The Twentieth Man

Inspector Harry Harper was in his Canberra office reading a memo from the Foreign Affairs officer whose job it was to liaise with the Yugoslavian Embassy. The Yugoslavian prime minister, Dzemal Bijedic, was due to visit the country in ten days’ time, and his advance team had just flown in from Belgrade. No sooner had they hit the ground than they were demanding answers to a long list of questions. The questions were remarkably specific, revealing a detailed knowledge of Croat nationalist organisations in Australia and of individuals who could pose a threat to their prime minister. Harper was impressed. If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect they’d been riffling through his intelligence files.

However, he wasn’t especially surprised. The Yugoslavs ran their own agents in Australia and had succeeded, to Harper’s sure knowledge, in infiltrating some of the extremist groups, which was a damn sight more than ASIO had managed. So, good on them—and full marks for being clever dicks. But now they wanted assurances that all the people on their list of suspects were under strict surveillance. It was a punishingly long list. He’d have to set up a meeting with the annoying buggers and bring Wal Price along to reassure them.

The most disturbing aspect was that the memo had come from out of the blue. The Yugos had been talking to his team about security arrangements for their PM for a long time and, until now, he’d thought they were satisfied. What had suddenly gotten their knickers in a knot?

Harper was pondering this when his senior research officer, Al Sharp, came rushing through the door looking unusually stern. He was carrying a bundle of papers. He closed the door behind him and lowered himself into the chair on the other side of the desk.

Sharp took a deep breath. ‘I’ve just been given evidence of a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Bijedic.’

Harper knew Kelly well. He was still in command of the NSW Special Breaking Squad, which had still not found the Town Hall Bomber. Ordinarily Kelly would not be passing on intelligence directly to an officer at Sharp’s level, but Harper had sent Sharp to Sydney to work with Kelly on the bombings. They had a special connection.

‘Well, I should tell you first that he’s in a bit of a lather about giving this to us; he’s sticking his neck out.’ Sharp sounded anxious. ‘I need to tell you that what he’s got, what he’s given us, comes from an illegal surveillance operation. Jim’s our only source for this product. He wants a guarantee we’ll treat it as confidential.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Harper bluntly. ‘But Jim’s a good copper. I’ve got no interest in burning him.’

‘Right. Well, you know the pressure the Breaking Squad was under to get quick results after the Sydney bombs. Their tactic was to lift up every rock and stamp on whatever crawled out. There are blokes in that squad who’d happily fit up the first Croat who looked at them sideways. Kelly reined them in and put a major surveillance operation in place. They used my stuff. I gave them lists and contacts and meeting places for every key figure in the old Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood. They didn’t bother with warrants. Laughed at me when I questioned it. Just went straight at it. Wiretaps, bugs, the lot.’

Harper was not surprised. ‘I warned you they operate on the edge. Those blokes don’t fuck around.’

‘I’m sure that’s how the KGB feels when they’re listening to you fart in bed.’

Sharp bit his lip. ‘I know. I feel bad. I should have given you a full debriefing on this. Kelly turned me from virgin to whore in a couple of days. We were desperate to get the bombers. But the product we got was mostly rubbish. The targets aren’t stupid. They know not to say anything on phones.’

Harper was growing impatient with the backstory. ‘So spit it out. What’s Kelly given us?’

‘I’m getting to that, but I reckon you need to know the background. The upshot of it all was that I had solid intel that the core Croat leaders have a secret meeting place in a restaurant in the middle of the city, the Hrvatska, in Elizabeth Street. The informant told me the food’s so bad you’d never eat there. The meeting room’s upstairs, noisy as hell and hard to wire up, but the technical team did a hell of a job. They managed to get a device inside a television set. Since then they’ve been listening in on every suspicious gathering.

‘That’s where this comes from. After all this time they’ve finally come up trumps. Three baddies were in the room, key people. Kelly says there’s a lot of background noise, but the TV was off at least. They’ve got these blokes on tape plotting to assassinate Prime Minister Bijedic when he comes here. And even worse, there’s threatening talk about Whitlam.’

Sharp held up a curling sheet of paper he had ripped off the telex and passed it over.

Top Secret/ To Compol Intel.

Eyes Only: Sharp, A. Harper, H.

‘Hrvatska Restoran’ meeting. Targets ‘T’, ‘B’ and ‘A’

Recording Date: 23.2.73.

Time: 21.35

Translated transcript segment follows:

T: What about Bijedic?

B: We’re putting people in place now. We can’t let this opportunity pass.

A: Agreed.

B: The Bosniak cunt … (inaudible) … with Tito from the beginning. He’s a fucking traitor to his people and to his religion.

A: Bijedic is an atheist. He has no religion.

B: He was born a Muslim. He’s from Mostar … (inaudible) … recruited him at Belgrade University.

A: That nest of red vipers.

B: They should all be exterminated, every fucking graduate.

T: Bijedic is doing us a favour by coming here … (inaudible).

B: That’s right. That’s right … his big mistake. Our friends in Europe got Rolovic. They’re looking to us now.

T: This will be our moment in history … (inaudible).

A: Don’t measure a wolf’s tail until he is dead. First, we must agree on the method … (inaudible) … Whitlam will be next to him.

T: There’s another socialist cunt. I know people who would give us a medal.

A: Don’t be a fool.

T: Who are you calling a fool? Whitlam deserves what he (inaudible) …

A: (inaudible) … it has to be clean.

B: We need to look … (inaudible) … one man at distance … (inaudible).

A: God willing, we will show the world how it’s done.

B: No details here, understood.

T: You’ll need our help, the network …

B: I told you. No details! Even here.

T: (inaudible section).

NB: One word was identified here. The translator believes it to be cvrčak, which would translate as ‘cicada’ or ‘the cicada’.

Harper felt a nervous griping in his belly as he read, already calculating the series of moves he would have to make. ‘Is that all there is?’ he asked, both hands holding the telex down, as if it might fly off his desk.

‘That’s the key part. Kelly has sent a copy of the full transcript to Compol in Sydney. They’re sending it in a secure bag this afternoon.’

Harper stared at the top of the page, ran a hand through his hair in agitation. ‘Look at the date! This was recorded on 23 February. That’s more than two fucking weeks ago.’

‘I don’t know exactly what happened, but it seems that the boss of the Electronics Unit sat on it,’ said Sharp. ‘He was terrified about being prosecuted by Murphy. I told you they were doing illegal operations all over the city. This only reached Kelly’s desk late yesterday. I think the translator got wind of what was happening and sent it directly to him.’

‘Fuck, I just can’t believe it!’ Harper exclaimed. ‘They’ve had a three-week head start on us. Who knows how far they’ve got with this.’

‘First thing’s first,’ said Harper, returning to his usual methodical style. ‘Who are these bastards? Who’s talking?’

Sharp consulted his notes. ‘Okay. B, the one who seems to be the main organiser, is Vlado Bilobrk. He was another wartime Ustasha. Came here in ’51 and became 2IC to Ivo Katich in the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood. We had him under surveillance last year.’

Sharp passed Harper a photograph of a large man coming out of a car-repair shop, late middle age but built hard, like an old rugby league player, his scarred face set in a scowl.

‘We know he’s still close to Katich. Very close, but they never meet in public anymore. Haven’t been seen together since the Brotherhood was broken up.’

‘I don’t have any doubt about that. In Mafia terms, Bilobrk would be his consigliore. Something as big as this can only have been authorised by Katich. That reference to “our friends in Europe”—that’s the global Ustasha leadership. Katich is the one who talks to them.’

‘T is Tomic, Darko Tomic, that is. He’s younger but a fanatic, an organiser of HM—which is the Croatian Youth movement. No pictures of him yet. Kelly will send some. The third man, A, is Viktor Artukovic; he’s HM too, but he’s no “youth”, that’s for sure. Like Bilobrk, he’s an older bloke.’

Sharp handed Harper another photo. It was of a lean, white-haired man, whose heavily lined face had a querulous expression that made him look like someone’s favourite uncle.

‘Artukovic was absorbed into HM when we broke up the Brotherhood. These connections confirm our intelligence. The Brotherhood is still running the show, using different organisations as fronts and recruiting a new generation. We suspected all along that they’d maintained some form of central control.’

Harper shook his head. ‘The way they speak, it’s so matter-of-fact. What do you make of this mention of Rolovic?’ He looked back down at the transcript and pointed it out to Sharp. ‘Here, look: “Our friends in Europe got Rolovic.”’

‘Well, that’s the name of the Yugoslav ambassador to Sweden who was assassinated in his own embassy, isn’t it?’

Harper was well aware of the details. In 1971, a two-man Ustasha team smuggled weapons into the Yugoslavian Embassy in Stockholm. Ambassador Vladimir Rolovic was their target; as a former head of UDBA, he’d been responsible for actions against Croat nationalists. After putting a gun in his mouth and shooting him at the end of a long siege at the embassy, the Ustasha team surrendered to police.

‘There was also a hijacking of a Scandinavian Airlines jet in September,’ continued Harper. ‘Ultimately the Swedes caved in to the terrorists’ demands and released Rolovic’s killers.’

Harper nodded. ‘That’s right. At the time we thought the attacks were probably coordinated. A bloke from Swedish intelligence contacted me back then to see if we could help them. That was when you were in Sydney with the Breaking Squad. Sven Schustrum was his name, the head of their national intelligence service. Looks like there’s some kind of link between our little group of plotters and the people who killed Rolovic. This Bilobrk fellow might just be a big-noter, but we have to assume the worst.’

‘What do you make of this reference to “the cicada”?’ he asked. ‘Ring any bells?’

Harper shook his head. ‘None at all. Obviously in that context it looks like a codename.’

‘It’s not conclusive, but look at the way Bilobrk shuts him down. It’s sensitive. He really doesn’t want anyone talking about it, even in their safe meeting place. It’s extremely worrying. We need to get hold of the original recording and get our technical people on to it. See if they can get more out of it.’

‘That’s going to be difficult, Harry. You should speak to Jim Kelly yourself. He might respond to rank.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Harper said, making another note on a list that was quickly getting longer.

Sharp watched the inspector gather his thoughts. He respected this about Harper. There was no bluster. He took his time to sum up the complex problems, and then responded decisively.

‘Instinctively, I want to haul these three bastards in and sweat them,’ said Harper. ‘We may have to do that at some point, but we’ve got two problems. Without warrants, the fucking tape is inadmissible and, even if it was, they’ve been careful enough to make sure that their comments are ambiguous. That’s the legal position. But as a piece of pure intelligence, it’s clear to me that this is not just a group of lunatics frothing at the mouth. These men are sitting in a quiet room talking cold-bloodedly about assassinating a visiting prime minister. They seem to have concrete plans. The mention of Whitlam suggests the threat could extend to him.’

‘I agree,’ said Sharp. ‘And the most worrying thing is that they’ve had weeks to develop those plans.’

‘So we have to move fast,’ said Harper, reeling off the orders he’d been compiling. ‘The first job is yours, Al. I want you to work up a new threat assessment on the Bijedic visit. Pull in Wally Price and whoever else you need from the team.

‘I want whatever you can pull together on the three plotters. I want them all under strict 24-hour surveillance as of now. Run this codename “cicada” past everyone. See if it rings any bells.

‘And Al, I need all this done in the next few hours. That’s all the time I can give you. When the threat assessment is done, I’ll take it directly to the commissioner. It’ll be up to him to alert the government. We’ve either got to get on top of this now or stop Bijedic from coming here.’

Sharp hesitated. ‘I can do that, boss, but how do we describe the source of this intelligence? Kelly almost had a rebellion when he told his team he was giving us the transcript. Some of them were ready to sit on this, just to protect their arses. I got to know Jim pretty well. He’s trusting me.’

‘In a nutshell. Kelly says that under no circumstances are we to let Lionel Murphy know that this came from a listening device. They know Murphy’s got a big stick up his arse about that. He’ll demand to know who approved the warrants, and we know that no one did.’

‘Kelly’s right to be worried,’ said Harper thoughtfully. ‘Murphy sees the state police forces as the enemy. They’ve been wiretapping him and his mates for decades, and he knows it. So … yes, it’s tricky.’

‘This is all going to end up on Murphy’s desk,’ said Harper. ‘Best you don’t go into the legal question in the Threat Assessment. Anyway, bugging a room is not the same as an illegal wiretap. Tainted or not, we’ve got credible intelligence of an assassination plot. It’d be criminal not to act on it.’

‘They studied law together a thousand years ago. I don’t believe he’s in Murphy’s pocket. Anyway, we need his backing. This is going to be a huge operation.’