 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Code Cicada
By Warren Reed
Harper Collins $29.95
 Retired Australian intelligence officer Warren Reed, a Chinese and Japanese linguist, has chosen for his good-guy character a former spook, Greg Mason, who is skilled in Asian languages, commercially savvy and totally loyal to his country of birth.
Amidst a complex set of circumstances focusing on natural gas and oil contracts in the Timor Sea, WA's Northwest shelf and the ocean between Japan and Russia, Reed's doppelganger is engaged by the CIA to identify an Australian double agent whose allegiances actually lie with Indonesia.
Amazingly, I agree, for however bizarre the world of intelligence, it seems highly implausible that a senior bureaucrat could cast his lot with the Jakarta generals just for a tropical retirement of satays, Bintang beer and minimal financial rewards.
Yet that's not how the story seems to be unfolding when the spy who will flee behind the batik curtain, at this stage calling himself Peter Phillips, approaches a trade officer from China's embassy in Canberra to suggest he might be prepared to defect to Beijing.
Phillips discusses the relative merits of stir-fried seafood and kung fu movies before revealing he is aware that China's embassy in Canberra has been bugged by Australian intelligence at the behest of their powerful American cousins.
When the shocked Zhang replies that the embassy is regularly checked for surveillance, he says, "I know it is, but it's still bugged," going on to justify his revelations on the basis that Australia should not be so subservient to US interests. Timely indeed!
This part of the plot, as explained in an author's note, derives from a revelation in 1995 by The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC-TV that the Embassy of the People's Republic of China was indeed bugged and attempts subsequently - and unsuccessfully - made to kill media coverage through the use of the 'D notice' security provision.
Despite the billion dollar stakes, guns are drawn only in the last pages, with most of the conflict entailing battles of words across restaurant tables in Sydney's Chinatown, corporate boardrooms or intelligence sessions in Canberra, Beijing, Tokyo, Jakarta and Washington.
The author portrays a world of human emotions beyond the struggle for commercial and political advantage, with the message being that whatever your nationality, one's ultimate allegiance should be to the truth, and by honouring that code you might transcend national interests and even help negotiate deals that benefit all parties - except the Indonesians.
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