Deception by Charles Miranda

Author:Charles Miranda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781741767773
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2012-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

8

Last Drinks

On 23 May, almost a month after the container arrived, the bill of lading documents are handed over to Customs. TTNU-282498-0 is moved from Patrick Terminal to Customs, then to the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service examination facility.

Morris has earlier ordered one of his team to contact Customs officials and ensure the cargo has passage through their care and is not touched. He risks a suspicious Customs officer making a mental note of the unusual request and inadvertently telling Standen when he calls, especially as Standen seems to be calling more regularly these days. But things are moving quickly, and detection of the case now is a risk Morris is willing to take.

The Quarantine officials look for bugs, not drugs, and Jalalaty knows it is close to coming off.

So too do the AFP agents from Octans who, in their backroom office, cheer when they are advised the consignment has finally moved on.

‘They’ve finally got their shit in one pile—these blokes are a joke!’ one agent says to another in their Sydney office.

‘Now we go in and find some rice in our bags of ephedrine,’ another responds jokingly.

Over one weekend, for twelve hours each day, twenty-five AFP agents working in shifts covertly go through all 537 bags of basmati rice—meticulously ensuring that their opening of the canvas-type sacks, stacked on pallets and wrapped tightly in shrink-wrap plastic, and their hand searches of their contents will not be detected by the criminals.

As each bag is resealed and the agents call out that nothing is found, Morris begins again to worry. There is no mistaking the batch is the one sent to Jalalaty; it has his company logo all over each bag, next to the proud declaration ‘Product of Pakistan’.

Finally the last bag is resealed and the agents slump about the warehouse, looking exhausted and shaking their heads.

Not an ounce of the drug precursor is found. Just tonnes of basmati rice. The agents can’t even find a forensic trace that a precursor chemical or a drug has ever been in the consignment. They use an IoScan device that can pick up a minute particle of substance.

Nothing. Negative readings.

They record their search on a handycam camera and take various photo images of the search, expecting the evidence to be key in any later trial. They needn’t have bothered.

‘Bullshit, look again,’ Morris tells his crew in exasperation more than anything. After almost two years of investigation it appears this is another red herring. Just like Operation Lacerta, just like Operation Skysail, just like all those other money-laundering and drug operations that involved the NSW Crime Commission, or the Dutch police, or both.

To Morris it seems incredible. Somehow, somewhere, the drugs have been offloaded from the ship—if they were ever loaded in the first place. With all the chaos in Pakistan there has been a surveillance gap. There is no doubt, based on all the intelligence and communication intercepts, that none of the crooks themselves suspect there will not be something else in the rice.

All the coded correspondence points to this being The Big One.

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