Amelia had been worried sick ever since the major’s visit the night before last when she’d overheard those ominous words – ‘shoot to kill’. Then today shopping in town, she’d heard the rumours. So many had, people were talking already. There’d been some terrible fracas out in the country near the army camps. Machine-gun fire in the dead of night. It wouldn’t have been military training at that hour, people said. And when he hadn’t returned that day and the whole of the following night, she’d lain awake fearing the worst, convincing herself that Samuel was dead.

‘Thank God you’re safe,’ she whispered once again.

He closed the door gently behind him. ‘Yes, I’m safe,’ he said.

They drifted effortlessly and unconsciously into each other’s arms.

Hank Henry, tough, no-nonsense military man though he was, critical and harsh to boot, was an excellent observer of human nature. Unbeknownst to themselves, Samuel Robinson and Amelia Sanderson had been in love for some time.

There was an inevitability about that late afternoon when they finally became the lovers they were destined to be.

PART THREE

THE POLITICIANS

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Pete Vickers was in his customary state of frustration. Like many others he was aware of the rumours. A couple of farmers had heard the gunfire and spread the word, but nobody knew what had happened.

Being the hard-nosed investigative journalist he was, Pete determined to sniff out any leak he could find in order to discover the truth, despite his knowledge that whatever he managed to unearth was not likely to appear in print. Not in Australia anyway. But he would compile a report nonetheless that would one day be published, if not in his home country, then in Britain or America. Furthermore, he determined it would be published along with the other material he’d written, all of which had been smothered by army censorship.

Choosing as his first port of call the two farms where, independent of each other, both farmers swore they’d heard the sound of heavy gunfire, he rode his bicycle out to their farmhouses on Monday morning.

‘Dunno what the heck was going on,’ came the reply from the Wicks farm. ‘Thought at first it was some sort of military training, but why the hell would they be training in the dead of night? Dangerous, if you ask me. Someone could’ve got hurt.’

There was a little more information on offer at the Hodgeman farm, however.

‘Yeah,’ Geoff said, ‘me and Norma thought it was some kind of army drill using live ammo, heavy-duty stuff, too, machine-gun fire. Bit funny in the middle of the night we reckoned though, didn’t we, love?’

‘Too right we did,’ his wife, a scrawny, tough outback woman in her late thirties replied. ‘Wasn’t bloody funny what happened after though,’ she added, her tone dour, a scowl darkening her already weathered face.