Chapter 33

So much to think about. So much to ponder. My dad, who for years I had worshipped as a man of steel, a man of power and when I found out about his war history, a man of enormous courage and conviction; was suddenly no longer immortal and I could now see how the curse of mankind, age, had made huge inroads into what he could now do. It was humbling as I took off the rose-coloured glasses and saw him truly as he was for the first time. He had hidden it well for all our sakes. I’d seen so much and learnt so much in my last visit home that all of a sudden, I was now far more worldly wise, more mature and thinking like someone in their mid-thirties not beginning their twenties.

On the bus trip back to Townsville I planned and plotted a series of events and actions along the lines of Dad’s military solution. Know the enemy, its numbers, its weaponry, its command structure and search for weaknesses and places to infiltrate. I was already embedded with it but only as a convenience. By sheer coincidence I knew of three higher up personnel. I had a sense of what they wanted to achieve and that objective made their task most secretive, challenging and open to error by either: discovery, misinformation or carelessness. The latter was the least likely. These three appeared to be most careful indeed. One was known to ASIO and the other two dismissed, although my boss thanks to my cryptic message was probably going under some pretty severe scrutiny at the moment.

I had to forget what their overall plan was to the extent that it did little to give me any extra information. They were targeting the funding arrangements for Defence expenditure, seeking guarantee of funding. Whether that was to see that the Defence force wasn’t cut, didn’t matter. Nor did it matter if the sub-reason was that they had a finger in the pie of procurement. In Canberra most politicians had a finger in every pie so they weren’t on their Pat Malone there. As Dad had pointed out, whatever the reasons, their actions were unlawful at best and treasonable at worst. The secret of bringing them down was the same thing that would make them succeed. Information was the key and given my role at JIO I was privy to providing the right key for their locks. I had to be careful and give them enough correct information so as not to give myself away but also enough disinformation to help smoke them out and find out how far their force was spread.

Kilometres disappear very quickly when you have your mind on other things. One issue I did have which my father obviously didn’t in his time in the islands, was what to do with individuals I discovered who weren’t part of the core of command. Dad had a sniper rifle. I had nothing I thought. However, by the time I landed in Canberra I had my version of a take-out weapon. No blood would be spilled but these outliers as Dad had called them would find themselves isolated and useless to the command structure. I smiled inwardly as I strode across the tarmac. People watching me would have been surprised to see someone keen to arrive in Canberra and not desperate to get back on the plane and head anywhere else. My anywhere else was Croydon but I had a job to do first.

1972 was a wake-up year for me and it was also for Australia. When I returned to Canberra, things had already gone awry and there was a buzz around the place as if change was on the cards. On Australia Day as a protest, a tent embassy was set up on the lawns of parliament House to represent the plight of indigenous people as they felt they had no representation. It was their country and it was made out that it wasn’t. Second class citizens in all but voting rights and that privilege had only just come in. The tent embassy was a silent and at times not so silent protest and a demand that they be recognised. Called shit stirrers by some and heroes by others, these protesters had seen the protest movement overseas and the Vietnam protests here and how effective they were. The government couldn’t do a thing about it as legally you were allowed to camp on the lawns there.

I had watched the rise of Gough Whitlam as a charismatic leader who could charm the pants off anyone. Billy McMahon did not look or sound like a Prime Minister and his government became more and more disunited and unhappy. Ex-Prime Minister John Gorton dropped the classic line that if he ever said anything in line with government policy ‘it would be purely coincidental’. Change was in the wind in Canberra and across the nation. An election was going to happen during the year and unless there was some massive pork barrelling then Whitlam would surely win. The huge number of baby boomers with different agendas and outlook on life and now of voting age would sweep away a tired and out of date government. This was confirmed for me when my boss started me on analysing more and more Labor party conversations that had been recorded.

Although the answers to who was involved in the process of trying to manipulate future events were probably hidden in Colonel Atkinson’s safe, there was no way I was going to compromise myself and any possible preventative action by breaking into his office and ransacking his safe. He was a cunning bastard and probably had all sorts of surveillance in his office and his safe was possibly booby trapped. One thing that occurred to me was that it didn’t matter whether the information used to guarantee compliance, such as my book was in Colonel Atkinson’s safe as long as the people who were threatened believed it was. Somehow, I had to scope the range of people who were in the same boat as me. It turned out far easier than I expected.

I had always figured that Captain Jenkins, Atkinson’s secretary was of little use and consequence but I found he had one quite appealing and redeeming feature. Anal retentive as he was, he kept scrupulous notes on times, dates and often names of people who entered into his office and on to see the colonel. Very few actually came to see him and as I discovered ‘why would they?’ So, in effect, he had created something to fill his time in and he thought it a most significant and important piece of work. He hated my guts and was always trying to laud his superiority in rank only over me. By chance he caught me unawares as I was leaving Atkinson’s office with an envelope marked for filing in the dungeon. He sneered at me, “Downs, take this down with you to the dungeon as well. It goes into my special file. They will show you where.”

I wasn’t his lackey but my mind was elsewhere and I dutifully agreed and he handed over a binder which I tucked under my arm as I left. Whether my manners got the better of me or I was lost in thought, Jenkins had scored one over me I realised as I headed down the corridor. As I went down the lift with my two parcels, I took the time to glance through that ‘piece of work’s’ piece of work. There in front of me written in long hand in table form were the dates, names and even length of visit of all the people who had been in the office. In the second part of the binder were all the phone calls transferred through to the colonel or marked out of office when the colonel wasn’t around. I had struck gold.

I acknowledged my friend, the dungeon dweller, and explained that I had a file from Captain Jenkins to put away. There was a deriding remark about Jenkins that accompanied the directions to the secret cache. There on a shelf were a large number of binders and I added the one I had brought with me to the end.

“You know he sometimes comes down and admires the look of that shelf,” the voice over my shoulder called out. “Bloody moron if you ask me. Thinks that he’s some mastermind of the secret service. Bullshit if you ask me. He’s just some witless bored clerk who somehow made captain. All they are, are visitor and caller logs to his boss yet he treats them with such reverence. I hear he even buys those special leather covered binders himself.”

I took an old one down from the shelf. In the same long hand written in old fashioned pen and ink were similar details. I called back, “Just to stick it up him, do you mind if I look through these and take some notes. I am going to ask him to recall who was in the office on a particular day and see if his tiny little brain can remember it.”

“You’re a clever bastard, aren’t you? Look I’ll give you a hand. We can make a list of the most common callers and the dates and that’ll make it harder for him.”

We pulled folders down and quickly made up lists. All the while my companion sniggered. Deep down, I too sniggered. Not only had I found the gold but I had found someone who had volunteered to dig it up for me. I expressed my concern that I would need to take the notes with me as I couldn’t remember them all. I added that I shouldn’t be taking out of the dungeon stuff that I wasn’t authorised to take. I was quickly informed that I was merely taking a summary not the documents themselves, besides who would know and more importantly who would care?

We spent over two hours collating the information and when I left what I now viewed as an Aladdin’s cave of treasures, I silently muttered the words, “Open Sesame” to the lift doors. I had my list of possible people involved with the colonel. I had a way of extracting some vengeance too on Captain Jenkins, that horrible prick. As the lift rose, I now had the beginnings of a plan forming to separate those on the fringe from those in the inner circle, and all because some smarmy little desk jockey needed to have his ego stroked. Small price to pay really.