Kompromat

Li Xiao-Tong, sitting in his office in the Ministry of State Security, Beijing, reviewed the report he had received an hour earlier. Thank God for the Chinese Diaspora, he thought. There seemed to be almost as many Chinese living outside China as inside, and many of those were fiercely loyal to the motherland. Take Ching and Fung, for example. They had never actually lived in China but they still regarded Wuxi as their ancestral home and planned to return one day. What a splendid idea MSS Agent Hu, owner of Kununurra’s Kimberley Asian Cuisine restaurant, had had when he proposed recruiting Mickey Selkirk’s two live-in staff as part of the MSS network of secret agents in Western Australia.

You could hardly suspect Ching and Fung of being spies just because they innocently popped into town for a Chinese meal on their day off.

What a good job they had just done! He clicked on the recording which accompanied the email and heard Mickey Selkirk’s unmistakably Australian accent: ‘So you don’t need to tell me why you’re here. But let me say one thing. I want to be perfectly clear about this. I can’t be bought, but I can possibly be persuaded. So let’s look at a deal that’s good for both sides.’

If that’s wasn’t a smoking gun, Li didn’t know what a smoking gun was.

Good work, Ching, he thought, picking up that whole conversation. Advances in technology made eavesdropping so much easier nowadays. If you were waiting at table, for example, you could just carry your phone around in your pocket with the record button pressed. Or you could hide the phone in some convenient nearby vessel and leave it there for the duration.

He clicked on the photos Ching had sent. How good Rosie looked on a horse, Li thought. Pity Fung hadn’t managed to snap a few pics of Rosie in bed with Jack. They’d be worth a bob or two on the black market. You missed a trick there, Ching, he thought.

Or maybe Ching had other plans for this kind of hot stuff. There were plenty of takers out there, he knew. Photos of Jack Varese and Rosie Craig in bed, even if they were just drinking a cup of tea and reading the Sunday papers, would go viral in seconds.

Li made a mental note to ask Agent Fu to have a quiet word with Ching. If he was selling secrets on the side, somebody should be getting a cut.

MSS held the whip-hand there, he reckoned, as far as Ching and Fung were concerned. That little house in Wuxi, reserved for them as long as they kept the reports flowing, might suddenly disappear off the list of homes available for loyal cadre if it came to it.

Barnard had left the terrace door to his room open. He could still hear the sound of singing and laughter from the campfire.

Ching Ze-Gong went to the store room, opened a crate, and removed a small wooden box. The box was locked but small holes had been drilled in the side.

While the rest of the party was still sitting by the fire, Barnard had turned in early. He felt tired. Maybe the jet-lag was getting to him. Jack Varese, he noted, seemed totally impervious to fatigue.

As the party broke up, Varese had taken Rosie aside, telling the others, ‘You guys mind if Rosie and I pop over to have a night cap with Jim and Ollie?’

‘Go ahead, Jack. Take the ute,’ Selkirk had said. ‘Please tell Ollie I’m looking forward to seeing him tomorrow. If he’s fit to drink, he’s fit to fly.’

Barnard undressed as soon as he reached his room, putting his pyjamas on and slipping into bed.

He felt the bite almost at once. A short, stinging pain, followed by a burning sensation.

‘What on earth’s that?’ he shouted aloud.

He flung back the bedclothes to see a black spider, about the size of a baby’s fist, with a large red spot on its back, scurrying towards the open terrace door.

Edward Barnard didn’t panic easily. He knew he needed a dose of anti-venom. Australia had some of the most poisonous spiders in the world. But you had to know which spider had bitten you.

He picked up a shoe. Two thwacks. One dead spider.

‘Hello there!’ he shouted. ‘Can someone give me a hand?’

Mickey Selkirk, like Ed Barnard, had turned in early, but Melanie, who been catching up on her emails in the sitting room, came running.

‘I’ve been bitten by a spider,’ Barnard gasped. He was already short of breath as the toxin kicked in.

Melanie Selkirk took a look at the dead spider. She was puzzled. ‘Not sure what that one is. Looks a nasty piece of work. We need to get you to hospital. I’ll get Mickey.’

They helped Barnard to the helicopter. Selkirk ran through the pre-take-off checks. He had taken plenty of shortcuts in his life but never when it came to flying planes.

‘Oh, heck,’ he swore. ‘We’re out of fuel. Can’t believe this. I thought I’d asked Ching to fill it up when we came back from the Bungles.’