Beyond the Bridge: A History of Future Crime

By Greg Hahn

In this thriller, the reader follows the fortunes of Australian ASIO agent Kate Austin. We find Kate has already led allied intelligence agencies to discover a well-established listening post to the key US intelligence gathering facility of Pine Gap in Central Australia. Australian authorities have in custody the head of a massive global electronics giant, Kronberg, the supplier of much of the computer equipment to governments around the world. The man in custody is Joseph Homberg. Austin has also uncovered half a century of archives, the records of two assassins that have been employed by Homberg and his family. These diaries are the key to understanding the current series of violent events. The diaries suggest European old money is at the heart of generational political corruption and a complete breakdown of global cyber security. Austins search for the hidden hand behind it all entwines with real events related to the birth of computing and the internet itself. In Beyond the Bridge, Kate pushes ahead but is caught in the kickback by the corrupt as she unravels a conspiracy that rivals no other. The story overlaps and follows on from the first novel of the three-part series The Bridge at Koondrook.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Apr 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543407532

Greg Hahn

The author Greg Hahn loves political non- fiction and crime because real story lines leave fictional accounts pale in comparison. His first book, The Bridge at Koondrook. he transposes his fictional characters onto real uniquely Australian historical events. Greg has travelled extensively in the Outback and lives in the Bush. His life experiences bring a first-hand feel to his accounts of place. Greg lives with his wife Kathryn on the banks of the Murray River and has used the small towns of Barham and Koondrook as the backdrop for many events. Greg likes telling big stories so his novels evolve to be truly international in scope.

Book preview

Chapter 1

On the Bridge at Koondrook

Australia’s Murray River creates a natural border between the states of New South Wales and Victoria. It is the world’s sixteenth longest river at over two thousand five hundred kilometres in length.

Around one hundred and thirty million years ago, much of Eastern Australia was submerged under a shallow sea. In the vast area surrounding the present-day town of Barham, tectonic movements began lifting the land mass. Then around one hundred million years ago, the saltwater began to spill from the land and into the ocean, and a freshwater river grew which became the Murray.

The river was first seen by Europeans in November 1824 and named the Hume in honour of explorer Hamilton Hume’s father. The name was changed in 1830 to reflect a man of higher status, in Sir George Murray, who after a distinguished military career became colonial secretary.

Today a bridge spans the river between the sister towns of Barham and Koondrook, which exist on the flat river plains some fourteen hundred kilometres upstream from where the river reaches the sea at Lake Alexandrina in South Australia.

The bridge story begins in 1904 when a civil engineer named John Monash oversaw its construction. The Murray River was then an inland highway. Paddle steamers moved cargoes of wool along the river, and in order to cater for the river traffic, Monash’s bridge included a lift span which was designed to allow the paddle steamers passage at high water. The days of river commerce are long gone, but the span remains.

Monash was a pioneer in working with reinforced concrete, but his future fame would come from a later career, that of soldiering. Monash would eventually reach the rank of general, to command the Australian Army Corps in 1918. His legacy, the wooden bridge is made of locally harvested red gum timbers and composite timber trusses and sits on a pair of concrete piers wrapped in wrought-iron cylinders.

It is approximately 5.00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and Kate Austin, a thirty-something ASIO agent, is only sixty metres from where there is the tribute to the bridge’s designer. Her situation is reminiscent of a scene from an old silent movie where she plays the part of the heroine. Her hands are tied to the bridge’s lift section while her feet are attached to its stationary road surface.

A young Irishwoman, Bridgette O’Haire, is standing nearby at the lift section controls, and she is gloating. O’Haire is taunting Kate, whose presence here in the pre-dawn blackness stems from a case which began in Darwin many months ago and it has been this case which has lead her here via a bloody path. She is heavily drugged and has little control over any of her body’s functions. Her vision is blurred.

The twin towns of Barham and Koondrook are small, and at this time of the morning, there is no bridge traffic. The few thousand people who live between the towns are still in their beds.

Bridgette is in her early thirties, and the theatre that this location provides appeals to her inner demons. Her senses tingle in anticipation, and she sees the bridge as her stage.

However, Bridgette and Kate are not the only players on call in the early morning darkness, for lying on his stomach a hundred metres upstream on the newly built wharf is a CIA agent, Adam Hauser. He has tracked Bridgette to this spot through her iTunes account, a foreseeable continuation of her disconcerting habit of downloading ringtones to the phones of her victims. This was her signature and her Achilles heel. She had downloaded a song in anticipation for this moment. This had brought him to her.

Hauser, almost perfectly still, lies on the wharf’s recycled hardwood deck as he methodically adjusts his weapon system.

The crisp morning air has brought back his memories of his training with the US Army sniper school at Fort Benning in Georgia. In his late thirties, Hauser had not taken a shot in anger since seeing active duty in Afghanistan eight years ago, but he is fast recalling his process. His breathing rate is dropping.

He knows he needs to adjust his psychology. The firing range was a different place, a different circumstance, but here the adrenaline has quickened his heart rate. In response he is meditating to lower it. He spread his legs for stability and continued to adjust his scope.

The lighting is poor. He is without a spotter and so his distance to target is imprecise and the breeze inconsistent. Hauser is using a modified Remington 700 long action. Its magazine holds real punch because as a sniper your adage was ‘if you take the shot, then whatever you hit must stay down.’ He switched the scope to infrared, and Bridgette appeared in the cross hairs.

Hauser could see her taunting the semi-conscious Kate. Hauser was conflicted. His priority, the CIA’s priority, was to capture Bridgette and interrogate her. The planning for her secret rendition back to the States was already well advanced. If he changed position, he could ensure that his shot was more precise and that Bridgette could be taken down alive, but as he watched the central lift span rise, he ruled out making a new position before Austin would be torn apart.

Adam was late thirties and drop-dead gorgeous and had been used as a honeypot. Austin had at one time availed of his services, but in the act, she had connected to him in a way that he did not understand. Subconsciously, Austin had become an echo of his life’s love lost.

Bridgette rechecked Kate’s strapping, as she lifted upwards along with the span.

Bridgette held out her phone and turned so that Kate’s body would be in the background, and she took a selfie and then another. Hauser felt a wave of disgust move up from the pit of his stomach. He knew she was also playing a cruel tune for her victim. The creaking of the bridge’s timbers punctuated the groan of the motors struggling to lift the roadway.

Adam made his decision and determined to take a shot and aim to disable the aggressor. As he came to this decision, Bridgette moved behind one of the large red gum timber uprights, and suddenly there was no shot on offer.

As the counterweights lowered, the faint music and lyrics being played from Kate’s phone could be heard. He could hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers song: ‘Under the bridge downtown / Is where I drew some blood’.

Bridgette moved closer to Kate, and this exposed her.

Kate was thrashing about as she was now suspended by her arms as her backside lifted from the bitumen. Bridgette stood with the phone in one hand and her gun in the other in case the sound of the lifting span brought in unwelcome spectators.

Hauser spoke softly into a thin microphone attached to his collar. ‘I’m taking the shot,’ he said.

‘That’s a negative,’ was the reply. ‘I’m not in position.’

Adam ignored the response and squeezed off a round. Bridgette fell instantly while the bridge retained its steadfast upward journey.

Hauser gained his feet and collected his weapon as a car careered across the lawn area adjacent to the wharf to collect him. It skidded to a halt as he threw his weapon inside its open rear window. The car tore up the grass as it made its way towards the bridge and pulled up short of Bridgette’s body.

Hauser’s driver switched the vehicle’s lights to high beam as Adam alighted. This blinded Kate, and Hauser became only a silhouetted shape moving towards her. Her drug-dilated pupils struggled to focus. Her shoulders ached as her feet lifted from the bitumen. Hauser reached across and switched off the power to the lift mechanism. He used a tissue from his pocket to wipe the switch down and chose to remain silhouetted by the lights.

He pushed at Bridgette’s body with his foot to see if there was any response. He was angry with himself because she was clearly dead. The pool of her blood was draining away between the cracks in the bitumen and through the timbers and into the river below.

On the southern side of the bridge, a truck approached. Adam retreated into the lights of his vehicle. He didn’t want the approaching truck’s lights to fall on him, so he hurried his conversation, altering his voice. He spoke with a non-descript accent. ‘I’ll be off then.’ he said with his voice showing none of its usual characteristics.

‘Who are you? ’Kate called out hoarsely.

‘A contemporary.’ Hauser replied, ‘It’s a real problem these days. Nobody wants to get their hands dirty so they use these things: psychopaths. In the end, they’re always more trouble than they’re worth.’ This ambiguous statement confused Kate. ‘A word of advice,’ he continued. ‘This should be the end of it for you. What you know or think you know is quite irrelevant. Do yourself a favour, wait a few years, and write a book complete with its own grassy knoll.’

Through his earpiece, Hauser was informed that the local police were on their way. He returned to the car and called out to Kate, ‘An ambulance has been called.’

His car quickly backed off and headed north towards the town of Deniliquin at high speed.

‘DC wanted the woman,’ Hauser’s driver complained. ‘The other woman’s death would have been of no importance.’

‘I shot too high,’ Hauser replied. ‘Only idiots would expect a guy who has sat behind a desk for a year to make that shot.’

Chapter 2

Talking to Luther

Months later

Kate sits by the lonely graveside in sandstone country south-west of Alice Springs in Central Australia. The air is warm and filled with insects. The grave’s occupant is Luther Brunswick, a former sergeant with the Australian Federal Police. The moment is profound for the woman. It is the first time that she has had the courage to face her grief.

It is late afternoon, and the MacDonnell Ranges to the north are bathed in the watercolour hues and the palette of colours that inspired the indigenous artist Albert Namatjira. Luther was also indigenous, an Arrernte man. This dry desert land is his country.

Kate is filled with memories about the morning that Luther died and how they had shadowed their assignment, the Wheeler Geological Survey group to a campsite north of Alice Springs to the area around the granite tors known as the Devil’s Marbles. It was there that they encountered a real devil named Jonas and his now deceased protégé Bridgette.

Kate looked at the palms of her hands as tears filled her eyes. She couldn’t stop the memory of the warm stickiness of Luther’s blood flowing over her hands. These were confronting thoughts, and she was finding it impossible to suppress her emotions. Then atop this was the violence that had followed her. She desperately needed to talk it all out with her dead lover but found herself needing to step back from it all for the moment.

She gazed up and around at the escarpments and at the rugged landscape and absorbed its beauty as a much-needed counterpoint to her emotional distress. The area’s harsh beauty had changed little from the days before white settlement, that is, beside from the not so distant joint US Australian spy base at Pine Gap. Though there were other footprints everywhere.

In 1860, an expedition from the south had come through this region from the fledgling city of Adelaide. It was led by John McDouall Stuart, a Scotsman, who had on that first expedition reached these same sandstone abutments. His were the first European eyes to see this dry mountain range deep in the heart of the Australian continent.

This area was then a part of the colony of New South Wales and not, as today, the Northern Territory. Stuart would go on to be the man who had led the first successful expedition to traverse the Australian continent from south to north and to return and therefore he had shown the way for the coming European intrusion.

He had reached this very spot in the April of that year. Come forward by a century and a half and unbeknown to Kate, she is sitting on the same fallen section of quartzite that Stuart had sat upon when he made camp.

If Kate could have crossed time, she would have seen night falling at Stuart’s camp. As he sat upon this rock, he had looked out on the same view and sketched the same panorama into his notebook while adding the necessary cartographic details. It was on that night, when standing on the nearby jump-up, that he made the decision to name the ranges after Sir Richard MacDonnell, the governor of South Australia, which proved a prudent move to obtain future commissions.

Stuart was fearful of the local blacks as warriors of the Arrernte peoples shadowed his expedition. As he sat, surrounding him were men cleaning their .704-calibre muzzle-loading percussion Brunswick rifles. There was a quirk of history that would never be recorded. The Brunswick rifles in that time leant against each other for quick access stood in a place where a black man called Brunswick would one day lay at rest.

The Brunswick rifles were manufactured for the British Army, and they gave Stuart great comfort in knowing that if the heathens proved bothersome, then the weapons would bring them down. He had already given the order to shoot to kill if the blacks came too close. As dusk turned to night, Stuart continued to sketch the distant hills, only to be disturbed by shots ringing out as a group of aboriginals scattered from the nearby acacias.

His men hurried to reload, and in the rush, a number of the .704-calibre rounds that were specifically designed for the grooves in the rifle dropped to the ground. These were lost in the failing light. These rounds would touch the future. They lay in the sand and crushed sandstone over the intervening years as water washed away the lighter materials and the old shot came to the surface.

Kate had picked up a few of the rounds and was holding them in her palm as she sat with Luther.

Kate placed them to rest on the quartzite beside her. The sound of movement behind brought her out from her thoughts. Luther’s mother Mary was busy nearby. She had built a small fire located within a group of rocks that Stuart’s men had originally moved into a circle for their own fire. In today’s fire, Mary’s billy was boiling.

In 1860, the men of the camp had left artefacts, garbage. An amber quart whiskey bottle had been tossed away and landed on sand and so it had remained intact. Today, small seedlings grew in a shallow hollow from where it had been lifted. The bottle had been covered by windblown sand and gravel over the years as similar generations of seedlings struggled for life in the poor gravelly soil. Nearby, at the head of the grave, one of them had won the contest for life and cracked through the underlying sandstone to secure its tenuous hold on life. It was a ghost gum, Corymbia aparrerinja, and now its job was to shade Luther from the heat of the day.

The earth where the bottle had rested was pushed up by the tree. When Luther was laid to rest beneath the ghost gum, the bottle was uncovered and it sat near the head of the unmarked grave with a small native paper flower inserted in it. It was the lonely grave’s only decoration.

In days not-so-recently gone, Luther would not have been buried. His body would have undergone a primary burial. His corpse would have been laid out on an elevated wooden platform and covered in leaves and branches to be left until his flesh had rotted away. Then a secondary burial, where his bones would be collected, would have followed and his bones painted with red ochre and then dispersed.

Luther’s mother, however, was a Christian, a Lutheran, as was Luther. He had been taken by missionaries as a newborn. Even his name had come from a picture on the wall at the mission. As a young man Luther had sought out and had been reunited with his mother years later.

The fire smoked nearby as Mary added a few more small sticks to it.

‘Your mother makes a fine cup of billy-tea, mate,’ Kate whispered softly as she rolled one of the metal shots she had found along the stone and then picked up the whisky bottle and replaced its single flower with a small bunch of similar paper daisies while using a tissue to rub away the dust clinging to its surface.

Mary walked over and gently cradled a metal cup with hot black tea in it. ‘Very hot, love,’ she said as she placed it on the quartzite beside Kate.

Mary returned to her seat by the fire in order to give Kate the privacy she needed to talk privately to Luther. ‘It’s time I bring you up to speed, mate,’ Kate said softly as she sipped at her smoky flavoured tea; she had so missed its rustic flavour. Kate continued on, ‘We’ve got one of the bastards and a few foot soldiers, and I’m still this side of the veil.’ She lifted her cup in a toast to the rocky grave. ‘But shit, mate, it’s grown so big and complicated. Where do I begin?’

She picked up the amber whisky bottle and tidied up the paper flowers. ‘You know this looks harmless now, but time’s a funny thing.’ Thirty metres away, there was a recently discarded glass beer stubby with its label visible and not faded from the sun’s ultraviolet rays. It sat on the sand. ‘That stubby of VB, it doesn’t look anywhere near as harmless, does it? Time somehow diminishes the weight of events.’

Out beyond the grave, at the edge of the expanse of open desert, a mob of red kangaroos grazed a few hundred metres away. One big male stood upright and watched the women as the mob calmly went about their business.

Kate returned to sipping her tea.

‘I found documents. Do you remember the bloke I shot at the Marbles? It turns out he’s been doing all sorts of really bad shit for years. I haven’t the time to explain, but his shady past goes all the way back to Harold Holt’s disappearance. He called himself Jonas. One name, big ego and he serviced his ego by keeping meticulous records. At one time, he teamed up with an old German, an ex-Nazi, and that prick kept records too.

‘I know why they killed off the survey team. Wheeler’s images were about to blow the lid on the fact that the spy base was compromised. There was a facility in the desert listening to it.’ Kate gave a little laugh. ‘Yeah, I know. How the hell does a girl from the Pines end up getting involved in this type of shit?’

‘Your mum’s been great,’ Kate said, looking across to where Mary gazed into the fire deep into her thoughts. Mary called across, ‘Don’t worry, love, he’s listening to you. My boy was always a good listener. So you keep talking to him, love, it’s good for you.’

Kate drank more of her tea before returning to her one-way conversation. Her voice became quite sombre as she tipped out the remaining dregs from her cup. ‘We’ve taken a bloke into custody. He’s a rich bastard and wouldn’t you know it, his company happens to supply computers to the Yanks and just about everyone else in the world that deal with spying, and this girl thinks he’s just the tip of the iceberg.’

Kate stood up to stretch her legs. ‘The man is called Joseph Homberg. We’ve got him and the documents that I told you about tucked away in the Pilbara. That’s where Wheeler had installed a massive computer set-up, and wouldn’t you know it, complete with Homberg’s computers.’ Kate laughed. ‘Moore, my new boss, doesn’t think like the rest of us. She set up this elaborate plan to fool people into thinking Homberg was dead so we can get some time with him before everyone else gets in on the act. The woman must have real clout, boy do they jump when she tells them to.’

Kate wandered over and picked up the newer stubby. ‘I’m angry. Do you remember Jon Wolters, my old mentor? Homberg’s people were into him—he was dirty.’

Kate suddenly found herself trying to suppress a burst of emotion. ‘I miss you, my good man.’ There was so much bottled up inside of her that she knew she risked breaking down and weeping over the grave.

The sun was disappearing behind the sandstone cliff to the west and the area around the grave was becoming dark. Clouds were moving in from the east. It was still warm as heat radiated out from the bare rock surfaces. Kate composed herself. ‘We’ve both got work to do tonight. Are you up to it? We interrogated Wolters, but it was a waste of time. There’s a caper on, Moore wants to dangle him like the worm he is on the end of a long line. She wants to see who the prick attracts.’

Mary called across, ‘You’ll need to get on the road soon. The bloody roos out here are thick as thieves.’ She began to pour the water out of the billy on to the embers of fire.

‘You go ahead,’ Kate called back. ‘I’ll see you back in the Alice.’

She returned to her conversation with Luther. ‘I need to be quick. You’re still my partner mate, so if it’s OK with you, the dangle starts here.’ Kate walked from the grave and embraced Mary as she got in her separate vehicle and watched as the old woman disappeared down the narrow dirt track that led back to the bitumen.

She called to Luther’s grave, ‘I have a surprise for you.’ She brushed the thin layer of dust from her backside and opened her Toyota troop carrier’s rear double doors. Inside beneath a tarp was a sweating Jon Wolters with his hands bound with plastic ties, as were his feet. Grey duct tape covered his mouth.

Kate placed the beer stubby in the troop carrier’s rubbish bag before turning her attention to Wolters. She had left the vehicle’s windows open, but even so, it had been stiflingly hot inside. The bound man’s eyes showed he was in deep distress. ‘Wakey-wakey, Jon,’ Kate said as she grabbed his feet and dragged his torso from the tray, ensuring that his body fell heavily and hit the ground hard. She showed no pity as she ripped away the duct tape and poured water over his face.

‘You look and smell like shit, Jon,’ she said as her old friend regained his senses. She propped him up against the troop carrier’s front wheel and gave him a sip of water.

Wolters snarled, ‘You’re a double-crossing bitch, where the hell are we?’

‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks,’ Kate replied sarcastically. She then added a lie: ‘Just be thankful that we haven’t enough to charge you yet and Moore’s only willing to take a half pound of flesh. As for me, I know, you understand, I know, you prick.’ She grabbed Wolters by the cheek. ‘So I’ve brought you out to have a word with my friend Luther. He’s just over there. I’ll turn on the headlights to help you see him.’

Wolters’ eyes opened wide as the grave came into shadowy view. ‘Belief’s a powerful thing, Jon. The local tribes believe there are still unborn spirits awaiting rebirth, and if the spirit or a part of the spirit of a dead person returns to its totemic site, it can be reborn. I think Luther is here. I think he’ll ensure that you’ll have an interesting night,’ she said with a sense of theatre in offering the dire warning. ‘I know Moore promised to let you go in return for your cooperation but I’m the one responsible for the detail.’

She crouched down. ‘A lot of good people died, maybe not directly because of you but your hand was in there. ‘What did Machiavelli say? Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them, they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared. Kate added, ‘You’ll find there’s no compassion left in me.’ She paused as she took the old lead rounds she found next to Luther’s grave from her pocket and selected one.

She placed the round on the ground and removed her sidearm, pointing it at Wolters. She cocked it and fired. Nothing happened, ‘Do you know how good that felt, well from my end that is? All this power: It’s giving me a sick puppy moment. You know I fantasised about filling you with lead.’ Wolters’ body had tensed before relaxing when he realised that the chamber was empty, but he lost control of his bladder. Kate’s face took on a callous smile as she picked up the lead shot from the ground and placed it between her thumb and forefinger. She knelt down and placed it in front of Jon’s face and rolled it between her fingers. Her voice darkened. ‘This is the next best thing. I want you to eat it!’ she said firmly as she proceeded to push the bullet into Wolters’ mouth. ‘It’s less than you deserve, but it’ll do for now.’

Wolters turned his head to the side. Kate reacted by forcing her gun into his mouth and breaking one of his teeth. ‘Look into these eyes, Jon. You’re going to be eating a bullet.’ she said, removing the gun from his mouth. ‘You decide which one.’

She placed the shot between her fingers and inserted it into his mouth. Wolters began to gag and spat out the shot. ‘At first we don’t succeed,’ Kate said as she picked up the shot, now with a layer of sand stuck to it and returned it forcefully to his mouth. She picked up the water bottle beside her and poured some water into his mouth.

Wolters’ face turned from an expression of fear to one of hate, anger, and then acceptance. He struggled but swallowed the lead shot.

‘Good boy,’ Kate said as she tapped him on the head. ‘I hope that hurts on the way out.’ She looked at the sky. ‘The cloud’s building up so it doesn’t look like there will be moonlight tonight so it’s going to get very dark out here.’ She began to remove Wolters’ shoes.

‘I’ve told you everything I know,’ Wolters said. ‘The deal was that you’d let me go if I did. It’s in writing and Moore signed off on it.’

‘Of course I know that, but be thankful, You see, I was thinking about taking your clothes as well, but yuck, I don’t need that picture playing in my head.’ She took the shoes and dropped them in a backpack that was in the front seat of the troop carrier. She held up the backpack up so Jon could see it. ‘This holds a change of clothes, your shoes, and enough cash to see you on your way, and because I’m a charitable soul, some water.’ She then showed Jon a box cutter. ‘I’m keeping Moore’s deal with you. You can use this to free yourself, and as you’re a resilient man, you’ll figure it out.’ She threw the cutter towards Luther’s grave. ‘I think it’s fifty-fifty whether you cut yourself free without drawing blood. So don’t quibble. I am letting you go. After that you can go fuck yourself for all that I care.’ Kate closed the troop carrier’s rear door. ‘Why free you here you ask? Well, I say, why the hell not?’

Kate pointed away from the quickly fading horizon. ‘The highway’s along the track. I’ll put your backpack down along it. I wouldn’t try to walk it tonight without your shoes, and think about it if you try, you might miss the backpack in the dark.’

‘Fuck you!’ Wolters snarled.

‘An elegant rebuttal—for a man with no shoes, you have a big mouth. The backpack just moved a further kilometre away along the track,’ Kate replied callously.

She started the motor and lowered her window. ‘I’d have a last look where the box cutter is, if I was you. Soon it’ll be so dark out here you won’t be able to see the hand in front of your face. There are a few dingoes around, so you’ll need to get to it quick.’

Kate engaged the gears and did a U–turn, throwing up a cloud of dust that was made even redder by her tail lights. For Jon, the light from Kate’s headlights faded into the distance, then there was darkness.

Chapter 3

Jack

Kate returned to the bitumen, headed towards Alice Springs with a sense of self-satisfaction from Jon’s misery. Although she could have accomplished the dangle of Wolters in so many ways, the pseudo involvement of Luther seemed to satisfy many of her own psychological needs.

She turned off the bitumen after a short distance and drove along a dusty, heavily corrugated track. A type of owl, a tawny frogmouth, was disturbed and lifted up from the road in front of her. It was carrying a small animal which looked to be something akin to a mouse. Kate swerved to avoid it. Ahead, a few hundred metres in the darkness was the orange-yellow glow of a campfire.

She came to a converted bus which was tucked away behind a stand of Eremophila. The bus belonged to an old friend, Jack, who was the one who called her on the night that it all started for Kate, the night when bodies were discovered in Darwin. To Kate, those memories seemed so long ago that they were almost unrelated to tonight’s events. She had not seen Jack since Luther’s impromptu wake and a few cans of beer in the back of this very same bus on the day Luther’s body was flown from Darwin to the Alice.

Jack had taken leave with the thought of retiring from the Australian Federal Police not long after they had last met. Darwin, he had hoped, was to be his final curtain call.

Because Homberg’s statement, made under interrogation, asserted that so-called secure communications were still not secure had resonated with her, Kate’s communications with Jack had been old style in writing and by courier. There had been no texting or phone calls, no emails.

The small campfire on the far side of the bus was not visible from the main road and Kate drove around and in behind it to bring Jack and another former Australian Federal Police mate, Colin, into the beam of her headlights. Colin had been one of Luther’s best mates. Colin was also an indigenous man, but his roots were in the Tiwi Islands, which were situated in the Arafura Sea north of Darwin.

The two men didn’t acknowledge Kate’s arrival. Jack merely leant forward and took a beer from his cooler and placed it in a stubby holder while keeping his eyes on the campfire’s glowing coals. Colin stood and opened up a camping chair and placed it between the men before sitting down and enjoying the flames.

In keeping with the men’s strong and silent theme, it seemed appropriate that Kate come across without any acknowledgement as well. She picked up her beer and pulled back its ring top, with the crack of the seal providing her greeting. She pointed her beer in the direction of the two men who now had finally turned towards her. ‘Cheers big ears,’ she said as she took a large gulp of her drink, adding, ‘It’s done. Luther’s babysitting.’

Colin held up his beer, laughed, and added, ‘Brunswick’s just whispered in my ear. The boy says he’s gonna scare the bejesus out of the prick tonight.’ He added, ‘Long time no see, Kate.’

Jack in turn held up his beer. ‘To a fallen mate,’ he said solemnly before changing the subject. ‘Margaret was chuffed to get her birthday card. It’s a pity that it wasn’t her birthday. In the police force, we use phones. So are you just showing off that you’re a spook now?’

‘I hear ASIO’s training homing pigeons,’ Colin joked.

‘I can’t really tell you what’s behind this, guys. Now that’s a real spy thing. The lingo is that you’re not read in. All that I can tell you is, don’t trust phones or computers,’ Kate said seriously.

‘I’ll read up on my semaphore then,’ Jack responded, not impressed. ‘You’re not going a bit over the top, are you, love?’

‘No I’m not being a drama queen. I’m being dead serious.’ Kate wanted to lighten the moment. ‘By the way, when is Margaret’s birthday? I’ll send her a Christmas card.’

Jack and Colin exchanged uncertain glances, ‘You’re the boss,’ Jack said as the men returned their gaze to the coals. Colin prodded at them with a stick as he finished his drink. Three more empty cans rested between his feet. Kate was drawn to the fire as were the men. She added, ‘Really, guys, it’s better if you don’t know why I’m getting you to do this. It’s safer for you old buggers. So keep the girl happy and tell me that you’ve had no electronic communications regarding any of this?’

Jack continued, ‘Everything’s been arranged for this over a few beers. You’ve told us that Wolters had something to do with Luther’s death, and that’s good enough. I’m technically still on the job. I was using this bout of long service to finish out my time, whereas Colin’s been idle for the duration. I’ve drafted a few other has-beens into service.’

Kate seemed pleased. ‘Shit, that didn’t even touch the sides,’ she said as she held up her empty beer can. ‘I’m drinking too much these days, but that’s far better than drinking too little.’

Jack threw both Kate and Colin another beer. ‘I take it the equipment has found its way to you?’ Kate asked as she cracked her second seal.

‘Poke your head inside the bus, and you’ll see Wolters’ shoes are pinging away right where you left them.’

‘Are your mates in position?’ Kate asked.

‘They’re all good,’ Jack replied. ‘They’ll be out there in their swags. A few Territory coppers will make sure that only our vehicles are passing when Wolters finally hits the bitumen. He’s got no option but to flag one of them down for a ride.’

‘You hungry?’ Colin asked as he used a hook to take a lid off a large camp oven at the side of the fire. He added, ‘We’ve got fried dimmos.’

Kate leant forward. Colin passed her a torch. He had ‘cooked’ a dozen dim sims, an Australian Chinese-inspired meat and vegetable dumpling-style snack food. They were well and truly crispy and oil-soaked.

Kate looked down on the cholesterol raising offering, ‘You blokes will end up gassing each other tonight,’ She joked. ‘Me, I’m fine.’

Jack continued, ‘Do you remember old Don from Wagga Wagga?’

Kate nodded.

‘He’s retired up here to be near his grandkids. He’ll be the third truck along the road and hopefully he’ll pick Wolters up. He’s legit. He drives trucks these days, but back in the day, he was good at undercover stuff and Wolters won’t know him,’ Jack added.

‘How do you know that he won’t want to head south towards Adelaide?’ Colin asked.

‘He definitely has contacts in the Alice.’ Kate paused. ‘And I didn’t give much cash. I know him, and he thinks he’s smarter than he is. He’ll find his trackers and he’ll be confident he can outsmart us, so we’ll let him have his little fantasy.’

Kate’s gaze again went to the fire. ‘I would give all of my fame for a pot of ale and safety.’ She added, ‘Luther would laugh at me quoting Shakespeare. He called it a stress response.’ Kate finished her second beer. ‘This is how it will play out. Tomorrow, Don will pick Wolters up. If I know Jon, he’ll do what has become instinctual. With his cash, the first thing he’ll do is buy a few prepaid phones, disposable. He always used throwaways. It’s habitual. He knows that they’re not easily tracked in real time.’

The conversation had suddenly become professional, and Jack pulled out a map of Alice Springs from his top pocket, unfolded it and placed it on the ground. He took the torch from Kate, and the three leant over the map.

Kate used a twig to point to locations on the town’s map. ‘Don will drop him off around here, near the shopping precinct. There are four outlets that stock cell phones within walking distance. If Jon can get a Nokia, that’s what he’ll buy, I guarantee you,’ Kate said, ‘so all the Nokias in these outlets have already had their SIM cards flagged. They’ve all been cloned. We can track him and listen in without anyone knowing. Don’t show your hand by doing anything else but to listen passively on the cloned phones. Jon will be allowed to slip away. We just want to see who he talks to over the next few weeks and who comes sniffing around.’

Colin added. ‘You know the chances are you’ll lose him.’

‘You mean chances are that you will lose him,’ Kate said in return. ‘He’ll go to ground, and when he resurfaces, it will be the time for him to make a mistake. We’re after a chain of contacts, to see how far the infection has spread.’

‘Or maybe he won’t make a mistake? He might not buy a phone or he might throw it away.’ Jack sounded concerned. ‘I’d just as soon pick him up and drop him in the middle of the desert and leave him out there for the crows.’

‘No guts, no glory,’ Kate said as she leant over and kissed him on the forehead. She placed her second empty beer into a small bucket that was already close to full. She looked down again at the fat-soaked dim sims. ‘I’m more worried about your cholesterol, old man.’ She paused. ‘You blokes are only to listen in and report only on the phone that I’ve given you and using the words or lack thereof on the list. There is word recognition software out there.’

Jack’s face showed genuine concern. ‘What’s really going on, Kate? What aren’t you telling us?’ Jack asked, more out of concern for Kate than for himself.

She took the beer bottle that she collected from near Luther’s grave and placed it in with Jack’s lot. ‘Do the right thing and dispose of these correctly.’ She took a deep breath. ‘There are monsters out there and they have big bloody ears and that’s not by accident.’

She gave Jack and Colin a hug before driving off into the night.

Chapter 4

Close Communications 1967

The north-west of the Australian continent has one of the oldest land surfaces on the planet. In its northern extremes, the land lies in the latitudes where there are distinct wet and dry seasons, but a little further south, the air mostly descends and it becomes much drier. The terrain itself is rocky, the soils generally poor.

In 1618, Captain Lenaert Jacobszoon and Willem Janszoon on the Mauritius made landfall on an isolated promontory on the edge of Australia’s great desert country. Jacobszoon and Janszoon were commissioned by the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, the Dutch East India Company. They found a dry, sandy desolate country of little interest to the company.

In 1818, an English explorer, Admiral Phillip King, sailed along the indented coastline. He named one of these peninsulas the North West Cape. As well, he named the gulf which separated the peninsula from the mainland as the Exmouth Gulf in honour of a fellow officer.

Despite the region appearing on maps, the years passed and the area remained undeveloped. The region’s harsh dry climate and poor soils attracted little interest, and it was only visited on occasions by bands of pearl luggers from much further north in Broome.

As the world came to war in the Forties, the Cape’s strategic military importance to access the Indian Ocean became apparent and the North West Cape gained significance. In 1942 the US Navy built a submarine base code named Operation Potshot. It was the beginning of a US Navy building a Little America. This base was built close to where the current RAAF Learmonth Air Force Base is now situated.

Today, 16 September 1967, there is still little on the cape apart from a cattle station which occupies much of the peninsula and the US Naval Communication Station – North West Cape. The base contains a bowling alley, hamburger joints, and the US dollar is used as currency and the traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road as it would in the US.

Today is earmarked for a ceremony. The US ambassador to Australia, Ed Clark, and the Australian prime minister, Harold Holt, have made their way the thousands of kilometres from the eastern capital and across the great inland deserts for the event. They have joined US military figures and industrial dignitaries from the United States. The purpose is to lay the foundation stone for the new town of Exmouth and to perform the ceremonial commissioning of the new naval communication station.

Harold Holt is Australia’s seventeenth prime minister and walks about the dignitaries pressing the flesh. He does the expected and talks to as many people as he can under the supervision of his minders. Holt carries with him somewhat of a playboy image. This is strange for a prime minister who represents the conservative Liberal Party. Holt has struck up a great strategic friendship with US president Johnson. His unofficial slogan as touted in the press is ‘All the way with LBJ’, although his friendship and dogged loyalty to the US president has become somewhat of a lead weight to his leadership, at least in the eyes of the left. The quagmire of Vietnam is beginning to unravel and to bite into the Australian psyche and into Holt’s poll numbers.

The fledgling town of Exmouth is to be constructed some six kilometres south of the top-secret communications facility. The ‘Little America’ tag that is being applied to the base is not helping Holt politically as resentment to Australia’s involvement in Vietnam increases.

Privately, Holt wants there to be more assimilation by the Americans, and privately, he is not impressed by the full Americanisation, but for now he hides his thoughts. In Holt’s mind, the Vietnam conflict means honouring the ANZUS alliance, which is at the heart of Australian defence strategy. Australian foreign policy is grounded on the notion that the dominoes to the north cannot be allowed to fall.

A marquee has been set up to protect the dignitaries from the heat and the bright northern Australian light levels. They mill around beneath its protective cover. US officials, both military and corporate, join Australian public servants and their political masters in the mix, in what is a sea of self-congratulation and thinly disguised nepotism. All understand that events such as these are nexus points in the flow of money from the public purse to the private sector.

Harold Holt looks younger than his fifty-nine years and is an avid sportsman with scuba diving ranking high among his interests. There is much small talk as he is introduced to the members of the US military and to the corporate gatekeepers. They jockey for position and a chance to speak to him, armed with titbits about his likes to initiate conversation. Nothing is unrehearsed.

They stand about listening on as the prime minister is given an explanation of the importance of the base by a US naval officer in full dress uniform: ‘This station allows us to maintain contact with our submarines throughout South-East Asia and in the Indian Ocean.’ He points to the distant towers of the facility. ‘The towers are constructed to produce low-frequency signals that penetrate into the depths, allowing for submarine operations to continue without the need for the subs to surface, Mr Prime Minister.’ Holt listens as he sips on a cup of tea.

Holt had the advantage of being a former defence minister and he was well aware of the role of the station and the strategic importance of the site. He nodded his thanks and returned to talk to his advisors whose job it was to update him on the people who were pressing to meet him.

A male public servant in his mid-fifties from the American desk of the Department of Foreign Affairs whispered privately to Holt. ‘Over to your right, those are the key security contractors. They are also the successful tenderers for the Project Merino site south-west of Alice Springs.’

A third man, another of the prime minister’s advisors, added, ‘The older man is Kurt Homberg. He’s the electronics wizard, anything to do with telephony and he’s become the Americans’ go-to guy. The State Department’s pushing hard for his company Kronberg to expand their security work over here. I’d say he’s paid off, oops, sorry, has a relationship with every second congressman in the house.’

‘He’s the ex-Nazi?’ Holt asked.

‘That’s the man,’ the advisor replied.

Holt put down his cup of tea as the aide continued softly speaking to him: ‘Homberg started off in wiretapping. He worked for Goering, whom they say he knew quite well. MI6 grabbed him at the end of the war, and that’s where he made his reputation. He’s invented all types of equipment for the British to spy on the Russians. After that, the Brits took him under their wing before the Americans stole him for themselves.’

‘Is that the son?’ Holt asked.

‘Yes, Prime Minister, the cocky young man with him is his son, Joseph. They’re pushing for a private meet and greet,’ the advisor continued.

‘Are they still after the same thing?’ Holt asked.

‘Yes, it’s the same. They want an in with our electronics people, anyone who has anything to do with encryption in the security area. They say it’s logical as they’re already contracted to do the bulk of the work at Project Merino to keep its communications secure.’

‘Do we trust him?’ Holt asked.

The advisor continued, ‘My personal opinion is the Americans trust him too much. Trust as far as their military industrial complex goes means they trust him to make them money and then to share the largesse around. As you requested, we have a few of our intelligence people looking at them.’

Holt thought deeply. ‘I’ve been invited to a yacht to go out with them to the Ningaloo Reef and swim with the whale sharks. It will be very private and away from the cameras,’ Holt said, sounding unsure. ‘I know how these people work. It’s all about subtle inducements. They’ll test the waters of that, I’m sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if a young semi-naked woman wants to sit on my lap. The Hombergs have that reputation. It was the same when I was defence minister. When you’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars . . .’

‘My advice is to decline,’ the advisor continued. ‘One compromising photo and the press will have a field day.’

Holt laughed, ‘It would just add to the image.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m more afraid of Zara. As it stands, I’m supposed to have that face to face in an hour from now. These Hombergs are in the middle of tendering to most of NATO. It seems they