The Marmalade Files by Steve Lewis & Chris Uhlmann Read Free Book Online Page A

‘How’s she doing?’
    â€˜Not good. It will be touch and go.’
    Toohey surprised his colleagues with his response: ‘Can you please give me a moment alone with her?’
    Confused looks were exchanged, but everyone was quietly relieved to be able to leave the room.
    As the group moved out of earshot, Toohey looked down on his fallen colleague.
    â€˜You selfish bitch.’

June 19, 2011
    When the Argyle Apartments were first sold off the plan to eager Canberra buyers, they were touted as a ‘delightful retreat in the Paris end of Kingston’. The marketing whiz who came up with that beguiling description was later jailed for false and misleading conduct.
    The final effect was more Cold War East Berlin than Boulevard Saint-Germain.
    Still, the Argyle Apartments had been snapped up by hungry investors who sought the charm of inner-city living without the traffic snarls of Sydney or Melbourne. An architectural travesty on the outside, they were, however, tastefully finished with modern European appliances and smart concrete floors. All in all, they had much appeal in an upmarket suburb favoured by professionals, well-paid bureaucrats and those parliamentarians with enough cash – and confidence – to buy investment properties.
    Unit Six was a stand-out, gorgeously furnished with a blend of imported lounges and tables, its walls lined with an impressive collection of indigenous Australian art.
    Ben Gordon had bought the two-level townhouse four years ago, regretting none of the $850,000 he’d spent. Enterprising agents would regularly tell him that he could sell for a handsome mark-up – close to one million, according to one blond-streaked prince who’d said all the right things … up to a point. But Gordon was having none of it. He needed some stability in his private life, which had swung between disaster and catastrophe for much of the past twenty-five years since he’d left Sydney.
    He’d arrived in the national capital in late 1985, on a windswept Sunday after a four-hour drive down the Hume, negotiating two rainstorms and the treachery of a single-lane highway that snaked around Lake George.
    He’d gone straight to work in ASIO, surprised and delighted that his peculiar blend of talents and obsessions could be put to good use in the national interest.
    On this late Sunday morning, the apartment filled with the scent of fresh lilies and long-stemmed roses from the nearby Bus Depot markets, Gordon poured a black coffee from his Diadema espresso machine before firing up his impressive network of computers.
    â€˜Thunderbirds are go,’ he said quietly to himself.
    Despite owning one of the most expansive private databases and most secure networks of computers in Canberra, the task seemed daunting. He was starting with just two names – Bruce Paxton and Zhou Dejiang – a mystery third man and the Acaciamarking. It was an intriguing cocktail, one that had immediately captured his imagination, and one that would have been far easier to understand if he could have accessed the DSD’s vast data banks. But working on a project like this at the directorate was a huge no-no – every keystroke was logged and employees who breached the strict security protocol would be quickly shown the door. Or worse.
    Gordon had spent years building up his credentials and skills, proving to his superiors that he could be trusted with the nation’s most sensitive matters, even while wearing the most revealing of dresses. He’d been a fastidious worker and was now far too valuable for DSD to let go, even when the top brass got wind of a trannie working in the senior ranks of intelligence.
    Like all computer junkies Gordon spent hours each day working with random data that meant absolutely nothing to most normal people. What set him apart from the scores of other PC hacks was that his home, instead of being littered with empty pizza boxes and soft-drink