The Marmalade Files (21 page)

YOU GOOSE!

Sydney's
Daily Telegraph
liked to start the morning screaming, preferably at someone it hated.

Alongside the massive headline was a picture of Greens leader Randal Wade looking suitably foolish and startled, snapped opening the front door of his Point Piper mansion in his animal-patterned pyjamas.

The three paragraphs below the enormous headline went straight for the jugular.

The tabloid had detailed information linking Wade to the illegal importation and consumption of
foie gras
, including credit card bills, email trails and logs of phone calls. Someone clearly had access to private details that were very hard to get. The
Tele
pointed out that Wade had initially denied the story but, presented with the wealth of detail, had directed the paper to his lawyer. The lawyer had tried and failed to get an injunction preventing the story from being published.

The revelation was a double blow for Wade because in February the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service had slapped an indefinite ban on the importation of poached and semi-cooked
foie gras
due to an outbreak of Newcastle Disease in France.

So not only was Wade morally culpable in the eyes of his peers, he had deliberately broken the law. And as an AQIS source pointed out, Wade's selfishness was a direct threat to the environment.

‘We didn't ban this stuff because it was the food of choice for wankers,' the senior source said. ‘Newcastle Disease is highly contagious. It could devastate Australia's avian industry and kill native birds by the hundreds of thousands. This guy is a selfish, dangerous clown. And a criminal.'

In several inside pages the
Tele
took Wade apart. There was a novice's guide to the horrors of
foie gras
. It detailed how ducks and
geese are caged and force-fed several times a day – a mechanical feeder stuffed down their throats as a mixture of corn and oil is pumped into their stomachs. This blows up their livers to ten times their normal size, which is where the words
foie gras
come from, meaning, literally, fat liver.

After establishing the cruelty of the food, the
Tele
reprinted Wade's
Q&A
declaration that he was to become a vegan in the name of animal rights.

Finally, it detailed the cost of Wade's food perversion. Five hundred grams of poached whole goose
foie gras
retailed for $300. And it was usually eaten with champagne or a sweet wine like Sauternes or Monbazillac. An investigation of Wade's bin had unearthed an empty bottle of 1998 vintage Krug Champagne, which retails for $379. Also discovered was the butt of a Cohiba Espléndidos cigar, retailing for $83. The
Tele
's total for one pre-dinner splurge was $762, a figure it said could feed a Mt Druitt family of four for more than a fortnight.

It was devastating.

Sam Buharia forensically examined the paper to ensure there was not a single fingerprint on it that could lead back to him.

No. Job done. A perfect crime. And the cunt wouldn't see the week out.

It was one of Canberra's finest days, the crystal-cut clarity of the sky guaranteed to lift your spirits from the depths of winter. Unfortunately for Ben Gordon, he was locked in the confines of Defence's most secure facility and felt only the artificial climate of recycled air and harsh neon lighting. Adding to Gordon's grey mood, his ambitious boss had placed a series of files on his desk with firm instructions. ‘I need answers by COB.'

Usually such an edict would be enough to stimulate his analytical brain into trying to solve whatever problem had been placed before him. But today he couldn't keep his mind on the job. Instead he was captivated by the unfolding mystery surrounding the pasts of Bruce Paxton and Catriona Bailey, pasts that, he was sure, were about to explode into the present.

And today there had been a significant development. Even Gordon's colleagues were intrigued by a smallish article buried in the world pages of the
New York Times
, quoting senior Pentagon
sources who, according to the
Times
, were miffed by reports that Australia was about to pull back on the flagship Joint Strike Fighter program. One quote, in particular, stood out. ‘A number of recent decisions by Minister Paxton raise the question of his commitment to ANZUS.'

In diplomatic terms, it was a definite shot across the bow. It was rare for US sources to be directly critical of a close ally like Australia. Something big was going on. He didn't know what it was, but Gordon was now sure that he and Dunkley were close to the epicentre.

It reminded him of the blunt message the Americans had sent in the lead-up to the dismissal of Gough Whitlam in November 1975. The head of the CIA had told his Australian counterpart that the US wanted Whitlam gone. Gordon was no raving leftie, but he could still recall his outrage and anger when, as a novice in the intelligence arena, he had first been alerted to the CIA's involvement in the Dismissal.

Why wasn't this on the history syllabus? Surely the Australian people were not so supine as to completely ignore this shameful episode?

For a while, Gordon had become obsessed with the issue, particularly after reading of the show trial of Christopher Boyce, the American who was sentenced to forty years imprisonment after being convicted of spying in 1977.

Boyce had learned that Pine Gap – the communications facility located in the Northern Territory that America had promoted as a joint facility with Australia – was in reality a CIA project. Incredibly, Boyce – whose misadventures were later turned into
a film,
The Falcon and the Snowman
– claimed to have CIA cables outlining plans to dispose of the Whitlam Government for fear that it would close Pine Gap. The CIA was profoundly concerned by Whitlam's socialism and his wooing of China.

Eventually arrested for leaking information to Russia, Boyce was thrown into jail and never given the chance to explain why the US would betray one of its closest allies.

Gordon had studied the case carefully and considered it the most egregious act of interference by a foreign government in Australia's sovereign affairs. He could almost recite word for word Whitlam's lament to Parliament after the Dismissal: ‘It is precisely because America is our principal ally that Australia must be satisfied that American agents are not acting in a manner contrary to our interests as a nation. Are we to let an ally get away with something that a rival would not be allowed to get away with? Alliances are not strengthened by covert operations or by condoning or covering up such covert operations.'

They were masterful and prescient words and they came flooding back as Gordon contemplated what he'd uncovered in the past few weeks – and what he suspected still remained hidden in the vault of secrecy.

Despite every keystroke at DSD being logged, Gordon was so enraged at the thought that the Americans were meddling in domestic politics – again – that his usual caution had cracked. He'd spent the last few hours trawling through the DSD's super computers looking for clues, but had sought to cover his tracks by embedding his searches within existing DSD projects.

When the end of the working day loomed, Gordon snapped back into official mode. He sent his boss a quick email promising he'd deliver the answers she wanted first thing in the morning.

For now he had more pressing matters to deal with.

 

Late that evening, logging on to his personal email account at home, Gordon hit the keyboard with a ferocity that surprised him, tapping out a few sentences to his friend.

He hit send, watching the email disappear into the ether, before closing down the computer for the night. It was late and he was planning an early start tomorrow.

 

A few kilometres away, in a small brightly lit room, two men carefully monitored their PC screens. Just after 11 p.m., they logged a short email.

Elizabeth Scott gazed at the ocean and breathed in a long draught of the chill salt air. The moon hung full and low, skimming light over the waves as they rolled towards Manly.

The crazies will be out tonight, she mused, sending me mad messages. Immediately, she tried to erase the image from her mind. She needed to think clearly and not about one of the thousand pieces of ephemera that crowded political life. No one, except those who had done the job, could ever imagine it. The workload was crushing, relentless and largely thankless. Constituents, local branch members, businesses, donors, colleagues, the media – everyone wanted a piece of you. No, everyone demanded it. And believed your time was theirs by right.

If they didn't get what they wanted the threats were never far away: ‘Won't vote for you', ‘Will challenge your pre-selection', ‘Will tell the media' – or the new narcissism: ‘Will write about it on Twitter'.

Scott was used to high-pressure jobs but found politics suffocating. You could never lash out in public, no matter how rudely you were treated, or how idiotic the complaint. The mask was always on, and it chafed. She feared that one day she would forget how to remove it.

She could still be herself on this porch, looking out to sea, when the rest of the family was asleep. She had loved this house from the moment she saw the ocean. There were more expensive houses in her electorate of Warringah, with panoramic water views towards the city. But Scott was drawn to the top of Bower Street, nestled between the sea and North Head National Park.

The ocean was her escape. In moments of despair she could feel her spirits rise as she was drawn into the uncluttered vastness of it.

She took another sip of red wine and lit another cigarette: something else she kept from the world in this absurd, censorious age. She had smoked since her senior years at Abbotsleigh – it was her one vice and she wasn't about to give it up, so she hid it. As she hid so many things.

‘Why am I doing this to myself?' It was not the first time she'd asked the question but, right now, the answer was more remote than ever. She had given up her freedom to be locked in the spotlight of the most thankless job in public life: Opposition leader.

From day one, everyone had questioned her motives.

‘Only wants to be PM,' was the default assessment. She'd been branded selfish, power-mad, dictatorial, heartless, politically inept and uncaring by people who knew nothing about her. She
barely bothered to read opinion pieces any more, so rote had the abuse become. And the cartoons. From the moment she stepped into politics she had been drawn wearing a tiara, with a silver spoon in her mouth, or dressed in a ballgown. That she had largely made her own wealth never seemed to matter. She came into public life as a spoiled rich girl cliché and she feared she'd never shake the image.

Yes, she was ambitious and that was never going to be sated in business. She was a nationalist and believed fiercely that Australia wasn't a lucky country. It had made its own luck and that luck would run out without good leadership. She had ideas and knew she could make a difference, if she ever got the chance.

But now that chance, like the night tide, was ebbing. Scott had made so many compromises that even she began to wonder if what people said about her was true: that there was nothing she wouldn't do to get to the Lodge.

And when she got there what would be left? A shell, echoing a cacophony of conflicting voices she had mimicked to talk her way to power.

She recalled one of the lines from her favourite play,
A Man for All Seasons
, where, in a debate between William Roper and Thomas More, Roper says he would cut down every law in England to get at the Devil.

‘Oh?' said More. ‘And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?'

In her six years in politics she had only met one person who really understood the terrifying dilemma of trying to balance
conviction with the pursuit of power. He recognised something of himself in her, understood her conflicts, and knew she was a good person. Different from him, but good. It mattered so much to her that someone knew.

And the connection had been so strong it frightened her. But she couldn't talk to him anymore. Politics was killing all the things that she loved. She wondered if it would kill her. That, one day, she would sit on the porch, looking out to sea, and not be able to remember who she was.