The Mandarin Code (32 page)

‘Level two,' a mechanical female voice announced when the lift arrived on the second floor.

The gallery was abuzz and Mathieson passed the boys from the
West Australian
slinking off home.

She walked the long corridor to the News bureau, arriving to find Dunkley under the pump. He barely lifted his gaze, stabbing at the computer, word after word after boring word.

‘Deadline, honey. Sorry.'

Oh great, I bust a gut to get this stuff and he's wrapped up in a ho-hum story.

‘Sure, no probs. I can wait. What's the story anyway?'

‘Harry, they need it now. Please.' The shrill voice of Leonie Willacy, the bureau's harried chief of staff, rang out.

‘Yeah, it's coming, give me a few mins, just got to tidy up something.'

‘Harry, don't mean to hassle but can you give me an ETA?'

‘Cel, sorry but I've got to write a comment after I finish the splash. Reckon I'm another hour; forty minutes, at least.'

‘Sure.' She touched his arm. ‘Well, could I just have a few minutes of your time to discuss you know what?'

He looked up, a felt-tip pen in his mouth.

‘Can't stop right now. I know I told you I'd be done and dusted by 7.30 but . . . well, Toohey's in deep trouble. His mental health bill is line ball. And they've called an all-nighter.'

He shrugged, hoping Celia would sympathise with his plight.

She wanted to, but didn't. She'd been so excited by her progress with the files and had been dying to share her find with Harry. She felt ridiculously disappointed and suddenly exhausted.

‘Oh Harry, for fuck's sake, I've spent the best part of today getting this stuff ready for you and you can't even spare me a few minutes . . .'

She threw an envelope on his desk.

‘I'll see myself out.'

‘Cel . . .'

No time for others. Takes me for granted. Christ, I'm sounding like Mum.

She was fuming as she strode out, as angry with herself as with Harry.

Close to tears, she was not in the mood to see anyone and headed towards the nearest lift.

‘Basement,' the female voice intoned.

Three floors down, she entered the bowels of Parliament. A pungent rotting smell was being driven by a cold air-conditioning draught.

These were unfamiliar surrounds. She needed to get her bearings. These tunnels must follow the building footprint. So turn right, and walk to a road flanking the western edge. Then down the length of the building and right again, back to Point One.

There was something unsettling about this part of the underworld. Many of the lights had been switched off and pools of darkness loomed over openings in the passageway, to both the right and left.

She paced one hundred metres down the corridor. It closed to nothing.

Bugger you, Harry Dunkley. I should have stayed out drinking.

She retraced her steps to the lift, and stopped.

Okay, you've done this before. I must hit a road that goes north. Soon.

Her pace quickened along a dim corridor, passing a row of odiferous bins.

A mechanical bang bounced off concrete walls. She stopped. The tick of a clock above. It was 7.38pm.

She looked around for any sign of life. Nothing.

Get a grip, Celia. Anyway, I've got my phone.

She checked. No reception.

Slowly, she started walking again, drifting to the centre of the corridor to avoid the dark alcoves and recesses. ‘No Entry' signs flanked her on either side.

Above her, a tangle of cables and pipes snaked along the ceiling, the arteries of the building.

An intersection loomed. East Terrace.

This is it.

The corridor was curved and dark. She couldn't see the end. Just a small green and white ‘Exit' sign in the distance. The lonely clip of her heels on concrete echoed eerily. She turned at the sound of a vehicle reversing, its mechanical beep amplified in the quiet, but saw nothing.

She turned back. Something was wrong. Two massive fire doors had swung shut, blocking her path. She reached for her phone. It showed ‘SOS only'.

A tingle of fear shivered through her.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed hard against the heavy metal barriers, forcing them open. Ahead, black shadows. Had she triggered an alarm? The exit sign was maybe seventy metres away. She had a choice: walk through the gloom or return again to the lift.

The globe above flickered, then darkness engulfed her.

Canberra

George Papadakis had a PhD in economics and knew every nuance of the market economy. A former Treasury boffin, he had a peerless understanding of the complex algorithms of the nation's finances. But when it came to the simple maths of counting parliamentary heads, Dr Papadakis was lost.

That job fell to Alberto ‘Burt' Crespo, Leader of the House and one of the best number-crunchers ever produced by Labor.

‘Jesus, Burt, there are only one hundred and fifty MPs, why is this so hard?' Papadakis was flustered.

‘Well, George, there aren't one hundred and fifty, for a start.' Crespo always carried a pad and was constantly making lists to keep track of the shifting sands of crossbench support. A pen was permanently lodged behind one ear.

‘Bailey has been out of the equation for twenty months,' he explained. ‘So that's one hundred and forty-nine. And since we bludgeoned the Tories into agreeing to pair her vote, the starting point is one hundred and forty-eight.'

Papadakis was determined to focus: the government's future relied on passing the mental health bills. Negotiations had stalled. In the last few hours Martin Toohey had declared that Parliament would sit until the bill was done.

Angry MPs had rescheduled their Thursday night flights home. Debate and procedural manoeuvring were raging in a House that would probably sit all night.

‘Okay.' Papadakis took a deep breath. ‘One more time from the beginning.'

‘We started this term with the Coalition and us locked on seventy-two votes each and there were six swinging votes on the crossbench: one Green and five independents.' Burt looked up from his pad and Papadakis nodded.

‘We got the support of the Green and three of the independents to get seventy-six votes and form government. But after that every other vote has been negotiated on a bill-by-bill basis.'

‘With you. Go on.' Papadakis knew that was the easy bit.

‘But we had to supply a Speaker, and he only votes when there is a tie. That's why we got a Coalition MP to rat and sit in the Chair. On any important tie, he always votes with us, but that's rare. On most bills, having him in the chair just strips one vote off them. So after that they had seventy-one to our seventy-two, with seven swinging votes.'

This was where Papadakis usually lost focus. Because behind each of these bland numbers was a long and usually painful story.

The deal to get the Speaker was a prime example. They'd been lumped with one of the most unsavoury MPs ever to park his arse on the green leather of the Lower House. Labor's chances of survival rose in Parliament but fell in the electorate.

‘George, are you with me?' Burt nagged.

‘Yep, yep. Continue.'

‘But then we lost Bailey. And the Coalition refused to pair her. For a while things were grim. But she whipped up public opinion and forced the Tories to grant her a pair. So on a good day we have our seventy-one, plus the Green, plus three independents. Which is seventy-five. And they usually get seventy-two when you add the independents who support them and subtract one to cover Bailey.'

‘Excellent.'

‘But then we lost Paxton to the crossbench.'

Papadakis rubbed his temples. Crespo was on a roll.

‘Actually, I think we'll get Bruce. He's a genuine left-winger and thinks mental health is a matter of social justice.'

‘That's great.' Papadakis's face brightened slightly.

‘The Greens on the other hand—'

Papadakis interrupted ‘—are extremist jihadists who are about as ready to compromise as Al Qaeda.'

‘Yep, if they don't get plain packaging of alcohol, their MP will vote against the bills.'

Crespo flicked through the pages of his pad and frowned. He was a brilliant parliamentary strategist and had managed to herd the Lower House cats so well that the government's legislative program rarely missed a beat. But this bill was proving harder than most.

‘But then there's the bad news.'

‘That last bit wasn't the bad news?'

‘No. All through that we still had the numbers. Right now, we have seventy-three at best, but so does the Coalition. Support from the crossbench is going to cost us. One of the independents is threatening to abstain and the others are shaky. George, the Speaker is wavering. His electorate's up in arms about the deficit and this is a big call on the public purse. And they hate the China deal. A tie means we lose.'

‘What about the rest of the crossbench menagerie?'

‘Well, George, that's where it gets complicated.'

Canberra

Harry Dunkley had been hammering the keyboard solidly since Question Time, knocking out a splash, an inside lead and a 40-centimetre comment.

He was buggered, famished and in need of a drink. Or three. Most importantly, he owed Celia an apology. Finally, he closed down his PC.

‘See ya tomorrow, Leonie. I'll be in early to monitor the vote in the House – can you make sure someone updates for online?'

Oh shit . . .

He'd nearly left the bureau when he remembered the envelope Celia had thrown on his desk.

It was lying under a notepad and recorder. He shoved it in his leather bag, reaching for his mobile to call his girlfriend, mentally rehearsing a well-worn apology.

Five rings and a familiar voice. ‘Hi. You know the drill. Leave a message for Celia. Bye.'

Bugger.

‘See ya Harry, which way d'ya reckon it'll go?'

Phil Coorey wore his usual look of mischief as he shuffled along the gallery corridor. The
Financial Review'
s chief newshound was tough competition and Dunkley wasn't in a sharing mood.

‘Don't know, mate. We'll find out tomorrow, I guess.'

‘Tomorrow? Too late Dunk. I've already called it. The government by one.'

Dunkley pushed the lift button, eager to escape Parliament after a twelve-hour shift. As the doors closed, he pulled out the envelope.

‘Notes from the Cloud' was written along the top of the first page.

He scanned the first few lines. It was mainly practical stuff, explaining how Celia had decrypted several megabytes of Kimberley's parting gift to the world.

Hey, that is interesting.

A roll call of former mandarins jumped off the page. Leaders of Australia's defence and security establishment, going back decades. The names of several former US Ambassadors, too.

All under the one heading.

The Alliance.

Three minutes later he was sitting in his four-wheel drive in the Senate carpark. He turned on the interior light to read the rest of the material. His hands told him he needed a Scotch.

Celia had done great work and Dunkley was keen to atone for his tardiness.

He started the LandCruiser and reached for his phone, hitting the ‘redial' button as he drove out into the night.

‘Hi. You know the . . .'

Celia, don't do this to me. I'm sorry.

He eased the Toyota around Parliament Drive and turned into Kings Avenue. He was five minutes from her apartment in Kingston, a nice place in the new Foreshore development that Daddy had bought. Celia had moved in when she'd returned to Canberra six months ago, ignoring her father's plea to move back home.

She'd given Harry a key to the place a few weeks back, when it appeared their relationship was becoming more than just lustful obsession.

He turned right at National Circuit, past the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet until he hit Brisbane Avenue. He veered towards the lake, flicking Celia's number again.