The Mandarin Code (12 page)

All the workers on the highly secretive building are Chinese nationals travelling on diplomatic passports and the site is immune from local laws under a deal struck with the Labor Government.

Little is known of the dead man, Lin An, prompting intelligence officials to voice their concerns that the embassy site might pose a national security threat.

The mysterious death comes on the back of a spike in Chinese-based cyber-espionage against Australia.

The Australian
has learned that Cabinet's National Security Committee has been briefed twice in the past six weeks on ‘specific threats' from Chinese cyber-units.

And the emails of key government figures, including the Prime Minister, are understood to have been hacked. US intelligence officials alerted their Australian counterparts and provided evidence that China was the source of the attacks.

Worried intelligence officials have accused the Toohey Government of being ‘asleep at the wheel'.

The project's secrecy has also prompted concerns over worker safety. Union and ACT Government representatives are barred from the site and there appears little they can do to ensure no one is injured or killed.

Jesus, that should get their attention.

Dunkley sat back and studied his handiwork. Thirty years in the hard news business and he still got a thrill when it all came together, when the usual grind of daily journalism gave way to a big delicious fillet of prime news.

This was a news story that mattered and could make it onto the international stage. If it wasn't legalled to death.

He checked the time: 3.18pm, and there was still no response from the PM's office. He'd gone to them an hour ago with a series of questions. This was too big a story for him to simply ring the press office at a quarter to six and demand an instant response.

He rechecked his notepad, wondering if he had missed some vital piece of information. He'd already written around six hundred words. It would bump out to seven hundred, once the flacks in the PM's office stopped panicking and actually scripted some bullshit response.

Dunkley's mobile rang. It was Eleanor Todd, the PM's hardboiled senior press secretary, who, mercifully, had replaced Dylan Blair six months ago, bringing some much-needed grunt to the role.

‘Hello mate. You calling to invite me to the Lodge for dinner?'

‘Hah, very funny, Harry. You know why I'm calling. Listen, I'm about to send you a formal response but, um, can I ask, off the record, if you don't want to take a breather on this one?'

‘I don't think so, Eleanor, not unless you're telling me I'm completely off track – and I don't expect you're about to do that?'

‘No mate, but Harry, we're dealing with a pretty sensitive matter here, national security and all, and, ah, well it would be nice to be able to walk you through it, the nuances and the consequences, if you go to print. Not me personally, but someone very senior. Maybe the Attorney?'

‘Danny Maiden? You are kidding, Eleanor. In the three years he's been Attorney-General, he's barely grunted in my direction. He's a pumped-up Melbourne rich kid who fluked his way into a senior ministerial role and who now thinks he's God's gift to fucking democracy.'

‘I'll take that as a “no” then. Okay Mr Dunkley, have it your way. Response being emailed to you now. '

‘Love you too, Eleanor. See ya.'

Dunkley hung up and waited. He liked Todd, a former senior political reporter who'd brought maturity to the Prime Minister's office after replacing Blair, who was young, good-looking and rumoured to have bedded more women than were paid-up members of Emily's List. But who knew diddly squat about actual journalism.

Half a minute later, he received an email marked ‘Eleanor Todd, Senior Press Secretary, Office of the Prime Minister.'

‘Via Beijing,' Dunkley joked.

He opened the email and started reading. She had copied his questions to the top.

Is the government aware that a Chinese national who recently drowned in Lake Burley Griffin is linked to the new Chinese embassy site? Is the government aware of what this man's role was?

Has the Toohey Government been made aware of potential cyber-attacks by China against key Australian facilities, including the email systems of the Prime Minister and other senior ministers?

Ms Todd's response was straight out of the ‘give 'em nothing' school of political bluster.

Harry, you can quote a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister on the following:

Marvellous, Dunkley thought. I'm about to go into print on a huge political yarn and the government thinks a lick of spin will demonstrate everything's under control.

No wonder they're in so much strife.

He called up his story and fed the lines in, reasonably high up to appease the lawyers.

But then he added a quote from a ‘senior national security official' that would trump the PM's bland PR bull.

‘We are one step away from cyber-war. And yet this government seems intent on chasing China's cash at the expense of our national sovereignty,' the official told
The Australian
.

‘Beijing is launching daily cyber-attacks against us, and yet Mr Toohey says nothing. When will the government learn that you can't appease a dragon?'

Dunkley read the draft a final time before checking his watch again: 4.12pm. He lined up his editor's email, cc-ed it to his chief of staff in Canberra, and then hit ‘send', watching a story that he had lovingly crafted over the past two days disappear.

He leaned back in his chair, a self-satisfied grin creasing his face. Then he wondered just how many prying eyes would read his sparkling prose before it was published online at midnight.

Canberra

It was the Ides of March, spring but still cool.

He lifted his finest purple robe above the dirt as he crossed the cobbled street. A rider slowed his horse as he recognised the pedestrian, and dipped his head in homage.

The familiar shape of the Theatre of Pompey hove into view. The Senate was in session and Caesar was due to address it.

As he strode towards the theatre, Tillius Cimber called out to him beseechingly.

‘Caesar, please . . . I ask you again to consider the fate of my brother. I have gathered signatures from some of Rome's finest citizens pleading for his return.'

The emperor dismissed him with an imperious wave. ‘I have told you before. The matter is settled.'

The petitioner's face hardened to a snarl as he dropped his scroll and dragged down Caesar's tunic, pinning his arms to his sides.

Within seconds the emperor was engulfed as a dozen conspirators emerged from the shadows, striking at his unprotected flesh with their blades.

The searing pain as the metal tore into his body.

One face leered from the crowd, plunging his dagger deeper than the rest.

‘
Et tu, Brute?
'

With his final breath the emperor whispered three defiant words not recorded by history. ‘
Non occides ambitione
.'

Catriona Bailey's eyes flashed open as the nightmare shook her awake. The face of her murderer was still vivid.

Her heart was racing. The nightmares were becoming more frequent. Even in waking the hallucinations were sometimes so real that it was hard to separate dreams from reality.

Bailey's doctor had warned her that this might happen when she'd demanded a radical course of treatment to speed her recovery: a dangerous cocktail of Stilnox and Prozac.

‘I strongly advise against it,' he had said. ‘Yes, it might see a rapid improvement in your physical condition but you risk destroying your mind. There are a host of possible side effects and you could do permanent damage.'

She had dismissed his concerns.

Now, in her waking hours Bailey could feel her body growing stronger. But sleep became a torment. And, sometimes, reality blurred.

‘I had to do it, you know.'

Martin Toohey's voice startled her. He stepped from the shadows of her hospital room.

Why?

‘Because you risked everything.'

You will pay. Soon.

Toohey's face vanished into the dark, and Caesar's last words echoed in her tormented mind.

You can't kill ambition.

Canberra

Nguyen Thi Mai Loan – ‘just call me May' – pulled the latest copy of
Foreign Affairs
from her satchel as she crunched into another muesli bar. The whip-smart graduate student was pulling the graveyard shift, alone. It was 5.05am and a long night was nearly over.

She wondered whether eminent diplomatic careers usually started like this, waiting for dull consular calls to replace lost passports.

Bugger.

Her computer screensaver had kicked in during the few minutes she'd been distracted. She hit a keyboard button to refresh it. Then she froze.

TEN CHINESE FISHERMEN OCCUPY SENKAKU ISLANDS

A tremor shot down her spine as she digested the Reuters newsflash.

‘Holy fuck,' she said, in an accent minted in Sydney's outer west.

Before being accepted into DFAT's prestigious graduate program, Nguyen had finished a PhD on the Chinese military. Part of that involved wargaming scenarios that might escalate into armed conflict between China and the US. This was straight out of the textbooks.

Even the name of these benighted islands was a source of dispute. Japan called them the Senkakus, while China hailed them as the Diaoyu.

They were five uninhabited islands and three barren rocks lying around two hundred nautical miles southwest of Japan and the same distance east of China. The largest was just a tick over four square kilometres.

In the history of mankind, had there ever been so much dispute over such a useless pile of rocks? she wondered.

Both countries claimed the islands but Japan administered them and they had been an increasing source of tension ever since oil had been discovered nearby in 1968. But the bilateral relationship hit rock bottom when the Japanese Government bought three of the islands from a Japanese family that had held their title. Asserting government control was supposed to reassure the Chinese that no one was about to do anything rash. That was not how the message was received.

The official Chinese response had been blunt. Its Foreign Ministry said Beijing would not ‘sit back and watch its territorial sovereignty violated'. Relations had not improved when Shinzo Abe had been re-elected as Japan's Prime Minister, a man Beijing viewed as a dangerous nationalist whose instincts would be to try to contain China's growth and, likely, move to undo Japan's constitutional constraints on its defence force.

Recently the
People's Daily
had described the bilateral relationship as ‘politically cold and economically cool'.

Then, without warning, the Chinese had escalated the dispute by inventing what it called an ‘air defence identification zone' covering the islands. It demanded all aircraft flying in the region lodge flight plans with China or face ‘emergency defensive measures'.

So far, despite bluster from the US and Japan, there had been no breach of the airspace but no one believed things would hold for long without China's resolve being tested.

So the fishermen's occupation meant only one thing: it was a government-sanctioned act of aggression. No matter how China's Foreign Ministry would spin it, the dragon was testing its power, daring the West to confront it or retreat.