Who bombed the Hilton? (14 page)

But right now, the investigation is still fresh and Norm is otherwise absorbed. He is drawn away from
the chaotic rapids of the intelligence coming in from crazies and eager beavers and moves towards the steady, heady stream of compelling intelligence pulling him back towards certain members of the Ananda Marga.

The Bangkok Three

I imagine that there will be a certain point in the future when the past can no longer be researched physically. That time when things are simply collated in digital formats and live in the ether like fairies. When everything is stored somewhere, undeciphered and unedited, in vast underground storehouses in Utah or the like. There won't be things that sit in boxes for years unattended and unloved waiting to be discovered. Historians or researchers of the future perhaps won't be able to feel the rush of undoing the linen ties that enclose a stack of primary sources that suddenly spring open yielding pages that you can leaf through with your lint-free gloves. Part of the whole experience is the time it takes to discriminate and decide which page is significant, which you will take notes on, which will be set aside.

It's much the same way Norm has to function
each time the indefatigable detectives on his task force present the daily intelligence on the Hilton bombing to their boss. He is understandably alert to any mention of the Ananda Marga, given what he has learnt about their alleged violence in 1977 and given the coalescence of violent acts internationally surrounding the 13 February bombing in Sydney. So when a neat hand-written letter from a Ms or Mr AB pointing to a member of the sect as being good for the bombing is sent up the line to Norm, he does not downplay it as he did the Hare Krishna scenario sketched out by Richard Seary.

The letter is written entirely in capital letters.
¹

The helpful AB states that ‘I HAVE SEEN HIM MAKING EXPERIMENTAL BOMBS FOR PARTICULAR MISSIONS', that ‘JACK IS AN ELECTRICIAN BY TRADE' and that if they need more information about plans for further attacks ‘MAYBE HIS WIFE CAN HELP AS I KNOW SHE LIVES IN FEAR'.

AB signs off with:

I really feel for policemen involved in major criminal investigations when I read things like this. Why the cloak and dagger? If you know something, why not just front up with the evidence? Make a statement? Be prepared to stand up in court? Their hearts must sink. Is it credible? What text should they place in the
personal columns? ‘Seeking AB who blew my mind on 16 Feb. I'd love to find out more about you and your interesting friends. Can we meet? CIBXXX …'

Still, coy as this letter is, it is a tip-off that cannot be ignored given the unnerving alarm bells it sounds. No other tip-off, anonymous or otherwise, has made reference to potential future attacks. Sheather assigns detectives to investigate.
²

At the same time he steps up the focus on the alleged violent acts by the Ananda Marga reported in Manila, West Germany and Bangkok immediately before and after the Sydney bombing. The two US-born Margiis arrested in the Manila knife attack on 7 February, and the three Margiis arrested in Thailand on 15 February (two Australians, and one American), are loudly proclaiming that they have been framed by the police forces in those countries.
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Not claiming foul play are Lakesh and Didi Uma, aka Helmut Klein Schmidt and Erica Rupert, who on 8 February, six days after Sarkar's appeal is denied, ‘sacrificed themselves by fire in protest against continued incarceration of Baba, world hunger and as a reprisal for the arrest of sect members in London'.
⁴
These London sect members — Anthony Niall Kidd, Susan Waring and Brian Shaw, caught and arrested on 1 November at the tail end of the 1977 wave of violence against Indian nationals — are about to stand trial in the UK.

Sheather's list of confirmed members of the Ananda Marga caught red-handed in acts of extreme violence (which includes the Australian Margii John William Duff, accused of attempted abduction and stabbing the military attaché at the Indian High Commission in Canberra) is growing and he and the team turn their gaze outside Australia to see if they can begin to connect these scattered sect members. There are broad similarities between them. They are all Western. They are all under 32 years of age. Each separate group always has a mix of genders. Never just all women or all men. Why? Does it make them less noticeable? Just hippie couples, hippie friends wandering around. Perhaps that makes it hard to assume that such a group is about to stab someone, blow something up or indeed set themselves on fire. If the Ananda Marga is responsible for the Hilton, was a similar modus operandi used? Are they looking for male and female suspects?

Driving Norm forward is the vital evidence that has just arrived at headquarters: a copy of Abhiik Kumar's passport. It's like someone had just hauled the Rosetta stone up the stairs and left it in the middle of the floor — ‘There you go lads, mystery solved.' While whoever filed the copy in the Hilton archive took pains to black out the origins of this wondrous document, it's pretty obviously from one of the ASIO agents embedded in the sect. It's a pretty nifty piece of spy work too — it can't be that easy to filch a sect
leader's passport, take photographs of its many pages, then smuggle it out of sect headquarters and get it to your contact so they can send it to the Hilton task force. All I know for certain from the running sheets is that this operation took place between 8 pm on Thursday 16 February, three days after the bombing, and 8.30 the next morning.
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It must have been pretty scary. Imagine you're an ASIO operative embedded in a sect trying to worm your way up to the leader. Now you have to get hold of his passport without being seen, bearing in mind that the Margii headquarters in Newtown where both leader and said passport reside is a densely populated communal living space seething with paranoia. Remember Tim Anderson claimed in the Margii press conference the day after the blast that they believed the sect had already been infiltrated by ASIO. Adding to the tense atmosphere is the fact that the Newtown residence had been searched by Breaking Squad police on the night of 14 February. The Margiis must have been as twitchy as cats on a windy day.

I suppose the above could be fanciful speculation on my part and the passport could have simply been copied by a diligent Customs officer the day Kumar arrived back in Sydney just prior to the bombing, and then passed on to the Hilton task force. It's the assertion by the redacted author in the running sheets that it was obtained via an operation that occurred over the
course of a Thursday night that makes me think it was obtained through covert means.

Whatever its origins, there it is on the morning of 17 February — 13 photocopied pages of the passport of the spiritual leader of the Ananda Marga in Australasia. Well, in actual fact, 13 photocopied pages of one of Kumar's many passports. He had one for each of his many names. This one is for Jason Holman Alexander, not Jon Hoffman or Michael Brandon or any of the others he is known to use.

Norm gets to see him close up for the first time, staring out of that square photograph. Thick blackframed glasses, bushy Ned Kelly beard, ‘1.80 m in height, brown eyes, brown hair. Born in Hartford on 21.11.49'. This makes him 28 years old.

The pages of this passport provide Norm Sheather with a fascinating if partial insight to where Kumar has actually been in the last eight months. While the notes accompanying the copied passport make it clear that certain of the entries cannot be deciphered owing to illegibility — for example, ‘Page 7 bears five stamps of which only one is readable as follows: PERMITTED TO LAND SANTACRUZ AIRPORT BOMBAY DATE 22.9.77' — what it does reveal is illuminating. Where has Kumar been over the last eight months? Well, where hasn't he been.

Between the first legible entry of 8 June 1977 when he enters the USA, and the last on 8 February
1978 when he arrives in Kuala Lumpur, a period of exactly eight months, the team can identify stamps that have Abhiik Kumar entering or exiting 25 international airports or ports that include London, Sweden, Nepal, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Bombay, the USA and Felixstowe Port. This has to be put in context with the stamps that are illegible — which add up to a total of 18 unreadable entries that potentially almost double his activities. This would have him entering or exiting an international port on average every six days. This of course is only what
this
passport shows. It is more than possible that Kumar is using other passports under his other names.

This is something that the Margiis have always been upfront about. They often asserted that they changed their names and passports with such frequency in order to avoid harassment from various authorities. Given that Kumar aka Jason Holman Alexander changed his name from Jon Hoffman in 1977 but is also known at this point to use the names Mark Randall and Stephen James Manly, and is using a passport in the name of Michael Brandon by early 1978, he could well have used these passports in parallel with the one in the name of Alexander. Further evidence that it is possible he was travelling under a different name/s and passport/s is the large gaps in time and sudden leaps from continent to continent. There are no legible stamps at all for August 1977. He
either stays in London for almost 11 weeks between his arrival on 8 July and his arrival in Bombay on 22 September — which seems a long time for our itchy-footed sect leader — or there are travels that can't be deciphered. Similarly, Kumar leaves Nepal on 24 September for destination unknown. There are then no legible stamps until he suddenly arrives in Sweden two and a half weeks later on 11 October.

So what? So the man is busy, he likes to travel — what does it prove? What can Norm actually tie to those readable dates and places? Quite a few things, actually. Kumar is in London at the time Margiis Kidd, Waring and Shaw are arrested for the attempted murder of the Indian ambassador. He is in India a few weeks before Sarkar's appeal is denied. He is in Bangkok eight days before Margiis Spark, Jones and Child are arrested in possession of explosives. He is back in Sydney the day before the Hilton.

While you can't prove anything exactly, what you can do is start to paint a picture in broad strokes. You can say, for example, that during those eight months Kumar was hopping around the globe, there is a record of him travelling to nearly every single country — the exceptions being Afghanistan and Canada — where there was a threat, an attack or a Margii arrest for violence against an Indian national. Bad timing? A coincidence?

Norm begins to drill down and sends two Special
Branch detectives assigned to the task force, Helson and Watson, to have a conference with the Indian vice-consul, Mr Alagh, at midday on 17 February. He asks Mr Alagh to forward a confidential message to India requesting information on Indian terrorists, the Ananda Marga, and the type of explosive devices used by same. The message reads as follows:

Next, Norm turns his attention to the three Ananda Marga members arrested in Bangkok. While initially the proximity between the Bangkok arrest of Australians Spark and Jones, along with the American Sarah Child, and the Hilton bombing seems meaningful, it is swiftly established that neither Jones nor Spark has been in Australia for almost four years. It is true they all had tickets to Australia in their possession, however they were unable to get on a flight.
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While Jones and Spark have been away for years, travelling in parts unknown, Norm is able to at least glean some
information about who these young people are from their families in Australia.

What Norm and the team also learn is that the Thai police have credible information placing Abhiik Kumar with Spark, Child and Jones in Bangkok five days before their arrests. The Thais further suggest that Kumar is involved in the purchase of the explosives the trio are caught with.
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It is the parents of Timothy Jones who provide a potent if heartbreaking etch-a-sketch of the closedoff universe these young men and women inhabit. The report of the interview with Timothy's parents, conducted the day after their son, Spark and Child are arrested in Bangkok, is incredibly poignant.
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Timothy's father is ‘a chartered accountant [who with his wife] resides in an upper class area of Kew'. The telex sent to Norm begins, somewhat surprisingly: