Chapter 16

It seemed everyone had a new job. The Defence Minister I had posed with was former Prime Minister, John Gorton. The former Defence Minister, Malcolm Fraser, had resigned on March 8^th. Gorton had resigned on March 10^th when he decided a tied party room vote wasn’t a vote of confidence in his leadership. Gorton and Fraser apparently had had a blazing row over Vietnam and Gorton’s constant interference in the defence portfolio. Fraser had spat the dummy and gone to the backbench only to be made Minister for Education and Science when Bill McMahon was chosen to replace Gorton. So, McMahon was the new Prime Minister and I was stuck in a new part of the JIO, promoted with a job that, well, I knew nothing about. Perhaps I was the player of the tiny triangle in Titanic’s orchestra as the deckchairs were being rearranged. I had wondered what had brought on Mum’s remark about ‘talking about politics’. I had been in Canberra when all this had happened but had been completely oblivious, but Mum and Dad had obviously been aware of it. Shows the difference that the age of a person makes and perhaps how little politics influences what a nineteen-year-old does.

I thought about the papers that Gorton had been reading and what his adviser had been consulting him on. One month after being dumped as Prime Minister and picking up the reins of a former minister who had been the cause of his downfall, Gorton was probably an angry man. It did however cause me to question why my recognition of his adviser’s voice had sent alarm bells ringing in the JIO. Of course, it may have been coincidence but the whole dumping of Gorton was due to issues in the Defence Department and Vietnam so there was a huge connection anyway.

What troubled me was that the JIO was I thought supposed to be investigating the issues within the defence force and other military forces overseas. But here I was listening to public servants, civilians who were involved in politics. I mean there were enough politics still going on between each of the branches of the military even though we were technically under the one umbrella at the JIO and supposed to share information. If we couldn’t get our own house in order how would we possible share stuff with ASIS and ASIO? See, I did actually read some of the stuff from higher up, that the director or someone else sent around.

I didn’t fully understand what ASIO and ASIS was, in particular the difference between the two. If I had met someone from either of these spy agencies then I didn’t know. Hmm… they must be good at their jobs. I sort of had them categorised as a Control type operation and the personnel like Agent 13, Maxwell Smart and Larabee without the sophisticated gadgetry. ASIO was in fact designed to spy on people in Australia and ASIS did much the same overseas. I had heard that there wasn’t a lot of talking between the two and a lot of contention about whose patch of turf was whose. In effect we had five intelligence services, the Army, the Navy, the Airforce, ASIO and ASIS all working separately, all not talking to each other and probably duplicating each other’s work. Hardly intelligent thinking really. Perhaps spies from each of these organisations were spying on each other and those spies were monitored by other spies and this went on exponentially. Well, the world could be going to rack and ruin but these people would be seen to be gainfully employed. I was becoming very quickly disillusioned with the JIO, Canberra and the army but you didn’t dare tell anyone or say it aloud in case anyone was eavesdropping. Instead I saw it all as somewhat of a farce. Perhaps I should have taken it a bit more seriously, but to tell the truth it evoked no interest.

There was no clock in the office so I couldn’t even watch my life slowly ebbing away, but I had found the toilets. Eventually I summoned up enough courage to ring my previous boss and ask who the hell the colonel was and could I have his number. This caused considerable confusion as at first Captain Adamson thought that I was kidding. Apparently, my new boss was quite high up and part of the inner circle. Adamson had been taken quite by surprise by the colonel’s action. In the end I got the colonel’s number and was put through to his secretary who tried to forestall any further enquiries with offers of a call back, a redirection to another officer or an appointment later the next week. As I looked around at the room which was about the size of a prison, and mentally would become one if there was nothing to do, I lost my cool and said to the secretary, “Your colonel asked me to come and work for him. If he can’t be bothered talking to me, I will find some other place to work. Tell him Second Lieutenant Downs said thanks but no thanks.” I slammed the phone down. You shouldn’t do that to a captain but I had issues with red tape.

The colonel was obviously used to bursting through doorways and coming in unannounced. I found out that his office wasn’t that far away based on the speed of his arrival. “Downs, what the fuck do you think you are doing?” he demanded.

The question was probably rhetorical but I answered it just as directly. “With all due deference, Colonel Atkinson, fuck all. I have been doing fuck all for a little over three hours now. If your idea is to isolate me because I was able to match a voice in public with one I heard on tape, you have succeeded for now. But you did say you thought this was an opportunity. I had hoped it was one for me as well. Instead I have managed to find the toilets, wipe the dust off the window ledge, count the fly spots on the inside of the door; there’s fifty-seven to be exact, and sit on my arse wondering what the fuck you want me to do. There weren’t even any paper clips to make a chain from. If this is what you want from me, frankly I would be much happier being down in the bowels of this place moving pieces of paper from one pile to another. By the way I’d offer you a chair but there isn’t one except the one I’m sitting on and I’m not giving that up.”

Colonel Atkinson probably wasn’t used to being spoken to by a subordinate like that but to his credit he stood there and took it. “Feisty little bastard, aren’t you?” he commented. This amused me as I towered over his five-foot seven body. I smiled. He must have guessed at what, because he added, “Well feisty big bastard really.” He too broke out in a grin.

“I think we will get on. This was not a test by the way. I was in a meeting, a special meeting, when I took the call from Captain Adamson. I had to deal with his issue and get back to the meeting. I am sorry you have been stuck here twiddling your thumbs. Sorry about the lack of paper clips too. Come to my office please and we will have a coffee. You probably haven’t eaten either, have you? Feisty and hungry. Bad combination. I will remember that. I will tell you what it is all about in my office.”

This time he waited and I led the way out of my office and we walked down the corridor to a room where his secretary was busy writing long hand in a diary. The anteroom to the colonel’s office, I was pleased to see, was no bigger than my own.

“Captain Jenkins, I will be talking with Lieutenant Downs for the next hour or so. Please make sure we are not disturbed. Lieutenant Downs hasn’t eaten either, so pop down to the kitchen and bring back some sandwiches and cake for him please.” The words were politely spoken but were definitely an order based on the reaction of Captain Jenkins whose eyes slitted defiantly at me as I followed Colonel Atkinson into a much larger office facing the War Memorial.

“Downs, I want you to listen to this and tell me what you think,” the colonel said as he handed me a portable cassette player. I reached over and pressed play. The sound quality was pretty poor and some of the voices were indistinct but I listened to it twice.

“I’d say that the wiretap was pretty poor and I feel sorry for the person who has to try to transcribe it,” I began, “There are at least six different voices I can make out but there may be more. I can only gather snippets of information and there’s not enough to go on without some context to the conversation, sir.”

“You can dispense with the sir part unless there is someone superior to me in the room or we are out in public. For anyone who has basically had the temerity to tell me quite rightly to ‘fuck off’, I am happy to dispense with protocol. This has not come from a wiretap as you probably have guessed because too many people are involved in the discussion and the sound recording isn’t that great. We planted a microphone in a meeting and this is what we were able to retrieve. I can’t tell you who was in the meeting and what the meeting was about, but I want you to listen to it a few more times and see what you can come up with. As good as our technicians are, they don’t have the ear for this sort of thing. I need to try to find out who said what, to whom and if possible, the tone of voice that was being used. By the latter I mean, whether it was being said as a command, said in anger, said trying to placate someone, said seeking a compromise or perhaps said in resignation or compliance. By the way this is extremely confidential and the tape and any discussion of its contents doesn’t leave this room. And no, it is not a test. I think this is something extremely important to the army.”

There was a discreet knock on the door and Captain Jenkins stood there holding a tray with sandwiches, cakes and coffee.

“Good man, Jenkins. Pour Lieutenant Downs his coffee and see we are left alone, would you.” Atkinson smiled pleasantly at his secretary who returned the smile as he begrudgingly poured me a coffee. As Jenkins handed it to me his smile disappeared and I feared the look I received may have curdled the milk.