Sensitive New Age Spy (22 page)

‘Adamek Island. You can see why the whalers chose it. The whales came to them. All they had to do was row out and harpoon the poor buggers while they were cruising past.’

Ed explained that the Tasmanian whaling industry had boomed for forty years in the 1800s, until the development of kerosene wiped out the market for whale oil as a lamp fuel. Adamek Island, being isolated and difficult to access in bad weather, was one of the first stations to close down. A lighthouse had been built in 1869 and the keepers and their families had been the only human inhabitants of
the windswept rocky outcrop for the next hundred years.

The lighthouse was the first structure we saw as we motored towards the island. It seemed to be flashing as we got closer, even though it was a bright sunny day. Ed focused his binoculars and grunted.

‘They’ve got radar mounted on top of the lighthouse. They already know we’re here, mate. Take a look.’

The rotating radar dish was clearly visible through the binoculars. One edge of the metal dish was catching the sun on each rotation, hence the flashing.

Ed took the boat round the southern end of the island, keeping about a kilometre offshore. The entrance to the main harbour faced south and was just a narrow gap in the rock face. Barely 250 metres wide, even on a calm day it looked menacing.

‘Christ,’ Ed said, throttling the engines back slightly, ‘I wouldn’t fancy going in or out of that with even a mild swell running. Imagine doing it under sail, or in a whaleboat using oars. Get a decent sea up, and some wind, and you’d have better odds playing Russian roulette.’

He put the engines back to full revs and we skirted the bottom of the island and headed north. The drop-off and pick-up point was the small inlet Lucas had pointed out, and Ed figured that if we kept well in to the shore we’d be under the radar for the drop-off. Then the plan was he’d take the
Suzie-QC
back towards Hobart, as if he’d just done a leisurely cruise around the island, and heave to over the
horizon to wait for my signal.

Once I had the information I needed and was ready to leave, I’d activate a homing device and disable the radar dish, so Ed could cruise back in and pick me up undetected. It seemed a simple enough plan – but I think that may have been what Custer said before he rode into the Little Big Horn.

I changed into black jeans, a black hoodie and my hiking boots. On the rear deck of the
Suzie-QC
was a spray jacket, a two-way radio, a flare pistol and a lifejacket. I gave Ed the receiver linked to the homing device under my belt buckle, and he gave me a quick refresher on handling the inflatable. He was reluctant to leave me, but I promised to keep out of trouble and to have the Zodiac back in the garage by midnight with a full tank of petrol and no scratches on it.

I’m not sure he was convinced, and frankly neither was I. Who knew what the hell I was going to run into on that lump of rock, apart from Artemesia Gaarg, Pergo, the choirboys, and a couple of nukes. The MP7 was wrapped up tight in plastic inside its holster and as I strapped it on I hoped I’d brought enough ammo.

I half jumped, half fell into the Zodiac from the stern of the
Suzie-QC
and Ed started laughing. I hate rubber boats. He was still laughing when I pushed away from the cabin cruiser, twisted the throttle on the outboard and turned in towards the island. Bastard.

The waves were small and even though they’d had no effect on the
Suzie-QC
, they caused quite a bit of buffeting on the little inflatable as I headed towards the narrow opening in the rock face. The inlet was a miniature version of Adamek Island’s main harbour, with the same towering stone walls and foaming white water where the ocean swirled in and out. It was ten percent seamanship and ninety percent blind luck that got me through the twenty-metre gap in the cliff face and onto the tiny pebble beach in one piece.

After making the Zodiac secure, I took off my lifejacket, wrapped the flare pistol in the spray jacket and stowed them
in the bottom of the boat. I checked and loaded the MP7, then started on the climb up the cliff. I had thermals on under my black jeans and hoodie and I was sweating by the time I reached the top.

The lighthouse appeared to be three or four k’s off and I headed that way. The island was almost devoid of trees, apart from occasional clumps of withered shrubs with spindly roots wrapped around the weathered rocks. They looked like they were hanging on for grim death in anticipation of the next big blow from the freezing south.

I’d been walking for about five minutes when I heard the chopper. The island didn’t offer a lot of hiding places so I sprinted towards a clump of shrubs, hoping my black clothes would camouflage me in the broken shadows of the bushes. The helicopter, heading north, passed over me without stopping. I breathed a sigh of relief and then stopped mid-exhalation when I noticed the unblinking eye of the fat black tiger snake at my elbow.

I was wondering whether I could jump faster than a snake could strike, which I wouldn’t want to put money on, and whether my thermals would deflect fangs, also a long shot, when the snake opened its mouth and then disintegrated into a writhing mass of white flesh and entrails. The noise of the pistol shot bounced off the boulders and then there was silence.

‘I hate those fuckers,’ the man with the gun said, and spat. I moved my left hand very slowly up to my face
and wiped snake guts off my cheek.

‘And if you so much as twitch another muscle, you prick, you’ll get the same.’

There were two of them, wearing camouflage combat gear, Raybans and bandanas. They looked like a couple of escapees from
Survivor
, but the pistols made me take them a little more seriously. And the fact that the bloke who’d shot the snake was Chief Petty Officer O’Reilly.

I got up with my hands in the air and O’Reilly kept me covered while the other bloke unhitched my MP7 and frisked me. He wasn’t very good at it. I once had an English bobby doing security at Heathrow give me what appeared to be a casual pat-down, but when he’d finished I reckon he knew exactly how much change I had in my pockets and how many fillings I had.

This bloke did find my two-way radio, which was no coup given it was the size of a packet of cigarettes. He smashed it on the rocks and handed the MP7 to O’Reilly.

‘Nice gun,’ O’Reilly said. ‘You take him in,’ he told the other bloke, gesturing towards the main harbour, ‘and if he gives you any grief waste him.’

We’d been walking for a couple of minutes when I heard a long burst of submachine gun fire coming from the direction of the inlet. The all-steel, spitzer-pointed ammo in the MP7 is designed to penetrate body armour, so the rubber Zodiac didn’t stand a chance. It was a good thing I was in training for the Bondi to Bronte ocean swim, because that was the only
way I had now of getting out to the
Suzie-QC
for the pick-up.

I hadn’t expected to see a township, but Adamek Island’s harbour was surrounded by ten or twelve substantial stone buildings, which must have been built in the whaling days. They looked like they were in good condition, with new roofs, windows and doors, and fresh white mortar joining the stones and blocking out the weather. There were also another dozen modern, prefabricated buildings, which looked to be a mixture of housing and workshops.

Solar panels lined most of the roofs, and on a hilltop in the distance I could see the slowly turning blades of a row of wind turbines. Two helicopters were parked on concrete pads near a large aircraft hangar. One was a nifty little Bell 430, which still had its rotor blades turning, and the other was a huge Russian Mi-26 Halo heavy-lifter. With its twin turbo-shaft engines powering an eight-blade rotor, the Halo could lift up to twenty tonnes of cargo, which would make resupplying Artemesia’s little enterprise a walk in the park.

The village was set in a depression, which sheltered it from the worst of the wind, and there were orchards full of healthy-looking fruit trees and acres of thriving, neatly laid-out vegetable gardens. The whole scene would have been quite idyllic if it weren’t for the man with the gun walking behind me.

The harbour widened substantially once you were through the narrow opening, and there was a jetty with a single-masted, wooden-hulled sailboat, about ten metres
in length, tied up to it. The lacquered planking on the hull was a rich golden-brown and it looked like an old whaleboat that had been lovingly restored.

To the left of the jetty was a cobbled slipway leading down to the water, and the remains of rusty railway tracks. Shiny new tracks ran out from the doors of a large workshop set back from the slipway, but rather than running down to the water to receive whales, these tracks arched upwards on a support structure of steel girders, ending abruptly after about fifty metres. I’d seen a construction like it before, but I couldn’t remember where.

As we walked past the workshop, a man in blue overalls stepped out of a side door. Behind him I could see flickering cold white light and hear the crackling of arc welding and the screech of an angle grinder cutting into metal. Sunday definitely wasn’t a day of rest on Adamek Island.

I was led into what looked to be a staff dining room in the main stone building. There were about a dozen or so large communal tables and a self-service hot food bar. I took a squiz at what was on offer and instantly regretted the decision. A self-service vegetarian cafeteria. That was two vegetarian joints in two days. What a nightmare. It was lucky the goons had taken the MP7 off me or I might have been tempted to blow my brains out.

Artemesia Gaarg was waiting for me at a private table tucked away in an alcove and set with a crisp white linen tablecloth. A waiter pushed in my chair for me, deftly placed
a napkin on my lap, handed me a menu and suggested I might like to start with an aperitif. I opted for a tomato juice – a Goodie, of course.

After delivering me to Artemesia, my escort had positioned himself next to the main door, and it was pretty obvious that was where he was going to stay. Artemesia hadn’t spoken since I was ushered into her presence. Perhaps she had a copy of
The Boy’s Own Book of Office Power Plays
too. A second waiter appeared, so I glanced over towards my hostess and said, ‘After you, please.’

She smiled and ordered garlic and potato soup and frittata. I ordered the soup and the stew and let the waiter choose the wine, since I had no idea what the hell would go with eggplant and black-eyed peas.

‘Interesting menu,’ I said, by way of a conversation starter.

‘If we were in a primary-school dining room in Japan, Mr Murdoch, the menu would offer whale meat.’

‘I had a close encounter with some whales on my way out here, Miss Gaarg,’ I said, ‘and I have to tell you that even a small one would make a hell of a sushi platter – I’m not sure the kids would be able to get through it in a single sitting.’

She smiled politely but there was no sign of humour in those hazel eyes. ‘Whales, Mr Murdoch, are thinking, caring, kind and loving creatures. They sing, they play, they gently romance their mates and make love with amazing grace, and they nurture their young with a dedication that
would put many a mother in our society to shame.’

‘You’ll get no argument from me there, Miss Gaarg. They’re unique creatures.’

The whale that checked me out on the boat had looked at me with more than just the passing interest of a dumb animal. I’d had a similar incident in a refuge for orangutans orphaned and dispossessed by illegal logging in West Kalimantan. A six-month-old orangutan held my hand and I’d have sworn he was saying, ‘Why are you letting this happen to us? You know it’s not right,’ as he looked up at me with his big sad eyes.

‘In the name of spurious scientific research and cultural heritage, Mr Murdoch,’ Artemesia continued, ‘Japanese whalers hunt down these amazing animals and fire explosive-tipped harpoons into their huge hearts.’

I’d seen her give that speech before, on the video, and with the same fire in her eyes.

Just then the dining-room door burst open and about twenty men and women, some in white coats, some in blue overalls, walked in. It must have been lunchtime for the workers. One of the blokes in a white coat looked familiar. He studied the blackboard and shook his head. ‘Jesus Christ, not more fucking tofu,’ he groaned. ‘I could bloody murder a meat pie.’

‘Meat
is
murder, Mr Sheehan,’ Artemesia called out.

Now I had a name for that familiar face: Francis Aloysius Sheehan. And I suddenly realised what that ramp and the
railway tracks were all about.

The Nazis had used similar ramps to launch V1 flying bombs at London towards the end of World War II. The V1 was powered by a simple pulse-jet engine and was blasted up a launching ramp by a steam-powered catapult. A small, propeller-like device in the nose roughly measured distance, and once over the target the V1 would dive, starving the engine of fuel. Seconds later, the one-ton, high-explosive warhead would detonate. A lot of V1s were built in the Volkswagen factory, and though crude they were the forerunner of today’s cruise missile.

Modern cruise missiles, like the American Tomahawk, fly at subsonic speeds and low altitude to avoid radar detection, self-navigating using inertial guidance to follow a preset course. The inertial system is supported by GPS, guiding the missile to the target with almost pinpoint accuracy. But those babies cost at least a million bucks a unit, so only the big boys can afford them, and they like to keep them to themselves.

Francis Sheehan, a former aeronautical engineer from the old Gaarg Aerospace operation, had earned a lot of publicity a few years back by claiming he could put together a homemade, accurate, long-range cruise missile from off-the-shelf parts. And he reckoned he could do it for under twenty-five grand a pop.

The entire government security apparatus had fallen on Sheehan from a great height. In the interests of national security they confiscated every drawing, plan and piece of paper
he had to his name, and Sheehan had disappeared off the face of the planet. And now here he was – on a rock in the Southern Ocean with a fully equipped workshop, an employer with very deep pockets, and a rather nifty launching ramp pointing north.