CHOGM Pt. 04

"Well we don't actually have any yet. We thought that we might just hang around and do what comes naturally. Why?"

"Oh it's just that there isn't much food in the place, I wasn't planning on guests you know, if you could run down to the shops and get a few things I'd be grateful."

"Sure, this will be a new experience for us, going shopping together that is, and it's something that we have to get used to. After all we are. . ."

"You're not!" Francine screamed in delight. "Jen that's wonderful!" She threw her arms around Jenny's neck and kissed her on the cheek. Turning to Russell she kissed him also, this time on the lips. "When did all this happen?"

"We have only just decided in the last day so you're one of the first to know."

"How long have you known each other?"

"What would it be, three days?" Jenny asked Russell.

"Three days that seems as if we have known each other forever. We know everything that there is to know about each other."

"Look darlings, love to stop and chat, must rush, work you know," Francine spoke in that sort of short hand that is popular among the busy trendies, "There's a spare key on a hook beside the fridge, get what you want, don't worry about shopping for me, I will probably be eating out tonight, see you when I get in, 'bye." And with that she was gone.

The relative quiet of Darling Point was shattered by the sound of Francine's Datsun executing a sliding 'U' turn and accelerating away.

Jenny hunted around until she found an iron to put some respectability into their clothes so that they wouldn't look too out of place as they walked down the street.

34

It was 12:30 in the morning and in an empty office overlooking the Hilton Hotel sat two men. One of them was looking through a pair of night vision binoculars at the street in front of the hotel.

"It's time to make the call."

The other man picked up a phone and dialled a number. "Listen to me, I will only say this once and then hang up so that you will not be able to trace the call." The voice was American and laced with menace. "There is a bomb planted somewhere near the rear entrance of the Hilton Hotel. It is timed to go off in ten minutes. Do not under any circumstances call the Bomb Squad" He hung up. "That should do it, happy now?"

"Sure, I have waited a long time for this opportunity to get even with those Limey bastards. They have got to be there when ASIO turns up at 12:40 to find them rummaging around in the bin and a bomb in it. We have arranged for it to go up accidentally just as the spooks arrive and there will be evidence that they are not who they claim to be." The voice was also American but it was one of vengeance and animal cunning. He returned to his surveillance through the binoculars. "Shit what are those fucking bastards doing?"

"What's wrong now?"

"I thought that you had said that the garbage truck was due around 1:00."

In the office of the National News a phone rang and Brian answered it. "How for from the Hilton Hotel are our friends?"

"Not far why?"

"We've been monitoring the local police switchboard and they just got a call that there was a bomb in a rubbish bin at the Hilton and it's due to go off at 12:40. I think that the balloon is about to go up, so I need you to contact them."

Brian put down the phone and immediately picked it up the 2 way radio. "John, Brian, look I think that all hell is about to let loose. I have just had a phone call from your mate Frank telling me that there is a bomb planted outside the Hilton and it's due to go up in less than ten minutes."

"Any idea who it was that made the call?"

"I didn't wait around to find out, my priority was to contact you."

"Did they say anything else?"

"Only that they shouldn't call the Bomb Squad or they will blow it sooner by remote control."

"Ignore that instruction and get the Bomb boys there as soon as possible and while you're at it see if you can get the police to cordon off the area to keep any innocent bystanders well away."

"Done. Good luck."

"Thanks, we'll need it."

*

"What's keeping them." The voice inside his head was telling him that the longer his quarry took to get there the more likely it would be for something to go wrong.

His attention was focussed on a vehicle making its way slowly down the street. The Sydney City Council garbage truck edged its way down the street towards the Hilton, its flashing amber lights signalling its presence to any late night revellers in the vicinity, two men worked the rear of the truck grabbing bins and throwing the contents into the hopper of the compactor at the rear.

"Hurry up." Tension mounted in the voice inside his head as the truck edged closer to the hotel. "You are early, you're not supposed to be here for another half an hour."

Slowly, slowly the truck moved down the street, every minute bringing it closer to the danger zone. "C'mon, c'mon." The inner voice was more urgent now. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch for the hundredth time in the last five minutes.

In the foyer of the hotel a policeman paced slowly back and forth lost in thought. His thinking was that he should be anywhere but here. Particularly he was thinking that he would rather be at home with his family. Boredom had set in some time before and he had decided to pace rather than stand in one place in an effort to relieve the boredom. His thoughts wondered why he had to do this duty after all it seemed as if this was a nothing assignment. A nothing meeting, nothing in the press or on television about it, nothing seemed to be happening in it, a real nothing assignment.

The men on the garbage truck laughed and joked to each other as they worked their way along the street. They liked this round, few cars to dodge around and fewer dogs to attack them. There was no-one around at this time of the night to complain at the noise that they made banging the bins on the truck to dislodge the last of the rubbish.

Again the dial of the watch was tilted towards the anxious face of the man watching this scene. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon fuck you hurry up!"

The driver stopped outside the hotel. "Can one of you pick up the rubbish bin?"

The policeman called over to them, grateful for someone to talk to, "You guys get it easy."

"Are you going to empty that bin?" The driver called from the cab of the truck.

"We were told to just take some of the stuff off the top of the bin, not to empty it."

"I don't care about what we were told, it's a bloody disgrace having an overflowing bin outside the hotel that is housing some of the most important people around. I'll wear the flack if there is any."

The bin was collected and its contents thrown into the truck. As the runner carried the empty bin back to its holder on the kerb the other runner moved to the side of the truck and pulled a lever which set the big hydraulic compactor in motion. The first runner jumped back to his position on the platform at the rear and whistled for the driver to move off.

As the door of the compactor closed on the rubbish in the hopper at the back of the truck there was a loud explosion and the back of truck was peeled open like a tin can. The two men on the platform were dead before the mangled remains of their bodies hit the pavement.

A large piece of metal scythed through the body of the policeman on duty outside the hotel and he fell mortally wounded to the footpath.

The Triumph had just turned into the street when the explosion occurred. "Christ! Let's go!" Burroughs shouted to Jerry. It leaped forward covering the distance to the hotel in no more than thirty seconds. As it pulled up outside the hotel a dazed doorman emerged. "Get Police, Ambulance and Fire Brigade, quickly!" Burroughs barked at him. He turned around and ran back inside.

"Stay here until help arrives, don't let anyone near this mess." John told Jerry, "I'm going to have a look around to see what I can find." He jumped into the Triumph and drove quickly away.

"Jesus fucking H Christ! What the fuck did they have to do that for?"

"Let's get the fuck out of here, and in a fucking hurry." He grabbed the binoculars from the window ledge and turned to leave the room, the other man was busy removing all trace of them having been there from the room.

"What a fuck up!" He said as they left the room, "Why can't these stupid Aussies follow simple instructions!"

"What happened?"

"When they closed the door at the back of the truck it must have made connection with the detonator of the bomb we put in there. In a confined space like that the blast is magnified and it blew the living shit out of the truck. What I had planned was for the thing to blew the rubbish bin apart and take out our friends and no-one else. Well I'll just have to start work on plan 'B'."

They had reached their car and were just driving away when the Triumph came around the corner. It didn't follow them, instead it turned off at the next corner and doubled back to pick Jerry up from the hotel.

"Well, what did you find out?"

"It was our friends right enough. I recognised the car as one that they have been using all along."

"You didn't think to follow them?"

"No. I didn't know how many of them there were or whether they had back up down the road so, discretion being the better part of valour et cetera, I chose to fight another day."

"Fair enough. I suppose that this supports your theory that one of the reasons that this was set up was to get to us?"

"I'm even more convinced. What worries me is, how did they know that we were coming in?"

"Have you stopped to think that maybe they arranged for us to be here? They contacted the local police knowing that the Feds were monitoring their switchboard and knowing that Frank would contact us as soon as he heard the message and we'd come running like the heroes that we are."

"Possible, in fact probable, it has to be someone who has the clout to organise this whole thing and stop anyone from interfering."

"What do you mean?"

"I know the locals aren't all that serious about security but you'd think that they'd at the very least have patrols with sniffer dogs going around on a regular basis and that they'd be first on the scene, but there was no sign of anyone other than the one cop on duty. Plus the fact that the Bomb Squad had yet to make an appearance before we left, they didn't have that far to come. I want to find those responsible."

"We won't find out here."

"Are you suggesting that we pack up and go back home?"

"No. In fact that is the last thing that I have in mind right now. What I want to do is to find the people that are responsible for this and punish them."

35

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday February 13, 1978

2 KILLED IN CITY BLAST

Two people were killed early this morning when an explosion rocked the Hilton Hotel in George St, Sydney.

The hotel is the venue for the Commonwealth Regional Meeting.

Russell and Jenny didn't see the headlines as they made their way by bus to Bondi Junction. Jenny emerged from a dress shop with three pairs of jeans and several tops. Russell's shopping was a little more conservative, his new wardrobe consisted of two pairs of jeans, a pair of sneakers, three 'T' shirts that told the world that he had been to Bondi Junction and a plain open necked sports shirt for more formal occasions.

With their wardrobes safely packed in an overnight bag they visited a letting agent who located from his files, a small flat overlooking Tamarama Beach, which they took.

Having signed the lease and left their luggage they left to stock the fridge and drop Francine's key back to her flat. Jenny left a note for Francine which told her that they had decided to find their own place to stay and would ring her as soon as the phone had been connected which would probably be in a day or two, in the mean time they would stay out of sight and she had every intention of taking the opportunity to enjoy every bit of her man.

"That should do it." Jenny said as she propped the note up on the dining room table. "That will have them running everywhere looking for us."

As they left the flat they were followed.

The tail was an expert in as much as he had no trouble keeping them in sight. With his concentration focused on the bus they were seated in, the tail was unaware that he himself was the subject of surveillance.

The first car was conspicuous in that it stopped at every stop that the bus made while the second car drove ahead and waited for the bus to catch up to it, all the time watching the passengers alight in the passenger's side rear view mirror.

The first car stopped when they got out of the bus and the passenger continued his surveillance. The second car, the one that was in front of the bus when Russell and Jenny got off, dropped its passenger where it was parked and did a quick trip around the block to see if it could pick up the trail. It did.

By the time that Russell and Jenny had the kettle on the boil, both parties had alerted their bases as to the whereabouts of their quarry.

Cup of tea consumed Russell and Jenny consumed each other. Their lips seldom left the company of the other's except to explore that part of the partner's body that had been identified as giving pleasure.

Their passion on one hand drained their strength while on the other hand it built their strength. The first was their physical strength which was at a relatively low ebb. The second was their emotional strength which grew as the day, the hour, the minute passed by, each of them drawing on the other's reserves to build their own. By the afternoon they were emotionally ready to take on the world.

The world came to them. The sound of a car approaching at high speed was followed by the reports of a gun being fired several times, or several guns being fired once, it was hard to tell. What they could tell was that several shots had been fired.

This in turn was followed by the sound of the car being driven off at high speed. "That car sounds familiar." Russell said into Jenny's ear as the car left.

"I wonder how they found us so quickly." Jenny asked.

"Simple, they probably kept tabs on the letting agents and found us through the one we used. I suppose that they could have followed us when we arrived, after all we didn't take too many precautions, did we?"

Within seconds of the first car roaring away they heard the sound of two other cars starting up. This was followed by the sound of the two cars stopping. This in turn was followed by the sound of the drivers of the respective vehicles getting out of their cars and kicking the punctured tyres in frustration.

The sound that could next be heard was that of a rapidly approaching police car. This was the cue for the occupants of both cars to beat a hasty retreat and by the time that the police car had arrived the occupants of the two cars were nowhere to be seen.

Hot on the heels of the police car was a contingent of TV news teams and while the police strove to get some sort of lucid statement from the witnesses, the more astute were giving their sometimes highly coloured version to the Television crews in exchange for money.

Viewers of the individual TV stations would have been treated to highly exaggerated and colourful accounts of the happenings, each coloured by the opinions of the witness and was a reflection of his or her particular crusade, be it traffic management, urban law and order or whatever.

While all of these people were milling around and the police were trying to restore some semblance of order, the high powered vultures of the tow truck industry descended onto the wrecks to claim their prize. Repairing bullet holes would prove more profitable than bent panels because they could charge much more on the premise that the damage required the welding in of new sections.

All of this was witnessed by Jenny and Russell through the thin curtains of their bedroom. They in their turn were witnessed by a man stationed on the roof of a block of flats across the road from them. He had been watching them through the telephoto lens of his expensive camera. He took several shots, screened by the thin curtain, of them naked in front of the window. It wasn't that he was some sort of pervert, but he admitted to himself that there were benefits to his trade, it was just that his vantage point proved to be the most suitable for the task.

The photographer was not about to entrust his work to the commercial film developers. He pocketed the exposed film which he would give to someone to take to the headquarters where the police photographer would process and print the film before subjecting it to closer scrutiny.

Having completed their sortie into the land of the expatriate Kiwi, Jerry drove quickly back towards the city. He picked John up from a phone box on Bondi Road. "The police are there, so are the media. That should keep our friends occupied and away from the love birds for a while. Now let's have a look at what is happening back there."

They stationed themselves in a position several hundred metres from the flat but in clear line of sight of it, they would be able to intervene in a matter of minutes should the enemy return.

Within ten minutes of the police leaving the scene the next shift of watchers arrived. A Commodore slid quietly past on its preliminary circuit of the block to check the lay of the land. John and Jerry had parked the Triumph in the driveway of a block of flats and were sure that their presence had gone unnoticed. It had.

36

"This has been one fuck up after another!" The voice was angry, the accent West Coast American, belonged to George P. Alderman, the American Consul. "Why is it that we have what is reputed to be the best intelligence service in the world and it can't even carry out a simple exercise like a minor explosion in a rubbish bin without fucking it up? What have you to say for yourselves?"

"Well," BillyBob started, "It would have gone according to plan if the garbage collectors hadn't gotten carried away and emptied that bin when they had specific instructions not to."

"But the explosives just, and I'll be guided by you on this although don't ask me why I should, they just seemed to be more powerful than we had discussed when we planned this show. Can you explain that to me?"

"The confining forces of the compactor magnified the power of the blast." BillyBob offered unconvincingly.

"Cut the crap buddy! I have here a preliminary forensic report which points to at least ten pounds of plastic explosive being used. Now tell me if I'm wrong, but the amount that we discussed was more to the tune of a fire cracker."

BillyBob's silence was enough confirmation for the Consul.

"Tell me also if I'm wrong, but didn't I give you specific instructions not to let your personal vendetta get in the way of this operation?"

"Yes."

"Now I might be jumping to conclusions here, but I think that you have deliberately disobeyed my instructions and have left me with a delicate diplomatic situation on my hands. It was me that arranged with the police to turn a blind eye to what was about to happen. It was me that arranged for the bin not to be emptied for three days. When the shit hits the fan, as it will, it is me that will cop the flack. Let me tell you, Buddy, if you believe that I will follow that old adage about the buck stopping here you had better think again, because, if my head rolls yours will be in front of mine. Now get the hell out of here!"

After BillyBob had left he picked up the phone and dialled a local number. "Henry? Yes I have spoken to my man and he assures me that the device that he gave those people was of the specified size. His explanation was that there has been another crowd running around who could have gotten in on the act in an effort to discredit us."