KANGAROO RANGE (2025 Edit)

Can Jon-James cut through the swath of lies surrounding the death at Kangaroo Range?

Early February 2014

Lying back upon his seat in the off-cream Lexus, Jon-James Spencer found himself being lulled to sleep by the sound of the rain teeming down against the bodywork of the small car. It had been raining nonstop for the last fifteen hours, since they had crossed the border from New South Wales into Queensland. As they passed over a rough mud track, he read, “You are now entering a flood region...” on one of the many signs that flanked the road.

In his early forties, Jon-James had been an agent of A.S.I.O. (the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation) for nearly twenty years. In that time he had worked mainly on matters such as helping to develop defence strategy to protect the Bass Strait off-shore oil platform against attack from Libya or Iran; helping to supervise the protection of foreign diplomats visiting Australia, and had personally prevented an assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II, during the pontiff’s last visit to Australia. So it was quite a letdown for him to now be assigned to do routine police work.

Looking out into the rain, Jon-James asked, “How much longer?”

“We should be at Kangaroo Range in another couple of hours,” replied the driver. Unlike Jon-James, who was tall, lean and blond with shoulder-length hair, Robin Harper was short, dumpy, with dark Celtic looks, and an almost military style crew-cut. Both men wore tailored pin-stripe suits. But whereas Jon-James’ suit drew from his muscular physique and made him seem even more masculine, on Harper, it looked like a monkey in sackcloth. “What’s the matter, getting bored already?”

“I’ve been bored for the last eighteen hours,” replied Jon-James.

“You shouldn’t be. You’re lucky to ever be allowed back to active service, after that fiasco three months ago.”


Canberra Airport, Late November 2013

Jackie Bindul and Robin Harper stood in the shade of a tall Elm tree watching the silver 747 a few hundred metres away.

“No sign of life,” said a willowy blonde policewoman beside Harper. And as though in answer, a male face appeared at a porthole near the front of the plane for just a few seconds.

“What’s keeping Superman?” said Harper to no one in particular, glancing down at his wristwatch.

“He was just going off duty for the day when we got the call,” explained Jackie. The half-breed Aboriginal looked at Harper, wondering what his relationship with Jon-James Spencer was. Harper & Spencer acted as though they hated each other’s guts, yet they had been partners for more than a decade and had saved each other’s lives half a dozen or more times.

“Movement,” said the blonde policewoman, pointing toward where a young Aboriginal steward suddenly came into sight at the top of the stair-ramp. The young stewardess was shaking from fright, beads of sweat ran down her forehead to her eyes, making her blink and shake her head to try to toss them away.

Behind the stewardess stood a tall, swarthy youth dressed like an accountant in a smart pin-stripe suit, but carrying a magnum revolver in one hand, and with an Uzi slung almost casually across his left shoulder.

“Well, here we go,” said Harper. And as he spoke, they heard the sound of a car behind them.

Jackie Bindul looked around as Jon-James Spencer climbed from an off-white Fairlane. Ducking low and keeping carefully to the shadows, Jon-James raced across to where Harper and the others stood.

“Okay, what’s going on?” asked Jon-James.

“All right, everybody, we can all pack up and go home now,” said Harper, “Superman’s here now to take care of everything.”

Pointedly turning his back on Harper, Jon-James said to Jackie Bindul: “Well, obviously, Jackie, you and I are the only even remotely sane people here. So would you please tell me what’s going on?”

“Sure. About an hour ago, an Aussie Airways 747 landed at Canberra to refuel. Fortunately, most of the passengers got off to stretch their legs. Then five young men dressed as accountants pulled Uzis and handguns and took the pilots, a refueller and three stewardesses hostage.”

“What are their demands, if any?”

“Five million dollars in small bills and an overseas pilot to take them to a destination they’ll give once they’re in the air.”

“Five million dollars, eh?” said Jon-James. “Well, it’s good to see that they’re not just in it for the money.”

“Time’s almost up, pigs!” called the swarthy youth holding the Aboriginal hostess.

Jon-James Spencer walked across to a cream Commodore and picked up a loud-hailer. Walking across to the edge of the clearing, he held the loud-hailer to his mouth and said, “I’m coming out, we need to talk.”

“Nothing to talk about, pig!” shouted back the youth.

“We need more time to raise the money,” said Jon-James, walking out into the open.

“You’ve had time,” said the youth as Jon-James continued walking across the tarmac toward the plane.

“We need more. It’s a lot of money.”

“You’ve had time,” repeated the youth. “We’ve got six hostages who will die if you don’t get the money here in ten more minutes.”

“If you kill the hostages, what’s to stop us storming the plane and killing you next?”

As they were talking, Jon-James continued walking slowly until he was almost at the bottom of the stair-ramp.

Realising that he had let the blonde cop get too close, the youth suddenly released the stewardess and reached for the Uzi hanging round his neck.

As he released her, the stewardess screamed and dived to the ground.

With the terrorist suddenly unshielded, Jon-James dropped the loud-hailer and quickly pulled his Smith-and-Wesson .44 magnum from his waistband and fired three shots.

“Aaaaaaaaaaah!” screamed the terrorist as he flew backwards into the plane.

As the stewardess raced down the stair-ramp, Jon-James raced up and met her halfway.

“Hide behind the back of the stair-ramp, don’t go out into the open,” warned Jon-James.

As Jon-James continued up the stair-ramp, the stewardess raced down to the ground and ran round to hide under the plane as instructed.

Jon-James stood outside the small door for a second to calm his breathing, then stepped tentatively into the small bay between the cabin and the passenger area.

Looking to his left, he saw that the door to the cockpit was closed. He tried it with his left hand, but the door was locked. So, careful to avoid falling over the corpse of the terrorist, Jon-James turned and started toward the curtain covering the doorway to the passenger section.


Inside the passenger section, the hostages crouched nervously in the aisle, trying to ignore the handguns and Uzis that the four smartly-dressed youths pointed toward them.

Outside, they heard talking, then handgun fire.

There was the slamming of a body inside the front section of the plane, then silence.

For a moment, the four terrorists crouched staring toward the floral curtain, expecting it to burst open. Then one of the youths aimed his Uzi toward the curtain and stepped forward.

“You all right, Sotero?” called the youth.

“Fine,” came a muffled voice from behind the curtain. “One dead pig out here.”

The hostages moaned in dismay, and the four youths grinned like idiots as the Uzi-wielding youth strode forward to greet Sotero.

He pulled the curtain wide and stared in shock at Jon-James.

“What the shit?” said the youth. He started to swing up his Uzi again, too late, as Jon-James fired, his Smith-and-Wesson and blew away half his chest.

“Ungfff!” gasped the already dead youth, flying backwards into the passenger compartment.

The other three terrorists leapt to their feet; however, Jon-James fired off two more shots to quickly despatch the nearest two. Then, as the fourth youth turned and raced toward the rear of the plane, Jon-James took careful aim, trying his best to ignore the squealing, scattering passengers and fired twice more.

The first shot hit the terrorist in the kidneys, and the second tore away half of his head.


Jackie Bindul and Robin Harper stood in the shade of the Elm, watching as Jon-James approached the plane slowly. After he shot the terrorist dead, the two agents started to race across the tarmac toward the plane.

“Jesus, I’ve gotta go on a diet,” gasped Robin Harper, wheezing from the effort of running.

Jackie Bindul easily reached the base of the stair-ramp first. Crouching low, he swung up the automatic Remington rifle that he carried and started up the stair-ramp at a run. As he reached the top of the ramp, five more shots rang out in quick succession.

“Jesus,” cursed the half-breed Aborigine. Ducking low, he leapt in through the doorway and lunged through the curtain into the passenger section.

“What the Hell?” said Jackie Bindul, staring at the sight of Jon-James Spencer being hugged by two willowy stewardesses.

“That’s why I call him Superman,” teased Robin Harper between panting breaths, “in the middle of a hostage situation, and he can still manage to pick up a couple of chicks.”


Afterwards, the airline management had called him a national hero, and an elder of a New South Wales Aboriginal tribe, Joseph Mutapina, had declared Jon-James to be an honorary Aborigine for rescuing the young air hostess. However, the magistrate presiding over the inquiry into the shootings had not been so impressed:


Canberra Crown Court, December 2013

“The Australian Secret Intelligence Agency has a responsibility to protect people from terrorists,” stressed the judge, “not endanger their lives with Quick-Draw MacGrath style gunplay. It is my conclusion, Mr Spencer, that you suffer from the ‘Dirty Harry Syndrome’ as psychologists now call it. Frankly, there is no room for people like you in the Australian Federal Police. I therefore suspend you from active duty for six months and suspend your licence to hold a firearm for two years. After which you will have to undergo a psychiatric assessment before reapplying for a gun licence.”


Early February 2014

For three months, Jon-James had been on suspension without pay; however, three days ago, he had been approached to go to work on a temporary loan to the Queensland Police Force on a routine police assignment.

“Don’t grumble,” said Harper, “this is your big chance to redeem yourself. Blow this and you’ll be back on the corner of Bourke and Russell Streets, directing traffic in Melbourne. Make a success, on the other hand, and all will be forgiven.”

Jon-James kept silent, refusing to answer Harper’s taunt. The two men had been sparring partners ever since Jon-James had joined the Australian Secret Service eighteen years earlier. Harper was an old-fashioned, Phil Marlow style fist-fighter, and had always resented Spencer for his youth, intelligence and modern police methods: he was trained in both computer crime solving techniques, and to a seventh-Dan level in Tai-Kwon-Do.

Harper reached across the dashboard to turn on the radio. At first, all he could raise was static; however, by fiddling with the dial, he finally managed to pick up the local station, 4BT.

“UFOs have been sighted flying low over the St. John area for the last three nights in a row,” whispered the announcer behind a loud static buzz, “in particular over Kangaroo Range, the property of millionaire kangaroo farmer Arthur Karnacki. Residents claim that the flying saucers are the cause of the millionaire’s recent disappearance, citing the local Aboriginal Dream-Time legends of Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake, as proof that strange lights have been spotted in the sky over St. John since time immemorial.”

For a few moments, the static buzz completely drowned out the sound of the announcer’s voice. Then he returned to say, “In Brisbane today, there was a sensation at the trial of Brisbane Police Sergeant Barry Tottenham, who was arrested a month ago, charged with corruption and misuse of authority, after allegedly shooting dead three Aboriginal youths, during an illegal demonstration for Aboriginal rights ....”

‘Illegal?’ thought Jon-James. For decades, there has been a law in Queensland requiring all demonstrations to be registered in advance and a licence to be bought for each separate rally. However, for years now, the Queensland government has not granted any licences, so minority groups had been forced to break the law to hold demonstrations.

“Answering the charges laid against him,” continued the radio announcer, “Tottenham claimed that he was only doing as instructed. That since the days of the Bjelke-Petersen and Ahern governments, the state police in Brisbane have been encouraged to use a maximum amount of violence while breaking up street demonstrations ... Particularly rallies by Aboriginal groups ....

“The magistrate had barely restored order after the uproar which this statement caused, when Tottenham stunned the courtroom by declaring that he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan; that he had had to join the Klan to enter the Brisbane police, as for the last forty years the Queensland Police Force has been the official Australian branch of the Ku Klux Klan ....

“After a moment of stunned silence, the outcry in the courthouse was so great that the magistrate was unable to restore order, so the trial had to be postponed until tomorrow. It has been rumoured that the rest of the proceedings may be in camera -- a closed court.”

Jon-James reached over and switched off the radio, and Harper said, “What’s the matter? Does it hit a little too close to home?”

Eventually, they reached the one-hundred-thousand-hectare property that had been named Kangaroo Range by its owner, Arthur Karnacki, the man they had come from Canberra to search for. But not until Jon-James was well and truly soaked to the skin, having had to step out into the teeming rain on half-a-dozen occasions to open wooden, or chain-link gates to allow the Lexus to drive through, without the protection of any kind of raincoat, since it had been bright and sunny when the two men had left Parkes, Canberra, and it had never occurred to them that it might be otherwise in the so called sunshine state.

“Well, well, look at you two,” said Ruth Karnacki by way of greeting when the two special agents ran from the rain to the veranda of the two-storeyed weatherboard ranch house.

A plump, matronly woman, she could not help smiling at the sight of the two men, who looked soaked through to the skin, which was true in Jon-James’ case. She had hardly stopped crying for the last four days due to the strange disappearance of her husband, and her eyes were circled with red, blotchy rings.

“Come on inside,” she said, standing back in the doorway to let them pass, “and we’ll soon get you dried out and into warm clothing. Ted and Len can bring your things in from the car.”

An hour later, the two men were dry and dressed in their spare clothing and sitting around on armchairs in front of a large roaring fire in the lounge room.

Jon-James sat wrapped up in a thick woollen blanket, warmed inside and out by the blazing log fire and a large bowl of chunky, home-made soup, which Ruth had thrust upon him, saying, “We’ll soon have you feeling human again.”

By nature a ladies’ man, Jon-James found it slightly embarrassing, but also strangely pleasing to be fussed over by the matronly Mrs Karnacki.

After the two officers were settled in, in front of the fire, Ruth Karnacki sat upon the large, plush leather sofa between her two teenage sons.

Len and Ted Karnacki were typical tall, burly Australian farm boys, both looking strong enough to wrestle for a living. However, as they sat beside their mother, only days after the disappearance of their father, they looked like big kids; like their mother, their eyes were ringed with red circles.

As a preliminary to their investigations, Jon-James asked about Kangaroo Range.

“Just what the name implies, Inspector,” said Len. “This part of Queensland is teeming with virtually every kind of Australian kangaroo and wallaby.”

“But mainly the eastern grey and big red variety,” said Ruth. “That’s how my husband made ... makes his living,” she said, stopping, close to tears for a moment before continuing. “When we first came to Australia from Germany in early 1970, we were paupers, with hardly two pennies to rub together. Arthur managed to borrow a few dollars from a local farmer, Steve Monroe, and bought a .202 rifle and some cartridges, which he used to shoot kangaroos for a living ....”

“For the hides?” asked Jon-James.

“Yes, and also for the meat?”

“To eat?” asked Jon-James, looking down in horror at the large chunks of meat floating around in his half-empty bowl of soup.

Ruth laughed then said, “Don’t worry, that’s good old Australian beef that you’re eating ... No, the kangaroo meat is sold to pet food manufacturers.”

“Yes,” agreed Ted. “Whenever you see on TV where the pet food companies boast that their brand has real beef, real chicken, or real lamb, for the most part, they’re lying. In Australia, anything in a can of pet food that isn’t fish is kangaroo meat.”

“At first,” continued Ruth, “when Arthur came here, he shot roos in the wild himself. However, he soon prospered and was able to afford to hire other shooters to work for him, and also set up a sort of mini game reserve to breed roos for the slaughter ....”

For another hour or more they talked about Kangaroo Range and how it had grown over the last forty years from a small holding to over one hundred thousand hectares of prime land, housing a few cattle, sheep, and other livestock, but mainly wild or semi-wild kangaroos and wallabies, which were still the mainstay of the Karnackis’ income.

Having started penniless in 1970, by 2014 Arthur Karnacki was a millionaire and his two sons were set to inherit a sizeable fortune.

Eventually, the conversation turned to the night of Karnacki’s disappearance.

“He had been jumpy for a couple of months, at least,” said Ruth. “He never went anywhere without taking an automatic pistol, a Luger which he had brought over from the old country, plus at least two of the Kelpies.

“Four nights ago, last Saturday, he seemed unusually edgy. He stayed out at the meat shed until well after dark, then settled down to bed almost straight after tea. However, he had a sleepless night, tossing and turning for hours. Finally, at about 2:00 AM, he decided to get dressed and go down to the meat shed. I tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted that he had to check something out.

“I saw him tuck his Luger into his belt, then heard him whistling up the dogs downstairs. Then nothing for nearly an hour, when the dogs began to bark furiously. There was the sound of two shotgun blasts, then one of the Kelpies began to bark hysterically.

“I roused Len and Ted, and we went down to the shed and found the two dogs, one of them with its stomach shot out ....”

“But there was no sign of Dad,” said Len, “and no sign of a struggle either. When Inspector Thompson got here, he found a few spots of blood on the grass around the meat shed ....”

“But they never found any sign of your father?” asked Robin Harper.

“No,” said Ruth Karnacki feebly. “But at least they didn’t find his body, I guess that’s some consolation at least.”

“What about the blood they found?” asked Harper.

“Most of it was from the dog that had been shot,” said Ted, “but a few spots were human blood, Type O, which was Dad’s blood type.”

“Still, that’s the most common type,” pointed out Jon-James.

“This inspector Thompson,” asked Harper, “would he be Tom Thompson?”

“That’s right,” said Len.

“He’s our local contact,” explained Harper.

“His station is a good sixty Kays from here,” said Ted, “over at Angumooka. That’s the nearest town from here, although it’s no more than a handful of Jerry-built buildings. You won’t find any big towns within two or three hundred kilometres of here.”

They talked for another half hour or so, and Jon-James raised the subject of their investigation around the meat shed.

“Of course,” agreed Ruth, “but not tonight. The rain won’t let up until at least tomorrow, and you won’t find any trace of the blood stains; they’ve been washed away long ago in this rain.”

So they settled down to an early night.

While Harper dropped off to sleep immediately and began to snore hoarsely, Jon-James lay awake on his back, rugged up against the cold in a mountain of blankets, yet unable to get to sleep for the noise of the machine-gun ratta-tat-tat of the pelting rain against the corrugated iron roof.

It was perhaps five minutes after 1:00 AM that Jon-James heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside his door. He crept out of bed and reached for his clothing, which lay upon a wicker chair beside the bed. After a glance at the snoring form of Robin Harper, Jon-James eased the large Smith and Wesson .457 magnum revolver, which he was no longer licensed to carry, out of his coat pocket and held the gun low at his hip as he crept across to the doorway.

As he reached the door, the ornate knob slowly turned then the door began to swing open. Jon-James stepped back behind the thick door as the burly figure of Len Karnacki entered the room.

In his hands, the tall youth carried a large, two-kilogram cricket bat.

Not seeing Jon-James in the dark, the young man carefully crossed the room and crept across to Jon-James’ bed, where he slowly pulled back the covers and whispered, “Inspector?”

“I’m over here,” said Jon-James quietly but crisply, as he cocked back the hammer of the large handgun with his right thumb.

“Mum sent me to get you,” called out Len, clearly startled to hear the voice from behind him. “She heard a sound coming from the meat shed, and there’s a light on over there.”

As the young man walked back across the room, Jon-James placed the handgun into the large outer pocket of the oversized dressing gown, which he had been lent by Ruth Karnacki, one of her husband’s, but kept the hammer cocked as he turned on the bedroom light.

Len Karnacki blinked against the sudden burst of light, then held out the cricket bat toward Jon-James and said, “She thought you might like to take this as a weapon, in case it’s whoever abducted Dad.”

Jon-James eased off the hammer of the magnum revolver, then reached out to take the cricket bat. He hurriedly slipped his trousers and coat on over his pyjamas, surreptitiously transferring the Smith and Wesson to an inner coat pocket, then followed the teenager out into the hallway.

“What about him?” asked Len, pointing toward the sleeping form of Harper.

“Let him get his beauty sleep,” said Jon-James. “He needs all he can get.”

Two minutes later, they were standing near the front door, where Ruth and Ted Karnacki were waiting.

Pointing out the corrugated iron shed, a couple of hundred metres away from the house, only just visible as a thin pin prick of light through the driving rain, Ruth said, “I’d send one of the boys with you, but after what happened to Arthur ....”

“I’m not afraid,” insisted Ted, the younger of the two teenagers. “I’ll go with him. ”

“No, you stay here and look after your mother,” insisted Jon-James, smiling at the teenager’s impetuosity, remembering ruefully his own eagerness at that age, and how it had nearly got him killed a dozen or more times in his teens and early twenties.

Helping him into one of her husband’s plastic raincoats, Ruth explained that although they had a dozen rifles in the house, she was unable to get one for Jon-James, as they were locked away in a cabinet to which Arthur Karnacki had had the only key with him when he had disappeared.

After transferring the magnum to an outer pocket of the raincoat, Jon-James pulled the collar up around his neck, bent his head and started across the yard through the rain.

He forced himself to work slowly despite the rain, while opening the wire gate to the two-metre high, chain-link fence which encircled the yard to the large meat shed. Then loped across the mud to the shed, careful not to fall against the metal side of the shed, for fear of alerting whoever was inside.

Standing in the relative shelter of a twenty-centimetre overhang from the sloping roof, Jon-James slowly inched round the shed until reaching a small, single-paned window, through which he was able to look into the shed. A door led to a room inside the shed, inside which there could have been any number of people. However, within the outer room, there was only one person. A short, curly-haired, middle-aged man who looked to be of either Greek or Italian extraction.

After a few moments’ hesitation, Jon-James backed away from the window, so that he could circle round the shed to investigate the larger room. However, the larger section was the cold meat storage and had no windows, so he walked right around the building until returning to the front again, where he was able to see the curly-haired man through a second window.

The man was poring through a thick ledger, which sat open upon a small wooden table, the only piece of furniture in the small front room.

After watching the man for a few moments, Jon-James crept across to the metal door. He silently turned the freezing handle, trying to ignore the numbing coldness in his hand as he swung the door wide, then quickly stepped into the room.

Looking up, startled at the sound of the creaking door, the curly-haired man asked (in a thick Australian accent which belied his looks), “Who are you?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” said Jon-James, keeping his right hand upon the revolver in his raincoat pocket.

Realising what the hand in the pocket meant, the curly-haired man gulped, then said in a shaky voice, “My name’s Steve Monroe.”

“Arthur Karnacki’s partner?” asked Jon-James. Receiving a nod, he took his hand off the revolver and showed his identification papers to Monroe.

“You’re one of the big city cops who came down to try to find Arthur?” said Monroe, more as a statement than a question.

“That’s right,” agreed Jon-James. “What can you tell me about his disappearance?”

“Nothing,” insisted Monroe, “I don’t have a clue who might’ve wanted to hurt Arthur. But I’ll tell you this much, Arthur sure knew who it was.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he was always a very suspicious type of bloke; never liked anyone to get behind him. If he were going into a room, he’d always switch on the light and look behind the door first, then lock the door behind him. He never went anywhere without his Luger and the dogs, and he was always careful to keep his four cars locked up tight, which is just about unheard of out here in the bush.

“But over the last five or six months, he seemed to be even more edgy than usual, as though he were expecting something bad to happen. Of course, I didn’t think too much of it before his disappearance, but since then ....”

“Since then, you’ve started to think that he knew that someone was after him,” Jon-James finished for Monroe.

“I’m sure of it. I don’t know who it was, though. Arthur was as tight as a clam. He was a very private person, with very few friends; I was the best friend he had, but even I couldn’t get a word out of him ... Except ....”

“Except?” asked Jon-James.

Monroe hesitated for a few moments, obviously reluctant to talk, but finally said, “Except I know that he was paranoid about the Ku Klux Klan.”

Jon-James looked startled, remembering the radio report about the Klan, and asked, “Surely there wouldn’t be any Klan activity out here?”

“Not until the last few years,” agreed Monroe. “But then after people like Michael Mansell started to call for a separate Aboriginal state in Australia, a local Klan branch was rumoured to have started up somewhere locally. I don’t know anything about it. I’ve never had any problems with the local blacks; in fact, quite the opposite. As long as you treat them fairly, they’re about the keenest workers you can get. But some of the people hereabouts seemed paranoid enough to form a local Klan branch, and Arthur in turn was paranoid about the Klan. He used to say that they were no better than Nazis, just cold-blooded psychopathic killers.”

Monroe paused to put the bulky ledger book away into the drawer of the rickety old table, then said, “Anyway, whatever happened to Arthur, he certainly knew it was going to happen. Over the last week or so before his disappearance, he must have told me at least a half-dozen times, ‘Steve, if anything happens to me, make sure you keep the business going.’ I guess he meant so that Ruth and the boys would be looked after. But there’s no worries on that score, Arthur had heaps of money stacked away in banks and investment portfolios.”

Jon-James considered this for a moment, then asked, “But apart from the Klan, you can’t think of anyone that Arthur was afraid of, or who might have had it in for him?”

Monroe ran a hand slowly through his short, curly hair as he thought for a moment, before very hesitantly saying, “Well ... not had it in for him ... but there was no love lost between Arthur and the pet food makers we deal with.”

“Why was that?”

“Because before Arthur and Ruth set up Kangaroo Range, the pet food manufacturers were onto a very good thing. They had a never-ending supply of kangaroo meat at little more than the cost of the ammunition it took to shoot them. Then Arthur came along and organised the shooters into a sort of union. He convinced them to only sell carcases to him, and then he resold the meat to the manufacturers. That way, he could squeeze them for top dollar, then pass on huge increases to the roo shooters. At first, some of the shooters were opposed to having to sell to us. But once they found that we were paying them three or four times what they’d been getting before, they soon decided to go along with the idea.

“The manufacturers had no choice but to go along with it, but only did so very grudgingly. In the early days, they tried every dirty trick in the book: offering a handful of shooters special rates; paying some shooters not to join the union, even torching one of the earlier meat sheds.”

“Is it possible that they might have had something to do with Arthur Karnacki’s disappearance?” asked Jon-James.

Steve Monroe hesitated for a moment, his brow creased in thought, then said, “I doubt it. Not nowadays. Things have been running too smoothly between us and the pet food makers over the last few years. Now if it had happened twenty or thirty years ago ....”

“You said that you got on very well with the local Aborigines. What about Arthur? How well did he get on with the Aborigines?”

“Well enough,” said Monroe, “but you might be better off consulting the local Aboriginal leader Harry Jumbajumbd on that matter. He’s a tribal elder and runs the Aboriginal advancement League branch in Downing Street in Angumooka.” They talked for another ten minutes or so, then Monroe showed Jon-James the large storage room, which looked like a huge refrigerator, which in fact it was, where more than a hundred disembowelled kangaroo carcases could hang on meat hooks from the ceiling, although currently it was almost empty.

After the tour of the freezer, Jon-James pulled the collar of his raincoat up high, stepped out into the relentless rain and dashed blindly across the yard, almost crashing into the gate to the meat shed yard. He fumbled with the metal gate for a few moments, his fingers almost too numb from the cold to be able to function.

Finally, he reached the ranch house, where he found Ruth Karnacki and her two teenage sons huddled together just inside the house. He handed them the cricket bat, which was sodden with rain, then explained what had happened at the meat shed.

Ruth was apologetic about having caused him to go out into the rain for nothing; however, Jon-James assured her that he would rather be safe and drenched to the skin than dry and sorry.

Sneezing into both hands, Jon-James refused Ruth’s offer of a hot lemon drink and hurried back to the comfort of his warm bed. However, it seemed as though he had hardly lain back upon the pillow, when Robin Harper was shaking him awake at the break of dawn.

“Wakey, wakey,” teased Harper, “we’ve got a full day’s work ahead of us.”

Jon-James forced himself up to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. He yawned widely, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, then, while dressing, he informed Harper of his meeting with Steve Monroe at the meat shed the night before.

“Sounds like a shady customer to me,” said Harper, shrugging off the suggestion that the Ku Klux Klan might have been involved in the disappearance of Arthur Karnacki. “If Steve Monroe was mixed up in Karnacki’s disappearance, it would make sense for him to find a suitable scapegoat, and Barry Tottenham’s recent claims against the Queensland Police Force make the Klan an obvious choice.”

Harper was equally sceptical of Monroe’s criticisms of the Australian pet food industry.

“The chances that a big manufacturer would risk legal action by burning down a meat shed, just to keep down the cost of their meat, must be pretty damn slim.”

They put off the subject over breakfast, rather than upset Ruth, who had got up as soon as she heard them moving about. Despite their protests, she insisted upon making them both a breakfast of porridge and toast.

After breakfast, the two men, dressed in raincoats and sharing a large black umbrella to protect against the teeming rain, quickly walked out to the meat shed to have a look around. However, as Ruth had suggested, any possible clues had long ago been washed away by the rain.

Then, after deciding not to waste time looking round the large property, since they would need a helicopter to cover the hundred thousand hectares and were unlikely to find anything due to the rain, they set out in a Land Rover borrowed from the Karnackis to drive into Angumooka to meet their contact officer, Inspector Tom Thompson.

“And don’t go mentioning the Klan to him when we get there,” instructed Harper as he drove along with his nose pressed almost against the windscreen, in a vain bid to see through the nearly solid sheet of rain.

“Is that a request, or an official order?” asked Jon-James.

Having worked with the headstrong younger man long enough to know how futile it was to try to boss him around, Harper said, “It’s an official request.”

They had planned to drive down to Angumooka, report to Thompson, then return to Kangaroo Range by noon, or 1:00 PM at the latest. However, the pouring rain reduced visibility to almost nil, so that even with no other traffic on the mud road, they were forced to drive most of the way in first gear for fear of skidding off the road. Which, after almost four days and four nights of non-stop rain, was little more than a quagmire.

It was well after noon when they finally reached Angumooka, having had to stop at least half a dozen times to consult the road map which they had borrowed from the Karnackis, then futilely try to read the infrequent road signs which were almost unreadable through the thick, pouring rain. As it was, when they finally arrived, they almost drove straight through the tiny town without seeing it, since the “town” was little more than a general store-cum-post office, police station, Aboriginal Advancement League headquarters, and six or seven single-storey weatherboard or brick-veneer houses. Jon-James remembered Ted’s remark about it not being a very large town, and thought, ‘He sure wasn’t joking!’

They pulled up in front of the general store, trying to park as close to the veranda as possible, so that they would not get too wet as they made their dash from the Land Rover.

They made their way along the creaky wooden veranda to the small, two-room police station, which had been a green grocery in the town’s more prosperous gold rush days at the turn of the 20th century. The front store had been converted into the station proper, with fruit stands replaced by a small desk and two three-drawer filing cabinets; the back fruit storage area had been converted into a rarely used lock-up.

After identifying themselves and going over the few clues that Thompson, a giant of a man, one hundred and eighty centimetres tall, with a barrel-like chest, had uncovered, despite Harper’s warning, Jon-James raised the subject of the Ku Klux Klan.

Thompson seemed shocked, and as loath to discuss the Klan as Harper had been.

“Anyway, what would the Klan have had against Karnacki?” demanded Harper, seated on one of the two high-backed wooden chairs in front of the desk. “They only persecute blacks, and whatever else Karnacki may have been, he was as white as you or I.”

“Besides, for the most part, the Klan are just decent white folk concerned about the blacks taking over their livelihood,” insisted Thompson, taking Harper and Jon-James both by surprise. “And can you blame them, with bastards like Michael Mansell forever screaming for more, more, more for the Abos and less, less, less for the rest of us?”

Sensing that he had gone too far, Thompson hurried to say, “At any rate, you can forget about the Ku Klux Klan. They had no reason to harm Karnacki. It’s much more likely to have been the bloody Abos. They hang around Kangaroo Range like vultures, looking for handouts.”

“Handouts?” asked Jon-James, surprised. “Steve Monroe said that they worked for him and Karnacki as kangaroo shooters.”

“Fat chance,” said Thompson. “Give an Abo a gun and you’d end up with a black boy with a gunshot wound in his stupid foot or belly. If you want to track down who killed Karnacki, I suggest you talk to some of the local blacks. They hated his guts.”

“If he’s dead,” said Robin Harper.

“Oh, he’s dead all right,” said Tom Thompson with authority.

“Why would the Aborigines want to kill him?” asked Jon-James.

“I don’t know the cause,” admitted Thompson, “but the local blacks have had it in for Karnacki ever since he first came here. To the point of poisoning roos so he couldn’t sell them for pet food, and they even burnt down his original meat cold storage shed.”

Jon-James looked up, surprised, and said, “Steve Monroe blamed that on the pet food manufacturers.”

Harper shook his head ruefully, and Tom Thompson said, “Yeah, well, he would, wouldn’t he. He’s a black lover from a long way back.”

They talked for a few minutes more, then Harper and Jon-James returned to the veranda outside, shivering at the icy, biting cold.

“I thought I told you not to mention the Klan?” said Harper, as he pulled up the collar of his raincoat, ready to dash in the Land Rover.

“I’m sorry,” said Jon-James, unconvincingly, “I didn’t realise that it was an order. I thought it was just an official request.”

Harper gave Jon-James a sharp look, then dashed out into the teeming rain, slipping and sliding in the deep mud. He got as far as the car door when he realised that the younger man was no longer with him. “Where the Hell?” he muttered, looking around just in time to see Jon-James step through the doorway into the Angumooka Aboriginal Advancement League headquarters.

‘Oh no!’ thought Harper.

He stood in the rain for a few moments, then, shrugging, he opened the car door and stepped inside to await the return of his headstrong partner.

Jon-James introduced himself to the two Aborigines inside the small office, and was embarrassed and pleased when they recognised him from his police papers as the agent who had rescued the young Aboriginal air hostess from the terrorists three months earlier.

“We all think it was a crime the way that judge treated you, Mr Spencer,” said the pretty, teenage secretary-cum-tea lady, Jennie Murambi, flashing him a toothy grin of welcome.

The other Aborigine was a tall, deathly thin, grey-haired old man who identified himself as Harry Jumbajumbd, after seconding the kind words of Jennie.

Sipping coffee made on an ancient pot-bellied stove by young Jennie, they made small talk for a few minutes, then, tentatively, Jon-James mentioned Tom Thompson’s remarks about the local Aborigines hating Arthur Karnacki.

Jumbajumbd, or Jumba as he told Jon-James to call him, seemed offended by the suggestion, and Jon-James felt that if it had not been for the very warm welcome that he had just been given, the old man might have ordered him to leave.

“On the contrary,” said Jumba, “the local Aborigines have a great respect for Arthur. He and Steve Monroe were the first whites in this area to ever treat us as their equals.

“Many of the local Aborigines owe their whole livelihood to Arthur, who they affectionately call The Kangaroo Man. Before Arthur set up Kangaroo Range, the sole income from roo shooting went to white shooters, who had forced the pet food manufacturers not to buy from Aborigines by threatening to boycott them. When Arthur came along, he stopped all that. He organised the shooters so they’d get a fair price for their roos and insisted on treating black and white shooters equally. He’d buy roos from anyone and pay top dollar, just so long as the carcases were top quality.”

“What did the white shooters think of that?” asked Jon-James, sitting on a three-legged stool in front of Jumba’s paper-laden desk.

“Some of them resented it at first, thought they’d lose part of their income to Aboriginal shooters. Fortunately, most of them soon woke up that even if they each sold fewer carcases than before, they were still better off, because Arthur paid two or three times as much as the pet food companies had done.”

“So most white shooters accepted their Aboriginal counterparts?”

“At least grudgingly. But there were a few who just couldn’t stand to see any black person getting fair treatment. The worst of them are three brothers: Jerry, Danny, and Sammy Ruxtable. The Ruxtable brothers are founding members of the Angumooka branch of the Ku Klux Klan. They use the antics of Aboriginal agitators like Michael Mansell as an excuse, claiming that they have to defend their rights to an income. But the truth is that all three of the Ruxtables have a far better income than any of their rival black shooters. They get paid for their roo shooting, plus pick up full unemployment benefits as well, plus Jerry Ruxtable gets a TPI payment from the government for a back injury that he got in the Gulf War, no doubt while running for safety!”

“Well, if he is totally and permanently incapacitated, how does he get employment benefits as well?” asked Jon-James.

“He shouldn’t,” agreed Jumba, “but I guess there’s a failure to communicate between the CentreLink computers and the Department of Defence computers.” He laughed, then said, “Ah, the wonders of white man’s magic.” He sipped his coffee then said, “Anyway, the Ruxtables have started to give the local Aborigines a hard time over the last couple of years, pretending they have to fight for their rights.”

“What about Inspector Thompson?” asked Jon-James. “Hasn’t he been able to break up the Klan, or at least keep them in order?”

“There isn’t a real lot he can do, since they haven’t officially killed anyone yet. Although there has been an occasional young buck disappeared, every two or three months, over the last couple of years.”

“What has Thompson done about that?”

“There’s not a lot he can do. Whenever he’s interviewed the Ruxtables, they’ve always claimed that the Aborigines must have upped and gone walkabout.”

“I always thought that walkabout was a marriage ceremony or something?” said Jon-James.

“That’s right,” agreed Jumba, grinning in pleasure at Jon-James’ knowledge. “In the days before white settlement, the Aborigines lived in small tribes of no more than forty or fifty individuals. So, to prevent too much inbreeding from occurring, once a year, we would congregate in large groups of a dozen or more tribes, and then the marriageable males could select suitable brides from other tribes. Any males who didn’t pick a bride would have to wait another year for their next chance. Nowadays, when most Aborigines live together on settlements with hundreds of people together, there is no need for walkabout and it is no longer practised.”

“Did you tell that to Thompson?”

“Yes, but he wasn’t particularly interested. I’m afraid our local policeman doesn’t have a lot of time for the troubles of his black constituents.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that,” admitted Jon-James. He took a sip of coffee, then said, “Steve Monroe said that Karnacki had a bee in his bonnet about the Klan.”

“That’s right,” agreed Jumba. “Most of the local whites have enough sense not to actively support the Klan, but Arthur and Steve are the only two with enough courage to actively campaign against the Klan.

“Arthur was warned off once or twice by a mysterious ‘concerned citizen’ after he had given one or two lectures too many in public against the evils of the Ku Klux Klan.”

“Could that have been the cause of his disappearance?”

“Possibly, I suppose. It would be stupid for the Klan to draw attention to themselves by abducting or killing Arthur, but then the Ruxtable boys have always been pretty damn stupid. So much so that I’ve often wondered whether they might be just figureheads for someone else.”

“A secret Klan leader?”

“Yes, someone smart enough to keep the Klan more or less in order and out of the eye of the media.”

Jon-James thought about this for a moment, looking about the boxes of filing cards and newspaper clippings which were stacked around the walls of the small office, then said, “I can’t help wondering just how genuine Karnacki might have been in his protests against the Klan in public, it goes against what Steve Monroe said about him being a very private person.”

Jennie Murambi turned round in her chair to look wide-eyed at Jon-James, but Jumba asked casually, “You mean sort of, ‘Me thinks the man doth protest too much!’?”

“Something like that,” agreed Jon-James.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that he was genuine. Arthur was a German Jew who spent three years in the Belsen concentration camp in World War Two. He hated the Nazis and all types of fascists. The Klan and the Nazis might not be quite the same thing, but close to it. They’re both ultra-right wing fascist organisations which virtually worship money, power, and racial bigotry as a religion. So if they’re not quite identical, they’re at least ninety-nine percent the same. To the point where it wouldn’t make sense for an American black not to hate the Nazis, or a German Jew not to hate the Ku Klux Klan.”

They made small talk for a few minutes more, with Jon-James embarrassed as Harry Jumbajumbd and Jennie Murambi again congratulated him for rescuing the Aboriginal air hostess, before finally Jon-James said his goodbyes and stepped out onto the wooden veranda outside the small office.

Jon-James saw Harper looking bored and petulant seated behind the steering wheel of the Karnackis’ Land Rover, and started to step out into the rain, when he heard the sound of footsteps behind him. Turning round quickly, he saw the towering form of Inspector Tom Thompson, looking very sour-faced, as though he were looking at something slimy.

“You won’t learn anything useful from that black bastard,” said Thompson gruffly.

Colouring, but trying to keep the anger out of his voice, Jon-James said, “Oh, I don’t know, he told me a few useful things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as he helped me to rule out a strange notion I had that Karnacki might have been the secret leader of the local Ku Klux Klan.”

“Secret leader?” asked Thompson, wide-eyed with amazement.

“That’s right. It seems that three brothers, Jerry, Danny, and Sammy Ruxtable, are figurehead leaders of the local Klan. So I had wondered if Karnacki might have been the real leader, and if the local Aborigines might have found out and murdered him as a warning to the other local Klan members.”

“I doubt it, Karnacki was a black lover like his partner, Monroe. Besides, the biggest enemy the blacks in this country have isn’t the Klan, but themselves. They’re all a pack of no-hoping scroungers, grown fat and lazy on government handouts. They wouldn’t have the guts or ability to abduct someone. If the Abos are involved, it’s more likely a lone black who did it for the money.”

When Jon-James looked surprised, Thompson explained, “Karnacki made it a habit to always pay for roo carcases in cash, and as a consequence, he carried a large wad of up to $12,000 of rolled up bank notes on him everywhere he went. So, my advice to you is to forget about the Klan and look for that money. If an Abo took it, it won’t be very long before he starts lashing out, buying grog. All the blacks around here are hopeless alcos.”

Jon-James thought about this advice for a few moments, then said, “Thanks, but I think at this stage the Klan are still the main suspects.” He looked up at the sky, which was still unleashing its torrential rain, and said, “There’s not a lot more that I can do today, but I think I’ll go over to talk with the Ruxtable brothers first thing tomorrow.”

Looking alarmed, Thompson started to speak, then changed his mind.

“You sure took your time,” said Robin Harper, as Jon-James finally returned to the Land Rover.

On the drive back to Kangaroo Range, Jon-James told Harper what he had learnt from Harry Jumbajumbd and Tom Thompson.

When they mentioned the wad of cash to Ruth Karnacki, she said, “Well, yes, he did sometimes carry huge amounts of money about on him. But other times he only had a few hundred dollars, so there’s no way an attacker would have known when it was best to rob him.”

“Besides,” said Jon-James, “the money doesn’t explain his disappearance. A robber could have just knocked him out, or killed him on the spot.”

The next day, despite protests from Robin Harper, who still thought that Jon-James was onto a false trail, the two agents drove out to the Ruxtables’ “farm” after getting directions from the Karnackis.

The property was nothing more than a dilapidated plasterboard two-bedroom structure, sitting upon a half-hectare of land. On the outside, the house looked abandoned, with two or three sheets of corrugated iron having fallen onto the overgrown native grass, leaving gaping holes in the roof. Inside, things were even worse. Empty beer bottles, cans, and TV-dinner trays were scattered about the rooms, mingling with cooking pots placed around the floor to collect the rainwater that poured in through holes in the ceiling. The furniture was ancient and dust-coated, and the rickety couch in the lounge room-cum-third bedroom was missing the legs on one end and had to be propped up by a stack of clay bricks. And the complete absence of doors between the rooms meant that you could have no privacy, even while in the bath or toilet.

The three Ruxtables were every bit as unruly as their house. All three men sported three-day growths, large beer-bellies and gave off an almost overpowering level of body odour.

At first, the Ruxtables denied any knowledge of the local Ku Klux Klan. But after badgering from Jon-James, they admitted to being leaders of the local branch and resolutely seconded Tom Thompson’s comment that the Klan’s only intention was to ensure a fair go for blacks and whites alike.

“So long as the Abos don’t try to get any unfair advantages over us, they’ve got nothing to fear from us,” insisted Danny, the eldest of the three brothers.

The brothers denied any knowledge of what had befallen Arthur Karnacki, and seconded what Ruth had said about him not always carrying large amounts of money around with him.

Apart from this, they were unable to get any real information or reaction out of the three brothers until Jon-James mentioned that since they made a good living shooting kangaroos, they were not eligible for unemployment benefits, which would have to be cut off.

“Plus, you may have to pay money back to the government for the time that you were getting the dole and shooting,” said Jon-James to the obvious anger of all three brothers, who were clenching and unclenching their hands, barely able to contain their rage. “Then there’s the matter of your TPI,” he said to Jerry Ruxtable. “Totally and permanently incapacitated means that you cannot take on any work, even part-time, and cannot receive employment benefits either. Both of which you have been blatantly doing.”

“Get out!” shouted Jerry Ruxtable, finally losing his temper and advancing upon the two agents. “Get out, before I throw you both out. I don’t have to take that from you right here in my own home!”

Jon-James and Harper started to walk toward the front door, sidling rather than presenting their backs to Jerry, who screeched at them, threatening violence, all the way to the door and back to the yard.

As they moved toward the Land Rover, he ran after them and shouted, “We’ll see what Tom Thompson has to say about you two and your sneaking, meddling ways!”

“I wonder what he meant by that?” said Jon-James as he slammed the car door behind him, locking out the sounds of Jerry Ruxtable.

“Just an idle threat,” insisted Harper, although Danny and Sammy Ruxtable were doing everything that they could to shut up their brother, before he said anything else.

Back at Kangaroo Range, Jon-James sat at the phone stool, nursing what looked like a black plastic suitcase. He opened the case to reveal a laptop complete with an external modem, which he connected to Karnacki’s telephone. Then he logged onto A.S.I.O.’s $80 million IBM MMX computer, using a briefcase-sized terminal which they had brought with them from Canberra, fed in information about the three Ruxtable brothers, and carried out his threat to get them all thrown off the CentreLink listing and Jerry off the TPI.

But the blond secret service agent was not the only one to carry out his threat. That night, they received a warning from the Ruxtable brothers.

Since there was nothing to do in the evenings, with the constant rain even interfering with the television reception, the two men had gone to bed early. However, they had hardly fallen asleep when they were awakened by shouting.

Sitting up upon the edge of his bed in the dark, Jon-James at first thought that it was the Karnackis shouting. However, he soon realised that the ululation was coming from outside the house.

Walking across to the four-paned window, the two men looked outside and saw the surrounding countryside lit up with a hundred petrol-soaked torches which burnt brightly despite the pouring rain which drenched the pointed white masks, and ankle length white gowns that the local Ku Klux Klan members wore as they stood around the front of the house, shouting for the two agents to come outside and face them.

“See what you get for stirring,” said Harper, more from fear than anger.

Jon-James, on the other hand, seemed almost preternaturally calm as he reached into his suit coat and extracted the .457 Smith and Wesson magnum revolver.

“Where the hell did you get that cannon from?” asked Harper, drawing his own much smaller .38 snub-nosed revolver. “You’re not even licensed to carry a handgun at the moment.”

“So arrest me,” said Jon-James caustically.

Turning toward the door at the sound of wood breaking downstairs, they saw Ruth Karnacki highlighted in the darkened doorway.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “that’s just Len and Ted breaking open the gun cabinet to get out Arthur’s shotguns.”

Ten minutes later, they stood near the front door carrying double-barrel shotguns and boxes of cartridges. Despite being told to keep well out of sight, Ruth Karnacki stood just behind the door, peeping out from behind the voile curtains of the window by the door, as her eldest son, Len, and Robin Harper strode outside, guns at the ready, to meet the hooded men.

As the two men stepped out onto the wooden veranda, four hooded figures stepped forward to meet them. Three of them were the Ruxtable brothers, a fact confirmed when Danny said, “Bring out that trouble-making bastard, Spencer. He’s the one we’re after.”

“What do you want him for?” asked Len, following Jon-James’ instructions to stall for time.

“Just bring him out!” ordered the fourth hooded figure in a gruff voice which they didn’t immediately recognise. A giant of a man, he was the secret Klan leader that Harry Jumbajumbd had suspected.

“We just want to teach him not to go meddling into other people’s business,” said Jerry Ruxtable.

“What do you plan to do to him?” asked Len.

“Don’t worry,” assured Jerry, “we don’t intend to hurt him ... too much.”

“Just break both his arms and both his legs three or four times each,” said Sammy Ruxtable, drawing sniggers from the crowd of hooded men.

“He’s not here,” said Harper, holding the shotgun so that it was pointed midway between Jerry Ruxtable and the secret Klan leader.

“He’s hiding in the house!” insisted Danny Ruxtable.

“Did you kill my father?” demanded Len Karnacki.

“That’s right,” agreed Jerry, having to shout to make himself heard above the sound of the teeming rain.

“Shut up, you idiot!” ordered Sammy Ruxtable.

“It doesn’t matter now,” said the leader in an ominous tone. “Let them know.”

“Because he helped the Aborigines get a better go around here?” asked Len.

Jerry snickered, then said, “Sure, we hate the Abos, but that has nothing to do with why we killed him.”

“Then why?” pleaded Len, needing to know.

“Why don’t you ask your mother?” said the Klan leader, catching a glimpse of Ruth Karnacki through the window. “She knows why we did it.”

Len and Harper both looked shocked and half turned toward the open front door, to face Ruth as she stepped out onto the rain-slickened veranda.

“Mum?” asked Len, riddled with doubt.

Ruth put a comforting hand on her son’s left shoulder and said, “Your father was a German Jew. He spent three years in Belsen concentration camp during the Second World War ....”

“Yes, mum, I know ...” began Len, before being shushed by his mother.

“While he was in there, he saw his father, two brothers and three cousins all murdered by the Nazis. Later, he found out that his mother and sister had both been murdered at Auschwitz. Your father himself was due to be executed when the American troops finally overran Belsen and liberated the inmates.

“When your father was released, he was a broken man, without purpose in his life. Then after the war, the Americans spent years tracking down and arresting escaped Nazis, and suddenly Arthur had a purpose in life: to avenge his murdered family! He worked with the Americans for five years. Then he was approached by the MOSSAD: the Jewish secret service. He worked for the MOSSAD for twenty long years, helping to track down dozens of minor Nazis and half-a-dozen or so of the big fish, and even had a hand in the capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1962.

“But after a quarter of a century, he decided that he’d had enough. The hurt of what had been done to him would never stop, but at least he had burnt out his need for revenge. So your father and I married and set out to build a new life together. But West Germany was not a good place for Jews in 1970; there were already rumblings of the rise of the Fourth Reich, with the new Hitler Youth heralding that madman, Hitler, as a German martyr.

“So, since Australia had virtually opened the floodgates to immigrants from the early 1950s, we decided that this was as good a place as any to start again, half the world or more away from the terror of the Nazis. Or so we thought ....”

“But what you forgot was that the floodgates were also open to Nazis, who fled from Germany to Australia in the hundreds in the late 1940s and early 1950s,” said the Klan leader. “Recently, the local Nazis discovered who Karnacki was, and since they didn’t have the means of taking care of him, they asked us to do it for them.

“We’re not completely aligned with the Nazis, but we do share certain sympathies, such as recognising the need to keep certain inferior races in their place. So we readily agreed to help them out by killing Karnacki.”

As they were talking, the crowd of hooded men began to grow restless as they were drenched to the skin in the pouring rain, so their leader said, “Anyway, enough of this; now, where is Jon-James Spencer?”

“Right behind you!” said a voice from behind the crowd. Turning, they saw Ted Karnacki holding a double-barrel shotgun in his hands, and Jon-James holding the large Smith and Wesson .457 magnum revolver.

The crowd started to move toward the two men, so Ted fired a warning shot over their heads. As the crowd hesitated, not having brought firearms themselves, their leader ordered, “Get them! Get them! and they moved forward.

Jon-James cocked the magnum revolver with a loud noise like someone cracking their knuckles, and the crowd hesitated again.

“For God’s sake, he won’t dare to shoot you,” insisted their leader, “he’s already on suspension for killing five men, he’s not even supposed to even have that thing.”

The crowd began to move forward again, so Jon-James fired a warning shot. In the rain, it sounded like a flash of thunder, and the crowd stopped in its tracks again.

“He’s only bluffing!” shouted their leader, and the crowd moved forward once more.

Jon-James raised the handgun and sighted at the chest of the nearest Klan member and ordered, “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”

As the man began to swing his burning torch like a club, Jon-James started to pull the trigger but then stopped, frozen for a second with doubt as he remembered the words of the magistrate three months ago, “You’re a trigger-happy killer, no better than the men you slay!” He wondered if it was true. If he was too fond of killing?

“For God’s sake, shoot him!” shouted Ted Karnacki, as the flaming torch swung within centimetres of Jon-James’ head.

Awakening from his reverie, Jon-James pulled the trigger.

The gun went off with a sound like a cannon.

The flaming torch flew out of the man’s hand, narrowly missing Jon-James’ head as it flew over his left shoulder.

The Klan member shrieked and flew backwards, propelled by the force of the magnum bullet, which ripped a hole the size of a fist through his chest.

For a few seconds, the crowd stopped and stood staring down at the bloody body that lay in the mud at their feet. Then they charged forward once more, determined to reach the secret service agent this time.

Jon-James fired three more times, and Ted Karnacki fired both barrels of the shotgun into the onrushing crowd.

Three men fell to Jon-James’ revolver, half a dozen fell screaming to the ground as the shotgun, at point-blank range, cut a swath through them.

Shocked and disheartened by the carnage that had befallen them, the other Klan members fell back. Some turned and ran into the surrounding bush. But the majority stood still and allowed themselves to be taken into custody.

“You’d better get our friend Thompson on the blower,” said Robin Harper, fifteen minutes later, as they locked the last of the Klan members inside the meat shed, which they were using as a temporary lock-up.

“No need,” said Jon-James, reaching up to pull the white, pointed mask off the head of the secret Klan leader.

“Inspector Thompson?” said Len Karnacki, in amazement.

“How did you know?” asked Tom Thompson.

“I wondered when you were so vocal defending the Klan. Then, when I heard you speak, I thought I recognised your voice. And when I spoke to you yesterday, you contradicted yourself badly when you started off saying the local blacks hated Karnacki’s guts, then ended up accusing him of being a ‘black lover’. But the clincher was when you said that I didn’t have a licence currently to carry a handgun. No one around here knew that except you and Rob, and I could see him standing on the veranda near Ruth and Len, so it had to be you.”

Jon-James used a PC and a modem to communicate with the master computer at A.S.I.O. headquarters in Canberra, to arrange for police helicopters to be sent overnight to pick up the more than eighty prisoners.


A.S.I.O. Headquarters, Canberra, Early March 2014

Jon-James stood ogling the willowy blonde secretary sitting at the desk before him.

After a moment, the phone buzzed on her desk. She picked up the receiver, then smiled at Jon-James and said, “You can go in now.”

The inner office resembled a small library, with hardbound books lining the shelves that covered most of three walls. Directly in front of the door was a large desk at which sat Jon-James’s immediate superior, Sir Leon Carter, a tall, thickset man in his early seventies who looked at least a decade younger than his years.

Indicating a manila folder on his desk, Carter said, “I’ve just been looking over Robin Harper’s report of the Karnacki case ... congratulations on a job well done.”

“What will happen to Thompson?” asked Jon-James, seating himself in front of the huge black marble-topped desk.

“He’s being transferred.”

“For trial, you mean?” asked Jon-James.

Carter looked down at his hands as though ashamed to look the younger man in the face, and said, “No, there isn’t going to be any trial. Officially, the seven Ku Klux Klan members that you and young Ted killed are responsible for the abduction and possible murder of Arthur Karnacki.”

“You’re going to whitewash it?” asked Jon-James.

“We can’t afford to have another scandal at the moment,” explained Carter, almost pleading with Jon-James to understand. “Not with the ongoing embarrassment over Barry Tottenham’s claims about the Queensland Police Force.”

“Which, it seems, are true?”

“Yes,” conceded Carter. “But part of the deal we made with Thompson and his cronies was that they would give us the evidence that we need to force the Klan members out of the top positions in the force. We intend to weed the Klan completely out of the Queensland Police Force. As for you, we’ve managed to convince Judge Jenkins to see the error of his ways, so, if it’s any consolation at all, you can return to official duties immediately.”

“No, no, it isn’t!” said Jon-James in disgust as he stood and turned to storm out of the office.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia