With the babble about Cold War paranoia becoming a routine matter in Canberra, the treacherous ground for war with China is being bedded down and readied. The Yellow Peril image never truly dissipated from Australia’s politics. It was crucial in framing the first act of the newly born Commonwealth in 1901: The Immigration Restriction Act. Even as China was being ravaged and savaged by foreign powers and implosion, there was a fear that somewhere along the line, a reckoning would come. Charles Henry Pearson, a professor of history at King’s College London, penned his National Life and Character: a Forecast (1893) with fear in mind. The expansion of the West into all parts of the globe and its claims to progress would soon have to face a new reality: the threat posed by the “Black and Yellow races.”

Pearson fastened on various developments. The population of China was booming. The Chinese diaspora, the same, making their presence felt in places such as Singapore. “The day will come and perhaps is not far distant, when the European observer will look round to see the globe girdled with a continuous zone of the black and yellow races, no longer too weak for aggression or under tutelage, but independent, or practically so, in government, monopolising the trade of their own regions, and circumscribing the industry of the Europeans.” Europeans would be “elbowed and hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside by peoples whom we looked down upon as servile and thought of as bound always to minister to our needs.”

The work’s effect was such as to have a future US President Theodore Roosevelt claim in a letter to Pearson that “all our men here in Washington … were greatly interested in what you said. In fact, I don’t suppose that any book recently, unless it is Mahan’s ‘Influence of Sea Power’ has excited anything like as much interest or has caused so many men to feel like they had to revise their mental estimates of facts.”

Anxiety, and sheer terror of China and the Chinese became part of the political furniture in Washington and in Britain’s dominions. In Australia, such views were fastened and bolted in the capital. The country’s first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, drew upon Pearson’s work extensively in justifying the Immigration Restriction Act in 1901. The White Tribe had to be protected.

In 1966, the Australian historian Donald Horne noted the continuing sense of impermanence for those living on the island continent, that “feeling that one morning we shall wake up to find that we are no longer here.” He recalled the views of an unnamed friend about China’s political aspirations, voiced in 1954. By 1957, he predicted, Southeast Asia would have fallen to its soldiers. Australia would duly follow, becoming a dependency. “Because of the submerged theme of impermanence and even catastrophe in the Australian imagination,” observed Horne, “the idea of possible Chinese dominance is ‘believable’ to Australians.”

There was a hiatus from such feeling through the 1980s and 1990s. The view in Australia, as it was in the United States, was that China could be managed to forget history, disposing itself to making money and bringing its populace out of poverty. But historical amnesia failed to take hold in Beijing.

Australian current actions in stoking the fires of discord over China serve a dual purpose. There is a domestic, electoral dimension: external enemies are always useful, even if they are mere apparitions. Therein lies the spirit of Barton, the besieged White tribe fearing submergence. The other is to be found in the realm of foreign policy and military security. Australian strategists have never been entirely sure how far the ANZUS Treaty could be relied upon.

One moment of candour on what might happen to trigger ANZUS obligations took place in 2004. Australia’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, on a trip to Beijing, pondered the issue of how a security relationship with China might affect US-Australian ties. Asked by journalist Hamish McDonald whether Australia had a treaty obligation to assist the US in defending Taiwan, the minister stated that the treaty was “symbolic” and would only be “invoked in the event of one of our two countries, Australia or the United States, being attacked. So some other military activity elsewhere in the world, be it in Iraq or anywhere else for that matter does not automatically invoke the ANZUS Treaty.” Its provisions, he observed, had only been invoked once: when the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001.

This startlingly sound reading did not go down well. The press wondered if this cast doubt over “ANZUS loyalties.” The US Ambassador to Canberra John Thomas Schieffer leapt into action to clarify that there was an expectation that Australia muck in should the US commit forces to battle in the Pacific. “[T]reaty commitments are that we are to come to the aid of each other in the event of either of our territories are attacked, or if either of our interests are attacked, our home territories are attacked or if either of our interests are attacked in the Pacific.” One cable from the Australian government attempted to pacify any fears about Australia’s reliability by suggesting that, “Some media reporting had taken elements [of Downer’s comments] out of context.”

The argument has now been turned. Discussion about Taiwan, and whether Australian blood would be shed over it, has much to do with keeping Washington focused on the Asia- and Indo-Pacific, finger on the trigger. If Canberra shouts loudly and foolishly enough that it will commit troops and weapons to a folly-ridden venture over Taiwan, Washington will be duly impressed to dig deeper in the region to contain Beijing. This betrays a naivety that comes with relying on strategic alliances with little reflection, forgetting that Washington will decide, in due course, what its own interests are.

So far, the Morrison government will be pleased with what the Biden administration has said. Australia could be assured of US support in its ongoing diplomatic wrangle Beijing. In the words of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, “the United States will not leave Australia alone on the field, or maybe I should say alone on the pitch, in the face of economic coercion by China. That’s what allies do. We have each other’s backs so we can face threats and challenges from a position of collective strength.”

Australia’s anti-China rhetoric has its admirers. Michael Shoebridge of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute – a US security think tank in all but name – dismisses the value of words such as “major conflict,” preferring the substance of action. He talks about “honesty” about China, which is grand coming from a member of an outfit which is less than frank about its funding sources and motivations. That honesty, he assumes, entails blaming China for belligerence. “Reporting what [President] Xi says and what the PLA and other Chinese armed forces do is not ‘stoking the drums of war’; it’s noticing what is happening in our region that affects our security.”

Thankfully, former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans is closer to the sane fringe in noting that words, in diplomacy, are bullets. He reminds us of “the immortal wisdom of the 1930s Scottish Labour leader Jimmy Maxton: ‘If you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the bloody circus.”

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam seemed to relish it before the cameras this week. The United States was enduring extensive shudders of internal instability in the wake of the George Floyd protests. Dubious proposals to deploy the military were on the books. This was a superb stage show. The Chinese move to crush or, to be more accurate, bring forward, the ultimate incorporation of Hong Kong into the PRC structure, had received some breathing space.

It all had to do with a little matter called sovereignty. For years, the United States, the United Kingdom, and European Union have seen Beijing’s sovereignty over the island qualified by the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. On the horizon lay the magic year when this singular status would end: 2047. In 2016, the Under Secretary for Constitutional & Mainland Affairs Ronald Chan announced that 2047 should not trouble those in Hong Kong. There was “no question of the expiry of the Basic Law after 2047.”

In the “one country, two systems” formula, the one country has, at stages, been forgotten in favour of the two systems, with Hong Kong having sway in most matters of governance except foreign affairs and defence. Much of this was bound to be wishful thinking on the part of those outside China. Since June 2019, when large and determined protests commenced against the proposed extradition treaty to China, the program of integration and winding back various provisions otherwise guaranteeing autonomy in the province has been fought tooth and nail.

The onset of the pandemic provided something of a forced lull, enabling the power brokers on the mainland to take stock. In April, a sense of what was to come was floated. Beijing threatened a sitting legislator with disqualification for sitting in office for resorting to filibustering. New security legislation was aired as a distinct possibility. And a conclusion was reached that the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO) and Liaison Office in Hong Kong were exempt from the application of Article 22 of the Basic Law. The provision prohibits “departments of the Central People’s Government” from meddling in matters otherwise within the scope of Hong Kong’s autonomy.

For all that, last month’s resolution through the National People’s Congress to enact a national security law specific to Hong Kong was merely part of an organic process that would ultimately challenge, if not displace the “one country, two systems” idea. Alvin Y.H. Cheung picks up on this in Just Security, suggesting three “interrelated and long-running developments: the Beijing and Hong Kong governments’ abuse of ‘advocating independence’ as political and legal cudgel; the growing role of the Liaison Office; and the political capture of a previously professionalized civil service apparatus.”

The proposed provisions are not pretty for the protesters, but then again, such laws are the generic stuff of a state apparatus that needs to prove its mettle. These include stopping or punishing conduct that seriously endangers national security (the usual offences of separatism, subversion or organising and carrying out terrorist activities would apply).

In of itself, any security-minded type would have little issue with language that focuses on targeting subversive elements, anything threatening national security and interference from a foreign power. (According to the NPC, the legislation “opposes the interference in the HKSAR affairs by any foreign or external forces in any form”, and authorises the taking of “necessary countermeasures” where necessary.) Such language is the essence of muscular sovereignty, however ugly it looks.

The reaction towards the unilateral move has been a gift to Lam and Beijing. We use a fist; you use a sledgehammer. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo concluded that the NPC’s decision neutered Hong Kong’s autonomous status. “No reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China, given facts on the ground.” Having attacked China intermittently over its handling of the novel coronavirus, US President Donald J. Trump further mudded matters by seeking to, in his instruction, “revoke Hong Kong’s preferential treatment as a separate customs and travel territory from the rest of China.” Such privileges are to be found in the US Hong Kong Policy Act 1992, which seems to be sliding into the morgue of treaties and understandings that has been increasingly packed by the Trump administration.

Such an alteration of Hong Kong’s status will have the ill-considered effect of pushing it further into the arms of PRC control. This point has been made by pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai, who claims that “removing those privileges would only make Hong Kong more dependent on China.”

In this latest rhetorical skirmish, everyone has a take on sovereignty. Naturally, the unfortunates in Hong Kong are wedged in between. Commentary has been quick and sharp on the subject of the NPC resolution, much of it regretful or indignant if you so happen to be in the British or US camp. “It should have come to this,” rued Caron Anne Goodwin Jones of the Birmingham Law School. The “de facto mini-constitution that came into effect after the British handover in 1997 – specifically limited Beijing from applying national laws to the territory, except in matters of defence and foreign affairs.”

Jones naturally puts this down to unnecessary PRC authoritarian paranoia. China, she suggests dismissively, has no grounds for fearing the prospect of Hong Kong become a base for subversion. Nowhere does she mention the eye-poking Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, passed by the US Congress and celebrated by certain protesters for permitting the imposition of “sanctions on those responsible for human rights violations in Hong Kong.” The mantra about the PRC challenging the “rules-based” order, a rather seedy way of concealing the role of power behind it, is cited in conclusion.

This rings rather oddly in an age where international paperwork on that very order is being torn-up with relish, most of all by that unruly man in the White House who deems all that preceded him “bad” and the “worst”. Anything with a pre-existing rule or code must, by Trump’s reckoning, be rotten. Be it trade wars or long standing security agreements, the MAGA platform of Trump has insisted on casting all the crockery out and replacing it with makeshift, rickety substitutes. Now, it seems that the PRC has taken a leaf out the president’s own book of ruffling chaos, suggesting that Hong Kong’s Basic Law can be tampered with ahead of time.

China’s foreign ministry has not shied away from poking fun at the anger from Washington. US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus was sappy in her remark that China’s move was “a pivotal moment for the world”, one that challenged the “rule of law”, inviting an acid response from Hua Chunying: “I can’t breathe.”

Britain has also waded into the sovereignty debate in its own, merry way. The UK government has offered all Hong Kong citizens who hold British National (Overseas) passports and those eligible for the BN(O) status but had not renewed their passports on expiration the right to live and work in the UK as a prelude to becoming citizens. Up to three million would fall into this category. China, in turn, claims the offer violates the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. No one, it seems, wants to read the fine print these days.

By Dr George Venturini  

In October 2012 a former senior royal aide revealed that notorious paedophile Jimmy Savile (actually Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile OBE since 2006), who was said to have acted as a kind of marriage counsellor between Prince Charles and Diana, was a cause for “concern and suspicion” at ‘The Palace’. Mr. Dickie Arbiter had handled media relations for the Prince and Princess of Wales while press spokesman for the Queen between 1988 and 2000.

Savile was known to have visited Prince Charles’s official London residence several times in the late 1980s when he was acting as a kind of marriage counsellor between Charles and Princess Diana. A spokesman for the Prince of Wales confirmed that the Charles and Savile formed a relationship in the late 1970s after coming together through their work with wheelchair sports charities. Charles led tributes to Savile when he died in 2011.

“He would walk into the office and do the rounds of the young ladies taking their hands and rubbing his lips all the way up their arms if they were wearing short sleeves.” Arbiter said of Savile. “If it was summer [and their arms were bare] his bottom lip would curl out and he would run it up their arms. This was at St James’s Palace. The women were in their mid to late 20s doing typing and secretarial work.”

Arbiter did not raise his concerns formally and there is no suggestion Savile committed any crimes while on ‘Royal premises’ or when he was with Prince Charles on numerous occasions from the 1970s onwards. But the concern over his behaviour expressed by a senior aide will raise questions over how Savile, who was under investigation in relation to child abuse involving 300 potential victims, managed to develop such a long-standing relationship with the heir to the throne.

Asked about Savile’s behaviour with the royal assistants or whether Prince Charles had taken any action to find out if anyone in his family or staff might have suffered any abuse or have any information relating to the criminal investigation into Savile’s alleged paedophilia, a spokesman for the Prince said: “We have no record of anyone making a complaint.”

“The Prince first met Savile through their shared interest in supporting disability charities [the Prince became patron of the British Wheelchair Sports Foundation in the late 1970s] and it was primarily because of this connection that they maintained a relationship in the years that followed,” the spokesman said.

Mr. Arbiter said that he thought the women might have thought Savile’s greeting was “rather funny”, but he said it was a cause for concern and he struggled to understand why Savile was granted such access to the ‘Royal Family’.

“I looked at him as a court jester and told him so,” said Arbiter. “I remember calling him an old reprobate and he said ‘not so much of the old’.”

Concern about Savile’s behaviour at ‘The Palace’ emerged as Sir Roger Jones, former chairman of the B.B.C.’s corporate charity Children In Need, said he had been so uncomfortable about Savile that he did not allow him to have any association with the cause. Jones, a B.B.C. governor from 1997 to 2002, said that he had “no evidence” that Savile was up to anything but “we all recognised he was a pretty creepy sort of character.”

“When I was with Children In Need, we took the decision that we did not want him anywhere near to the charity.” he told the B.B.C.

Prince Charles met Savile on numerous occasions. In 1999 he accepted an invitation to a private meal at Savile’s Glencoe home which was later in 2012 daubed with graffiti reading “Jimmy the beast.” Savile asked three local women to dress up in pinafores emblazoned with the letters H.R.H. and Charles subsequently sent the television presenter a Christmas card with the note: “Jimmy, with affectionate greetings from Charles. Give my love to your ladies in Scotland.”

Charles reportedly sent him a box of cigars and a pair of gold cuff-links on his 80th birthday with a note which read: “Nobody will ever know what you have done for this country Jimmy. This is to go some way in thanking you for that.”

Savile used to boast of his royal connections, made sure to be photographed with Charles on numerous occasions and ingratiated himself once telling the press that the Prince was “the nicest man you will ever meet. Royalty are surrounded by people who don’t know how to deal with it,” Savile said in an interview. “I have a freshness of approach which they obviously find to their liking. I think I get invited because I have a natural, good fun way of going on and we have a laugh. They don’t get too many laughs.”

The day after the meal in Glencoe Savile persuaded Charles to join him for a photo opportunity at his local post office where he went to pick up his pension money.

“The post office photo opportunity was definitely [down to] him [Savile],” said Ms. Coleen Harris, Prince Charles’s press secretary. “You always think that other people are getting more out of these things [than the prince] but on the whole it is for a good reason, for the charities and it is a positive thing.” She added: “Personally I always thought he was slightly eccentric, but beyond that I had no idea. He was a slightly odd bloke, but not in a cruel way.”

Mr. Arbiter said that despite Savile’s unusual behaviour with the royal administrative staff there was no evidence of any other cause for suspicion.

“There was a limit to what he could get away with in the royal household,” he said.

He also said ‘The Palace’ advisers felt the Prince’s charities might benefit from a connection with Savile, at the time one of the country’s most famous TV stars.

Perhaps Savile’s most unlikely role was that of personal counsel to Prince Charles in the late 1980s at a time when the ‘Royal Family’ was in deep trouble. The marriages of Charles and Diana and Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson were falling apart. Around new year 1990 Charles asked Savile to help the Duchess of York with what Savile later said was keeping her profile down.

Princess Diana was recorded telling her friend James Gilbey on the so-called “squidgygate tape”: “Jimmy Savile rang me up yesterday, and he said: ‘I’m just ringing up, my girl, to tell you that His Nibs [Prince Charles] has asked me to come and help out the redhead [the Duchess of York], and I’m just letting you know, so that you don’t find out through her or him; and I hope it’s all right by you.’ ” (R. Booth, ‘Jimmy Savile caused concern with behaviour on visits to Prince Charles’, 30 October 2012, theguardian.com).

Sometime in the 1980s Prince Charles met the Anglican priest Peter Ball. They remained good friends since, and Ball, who was boasting of his powerful friends, claimed to be a confidant of the heir to the throne.

In time Ball became Bishop of Gloucester, which is the district covering Prince Charles’ private estate Highgrove.

In July 2018, at an inquiry into Ball’s paedophile activities, Prince Charles appeared and submitted a letter – amongst others – which was read at the inquiry in July 2018, and in which Charles wrote of his “deep personal regret” at being “misled” by Ball.

The inquiry was investigating the actions of the Church of England after an earlier inquiry in 2017 found senior church figures covered-up the abuse allegations against the paedophile Ball, who was gaoled in 2015 after finally being convicted of abusing 18 teenagers and men over a 30-year period. Now aged in his late 80s, he is out on parole.

The inquiry was read extracts from a number of letters exchanged between Ball and Prince Charles when abuse allegations began to surface, including one in 1997 where Charles wrote of a victim: “I’ll see this horrid man off if he tries anything.”

Two years earlier, in 1995, Prince Charles wrote to Ball: “I wish I could do more. I feel so desperately strong about the monstrous wrongs that have been done to you.” This letter came despite Ball having accepted a police caution for gross indecency.

In November 1993, after a police investigation ended in the caution and his resignation, Ball wrote to Prince Charles: “Life continues to be pretty nasty for me, for it seems that my accusers still want to continue their malicious campaign. Luckily, they are beginning to show some of their fraudulent plans.”

A letter from Prince Charles, dated 16 February 1995, said: “I wish I could do more. I feel so desperately strongly about the monstrous wrongs that have been done to you and the way you have been treated.”

He went on to say it was “appalling” that the archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, had “gone back on what he told me before Xmas that he was hoping to restore you to some form of ministry in the church. I suspect you are absolutely right – it is due to fear of the media … If it is any consolation, the archbishop has written me a letter (between you and me) in which it is also clear that he is frightened of the press – what he calls ‘public perception’, which in fact, [is] perception of events and characters based entirely on lies, invention, speculation and sensation.”

In 1996 Prince Charles referred to efforts by the Duchy of Cornwall to buy a house that could be rented by Ball and his identical twin, Michael, also a bishop.

He wrote: “I pray the Duchy will be able to find something suitable for you both in due course, but it may take a little time to locate it! I long to see you both settled somewhere that suits you and gives you peace and tranquillity – and not too far from here so you can come over more easily.”

In March 1997 Prince Charles wrote to Ball: “I can’t bear it that the frightful, terrifying man is on the loose again and doing his worst.” He added: “I’ll see off this horrid man if he tries anything again.”

In his submission to the inquiry, Charles said that he was “unable to shed any light on references … to a ‘horrid man’ or a ‘frightful and terrifying man’ ” after a gap of more than 20 years. However, he suspected it referred to people trying to discredit Ball.

Prince Charles added that the letter to Ball needed to be read “in the context of my understanding at that time, namely that Peter Ball had been falsely accused of a single offence (the nature of which was unknown to me) … Events later demonstrated beyond any doubt, to my deep regret, that I, along with many others, had been misled.”

Charles was asked to submit a witness statement to the inquiry covering his friendship and correspondence with Ball. After protracted discussions between legal teams representing the prince and the inquiry, he submitted a letter.

In it he said he first became aware of Ball during the 1980s after hearing him preach, and found him to be “an interesting and engaging person.” From 1993 – the year Ball was cautioned by police – he invited Ball to give holy communion at the prince’s home “from time to time.”

The pair corresponded, although contact was “normally instigated and driven” by Ball. The bishop told the Prince that he had been “involved in some form of ‘indiscretion’ which prompted his resignation.” Ball suggested that the complaint came from a single individual who bore a grudge.

According to Prince Charles, the “true context and details” of the complaint did not come to his attention until Ball’s trial and conviction in 2015. “As context, it seems important to say that in the 1980s and 1990s there was a presumption that people such as bishops could be taken at their word and, as a result of the high office they held, were worthy of trust and confidence … At the time there was a presumption on my part of good faith.”

Prince Charles said that he was not aware of the “significance or impact” of the police caution and was “not aware until recently that a caution in fact carries an acceptance of guilt.”

He occasionally sent the Ball brothers “small gifts of money” as well as arranging for a house to be purchased by the Duchy of Cornwall which was rented by the Balls between 1997 and 2011.

The letter said: “At no stage did I ever seek to influence the outcome of either the police investigations into Peter Ball and nor did I instruct or encourage my staff to do so.”

He said he had ceased contact with Ball once he was convicted in 2015. “It remains a source of deep personal regret that I was one of many who were deceived over a long period of time about the true nature of Mr Ball’s activities.”

Richard Scorer, a specialist abuse lawyer representing a number of Ball’s victims, said the Prince’s explanation that he was not aware of the meaning of a caution left his clients “dissatisfied”.

He said: “Prince Charles had access to the best legal advice that money can buy and, as a man in his position, a particular responsibility to check the facts. It is difficult to see his failure to do so as anything other than wilful blindness. His evidence, together with that of Lord Carey, the then archbishop of Canterbury, and other establishment figures who have given evidence this week, will do little to dissuade survivors from the conclusion that the British establishment aided and protected Ball and even now have failed to give a transparent account of their actions.” (H. Sherwood, ‘Prince Charles kept in touch with ex-bishop later jailed for abuse’, 20 July 2018, theguardian.com).

Prince Charles told the inquiry of his deep regret at supporting a Church of England bishop later gaoled for sexual abuse of 18 teenagers and men. Prince Charles will become the global head of the Church of England whenever he ascends the throne.

“Peter Ball told me he had been involved in some sort of ‘indiscretion’ which prompted his resignation as my local bishop,” Charles wrote in his letter.

The Prince wrote that Ball had told him one individual had complained to police but the Crown Prosecution Service had taken no action.

While he had believed Bishop Peter Ball’s denials, Charles said that he had never sought to influence a police investigation.

“Events later demonstrated beyond any doubt, to my deep regret, that I, along with many others, has been misled,” Charles wrote. “It remains a source of deep personal regret that I was one of many who were deceived over a long period of time, about the true nature of Mr. Ball’s activities.”

Prince Charles wrote that his position had occasionally brought him into contact with prominent people who were later accused of serious wrongdoing. “Rather than rushing to private judgement I have always taken the view that the judicial process should take its course,’’ he told the inquiry through his letter.

He said he ceased all contact with Ball once the “true context and details’’ emerged against him at trial in 2015.

“My heart goes out to the victims of abuse and I applaud their courage as they rebuild their lives and so often offer invaluable support to others who have suffered,’’ he wrote (E. Whinnett, ‘Prince Charles’ deep regret over supporting Bishop Peter Ball who was later jailed for sex abuse’, 28 July 2018, news.com.au).

Continued Saturday – A conga line of bludgers: Prince Charles (part 3)

Previous instalment – A conga line of bludgers: Prince Charles (part 1)

By Dr George Venturini

Heinz Alfred ‘Henry’ Kissinger obtained a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1954. His interest was on Castelreagh and Metternich – two empire builders. He devoted his life to sublimate them.

In an incendiary, studiedly defamatory book the late Christopher Hitchens described him as “a mediocre and opportunist academic [intent on] becoming an international potentate. The signature qualities were there from the inaugural moment: the sycophancy and the duplicity; the power worship and the absence of scruple; the empty trading of old non-friends for new non-friends. And the distinctive effects were also present: the uncounted and expendable corpses; the official and unofficial lying about the cost; the heavy and pompous pseudo-indignation when unwelcome questions were asked. Kissinger’s global career started as it meant to go on. It debauched the American republic and American democracy, and it levied a hideous toll of casualties on weaker and more vulnerable societies.”

The story is all here: from the martyrdom of Indochina to becoming the real backchannel to Moscow on behalf of his new client: Donald Trump.

Editor’s note: This outstanding series by Dr Venturini is published bi-weekly (Wednesdays and Saturdays). Today we publish Part Twenty-two. Here is the link to Part Twenty-one; The shadowy role of Kissinger in the Trump Administration.

Conclusion

Todd Gitlin is an American sociologist, political writer, novelist, and cultural commentator. He has written widely on the mass media, politics, intellectual life and the arts, for both popular and scholarly publications.

After teaching part-time 1970–77 at the New College of San Jose State University and the Community Studies programme at the University of California, Santa Cruz, he served for sixteen years as professor of sociology and director of the mass communications programme at University of California, Berkeley, then for seven years as a professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University. Since 2002 he has been a professor of sociology and journalism at Columbia University.

This long introduction is worthy, because prof. Gitlin has offered the shortest, lapidary almost, biography of Heinz Alfred ‘Henry’ Kissinger.

“Henry Kissinger – he wrote – rose to power as a banal, obsequious and sometimes hysterical cold warrior whose leap into the front ranks of America’s higher courtiers was launched by his advocacy of preparation for a nuclear war in central Europe – a “limited” one, in the perverse locution of the time, since in his scenario America would deploy ‘battlefield nuclear weapons’ of 500 kilotons, or 25 Hiroshimas – each.”

That he, a Jewish refugee from Hitler’s Germany, should second and promote the ‘selective’ thoughts of David Rockefeller – and of the family, too – on eugenics, may be astounding. What is not surprising is that he found the comfort of his position as Éminence grise at the Nixon White House. He had nothing but contempt for the parvenu from the rarefied air of Yorba Linda, California. But he served him well, and in the process served himself even better.

He was given an opportunity to put into practice his resurrected view of the world as an opportunity to ‘divide and rule’. The British had done that for quite some time with an imperially successful result, and the Austrians would follow. Kissinger saw himself as nothing less than Castelreagh + Metternich.

To that end, he cried wolf over Soviet power in a conception of international relations which would leave no room for mixed colours. Everything would be black and white, with the alarming result that America was in mortal danger of a surprise Soviet attack. There was no time, certainly no inclination, to think about the enormous sacrifices of a country which was trying to reconstruct after the loss of twenty-five million lives and the destruction of thousands of kilometres of the mother land.

Perhaps not out of feelings, which would not have made such an attitude justified, but would have gone a long way in explaining it, Russia was a ‘new threat’ to America.

Such hysteria moved the world to within a hair’s breadth of not-so-limited war during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

A cruel, dispirited, surprisingly crude view of humanity and its aspirations prevented Kissinger from seeing and understanding that Communist-led insurgencies like Vietnam’s were crucially nationalist and anti-colonial.

Kissinger offered his services for an adventure which propelled him into the heights and depths of a career as courtier-in-chief. It culminated in his partnership with Nixon in conducting the last six years of the Vietnam var. And that in the process more than 21,000 Americans died in those six years, along with up to 1.5 million Vietnamese, mattered not. But in the process there developed a little secret between Kissinger and Nixon. In Nixonian terms it was traduced to a matter of ‘deniability’, of keeping from the Americans, indeed the world’s public the ‘secret war’ and the consequent bombing of Cambodia and Laos. That they became the most heavily-bombarded countries in history, that they had for no reason – except the ‘madman strategy’ – to suffer the United States’ air power was a ‘secret’ between two brigands, tactically obtuse, morally unjustifiable. Kissinger dealt with that as a ‘sideshow’, with people expendable in the great game of large nations.

There followed the new, ‘peace-time enterprises’: genocide in Bangladesh, East Timor now Timor-Leste, Chile, Argentina, Cyprus – other places (Australia?). Christopher Hitchens has dealt with those subjects with clarity and great empathy in his book – and a sense that not much is left meaningfully to add.

Quite recently, Zach Dorfman, who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, was scavenging through documents at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University, California. By accident he came upon a six-page memorandum of a conversation between the Chilean Junta’s Foreign Minister Hernán Cubillos Sallato and Kissinger. On 3 October 1979 Kissinger was making a private visit to those he had so actively assisted in taking power in Santiago.

The document is, of course, in Spanish, but a translation would appraise the reader about Kissinger’s opinion of personages and events of the time.

At the time President Carter had been in the White House since January 1977, when Kissinger had lost his position as Secretary of State under President Ford.

In August 1978, after a long and tortuous investigation, United States federal prosecutors had indicted three Chilean intelligence agents for masterminding the assassination, in Washington, D.C. on 21 September 1976 of Orlando Letelier, former ambassador to the United States and a refugee from the Junta and his assistant Ronnie Moffitt. Among the three were the former head of Pinochet’s intelligence services, Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda and his director of operations, Pedro Espinoza Bravo. President Carter’s Administration had formally requested that Chile extradite the three men to the United States to stand trial.

Just two days before the Cubillos-Kissinger conversation, the Supreme Court of Chile, yielding to intimidation by the Junta, had rejected the American extradition request.

President Carter was unsure on how to react. Some suggested that the United States should break diplomatic relations with the Junta, others proposed a nicer treatment of the Junta. Among the latter was Kissinger, of course. He had contributed, while Nixon’s Secretary of State, to the success of the coup against Allende. Kissinger had no time for Carter.

On 3 October 1979 Kissinger hosted the Junta’s foreign minister at his flat, at ‘River House’, 435 E 52n Street, New York, just next to the hoity-toity River Club, where one can rub shoulders with celebrities such as Sir Evelyn de Rothschild.

According to the record, that the Foreign Minister sent back to the Acting Minister, Digen-Diplan, in Santiago from the Chilean Delegation at the United Nations in form of a ‘secret’ diplomatic cable No. 678, 03 October 1979, Cubillos and Kissinger took breakfast and in seventy minutes made a kind of  ‘world tour’, as it were. What follows is a translation of some passages of that cable.

Kissinger, who displayed “great affection for our country, and great admiration for what is being done there,” then moved on to express his opinion on Pope John Paul II: “I do not understand,” he said, “whether he is trying to manage the left,” or to “control the left.” Therefore, he added, “I am not completely convinced he will be good for humanity.” He added that he was suspicious of Cardinal Casaroli, who in order to save the Church was willing to compromise with communism.”

On Carter’s speech on Cuba, Kissinger “told [Cubillos] that he considered it a ‘disaster.’ He added that he found it unbelievable that a country with the power of the United States had been the first to say it would not accept Soviet presence in Cuba, and later ended up accepting it. He mentioned that  Carter had called him to ask his opinion, but that what he decided did not correspond to his advice and for that reason he had criticised the measures taken.”

On his (Kissinger’s) memoirs: “ … to be published [the following] week, [they] will cause great discomfort among liberal circles in the United States, and among communists and their friends.” And when Kissinger mentioned the aspects of the memoires which touch on the Chilean situation, he said ironically that it was a dishonour to Allende that he should continue to be known as democratic, when in truth he was really a communist.”

On Chile-United States relations: “ … I asked him how we should handle our relationship with the United States. He said that was a very difficult question to answer, since the Carter government has “begun making enemies of all its friends and making friends of all its enemies.”

When the foreign minister mentioned the Letelier case and indicated the Junta’s puzzlement at the fact that the United States did not respect Latin America’s legal institutions, “[Kissinger] admitted we were right: that the Chilean legal decision was correct, but this was not a legal problem so much as a political one. “It needs to be managed,” he said. “with political criteria.” Apologising for his frankness, he said that this was a bad case for us, and had been badly managed politically.”

At this point Kissinger “added that his own advice was that we treat the current U.S. administration with ‘brutality.’ He suggested that “this is the only language they understand.” [Italics added]. He repeated this same suggestion several times during the conversation. He later said that we should make our positions public, and move forward decisively. However, he emphasised that until the election process was complete in the United States and a new administration elected, there was nothing we could do to improve our relations with the United States, given that the problem was being treated as a political one.”

The foreign minister noted: “ … He said, and I quote, ‘You will have to tough it out until then.’ “

“Regarding Pat Derian, in charge of humanitarian matters in the State Department, he said that she was “stupid” and should receive a tough treatment. He also spoke harshly about [a former colleague] and the State Department bureaucracy, which makes statements and sends cables with no control from above.”

“Of Brezinski (then an adviser to President Carter) he said that “if he worked with me he would be a good element, but I do not trust him by himself.” In any case, he promised to speak with him favourably about Chile. He later said he considered it a disgrace that the United States had helped Allende’s government more than the current Chilean government.”

“Next, Kissinger gave me some advice about the responsible U.S. organisations, with which it would be convenient to increase our contacts for the sake of future Chilean-U.S. relations, and indicated the names of some of the people in them: Institute for Strategic Studies, American Enterprise Institute, and Council on Foreign Relations.”

“Furthermore, Kissinger spoke harshly of the United States government’s approach in Latin America, where, he said, Carter insisted on eliminating military regimes, without understanding that elections should only be held when the political situation has matured, thus preventing the left from winning. ‘What do we achieve,’ he said, ‘by replacing the military if the communists are going to be left in power ?’ ”

According to Cubillos’ recounting, the two men also discussed the Letelier case extensively. First, Kissinger told Cubillos he believed that the Chileans made the “correct” decision in rejecting the U.S. government’s extradition request. And then, Kissinger went on to advise the Pinochet Junta on how to get what he wanted from Carter. You have to be tough, he told Cubillos – in fact, you must treat the Carter administration “with brutality.” This, Kissinger said, “is the only language they understand.” This was no idle slip of the tongue; according to Cubillos, Kissinger “repeated this same idea several times during the conversation.”

So, here was an American citizen of some weight, inciting the representative of those who had murdered President Allende and installed a military dictatorship to treat President Carter’s administration with ‘brutality’, for that was “the only language they understand.”

As the meeting ended, Cubillos invited Kissinger to visit Chile, and Kissinger volunteered to continue the conversation through the Chilean ambassador in Washington. All in all, Cubillos concluded, his meeting with Kissinger was a “fruitful and interesting” one.

In November 1979, the Carter Administration announced that it would punish Chile for its intransigence by banning trade assistance to the country through the Export-Import Bank. This was a far weaker response than many had hoped for, given the seriousness of the crime, and the thoroughness of the obstruction on the part of the Junta.

Hanging over the conversation between Cubillos and Kissinger was the unspoken implication that Kissinger himself might soon regain his old job as secretary of state, where he would once again be in charge of shaping American foreign policy towards Chile. (Zach Dorfman, How Henry Kissinger Conspired Against a Sitting President, 6 January 2017, Politico).

Kissinger predicted – wrongly in fact – that Ford would have won the 1980 election. Ronald W. Reagan did. Never mind. Before the election took place Kissinger had succeeded in a ‘deal’ whereby Ford would have become vice-president to Reagan and he, Kissinger, would have returned as secretary of state.

Over thirty years later, Kissinger was back to the same – if more elaborate – game, admired by Hillary Clinton and, semble, secretly advising Trump.

Since Trump’s election Kissinger has come close to the new president, first offering his opinion on key appointments and praising him in public – as he did in Oslo – while at the same time positioning himself as a reliable intermediary between the Kremlin, where he has close ties with President Putin, and the White House.

Not for the first time since November 2016 Kissinger has warned against expecting too much from Trump’s words.

Kissinger had previously said that he believes people should not expect Trump to stand by all of his campaign positions. During the Nobel Peace Prize Forum in Oslo in December 2016, Kissinger said that Trump is “a personality for whom there is no precedent in modern American history.” One wonders what Kissinger really meant by that.

He added then, in a rather sybilline way, “Before postulating an inevitable crisis, an opportunity should be given to the new administration to put forward its vision of international order.” Whose vision?

Not for Trump to stop and try to think how inappropriately anti-American had been Kissinger’s counsel to Cubillos. Not only did he praise Chile’s decision to stymie a murder trial related to a major act of international terrorism carried out in the American capital, but the former secretary of state also actively encouraged the Junta which had mandated that crime to take a hard line with the United States government, in order to hamper American prosecutors.

And one should wonder: would Kissinger or any of his Associates give similar kind of advice to a client? And could that not be obstruction of justice?

During the fifth Democratic presidential debate, on 4 February 2016, Hillary Clinton boasted that she was supported by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. She was obviously totally oblivious of the accusations laid against Kissinger of being a war criminal who oversaw policies which led to the deaths of millions of people.

“I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time,” she said.

While on one hand Clinton boasted openly of her close relationship to Kissinger, on the other another aspiring candidate, Senator Bernard ‘Bernie’ Sanders, used that relationship to criticise Clinton as a ‘warmonger’: “I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger. And in fact, Kissinger’s actions in Cambodia, when the United States bombed that country, overthrew Prince Sihanouk, created the instability for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in, who then butchered some 3 million innocent people, one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger.”

Clinton did not reply effectively, resorting instead to saying that as Secretary of State “you listen to all kinds of people.”

Sanders continued the ‘warmonger’ accusation:

“Now I think an area in kind of a vague way, or not so vague, where Secretary Clinton and I disagree is the area of regime change. Look, the truth is that a powerful nation like the United States, certainly working with our allies, we can overthrow dictators all over the world.

And God only knows Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. We could overthrow Assad tomorrow if we wanted to. We got rid of Gadhafi. But the point about foreign policy is not just to know that you can overthrow a terrible dictator, it’s to understand what happens the day after.

And in Libya, for example, the United States, Secretary Clinton, as secretary of state, working with some other countries, did get rid of a terrible dictator named Gadhafi. But what happened is a political vacuum developed. I.S.I.S. came in, and now occupies significant territory in Libya, and is now prepared, unless we stop them, to have a terrorist foothold.”

Sanders even went back to the C.I.A. overthrow of the Iranian nationalist prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953.

In another sally, almost as if it were one last coup de grâce, Sanders berated Clinton for saying that she appreciated the foreign policy mentoring she received from Kissinger. “I happen to believe,” retorted Sanders, “that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country.”

Clinton went on to defend Kissinger, using the example of China. “His opening up China and his ongoing relationships with the leaders of China is an incredibly useful relationship for the United States of America,” she insisted. Maybe.

But Sanders responded that Kissinger scared Americans about communist China, then opened up trade so that American corporations could dump American workers and hire exploited, repressed Chinese. “First he warned us about the terrible, authoritarian, Communist dictatorship,” groaned Sanders. “Now he is urging companies to shut down and move to China. Not my kind of guy.”

In January last year thousands of emails released from Clinton’s time as Secretary of State for the Obama Administration exposed the very close ties between Clinton and Kissinger. One of the emails suggests that Clinton saw Kissinger as her role model.

Kissinger met regularly with Secretary Clinton, and applauded enthusiastically her hawkish foreign policy on many occasions, well beyond what an Anglophone would call chivalry or gallantry, of which Kissinger may be capable if the price is right, or better still Gemütlichkeit = peace of mind, which in the case of Kissinger seems an impossibility.

In a 7 February 2012 letter Kissinger wrote to Clinton:

The best one can make of such Chinoiserie is a compliment between hawks.

Whatever the reason – or the expected reward, Hillary Clinton was able to write in a review to Kissinger then latest work: World order, that “Kissinger is a friend, and I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state. He checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels. Though we have often seen the world and some of our challenges quite differently, and advocated different responses now and in the past, what comes through clearly in this new book is a conviction that we, and President Obama, share: a belief in the indispensability of continued American leadership in service of a just and liberal order.”

Clinton’s abstract and fatuous rhetoric exemplifies the bipartisan, imperialist agenda formulated and propagated by the Council on Foreign Relations. There ‘humanitarianism’ is a guise for the ruthless pursuit of United States political and economic hegemony across the world. The people who belong to this élite club have internalised the imperialist worldview that America is an ‘indispensable nation’ which upholds ‘a just and liberal world order’, and uses this belief to rationalise its ‘Machiavellian’ exertions of power abroad.

The club is the equivalent of the ‘American Establishment’. The American Establishment which matters most is not limited to any one party, gender, or government organisation. It is limited to people who are involved, directly or peripherally, in formulating and carrying out the plans of a tiny élite class – plans which ignore the 99 per cent of the Americans in whose names they act, and the billions of people whose lives their decisions impact. Clinton, because of her professional career and her social relationships, is the embodiment of that Establishment.

The fact of the matter is that, whether one observes either the master-magician  or the apprentice  at work, one is entitled to draw the conclusion that, when it comes to applying rules of international law and ethics, the United States government, its statesmen – rather, statespersons. and its mainstream media operate with stunning hypocrisy – what might be called “moral idiocy.”

History professor Lawrence Davidson has provided a neat explanation of what he meant by combining those two words, as now chosen because applicable to Kissinger and Clinton.

Moral idiocy is not something that Davidson had simply made up. “It is a real concept in psychology that has been around for over a century. However, in our increasingly relativistic societies, it has fallen into disuse.

Briefly, it means the “inability to understand moral principles and values and to act in accordance with them, apparently without impairment of the reasoning and intellectual faculties.” The key word here is “understand.” It is not that moral idiots do not know, intellectually, that something called morality exists, but rather they cannot understand its applicability to their lives, particularly their professional lives. [Italics in original].

At best they think it is a personal thing that operates between friends or relatives and goes no further – a reduction of values to the narrowest of social spaces. This is paralleled by the absence of such values as guiding principles for one’s actions in the wider world.”

There are innumerable examples of such apparent moral idiots acting within the halls of power. The following short list specific to the U.S. reflects Davidson’s opinion: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Oliver North, Richard Nixon and, his favourite, Henry Kissinger. “Those reading this” Davidson continues “both in and outside of the United States can, no doubt, make a list of their own.”(L. Davidson, ‘America and the Plague of ‘Moral Idiocy’ – Consortiumnews).

Yes, thank you, professor Davidson. From Australia the list could be completed with John Winston Howard, and from Britain with Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.

Next installment Wednesday: The “Nobel Peace Prize for War”.

By Dr George Venturini

Heinz Alfred ‘Henry’ Kissinger obtained a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1954. His interest was on Castelreagh and Metternich – two empire builders. He devoted his life to sublimate them.

In an incendiary, studiedly defamatory book the late Christopher Hitchens described him as “a mediocre and opportunist academic [intent on] becoming an international potentate. The signature qualities were there from the inaugural moment: the sycophancy and the duplicity; the power worship and the absence of scruple; the empty trading of old non-friends for new non-friends. And the distinctive effects were also present: the uncounted and expendable corpses; the official and unofficial lying about the cost; the heavy and pompous pseudo-indignation when unwelcome questions were asked. Kissinger’s global career started as it meant to go on. It debauched the American republic and American democracy, and it levied a hideous toll of casualties on weaker and more vulnerable societies.”

The story is all here: from the martyrdom of Indochina to becoming the real backchannel to Moscow on behalf of his new client: Donald Trump.

Editor’s note: This outstanding series by Dr Venturini is published bi-weekly (Wednesdays and Saturdays). Today we publish Part Four. Here is the link to Part Three; Who is really Henry Kissinger?

Consigliere

In 1954 Kissinger met David Rockefeller. In time he became intimate adviser to David and the other four Rockefeller brothers. Undoubtedly he knew the history of the Rockefeller family. That relationship tells a million stories about Kissinger’s character and the company he chose.

One should begin with the recent death of David Rockefeller (1915-2017), the youngest of the five brothers, because on the occasion Kissinger displayed his servility to, more than admiration for, his all-life benefactor. On 30 March 2017 Kissinger wrote what could be justly called a love letter for David who had died the day before.

It is dutiful and noble to honour the old saying: De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, but one should always find a limit in good taste. The praise begins with the title of the article requested of The Washington Post: “Henry Kissinger: My friend David Rockefeller, a man who served the world.”

The article opens with the words: “In an egalitarian society such as America, the inheritance of great wealth presents a complex challenge. In an autocratic world, status provides an automatic legitimacy.” But what matters is the title given to the tribute: “ … Rockefeller, a man who served the world.” There follows a cascade of unctuousness.

The Rockefeller fortune is based on oil around companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and others.

Leaving aside the grand-father John D. Rockefeller and his peculiar views on the ‘American way of free enterprise’, David and his four brothers: Nelson, John D. III, Laurance and Winthrop–David Rockefeller and their Rockefeller Foundation in 1939 financed the top secret War and Peace Studies at the New York Council on Foreign Relations, the most influential private U.S. foreign policy think-tank which also was controlled by the Rockefellers.

Up until then the Rockefeller Foundation had financed biological research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. Actually, it was Nazi eugenics – how to breed a ‘superior race’ and how to sterilise or, better still, kill off those deemed ‘inferior.’ Eugenics, the set of beliefs and practices which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population, played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States prior to its involvement in the second world war.

Eugenics was practiced in the United States many years before eugenics programmes in Nazi Germany, which were largely inspired by the previous American work. (History News Network, ‘The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics’, by Edwin Black, September 2003, historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796).

The American eugenics movement was rooted in the biological determinist ideas of Sir Francis Galton, which originated in the 1880s. Galton studied the upper classes of Britain, and arrived at the conclusion that their social positions were due to a superior genetic makeup. Eugenics was widely accepted in the American academic community. By 1928 there were 376 separate university courses in some of the United States’ leading schools, enrolling more than 20,000 students, which included eugenics in the curriculum.

After the eugenics movement was well established in the United States, it spread to Germany. California eugenicists began producing literature promoting eugenics and sterilisation and sending it overseas to German scientists and medical professionals. By 1933 California had subjected more people to forceful sterilisation than all other United States combined. The forced sterilisation programme engineered by the Nazis was partly inspired by California’s.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programmes, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

For a long time into the second world war Rockefeller’s Standard Oil – today’s ExxonMobil – also violated American law by secretly supplying the Luftwaffe with scarce fuel. After the war the Rockefeller brothers would arrange for leading Nazi scientists involved in ghastly human experiments to be brought to the United States under ‘new identities’ to continue their eugenics research. Many worked in the Central Intelligence Agency top secret Project MK-Ultra.

Project MK-Ultra – sometimes referred to as the C.I.A.’s mind control programme – is the code name given to a programme of experiments on human subjects, more often than not illegal, designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations and torture, in order to weaken the individual to force confessions through mind control. Organised through the Scientific Intelligence Division of the C.I.A., the project coordinated with the Special Operations Division of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps. The Agency recruited former Nazi scientists, some of whom had been identified and prosecuted as war criminals during the Nuremberg Trials.

The third paragraph of Kissinger’s tribute to David Rockefeller opens with the words: “Character and integrity were the sources of David’s inspiration.”

A collection of American academics had gathered even before the outbreak of  the second world war to plan a post-war world empire – what Time-Life’s Henry Luce would later call The American Century. They made a blueprint for taking over a global empire from the bankrupt British, but carefully decided not to call it an empire. Rather they called it “spreading democracy, freedom, the American way of free enterprise.” The words may be rarely heard from Kissinger’s mouth, but he has always been attracted to what they hide.

Under that mantle the five brothers drew up a geopolitical map of the post-war world and planned how the United States would replace the British Empire as de facto the dominant empire. The creation of the United Nations was a key part of that programme of reconstruction. So, the Rockefeller brothers donated the land in Manhattan for the United Nations Headquarters – and in the process made billions in the increased prices of the adjoining real estate that they also owned. The myth of the Rockefeller ‘philanthropy’ was furthered by such ‘generosity’. They probably saw themselves as modern Medici, and might have felt as spurred by the Medici’s maxim that they had made money to gain power, and from further power they could reach for more money.

After the war David Rockefeller dominated American  foreign policy and profited from the countless wars in Latin America, Africa and Asia. The Rockefeller quintet arranged for the ‘cold war’ against the Soviet Union, and was very active in the formation of N.A.T.O. in order to keep a reviving ‘western’ Europe under American vassal status. (F. William Engdahl, The gods of money (edition.engdahl, Wiesbaden, Germany 2009).

In 1952 John D. Rockefeller III, with important funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, set up the Population Council, a body governed by an international board of trustees, to advance eugenics, disguised as population research into birth control.  Ostensibly, the philosophical underpinnings for the theories of the Population Council are the obsolete theses of Thomas Robert Malthus. Presently the Council board includes leaders in biomedicine, business, economic development, government, health, international finance, the media, philanthropy, and social science.

Importantly though, the Council has its roots in the eugenics movement. The Council was intended to advance eugenics, disguised as population research into birth control. The first president of the Council was a eugenicist appointed by Rockefeller: Frederick Osborn, an American philanthropist, military leader, and eugenicist – in that order of presentation, it seems.  His ideas were collected in Preface to eugenics (Harper & Brothers, New York  1940). Leader of the American Eugenics Society, and one of the founding members of the Pioneer Fund, Osborn was vice president or president of the Population Council until 1959. In 1968 he wrote: “Eugenic goals are most likely to be achieved under another name than eugenics.” In 1983 the American Philosophical Society considered him to have been “the respectable face of eugenic research in the post-war period.”

In the 1970s David Rockefeller’s Rockefeller Foundation also financed together with the World Health Organisation the development of a special tetanus vaccine which limited population by making a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy, literally influencing the human reproductive process itself – eugenics by any other name!

The Rockefeller Foundation financed university biology research to develop the ‘gene cannon’ and other techniques artificially to alter gene expression of a given plant. The aim of genetically modified organism, since Rockefeller sponsored the disastrous Philippine Golden Rice project, has been to use g.m.o. to control the human and animal food chain. Monsanto’s policy seems briefly expressed thus: “Control the food supply, and you control the people.” Today more than 90 per cent of all soybeans grown in the United States are g.m.o. and more than 80 per cent all corn and cotton. The corporation has research facilities, manufacturing plants and sales offices in more than 100 countries. It has the largest share of the global g.m.o. crops market.

The Rockefeller Foundation advanced the entire field of genetic manipulation through its control of Monsanto Corporation, a U.S. based agricultural and pharmaceutical monopoly with a dark history and a controversial recent past as the producer of Agent orange, widely used in South East Asia during the Vietnam war. It has had questionable relations with Dupont and Dow Chemical Company, as well a Syngenta and B.A.S.F., and recently accepted a takeover offer by Bayer another long-time associate. Of recent, Monsanto seems to have encountered several legal problems (Conflict of interest Questions dog former EPA official, taken to court, 2 May 2017, Liberalviewnews › top-news › 2017 › … › conflict-of-interest…), (Monsanto accused of hiring army of trolls to silence online dissent, 2 May 2017, encyclopedic.co.uk › monsanto-accused-of-hiring-army-of-trolls-to…), but nothing which cannot be solved with the new Administration in Washington!

The Rockefellers – with the Rothchilds, semble – control The Vanguard Group Inc. which owns over U.S. $3 trillion in investments in different companies like Monsanto. They also hold the world’s largest companies such as: JPMorgan Chase & Co., a multinational banking and financial services holding company headquartered in New York City. (Chase used to be fully controlled by the Rockefellers). It is the largest bank in the United States, the world’s third largest bank by total assets, with total assets of roughly U.S.$2.5 trillion, and the world’s most valuable bank by market capitalisation. Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, State Street Corporation, Capital Research Global Investors, and FMR (Fidelity) are all the key owners of – well, essentially the world. One could hazard to say that just four companies control all the big banks and all the major companies on the planet.

In the 1970s Kissinger, by then head of the U.S. National Security Council, prepared  the  National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM200). Commissioned in substance by the Rockefeller brothers, it was completed on 10 December 1974; it was  adopted as official U.S. policy by President Gerald Ford in November 1975. It was originally classified, but was later declassified and obtained by researchers in the early 1990s.(National Seurity Study Memorandum NSSM200, pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PCAAB500.pdf · PDF file, THE KISSINGER REPORT).

The basic thesis of the memorandum was that population growth in the least developed countries – and NSSM200 named 13 of them: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil – is a concern to United States national security, because it would tend to risk civil unrest and political instability in countries which had a high potential for economic development. The policy gave “paramount importance” to population control measures and the promotion of contraception among those thirteen countries to control rapid population growth that the United States deemed inimical to the socio-political and economic growth of those countries and to the national interests of the United States since the “U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad” and those countries could produce destabilising opposition forces against, and “national security threat” to, the United States.

The memorandum recommended for U.S. leadership “to influence national leaders” and that “improved world-wide support for population-related efforts should be sought through increased emphasis on mass media and other population education and motivation programs by the UN, USIA, and USAID.”

The named countries were projected to create 47 per cent of all world population growth. The memorandum advocated the promotion of education and contraception and other population control: “No country has reduced its population growth without resorting to abortion.” It also raises the question of whether the U.S. should consider preferential allocation of surplus food supplies to states deemed constructive in use of population control measures.

As F. W. Engdahl writes, the NSSM-200 prepared by Kissinger “argued high population growth in developing nations with strategic raw materials like oil or minerals were a US “national security threat” as more population demands national economic growth, using those resources internally (sic!). NSSM-200 made developing world population reduction programs a precondition of US aid.” (D. Rockefeller’s Gruesome Legacy, by F. William Engdahl, The death of David Rockefeller, the de facto Patriarch of the American …).

Kissinger summed up both the ‘philosophy’ of the memorandum and David Rockefeller’s world strategy with the following tight ‘reasoning’: “If you control the oil, you control entire nations; if you control food, you control the people; if you control money, you control the entire world.” Only Kissinger could find that an ‘elegant reasoning’.

In 1973 Kissinger secretly manipulated Middle East diplomacy to trigger an Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil embargo.

The ‘Arab’ Oil Shock of 1973-74 was orchestrated by a secretive organisation that David Rockefeller had suggested in the 1950s and became known as Bilderberg Group. In May 1973 David Rockefeller and the heads of the major American  and British oil companies met in Saltsjoebaden, Sweden at the annual Bilderberg Meeting to plan the oil shock. It would be blamed on “greedy Arab oil sheikhs.” It saved the falling U.S. dollar, and made Wall Street banks, including David Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan, into the world’s largest banks. (F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World, Pluto, London-Ann Arbor, MI 1992)

David Rockefeller controlled money alright. He was chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank – the family bank. He was responsible for getting Chase Vice President, Paul Volcker, to become President Carter’s Federal Reserve chairman to make the Volcker interest rate shock that again, like the oil shock, saved the falling U.S. dollar and Wall Street bank profits, including Chase Manhattan, at the expense of the world economy.

Volcker’s October 1979 interest rate ‘shock therapy’, supported by Rockefeller, created the 1980s “Third World Debt Crisis.” Rockefeller and Wall Street used that debt crisis to force state privatisations and drastic national currency devaluations in countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Rockefeller and friends such as George Soros then gained the crown jewels of those three countries at dirt cheap prices.

The model was much like the British banks used in the Ottoman Empire after 1881 when they de facto took control of the finances of the Sultan by controlling all tax revenues through the Ottoman Public Debt Administration. Rockefeller interests used the 1980s debt crisis to loot much of the indebted Latin America and African countries, using the I.M.F. as their policeman. David Rockefeller was personal friends to some of the more savage military dictators in Latin America including General Jorge Videla in Argentina and General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, both of whom owed their future fortune to C.I.A. coups arranged by the then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on behalf of Rockefeller family interests in Latin America.

As Kissinger remembered in his love letter to David Rockefeller, after having “encouraged a discussion group, which later [in May 1954] was developed into what is now known as the Bilderberg Group, an annual meeting of European and American leaders to explore their challenges and common purposes, [a] decade later, David called on me.”  At the time Kissinger was Secretary of State, and David wanted “to inform me that, in the view of some of the colleagues he had brought with him, the scope of U.S. foreign policy needed broadening. A truly global study to include Asia was required for that challenge. His associates, in fact, included Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale and Zbigniew Brzezinski; in other words, a government in exile waiting to replace the [Nixon] administration in which I served. But David’s combination of dedication and innocence was such that the thought never took hold. Instead, [in 1973] I became a founding member of the Trilateral Commission, which thrives to this day.”

Through organisations such as [Rockefeller’s] Trilateral Commission, ostensibly to foster closer cooperation among North America, Western Europe, and Japan, David Rockefeller was the foremost architect of the destruction of national economies and advancing so-called Globalisation, a policy which mainly benefited and still benefits the largest banks of Wall Street, of the City of London and of select global corporations – the same which became funding  members of the Trilateral Commission. Rockefeller set up the Trilateral Commission in 1973 and assigned his close friend Zbigniew Brzezinski to the duty of choosing its members in those countries.

As F. W. Engdhal concluded: “If we speak of an unseen, powerful network some call the Deep State, we might say David Rockefeller saw himself as Patriarch of that Deep State. His true acts deserve to be honestly seen for what they were – misanthropic and not philanthropic.” (D. Rockefeller’s gruesome legacy, 31 March 2017).

Kissinger would disagree of course. Of the “man who served the world” he would say:

“Service was one facet of David’s life. Devotion to his family was its equal. In 1979, when the Shah of Iran was being exiled, some close friends appealed to David to help find refuge for a ruler who had demonstrated his friendship with America in various international crises. David regretfully refused because of his obligation to Chase Bank.” (Not quite so, actually). Rockefeller helped the Shah, despite any negative commercial consequence to Chase Bank. What Kissinger fails to mention is a little detail: the Shah was exiled from Iran during the 1979 revolution because he was a puppet of the American administration, having been installed through a coup d’état against the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mossadegh was the head of a democratically elected government, holding office as the Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 until 1953, when his government was overthrown in the coup jointly organised by the Central Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service.)  Undeterred by the truth, Kissinger continued and concluded: “… David assumed the task and helped the Shah find refuge, first in Mexico, then in Panama, regardless of the commercial impact of the decision.

David would often mention departed friends with whom he had shared part of his life. They would merge in his recital as if still part of a continuing, never-ending effort. Now, as he joins their number, he will be in our mind as a permanent part of our life, and to our country he will remain a reminder that our ultimate legacy will be service and values, not personal ambitions.” One can hear in the background a noisy crescendo by a Hollywood gigantic orchestra.

The best chance to become a political adviser, and given the reputation that Kissinger built and cultivated during the following twenty years, came to Kissinger at the time of the 1968 presidential campaign. If one pays attention to the careful biography by Walter Isaacson  (Kissinger, a biography, Simon & Schuster, New York 2005) Kissinger had been openly and un-characteristically for him spoken quite scathingly about Nixon. But he changed his mind when it appeared as though Nixon might win. He had been until then allied with Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey. Suddenly he began to ingratiate himself with the Nixon camp. According to Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History (Penguin Books, New York 1992) he even began  clandestinely to supply the Nixon campaign with information about Humphrey’s plans.

Nixon realised that he had found his consigliere.

Once in office, Kissinger and Nixon proclaimed that they were seeking “peace with honour.” Abandoning their South Vietnamese allies would have seemed a dishonourable betrayal and would have undermined the United States credibility in the world. In the end there was not much honour in what followed: they did precisely the contrary of what they had proclaimed. Disregarding for a moment how events unfolded, the “peace with honour” formulation was riddled with flaws. And the South Vietnamese regime was known to have been inept and hopelessly corrupt. Writing about the importance of his allies in South Vietnam, (Ending the Vietnam War: A history of America’s involvement in and extrication from the Vietnam War (Simon & Schiuster, New York  2003), Kissinger gives minimal attention to the Vietnamese people but a great deal to South Vietnam’s Nguyễn Văn Thiệu – a general in the southern army who in 1965 became the head of a military junta, had himself elected as president and occupied that position until Saigon was liberated in April 1975. Kissinger refers to him as ‘a great patriot’ and a ‘dauntless leader’.

Next installment Wednesday: Madman diplomacy

Paul Dellit has written some excellent political articles for The AIMN, so it came as some surprise that he is better known for his screenplay writing. Thomas Keneally, in a recent review of one of Paul’s screenplays I wrote: “I liked your screenplay and plot very much” and went on to describe it as “a very interesting and well-wrought script”. This particular screenplay – a spy thriller set in 1992 involving a MI5 mission directed at uncovering the source of stolen Russian radioactive material – has been turned into a novella (with input from Mr Keneally) and prior to publishing in hard copy has been offered to The AIMN.

We have been pleased to ‘publish’ Paul’s novella.

Today we offer Part 12 – the final installment – (picking up where we left off from in Part 11).

Chapter 5 (continued)

X

Oliver leaves the café and walks over to Emma in her car. He knocks on her window. She winds it down. He asks: “Are you alright for this?”

“I’m alright.”

Oliver hands a two-way radio to her. “I’ll wait in the bus and follow you.”

Emma winds her window up without replying.

A car drives through Castello Dei Martiri and turns off on the road to the orphanage. Emma starts her car and follows and Oliver follows in the bus. Before they get to the orphanage, Emma stops her car and waits for Oliver in the bus to catch up. He stops the bus and she walks up to it. Oliver opens its front door. Emma speaks to him. “It might be better if you drive up to the orphanage as if you’re a tourist bus who’s lost his way and in need of directions. Wait here until the head of the orphanage has entered and has had time to settle in. I’ll follow you when I think you have had time to gain entrance. Have your gun ready and leave the front door open for me.”

“Okay.”

Oliver drives off in the bus and, arriving at the orphanage, gets out and walks up to the front door and pulls the bell ringer. The front door is opened by a very large lay brother, clearly intellectually challenged. Oliver speaks to him in Italian. “I have lost my way, Reverend Brother. Will you be able to give me directions?”

The Reverend Brother, without speaking, motions to Oliver to come in. Oliver pretends to close the door but holds the handle so that it makes the sound of closing but does not close and is left slightly ajar. The Reverend Brother then motions to Oliver to follow him. Oliver follows, drawing his gun, silencer attached, and holding it behind his back. As they approach a large double door, there is the sound of a man shouting, followed by the sound of a cane striking flesh, followed by the sound of a child crying out with pain. The Reverend Brother opens the double doors to reveal a dining hall with eight men sitting at a refectory table about to begin their lunch. There is a young boy standing on a chair with the back of the smock he is wearing pulled up over his head, revealing upon his naked body the welt marks of the current beating and the scars of earlier beatings. Sitting facing each other at the table at the end closest to Oliver are two older men dressed in expensively tailored, well pressed black clerical street suits and clerical collars. At other end of the table, at its head, is a younger middle aged man, in a less impressive clerical street suit, who appears to be the head of the orphanage. Ranged on either side of the table, between the men in clerical street suits at either end, are five monks in rough monastic cassocks. A sixth monk, holding the cane, is standing beside the young boy on the chair. All the adults in the room turn to look at Oliver as he walks in.

The head of the orphanage screams at the Reverend Brother who has led Oliver to them: “Giovanni!! You idiot!! Why bring this man in here! Why did you not tell him to wait in the entrance hall! You fool!!” The man sitting to Oliver’s immediate left, Cardinal Juric, seems a little peeved. “How can we help you, sir?”

Oliver produces the gun from behind his back. All of the men at the table and the monk holding the cane are clearly shocked by this development.

Oliver speaks in a soft voice: “Young boy. You can get down from the chair now. Will it be alright with you if you leave with Giovanni so that he can look after you?”

“Yes it will be alright.”

“Giovanni, will you please take the young boy and look after him. You with the cane – you come here! Bring the cane.”

Giovanni helps the young boy down from the chair. The young boy takes his hand and they begin to walk slowly out of the dining hall. The monk with the cane stands his ground, clearly with no intention of moving from beside the chair on which the young boy previously stood. As the young boy reaches the door of the dining hall, he turns and calls out to Oliver. “He is Fra Adolfo.”

“Thank you.” He addresses Adolfo: “You do not move, Fra Adolfo?”

“I will not move. You will not shoot me!”

Oliver fires a shot which passes close by the hand with which Adolfo holds the cane. Adolfo is shocked by this and drops the cane.

“Bad shot, but I never miss twice.”

Adolfo’s demeanour changes from defiance to fear and he begins to walk towards Oliver. The rest of the men are clearly fearful.

“Pick up the cane, Adolfo.”

Adolfo walks back slowly, picks up the cane and walks up to Oliver. He gives the cane to Oliver.

“Take off your cassock.”

“No sir, please. Marcello is a very bad boy. You don’t understand how hard it is to maintain discipline with these urchins.”

Oliver speaks with calm deliberation: “Take off your cassock now, and the rest of your clothes, or I will shoot you. I will shoot you so that you will not die straight away. You will die in extreme pain!”

Adolfo takes off his cassock and the rest of his clothes and holds them in front of himself.

“Drop your clothes, turn around, and bend over the end of the table between their Eminences.”

Cardinal Juric comes to Adolfo’s defence. “Is this necessary, sir? Fra Adolfo was perhaps a little vigorous with his punishment, but he does have a point. Discipline is very . . .”

Oliver lashes the Cardinal’s face with the cane. He reels back from his chair and falls to the floor, crying out in pain, blood beginning to drip from the wound.

“You were not invited to speak, Your Eminence. I must maintain discipline. You understand the importance of discipline. And . . .” Oliver pauses and shakes his head before continuing: “you do not have permission to leave the table. Please sit.”

Cardinal Juric hesitates.

“Sit now! or there will be more! You, Adolfo! – bend over the table between their Eminences! I have that right – you two are bishops at least, if not cardinals?

Cardinal Juric looks down without responding. Adolfo bends over the end of the table as instructed and places his hands over his buttocks.

Oliver speaks again to Adolfo in measured tones. “Stretch your hands out in front of you.”

Adolfo slowly takes his hands from behind him and stretches them out in front of him. Oliver runs the muzzle of the gun over Adolfo’s back and down to the cheeks of his buttocks.

“You feel that Adolfo? If you move, I will place a bullet into your anus. Do you understand, Adolfo?”

Adolfo replies fearfully: “Yes.”

Oliver begins to cane Adolfo across his buttocks and back. As each slash of the cane breaks his fine, pale skin and bites deeply into his soft flesh, Adolfo cries out in pain. After the cane finds its mark for the sixth time, Adolfo urinates uncontrollably. Oliver stops beating him, throws the cane away and addresses the room: “Anyone who does not do what they are told, when they are told, will be shot, dead – which means, you mortal sinners, you will go straight to hell!”

Emma enters the dining hall with her gun drawn and walks up to Oliver, all the time observing the terror-struck diners, and asks him: “Where are we up to?”

“The gentleman bending over the table was beating a small boy with a cane when I entered. It was necessary to redress the power structure and instil some discipline.”

“I see. Do you think that has been achieved?”

“I do. So now we need the duct tape.”

“It’s in the car. Here are the keys. I think you should get it, don’t you?”

Oliver returns to the dining hall with the duct tape. The young boy and Giovanni have returned to the dining hall to observe what is happening. Oliver picks up a cutlery knife, the only knife on the table, but it is too blunt to cut the tape. Marcello sees this and runs over to the sideboard where there is a bread knife, picks it up and runs over to Oliver and gives it to him. Oliver smiles and thanks him. Oliver then motions to everyone seated at the table to stand up. Adolfo has returned to his place at the table and is wearing his cassock again.

Oliver addresses the room. “Now, you will all turn your chairs around and sit down again with your hands behind your backs.”

There are murmurings of discontent in the background as Cardinal Juric nervously speaks up: “What are you going to do? We have not done anything to you. We have not harmed you in any way. Why are you doing this?”

“What is your name?”

“I am a priest of the Catholic Church.”

“Oh, I think you sell yourself short. I think you enjoy a much higher rank than priest, though all bishops are priests, and all cardinals are bishops. I think that’s right, isn’t it, Your Eminence? Now, you obviously outrank that other guy opposite, because you do all the talking and he is obviously deferential to you, so, given what I know, I’d say you are a cardinal. Maybe he’s a bishop. Now let me see – yes, I think I feel the inspiration of Holy Spirit upon me . . . and it’s telling me you are a member of the Curia.” Oliver turns on Juric and demands in a menacing tone: “Tell me your name, or I’ll deal with you again.”

“I am Ante Juric.”

“Would that be Cardinal Ante Juric?”

“Yes.”

“A member of the Curia?”

“Yes.”

“My guess is your Croatian father named you after Ante Pavelic, head of Croatia during the Second World War – one of the most animalistic of the Nazis, a man who kept a basket of human eyes in his office, a man who exceeded, even, the depravity of the SS to the point that they sought to rein him in. And a man who was dressed as a priest by the Vatican so he could escape down the Vatican Rat Lines to South America. You are well named, Cardinal Ante Juric – except that you exercise your depravity on children. You steal their sense of self-worth, their dignity. You ruin their lives . . . for your pleasure!” Oliver calms himself. “Enough of this chitchat. Reverend Brother, may I call you Giovanni – can you help us please?

The young boy speaks up. “He is Giovanni, but he does not speak. He will help you and I will help you. They call me Marcello.”

“Thank you. First I will bind their hands behind them with this duct tape. Marcello, can you cut of strips of tape this long.” Oliver holds up a length of tape he has cut off the roll to show him then turns to Marcello to suggest: “Perhaps Giovanni can hold the roll up for you while you cut of pieces and hand them to me.”

The nine clergymen seated on reversed chairs with their chests against the backs of the chairs, duct tape binding their hands behind them, covering their mouths, binding their legs to the back legs of their chairs, and encircling their upper bodies and the backs of the chairs so that they are securely attached to them. The suit coats and waistcoats of the three men in clerical suits have been removed. Oliver, Emma, Marcello and Giovanni are sitting on two benches in the corner of the room, Emma on one bench with her arm around Marcello’s shoulder, Oliver and Giovanni on the other bench facing them.

XI

Emma looks with great kindness in her eyes as she ask Marcello: “How old are you, Marcello?”

“My real name is Ahmet. I am ten years old.”

“Can you tell us how you live here, what they do to you, what they make you do?

“What will you do with them? What will happen to us when you go?”

Oliver replies: “If you like, we can take you all away from here to a very nice place where nice nurses and doctors will take care of you and gentle teachers can teach you and you will have a nice place to play and you can go on trips to the beach and have nice holidays. Would you like that?”

“We must all be together, all of us. Okay?”

“Every one of you. We would not leave anyone behind.”

“Even Pesha? They don’t like Pesha because he becomes very angry. The other children don’t like Pesha, but he can’t help it.”

“Of course Pesha. We must help Pesha not to be angry.”

“What will we have to eat?”

“What would you like to eat?”

“We would like to eat what my mother used to cook.”

Oliver smiles and attempts to allay Ahmet’s concerns: “I promise you, Ahmet, if you want, we will take you to every place where they cook food like your mother used to cook, and when we find someone who can cook that food, and when you approve, we will make sure that we cook that food back home, your new home. But we must make sure that all the children can have the food they like too.”

“I know they will like my mother’s food.”

Emma wishes to bring Ahmet to the question she had asked: “Ahmet, we want to care for all the children and we want to make sure that we do not do or say anything that might upset them. It would help us to know what would have happened today if we did not arrive and tie these men up. Can you tell us, from when you woke up this morning, what happened, and what would have happened this afternoon and tonight if we did not come here?”

“You know Adolfo, he wakes me up. I must wake the others up and . . .”

Ahmet begins his account while the others listen. Tears begin forming in the eyes of both Oliver and Emma; they struggle to keep their emotions under control so that Ahmet can continue uninterrupted. Ahmet’s demeanour remains matter-of-fact throughout, his eyes occasionally widening with flashes of anger when he needs to emphasise a point. Giovanni sits staring into the distance, expressionless. When Ahmet’s story comes to an end, Emma draws him to her and kisses his head. Silent tears are running down her cheeks. She asks as calmly as she can: “Can you take me to the children? I think it would be good to show them that these bad men cannot hurt them anymore. Do you think it would be good for them so see these men tied up like this, or do you think it might upset them?”

“I will go first to talk to them. I will tell them that you are a kind lady and want to care for them. I will tell them that the man beat Adolfo because Adolfo beat me. Then I come to take you to see them, but only you. If they see a big man, they will be scared. When you are kind to them, then when they see you are the friend of the big man, they will be not so scared of him.”

“You are a very wise young man, Ahmet. My name is Oliver, but it is hard to say, so you can call me Ollie.”

“And my name is Emma. I have a simple name.”

Oliver winks at Ahmet. “Simple name for a simple girl.”

Ahmet at first looks puzzled at what Oliver has said and what he means by it. Then he begins to see that Oliver is joking and he begins to smile. Emma puts her hands on her hips and feigns a cross expression and shakes her head. Ahmet points first at Oliver then at Emma and then begins to laugh. He turns and runs off quickly.

He returns soon after, timidly followed by a group of little boys and girls, mostly boys, apparently between the ages of five and nine, all dressed in smocks, huddled together. Ahmet motions to them impatiently to come into the room. He coaxes them to gather together in the corner of the room. He speaks to them in their own languages. He is smiling. He puts on a kind of show for them with the intention of putting them at their ease. He walks over to the sideboard, picks up a carafe of wine, walks over to stand beside Cardinal Juric, climbs up on his knee then stands up on the table and walks along the table, tipping the wine over the nine bound men. The children are horrified as first, but when Ahmet has emptied the carafe, he does a cheeky, mocking dance in front of the bound men, which makes one child begin to laugh, and then they all gradually laugh more and more heartily. Emma calls to Ahmet to come to her and she walks over to the table and lifts him down to the ground.

“You are very good for the children, Ahmet. You are a natural leader. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, I know.”

Oliver walks over to join Emma and Ahmet.

Emma places her hand on Ahmet’s shoulder. “We have a bus here for you and all the children to take you all, including Pesha, to a nice place where you can be looked after and cared for and fed, and all those other good things. We want all the people in the world to see how bad these men have been to you so that they can never be bad to children again and they will go to gaol. Some people will come here in a little while and they will want to take pictures and make movies of all these bad men and all the children and where they kept you. When they come here they will take pictures of all the children first. They will not take pictures of their faces. Then we will take you all to the bus. Oliver will drive the bus because I do not know how to drive a bus, but I will drive a car in front of the bus to lead the way. Ahmet, can you tell all of this to the children? Do you think they will be okay with this?

Ahmet replies with a cheeky smile: “Of course. I am a natural leader.”

Emma smiles broadly and Oliver laughs out loud, and says: “You are indeed, Ahmet, you are indeed.”

Ahmet’s smile dissolves into tears. He begins to cry uncontrollably. Emma drops to her knees and draws him to her and hugs him. Oliver squats down to place his hand on Ahmet’s back. Kissing him again, she whispers: “It’s all over now, sweetheart. It’s all over now. You are safe now.”

XII

There is the sound of sirens and then a convoy of police cars driving into the yard in front of the orphanage. Oliver and Emma race to the windows and see that the orphanage is effectively surrounded by Carabinieri. Emma rushes to her car which is parked close to the front door of the orphanage, retrieves the two way radio, and rushes back inside. She calls Jimmy. “Jimmy. Carabinieri everywhere. Stay by the two way. Don’t come up yet. I’ll call you, okay.”

Emma rushes back into the dining hall. As she does, the Carabinieri begin making announcements from a police loudhailer in Italian: “We have the place surrounded and there can be no escape. If you release the hostages, no harm will come to you.”

Oliver opens a window and calls out in Italian: “We do not have hostages. We have detained a group of criminals engaged in crime. We do not intend to harm them or anyone. We have film of these criminals committing their crimes. Please wait there. We will bring a TV to the verandah and run one of the films for you. After you see this film, we want your agreement to take these men into custody.”

The loudhailer responds: “We give you five minutes to produce the TV and show the film.”

Oliver and Giovanni follow Ahmet to the room where the films are edited and copies made and stored. Oliver places a VHS tape into a VHS player slot at the base of a TV. He begins to play the tape. “Shit! That’s enough! Okay, Giovanni, we carry the TV and, Ahmet, can you carry that extension cord and set up a table on the verandah so we can show this tape to the Carabinieri.”

As the tape plays on the TV set up on the verandah, the volume turned up loud, the senior officer carrying the loudhailer walks forward to get a better look. He begins to shake his head. He looks shocked. He becomes emotional. Oliver and Emma are standing beside the TV. They are waiting for him to compose himself so that they can begin to discuss what is to happen to the bound men.

While discussions between the Carabinieri officer and Oliver and Emma are in progress, in the dining hall Ahmet is attempting to stab one of the monks in the back with a cutlery knife. He is unsuccessful because the cutlery knife has a blunt point and cannot penetrate the course material of the monk’s cassock. He then runs back to the cutlery draw and takes out a fork and then tries to stab one of the monks with that. Giovanni walks over to him and uses the breadknife to cut through the cassock so that Ahmet can stick the fork into the back of the monk. He makes no effort to avoid cutting the backs of the monks as he does so. Ahmet stabs each monk in the back with a fork but on each occasion it penetrates to the length of tines only. He and Giovanni then repeat the exercise with Cardinal Juric, the bishop and the head of the orphanage. Ahmet then runs to a corner of the room where there is a long-handled broom. We see him climb up on the knee of the grimacing Cardinal Juric to get onto the table. He has the long-handled broom with him. Each of the bound men grimaces with the pain of having a fork partially inserted in his back. Ahmet stands on the table and, looking down on Cardinal Juric, screams in Italian: “Look at me!”, and then in a calm deliberate voice, continues: “My . . name . . is . . Ahmet!”

Ahmet places the head of the broom against the throat of Cardinal Juric and gives it a sudden push so that the chair to which he is bound tips over backward. The fork partially inserted into his back is driven in to its full length. Cardinal Juric looks back at Ahmet with a look of indescribable pain, horror and fear of the afterlife.

Ahmet walks along the table to the next bound man and proclaims: ‘My name is Ahmet’ and pushes the broom suddenly against his throat so that he suffers the same fate as the Cardinal. He continues with this until all of the seated clergy lie dying on the floor in pools of blood, fearing the fate that awaits their immortal souls.

XIII

With their negotiations complete, Oliver and Emma leading the senior Carabinieri officer into the dining hall. They are stunned at the sight. Ahmet is sitting on the table, cross-legged. Giovanni is leaning with his both hands on the table and looks up as they enter. He smiles. He has the breadknife in his right hand. Grinning, he makes the motion of stabbing. The Carabinieri officer rushes forward and lifts up the body and chair of the Cardinal to the upright position and observes with horror the end of the handle of the fork protruding from his blood-soaked shirt. Emma and Oliver rush to lift the others to the upright position; and sensing that Ahmet’s involvement in the deaths of these nine men, they move close to the table where he is sitting. Oliver lifts him down and the leads him away to the far corner of the room.

Oliver asks: “What happened? Where are the children?”

Ahmet looks up at Oliver, blank-faced, afraid that the slightest expression might convey his guilt. Oliver places his hand on Ahmet’s Oliver and says reassuringly: “Don’t worry. We’ll sort something out.”

Oliver motions to Emma and the two of them walk over to the Carabinieri officer who is standing near the entrance door of the dining hall. Oliver begins conversing with him in Italian and Emma joins in.

Oliver begins to lay out his hypothetical view of the matter for the Carabinieri officer’s consideration: “We’re with a large contingent of international media people. You might have seen them in Castello Dei Martiri. Somebody got a tip-off about what was going on here, and I got roped in to drive a bus to ferry the kids away to safety. They were beating that kid over there when I walked in. I pulled a gun on them and then my colleague here walked in . . .” Oliver continues the account of the suffering to which the children have been subjected at the hands of the dead clergy.   “. . . and when we were showing you the tape, apparently Giovanni lost the plot. He has some kind of mental disorder and a very low IQ. They used him as their drudge and they whipped him when he got it wrong. So he saw his chance when his persecutors were tied up and stabbed them. That kid got the other kids and took them to the kitchen to keep them out of harm’s way. They were grabbing some food and waiting by the back door so they could run if things got out of hand. I had told them that I would take them to safety in that bus.”

“Maybe. Maybe. . . . Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. But we have nine dead bodies, one of them a Cardinal, a member of the Curia – I know of him – and a bishop, and the others.

“Whatever happens from this point on, I think what we would all want is natural justice to prevail. We know that whatever happens, Giovanni will not be held responsible and he will be placed in care. I can guarantee that I will pay for his proper care. We know that that kid has been through hell in this place – all of the kids have, but especially him. He took most of the beatings and he bravely tried to protect the others and keep their spirits up. We don’t want to put that kid or any of them through any more. We want them cared for and rehabilitated and given the best chance at a happy life we can give them.”

“So you are going to pay for Giovanni? And are you going to pay for the care of the children too?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You must be a very rich man . . . what is your name?”

“Saint Francis. I am a very rich man but I am happy to give my money away whenever I see a good cause. For example, you look like a married man to me; you must have children; you look like a good man; you must want the best education for your children. How much do you think it would cost to give your children the best education you can think of?”

“Even if I have ten kids I want to send to private boarding schools in Switzerland, we cannot fix this. Not with these dead people. I got a tip-off that someone had come here to take hostages and that there could be some very important people here. Then we have him here.” He gestures towards the body of Cardinal Juric. “With all this paedophile business. This is a big scandal. There will be a very high-level investigation when a Curia Cardinal is one of the paedophiles.”

“So what if, for the record, he wasn’t involved, but came here because he had had a tipoff that this place was used as a paedophile bordello and he came here to investigate. There is a retreat up the road called San Giovanni Bosco. That’s where the clientele for this place stay. I’m sure you will find all the witnesses you want to say that that’s the reason Cardinal Juric and his mate over there were here – to investigate and put things right. You could get a couple of them to say they came down here later on to see how things were going and found the dead bodies as we found them.”

“But how do we explain the dead bodies?”

“The perpetrator had long gone by the time you got here. You speculate that it could be some deranged ex-inmate of this place come back to wreak his revenge, and the good Cardinal and his mate got innocently caught up in it all and they become martyrs and heroes of the day. You are vigorously following all leads to catch the perpetrator. Now, I am sure, if you search the room of the head of the orphanage – that guy over there who was sitting at the end of the table – you will find a set of tapes where you see the faces of all the important people who visited this place, in the act. That guy was surely going to have a backup plan to make sure he didn’t have to carry the can if the purpose of this place was ever exposed. There are secret cameras in all the rooms. I checked.”

“And the press? And the children? And what about the two of you?”

“I have arranged for an accredited representative of a French childcare agency to be with the press in Castello. She will come with me on the bus. She has all the documentation with her for us to be able to take the children from Italy to France to a rehabilitation centre we have set up for them. They are not Italian citizens. They are refugees. As for the press, we have a two-way radio. We will brief them on the Cardinal and his mate being the good guys who came here to close the operation down; alas, they got killed by a person or persons unknown like the others. You can give them your speculation about the deranged former inmate. That should get them going.”

The Carabinieri officer pauses reflectively, seeming to see some merit in Oliver’s reconstruction of events. He is about to say something when Oliver speaks. “Can you come with me to the bus? I want you to see that it is acceptable for the children, and while we are walking, perhaps you can suggest the amount it might take to educate your children, in US dollars. I have some of those with me.

Oliver leads the Carabinieri officer out to the bus, and a few moments later, the Carabinieri officer tucks an envelope into his coat pocket then walks over to his men.

Emma and Oliver assemble the children and lead them onto the bus. After they are all loaded on, Oliver and Emma stand beside the bus. She looks at him with admiration. “You cut your teeth on this in Malaysia, didn’t you – smoothing things over after a disaster. You are a very resourceful man, Oliver. You handled that so well.”

“If you want to see Thierry, I can take them to their new home. I have Mademoiselle Petite with us. She probably knows more about what to do with these kids than the both of us put together.”

“I have the address. I’ll see you there in a day or two.” She pauses and with tears in her eyes asks: “Can we kiss goodbye? . . . I mean ‘au revoir’.”

They kiss. Oliver is about to say something, but Emma pulls away from his embrace and runs to her car, crying. Oliver watches her with a look of despair in his eyes.

XIV

Oliver is driving the bus with Ahmet sitting on the seat nearest him. The children are all sitting noiselessly, looking timidly at the passing scenery. Mademoiselle Petite is sitting at the back of the bus, reading.

Oliver asks Ahmet: “Do you know if the children like to sing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you like to learn a song and teach the children – to pass the time? You could translate it into their languages and they could each sing in their own language. It wouldn’t matter as long as they keep to the same tune. Would you like to do that?

Ahmet smiles and replies: “Yes, I would like to.”

“Okay. This is a song my grandmother used to sing to me at night to cheer me up. I will sing the words in English and you practice in your language and then translate. So, here goes, first line:

‘I’m letting in the sunshine’”

Ahmet follows Oliver’s lead for each of the following lines of the song ‘Letting in the Sunshine’, a popular song with dance bands, circa 1933. Oliver continues:

“‘I’m letting in the sunshine

It’s shining everywhere

I’m letting in the sunshine

For both of us to share

 

I’m opening the window

For summer’s in the air

I’m letting in the sunshine

For both of us to share

 

Can’t you see that all the dull days and grey skies are over?

Can’t you see that we’ll be living from now on in clover?

 

The lovely little sunbeams

Are dancing everywhere

I’m letting in the sunshine

For both of us to share.’”

The children eventually get the hang of the game and all begin singing the same tune, each singing the lyrics in their own language. The different words clashing and jangling as they sing becomes a great source of amusement and they begin to laugh, probably for the first time in many years. Oliver sits at the steering wheel, singing in English, smiling, though with the weight of melancholy thoughts of Emma and what might have been betrayed in his glistening eyes.

Chapter 6

SOUTH OF FRANCE

Three months later

I

A number of children, originally from the Italian ‘orphanage’, are playing on the front lawn of a holiday resort. A car is parked in the front driveway of the resort adjacent to its entrance and a man and woman in their sixties are standing at its front door. A young female member of staff, a teacher, opens the front door to see who has rung the front door bell. The front doorbell is infrequently rung, except by the children playing a prank upon her, or by a tourist who has lost his way. She opens the door abruptly, ready to scold a child or deal with a lost tourist. Instead, she finds at the front door an elderly couple who are apparently where they intend to be. The woman visitor speaks in English with a slight German accent: “Good afternoon. We would like to see Mr. Oliver Pymm, please.”

Her husband introduces them: “Mungo and Clara Dalrymple.”

The young teacher opens the front door wider and invites them into the entrance hall. She motions to a couch by the wall: “Would you mind waiting here and I will get him for you.”

Clara Dalrymple replies: “Thank you.”

Oliver walks down the staircase which leads to the entrance hall of the resort and greets his two visitors: “Good afternoon. Oliver Pymm. How can I help you?”

“Mungo Dalrymple. My wife Clara.”

Clara adds, “We are Emma’s parents.”

“Oh.”

Oliver pauses before inviting them to join him for further discussions.

“Oh, well, would you like to come in and sit down . . . in our sitting room. Please, follow me.”

Clara sits beside Mungo on a comfortable sofa. There is a coffee table in front of them. Oliver is sitting in an armchair opposite them. There is an awkward pause before he motions to stand up.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Can I get you a tea or coffee, or something stronger? I think I am going to have something stronger.”

Mungo replies: “Perhaps a scotch?”

Clara smiles and says: “A sherry for me, please.”

Oliver gets up and walks over to the drinks’ cabinet in the corner of the room. He takes a key ring, with a number of keys on it, out of his pocket and unlocks the drinks’ cabinet. The room is silent except for the jangle of keys and the sound of the drinks’ cabinet being unlocked. Oliver holds up a large key ring full of keys and explains: “Kids. Have to keep it locked.”

There is silence again, except for the clink of glass against glass as Oliver brings glasses and bottles to the table. It takes two trips. He brings wine for himself. Smiling a little self-consciously, he breaks the ice.

“Well, I haven’t seen or heard from Emma for . . .”

Clara interrupts: “We know, Oliver – may we call you by your . . .”

Oliver is quick to assure them: “Yes of course, please, and do you mind if I do too, I mean . . .”

Mungo reciprocates: “Of course, Oliver, of course.”

Clara smiles warmly at Oliver and continues as if she has not heard anything that Oliver and Mungo have said since they last spoke.

“We feel we know you so well . . . and we are very happy to be here . . . with all you are doing for these children. Do you think you might be able to take us around to see more of what you have made here . . . later perhaps?”

“Of course. It would be my pleasure. But I can’t take much credit for it. I’ve been writing while the professionals have been doing all the caring. I think the kids see me as some kind of silly uncle. I’ll be gone in another couple of weeks, not permanently of course. I’ll turn up from time to time, like silly uncles do.”

Clara’s demeanour changes to a more serious aspect.

“Oliver, do you mind if I speak to you in a very direct manner? I am sure you are wondering why we are here, and I think you are a man who would appreciate directness.”

“I would appreciate directness. Yes. Please continue.”

“The first question you must have is: ‘Why hasn’t Emma contacted you herself?’ ‘Why has she sent her parents?’ Well, there are two answers: the first is she is afraid; and the second is she asked my advice and I said we should come here. Oh, and there is also that she has not been able to contact you until now.”

“But why is she afraid? . . . I’m sorry. Please continue.”

“Yes, it is very unlike her to be afraid. That is not her way. And it is very unusual for her to want my advice. She usually talks to her father. They are alike. They think in similar ways.”

Clara looks at Mungo for acceptance of what she has just said and he nods.

“But she wanted to talk to me. She said I would understand because, she said, we are alike in some ways – you and I are alike.” She smiles warmly at Oliver.

“But she could just simply pick up the phone if there was something troubling about seeing me in person.”

“She wanted me to talk to you first.”

“But why? I mean no disrespect. We have only just met, and we obviously have a good rapport, but why does she need an intermediary?”

“It is very difficult for her. She said it was because you and I are alike, so I might know better how to approach you.”

Oliver smiles. “Do you think I really am someone so . . . ?”

Clara interrupts: “Of course not. No. No, it was because Emma said that I would be able to make the correct plan for how to handle the situation. She said I always make plans to deal with situations, just like you do.” She smiles. “She said that I also tend to drift away from the point of a conversation with little side observations . . .”

Mungo seems to take great pleasure in affirming: “Yes, now that is true.”

Clara pats Mungo on the hand.

“Yes, that is the old family joke. And Emma said you do the same. Do you really do those things too, Oliver?”

“I’m afraid I do.”

“Oh no! Don’t be afraid! It is sensible to make up a plan first if you want to succeed. And also, you know Oliver, we do not drift away. I do not think it is drifting. Sometimes, conversations can become so predictable, so boring. We have very active minds, don’t we, Oliver.” And she adds, smiling broadly: “We need something extra to amuse ourselves along the way.”

“Precisely. I hadn’t thought it through the way you have, but you are right.”

And now with an ironic smile, he continues, “And – I never thought it would ever be me uttering these words – but can we get back to why Emma needs you to talk to me before she does?”

“She telephoned to ask me what to do, can I advise her on the approach we should take, and I suggested that I talk to you first. You see, Oliver, she is afraid to see you. She is afraid of how you will react.”

“Of how I will react to what?”

“Her big problem is she is in love and she is out of her depth. She has never been in love before, not in this very deep way, and she doesn’t know how to handle the situation. And she is afraid she has hurt you so much.”

Mungo shuffles to his feet, looking a little put out.

“Mind if I take a walk around the grounds?”

Oliver looks up to assure him of the freedom of the place.

“Please. Wander where you like. From the hill behind us you can see the sea.”

When Mungo has left, Clara speaks confidentially.

“I think he is a little jealous to think of his daughter being romantically involved.”

“You know, now that we have met, Clara, I realize there is something about the women of your family and me. I’ve known you for all of five minutes and suddenly we are having this discussion . . . as if we’ve been close friends for years. Do you mind if I sit by you?”

Clara smiles and pats the seat beside her and Oliver joins her.

“Please don’t feel bad. Emma shouldn’t feel bad, or guilty in any way – not in the least.” And he attempts to smile as he continues: “I love Emma. Even though our time together was very brief – very intense – very intense situations – but in spite of all that was going on, all the confusion, there was one thing very profoundly clear to me: I love her more deeply than . . . I know how to put into words. And we were close, very close, but . . . I also know that she was with Thierry for much longer, and I accept that she is still in love with him. I understand why they parted – and why they are now reunited. She needn’t be afraid of anything. I would like to see her again to clear the air, so she knows there is no reason for her to feel bad about anything. This is just part of life, as I have learned, and I will get on with it. I really don’t want her to feel bad about anything, or anyone. I want her to be really happy.”

Oliver looks away, obviously upset but in control of his emotions.

“Yes, you have a way when you speak. I’m sure you have many other ways, too. But I am afraid I have started at the wrong end. What you do not know is that Emma has been working undercover since you last saw her. Julian insisted. There were so many things to deal with after the deaths at the orphanage. I do not know anything about her undercover work, but I do know that she has been working as a journalist again – under the name she has always used: E. H. Magdalene – her College at Cambridge. When she has to work undercover, her father and I sometimes provide some text to her ghost-writer and sometimes some old photographs from our collections. We used to travel around the Mediterranean and other parts of Europe during our summer holidays when the children were young, and we still do sometimes. They use a ghost-writer to keep publishing articles under her name while she is undercover, you see. But this time, while she was working undercover, she made time to write an article herself. It was entitled ‘Bespoke Assassins’.

“I have that article! It was the one, of all that articles and media coverage about the orphanage, that I thought was the most insightful, of the most lasting importance. It addressed the high incidence of paedophilia within the Catholic Church. It suggested links between the Church’s unhealthy obsession with repressing normal sexual activity and the way that that may inhibit normal sexual development. It suggested that the doctrines of the Catholic Church may be a significant factor in the high incidence of child abuse within the Church. . . . So she was the author! Good on her!”

“I believe she consulted a child psychologist when she was researching the article.”

“Yes, as I recall, it referenced the psychological effects of sexual repression on pre-adolescents. It said that it could prevent some of them from achieving sexual maturity – as I recall, some of the more impressionable young Catholic boys under the sway of the Church’s sexually repressive doctrines could develop a sexual attraction for children instead of adults. Consequently, when they grow up their sexual appetites can only be satisfied if they become sexual predators. And where better for a sexual predator to acquire the power and the opportunities, and the support they need to cover their tracks, than as a man of the cloth? The Catholic Church, the article contended, was producing, among its clergy, tailor-made assassins of the lives of children – hence the title of the article: ‘Bespoke Assassins’.”

Oliver pauses reflectively before continuing

“Well, once again, I am really pleased to hear that Emma was the author. I wished I had written it myself.”

He looks up at Clara and smiles reassuringly.

“So, Clara, please tell Emma that I wish her every happiness in life. If there is anything I can ever do to help her in any way, she should not think twice before contacting me. Tell her that I will always love her and that is why I really want her to be happy, to follow her heart . . . if it is with Thierry or whoever it may be.”

“Yes, she knew you would guess she had left you for Thierry. That is why she was so afraid she had hurt you so much. It was Julian who told her she must allow you to continue to think that but not contact you. And she had to agree with him. Otherwise you might have tried to find her. Or you might try to help her. Or you might bring yourself into danger.”

Clara pauses, annoyed with herself.

“Oh, I am not being clear at all, am I? Oliver, she is in love with you! And now that I have met you, I am not surprised you are the one for her, even after such a short time.”

“Oh . . . I . . .” He is overwhelmed and, shaking his head, asks: “You mean she loves me? You mean she loves me?”

Clara takes his hand in both of hers and speaks in a gentle voice.

“Of course she loves you, Oliver.”

“You’re sure?”

She replies reassuringly: “It is without doubt.”

Oliver, smiling, a bit choked up, regains his composure.

“Hah! So she needed you to help her get down from the tiger.”

“Oh!” Clara is taken by surprise by this comment and laughs heartily.

“So she told you that story! She was such a handful as a child!”

His eyes glistening and with a beaming smile, he responds: “She is such a handful now!”

They both laugh knowingly.

II

Not long after sunrise, Emma stands at the front door of the resort ringing the front door bell. A sleepy member of staff in her pyjamas opens the door.

Emma silently opens Oliver’s bedroom door. He is asleep. She takes off her clothes and gets into bed beside him. He wakes up. He looks at her with sleepy surprise. She is smiling at him with a look of love and vulnerability.

“Mummy phoned me.”

Oliver reaches over to her with his free arm and speaks with a sleepy voice. “I love Mummy.”

Postscript

A telephone rings. It is picked up by Emma. “Well, hallo Julian. It is good to hear your voice. Where are you?

“At home, South of France, with Millie. What have you two been up to?”

“Holidaying. Sailing the Mediterranean and calling in at ports on a whim. It has been just what the doctor ordered.”

“And what are the two of you up to now? What’s on your agenda?”

“Oliver has started a charity for war orphans. And I’m getting back into photojournalism of a sort – with Oliver. We are going to write a travel book together. He still puts in an appearance at his bank from time to time to keep an eye on things. His ‘magnum opus’ about investing in emerging Eastern Bloc economies seems to have been a hit within its intended market – brought a lot of kudos to his Bank.”

“Is Oliver there?”

“Yes. I’ll get him if you like.”

“Please.”

She calls to Oliver who joins them.

“Can you put me on speakerphone?”

“Sure.”

She presses a button and replaces the receiver.

“Hello Julian.”

“Hallo Oliver.”

“I suppose Emm had been filling you in about our Mediterranean odyssey.”

“Indeed. The purpose for my call, aside from catching up and complaining that the two of you have yet to spend any time with Millie and me, as per my invitation, is to invite you to dine – at John Flaye’s country seat.   You will both, no doubt, remember Harry Glenister.”

Oliver replies: “A lovely chap, quiet, unassuming.”

“Just so. He wants to have dinner with the two of you at John Flaye’s. Harry is in my old chair.”

Emma enquires: “And Marcel”

“Ah, the young Glasely is back in his hole, never to be heard from again, it seems.”

Emma continues: “And the purpose of this dinner?”

“Harry wants your help. Essentially intelligence gathering, but there is the possibility of an element of risk.”

Oliver repeats: “The possibility of an element of risk.”

“Yes, it seems so.”

Oliver muses: “We will be dining at John Flaye’s country seat in winter. There will be a log fire in the library. It brings back memories, Julian. Emma was very cruel to me in front of a log fire in the library of John Flaye’s country seat.”

“I was trying to keep you out of harm’s way, as I recall – and you argued with me and we went to bed, separately, as I recall.”

“You’re not suggesting that there may have been the possibility of alternative sleeping arrangements on our first evening together.”

“As a farewell gesture . . . perhaps . . .”

Julian interrupts: “Do I need to be here for this?”

Oliver replies: “Do you have the date for our dinner?

“Two weeks from now – the 27^th. Arrive mid-afternoon. Okay?

Emma replies: “Fine, Julian, and I will talk to Millie about paying you a visit. Please give her our love.”

“Okay, well, goodbye, to the two of you.”

“Bye, Julian.”

“Bye, Julian.”

Emma presses the button to end the call and asks, “Now, what’s all this nonsense about me being cruel to you?”

“You were always cruel to me when we were on our mission, even when we made love for the first time.”

“How can you say that?! Didn’t I initiate you getting your leg over?”

“And then complained about my performance, for god sake, because it was too good!!!”

“I think it was the fault of all that adrenalin we had to deal with.”

“There is the possibility of the element of risk in our new assignment – which translates into an atmosphere of constant adrenalin.”

“It does. How did that unfold, in the safe house?”

“Do you mean when you used the imperative mood – not an exclamation but an order?”

“Yes, that’s the one. What did I say . . .”

“You said . . .”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“. . . Oliver!”

The End

Paul Dellit has written some excellent political articles for The AIMN, so it came as some surprise that he is better known for his screenplay writing. Thomas Keneally, in a recent review of one of Paul’s screenplays I wrote: “I liked your screenplay and plot very much” and went on to describe it as “a very interesting and well-wrought script”. This particular screenplay – a spy thriller set in 1992 involving a MI5 mission directed at uncovering the source of stolen Russian radioactive material – has been turned into a novella (with input from Mr Keneally) and prior to publishing in hard copy has been offered to The AIMN.

We are pleased to ‘publish’ Paul’s novella. Being over 40,000 words, it is published in weekly installments.

Today we offer Part 11 (picking up where we left off from in Part 10).

Chapter 5 (continued)

V

Oliver and Emma are facing each other across the dining room table, the remnants of their dinner evident on used dinner plates. They each have wine glasses in front of them. Jim and Clive are not there.

Oliver looks reflectively into the distance then speaks in a slow deliberative voice: “You know, I spent eight years at a Jesuit boarding school, admittedly one of Sydney’s finest schools, but this kind of thing was virtually unknown – to students and parents, at least. Now here we have a list of – a united nations of socially pre-eminent paedophiles – every rank of Catholic hierarchy from cardinals down – a power structure rotten to its core. Paedophilia must be much more widespread in parishes and schools than people are aware of.” He pauses before continuing with a look of infinitely sad resignation: “So this is the Catholic-Church-in-action – not the message they sell to the faithful, not the message that underpins their power structure, gives them their status and massages their egos and pays for their very expensive fancy dress and fat bellies. Paedophilia must be their in-house secret! It must be systemic! He pauses and then resumes his monologue with rising anger: “What a pathetic bunch of gutless, conspiratorial, hypocritical shits!” He again pauses reflectively before adding: “There must be a way . . .”

Emma turns to Oliver, replying: “Well, we know everything it is possible to know about the orphanage and its inhabitants – at this stage at least. But how do we use it?”

“When Jim and Clive follow the head of the orphanage to his meeting with Oleg . . . I could wait there for the head of the orphanage to return. I could hit him with your tranquiliser pen and bundle him into the car and . . . then . . .”

‘Then’ is right, Oliver. What do you do then? She pauses before asking: “Who was your favourite cowboy hero?”

“Hopalong Cassidy.”

“You had one. How did I guess. Well, pardner, your ‘knock ‘em out or shoot ‘em up’ strategy has so far had a fifty percent mortality rate.”

“Okay. I’m all ears.”

Emma replies as if thinking aloud: “Sunlight is supposed to be a powerful antiseptic.”

“Yes, though I’m not altogether sure I follow. Are you planning to blind them with your make-up mirror?”

“How about using the glare of publicity as a disinfectant?”

The import of Emma’s words begin to excite his imagination prompting him to respond in a rush: “Of course! How brilliant!” He smiles and says with an affected Australian drawl: “You bonza sheila you!” And pauses briefly before continuing: “We get the media involved, get a team of them to the orphanage and they can do an international exposé on these bastards while we spirit the kids away. Absolutely brilliant! So, how do we get the ball rolling?”

“Well, I do know one or two journalists.”

“Yes, you mentioned that.”

“This will be the story of their lives.”

“Do you mean ‘their unexpurgated lives’?”

“One of them works for CNN and does pieces to camera occasionally. She has contacts at other networks – if she’s prepared to share.”

“I’d forgotten to ask whether you’d ever batted for the other team.”

“And I also know a documentary maker, Jimmy. And, oh, Jerome at Paris Match, and . . .” She laughs before continuing: “Red Sid: very leftwing freelancer; he took thirty pieces of silver from News of the World, as a staffer. After that they called him Sad Sid.”

“I shouldn’t ask about your history with any of these particular characters, should I?”

“Oh, don’t be silly – of course not.”

“So don’t ask?”

“Just stay jealous, Darling.” She smiles. “It’s very sweet.” And continues with more serious intent: “We need a sizeable team of international media on the scene. If the CIA or 6 find out what we’re up to they’ll do all they can to stop us, but they won’t once they know the media are all over it. They couldn’t risk being cast in the role of collaborators with a gang of paedophiles.” She takes Oliver’s hand, adding: “We don’t have any time to waste.”

“And we need somewhere to take the kids!” He squeezes her hand then releases it, stands up, and begins pacing, speaking his thoughts aloud as her traverses the room: “I’ll lease or buy a resort and turn it into the kind of place they need.”

“We only have a few days . . .”

Oliver turns to Emma with a steely look of determination and replies: “Watch me.”

VI

Emma and Oliver are speaking animatedly on their mobile phones.

Oliver is pacing up and down looking into the distance as he speaks: “George! . . . Going well, with one dramatic change in direction, which is why I’m calling, oh, not to mention that I just couldn’t go another day without hearing the sound of your dulcet tones. . . . I’d forgotten what a smooth bastard you are . . .” Oliver laughs, the continues: “Serious now, I have thirty two orphans to find a place for – victims of the Balkans War. . . . Yes . . . . what I said. . . . right . . . They’ve suffered physical and psychological abuse – don’t want to go into details right now. George, my involvement is a bit complicated for the phone – I’ll tell you in person . . . soon. They need a place where they can be rehabilitated – medical care, psychological care, education, everything you can imagine that these kids might need. . . . in two or three days time . . . . George, that’s why I thought of you . . .

Emma is sitting back in her chair, a pad and pen on the dining room table beside her. Her face lights up when there is a response to her call, and she becomes animated by this reunion with an old friend as she replies: “Jimmy. . . . Emma. ‘Sony’ Emma! . . . No, it’s really me. . . . Well, it got a bit much for me when Karl died. . . . Yes . . . I had to get away . . . where nobody could find me – on my own for a while. Yes. . . . Well, I’ve been working on a kind of novel . . . no . . . nothing to do with pornography, Jimmy – a novel based a lot on actual events but with names changed, and so on. Okay . . yes, well, have it your way, I am back making up stuff for the print media, but I have something for you – the absolute truth . . . well, let me tell you. You will be able to make a documentary – the documentary by which you will be remembered forever. . . . Okay, well first I’m giving you this on one vitally important condition: you can’t tell anyone that I am involved because I will be pestered relentlessly for my source and someone might be able to work it out. . . . Well, if you’re pestered, that’s your price of admission, okay. At least if you keep your trap shut about me, they won’t be able to work out where the lead came from. I’ll be introducing you to a colleague – he stays secret, too. Okay. . . . Well I can’t tell you everything yet, but I can say it involves the Vatican in the worst kind of corruption imaginable – worse than the Rat Lines and it’s happening now . . . yes, live and ongoing. . . . Jimmy, you have my word. My source is impeccable. . . . I need you to contact network people, and print media . . . no, their coverage will become promotional hype for your doco. . . . Make the phone calls Jimmy. It won’t work unless we have a sizable team. . . . Good. Yes. . . . If it’s just one or two we could be stopped. . . . Yes, very powerful people. . . . Right, it’s got to look like the international media are on to this. So, our first priority is to get everybody to assemble at Castello Dei Martiri in northern Italy . . . okay. . . yes, that’s the right spelling – by day after tomorrow – and you can’t tell them about Vatican involvement – just say a major international scandal which will run as a lead story, internationally, for weeks. Tell them it could be completely shut down if anything gets out. Right. . . . We’ll leave, en masse, for our target destination from Castello. Full briefing for you at Castello – you have to get there well before the others so that my colleague and I can leave before they arrive. . . . Right, and then you can tell the others. . . . Thanks Jimmy . . . yes. Here are the people I’ve thought of but I’ll leave it up to you . . .

Oliver is on the phone, still speaking to George: “How can you ask about the book? . . . Well, George, this is related to the book, and you needn’t worry. I’ll have all we need for the book and more, and . . . Well please tell Sam and Heinz that the Bank’s image will be enhanced considerably, and this thing I’m asking you to do now forms an essential part of the narrative. I really don’t have time to think about business now, George. We really have to crack on. Thirty two damaged kids to look after, remember? . . . Right, well this might be a good project for Carl and Julia to cut their teeth on . . . I said I’ll fund it all . . . that’s right . . . as a charity would be the best way, obviously . . . George, I really appreciate your concerns to optimise my tax position, and I am really relying on you to manage this because my hands are pretty full here at the moment . . . Mate, I would tell you if I could . . . later, I promise, but right now . . .”

Emma is on the phone, finalising her call to Jimmy: “Oh, thank you Jimmy. . . . Yes, I’m pleased to have those times to remember. . . . No, I think we all must be different people now. . . .” She laughs before adding: “No. . . . No, we have different lives. . . . Oh, I am flattered, but I have someone. . . . No, he’s a keeper. . . . So, we have the right people, you know how to get there, and they will all be there by no later than.

VII

Emma, Oliver and Kleinsdorf are sitting at the dining room table. They have pads and pens in front of them. Kleinsdorf is finishing up a phone call on the mobile phone provided by MI6.

Kleinsdorf begins: “Okay. So Oleg will arrange for the orphanage priest to deliver two suitcases to me in three days at the usual place. This means that Oleg must deliver the suitcases to the priest in two days so the priest can be at the usual place in three days. This also means that Oleg must leave now to his place where he keeps his radioactive dirty bomb stuff. If he does not leave now, he will not be able to return to meet the priest in two days. So now my job is done, yes?”

Emma replies: “Almost, Klaus. We have to wait here for a day or two to make sure that there are no last minute calls from Oleg which require your attention. Once we know that your involvement is no longer required, you will be taken to the British Embassy as arranged.”

“So, that is okay with me. You are very good hosts, but I think that you cook very rich food. I think also you do not cook like other English people. But I also do not like your English cooking. I think I must find an old oma to cook for me when I live in England.”

“Just so. Well, I’m afraid you will be even more disappointed with tonight’s fair. Mr. Darcy is preparing this evening’s meal, very rich and very French. Mr. Darcy loves to experiment in the kitchen.”

Oliver turns to Kleinsdorf. “Just thinking about your needs for a domestic when you’re set up in Britain – you’ll have to advertise. You could do worse than use Miss Bennett here as the blueprint for your ad, except . . .”

“Except he wants the old oma type.”

“I was going to say ‘except for your cooking’.”

Emma playfully throws her pen at Oliver.

VIII

Oliver is opening the front door of the safe house to Harry Glenister, First Secretary, British Embassy, Berlin, also an undercover MI6 officer.

“Harry Glenister.” He walks into the entrance hallway, turns and offers his hand to Oliver. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Pymm.”

They shake hands and Oliver motions in the direction of an open doorway. “We’re in the lounge room.”

They walk into the lounge room where Emma and Kleinsdorf are drinking coffee. Emma stands to greet Glenister. Kleinsdorf remains seated. Glenister walks over to Emma and they shake hands.

Glenister smiles. “Harry Glenister. Your reputation precedes you.”

Emma smiles, her head to one side. “Julian?”

“Julian.” Glenister smiles and turns to Kleinsdorf. “And you must be Mr. Kleinsdorf.” Glenister holds out his hand to Kleinsdorf, Kleinsdorf stands up, and they shake hands. “Harry Glenister. How do you do.”

“I am very well, Mr. Glenister. You are from the Embassy?”

“Yes, Mr. Kleinsdorf, and that is where I will be taking you.” He turns to Emma. “Emma, might I talk to you privately.”

Emma and Harry walk out into the entrance hallway for a brief conversation before returning to join the others. Harry says his goodbyes and leaves as quietly and unobtrusively as he arrived. After the front door closes, Emma reveals to Oliver what Glenister told her in private: “Jim and Clive are currently following the head of the orphanage to his rendezvous with Oleg. Shouldn’t be long before they have him. So now I should call Julian and promise him our mission report within, say, a week. He’ll accept that we need a bit of R & R to properly gather our thoughts.”

“Okay, so let’s pack and hit the road. We’ll have to hire a bus for the kids . . .”

IX

Emma, driving their hire car, followed by Oliver in their hired bus arrive at Castello Dei Martiri during the early morning. They pull up outside a small restaurant and bar, the only one visible in the main street. A tall fair-haired man walks out to greet Emma. Oliver gets out of the bus and walks over to join them.

The man speaks with a cockney accent: “‘ello Sony. Just the same as always.”

They embrace warmly.

“Hallo Jimmy. And very pleased to see you too.”

Jimmy turns to Oliver and speaks as he shakes his hand: “This must be ‘the keeper’.”

“Oliver.”

“Jimmy Crago, and very pleased to meet you.” He turns to Emma. “So, luv, what ‘ave you got for us. Beda be good. Should be about twenty or more people turning up this afternoon, five or six different organizations represented . . .”

“A paedophile brothel, set up by two Vatican cardinals to appear to be an orphanage for orphans from the Balkans War.”

“You can’t be for real! No! Shit! Come on Sony! – what’s the real story. This can’t be . . .”

“It’s the real story, Jimmy. Oliver and I will wait to see the head of the orphanage drive by, fairly soon, we expect – he’s on his way back from Croatia. We’ll follow him and then bring things under control so you can . . .”

“Not often I’m lost for words, Sony.” He looks down the road. “How will we be able . . . they’re not gona just let us walk in and start filming.”

“They won’t have any option by the time you arrive.”

“Shit, Sony!” He laughs. “We all knew you was tough as nails, but are you now armed and dangerous?”

“Don’t worry about how it will happen, Jimmy. Just believe it will happen.”

“Is he . . . sorry, Ollie, right?   Are you some kind’v ‘ard man?”

“One condition of this deal, Jimmy, is that neither our names nor pictures must appear anywhere – if you value our lives.”

“Understood! Understood! I can’t even pick where you’re from. It’s not quite English, or Australian? – could be Nu Zealand? I don’t know any Kiwis . . . but, no, not Kiwi, is it?”

“Perhaps we leave it that way.”

Jimmy turns to Emma. “You were always full of surprises, but this . . .”

Oliver places his hand on Emma’s shoulder. “You are full of surprises. I didn’t know you were called Sony.”

“Just a nickname. It’s no longer relevant.”

Jimmy smiles at Emma, then laughs. “Darlin’, to me you’ll always be Sony. It was the Wiz, wasn’t it?’ He turns to Oliver. “We was in this bar, very late, rough day, and this Yank started to pull ‘er chain. Jimmy attempts an American accent: ‘What’s a cute girly like you doin’ with all these rough gentlemen? This is no place for you, you bein’ so refined. Why don’t you let me take you somewhere where we can share some quality time?’” So she comes back, all posh: “‘Well, I don’t mind f*cking ugly guys, but from the look of you, you probably have a dick the size of your brain, and as you have just demonstrated, that’s the size of a pea.’ So we sit there, stunned, when this Aussie guy, the Wiz, pipes up: ‘Yeah, ‘ssoff or she’ll ‘sonya.’ which is Australian for: ‘piss off or she’ll piss on ya!’ So after that we called her Sonya, which became Sony, right Sony?”

Oliver buts in, smiling broadly. “You must have a whole shit-load of stories like that, Jimmy. When this is all over, what say we have a night on the piss together?”

“So you are an Aussie. Well, as the Wiz would say: ‘Blood oath!’” and he begins to laugh.

Emma, deliberately ignores the rapport developing between Oliver and Jimmy. “Did you bring that set of two way radios, Jimmy? I don’t think there will be mobile phone coverage here.”

“Sure. So you will call me when it’s right for us to come up? And where will you be so that you don’t end up in somebody’s frame?”

“We’ll stay out of sight until we can leave with the children on that bus.” She motions to the bus Oliver was driving. “Make sure they deal sensitively with the children, Jimmy. No pictures of faces. We’re going to take them to a safe place where they can receive treatment and be looked after. If you can, take everyone to film the children first. There is an older little boy there who acts as an interpreter for them. We will try to have him lead them onto the bus after you spend your five minutes filming them – and Jimmy, please do make sure they’re filmed so that their faces can’t be seen and they don’t have to look at people filming them. They’ve had a rough enough time without us turning them into a sideshow. After that you can film their quarters and the members of the clergy who are running the place, any of their clientele present, and gather up the videos and photos.”

“They’re flogging porno as well?!”

“You can see how important it is that the world knows.”

Jimmy looks directly at Emma and pauses before saying in a soft voice: “You know Thierry is coming.”

“He was on my list.”

“Let’s have a coffee.”

They walk into the cafe, sit at a table and order breakfast.

“Why did you call me instead of Thierry? You could trust ‘im as well as me.”

“I thought you would be more reliable. Anyway, he will get his story the same as everyone else.” She pauses before asking: “You didn’t tell him about me, did you?”

“No, but ‘e ‘as been lookin’ for you.”

“What on earth for?”

“‘e went looking for you – a couple of months after Marguerite died – no luck. ‘e said it was like you disappeared off the face of the earth.”

Their breakfasts and coffee arrive. Jimmy takes a sip of coffee. “‘e lost the plot, ya know. ‘e was a real boozer after that – only got it back together in the last couple a months. I think you should see ‘im, luv. I don’t know wha’ ‘appened between you two, but I think you owe ‘im that.”

Emma looks shaken. “How did Marguerite die?

“She’d been in remission for quite a while, but it came back suddenly and spread quickly. Nothing they could do. She was dead a few months after they found out.”

“When did she first get cancer – it was cancer?”

“Well, when Thierry left, when you . . .” Realisation dawns on him. “Oh, ‘e didn’t tell you, did ‘e. . . . ‘e wanted to give you a clean break. Oh, I’m sorry luv.”

Emma gets up and walks to the café counter and buys a packet of cigarettes and a lighter and walks outside, trying to remain calm but visibly upset, lights a cigarette and begins smoking in an agitated manner. Oliver and Jimmy remain seated in the café without speaking for a few moments more, and then Oliver gets up and walks slowly out to Emma. He is about to speak but Emma speaks first: “Do you mind if we don’t talk about this now – until we finish this mission – not about anything but the mission – we have to get these children away from here and make sure this place is closed down and the people responsible exposed. That’s all that’s important now.”

“And after that?”

“Not now, Oliver, please.”

“Sure. . . . Look, if it helps, I have no expectations – we’ve only known one another for a very short time, so . . .”

Emma looks at him with fire in her eyes. “What makes you think you even crossed my mind? Why would you . . . ? You can be so . . awfully . . stupid!” She throws the cigarette down and storms off to her car, gets in and lights another cigarette.

Oliver walks back into the café. The three breakfasts are sitting on the table untouched. Jimmy begins eating his. Oliver sits down. He doesn’t eat.

Jimmy looks up from his meal. “It was a few years ago, now. When I met them they’d been together for about seven or eight months, as an item I mean. Then one day he leaves, doesn’t tell anyone ‘e’s going, just there one day and gone the next. We asked Sony why ‘e’d gone. She said ‘e left ‘er a note and didn’t want to talk about it. Someone went to see him at his apartment in Paris and that’s how we found out that ‘e’d gone back to look after Marguerite because she had cancer. She was ‘is wife – separated. Two kids to look after, as well as ‘er when ‘e went back. I thought ‘e’d told Sony in the note.”

To be continued . . .