Dear reader, we return where we left off with another stirring episode.

In this-un our trio find themselves hurtling across the arid interior in the forlorn hope that perhaps if they make it to Bali, they may escape the rough justice meted out to them by the Australian authorities. And with that forlorn hope the realisation that the authorities are all linked in one way or another to Windsor Inc. The world’s biggest crime syndicate with a global reach that made Vladimir’s lot look like rank amateurs.

With Sophie, (is that a geriatric in the way of my destiny?) Mirabella trussed up and gagged as a bargaining chip to negotiate a release from the Indonesian government. It’s a ploy more perilous than killing journalists in East Timor.  But with a bit of luck they know if no one is looking they might just get away with it.  And getting away is what ties them together on this perilous flight in their very own hijacked Rotodyne. A Rotodyne, allegedly on loan via Gina from one of our AWKWARD pact colleagues. Why Gina has the Rotodyne?  Possibly as a way of ferrying discretely the 30 ingots of pure gold destined to our sovereign King Charles the turd.  To secure her possie on the House of Lords. To make her queenly and inviolate, and our trio innocently caught up in the intrigue and their nemesis Sophie the assassin. The most formidable crime gang of them all Windsor Inc. Pulling the strings and doing whatever it takes to keep their share of gold, influence, kickbacks and cronyism to new heights.

And the Rotodyne, must be their tool to conduct the Australian operation.  A tried and trusted relic of post war technology that is complicated, expensive to maintain and like Nuclear-submarines, provide first class service for those with the money to pay and a forelock to tug… Tug away.

We return to our serial. The trio discussing their options.

 

‘If we can just keep low the radar, the signals, the whole bloody Awkward treaty participants won’t know we’ve pissed off!  We’ll just disappear over the horizon and if we get to Bali, we can trade the Rotodyne and Sophie for a resort option or even a block of land where we can just lie low. Or do chartered flights for Aussie expats who want to do sightseeing or run contraband back to Australia. It’ll be as easy’, Quent looked for the suitable epithet, ‘as easy as as, as easy as’……Terry quipped; ‘bringing drugs into the country’.

And looking at his colleagues, Ces grimaced; ‘But not entirely as profitable. And remember whatever we bring in Windsor inc or Angus will want a cut. And Gina will want all the profit’.

‘I suppose Angus has an inside on drug importation as well?

Well put it this way, like the Murray Darling Basin Plan, he made sure that Covid also worked well for his interests….and of his interests we now ‘know rather than thought we knew’ are GLOBAL!! I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a handle on one of the biggest profit-making enterprises since the Opium Wars.

 

 

What’s that’? Terry enthused; ‘the arrival of the computer?

Nuclear physics and the atom bomb?

The development of anti-ageing cream?

The advent of social media?

Nup much more fundamental than that, the supply of arms to Ukraine.

Profits are going through the roof, an as looking as he doesn’t run out of Russians or Ukrainians, he’s gonna make more money than the Murray Darling by a power of ten’. They all exhaled a sigh of wonder.

‘Jeez you’ve gotta hand it to him. Yeah, and that why Sophie wants a cut. She’s fed up being paid a paltry 500 k for being a Fair Work Commissioner and wants a slice. But Angus won’t have a bar of it. That was why he’s still in government, or even the opposition, to make deals and make Canberra and the taxpayer cover any additional expenses. Either way if we don’t trade or negotiate in Indonesia were stuffed. If we stay in Australia, they’ll just ‘Juurkan Gorge’ us or worse.

What could be worse off’?

Ces searched again for another suitable epithet, ‘than that I dunno, it’d be like being a piece of rock art in the Pilbara’.

We thought of Ces’s analogy to rock art and the Pilbara and we all felt a little uncomfortable. Would there be anything sacred or even just ordinary that was beyond the grasp of Angus, Gina and their mining mates? Bit like Vladimir’s ex cronies, we knew that wherever we went they get us in the end. And our end could come all of a sudden from any quarter. It made us shudder, and just then the Rotodyne shuddered and the pitch of the rotors changed. Terry flicked a toggle switch expertly, ‘that’s us going into reserve’.

‘How much in reserve’?  Quent asked anxiously; ‘I dunno about 500 miles at a pinch, we’ll only know when the bloody thing stops’.  He flicked the gauge a little and sure enough the R light shone above the console, and a buzzer sounded, as a sort of preliminary warning…. With the change of tempo we could hear Sophie again. She was a force of nature and still at it; ‘When I get youse bastards I’m gonna de- ball ya, and then bit by bit disembowel ya till your eyes pop out of their sockets and your tongues are scratching your throats, and then I’ll’…

Will Sophie wreak her revenge or will the tables stay turned? Will the Indonesians trade freedom for Sophies negotiating skills and her status as a Fair Work Commissioner?

Find out in the next enthralling episode, “I’d rather be a piece of Pilbara Rock art than an endangered species, at least someone sees value in it’, or; ‘Pilbara rock art and Woodside should get hung in a Western Australian Art Gallery’.