4 – Thirteen phantoms

Peter looked around the room at The Lodge and at the people sitting at the table. It was once again a meeting room where high authority gathered to be briefed. Déjà vu—it made the back of his neck tingle. Last year his life seemed to have taken turns where dangerous and damaging occurrences repeated themselves. And it was only last year that this room had been the meeting place where he contemplated the worst of potentials and here he was again. The atmospherics weren’t lost to the Prime Minister, he winked at Peter—the confirmation of a kindred spirit.

‘As you know, I’ve decided that we will all hear the CIA’s briefing together,’ the PM began. There were eight people seated around him: Peter and Robyn; Rob and Servandra; Frank, the Attorney-General; Anthony Winthrop, Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP); Harold Barrett, Director-General of ASIO, Australia’s national security agency; and General Samuel Windsor, Chief of the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

‘No delay through written reports or dilution through re-telling. We all have a stake in this but maybe we’ll know what that stake is if we hear it together and tease it out. Peter and Robert will be privy to all information we have as they may have the greater exposure. Servandra and Robyn are as much public property as these two,’ he indicated Peter and Rob, ‘and need to know it all, first hand. They have clearance from me—and for all intents and purposes, they are part of my advisory group.’

The A-G nodded at Rob and smiled. Theirs had grown into a good friendship.

It had been a month since the lunch where the PM had frightened the hell out of Robyn and Servandra, that lunch where th