LITMIR.BIZ

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car waiting to pick him up when he reaches Narellan,’ his supervisor in Sydney replied bleakly.

      CHAPTER 6

       Dan

      I was eager to return to home as quickly as possible because I knew that Sandy and the kids would be worrying about me. My mobile phone was still turned off, and I wondered if I could bring myself to reconnect it. News of the worst kind I felt sure would spew forth as soon as I dared push the on button.

      I drove without stopping, and pulled into my street to find several cars parked close to my driveway. The front gate had been left open which was unusual, but I was glad that Sandy had done so, when a group of men, some with cameras, came rushing toward me. I accelerated up the driveway leaving them floundering at the gate, and parked out of sight behind our house.

      Also parked here was a work van with both a handyman’s ladder and a surf board strapped to its roof. Emblazoned on the van’s side was the company name of Bowats Plumbing and Electrical and I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Sandy was being guarded by my best friends Rick Bonham and Sam Watson.

      I found the trio seated around the kitchen table, and as I entered, Sandy jumped to her feet and threw herself into my arms. The feeling of her arms around me, and her face pressed tightly into my neck was what I had been craving ever since my fall from grace. All the tension of the past days flowed out of me for the first time, and my knees began to feel like jelly. I luxuriated in the feeling of release that our embrace afforded me and totally ignored my two friends who remained seated with a beer close at hand and seemingly completely relaxed.

      ‘Where have you been? What have you been doing?’ asked Sandy worriedly as she finally released me.

      ‘Leave him be Sandy,’ smiled Rick. ‘He’s only just in the door. Get him a beer will you Sammy,’ he added quietly to his friend.

      Sam leaned back precariously on his chair and opened the fridge door behind him. He extracted a bottle and twisted off the cap before handing it to me.

      I took the bottle with one arm still around Sandy’s waist, and stood in the middle of the kitchen floor while I drank the contents in a couple of long gulps.

      ‘Who are those blokes outside?’ I asked as I placed the empty bottle on the table.

      ‘They’re the press boyo,’ replied Sam. ‘You’re famous.’

      ‘Shit!’ I responded.

      ‘You might very well say that,’ nodded the bearded Rick.

      ‘You haven’t seen the papers or the television?’ asked Sandy.

      ‘I’ve been doing other things. I didn’t have time to worry about the news, and I’ve been playing music in the car.’

      ‘Well it looks like we all have a lot to talk about,’ said Rick.

      ‘Do you mind if I have a shower first? I need to get my wits about me after that long trip.’

      ‘What long trip?’ asked Sandy. ‘Where have you been all this time?’

      I gave her a quick kiss. ‘I’ll tell you everything as soon as I get showered,’ I promised.

      I turned to Sam. ‘How much beer is in the fridge?’

      ‘Plenty.’

      ‘Put in some more. Plenty won’t be enough.’

      * * *

      As I showered I reflected on the pair of men seated in my kitchen. Sam and Rick had grown up together in Seashell Cove, a tiny dot on the eastern coast of northern New South Wales. After completing high school they had both chosen to do apprenticeships with the Australian Army, Rick as a plumber and Sam as an electrician. When I asked them why they hadn’t done their apprenticeships at home they had explained that Seashell Cove was so small that after the town had one of everything there was no room for a second. As the town already had a plumber and an electrician they had been forced to look elsewhere for employment and the army seemed to offer them the best choice of a future.

      We had first met when I received an overseas secondment from the Joint Communications Centre to the signal centre operated by the Australian forces in East Timor. Rick and Sam’s unit had been helping the locals with the reconstruction of basic infrastructure and we had met in the army’s mess tent.

      I had been reading a surfing magazine and sipping at a cold beer when a large shadow fell over me. ‘Surfing magazine?’ had asked the giant of a man that was looking down on me.

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘Where do you get them around here?’

      ‘A mate in my unit in Canberra posts them to me,’ I explained.

      The big man nodded to a nearby table where he had been seated with a much smaller man. ‘Can we borrow it when you’re finished?’

      ‘You surf?’ I asked casually.

      ‘Yeah. We come from a place where the waves are the most consistent and best formed in the world.’

      ‘Oh yeah,’ I scoffed, ‘and where would that be?’

      ‘Seashell Cove, just north of Taree.’

      ‘Never heard of it.’

      ‘Of course not. We don’t want every bastard to know about it.’

      I nodded. It was exactly the answer I would have expected from a dedicated surfer. ‘And now you’re going to tell a complete stranger about your secret?’

      He grinned. ‘Only because you’re going to lend us your magazines.’

      We had become close friends after that, and people began to refer to us as the Three Amigos, or the Three Musketeers. However it was not quite like that at all.

      I became the extra add-on to an already unshakable friendship. Having known one another all their lives Rick and Sam were more like twin brothers than mates. Sometimes they seemed to know instinctively what the other one was thinking.

      Not that they were alike in any physical way. Rick was a bull of a man who nowadays sported a wild beard and long hair, while Sam was short and slim, clean-shaven as we had been in the army with close cropped hair. I tended to be somewhere in the middle in all respects.

      The other major factor that defined their relationship were their constant arguments. If a topic of conversation were to crop up that did not directly relate to their own or their family’s wellbeing then a heated debate would ensue.

      Polite discussion of general events would always lead to polarisation, with Sam adopting one viewpoint and Rick the diametrically opposing one, no matter what the topic. I was always left trying vainly to defend the middle ground with both my friends demanding that I adopt their viewpoint.

      Once, I thought I had made a breakthrough and convinced one of them that their friend’s argument was correct on this particular occasion, only to have the other immediately reverse his attitude and argue from the opposite standpoint. I realised at that moment then that I could never win, and ever since had allowed them to espouse whatever side of an argument they wished, joining in only when specifically invited.

      * * *

      After a long hot shower I felt much better and returned to the kitchen.

      ‘When did you arrive?’ I asked.

      ‘Sandy rang us up as soon as you left,’ replied Rick.

      ‘And we started to hear about you on the radio on the way down,’ added Sam.

      ‘What were they saying?’ I asked.

      Sandy was standing at the sink preparing a meal. She disappeared into the lounge room and returned with a paper which she placed before me. It was opened to the third page where an article appeared beneath a headline blaring the words ‘SPIES IN THE RANKS’, and going on to state that a certain

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