To Touch the Clouds : The Frontier Series 5 (14 page)

Hirsch called an order for his police to halt and walked towards Alex. ‘Good morning, Captain Macintosh,’ he greeted with a smile. ‘I notice that your friend has met some of our local lads.’

Alex grinned, knowing that Hirsch was referring to Jock’s two black eyes. ‘He informs me that his was a worthy cause. One of the men he clashed with called him an Englishman.’

‘I am afraid that many of my people here do not realise that the Scots are as different from the English as a Bavarian is from a Prussian,’ Hirsch said. ‘I see that you are ready to proceed.’

Alex hefted his kit over his shoulder. ‘Lead on, Hauptmann Hirsch,’ he said.

The trek took them from the tiny coastal strip of Rabaul town into rugged rainforest surrounding the horseshoe-shaped bay. Hirsch had informed Alex that the journey could possibly take a full day and night to reach the mission station.

The small party wound its way along an almost indiscernible track used for generations by the Tolai people travelling down to the coast. The humidity in the dank forest was oppressive as was the silence in the shadows. Stops were made to rest and drink water and it was on one of the stops that Alex became aware that a fever was coming on him. He alternated between feeling very hot to shivering from a chill that almost brought him to his knees. When a severe headache quickly followed, Alex began stumbling.
Dieter Hirsch noticed the physical change in the Australian. When Alex sank to his knees, dropping his swag, Hirsch called a stop to the arduous journey upwards. Jock was beside Alex with a canteen of water, attempting to force some between his lips. ‘Here laddie,’ he said with soothing words. ‘Take a wee sip.’

‘Malaria,’ Hirsch said, kneeling beside Jock and placing his hand to Alex’s brow. The terrible disease had claimed so many German settlers over the years that the symptoms were as common to him as those of a cold. He spoke to Jock in German but the engineer simply shook his head and said, ‘I don’t speak German.’

Hirsch frowned. He had very little knowledge of English. ‘We carry,’ he was able to muster in his limited grasp of English.

With orders snapped to his police, construction of a makeshift litter was quickly underway. Using their machetes the men cut saplings for poles and a blanket was quickly strung between them. Alex was lifted into the litter and the four police took an end each to hoist the improvised stretcher onto their shoulders. Hirsch made a decision. They were closer to the mission station than to Rabaul behind them and he knew that Father Umberto’s clinic would most likely have a supply of quinine. The patrol slowly struggled through the thick jungle. Just after sunset they emerged on a plateau and saw lanterns burning in the huts at the mission.

The Italian priest was summoned by one of the Tolai residents and greeted by Hauptmann Hirsch. Father Umberto spoke German fluently and gave orders for Alex to be taken to a small, white-washed stone building.

Jock could see from the glass cabinets affixed to the walls displaying vials of drugs that the building was some kind of
medical dispensary. Alex was placed in the single cot to one side of the one-roomed clinic. When the priest spoke his voice was a rich baritone. A man in his fifties with a mop of snow white thick hair, black bushy eyebrows and a tanned bearded face he was wearing a flowing white cassock but no clerical collar. He was indeed a man to be respected, Jock thought, and was disappointed to learn that the priest only spoke Italian, German and French. None of the languages he knew.

‘What do you think?’ Hirsch asked the priest, now bending over Alex who had fallen into a delirium and was mumbling unintelligible words in English.

‘I do not like what I can see,’ the priest replied, forcing a thermometer into Alex’s mouth. ‘I think that this man has little chance of surviving. I am sorry, Herr Hauptmann,’ Father Umberto said, standing stiffly to examine the mercury tube. ‘He will be lucky if he sees another sunrise.’

The German militia captain shook his head. He had a decision to make. If Captain Macintosh died of natural causes then his mission was over. He’d be relieved of a duty he did not relish. But if the Australian recovered then he would be forced to remain and confirm that Macintosh was indeed a spy. But Hirsch had an ace up his sleeve; the Italian priest was not aware of the fact but one of his staff close to him was an informant to the German administration. That person had the priest’s confidence and would be able to report just about everything back to Hirsch.

Dieter Hirsch made a decision to remain until Alex either died or gained his health. He turned to the priest and requested quarters for himself and his men. When Father Umberto agreed that Hirsch and Jock could share his quarters and the police a men’s dormitory in the station, Hirsch
ordered his men to bunk down and they were guided away by one of Father Umberto’s Tolai assistants.

‘I will have one of the good sisters sit with Mr Macintosh,’ Father Umberto said. ‘My nuns will take turns keeping an eye on the man.’

Arrangements were made and two very black-skinned nuns wearing white dresses and veils were summoned and although they were young they appeared competent in their nursing duties.

Holding a lantern, Father Umberto accompanied Jock and Hirsch across a flat, open ground to a spacious Tolai-built hut with European verandahs. Inside his quarters Jock could see that the priest had surrounded himself with shelves of leather-bound books – mostly on medical procedures – and some items of European furniture. Geckos scurried into corners of the thatched ceiling upon their entry into the building. ‘I presume that you might like a wine before retiring,’ the priest said to Hirsch, lighting another couple of kerosene lanterns. ‘It is not often that a most distinguished member of the administration pays our humble mission station a visit.’

Hirsch accepted the offer and Father Umberto produced a bottle of red wine from a cupboard along with three glasses. Hirsch gestured to the glass and wine. Jock understood the invitation and nodded his head. The three men sat at a sturdy wooden table and raised their glasses. Although Jock did not understand the words in German he did recognise Alex’s name and presumed that it was a toast to his boss and friend recovering. ‘To Mr Macintosh,’ he responded, with feeling.

Meanwhile Alex was fighting for his life in the clinic across the open ground between the two buildings. Swigging back his wine, Dieter Hirsch wondered if he might yet
have to kill the Australian and this soured the taste of the fine Italian red. Maybe the man was better dying from the tropical illness than recovering only to be killed at a later date.

9

T
he location for the meeting had been well thought-out. Busy Circular Quay with its milling crowds embarking or disembarking from the ferries of Sydney Harbour was a place to disappear in. Herr Bosch, the assistant to the German consul in Sydney, knew whom he was to meet. He stood by the exit to the Mosman ferry watching the ladies in their long dresses hurrying for shelter and holding down their hats against a wind flurry while gentlemen in suits and straw boater hats joined them.

As rain clouds gathered in the skies overhead Bosch waited patiently under the shelter over the pier until he saw the man he had come to meet.

‘Mr Macintosh,’ he said in English when the man wearing an expensive, tailored suit approached. ‘We should walk and talk.’

George Macintosh fell into step with the assistant
consul. They made their way with their heads down against the southerly wind now blowing sleeting rain towards the streets of Sydney. Trams clattered into life, conveying ferry passengers to their places of occupation. ‘You have news of my brother?’ George asked.

‘Ja,’ Bosch answered. ‘Our last report was that he has been intercepted in Rabaul and remains under the observation of our government there.’

‘Have your people in Rabaul uncovered any signs that he is on a spying mission?’ George asked, crossing a busy street filled with trams, horse-drawn wagons and automobiles spewing fumes.

‘Not so far,’ Bosch answered. ‘But if we do I cannot be responsible for what may befall your brother. You must understand that his life is in dire peril if he is a spy.’

‘I appreciate what you are trying to tell me and be assured that I would not hold your government responsible if my brother were to have an unfortunate accident in the jungle.’

Maynard Bosch glanced at him with an unconcealed expression of disgust. ‘I cannot understand how a man could speak so lightly of the possible death of a brother,’ he said.

‘You must understand, Herr Bosch, before you judge me, that my feelings towards my brother come second to the future of the family fortunes. If my brother is on some foolish mission to commit a crime against your government then he must understand that he runs a terrible risk of jeopardising his own life and, worse still, our investments with your country. What is the sacrifice of one man worth in the interests of many?’ George said.

Bosch nodded although he still did not understand why any man would betray his brother. ‘My government is very
appreciative of your assistance in the matter and hope that your suspicions are unfounded. From what I have been able to glean about your brother, Captain Macintosh, he proved very popular with the officers in Rabaul. It would be a shame for the world to lose such a man.’

George listened but felt no emotion concerning his brother’s fate. He had passed on the information to curry favour with the German government as well as solve his problem of Alex sharing in any future inheritance. His plan to discredit Fenella appeared to be progressing well and before the end of the year he aimed to have both out of the family – one way or the other – leaving him the sole beneficiary of the vast Macintosh fortune. The heavy investment in the German chemical industry was fast becoming a small fortune in its own right as the Germans were leading in this field. George could see their discoveries as the basis of a huge pharmaceutical industry in the future. If Lady Enid Macintosh had still been alive she might have approved of his concern for the family name and fortune, he thought. She had no time for the weak and approved of his ruthless strength. He could bide his time either until his father died or eventually handed him the total control of the companies.

‘Do you have anything else for me?’ George asked, stopping outside one of Sydney’s more exclusive hotels.

‘It would help us if you could uncover more of what your father and Colonel Hughes are plotting,’ Bosch said. ‘I am sure that you could make yourself present when they meet at your father’s house.’

‘I do not see them together there very often,’ George replied. ‘My father normally discusses military matters with Colonel Hughes at Victoria Barracks.’

‘It is a shame that you do not have a commission with
Colonel Duffy’s regiment like your brother does,’ Bosch said. ‘You could prove to be invaluable to us.’

‘I am not a spy like my brother,’ George retorted. ‘I have passed on the information that I had because I felt I had justification to do so. But I am not a traitor to my country.’

‘I did not say that you were,’ Bosch countered. ‘What you have passed to us is really in the interests of peace between our two nations. It is better that the activities of men like your brother be neutralised to maintain stability in the region.’

George knew that the assistant consul was throwing up a feeble defence of counterespionage but did not care. So long as they helped dispose of Alex and remembered his favour in the financial dealings he had with their industrialists he was untroubled by what they said about his role in the affair.

‘Well, if there is nothing else I will bid you a good afternoon,’ George said. ‘I have a luncheon meeting with my company directors. But I would be very grateful if you would inform me immediately if anything should befall my brother. In the meantime I can assure you my cooperation will continue.’

Bosch watched as George Macintosh entered the main entrance to the hotel. It was a place that would have cost him a month’s salary just to eat one meal. Bosch was a straightforward man who loved his country and his family. The idea that a man could so easily condemn his brother to death was beyond him, no matter what was at stake. Bosch’s own brother was a farmer in South Australia. Sadly, he was a professed patriot of his new country and unaware of Bosch’s activities in espionage. If it came to war between Germany and England Bosch worried that the ensuing hostilities would divide him and his brother in their loyalties.

He shook his head in disgust and turned to walk back to
the consul office. At least he had the powerful and influential George Macintosh over a barrel. To not assist him could have dire consequences for Mr George Macintosh.

With Matthew Duffy in Queensland, Randolph Gates found that he had a lot of time on his hands in Sydney. He had an excuse to stay around the film set and assist with the project because he needed to be expert in the use of the camera. But he also found the work interesting as they changed locations and he helped set up the props as backgrounds for the scenes in Arthur’s epic love story of passion and betrayal. Fenella was not hostile to his presence but simply seemed to ignore him. But his persistence seemed to be paying off. After a week, Fenella fell into small talk with him between scenes being shot.

This day Arthur had selected a location on one of Sydney’s more remote northern beaches where he owned a beach cottage. The entire cast and crew camped out there and an impromptu party began when the sun went down over a glorious autumn day. At least that is what the cast and crew thought. In fact, Arthur had a good stockpile of food and alcohol for the shooting of the last scene in his film. He saw the occasion as a way to celebrate the conclusion of what had almost been a terminated project.

Randolph impressed them with his ability to find driftwood in the tussock-covered sand dunes and build a bonfire on the beach, while Arthur truly endeared himself to his employees by producing big, succulent steaks to grill over the fire. Potatoes were thrown into the hot ashes to bake in their skins and slabs of fresh bread acted as plates. Crates of beer completed the abundant feast.