Prior to his joining ASIO Alan Kelsey had been a lieutenant-commander in Naval Intelligence in the Australian Navy. When the navy began to run out of ships, and money, many of its personnel had been declared redundant. Kelsey had sensed that advancement would be problematical so he had taken redundancy and had promptly been snapped up by ASIO.
‘David McKay is already there, as you know, he has been there for about three months. He is ostensibly the home correspondent on one of our dailies in London. We have another security detachment on call for the negotiations we shall shortly be holding with Indonesia and Taranga on the question of deep sea oil exploration in the Arafura Sea. So we have much on our plate at present.’
‘Yes, we’re pretty thin on the ground at present.’
‘Do you remember Murray Craddock?’
‘Will I ever forget him,’ snorted Kelsey.
‘We never did find him did we?’ said Burton. ‘How long ago was it the bastard defected and disappeared?’
‘Oh…what would it be, nearly twelve months ago now? He doesn’t seem to have surfaced in Moscow, so heaven knows where he is now.’
‘Well I think there’s a possibility we may have found him,’ rejoined Francis Burton dryly, referring to a note on his desk. ‘Or at least, we do have a clue as to his whereabouts.’
‘We do? Where?’
‘We believe he’s run to ground in England, and that he’s been there since he did a runner from here.’
‘England! Good God!’
‘Well he does have English antecedents, as I suppose many of us do if we go back far enough,’ Burton ruminated. ‘But his final destination must have been planned long before he finally made a run for it, with everything geared for a hasty departure.’
‘What led us to England?’
‘We’ve been lucky,’ commented Burton. ‘A member of the Russian embassy staff in London committed an indiscretion and was ordered home in disgrace. He had no wish to return to Mother Russia, especially with a cloud over his head which would have obviated further foreign postings, so he opted to defect.’
‘Bill Wainwright and the rest of MI 5 must be cock-a-hoop.’
‘He is and they are,’ Burton gave a snort of amusement. ‘Bill and his team are sorting out what this Russki brought with him, obviously the bloke thought he’d better bring something of value to stop them throwing him back! Bill was on the blower yesterday, apparently one of the files this bloke brought out with him indicates that Murray Craddock is somewhere in the Midlands working in a bookshop owned by a member of the British Communist Party, where he’s been since he buggered off from here.’
‘Do we know where?’
‘Not yet, Dave McKay is working on it; a process of elimination,’ grunted Burton, running the palm of his hand over his bald head. ‘He’s working with Colin Grimshaw of Five to try to isolate which Communist Party member runs a bookshop in that area. I think we may strike gold here.’
‘That’s good news.’
‘Also, according to the file that Five are checking now, Craddock is still in contact with some members of an espionage ring he was working with before he upped and left. We have no names but we know that somebody is still leaking information from here, this may put a stopper on it.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘When were you due to leave for London?’
‘Couple of weeks.’
‘How is your wife taking it?’
‘Badly,’ responded Kelsey ruefully. ‘She’s used to the enforced absences, but all our children are reaching teenage, they are becoming independent and bloody minded, especially the girls.’
‘Makes you wonder why we have children at all,’ sighed Burton. ‘I wish you, and especially Petra, joy.’
‘Thanks…for nothing!’
‘They are called The Society of Asian Commerce,’ said Christine Norton as she riffled through the file. ‘I’ve never heard of them before so I did a check on them. They were formed three years ago but they don’t seem to do very much apart from hold meetings.’
‘What are they offering?’
‘$2,000 for a four hour seminar and a rah rah speech,’ said Christine. ‘Together with a supper segment back at the hotel afterwards that shouldn’t present too many problems.’
‘Does Saul know them?’
‘No, that is to say, he had heard of them but doesn’t really know very much about them. They seem harmless enough, no politics or religion, not on the face of it anyway, though you can never tell these days. They seem to be mainly interested in trade.’
‘All right, suits me,’ Wallace replied. ‘OK, see what you can find out about them and then if it seems satisfactory, cable acceptance. The date slots in with my trip.’
‘Not entirely, you’d have to stay for another two weeks, but Saul says he has another couple of nibbles from some other organisations that want to know something of trade and insurance practices in the Southern Hemisphere, he says it could make it worth your while and contribute something to your vacation expenses.’
She made one or two notations on the file. Christine Norton was a tall woman, about 5’10” tall and though a little lacking in the upper works was quite striking elsewhere. Her hair was fair and short around the back and sides but with a mass of curls on top. Wallace found her quite attractive to look upon, though he had heard that in the sexual sphere she played for the other team. He could believe it, there was a masculine look about her despite her use of clothes that emphasised her femininity. They had a strong rapport; she was an efficient lady and a good agent, with a sense of humour that closely tallied with Wallace’s.
Wallace tended to land many of his own speaking engagements locally through his own contacts, but as she obtained many more overseas they both did well out of each other. Her clients included many actors, most of them small time who were involved in the advertising, movie and television fields, which was her main bread and butter. In the main the faces of many of her clientele would be familiar to television viewers, who would recognise many of them when they appeared on the screen but would find it difficult to remember their names.
She had a few clients like Wallace who laid no claim to being thespians, who were in demand by commercial organisations and occasionally government utilities for end of year entertaining speeches at Christmas dinners or other business functions. Wallace’s overseas commitments were useful in that if he was going anyway, particularly to England where he still had relatives, a presentation or seminar could pay much of, if not all, air fares and expenses.
Since they had joined forces Wallace’s speaking assignments had sky rocketed within Australia, particularly interstate where there had previously been few contacts.
She lit a cigarette in a manner which tended to accentuate her masculine properties, and Wallace found himself smiling at the thought that Elsie’s friend had considered her worthy of mention to Elsie as a rival for Elsie herself. Saul, who
