Rogue Element

Griffin was the Director-General of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, a man Niven could always rely on to play it straight. The two men had been to university together, played football together, and had even been out with a few of the same women.

‘Ahead of you there, Spike. Shirley?’ he said, raising his voice so it would carry over the thick carpet. ‘Could you get Graeme Griffin in here? And ask Phil Sharpe to come over too.’

Niven scowled again, this time intentionally. He couldn’t think of one issue he and Sharpe agreed on.

The PA appeared around the door. ‘Anything else?’

‘No thanks, mate,’ said Blight, treating the woman who’d been his PA for twenty years no differently to one of the boys.

The two men made small talk for a couple of minutes while they waited for Griffin and the Minister for Foreign Affairs to arrive, but the conversation was awkward. Both men wanted action, not talk, and were soon lost in the silence of their own thoughts.

Shirley hurried in with a jug of water and some glasses and left saying, ‘If you need anything, call.’

The Prime Minister nodded.

‘Prime Minister, Spike,’ Griffin said as he entered the office and sat beside the CDF. The ASIS chief was tall and wiry with hard blue eyes softened by deep laugh lines at the corners. He wore his grey hair cropped short, military style.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Phil Sharpe, followed, settling comfortably into a chair under the window. He ran his hands through the thick, mouse-coloured hair that hung down his tanned forehead like rope, repositioning it back on top of his head. He affected a hint of a smile, as if he’d just shared a witticism at someone else’s expense before entering the room. Niven and the minister didn’t get on. Neither man knew why, it was just chemistry, or lack of it. Griffin and Sharpe shook hands and were cordial to each other — ASIS answered to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Niven noted that, as usual, Sharpe wore an imported, dark navy suit and a hard white shirt. His tie had been chosen to make a statement. On other occasions, Niven had joked to himself that the statement was probably something like, ‘Hey, look at me, I’m an arsehole.’ The CDF caught a whiff of the man’s aftershave. It was the one he used. Niven made a mental note to pour the remains of his bottle down the sink.

‘Prime Minister, if I may start?’ asked the ADF chief. Blight nodded.

‘I’ve been doing some checking with both my own people and Qantas.’ He opened an atlas he had brought with him at the marked spread and pointed at Sulawesi in the Indonesian archipelago. He also pulled out a World Area Chart of Sulawesi, the kind of map aviators use to navigate visually over terrain. The track of the 747 had been drawn on the map with greasy red pencil. The track ended with a red cross. A semicircle, also drawn in red, about eight centimetres in diameter, fanned around from the X.

‘The X represents the approximate coordinates of QF-1 at about the time it disappeared from ATC screens, taking into account wind and other factors. We’re not exactly sure of the position because the Indons haven’t released the ATC disks that would give us the precise latitude and longitude. Nevertheless, our people are pretty sure of the plane’s position in the sky when it was reported to have gone missing.

‘Now, the 747 will be somewhere within this circle. To suggest it might have come down elsewhere is ridiculous,’ he said quietly but firmly.

Niven studied the red track that ended in a cross on the map, and massaged his chin in thought. ‘All kinds of different communications link 747s with various traffic control systems and satellites and there’s a shit-load of redundancy built in. These planes don’t just go missing. So when that traffic controller in Denpasar says QF-1’s transponder code went out, along with all its communications gear, well… I hate to say it, but there are a few things capable of doing that and most of them make a nasty mess of an aircraft when they go off.

‘There is the remotest possibility that QF-1 could have been flying out of control in a wide but decreasing downward spiral, which is why I’ve drawn in this semicircle here,’ he said, pointing to the pencilled area on the WAC. ‘Whether it blew up in the sky or crash-landed, QF-1’s somewhere here.’ He tapped the X marked on the map with his index finger.

‘I’m not sure what your point is, Spike,’ Sharpe said. ‘We’re in Indonesia’s hands. It’s their territory, and they do have the men and equipment needed to locate the crash site. It’s frustrating but we’ll just have to wait and see what they turn up. Also, let’s not forget that the plane only went down,’ he checked his watch, ‘maybe eight hours ago, so we can hardly accuse them of dragging the chain. Then there’s the terrain it went down in. Sulawesi is not a very hospitable place; most of it’s covered in jungle and volcanoes.’