Fishing for Stars (77 page)

‘I know, so I told him about the oil.’

I feigned ignorance. ‘What oil?’

Marg switched to her intelligence-officer-briefing voice. ‘That’s one of the major reasons Australia stood by and watched East Timor being crushed. The Timor Sea has huge oil and natural gas deposits. The Indonesians wanted Timor’s oil and because the boundary between Australia and East Timor isn’t settled they offered to be generous in the ongoing negotiations, giving us a much larger slice of the oil reserves. In return Australia would keep quiet and not make a fuss if they annexed East Timor.’

‘Oil? Are you sure?’ I asked, shocked that she knew.

‘Yes.’

‘How the hell do you know all this? Let me guess, your friend in Canberra, Roger Rigby.’

‘Nick, I’m not at liberty to say,’ Marg said crisply.

‘But why would he do that? He’d be charged under the
Official Secrets Act
, they’d put him in jail and throw away the key. Worse still, he’d lose his pension.’

‘I didn’t say it was him. But it’s all going to blow up and the government can’t do a thing to stop it.’

‘And that’s why Roger told you? How? How is it going to blow up?’ I asked, suddenly fearful for Anna.

‘Nick, I didn’t say it was him. Apparently somebody who was at Shoal Bay, the radio intercept post near Darwin, during the invasion of East Timor is about to die of cancer and he wants to clear his conscience. He knows the game and how to play it and has a set of the transcripts of the intelligence intercepts that show the Australian governments have been lying through their teeth about East Timor. He’s released details to Reuters and other international media organisations. The cat has been let out of the bag, or if you’ll excuse the French, as my contact put it, “We can’t put the shit back in the goose this time.” He was only telling me what the whole world is about to find out.’

I tried to gather my thoughts. I needed to know if Marg had any more details. ‘Hang on, so what? The conspiracy, if it’s about oil, is between us and Indonesia. What’s that got to do with Anna?’

‘I didn’t say the exposure was
only
about the government’s grubby oil deal; all I said was that I told Peter Yeldham about the split-up of the oil in Australia’s favour. As a matter of fact he had heard rumours for years and wasn’t that excited about it. There’s no hard evidence the media can get onto and both governments simply deny, deny, deny.’

‘So, what’s the exposure about if it isn’t
only
about the oil?’

‘It’s what I hinted to you last time we talked. It’s about Major General Budi Til. Australian intelligence overheard the Indonesian army planning the murder of the Balibo Five. He’s the general who formulated it and issued the orders to kill them all. They did it to cover up the Indonesian army’s invasion of the area around Balibo. He was also implicated in the death, a little later in Dili, of Roger East, the Australian correspondent.’

‘You mean we knew
before
the murders happened?’

‘Yes, despite denying it for nine years, the Australian Government knew precisely what happened to the five journalists. They knew when, where and by whose command, before it took place! The Indonesian army heard from their Timorese sympathisers that there were five journalists in the village, the army radioed for instructions and Major General Budi Til instructed the nearest army unit to go in and assassinate them.’

‘Jesus!’ This was something I didn’t know. Anna was even closer to being in big trouble.

Marg was still in intelligence-officer mode. ‘As you possibly know from your own time in radio intelligence with the marines and elsewhere, the last thing you want your opponent to know is that you have the capacity to eavesdrop on their top-secret conversations. From the end of the war until 1977 Canberra didn’t even allow any reference in the press to the existence of what’s now the Defence Signals Directorate.’

‘Where Roger is the director?’

Marg gave an audible sigh. ‘Yes, Nick. I’ve told you that previously. Now, please stop probing for my source. You’re insulting my intelligence.’

‘And so the government was prepared to wash its hands of the five journalists to keep this knowledge from Indonesia?’

‘Nick, you should know that will always be the case – “for the greater good” and all that twaddle.’

‘Do you know any more about Budi . . . er, Major General Til?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes. Major General Budi is also the commander of a counter-intelligence unit that has been responsible for the torture and killing of eighty-two Timorese resistance fighters and the wholesale slaughter of civilians in reprisal raids by units of the Indonesian army under his command. The Indonesians won’t release him to an international tribunal to face charges, of course, but if he’d been a German or a Japanese general in 1945 he would certainly have been hanged.’

‘And Anna is his partner in several business enterprises, so it’s guilt by association? Is this the basis of your threat – that if she doesn’t give up the timber concessions you’ll reveal the relationship between her and the man responsible for the murder of the Balibo Five?’ I asked pointedly. Then, not waiting for her to answer, I let her have it. ‘Marg, Anna is one tough cookie. She won’t like the news about her business partner, but it won’t make her back off.
She
isn’t guilty of war crimes! It’s bad for Budi Til, but it’s not necessarily a disaster for Anna. You may be certain she’ll call your bluff.’

Marge laughed. ‘Nick, I saved the best for last. This vile little murderer was rewarded for his deeds with a small part of the future oil and natural gas concessions and Anna is a fifty per cent partner! My contact says when it comes into production their part alone will be worth billions and so Anna will be shown to be a direct beneficiary of murder and genocide in East Timor.’

My heart sank. Marg knew. ‘Holy shit! Is this all going to be released? Anna is a part of the exposure?’

‘No, Anna’s involvement is not known . . . yet. It was told to me separately by my contact. Now, you tell her, Nick, that she has one week. Seven days! I believe the exposure of Major General Budi Til will break in the next couple of days. You tell Princess Plunder that if the timber concessions she holds are not left intact as habitat for the orangutan, and I mean every inch of it, I tell Peter Yeldham and he prints the pictures and the story about Australia’s richest self-made woman and how she goes about her business! It’s a story that’s bound to be syndicated throughout the world.’

‘Marg, you wouldn’t. You’d destroy not only Anna, but all three of us.’

‘Watch me, Nick. I don’t give a shit about Anna and the oil, but I do about the great apes. It’s got to stop somewhere and if I don’t do it, it will be on my conscience until I die. I’m not going to stand by and allow these gorgeous creatures to become extinct, which at the present rate will happen by the year 2015! If it destroys our relationship, and God knows I love you, Nick, I have to take that chance! Now, if you don’t mind, it’s past my bedtime.’

So, of course, I had another Scotch and then another and followed it up with a near sleepless night. I decided I had no choice. I was going to have to confront Anna in the morning and stand by while the excrement hit the rapidly rotating blades, as they say in the classics.

The following morning – the usual tropical extravaganza, various shades of blue with a sharp bite of green between sea and sky – I waited until after breakfast, which consisted of a single slice of dry toast and a glass of orange juice for Anna, then suggested, ‘Darling, it’s a beautiful day. Why don’t we take
Madam Butterfly
and sail to Coffee Scald? I’ll get Cook to pack a cold chicken, a salad and a bottle of chilled wine for lunch, shall I?’

‘Wine? God no, Nicholas! Tell her a bottle of soda water and a packet of crackers for me. I must be getting old – my head feels as though it’s been inside a voodoo drum all night.’

‘Take it easy, have a couple of hours in the hammock under the big old native fig in the garden. It’s dark and cool under the canopy. What say we leave about eleven-thirty? There’s a nice following breeze this time of the year – we’ll get there about one-thirty. You’re bound to feel a little better by then,’ I said optimistically. ‘Nothing like a bit of a breeze and the open sea for a hangover.’

At one-thirty when we arrived at Coffee Scald it was hot as hell and I rigged a beach umbrella while Anna laid out lunch on a blanket, then we went for a swim. Strangely she wore a bikini top, but not the pants, which was unusual because we usually swam in the nuddy and Anna wasn’t exactly big breasted. If she was becoming self-conscious of her breasts drooping I certainly hadn’t noticed; as far as I was concerned, at fifty-eight she still had the figure of a young woman, although she was just a tad too thin. We dressed in shorts and T-shirts by which time Anna pronounced herself hungry and headache free.

‘Eat a good lunch, darling, you need to put on a kilo or two,’ I observed. ‘I could see your ribs clearly as we were swimming.’

Anna laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Nicholas, a woman can never be too rich or too thin. I guess I’ve been travelling and working a bit too much lately. There’s a world shortage of high-quality long-fibre cotton and I was in Egypt last week trying to negotiate supplies. The cotton merchants were giving me the run-around. Egyptian men still see women as a cross between a mule, a cook and a begetter of sons; they have few rights and are sent packing if they have the misfortune to bear more than one girl child. Budi usually does the trip but he couldn’t go on this occasion; some urgent government business cropped up. The Egyptians respect him as a fellow Muslim and a general to boot. With my attitude towards men, misogynists in particular, it’s been a difficult few days.’

Anna sat cross-legged on the blanket. She reached forward and tore off a chicken leg and helped herself to salad and a cold roast potato left over from last night’s scarcely touched roast, placing the plate in her lap and eating hungrily but still somehow elegantly with her fingers. I poured her a glass of chablis and she placed it beyond the edge of the blanket, digging the base and stem slightly into the dry sand.

‘Anna, I’m glad you brought up Budi. There’s something I need to say.’

‘Oh dear. About last night – too much champagne, too little discretion.’

‘Not at all, I was honoured that you chose to tell me.’

‘Nicholas, I’ve always wanted to. I don’t share much with you that’s business, but lately I’ve been conscious that perhaps, as the person I love the most in the world, you really ought to know a little more about what’s going on. I’m not sorry about last night.’

‘Anna, please don’t. The problem I have at the moment is that I know rather too much of what’s going on in your life. Perhaps even more than you do. Last night helped clear up several things in my mind and it’s the primary reason we’re here.’

‘Oh? What can you possibly mean?’ Anna, holding the chicken leg poised, grinned. ‘I hope you’re not going to try and kidnap me again?’ She’d played it for a laugh but suddenly noticed my expression. ‘What’s wrong, Nicholas?’ she asked, her expression now serious.

‘Darling, I think you’re going to be involved in a spot of serious trouble that concerns you and Budi. I’m afraid I have to break our agreement. The information comes from Marg.’

‘The Green Bitch? It can’t be good news,’ Anna said, frowning.

‘It isn’t. But first you should know where I stand. I’ve made my position clear to you on more than one occasion.’

Anna said quickly, ‘Nicholas, there’s no way —’

‘Please, Anna, just hear me out without interrupting, then you can decide for yourself what to do,’ I pleaded.

Anna put down her plate and reached for the glass of wine, lifting it to her mouth and taking a small sip. ‘Go ahead, I’m listening.’

I spent the next twenty minutes outlining the situation to Anna, ending with Marg’s ultimatum and then saying, ‘I realise you’re caught between a rock and a hard place, darling, but if your oil and gas partnership with Budi comes out there’ll be no endgame for you. The media are going to hang you out to dry. But there’s worse.’ I reached into the back of the picnic basket for a plastic bag, broke it open and withdrew a large manila envelope. I handed her the picture of the five beheaded apes. ‘Peter Yeldham is syndicated throughout the world. If this photograph gets out, and Marg says she has more, it’s all over for you, Anna.’

Anna wiped her hands and took the photograph. Moments later, while her expression didn’t change, her hand started to shake. Then her eyes filled and a single tear escaped and ran down her cheek. I shall never know whether the tears that followed were out of compassion or rage. She handed back the photograph. ‘The bitch! She wouldn’t hesitate, would she!’ she spat.

‘No, Marg is a zealot. She doesn’t make threats unless she intends to carry them out. She feels very strongly about the great apes. The oil information, your sharing it with Budi, is also well founded. It very likely comes from Roger Rigby, who was with her in Naval Intelligence during the war and now heads the Defence Signals Directorate in Canberra. It’s kosher all right.’

Anna sniffed and knuckled away the tears. ‘Where did she get that photograph?’

‘Peter Yeldham.’

‘Nick, she’s trying to make a fool of me. If the photograph comes from Yeldham, then he obviously possesses the negatives. If we comply with Marg’s wishes and in return she doesn’t tell him about our oil and gas deal then Yeldham still has a good story, though a different one. He simply goes ahead and prints the photographs and I’m well and truly discredited. Not perhaps as badly as I would be over the oil deal, but I’m total mud in the media from then on.’