When petroleum funds from impoverished East Timor go missing, Agent Jane Diamond  must unravel the intricate plans of a mysterious figurehead and prevent a global catastrophe.

SYNOPSIS:

Australia has failed to measure up to the human rights standards it critically endorses. Enter, the Lafayette Circle. A UN funded spy agency headquartered out of The Hague, tasked with one single mandate. To Bring down Big Government. The team, Jane Diamond, Abbe Pawdrig SJ and Muskitoo, a young Australian indigenous adopted by a British couple in search of his past, are on a mission to uncover a conspiracy against Whitlam Bligh, Australia’s socially minded Foreign Minister after he had discovered that billions of dollars of funds had gone missing from one of East Timor’s richest oil fields. Bligh’s information points to the Australian Canberra bureaucracy and sets up a meeting with East Timor’s President to hand over the evidence in exchange for asylum. Before the meeting takes place, Bligh is confronted by hired thugs demanding that he hand over the evidence to them. Bligh refuses, realises he is outgunned and is abducted and taken to the Darwin mines, a once proudly owned Australian enterprise founded by local patriarch, Lucien Dowling, now a secret government experiment set up as a reeducation camp for political dissenters, and run by a shadowy organisation controlled by its figurehead, a powerful Britisher known only as the Contractor.

The Lafayette Circle begin their mission by voyaging to Sydney on their yacht the Lady Liberty to seek out a trade union heavyweight, Paddy Fitch, the last person to have seen Bligh alive. Their trail takes them to a seedy part of Sydney, The Rocks and to a known hangout of Fitch’s called The BloodHouse Hotel. They arrive to find the Hotel completely destroyed and several patrons dead. One of them Paddy Fitch. From the rubble emerges a young woman called Molly who reveals to the Circle that Fitch’s trade union brethren have been captured by a dubious Sydney political figure called Augustus Rochester with allegiances to the notorious Red Coats, a band of notorious Sumatran smugglers, with ties to a Dutch colonial past and taken to work in the Darwin mines.

The Circle then voyage to Darwin and, upon arrival soon fall under the suspicion of a Papuan ganja dealer called Captain Whisper working for the Contractor. With the help of a local indigenous woman called Mary, infamous for her deadly wink before thrusting a boomerang, the Lafayette Circle kill Whisper. It turns out Mary and Pawdrig have shared history, and we learn that twenty five years ago, Mary’s husband, Darcy Dowling

heir to the Dowling empire was killed by the Contractor and with Mary’s consent Pawdrig had taken her only child, a baby boy and hidden him to protect him against his father’s murderers who are out to defraud him of a sizeable inheritance. Mary had returned to Darwin to find her son and seek her revenge. Mary informs the Circle that the Australian Prime Minister is on the payroll of the Contractor and intends to turn Australia into a Monaco-style tax haven. At the same time, Mary learns her son is alive and well. This gives Mary hope. She then reveals to the Circle that Bligh is a captive inside the mines. Mary informs the Circle, they will need help in arresting the Contractor and is forced to consult her indigenous brethren. A highly trained group of Australian soldiers called the Indigenous Guerrilla Unit. Together they storm the mines, capture Bligh and return democracy to the Australian people.

DIAMOND JANE A-GO-GO AND WINK