Smoking Gun (Adam Cartwright Trilogy Book 1) (15 page)

***

Travelling down in the lift Ewan Ryan shook his head at me and said, “There’s certainly not a dull moment with you, is there?”

I grinned and replied, “Believe me, I’d much prefer a dull, boring life.”

“So you are returning to Cairns tonight?”

“Yes. On the six thirty flight.”

“Well take care. That Comancheros warning should be taken seriously. I’ll be in touch tomorrow about next Tuesday and what else needs to be done. I assume that you are happy to keep the two whistleblowers on until we know how this is going to work out?”

“Sure.”

Later while waiting at the airport for my flight to Cairns, I rang Leonie Wran to give her a progress report.

She would go and track down Lex Robertson and Heino Pops to give them the news. So far things were on track. And perhaps I was a little closer to finding out who was responsible for the attacks on me.

***

I had only been off the construction site for a day but things had backed up noticeably. There was a stack of notes on my desk when I arrived back in my office the following day. All were requesting my immediate attention. There was nothing really serious, but I had a number of small fires to put out before I could even start thinking about the next step in the whistleblower saga.

I had arrived back onboard ‘Irish Mist’ in the Cairns Marina late last night and gone straight to bed. Or, more strictly speaking, straight to my quarter berth and slept soundly. I had been on the lookout for trouble in the dark as I approached my marina berth as the warning about the Comancheros had not gone entirely unheeded. Nevertheless I had no trouble getting to sleep once I was buttoned up down below.

Now that the Red Rock project had reached the equipment installation phase my supervisory force had been strengthened with more specialist technical inspectors. Most were contractors, but two were Gibson Construction employees who were usually based in Brisbane. There were now electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, instrument technicians and electronic engineers reporting to me. The range and complexity of activity onsite more than justified their participation but each felt a need to talk to me at least once a day. Consequently I had recently introduced a new mealtime protocol. I would now eat my evening meals at a table with the engineering and technical inspectors, and we would talk work. The after dinner talk sometimes dragged on to the extent that we overstayed our welcome at the dining room and were asked to leave.

The only rule was that if anyone had been relaxing with a beer or two at the bar beforehand, then they should eat at another table. I was not inclined to let anyone waste my time with meaningless beer-inspired rhetoric. Apart from actual work-related matters requiring decisions to be made on the construction site, there was a new issue looming on the horizon. It was the Union’s reaction to my recent edict that all workers on the construction site must have a Red Rock Project ID card with them at all times. As expected the Construction Workers Union had objected strenuously.

Just two days after I had announced the ID card a Union activist was walking around the construction site and haranguing everyone about the evils of the proposed ID card. He had avoided speaking to me but he was already proposing a strike if the ID card was introduced. His name was Toby Jones. Before I met him he had been described to me as being ugly, obese, self-important and a pretentious demagogue. When I met him I realised that he was every bit as unpleasant as the description I had been given. I had found him easy to dislike, even before I heard what he had to say.

In order to bring the issue to a conclusion before it got out of hand I called for a general stop-work meeting to be held in the dining room at eleven fifteen today. Work would halt at eleven o’clock and resume at one o’clock after lunch. All workers on site were invited to attend. Toby Jones was invited to address the gathering after me if he wished. He accepted the invitation with alacrity.

When I arrived at the dining room at ten past eleven it was packed. All the tables were occupied and the walls lined two deep. Jack Gilmore told me later that there were over four hundred attending the meeting. He had invited his mine contract workers to attend also as the mine owners were also strongly in favour of the ID card proposal.

A large, solid table had been cleared and placed at the front for me and Toby Jones to use as a dais. A chair had been placed with its back against the table as a step to mount the dais. There was no need for a P.A. system. As soon as I arrived I stepped up onto the chair and then onto the table and turned to face the gathering. Toby Jones had been standing by the table apparently awaiting my arrival. I did not acknowledge him as I brushed past.

The buzz of the crowd subsided almost immediately when I held up my hands for silence. “I’m probably known to most of you. My name is Adam Cartwright. I’m employed by Gibson Construction to manage construction of the Red Rock Project...” I was forced to pause as the overwhelmingly friendly crowd responded with cheers and calls of “Good on you Adam.” I grinned and held my hands up again for silence before continuing. “Thank you. Well, I am going to speak to you about the proposal, my proposal in fact, to introduce photo ID cards for all workers on the construction site. But before I do I’d like to welcome Mister Toby Jones. Many of you know him already. He is the guy who has been going around the site telling you that the sky will fall in, and your chooks stop laying, if photo ID cards are made compulsory…” Again I was interrupted, this time with laughter. I think that everyone present now realised just how I was going to play this confrontation with the Union organiser. I held up my hands again. “But I am pre-empting what Mister Jones has to say.” Looking down at Toby Jones standing next to the table cum dais I said, “Toby, would you please come up and join me?”

He instantly put a foot up on the chair and tried to lever himself up onto the dais. But he couldn’t do it. Embarrassed, he instinctively extended a hand to me, silently requesting me to give him a hand up. I looked down at him unmoved. This man had been identified in the recent Royal Commission as being connected with the Comancheros bikie gang. He had refused my invitation to meet with him earlier and I was not at all inclined to assist him in any way. Looking down at his supporters standing next to him I said, “I think that Mister Jones needs a hand.” Four hundred people watched in bemused silence as the remarkably obese Toby Jones was pushed and levered up onto the dais.

As soon as he was standing next to me, wheezing and looking like a big crumpled balloon, I commenced presenting the reasons for introducing the ID cards. “The benefits, to each of you and your employer, arising from introduction of the photo ID card are too numerous to cover in depth. There is the improved safety, better everyday security, protection against terrorist attacks, elimination of ghosts on the payroll and more effective protection against fraud.” I then went on to briefly address each aspect. From time to time there were questions from the gathering which I responded to clarify the issue. Several were asked by the mining contractor, who I soon realised was guiding me to mention aspects that would affect his mining contract workers. I concluded my explanations with the words. “Well I’ve been talking to you for fifteen minutes. I have now concluded my summary of the case for the photo ID card. Toby Jones now has a maximum of fifteen minutes to tell you why he thinks that it is a bad idea. After he finishes I will have a few brief words to wind up this meeting and you can all have lunch.”

Amid much clapping and whistling I then stepped to the side to allow Toby Jones to assume the central position on the dais.

Toby Jones was a strong speaker but what he had to say was absolute twaddle. His arguments were mostly irrelevant, his wild claims were without any supporting evidence and his rhetoric full of clichés. His key objection seemed to be that the photo ID card was part of a government conspiracy to monitor and control its citizens. He stated that it was the duty of every worker to fight against it tooth and nail. Even then his library of arguments was sparse and he started repeating himself before he was half way through his allotted time. Finally, after fifteen minutes of excruciating frustration at having to listen to his nonsense, I stepped back towards the centre of the table, ostentatiously tapped my watch and called out in a firm voice. “Times up!”

There was a buzz of conversation around the room which instantly silenced when I held up my hands for quiet. I looked around the room assessing the mood of the crowd. There were no angry faces and whenever my eyes settled on someone momentarily I received a friendly smile. There was no need for me to recap the issues, as far as I was concerned the debate was over. All I needed to do was to wrap up the meeting. Turning to face Toby Jones I said in a clear voice. “Thank you, Toby for your eloquent presentation. I have only one word of response. Oombarlo!”

Jones was bewildered and showed it by blurting out. “Oombarlo? What on earth do you mean?”

I smiled indulgently. “Sorry, Toby. I thought that you, of all people, would be familiar with the word, oombarlo. Let me explain by giving you an example of how it is used. Some years ago there was a union organiser engaged in travelling through darkest Africa seeking to spread the unionist word amongst the tribes in remote areas. One day he came across a village where he was invited to address the gathered members of the tribe. As the union organiser outlined each of the benefits of being a union member, and the great advances achieved by unions, the tribe would roar their appreciation and shout loudly in unison. ‘Oombarlo! Oombarlo!’ Each time the union organiser received an ovation he swelled with pride and proceeded to make even more outrageous claims. And each time he did so the tribe members’ ovation and chants of ‘Oombarlo! Oombarlo!’ resonated even louder through the jungle. Eventually the chief, with tears streaming down his cheeks, stood up to thank the union organiser and said, ‘On behalf of the tribe I would like to thank you for your talk. As a gesture of our appreciation of you coming here and telling us about Unions I would like to take you on a tour of our temple where hundreds of sacred bulls are kept. But I need to warn you, watch out where you step as there is a lot of oombarlo on the floor.’”

There was a momentary pause as the crowd, who had been completely silent during my rather longwinded story, suddenly got the joke and roared with laughter. Toby Jones was mortified. When he tried to speak he was repeatedly drowned out with a chorus of ‘oombarlo, oombarlo’. Eventually, totally humiliated, he had to be assisted down from the table and led from the dining room by his few remaining supporters.

I stood silently watching him depart. I had no sympathy for him and I guess that it showed. Glancing around at the gathering I saw Jack Gilmore at the front, taking a photograph of me with his cell phone. I grinned, gave him a thumbs-up and jumped down off the table. All things considered, I reckoned that the confrontation with Toby Jones had gone well.

***

It was three o’clock when I walked back into my office. A note was lying on my desk. It was a message to ring Ewan Ryan. I had been busy doing the rounds of the construction site since lunch and had been so busy that I had not even checked my emails. The midday meal had been a high spirited affair. Everyone had been in good spirits after the stop-work meeting. I repeatedly heard the word ‘oombarlo’ followed by laughter. 

I had expected Ewan Ryan to contact me today but his greeting took me totally by surprise, “I thought you said that you preferred a quiet, boring life.”

I was thrown by his unexpected response to my greeting and stammered. “What…what do you mean?”

“The YouTube video of your stop-work meeting today.”

I was still bewildered. “I don’t know what you mean?”

“Oh! Well, someone recorded your presentation at the stop-work meeting today and put it up on YouTube. It’s been there less than two hours and has had thousands of hits already. I’ve been told that it is going viral, whatever that means.”

I was silent for a few moments, taking it all in. Finally I spoke. “Well, I didn’t know about the recording or the YouTube clip. Have you seen it?”

“Yes.”

“Does it help our cause?”

Ryan chuckled. “I should bloody think so. Someone at Red Rock sent a link to Gibson Construction and we have all seen it. But what I want to know is; what was the reaction at Red Rock to the meeting?”

“I think that the Union will be hard pressed to make trouble in regard to the photo ID card. I don’t think that they will muster much support on site. I’ve been constantly approached by workers around the construction site telling me that they support the proposal. I think that it is done and dusted.”

“Good. Well the lawyers, yes the bloody lawyers, have reviewed the stuff on the data stick and are right behind you. They recommend that Gibson Construction do not prosecute the whistleblowers. They also think that there is an excellent chance of getting witness protection for them. Our administration people are very much in favour of your initiatives for the photo ID cards and checking out the approved suppliers list.”

He stopped talking apparently waiting for me to respond so I said, “Good. I don’t think that the ID cards and checking the approved supplier list is particularly radical or innovative. They’re the obvious steps to take.”

Ryan snorted. “To you maybe, but from where I’m sitting I have to tell you that I’m pretty impressed.”

For a moment I thought that I’d make a joke about taking the opportunity to ask him for a raise in salary but decided against it. Somehow I felt that he would not react well to flippancy. Instead I asked, “What about the meeting with the Commission on Tuesday. I would like to spend half a day or so with the consulting engineers in Brisbane soon. Tuesday would be a good date. What time is your meeting and do you still want me to be there?”

“Yes. Definitely, I want you there. Anyway you were invited by the Commission. The meeting is at ten o’clock. What time can you get here?”

“Nine o’clock.”

“Excellent. I’ll see you here in my office then. You can see the engineers in the afternoon.”

“Okay. I’ll see you at nine on Tuesday.”

Ryan chuckled again and said loudly. “Oombarlo! Oombarlo! I love it.” He was still laughing as he terminated the call.

***

I had just hung up when there was a knock on my door and Jack Gilmore walked into my office. With a grin on his face he said, “Hey, Adam there’s something that you should see…”