Tempus Fugitives

"Yes. I thought that their tricks were pretty good but any competent illusionist could do just as well."

"I'm glad you think that because I have news for you. We have closely analysed the tapes of the meeting and we can find no evidence to support anything other than a miracle. We watched the tape in slow motion and they could appear and disappear without any trickery being evident."

"There must be some logical explanation. I'll get our experts to check the tape and see if they can find out how it was done. In the mean time we have a problem on our hands."

13

The Secretary of Defence looked at us over the desk. "You want to buy some land that we are using, why?"

"We have information that the next El Niño will cause devastating droughts in the Western parts of New South Wales, the whole of South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland and what we want to do is to flood the centre of South Australia, the land that you are using, to create an inland sea, much the same as existed centuries ago. We feel that this will moderate the climate and increase the rainfall and consequently the fertility and arability of the land."

"Very commendable but I'm afraid that we can't let you have the land, we need it for security purposes."

"We are aware of the importance of your satellite tracking systems and your global positioning navigation systems, but if there were no threat of war you wouldn't need these systems to be in place, would you?"

"No-one can guarantee that there will never be another war. We would still need the systems for civilian purposes. Just about every commercial and pleasure vessel or plane that travels the world uses our system."

"If we had our way we could guarantee that there would be no more wars."

"There are too many people around that will never let that happen."

"Are you saying that you are one of these?"

"I didn't say that."

"But you thought it. You have too much to lose if there was no war, your job for starters."

"My job is safe." ('At least while I can stir the pot.')

"Well then I guess that we will have to go to plan B."

"What is plan B?"

"We could try to get the Australian Government to legislate for the termination of your tenure on the land and its sale to us."

"You will have two chances there, Buckley's and none. I don't even like Buckley's. We have ways of seeing that you don't get control of that land."

"You could probably tell your CIA mates, but they have so far failed to touch us. One of them is on his way into this building as we speak."

"Good guess, but I'm not expecting a visit from them today."

The intercom on his desk buzzed, two short and one long buzz, we figured it for some sort of code. The door opened and the man from Langley walked into the room. He obviously thought that he could surprise us by his knowledge of the reason that we were in Washington.

"What took you so long?" I asked, "We were expecting that your intelligence people would have told you hours ago that we were here and the reason for our visit."

"I knew that moment that you stepped from your plane that you were here. In fact I knew before your plane arrived that you were coming, and I knew why."

"I think that you should check to see what your intelligence people are on before you make a total fool of yourself. A check with air traffic control and the arrivals at the airport will confirm that we didn't arrive by plane, commercial, military or private."

"Then how did you get here?"

"You're the clever one, you work it out."

"Gentlemen please." The secretary cut in, "Let us get down to business. Now you want the land for some purpose to do with changing the climate to counter the El Niño effect. What do you hope to get out of it?"

"Personally, nothing. We are just looking to give the food producers a fair go so that they can produce enough so that the surplus can be used to help the starving and overcrowded nation of the third world."

"You are trying to tell us that you are doing this out of the goodness of your heart. Pull the other leg, it whistles Dixie, there has to be catch in this."

"No catch. The way that we see it is that if we can help the poorer countries to become self sufficient in food production, and help them to establish a viable economic base, they will feel less like going to war against any other country. I feel that is what the world wants and needs."

"We beg to differ." The man from Langley spoke again. "You have to keep these people in their place and deprive them of the ability to attack us."

"Is that why you have been supplying arms and military expertise to rebels in certain countries to overthrow the governments of those countries?"

"We are protecting our nation's interests."

"Your own interests you mean. It would probably interest Congress to learn how you finance your covert operations. How much do you earn from the importation of certain agricultural commodities?"

"What do you mean?"

"You started in South East Asia and now your operations are world wide. You are reaping the benefits of supplying the drugs to meet the needs of addicts who probably wouldn't have found themselves so dependent if the drugs weren't so freely made available by you."

"That old hobby horse. We have never been involved in the growing, importation or distribution of drugs and I defy you to prove otherwise!"

"In good time." My answer was soft but the threat was still strong enough to stop him.

The Defence Secretary had sat quietly through this exchange but at last he spoke. "We will get nowhere with this argument. I'm afraid that we cannot let you have that land. Not from any anti-American sentimental reasons but purely from a technical standpoint. The main reason that these facilities were set up where they have been, is the climate. It is drier there than just about anywhere else. If the climate was to change and we found ourselves being dumped on by even moderate amounts of rain then the site will be rendered useless."

"Surely you can relocate further west?"

"No. Our experts have surveyed all available sites and none are as suitable as the one that we have now."

"What if we were to come up with a suitable site?"

"There would be the cost of relocation to be taken into consideration."

"We may be able to help you there. If we could find 50 percent of the cost of relocation would you consider our proposal?"

"We would give it due consideration, yes." (But you still wouldn't get the land.) Both of them thought the same thought at the same time.

We shook hands with both of them and left. As soon as we walked out of the room the man from Langley was on the phone. "There are two people leaving the building, a man in his late thirties or early forties and a woman who could be any age from mid twenties to late thirties, the man is wearing a grey suit and white shirt while the woman is wearing a navy blue skirt, white blouse and grey jacket. I want them followed. If you lose sight of them just keep driving until you hit the sea somewhere. Failure in this is not a consideration."

Failure took on monumental proportions within minutes. "What do you mean they haven't come through the lobby?"

The voice on the other end of the phone was confused. "You gave us a description of two people who haven't come down from your floor. The elevator has gone up and down several times and no-one meeting their description, or anything like, it has left. We have scanned the monitor Discs from the elevators, stairs and all entrances to this building, including the roof. We can find no evidence of anyone of that description having entered or left this building at any time today."

"What are we dealing with?" The Secretary was clearly out of his depth here.

14

Our interview with the Defence Ministry in Canberra, or should I say interviews, proved an exercise in frustration. We progressed slowly up the chain of command, from clerk to clerk, using a series of threats until we at last reached a person who just might have had the authority to grant us our wish.

Authority he had, interest, not much, desire to comply, none at all. That was until we produced a letter, on White House paper and signed and sealed by the President of the US that stated that he gave his approval for the lease to be turned over to us.

The President would not, had he been asked, have been able to recall having signed such a letter, for the simple reason that he had not. The letter and signature were both genuine, it was just that the signature should have appeared on another document entirely. How this came to happen no-one, not even the President or any of his vast army of advisers and lackeys, would have been able to explain. Not even the security Discs of all that happened in the Oval Office, interesting though they might be, could explain how the signature happened to appear on the bottom of the letter.

When the directive from Canberra, accompanied by a copy of the letter, arrived on the desk of the Base Commander a flurry of communication began between him, Canberra, through the US embassy and other more direct channels to Washington.

The Presidential advisers at first fobbed the incident and the letter off as a fake. When proof was provided that the letter was not a fake they fobbed it off as a momentary lapse on the President's part, offering as an excuse, the distraction caused by an interview with a certain lobbyist, young, attractive, and female, who had attracted the attention of the President.

Jokes and innuendo circulated rapidly around the White House as staff got to hear about the latest in the President's supposed indiscretions. The jokes ceased when the seriousness of the occasion was revealed.

That the US government had lost control of a strategic facility was bad enough, the fact that they had lost control without realising it, was an acute embarrassment to the administration. Heads rolled and arses were kicked from the top of the administration and the military right down to the cleaners. No-one was above suspicion. Paranoia was complete and all consuming.

The reaction from the Australian government was initially to have a good laugh at the expense of their friends across the Pacific. Revenge has its place in international politics and the Australians were making the most of one of the few chances that they would ever get.

After the mirth had subsided somewhat, reality set in. How a private company had gained control of strategically sensitive land was unclear. What they intended to do with the land was soon made perfectly clear.

In a series of media releases the Underhill Corporation announced its plans to build two pipelines from the Northern end of Spencer Gulf to the centre of the country. This would cause the centre to flood which would result in an inland sea that in turn would affect the climate of the whole of Australia. This would result in a substantial increase in food production.

The corporation also announced that it had managed to buy most of the grazing and cropping land to the East of the proposed inland sea. The announcement made it clear the previous owners would not be forced off the land, held in some cases, for several generations of the same family. Instead the owners would be retained, on a profit sharing basis, to run the property.

Within a day of the media release the Australian Government, through the Primary Industries Minister, announced that the proposed development would be halted pending an Environmental Impact Study and several other, unspecified, investigations.

This second announcement led to a series of comments from media experts, conservationists and just about everyone else with an opinion that boosted newspaper sales and television ratings. Just about every expert in Australia emerged from the woodwork to offer his or her opinion.

The government in a desperate attempt to regain control of the debate announced a Senate Select Committee would carry out a full and comprehensive inquiry into the matter. This attempt failed.

Our opponents, fuelled by information from a 'reliable source' waded in with a series of libellous accusations ranging from our being tax evaders, which improved our image with the working class, to our having conducted a whole range of satanic rituals, many of which involved public sexual practises and sacrifices.

Rather than attempt to deny these accusations we countered by allowing the full and open public scrutiny of our professional and private lives. People that had previously found us so interesting were amazed at how crushingly boring we appeared to be.

The attacks on us didn't let up. The focus changed from personal to attacks on our allegiances. The face that appeared on the television screen that night seemed ordinary enough but the words that poured from the mouth were something else again. "The directors of the Underhill Corporation have announced a plan to flood Central Australia and change the face of this country. Why are they doing this?"

"They are trying to get us to believe that they are doing it, not for personal monetary reward, but for humanitarian reasons. They have claimed that they are planning to eliminate world hunger and improve the efficiency of all nature of rural enterprises."

"What is their real motive? This program's researchers have been delving into the records of these people and what we have uncovered will force thinking Australians to take a second look at these self proclaimed paragons of virtue."

"We have discovered that their real purpose is to achieve world dominance for themselves and to subvert the powers of the democratically elected governments of, not only this country, but others around the world."

"How do they propose to achieve this? They already have the capacity, and they have demonstrated this capacity by removing an executive of their television station who opposed them, to attempt to control public thinking on a whole range of important issues."

"They have also set up a quasi religious community that has as its sole purpose the undermining of the Christian values on which this country was founded. They recently put on a show that purported to have Jesus and others sitting in a forum denouncing the belief structure that we have held sacred for centuries. That this show was a fake is obvious to all who saw it, as was the television interview that purported to demonstrate that these people could carry out miracles. This program has uncovered evidence that will expose this show for the fraud that it was."

"While you and I have been going about our legitimate daily lives, these people have been insinuating themselves into the commercial world. Using such outlawed methods as insider trading they have managed to amass a large fortune by playing the stock and the futures markets. That they have been so spectacularly successful is testament to the fact that their methods cannot be legal."

"They recently invited the media to examine their personal and professional lives. What we saw was a very much sanitised version of how they live. We have discovered that the principals of this corporation, calling themselves John and Jane Smith, aliases if there ever were, are illegal aliens. They claim that their birth records were lost in a fire, bullshit. They entered this country illegally and have set about to carry out the directives of their puppet masters and undermine the very fabric of this country."

"The Tax Office has no record of them ever having paid tax, something that we, the average Australian would find repulsive. Here are these people sucking the financial lifeblood from this country, expatriating the money to another country and contributing nothing to our economy."

"The people of this country should, no must, show these people that we are not going to stand for what they are doing to us. We should boycott any product that they produce, any service that they provide and cancel our membership to their phoney church. Let us get out there and reclaim our land and our inheritance. It is time that Australians stopped being complacent and did something about reclaiming our country. Get out of your chairs and do something, anything!"

It would have been very tempting for us to strip him naked on camera so that he became the laughing stock of his viewers, a temptation that we resisted. Instead, as the camera pulled back from his desk we had a man walk onto the set and placed an attaché case on the desk. The man opened it revealing to the viewers that in contained a large quantity of high denomination bank notes.

The reaction from the presenter ranged from surprise to greed in a matter of seconds and he was about to pick up the case when he realised that the camera was still running. He ran his finger across his throat in a familiar gesture, "Cut! Turn off that fucking camera!"

"I can't." the camera operator was madly trying to switch it off.

In the control room the producer was just as madly flicking switches. Nothing that they did could turn off the broadcast.

"This money isn't mine!" The presenter screamed. "I haven't seen this man before in my life and I have never been paid by anyone to editorialise."

"You're right you have never met me before in your life, but you have met my partners. They promised you this and more money if you would start a campaign of lies and innuendo against the Underhill Corporation. They do not want Underhill to succeed in this new venture because they have a vested interest in making sure that their interests and that of the United States continue to prevail." Turning to face the camera he continued. "Until very recently I was in the employ of the CIA and was privy to the planning that went along with that organisations plots to undermine the Underhill Corporation. It was only after several attempts to kill the directors failed that I took a closer look at the operations of that corporation and those that worked for it."

"I have found that they have done nothing legally or morally wrong. They have in fact paid any taxes owing, as the Tax Office records will show, they have done nothing that wasn't in the best interests of the people of Australia and, despite the campaigns waged against them, have at all times deported themselves in a kind and gentle manner. In balance, I have decided that I, and I'm putting my own life at risk in doing this, would like to work for Underhill Corporation."

"He's genuine." Jadixna's observation was quietly but forcefully delivered. "I'll have a talk with him, he could prove useful."

The next attack on our plans was from a panel of 'experts' including an environmentalist, a botanist, a civil engineer and an economist.

"I have seen plans for two channels at least fifty metres wide running to and from the top end of Spencer Gulf to a position from which the centre could be flooded. This will cause massive disruption to the fragile ecosystem and will cause irreparable damage to it." He paused for breath, "The increased salinity in the gulf caused by the flushing effect of what you propose will kill off the marine life, leaving a desert, and ruining the livelihood of those fishermen who relied on the gulf." The environmentalist started the proceedings.

"These allegations are untrue." I countered, showing plans for a tunnel from Spencer Gulf to the centre and a return tunnel to St Vincent Gulf. "Our plans will cause little or no disruption to the ecosystems. There will be minimal disturbance to the surface. This being confined to salt stockpiles."

"Even the smallest disruption will destroy this fragile environment," the botanist said.

"Salt from the lake systems will be used in the tunnel construction. It will be fused with the natural sands to form an impervious barrier that would not contaminate the water that flowed through the tunnel."