14 March 1973
Marin Katich sat, stripped to the waist, on a delicate little bench in front of a dressing table, an incongruous figure even to his own eyes. A line of high-wattage globes above the mirror, as one might find in an actor’s dressing-room, illuminated the landscape of his torso, coloured in fading shades of green, blue, purple and mauve, as variegated as live coral. Three weeks after the beating he’d taken at Khandalah, he was now slowly healing.
He surveyed his arms and upper body, which had been covered in multiple contusions, welts, lacerations and scratches. He probed at the two fractured ribs, wincing at the sharp pain. They were, miraculously, the only broken bones; he would strap them back up before he left the house. All that damage he could cover up with clothes.
The real problem was his face. At least the swelling had subsided. He consulted the written instructions that had been left for him before applying foundation cream to conceal the discolouration. As he stared into the mirror he had the odd sense of sitting in front of a stranger, and he scowled, bearing his teeth, to make sure the reflection followed suit.
He picked up a powder puff and examined the delicate object with a grim smile, turning it over and over in his fingers, before applying a layer of powder to his face. Each time he closed his eyes his mind threw up flash frames, a gruesome slideshow of the explosion of violence on the river.
Faint with pain and exhaustion in its aftermath, he had wanted to sink into the warm sand on the riverbank and sleep, but he knew he had to stay on his feet. The Yugoslavs would inevitably send others to find out what had happened to their team. It was no longer an option to remain at Khandalah.
He dragged Bob’s body across the sand and hid it in thick brush. Then he rinsed his filthy clothes, put them on wet and motored back upstream. At the main house he used a razorblade to make incisions in the lumps around his eyes and drained blood away to reduce the swelling. He washed his wounds and poured iodine into them, clenching his teeth at the acid burn. He took codeine for the pain and benzedrine to keep himself going.
It was dark when he returned to the river, but he managed to locate the two bodies. He wrapped the corpses in old tarps, weighted them with rocks and tied them into tight packages with rope and steel chains. He hauled his burdens into the tinny and motored downstream in the moonlight to Twofold Bay.
The bay was calm. He pushed on out as far as he dared into the steady swell of the ocean and then rolled the bodies over the side without ceremony.
Marin heard a noise outside. He moved stiffly to the window and pulled down a slat in the venetian blinds. Outside was a neat patch of lawn, a well-tended garden with a few shade trees. Beyond the trees was a typically quiet suburban Canberra street. It was a sunny morning, a few scattered clouds in a blue sky. A dog was barking. Birds twittered politely.
He let go of the blinds and backed away from the window. He went into the pink-tiled ensuite bathroom, emptied his bladder and bent to scrutinise the bowl. He had passed blood from his bruised kidneys for weeks, but his urine was clear now.
He went to the kitchen and made himself a bowl of Rice Bubbles. He poured milk from a bottle so cold it sweated with condensation. As he began to eat, the cereal box sat in front of him like a frozen TV screen. He stared at the clownish elves—Snap, Crackle and Pop—until a rush of memories stopped his spoon mid-air:
Petar in his school uniform, ear to the bowl, listening for the promised sounds … Their mother moving towards Marin with the milk bottle, straight from the fridge as he always demanded … There was a dark smudge around one of her eyes … The shadow of his father behind her …
Marin pushed the bowl aside and brushed tears from his cheeks. He busied himself making a pot of coffee and set it above a low flame on the stove. While the water heated, he walked into the dining room. His rifle and cleaning gear sat on the long table. He had spread out an old newspaper beneath it to protect the lacquered surface. He had kept the paper’s front page separate; he now picked it up and reread the main story, with its startling headline and equally surprising by-line.
Friday March 2 1973, the Herald
Ustasha’s World HQ in Australia
Murphy to tell Senate
From ANNA ROSEN, our Security Correspondent.
Canberra – Australia is the world headquarters of Croatian terrorism, according to the Attorney-General, Senator Murphy. Senator Murphy will table documents seized by Commonwealth Police revealing evidence of Croatian extremists training in Australia before being sent to Yugoslavia as guerrilla fighters. The documents are part of a statement on Croatian terrorism the attorney-general is planning to make in the Senate next week. He will also claim that the extremists have been engaged in intimidation, terrorism and other acts of violence against other Yugoslavs in Australia …
Anna was here in Canberra—perhaps only a few miles away! Security correspondent? How strange.
Marin knew that Murphy had targeted his father. So had Anna, for that matter. What did she know? Had she been drawn here to witness his final act? Perhaps she was here to talk to his conscience, to remind him of what he was and what he might have been. He had often thought about how he would explain himself to her. Anna was bound into his fate in ways she would never know.
As Marin had come to understand it, fate existed beyond individual will. It was remorseless and it was random. It allowed some lucky people just to pass by; but others were seized by its talons and never let loose. He was sure now—absolutely sure—that his own choices were dictated by forces beyond his control. He had once thought himself free as a bird, but, as the meanest Croatian peasant could tell you, there is a hawk above every bird.
Marin took his coffee into the backyard, sat at the round wrought-iron table and smoked a cigarette. The hot sun felt good on his bare chest. He took out a map of the city and looked again at the locations he had marked. There was one, in particular, that he was keen to visit. If he was right, it was a potential firing platform fifty metres high. He calculated it was about nine hundred metres from the target; beyond the safe range, they would imagine.
He leaned back and closed his eyes. The sun’s burning disc was imprinted on his eyelids. He thought of days on the beach with Petar, when the only thing you’d had to think about was how hot you had to be before you ran down and threw yourself back into the waves. He dozed off for a moment and, when he opened his eyes, Petar was gone.
He went inside, bound up his fractured ribs and got dressed. He put on sunglasses and a floppy hat and checked himself in the mirror. He went back to the dining room and covered the rifle with a blanket. He picked up the car keys, pocketed the small camera and a handful of cottonwool balls, took the binoculars in their brown leather case and left the house, closing the door quietly.