An Australian Assignment

"I saw some of your photographs recently. In Canberra. Big they were – very big. Covered the whole wall." he said out of the corner of his mouth as he slid on to the stool beside me. We were the only customers in the bar and the barmaid was still busy pulling his beer.

"In your present situation, you could be very useful to us. I'll leave here in a minute or so. Join me down on the wharf."

I had been taking the second long, satisfying swig of my first beer when he walked into the bar of this waterside pub in a small coastal town south of Fremantle in Western Australia. I had no idea who he was or what he was talking about.

"What do you mean?" I asked, but he ignored me; just sipped his beer and gazed out the window towards the darkening sea.

I had given up working after the sun sank slowly and spectacularly into the sea. Heading north, I noticed the pub and decided a well-earned beer – or even two – was called for. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

My name is Mark Roberts and, until about six months ago, I was a full-time government employee and an occasional part-timephotographer. Now, having been, as they say, 'offered a package' to retire, I'm just a photographer. I was born in north Queensland but had spent almost all my working life in Canberra in the Government Employment Service. The greater part of that 25 years hadn't been finding work for the unemployed, but recruiting the staff who would. Years ago, after my childless marriage ended in a final, blazing row, I joined one of the local camera clubs and devoted most of my spare time to photography. I became rather good – even if I say so myself – and spent weekends and holidays traveling with my growing collection of photographic equipment.

Unlike some of my friends, I have never been attracted to playing around in a darkroom making prints, so most of my photographs have been colour slides -- known in the trade as transparencies or trannies for short. I was to discover that these are the most sought after by picture libraries, which will, for a substantial commission, sell them for you. I have been dealing with a library in New York for some years and, since becoming a full time photographer, I have been able to increase both the quantity and the quality of the images I have been sending them, to our mutual benefit.

I took my time over the second beer, then, as I was returning to my camper van, I noticed the glow of a cigarette down on the wharf. I ignored it and drove towards Fremantle until I found a side track where I could pull off the highway and cook myself a meal before bedding down for the night. As I sat on the steps of the van enjoying a brandy in the cool night air, I realised what the chap in the pub must have been talking about.

Back when I was still a part-time photographer, I was asked if I would sell some of my large panoramic transparencies to be used to make mural sized prints for use in a new building. The price offered was attractive so I agreed. When I asked to see the finished job, I was told that would not be possible as the pictures were being used to bring some sense of the outdoors into a windowless, high security area. I assumed this to be in the recently completed building which had risen from a deep hole in the ground behind a high, well patrolled fence and which the Government kept denying was for one of the security services.

The trip west had gone well and, after tracking back across the desert to South Australia, I headed north for a few days in the Flinders Ranges. Then, it was back to Canberra to collect the pile of processed films waiting for me at the lab and get a batch of trannies captioned ready to send to New York. I had been back in my small apartment less than an hour when the telephone rang. I beat the answering machine to the draw.

"Mark Roberts." I grunted into the receiver, my mind on other things.

"I believe you met a friend of ours in Bingelup." The voice was male, husky, with a slight drawl. I'm rather good on voices on the telephone and was sure I had never heard this one before.

"Where?"

"Bingelup. A little town on the coast south of Fremantle. You met in the pub."

"I don't think so."

"He tells me you did. He talked to you about some very large photographs."

"Don't remember," I lied.

"I think we should meet."

"I haven't got the time. I'm only in Canberra for a couple of days. Sorry."

Half an hour later, the doorbell rang. It was a uniformed hire car driver."

"Your hire car, Mr Roberts."

"I haven't ordered a hire car. Anyway, where are you supposed to take me?"

"To the lookout on Red Hill, Sir.'

"This is ridiculous. I never ordered a hire car and the last place I want to visit is the Red Hill lookout."

I was beginning to get annoyed. Slamming the door in his face, I went and looked out the window. There was a hire car in front of the building. He rang the bell again several times before giving up. I watched him speaking earnestly into his radio before he drove away. Almost instantly the telephone rang. I let the machine answer; no message was left.

Two days later, I had all the film sorted and a large batch of trannies on their way to New York. I was ready to head north and was stowing the camera gear back in the camper van when a man, who looked like an aging, overweight jockey, sidled in beside me. His sparse hair was almost jet black as was the stubble which stood out starkly against his pale, sallow skin. He looked as though he regularly slept in his unfashionable brown suit, smoked too much, and rarely saw the sun .

"Mark Roberts?" he asked in the husky voice I recognised from the anonymous telephone call.

"Yes. Whose asking?"

He reached into his pocket and flashed what might have been an ID card at me so quickly I was unable to read what was on it.

"You are Mark Roberts, born Vladimir Rodjinski in Petrograd in the Soviet Union in 1948." It was not a question, it was a statement. "You entered Australia illegally in 1973 as a Soviet agent."

"That's ridiculous! I was born in Queensland on the fifth of November 1947. In 1973 I had been working here in Canberra for two years."

"But we were informed... Can you prove that?"

"Of course I can but it may take me some time to find the papers. This isn't a police state yet... or is it? Come back to the flat with me."

"That would not be wise. I will wait here."

"Not in the van you won't. There's too much valuable equipment in here. If you must wait here, you can skulk in the carport after I have locked the van."

He elected to skulk.

I knew where all the papers were but I made him wait about twenty minutes before I went back and spread them on the small table in the van. There was the birth certificate, passport, and Public Service correspondence relating to my original appointment back in 1971 and my recent redundancy. He scowled at each piece of paper twice before saying,

"Please accept my apologies, Mr. Roberts. There seems to have been a mistake."

Tapping the redundancy papers, I said, "Perhaps you should think about it. I can recommend it. But I suppose yours is one of those Government services they feel they can't do without."

He was obviously annoyed and pushed past me and headed for the hire car parked in the driveway.

After I finished loading the van, I sat down in the apartment, took a deep breath and poured myself a stiff drink. That had been too close for comfort. No. I am not Vladimir Rodjinski, – but I knew him well all those years ago at an establishment without a name on the outskirts of Leningrad, where people were taught to become more English than the English, more American than the Americans or, in our case, more Australian than the Australians. We had arrived in Melbourne from New Zealand back in the days when a passport was not required to travel between the two countries and spent about a year in Melbourne familiarising ourselves with the culture. We became Carlton supporters – both the football club and the beer – until I was suddenly advised of my new identity as Mark Roberts who had just been appointed to the Commonwealth Employment Service in Canberra. There was, or had been, a real Mark Roberts, but I thought it better not to enquire what had happened to him.

I had two days to absorb the family background. Fortunately, Mark was the only child of a couple who had lived in north Queensland until they were killed in a car accident, so there wasn't a great amount of detail to learn. Two days later I was in Canberra, where I have been Mark Roberts ever since.

I was what was known as a sleeper. My mission was to work my way into a senior position in the Defence Department or Foreign Affairs and when I achieved that I would be activated. Those who devised this plan obviously did not appreciate that Mark – the real Mark – was poorly qualified for the job to which he had been appointed, and his prospects of promotion to any position of interest to the Soviet intelligence services was remote. Besides, I really wasn't trying; I had become an enthusiastic Aussie. The KGB made occasional contact over the years, just to remind me they still remembered who I was, but I had not heard from them since the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union began to break up. When I was offered the redundancy package, I knew I would be free at last. I intended to stay that way.

When I arrived back from Queensland, there was a message on the machine, timed a mere ten minutes before I returned to the apartment. The caller did not give his name but I remembered the voice from the distant past when I knew him as Vladimir Rodjinski.

"Hello Ilya; or should I call you Mark? I'm sorry you were troubled recently. It seems that our former masters, when agreeing to provide certain information, thought it would be embarrassing if my real identity became known. The information they supplied appears to have been muddled to protect us both, but I could hardly say 'That's wrong!' when it crossed my desk. You won't be bothered again. If you remember any of your old training I shouldn't need to remind you to erase the tape once you have heard this message."