The Mandarin Code (43 page)

‘Then this meeting will be mercifully brief.'

‘It will, because your presence here speaks volumes. Doesn't it, Brendan?'

Ryan knew they were here to barter for the last of his dignity. He only wanted one assurance.

‘The final matter to resolve is the date of the election. I will support you if you call it within a month of taking over as leader.'

‘What's the rush? Toohey set September 14.'

‘Frankly, I want to minimise the damage that you can inflict, Catriona. On the party and the country.'

‘Yet the reason you want me back is to save the ship.'

‘Don't kid yourself. The ship has sunk. I just want to stuff as many survivors as I can into the life rafts.'

Bailey's eyes, a stain of dark blue, held Ryan in their vice for a brief, uncomfortable moment.

‘Done.'

Ryan stood transfixed by the view. The out-of-the-way office had been chosen to avoid prying eyes.

But he could not escape the glare of his conscience.

What have I done?

‘What else could I have done?' he muttered, as he put both hands on the window sill to steady himself.

Ryan was an old-school right-winger, the son of a Victorian Catholic who'd stayed with the Australian Labor Party when the split had torn its heart out in the 1950s. His father had lost lifelong friendships in the turmoil, so he hammered a set of principles into the eager boy. Old, unfashionable ideas like duty, constancy and, above all, loyalty.

‘If a man isn't loyal then he isn't anything,' his father would say. ‘You pick and stick son.'

Ryan had settled his loyalties long ago. To his party, his country and its allies. Once he built those battlements, he declared war on his enemies. Life was about hard choices and a man had to realise that meant he couldn't have everything.

But Bailey?

She personified everything he hated. A dictator who had hijacked and gutted his party, a vagrant Christian who shifted like a chameleon between denominations, and a multilateralist who embraced the impotence of the United Nations.

Above all, Bailey was a clear and present danger to the alliance that protected the nation's castle walls. Ryan had suspected that Bailey was the human equivalent of a computer virus: a long-dormant but deadly infection.

One that had been cultivated by the Chinese.

Ryan slumped into a lounge chair and put his head in his hands. Martin Toohey was a decent man but had been a disaster as prime minister. Ryan blamed himself for part of that failure. He had pushed Toohey into rolling Bailey, not realising that the coup would kill both leaders.

Australians had never understood Bailey's brutal dispatch and Toohey rose from the fight with blood on his hands.

His mark of Cain.

Then again, Toohey had made plenty of his own mistakes.

‘I tried to warn him. Tried to save him.' Ryan shoved a small pile of coffee-table books onto the floor and stood up.

He needed a cigarette and decided to have one; an act of defiance against another modern verity he despised. He pulled a packet of Benson & Hedges 25s from his jacket pocket and looked at the miserable image on it: a man with a gaping hole in a cancer-ravaged throat.

How appropriate.

‘So this is for you, Catriona.' Ryan took a lighter from his pocket, stuffed a fag in his mouth and lit it. He drew in a deep breath and blew a long and gratifying line of smoke into the room.

He looked around for something that would serve as an ashtray before shrugging his shoulders and tapping the ash onto the carpet. He rubbed it in with the toe of his shoe, leaving a little grey smudge. He admired his handiwork. A small sin compared to the mortal one he had just committed.

I have sold out to buy my party a few seats. A slim hope of redemption.

Ryan took another long drag and blew smoke towards the window. Out of sight, just off Kings Avenue to his right, he knew there was a statue of John Curtin and Ben Chifley, frozen in a moment from 1945 as they walked to the Parliament.

Curtin, the leader who had turned to America in the nation's hour of greatest need. And the US had delivered.

Now Labor was turning from America without understanding the consequences. His party needed time in the wilderness to reassess. But he didn't want to see it destroyed and, under Toohey, that was inevitable. Bailey was the only viable choice. It was a huge gamble but a quick election would minimise the risk.

Once she had minimised the losses he would bury her forever.

And all it has cost me is my soul.

Ryan threw the butt on the carpet, lifted his shoe to snuff out the ember, and stopped.

He decided to let it burn.

‘I thought you'd be with me to the end, Brendan.'

Martin Toohey's voice was laced with sadness. The Defence Minister had hoped for anger. He could cope with a fight, but sorrow was more than he could bear.

He couldn't look at Toohey, who was standing behind his desk, or George Papadakis, who was slumped on a lounge in the Prime Minister's office.

Ryan looked at his feet as he spoke.

‘We had to . . .' Ryan caught himself trying to deflect blame for his decision and started again.

‘I had to do it. I had to make a choice between my friendship with you and my loyalty to the party.'

He forced himself to look at Toohey.

‘Martin, we're doomed. The people have stopped listening to you. If you lead us to the election there will be a rout and it will take a generation for us to recover.'

Toohey's eyes gleamed. Like all leaders, he had a distorted image of his powers. He still believed he could turn the ship around.

‘That's not true. We can claw our way back with the mental health plan. I can beat Landry.'

‘Martin, even if we get elected we can't afford another huge welfare scheme. George, you know the truth. Tell him.'

Papadakis lifted his head and fixed Ryan with hate in his eyes.

‘Truth. What would you know about the truth, Brendan? And don't ever mention the word “loyalty” again. You have betrayed us for someone you despise. And if she wins what do you get? What promises has Bailey made to buy you?'

‘I got nothing beyond a commitment to an early election.'

Papadakis snorted.

‘You know your Bible, Brendan. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world yet lose his soul?” I thought you were with us.'

‘I didn't sign up so you could empty Treasury to build a welfare state. If you keep gutting Defence, you'll find your dreams mugged by reality. We're facing war in the Pacific and slashing Defence is endangering the nation.'

Toohey strode from behind his desk, knocking his iPad to the floor.

‘Don't be such a fucking drama queen. The US and China can't afford to go to war. Their economies rely on each other. Both will come to their senses.'

Ryan shook his head.

‘No one ever wants to go to war. No one can afford to go to war. But nations go to war when the alternative is unacceptable. The preconditions for war now exist. America won't be pushed back across the Pacific and China won't stop pushing.'

Toohey pointed to the map of the world on his wall.

‘Then we need to sit where we are on that map. In the middle. As the calm heads at the table. Not to always fall in behind the United States. Those clowns started this fight, Brendan.'

Ryan waved at the briefs piled on Toohey's disorderly desk.

‘What about the attacks on us? If a Chinese destroyer opened fire on an Australian ship, it would be an act of war. Yet Beijing has hit our airspace, banks and phones. Prime Minister, that is unacceptable.'

Toohey moved closer to Ryan. They were separated by a coffee table.

‘You know as well as I do that verifying that kind of attack is dicey. I'm not starting a fight without being certain who broke the windows.

‘And is it any wonder that the Chinese see us as puppets of Uncle Sam? The Yanks keep dragging us into their fights. Maybe we need to reposition ourselves for the twenty-first century. To build a more nuanced set of alliances.'

Toohey's words confirmed Ryan's worst fears.

‘Really? The next warning shot might be through your brain. Hitting air-traffic control was an act of war. And when did you decide to unwind the ANZUS treaty? When did that become Australia's foreign policy?'

‘I do believe I am Prime Minister.'

Ryan checked his watch.

‘Martin, I'll be supporting Catriona Bailey and I'll advise others to do the same. You will lose the ballot. I'm sorry about that. But the longer we've spoken this evening the more I'm convinced that it's the right decision. You're forgetting that your first duty is to defend the nation.'

Toohey put up his hand as Ryan turned to leave.

‘One last thing. Something's been bothering me. I ran into Harry Dunkley and he had the most amazing conspiracy theory – that the US was behind those cyber-attacks, not China.'

The Defence Minister weighed his answer.

‘Dunkley has been discredited. And, as I recall, you've never been a fan. It does sound like a wild theory. But some claim that Churchill dragged the US into World War I by allowing the
Lusitania
to be sunk. A thousand people drowned, but maybe millions were saved. If he did, was that a good or a bad thing? The war ended. We won.'

Canberra

It had been a gift from her mother in celebration of her eighteenth birthday, her passage to womanhood. She'd packed the pink brush when she'd left China; a link to a family and life left behind. Now it would go with her into exile.

Weng Meihui glanced around her room as she counted down the minutes.

What can you pack in one small bag when you are leaving your old life forever?

She brushed away a tear, trying to subdue a feeling of dread as she contemplated this flight from a life of certainty into the unknown.

Weng was from a Tibetan family who had embraced China. She recalled her handlers' taunts when she trained to become a Mata Hari. Perfectly suited because ‘betrayal runs in the blood of your family'.

But wasn't she the one who'd been betrayed? By a state that didn't hesitate to kill when your usefulness was spent. Her life was at risk if she stayed. She had to flee.

It was 6.22pm. Eight minutes until the hire car was due. She would time her departure from the building to minimise the moments she'd need to wait on the kerb.

Her cover had been carefully thought through. The Ambassador was at a parliamentary function. She was supposedly meeting the Canadian High Commissioner's wife for a drink at the Hyatt, a short stroll away. The driver had been instructed to pick her up around the corner from the Chinese embassy, in Forster Crescent, opposite the rear entrance to the British High Commission. Bruce Paxton would be waiting at the airport.

It was time. She gathered her handbag and walked from the embassy. She nodded to the guard on the gate before turning onto the path that ran along the front of the complex.

Across the road three Falun Gong protesters still camped under their banners. She turned into the crescent. The car was there, silver and official, sporting the familiar ‘HC' plates. She walked quickly to its rear door, her gaze lowered. She stepped in, collapsing into a comfortable leather seat.

Her heart surged with relief. She nodded for the driver to proceed.

The car pulled out from the kerb and indicated a left-hand turn. Weng knew the route well. They would pass in front of the Chinese embassy before turning left at the roundabout. In ten minutes, she would be pulling up at the airport.

She turned away from the embassy as they passed it on the left, nervously opening her bag to see that her brush was there.

Something was wrong.

‘No. No. Turn left.' She waved in protest to the driver.

He said nothing as the limousine doors locked and the car glided up the dirt driveway to the new embassy building.

When he spoke, the voice was pure ice; his jet-black eyes cruel in the rear-vision mirror.

‘Ms Weng, where
did
you think you were going?'

‘Mr Paxton, your flight is ready to board.'

Bruce Paxton offered a thin smile as the Qantas attendant handed him two boarding passes. It was 7.41pm and the final short-haul flight from Canberra to Sydney was about to depart.

He'd arrived at the Chairman's Lounge an hour earlier, ignoring the high-octane buzz of those Coalition MPs who'd managed to escape Parliament and were heading home. The lounge was unusually empty because Labor's leadership showdown was still playing out.

That mattered nothing. His entire focus was on willing Weng Meihui to stroll into the lounge.

He had expected her forty-five minutes ago, positioning himself so he could nab her the moment she walked in. That was the plan. Hiding in plain sight and then a short walk to the gateway.

His phone calls had been unanswered and his fear began to rise with each empty minute.