The Son (32 page)

Seven o'clock, eight o'clock passed. At nine thirty there was a brief flurry of movement, three or four cars drove up and parked near the front of the building, people emerged and walked towards the entrance, out of sight around the corner. That would be the official party returning from their last engagement. I looked up and down the street but saw no sign of Eric, or anyone else. Whatever their plan, they were being very cautious. The hubbub died down, the cars drove off. I imagined the visitors being cleared into their apartment, settling down for a discussion of the day's events before going to bed, careful not to speak too freely. With their background they would expect their rooms to be bugged. For all I knew, they probably were.

It was another hour before anything happened. I was leaning with my forehead against the glass, numb with boredom, hypnotically staring at the same spot in the street below, when I saw movement on the other side of the street. A short stumpy figure, foreshortened from above, wearing a baseball cap and a bright shirt and carrying some kind of box. He was walking along the footpath on the other side and I wasn't sure at first that it was him. Then he turned to cross the street and glanced up at the building and I recognised his face, pale and expressionless in the lamplight. When he reached the near side I briefly lost sight of him, before he reappeared, walking towards the corner and the front entrance.

I moved. This was the moment I'd been waiting for, and from now on there'd be no time for second thoughts. I checked my equipment one last time, went to the door, picked up the coils of rope which lay there, with a grappling hook at one end, and gently opened the door. No one about. Holding the hook securely to make sure I didn't impale myself on one of its prongs I walked quickly to the window at the end of the corridor. It was a single pane window with a metal frame which swung outwards, as I knew from my earlier recce. I pushed the handle down and out. It was stiff in its frame but it opened without making a noise. A gust of cold air hit me but I ignored it. I looked out, saw no one below. I placed the hook inside the window opening, near the bottom right-hand corner, one prong either side, pushed it hard against the wall and threw the rope out, keeping it clear of the wall. I watched it snake its way down, coming to an end a few feet off the ground. I jammed the hook tighter, tugged with my left hand to test it, looked out again, then took a deep breath.

I've never liked heights. I like them even less than waiting at night for something nasty to happen. Ever since I was a child I've been afraid of standing near the edge of cliffs or on the top of tall buildings. But there are times in life when you have to overcome your fears, and I knew what I had to do: act, not think. I put one leg over the sill, swung myself out, seized the rope with both hands. When I was clear of the window I reached up with my right hand and pushed it back towards the opening. Then I started to go down.

It wasn't a long climb, even by my modest standards. As a further precaution I'd tied a series of knots along the rope, one metre apart, to make it easier to hang on and help me judge the distance. We were on the seventh floor, they were on the third, sixteen to eighteen metres overall. I made my way down hand over hand, holding myself off the wall with my feet and counting the knots as I went, careful not to think of the void beneath. I passed the next floor down, then the next, then a third. One more to go. I was breathing hard, with nervous tension as much as with effort. I gripped the rope more tightly, went down another three knots, until I was level with the third-floor window. I wrapped my leg around the rope for extra purchase and rested against the wall for a moment, catching my breath. My arms were beginning to tremble with the strain.

I knew it wouldn't be long now. Eric would be held up in the lobby while they went through the motions of checking him through, took him into a separate room, made him take his shirt off to put his bullet-proof vest on. I pictured Considine sizing him up, quickly questioning him, giving him last-minute instructions. Would Roger be there too, and Keith or Bob Maynard? Four, five minutes at most. They wouldn't want to risk alerting anyone by keeping him too long. I wouldn't have been the only one watching out for him. I peered cautiously around the edge.

The corridor was empty. I was looking in from the left hand side of the window and I had a good view of the opposite wall, all the way to the other end. I identified the lift door, halfway down, next to it the door to the emergency stairs. Down the left hand side I thought I saw a door open a fraction, but I couldn't be certain and I didn't dare stick my head out too far. The light in the panel next to the lift moved, then stopped. The lift door opened, Eric came out, still holding his box. I saw now that it was four large pizza boxes, stacked on top of each other. Was he supposed to smuggle his weapon inside a pizza? I wondered. Surely not, it would have been discovered at once. He glanced up and down the corridor, moved to his left, put the boxes down and opened a panel in the wall. There was a similar panel on our floor, marked Fire Hose and Reel. He rummaged inside, pulled out a long flat package at the end of a string. The package appeared to be wrapped in cloth. He pulled off the wrapping and took out its contents. There was no mistaking the shape, even at that distance: a long narrow pistol, with a thick cylinder at the end of the barrel. He looked at it for a moment, as if puzzled by it, then turned it over to look at the grip.

Meanwhile other things were starting to happen. The door which I'd noticed earlier now opened fully, and two men came out, both Asian. One was tall, the other short but solidly built. I wondered which one might be Truong Dzu, Loc's security man. The taller one seemed to have more authority. They wore suits and gloves and the tall one carried two lengths of wood. They moved quickly. By the time Eric noticed them it was too late: as he turned to face them the shorter one slipped behind him, clamped a hand over his mouth, with his other hand put a knife to his throat and pulled him back hard on his heels. The tall man smiled and put a finger to his lips.

I watched, horrified, as the drama began to unfold. The tall man immobilised the lift with one of the pieces of wood, jamming it in the open door, then used the second to secure the door to the emergency stairs, tying it crossways to the handle so it couldn't be pulled open from the stairs. Eric meanwhile stood still, unable to move, his back arched against the shorter man's chest, his mouth hidden by his captor's gloved hand. The tall man turned back to him, fished a flat object out of his pocket, took the pistol out of Eric's hand and inserted the object into the butt. A magazine, obviously, the pistol must have been placed unloaded in its hiding place, that was why Eric had been puzzled by it. He held the pistol up, cocked it, looked at Eric again for a second longer. With his left hand he took another gun from his pocket, a shorter, stubbier weapon, without a silencer this time. He held it down by his side. Then he turned on his heel and began to walk towards the far end of the corridor.

I knew at once what was about to happen. There was no time to lose. But as I watched I saw the tall man pause, look over his shoulder as if to listen. He looked back towards Eric, as if uncertain what to do next. I heard muffled thumps and shouts, coming it seemed from the other side of the stairwell door.

The tall man now moved with greater urgency. He hurried to the end of the corridor, faced the last door on his right, and knocked. The door stayed shut. He knocked again, tried the handle, to no avail. He put his shoulder to the door and shoved, then stepped back and kicked at the lock with his heel. Still it stayed closed. I could almost sense his panic. He raised his pistol, seemed for a second about to shoot the lock out, then turned back towards Eric. He said something and gestured violently at the other man, who seemed confused at first – then, realising what was expected of him, released Eric and stepped aside. Eric stumbled, tried to regain his balance, as the tall man ran back towards him, raising his gun.

‘No!' I shouted. I let go the rope with my right hand, began to hit at the window. ‘No! Don't do that you bastard! Don't shoot him!' I struck again. The window didn't budge, but he looked in my direction. Eric also looked round, then started to move, to get away from him. No time for the jemmy at my belt. I seized the rope with both hands, kicked out against the wall and swung back with my feet towards the window. The pane cracked but didn't break. I swung back harder, kicked again. This time the pane gave way, I plunged feet first, elbows up, no time for the safety glasses. The jemmy snagged against the window frame, the string snapped, a sharp sting as my right sleeve caught on something, then I was through, stumbling on my feet, somehow managing to stay upright. There was a shot, loud as a thunderclap in that confined space. Eric cried out, clutching his right arm.

‘No!' I shouted again. ‘No! Shoot me instead you vile piece of shit!'

I hurled myself forward, desperate to get at him before he could shoot again. Too late. He fired a second shot, I saw Eric stagger and fall. The man turned towards me. He was still a good five metres away, I had no hope of getting to him in time, but I kept charging, screaming at the top of my lungs. I seemed to see his face for the first time, hard, full of hate, his eyes like burning black holes. He levelled his gun at me, fired two more shots. I felt a hard punch to the shoulder which half spun me round, then a tremendous kick to the chest. Dimly as I fell I heard the crash of metal, shouting, more shooting, before all became black.

PART VI

PICKING UP THE PIECES

Coming back to life was almost worse than trying to leave it.

When I regained consciousness I was in Royal North Shore Hospital at St Leonards, a short drive up the Pacific Highway from my office in North Sydney and less than ten minutes over the Bridge by high speed ambulance from the scene of the shooting. Considine had had a medical team on standby, and they had wasted no time. That, and the skill of the surgeons, was what saved me.

I was badly wounded: a bullet through the right shoulder – relatively minor – a deep cut on the upper arm, another shot to the chest. It was the second shot which had done the damage. The bullet had missed my heart but perforated my left lung front and back, causing it to collapse, with massive internal bleeding, and then had careened in a downward spiral, fortunately missing any other major organs but ending up against my spine, in my lower back. Between the second and third lumbar vertebrae, to be exact. The spinal cord wasn't severed but the bullet was too firmly wedged to be removed without a further operation, which was dicey. For the present I was forced to lie still, wrapped like a mummy from my waist to my neck, unable to move my arms, or even my legs very much.

Worse than my wounds was my anguish. I was convinced that Eric was dead. I had seen him fall, seconds before I was shot myself. What had gone wrong? Had Considine forgotten to put a protective vest on him? Had a bullet got through somehow, had he been shot in the head? When I tried to find out all I could manage was a groan. Don't try to speak, someone said. You've been badly wounded and we've just operated. You're going to be alright. But right now you must rest.

I remained in that state for over twenty-four hours, alternately sleeping and staring at the ceiling, not sure when I was awake or hallucinating. When I slept I dreamt of falling, of being pursued by demons through monstrous landscapes, like a painting by Hieronymous Bosch, of being branded on the chest with red-hot irons.

When I woke I thought of Eric, and how I had failed him.

Then, on the morning of the second day, two police officers came to see me. They were from Internal Affairs, and were investigating the circumstances of the shooting at the Southern Cross Apartments, during which a foreign official had been killed. I was still in intensive care and wore an oxygen mask but I was able to communicate by then and the doctor reluctantly allowed them in. They said it was urgent.