CLANDESTINE AUTHORITY: A FINAL BEAUTY

Picture of Wyndham by Richard Woldendorp

At last he was free.

He stopped chanting at the microphone in the car, and therefore to the authorities: "You are dishonest, incompetent and corrupt." Or: "Never forget, I know how dishonest and incompetent you really are."

The hell, the living purgatory, that had been inflicted upon him and which they liked to say he had inflicted on himself had gone.

His anger, his frustration, as counterproductive as it had been, was already washing away.

The Ridge, as it was locally known, was green from recent rains, unusual in that part of the country. The landscape often looked more like Mars. Now the inland rivers were flowing, and Menindee Lakes was full.

He had been coming to Lightning Ridge on and off for decades. It was one of the only places in the world where opal could be found, and had a peculiar resonance. Decades before, landing at the red dust pot hole filled airstrip had been a dangerous exercise. Now, there was even an asphalted tarmac.

Old Alex had last been here two years before, when, after a similar hounding, he had just finished writing Thailand: Deadly Destination. 

And then, as now, haunted and hunted for so long, felt an enormous relief.

He went, that first morning, to the Artesian Bore outside town, where, as the sign declared, the hot, mineral rich waters would soak away your aches and pains.

As so often, there were Europeans taking the water in this Outback place, and the air was full of the Yugoslavian language.

He liked the idea of bathing in million year old water, although in truth he had no idea how old it was and could find no easy reference.

It was the final month of spring, after what had been a hellish winter; with kidney stones and a fractured vertebrae leaving him in constant pain, and the targeting of him by the authorities, or under the purvey of the authorities, had made his life entirely miserable. 

If he had destroyed one opportunity by his flagrant fury, contempt or disregard, there would be many more. He was was the one bathing in the Artesian waters and watching the birds flock through the low scrub of the Australian Outback. He was the one whose mind could pick through the surrounding fields, at last, without being pressurised. He was the one who had survived.

And they would squirrel back into their useless jobs, no longer safe. For the wraiths unleashed were already out hunting their targets; and they would find their way,

If it was simply puerile revenge, they would never have done their job. It was more than that: a battle between the sacred and the profane. The desire of the ordinary to triumph over the extraordinary was a battle they would not, could not win.

And so he rose bare faced into the laughing sky, and was free.

THE BIGGER STORY:

As the battle for Mosul proper begins -- a pain-staking and brutal process of clearing ISIS street by street -- cracks in the Iraqi government's planning and preparation are already beginning to show.

This was chillingly illustrated by my colleague Arwa Damon's intense 28 hours embedded with one special forces group, as it plunged deep into Mosul's eastern neighborhoods. The terrifying experience revealed a force seemingly ill equipped and poorly trained for the task at hand.
ISIS fighters were lying in wait to ambush the unit Arwa was with as its commander ordered the convoy on without an apparent "Plan B" or reserve forces to back them up if they got into trouble.

Conventional wisdom is the radical Islamist terror group has had two years to prepare for this defense. Reality is in Iraq alone their fighters have spent more than a decade honing tactics and techniques for fighting an urban guerrilla conflict against conventional forces -- American first and now Iraqi.

US election: Hillary Clinton has wafer-thin margin over Donald Trump on campaign's final day
So who is going to win?
It is the question on the lips of every American as this volatile presidential election campaign comes to a close.
Republican nominee Donald Trump's supporters are bullish, and wildly optimistic as he rides a wave of improved polls into election day.
The backers of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton are nervous, and simply want it to be over, and won.

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