the senior ranks of the Commonwealth public service, they were known as the most strident supporters of the US relationship and had dubbed themselves ‘the Alliance’ as a nod to this.

  The Alliance’s meetings were shrouded in Freemason-like secrecy. They told no one, not even their wives, of the gatherings, but the serving US ambassador had a standing invitation to attend.

  With its lush two acres of gardens and old worldly atmospherics, the Commonwealth Club offered the perfect sanctuary. Sure, it was frequented by other senior members of the public service, but discretion was always honoured and private meetings could take place in its myriad of rooms.

  Several days ago, Ambassador Moreton had contacted Webster on his secure private phone line, seeking an urgent meeting with the Alliance. He wouldn’t give the reason over the phone, except to say it was of the utmost importance.

  Now Moreton began. ‘Gentlemen, we need to establish some ground rules before we start. What I am about to tell you remains within these four walls. It has to be strictly between us four – understood?’

  No one demurred.

  ‘Two weeks ago, I was summoned to DC for what I imagined would be a routine debrief on my first few months in Canberra, the kind of thing that could have been done over a secure line. It was far from it …

  ‘When I arrived at the State Department, I was whisked through security and taken directly to Assistant Secretary Robert Hinds’ office; as you know he’s one of Hillary’s confidants.

  ‘Guys, this is where it gets real touchy. Your Defence Minister, Mr Paxton …’

  Moreton’s voice trailed off as he considered how best to phrase the coming bombshell. He trained his eye on Webster, and cleared his throat.

  ‘Our government, at the very highest level, fears Mr Paxton is way too close to the Chinese. Given that we share our intelligence with you, this jeopardises us as much as it does you. I have been sent with a very specific message. Fix it or … or your access to our intel ends.’

  The three mandarins sat stunned. The Defence Minister was treading all over his Department, trying to make absurd cuts – but Bruce Paxton, a traitor? It defied belief.

  And the US was threatening to end what the Australian defence and intelligence agencies treasured above all else: access to the best intel money could buy. Thousands of spies and analysts and a spy satellite network that could read your newspaper from space.

  It was one of the lasting legacies of the close friendship between John Howard and George W Bush. At Howard’s insistence, in July 2004, Bush had signed a one-page presidential directive to the US Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency ordering them to allow Australia access to the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET) used by the military to store information about intelligence, operations orders and technical data. Until then SIPRNET had a NOFORN (‘no foreign eyes’) classification, and that included the British and the Australians.

  The US intelligence establishment was flabbergasted and pushed back, refusing to implement the directive for years. In 2006 Howard called his friend again and went public with his complaint, attacking the Pentagon for ignoring a presidential directive.

  The barrier was lifted and Australia got access to what was described by former Defence Minister Robert Hill as ‘the greatest repository of information that exists’.

  Webster finally spoke. ‘You can’t be serious! Paxton’s an amateur, out of his depth, but he’s not a security risk. What evidence do you have?’

  The Ambassador narrowed his gaze. ‘It seems the Secretary of State heard it direct … from your Foreign Minister. Check his past. Fix this. You’ve got two months or the pipeline will be switched off.’

  June 19, 2011

  As she’d prepared for her Lateline interview, Catriona Bailey had carried the worrying signs of an impending stroke. All the things she’d put down to tiredness would have disturbed a trained eye: dropping the glass, the dizziness, the trouble she had understanding questions, the headache, the difficulty she had writing.

  It was her addiction to galloping about the world to insert herself in the news cycle that was at the root of the problem. A punishing series of jaunts saw her more rundown than usual and she had picked up the flu on her way back to Canberra. Typically defying orders to rest she’d ploughed on until a fever forced her to bed. The flu is much more dangerous than many appreciate and Bailey’s heart was damaged by it. Her fever broke but a blood clot had formed in her heart and was pumped out and up a vertebral artery that emerges at the base of the brain and merges with another to form the basilar artery.

&nb
sp; Here the clot lodged. It cut the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the brain’s junction box, the pons, which suffered catastrophic damage.

  And so Bailey collapsed and appeared to be unconscious and unreachable. But she was not. She had suffered a very particular type of stroke and the effect was coma-like, but not a coma.

  What Bailey was experiencing was locked-in syndrome. She had been completely unconscious for over a day, but then she woke. She struggled to remember what had happened. She found she could hear and think clearly but was unable to move a single muscle in her body, even to open her eyes. And there was the problem. Others afflicted by locked-in syndrome could alert doctors to their fate by blinking responses. But Bailey’s eyes remained firmly shut. In any case, her doctors were consumed by the task of simply keeping her alive. Even the most astute neurologist would have struggled to diagnose what was going on in Bailey’s brain at this stage of her illness.

  The first words she’d heard on waking came from a familiar voice.

  ‘You selfish bitch.’

  It was Martin Toohey, the bastard who had stolen the only thing that mattered to her: her job. The man she would never forgive.

  And the man who didn’t know that she had already laid a landmine that would destroy him and bring down his government full of traitors.

  That thought of revenge empowered and sustained her. If she could have smiled, she would have.

  May 16, 2011

  For nearly a century, the Brookings Institution has been at the heart of every serious policy tussle in the US. A brisk ten-minute walk from the White House, it has also achieved the near impossible: in blindingly partisan Washington, it has the respect of both the Democrats and Republicans.

  For Catriona Bailey, Brookings was as familiar and welcoming as the United Nations headquarters in New York. She had been a regular visitor for thirty years, using its global diaspora as her own kind of personal Wikipedia. She’d shifted, slightly, her view on the West Bank settlements after a series of animated discussions with a Jewish academic she’d met a decade before, and who was now courting trouble in Jerusalem with his pro-Palestinian views.

  For as long as she could remember, Bailey had wanted to be a part of Brookings, to be endorsed by it, feted by it and ushered into its inner sanctum.

  As a student in the 1970s, Bailey had courted contacts at Brookings as a hooker courts her clientele; her appointment as a non-resident senior fellow was one of the proudest days of her life. But not the proudest. That came in April 2008 when Bailey returned to Brookings as Prime Minister of Australia, making her first trip overseas aboard the Boeing 737 the Howards had ordered six years before. She had chosen Brookings as the venue for her first serious foreign policy speech, a statement that she was sure would resonate around the globe.

  Bailey wanted to recast the relationship between the US and China, and saw herself as a kind of regional intermediary, the Kissinger-of-the-Pacific. Her speech – an opus stretching nearly fifty minutes – outlined her views on how to manage the rise of China and how to refashion the post World War II power settlements to ensure China was a stakeholder in all decisions affecting global security. She argued that conflict between the US and China was avoidable and the ‘Pacific century’ should be marked by a close working relationship between the Americans and Chinese.

  It was a bold foray into global affairs, and well received by the policy wonks at Brookings, who were delighted to see one of their own elevated into a position of serious influence. Over morning tea, the Washington intelligentsia helped to fuel the notion that Cate Bailey was the woman the West needed at this vital hour, when the power balance was shifting East. Some said she could be the most important leader of her generation, the Thatcher of her time, a murmur Bailey did nothing to dispel with the travelling Australian media pack.

  But it was a special meeting after the speech that helped lift that day into the stratosphere. The US presidential primaries were in full swing and Bailey’s office, together with the Australian Ambassador, had called in every favour to try and get ‘face-time’ and, more importantly, picture opportunities, with each of the three key candidates: the Republican frontrunner John McCain and the two Democrats who were still locked in a bruising struggle, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

  In the end, Obama proved elusive, and Bailey had to settle for a thirty-minute phone conversation with the black superstar, something her staff later paid for dearly.

  But Hillary – well, that was a different equation. Clinton was an old friend, a member of the sisterhood and a Brookings fellow traveller. She called in for a delightful forty-minute chat with Bailey after her ‘rise of China’ speech.

  So chuffed was Bailey by Clinton’s show of support that she made a minor faux pas during the photo opportunity when the obvious question was asked: ‘So, are you backing Mrs Clinton for President?’

  Bailey got that goofy look on her face that always emerged when she knew she was cornered. Clinton had done her an enormous favour, but … how could a new Australian PM express a preference in US domestic politics?

  ‘Well, you know me … we girls have got to stick together.’

  Clinton beamed, taking it as an endorsement – a sentiment shared by the travelling media pack. The PM’s media minders were forced to spend hours hosing it down, claiming it was nothing more than an expression of friendship, not a signal of preference over Obama.

  Three years after she had delivered that brilliant speech, Bailey was back and so much had changed. Officially, Bailey was in DC as the Foreign Minister to hear Clinton, as Secretary of State, address Brookings on what the Arab Spring meant for US relations in the Middle East.

  Unofficially, she had a very specific message she intended to deliver.

  After Clinton’s speech the two old friends sat down in the same room where, in 2008, they had met in such different roles. The irony was not lost on either of them.

  ‘Things didn’t exactly turn out the way we expected,’ quipped Clinton.

  ‘No,’ said Bailey. ‘I certainly didn’t see it coming, did you?’

  ‘For a long time Bill was convinced that we would win, and so was everyone else who mattered … But what can you do? It’s history; Obama has been surprisingly gracious and … well, this is a great job.’

  ‘So is mine,’ Bailey lied. Just the memory of being Prime Minister was enough to make her wince. And she suspected Clinton felt the same about missing out on becoming the leader of the Free World.

  ‘There’s something we’re concerned about, Cate.’ Clinton seamlessly switched to business. ‘We hear from our embassy that your Defence Minister is considering making big cuts. Our people are keen to ensure your commitment to the Joint Strike Fighter is rock solid.’

  ‘Hillary, you know that’s sacrosanct,’ Bailey said. ‘I made it a priority when I was Prime Minister and Toohey has publicly backed it.’

  ‘We aren’t concerned about you or Toohey. We’re concerned about Paxton. Is he committed to the Alliance? His public remarks are quite pro-China.’

  ‘Paxton’s from Western Australia. They all love China because it’s making them rich. I’m sure his past … dalliances … were, well, meaningless.’

  ‘Dalliances?’ The alarm in Clinton’s voice was obvious, and Bailey closed the net.

  ‘It was a long time ago. He was just a union official on one of those visits the Labor Left used to make to China. It was the first time I met him. He was introduced to a young Tibetan woman, Weng Meihui. She turned out to be working for their intelligence service.’

  ‘And the nature of this relationship?’ Clinton leaned closer.

  ‘Well, she was very … persuasive.’

  ‘You’re telling me that Australia’s Defence Minister had a sexual relationship with a Chinese spy?’

  ‘He wasn’t Defence Minister then. And he hadn’t seen her for years …’

  ‘Hadn’t?’

  ‘Until three months ago. February. They met again over dinner.’

&n
bsp; ‘Are you sure? How do you know?’

  ‘Because, Hillary, I hosted it.’

  Bailey paused to allow her friend to fully absorb the revelation before continuing. ‘Look, Hillary, I’m sure it isn’t serious.’

  ‘Cate, I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Hillary, no …’ For the next ten minutes, Bailey launched a strident defence of Paxton. For the record. But, as she left, she knew the damage had been done. The clock was now ticking.

  A smile creased her face.

  July 12, 2011

  ‘Those bastards, those grubby, calculating fucking bastards.’

  Each word was spat out by Sam Buharia, who sat with a neat espresso, dumbfounded by the front page of the Australian.

  He both hated the national broadsheet for its relentless campaigning against Labor, and admired it for its audacious use of power. But this morning, Rupert’s flagship had gone too far.

  BAILEY IN COMA OUT-POLLS TOOHEY

  In an act of rat-cunning Sussex Street would have been proud of, the Oz had included Bailey in its fortnightly Newspoll. Oh, and just to ram home the point, the paper had splashed it all over page one. Gleefully.

  Catriona Bailey was ten points ahead of Martin Toohey as preferred Prime Minister – even more so with Labor voters – and twenty points in front of Opposition leader Elizabeth Scott.

  The imagery was devastating, Buharia thought. A half-dead politician out-polling the PM screamed that Toohey was a dead man walking. The only good news, if any could be extracted from this stinking turd of a front page, was that the dropkick of an Opposition leader was stone motherless dead. If she was leading Labor, he would have capped her months ago.