Gideon had not been exaggerating after all, Harold thought, the man was a megalomaniac of the first order.

'There are always those who want to be heroes and push themselves that one step further, and there are always those who are content to follow. We would have no shortage of volunteers begging to lead or be led on the latest enterprise, so long as we minimise the actual threat of danger.'

'And, in the meantime,' Harold said jovially, 'should a catastrophe occur, you'd have a wealth of human material for examination purposes.'

Melvyn presumed Lord Dartleigh was joking, but he wasn't prepared to take the risk. 'We're scientists, Harold,' he said. 'We do not make catastrophic mistakes.'

b.a.l.l.s, Harold thought. Melvyn Crowley was just panting for a mistake, and the more catastrophic its proportion the better. All of which quite suited Harold's purpose.

'Well, keep up the good work, Melvyn.' He stood and offered his hand. 'You're doing your country a great service, and you have the full support of MI6, I can a.s.sure you.'

'Thank you, Harold.' Melvyn also stood and the two shook hands.

'I shall look forward to receiving your personal reports,' Harold said, 'on a confidential basis, naturally. I'll be of greater a.s.sistance to you that way we'll be able to cut a few corners in the general bureaucratic process.'

'Of course.' Melvyn once again mopped the beads of perspiration from his brow. This had been one of the most exciting days of his life. 'Thank you, Harold. I'm only too delighted to be of service to MI6.'

'Of course you are, old chap.'

As Harold left, he thought what an excellent SS officer Melvyn would have made during the days of the n.a.z.i regime. Come to think of it, he looked rather like Heinrich Himmler. Harold wondered if Himmler had been bullied at school.

On 27 September 1956, after a fortnight of postponements and eleven aborted countdowns, it appeared the One Tree test was finally about to happen.

At dawn, weather conditions were perfect and meteorological reports predicted minimal change. The detonation was planned for late afternoon and, yet again, the countdown began.

Throughout the day, preparations were made. Animals were strategically placed for experimental purposes. Goats were tethered inside the air-raid shelters, which had been constructed not far from ground zero, while sheep, rabbits and mice were tethered and caged in the open air several miles from the blast. Human dummies in military uniform were placed in several of the vehicles that were strewn haphazardly about in the forward zone, the vast collection of warfare paraphernalia having been standing there for weeks tanks, vehicles, planes, guns, radar sets and more all awaiting the effects of a nuclear explosion.

Men, too, were prepared for their specialised tasks. Scientists and the officers of the 'indoctrination force' responsible for examining the equipment shortly after the blast were supplied with respirators and the all-white protective clothing fondly referred to as 'goon suits'.

Engineers and technicians spent hours rigging the scientific recording apparatus in the blast area, and the cameras in the twin observation towers that had been erected at the firing zone, officially known as Roadside, ten miles from ground zero.

At the airfield, ground crew ran final checks on the two Canberra bombers that were to fly into the cloud shortly after detonation, special canisters fitted beneath their wings to collect air samples. The pilots were standing by their respective aircrafts, waiting to conduct their own checks, and both two-man teams were excited at the prospect of what lay ahead. Like many at Maralinga, they were young and eager for adventure.

'Looks like today's going to be the day,' Maurie said as he and his co-pilot, Len, stood shoulder to shoulder watching the ground crew at work. 'Something to tell your kids about, eh?'

'Yep,' Len agreed. 'First into the cloud at Maralinga it's the chance of a lifetime all right.'

'I've been thinking, you know we could end up rich if we sold our story to the papers. We Flew Through the Mushroom Cloud.' Maurie painted the headlines with a flamboyant gesture. 'We'd make a b.l.o.o.d.y fortune.'

'Oh, yeah?' Len laughed. 'What about the Official Secrets Act? What about the oath of silence? They'd have our guts for garters.'

'I don't mean now,' Maurie scoffed. 'I mean way down the track when we retire from the air force. We could sell our story to newspapers and magazines all over the world. They'd pay us hundreds! Just think of it, Len, we'd become veritable heroes. We'd be living on easy street for the rest of our lives.'

Len was never sure when Maurie was joking, but the thought was attractive so he decided to humour him. Maurie, after all, was not stupid. 'Who knows?' he said. 'You might just have something there.'

Maurie and Len were not alone in their excitement. At Maralinga, men were queuing up to volunteer for duties at Roadside, where the electronic firing would take place, all eager to witness the event from the closest possible vantage point. No-one was permitted into the forward zone beyond Roadside, with the exception of the specially equipped scientists and members of the indoctrination team who would observe the detonation from trenches just five miles from the blast. All other spectators and there would be hundreds were to witness the spectacle from Roadside.

The hourly countdown continued, and the weather conditions remained within the limits of safety at least that was the way William Penney chose to interpret the meteorologists' reports, which were, in fact, borderline. There would be no further delays, he had firmly decided. The waiting game had gone on for far too long all was set in place and all would go ahead.

'A groundbreaking occasion, eh, Dan?'

'It is, sir.'

'Groundbreaking in quite the literal sense I should imagine.' Harold gave a satisfied chuckle before continuing in a serious vein more appropriate to the occasion. 'This is a proud moment for Britain, lad, and today's only the first step. By the time we finish at Maralinga, we'll be a major authority on atomic power, no longer reliant upon American know-how. And you and I will have been amongst those privileged to witness this glorious page in our country's history. I'd call that d.a.m.ned exciting, wouldn't you?'

'Yes, sir.' Despite Lord Dartleigh's rhetoric, Daniel agreed with fervour. He was as exhilarated at the prospect of what lay ahead as every man at Maralinga. Today was finally the day! Excitement had spread like a contagion. 'Yes, I certainly would.'

'Good lad.' Harold nodded approvingly, satisfied that his brief but inspirational words had hit home. He gazed happily out the window, enjoying the light breeze, his steel-grey hair glinting in the late afternoon sun. Life really was excellent.

Daniel had been a.s.signed to drive Lord Dartleigh the fifteen miles from Maralinga village to Roadside, where, along with hundreds of others, the deputy director of MI6 would observe the explosion. Sir William Penney had extended an offer for Harold to join him in his chauffeur-driven Humber Super Snipe, in order that the two of them might be seen to arrive together with the official party, as propriety demanded, but Harold had refused.

'No thank you, William,' he'd said in his most aloof manner, designed to infuriate. 'I've been a.s.signed my own chauffeur of late, a young first lieutenant with the transport corps. Wouldn't want to disappoint the poor lad now, would I? He's no doubt eager to be at the prime observation point. Wouldn't be fair to let him down, what?'

Harold's reasoning had been insultingly transparent. Officers of the transport corps were heavily in demand, and First Lieutenant Daniel Gardiner could have availed himself of any number of opportunities that would have seen him at Roadside. William Penney, although irritated by the blatancy of Harold Dartleigh's insult, had accepted the flimsy excuse with apparent grace, and had indeed been grateful to escape the man's company, just as he had no doubt Harold was grateful to escape his.

The feeling would have been mutual if Harold had given it any thought, but he hadn't. He was aware that both his refusal and his excuse could have been seen as insulting, a fact which rather pleased him, but he hadn't been consciously escaping William's company. He'd had Daniel a.s.signed as his driver because he liked the lad, and he wasn't about to change his plans to suit William Penney's sense of propriety. Besides, he would make more of an impact arriving on his own rather than en ma.s.se with the official party.

'Do you have a girlfriend, Dan?' On such a momentous day, Harold was full of bonhomie.

'Yes, sir, I do.' At the very thought of Elizabeth, Daniel's face glowed. 'We're engaged to be married.'

'How delightful.' Harold found Dan a most beguiling young man. 'My heartiest congratulations.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'And have you set the date?'

'As soon as I get back from Maralinga, sir.' Daniel grinned, he couldn't help himself. 'In fact, if I have my way, the moment I walk off the plane.'

'Ah, my boy,' Harold's smile was all-knowing and avuncular, 'I think your fiancee may have something to say about that.'

'Oh no, sir, Elizabeth's not one for tradition at all. She doesn't want a white wedding with all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs.'

'Well, good for Elizabeth, I say.'

Lucky girl, Harold thought young Dan really was an engaging lad. Not conventionally handsome, but attractive in an earnest, boyish way so much more pleasing to the eye than poor, plodding Ned. By rights, Harold's cipher clerk, Ned Hanson, should have been accompanying him out to Roadside, but Harold had given him orders to remain on duty at the office in Maralinga. Much as he knew Ned longed to be part of the action, Harold found him a boring fellow. He preferred to bask in the refreshingly youthful company of the Daniel Gardiners of this world.

The hour of detonation was now ticking over and the countdown had become minutes. The hundreds of spectators were in position, all facing the direction of the site and waiting for the final moment when they must obey their explicit instructions.

The countdown became seconds. In this hour before dusk, when the land reflected a beautiful light, the voice ringing out from the loudspeakers was jarringly at odds with the desert's serenity.

'Ten, nine ...'

At the start of the final ten-second countdown, the crowd, to a man, turned its back on the site.

'Eight, seven ...'

As instructed, every spectator covered his face with his hands.

'Six, five ...'

Eyes tightly shut, they waited.

'Four, three, two ...'

Then the moment of detonation.

There was a blinding light. Even through closed eyelids, the world flashed suddenly white and was drained of all colour. The backs of necks and the bare legs of men in shorts felt the intense heat of the explosion's gamma rays, and, seconds later, a vivid, orange-red fireball rose in the sky. But the spectators remained with their faces covered and their backs to the blast, waiting for the effects that would follow and about which they had been warned.

The shock waves. .h.i.t in spectacular fashion, like a physical blow to the body. Men were taken by surprise, some even staggering slightly, caught off balance, and hands left faces to cover ears as the intensity of the reverberations jarred eardrums. In a series of successive explosions, the soundwaves proceeded to take on a life of their own. They resonated about the landscape, racing through the mallee scrub and dodging amongst the mulgas, chasing each other like demented banshees. The desert was alive with sound.

Then, finally, silence.

After minutes that dragged like hours, it was deemed safe to look and, in unison, the spectators turned to face the site.

There, towering in the sky, its stem growing taller, its head billowing larger with every pa.s.sing second, was the magnificent and perfectly formed mushroom cloud of an atomic explosion.

Harold Dartleigh initiated a round of applause, not forgetting to cast a glance in William Penney's direction.

Others amongst the official party of senior scientists and top-ranking officers joined in, and Sir William accepted the acknowledgement with a curt nod before removing his spectacles and lifting his field gla.s.ses to his eyes. But he cursed Harold Dartleigh. In initiating the applause, Harold had successfully drawn attention to himself, as if it were he who was running the show. It was too infuriating for words.

Harold exchanged a quick smile with Gideon Melbray, who was standing barely fifty yards away and who hadn't missed a trick. Then he raised his own set of field gla.s.ses to his eyes.

During the half-hour that followed, amazing sights continued to unfold. Within only minutes, two Canberra bombers appeared in the sky. They swung in an arc, as if saluting all who might be watching, then dived into the mushroom cloud and disappeared from sight, eaten up by the dense mora.s.s of grey-black.

In the forward area, five miles away and clearly visible across the vast, flat plains, over seventy white-clad scientists appeared from nowhere. They gave the 'safe' signal to the officers of the indoctrination force, and more men materialised to join them, hundreds it seemed. An army in white was marching across the desert. They looked like aliens from outer s.p.a.ce.

Binoculars and field gla.s.ses kept tilting from land to sky as aliens and aerobatics became of equal fascination to the spellbound spectators.

Maurie had had qualms before they'd dived into the cloud, just as he was sure Len must have had, and the pilots in the other Canberra. It was one thing to be boastful down on the ground and another altogether up here in the sky, he'd thought as they'd faced the great, angry cloud. This was pretty daunting stuff. But orders were orders, and they'd dived.

The moment they'd entered the blackness, radioactivity levels had sent the instruments wild, which had been a bit scary, but the cloud was dispersing as the breeze picked up and most instruments were now becoming operational.

Then they were out the other side and banking, preparing to turn and dive back into the cloud, the other Canberra repeating the manoeuvre below them. Their orders were to continue taking air samples for at least forty minutes.

Once again inside the eerie, all-enveloping gloom, unlike any normal storm cloud he'd encountered, Maurie started to feel elated by the experience. He wondered if Len was too, and he yelled the opening lines of 'High Flight' through his radio mike.

'Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings ...'

Young John Gillespie Magee's poem, written during the Battle of Britain, had become an anthem to air force pilots, and Maurie and Len knew every word.

Len got the joke, and yelled back.

'Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds ...'

Looking through the windscreen at the inky blackness surrounding them, they laughed, before yelling in one accord: 'and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of.'

We're one up on you, John, Maurie thought. John Gillespie Magee sure as h.e.l.l hadn't flown through the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion.

Test results revealed that the radioactive cloud from One Tree reached a height of 37,500 feet, exceeding the predicted 27,900 feet, and radioactivity was detected as far afield as the Northern Territory, New South Wales and Queensland. The bomb's energy yield of fifteen kilotons was the equivalent of exploding 15,000 tons of TNT, and the same yield as Little Boy, the bomb that had obliterated Hiroshima ten years earlier, claiming in excess of 100,000 human lives.

They have been walking for days now, Yunamingu, his two wives, his three children and two dogs. Their progress has been slow for the older of the wives is heavy with child. Djunga has presented her husband with all three of his children. A healthy, fertile woman, she could have produced many more over the years, but Yunamingu is careful to observe the tribal law of desert men. He avoids siring more offspring than he can support, particularly during the lean drought years when hunting is poor and food supplies scant.

At thirty, Djunga is no longer young, which is why Yunamingu has recently acquired his second wife. But Djunga remains his favourite. Djunga is a quiet woman who talks only when there is a need to talk. Mundapa annoys Yunamingu. Mundapa is little more than a girl, and she talks far too much.

The family is heading south to the soak at Ooldea, where, in the coming weeks, they will await the birth of Djunga's baby. As they walk, Mundapa chatters incessantly, but no-one is listening. Yunamingu has dropped back into the scrub behind them in search of goanna, and even the children pay Mundapa no heed. Djunga feels sorry for her husband's new wife, knowing that Mundapa is lonely. The girl is missing the boisterousness of her clan - she is not accustomed to travelling in a small family group. But Djunga, too, has become tired of the sound of Mundapa's voice and she no longer pretends to pay attention. Instead, she watches the dogs sniffing amongst the gra.s.ses and allows herself to daydream. Djunga has always been a great daydreamer. In her mind, she is once more a child. The dogs are her father's dogs, and she and her extended family are visiting Ooldea during the days of the white grandmother.

Kabbarli was the first white person Djunga had ever seen, but she had not been frightened. Djunga had found Kabbarli a source of great interest - all the children had. Kabbarli had allowed them to lift her strange garments to see what lay beneath, and they had discovered to their amazement that under yet more layers of cloth, Kabbarli's legs were as white as her face. How they had giggled. Kabbarli had also allowed them to peer - very, very carefully - through the metal circles she called 'spectacles'. The smaller of the children had been frightened at the way the world had become hazy through the spectacles, but Kabbarli had comforted them in their own tongue. Kabbarli spoke in the tongues of many people, even those who had travelled great distances to gather at Ooldea.

The children had all come to love Kabbarli. So had the mothers and the aunties of the families who had regularly flocked to her camp. Even the men had held Kabbarli in high regard.

These days when Djunga travels to Ooldea with her husband and family, her thoughts are always of Kabbarli. She wishes her own children could meet the white grandmother, for her children have had little contact with the white men and she does not wish them to grow up in fear. But Kabbarli has long since departed, and Djunga wonders whether perhaps the white grandmother has gone to meet her ancestors. Her own ancestors would surely welcome Kabbarli, who has been a true friend to so many, and Djunga likes to think that one day they may meet again in the spirit world.

Djunga's thoughts are shattered by Mundapa's piercing scream, which is quickly joined by the screams of the children, and then Yunamingu is by her side, his spear at the ready. He barks at them to be quiet, and stands motionless, the whites of his eyes revealing his terror. He whirls on the spot and stands motionless again. They are all motionless now, all deathly silent, frozen in horror as yet more demons appear from out of the scrub.

Yunamingu and his family are surrounded by devil spirits - strange, formless mamu with ugly long noses. Even the dogs cower at the sight, without so much as a whimper between them.

Then one of the mamu speaks and, although Yunamingu does not understand the words, he realises that these are not spirit beings. These are white men disguised as mamu. But there are too many for him to fight, even if he could summon the courage.

Yunamingu is forced to submit to the will of the white men for fear they may harm his family, and, as a truck is driven up, he obeys the instruction to climb into the back. His wives and children obediently follow his example, although the younger children are crying now. Djunga, with her swollen belly, requires help, and she offers no resistance as two of the white men hoist her aboard the truck. Like Yunamingu, Djunga is fearful for the safety of her children.

Never before have they travelled in a vehicle of any kind and the experience is frightening. Mundapa wails as she clings to the side of the truck's open tray, and her wails merge with the children's screams to form a chorus of terror.

Yunamingu and Djunga make no sound at all, but they too are consumed by fear, and, as two shots ring out behind them like the brittle cracks of thunder, they do not think of the dogs.

The ordeal of the truck is nothing compared to that which follows.

They are in a white prison, and here even Djunga cannot maintain her silence. She whimpers as the mamu run their sticks over her belly. For she is now convinced that these are mamu in the guise of white men, not the other way round as her husband believes. She hears the click-click-click of the mamu sticks. They are casting a spell on her and her unborn child.

Then her naked body is. .h.i.t with fierce jets of water. The naked bodies of her children suffer the same torment, even the youngest of them, and they begin screaming and writhing, and now Djunga lends her voice to theirs. Water blasts its way into ears and up nostrils, they cannot escape it. Then fresh torture as hands and feet are scrubbed red raw with brushes that feel like spinifex thorns.

Again, the evil sticks are run over their bodies, and again, to Djunga's horror, she hears the click-click-click of the mamu's spell.

Once more the relentless water and the scrubbing, and once more the click-click of the sticks. Then again and again, a third and a fourth time, until finally it is over and they are being dressed in harsh, cloth garments.

When eventually they are bundled back into the truck, Djunga has lost all sense of time. Is it the next day? It seems to be morning. Has she slept? She cannot remember. Have the children eaten? She cannot recall feeding them. The youngest one is vomiting, and she herself does not feel well.

Without their disguises, the mamu now appear as white men. One of them pretends to be kind. He speaks their language and tells them not to fear. Yunamingu responds to the kindness and answers the man's questions, but Djunga recognises this as a trick and further evidence of the mamu's cunning. The white man who pretends to be kind is just like the others. He is mamu. They are all mamu. Djunga knows this. Just as she knows a spell has been cast upon her and her unborn child.

CHAPTER TEN.