A Time of Secrets (49 page)

‘Havens can easily become prisons.’

‘Only if you go there to hide. I’m going there to be with Eric – once this war is over.’

His breathing had become fast, as if he’d been running. ‘Stella, you’re the only thing in my life that makes any sense. I know you’re attracted to me . . . well, I adore you. I’ve never –’ He rubbed his forehead, in an unconscious gesture of pain. ‘Please, Stella, just give me a chance.’

I had no idea how to reply, because I knew he was right; I was attracted to him. And it was more than simply physical attraction. Together we’d have passion and genuine friendship. It wasn’t enough.

Shaking my head, I mumbled, ‘Nick, I can’t –’

The misery in his eyes was hauntingly real. ‘I’m drowning. I’m back in the river, but I can’t make it to shore this time. Not without you.’

I felt as if I was being torn into pieces, very slowly.

Eventually I said, ‘I’m your friend, Nick. Always. But I can’t be anything more. I love Eric.’

He twisted away from me, hiding his face. He breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. When he turned back to me he was composed. ‘If you find it hard to forget what happened that night, if you get nightmares, fears . . . if you just want to talk – about anything – come to me. I’ll always try to help you, Stella.’

‘As a psychologist? Or as a friend?’

He looked straight into my eyes. ‘As whatever you want. Always.’

‘As a friend, then.’ I attempted a smile.

A little while later, Eric and Rob Sinclair arrived at the flat. Soon after that, we were all sipping tea and munching Brockhoff’s Morning Coffee biscuits.

Rob Sinclair sat quietly at one end of the couch, looking harmless and a little owl-like. But when he glanced up at me, I saw the flash of ruthless intelligence in his blue eyes. Like Nick Ross, Sinclair would be often underestimated. I suspected that was exactly what he wanted.

Ross reached over to pick up a biscuit, saw me looking at him, and smiled. He’d reverted to his usual insouciant attitude and it was as if our talk on the balcony had never occurred. I firmly believed that Nick Ross and I were better as friends than lovers. I hoped he’d accept that in time.

I looked last at Eric, who was sprawled back in his chair. He seemed entirely at ease, yet I knew that he could turn in an instant into the expert fighter he was, though he was adamant it would not define him. When he turned his head and smiled at me my breath seemed to catch in my chest. I realised then that my breath always would catch when Eric smiled at me.

I turned to Sinclair.

‘Are you allowed to tell us anything?’ I asked.

‘Ask me the question and I’ll let you know,’ he replied.

‘How is Sam de Groot?’

‘He’s dead.’

I gasped. Sam had clearly been very badly injured, but he was dead already?

Sinclair went on. ‘He died ten months ago in Japanese custody.’

I scowled at him. ‘I meant the man we knew as Sam de Groot. Did he survive? What’s his condition?’

Sinclair smiled, and pushed his glasses further up his nose. ‘Next question.’

‘We’ll never know,’ said Ross. ‘It’s as if the man we knew as Sam de Groot never existed. They’ve made up some excuse to cover the fact that he’s left APLO. Forget about him.’

‘What is happening about Cole’s murder?’ I asked.

‘All charges against Eric have been dropped.’

I considered what else I wanted to know, looked at Sinclair and began. ‘Where was the false de Groot before he came to APLO?’

‘Special Operations Australia.’

I gasped. ‘He was in SOA?’

‘Yes. They’re furious at the deception. They’re blaming the Netherlands East Indies Forces Intelligence Service.’

‘Lieutenant Commander Boon won’t be happy.’

‘He’s blaming the Coast Watch Organisation.’

‘Who are they blaming?’

‘Secret Intelligence Australia.’

‘And they’re blaming . . .?’

‘The Americans.’

I laughed. ‘And the buck stops there. Not that it’s amusing in the slightest. Do we know why Cole didn’t work out what was happening with Destro?’

‘Arrogance, wilful blindness,’ said Ross.

‘To give him his due,’ said Sinclair, ‘it seems likely that he never saw the communication from Perth. We’ve been informed that – let’s call him de Groot, shall we?’

‘Let’s,’ murmured Ross. ‘And let’s assume that he’s been intensively interrogated, despite being seriously injured.’

Sinclair went on as if Ross hadn’t spoken. ‘We’ve been informed that de Groot stole the communication from Cole’s desk before he saw it.’

‘Perth never followed it up, though,’ said Ross. ‘There are too many jealously guarded secrets and reputations to be made in the Allied Intelligence Bureau. Hopefully this whole fiasco will be a wake-up call.’

I thought it was unlikely.

‘We also know that de Groot killed the Malay prisoner,’ said Sinclair.

‘What?’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘Turns out he knew the real de Groot. The false one couldn’t risk it.’

‘How did he kill him?’

‘Slipped poison into his mouth when he and the guard first manhandled him into the interrogation room. The prisoner was agitated because he feared de Groot and that’s why he fought them.’

‘But he vomited up the poison.’

Sinclair nodded. ‘So, when de Groot went to help him he –’

I broke in excitedly. ‘I know what happened. He put his fingers into the prisoner’s mouth. I thought it was to help him breathe, but he was feeding him more poison, wasn’t he?’

‘Correct. We’ve now learned that de Groot’s been using the empty flat for his transmissions since he arrived in Melbourne in late June.’

‘By the way,’ said Ross, ‘Allott has reported in from Timor. He hid himself and watched what happened when we made a drop of supplies to Destro. Bill Ellis came out under Japanese guard. Poor chap looked pretty bad, apparently. So Destro is now officially recorded as compromised. We won’t be sending any missions to Timor for a while.’

Eric wasn’t going to Timor. I smiled.

‘Why was Cole there, in the laneway behind the flats?’ I asked. ‘On the night he was killed?’

‘We’re not sure. Perhaps he’d started to suspect de Groot. He may have been following him back to the empty flat when de Groot saw him, confronted him and killed him. De Groot’s denying the murder – says he found the body and just moved it – but we don’t believe him.’

‘Cole may have been on his way to attack Stella again,’ said Eric. ‘That’s what I think.’

‘I think so, too,’ said Ross.

‘So de Groot wheeled the body away to divert police attention from Avoca and the wireless transmitter?’ I said, trying not to imagine how much Cole must have hated me.

‘Yes,’ said Sinclair.

I looked out the window. Ross was right about Melbourne weather. The beautiful day had clouded over and a light rain was now falling. Would this winter ever end?

*

Three days after de Groot had been captured I was tipping the used tea leaves into the geraniums when Lawrie Smith came out of Violet’s back door onto the landing. He was carrying his duffle bag.

‘You’re off, then,’ I said. ‘Back to the war?’

‘G’day, Stella. Yeah, I’m shipping out today. Won’t miss Melbourne. Too cold, too wet and too many bad memories.’

‘How’s Violet?’

His face darkened. ‘She’s hanging on, but it doesn’t look good. Doctors don’t think she’ll make it and we’re all preparing for the worst.’

‘Oh, Lawrie, I am sorry. It’s been a long, heartbreaking couple of weeks for you and your parents.’

He put the duffle bag down and reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. ‘Thanks for trying to warn me about that bastard, Cole. You know, he bashed Violet and left her for dead. How could you do that to someone you said you loved?’ He lit his cigarette and shouldered his duffle bag. ‘I heard he attacked you, too.’

‘Yes, he did,’ I said slowly.

Lawrie’s eyes narrowed, and he took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘I reckon mongrels like that are as much the enemy as the Japs. Good luck, Stella. You stick with the staff. He’s a top bloke.’

His boots clattered as he descended the wooden stairs. He strode purposefully across the backyard to the gap in the fence that led to the back lane. In a minute he was out of sight.

I stood on the landing, watching the gap in the fence, gripping the teapot with both hands, mouth slightly open. How did Lawrie know that Cole had left Violet for dead that night? My mind worked furiously. Violet came out of her coma briefly on Monday. Cole was murdered on Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.

Behind me the back door opened and Eric appeared.

‘Heard voices,’ he said.

‘It was Lawrie Smith. He’s shipping out today, returning to the Pacific front.’

Eric took the teapot out of my hands. ‘Good man, Lawrie Smith,’ he said. ‘Tough. Does what has to be done, but he doesn’t enjoy it. Cool-headed in a crisis, too.’

*

Later that afternoon Eric came to Goodwood to take me to dinner and then dancing at Leggett’s, where we’d first met. It was still light when I emerged at five o’clock to find him waiting on the porch. I took his arm in mine and leaned into him, feeling the hard muscles under the rough woollen fabric of his khaki tunic as we walked towards the gate. The puddles on the path were pools of blue, glinting in the late sunshine. A light breeze ruffled my hair.

‘Everything okay?’ he asked.

‘Tickety-boo,’ I replied.

He turned to me, eyebrow raised. ‘Tickety-boo?’ he repeated, deadpan. He put on a fake upper-crust English accent. ‘That’s simply wizard, old girl.’

I laughed. ‘Go bag your head.’

‘We’ll make an Aussie of you yet,’ he said, smiling.

Two jeeps full of Americans slowed down to a walking pace beside us on Toorak Road. The GIs called to me, entreating me to dump the sap I was with and go out with them. In response, Eric pulled me into a passionate kiss. The GIs whistled and made ribald comments before the jeeps roared off. When Eric released me, I caught the scent of flowers in the air.

Spring was coming at last to Melbourne.

Author’s note

APLO is modelled on a branch of the Allied Intelligence Bureau known as the Far Eastern Liaison Office, or FELO, whose Melbourne headquarters were in a mansion on Toorak Road, South Yarra, known as Goodrest.

The Destro mission is based on a disastrous Australian intelligence operation codenamed Lagarto, which was an operation of the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD), not FELO. The circumstances are much as I’ve set them out in the novel, except that the Lagarto party landed in Timor in July 1943 and was captured by the Japanese army in September 1943. The farce didn’t end until July 1945, after a code-intercept station in Perth became convinced that the Lagarto wireless operator was sending under duress. This was made known through unspecified ‘unofficial’ channels, just in time to prevent the men in yet another intelligence mission from parachuting into Timor to certain capture or death.

A report into the debacle found: ‘The Lagarto operation has no redeeming feature . . . To this failure can be ascribed the wretched deaths of 9 Australians, some Portuguese and scores of loyal natives. Even the Japanese must have despised the gross inefficiency and criminal negligence with which it was conducted.’

The last message received by Australia, ostensibly from Lagarto, was on 12 August 1945. It read:
Thanks for your assistance for this long while. Hope to see you again. Until then wish you good health. Nippon Army
.

Further reading

‘A Small South Pole’,
Studies in Intelligence
, Central Intelligence Agency, vol 4, issue 4.

Kate Darian-Smith,
On the Home Front: Melbourne in wartime: 1939–1945
, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 1990.

John Laffin,
Special and Secret
, Time Life (Australia), 1990.

Joanna Penglase and David Horner,
When the War Came to Australia: memories of the Second World War
, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992.

Alan Powell,
War by Stealth: Australians and the Allied Intelligence Bureau 1942–1945
, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, 1996.

www.ozatwar.com/sigint/sigint.htm

trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/ (This marvellous site allows you to read the newspapers of 1943.)

Acknowledgements

As always, this novel would not have been written without the support, assistance and research skills of my wonderful husband, Toby.

My thanks go to the following, for their friendship and encouragement: the ‘coffee girls’, Felicity, Ilse and Maureen; SSO friends, especially Carolyn, Giselle, John Y, Sue Le S, Sue P and Sheila; also Jenks and David for military information; my nieces, Jessamy (and now little Nell), Susannah and Esther; Bevan, Mark and Vaughn; and all my wonderful ‘steps’, Em, Lucy (and Jacob, Olive and Sunday) and Nigel. And to my cousin, Bernard, who sent me his vivid recollection of seeing US navy men misbehave on a tram, which I used practically verbatim.