26. Following week. Capricorn Downs/Canberra. Late August 2012.
Wednesday night. Capricorn Downs.
It had taken Lucas three days but he had finally cracked the database belonging to the Department of Transport and Main Roads. The trip back, with his taciturn Malaysian passenger, had taken all day on Saturday so he hadn't been able to get to the computers until Sunday. From then until now he had spent hours, in dribs and drabs, working his way into the system, treading carefully to leave no tracks for either the Government or Kim Burgess to follow and now he had his reward. The registered owner of the 1998 Toyota Landcruiser cab-chassis was one Laurence William Stafford with an address of a small farming property up on the Tablelands. His gut contracted and the flicker of hope suddenly flared up, brighter than ever. Filing the information away he next went to Google Earth, typed in the address and waited the few seconds it took to zoom to the location. Streetview didn't cover the area but that didn't matter, it was the geographical position and the roads leading to it that he was interested in. He was studying the surrounding countryside – wild, hilly rainforest – when an unidentified noise from the hallway made him shut everything down. It was a false alarm – someone heading for the kitchen – but he decided that was enough for one evening anyway. He would return to his donga and ponder the new knowledge in peace.
Thursday afternoon. Canberra.
Ilian was snatching a short break between meetings when the idea hit. It had been one of those weeks so far, with various low level threats bubbling their way up the priority list and, today, one in particular rocketing its way to the top as they gathered strong intel that an attack was imminent on RAAF Base Williamtown, home of the Tactical Fighter Group's F/A18s, among other things. The place was buzzing like a demented hornet's nest and she was due to host representatives of the Air Force, Army, Federal and State police and the Tactical Response Team at a briefing in under half an hour so she had taken the opportunity presented by the pre-meeting lull to grab a coffee and disappear into her office for a few minutes. As ever, Capricorn Downs had been niggling away at the back of her mind all week and was still there as she stood, gazing out at the lake and thoughtfully sipping the drink. Her mind had wandered to the photos coming in from the remote station and how none of them had shown up on any international databases yet and that was when the light-bulb went off. They should be comparing the photos elsewhere as well, namely, the security clearance applications that had been coming through for all workers in and around the G20 summit. Unable to quite believe how that thought hadn't occurred to her before and turning away from the view, she quickly spotted Tori out on the floor and dashed out to collar him before he vanished into the controlled maelstrom again. They just had time to discuss the outline of the plan before they glanced up to see the visitors being escorted towards the far side of the security lock so she clapped him on the shoulder and prepared herself to plunge into the maelstrom instead. She still hadn't rung either Ray or Harry, either – shit! After all this fuss was over…
Friday evening, Capricorn Downs.
Tutorials had finished early for Friday prayers and Lucas had taken the opportunity to stay back in the computer room to do some more research. Two hours later he was coming to the conclusion that what he had was all there was to be found and was shutting the machine down when Kim Burgess stuck his head through the door.
"You still in here, mate? You're spending a lot of extra time on the computers lately."
Lucas grinned and joined him, shepherding him back out into the hallway and shutting the door behind them.
"Just planning my next holiday, after this job finishes. Might go and spend some of the ill-gotten loot in the Caribbean."
"The lure of the dusky ladies, hey?" Burgess' grin was lascivious; Lucas gave him a hollow facsimile in return as they reached the veranda.
"Something like that."
"Have you worked out what this lot are up to?"
Why come out with that question now? Lucas pushed his way through the fly-screen door onto the veranda and headed for his usual seat. Was he working for Shinwari in more ways than one? He'd never shown any interest before.
"I've told you before, I don't really care. As long as they pay me I'll do my job and not ask questions."
"Yeah, keep saying it and I might believe it one day." The cigarettes came out and one was lit up as they made their way across the lawn in the soft, whispering dark. It would be cold later but at the moment the residual heat of the land was keeping the atmosphere almost balmy and, high above, the stars were shining with the steady, remote, non-twinkling light that was typical of the time of year. Lucas' nose wrinkled reflexively as the smoke tainted the air around him but kept his silence. The truth was he thought he had worked it out but it might be interesting to hear what the other man had to say even if he was fishing on their employer's behalf, although perhaps that thought was merely his own paranoia raising its head. "I've been searching around and I reckon it's either this horse race in Melbourne or the G20 summit in Sydney in November. They've had us working on the power and comms grids around both cities for the past few days and that pair you dropped off the other day were heading that way, weren't they? Some of the earlier students went back overseas but lately they've been staying inside the country. Add that to the pace picking up recently and it fits. And there's nothing else going on in this hemisphere in the short or medium term that would have the same effect. Just imagine it, twenty world leaders, mostly with their senior intelligence staff in tow, taken out in one of the most iconic buildings on the planet or over 100,000 punters attacked in one hit at one of the great international race days…"
He almost sounded like he was impressed, Lucas thought as they got to the breezeway between the two sets of dongas that was their accommodation. Maybe that was why he had asked the queston – wanted someone to drool over the idea with him… Lucas himself had managed to avoid being impressed by, or admiring, the scale of the plan when he had worked it out himself over the course of the long drives to and from Cairns – he had arrived at the same two targets but was more inclined towards the G20, for all that it was the inherently harder target. All he felt was a sinking, sickening sense of doom at what this event, if he was right, might do not only to the innocent residents of one of the cities but to the fragile world balance. He had been half hoping that he was wrong but now here was Burgess coming to exactly the same conclusions and it wasn't inspiring. Outwardly his face didn't change; stopping outside his door he looked at the other man and shrugged again.
"Could be either. It makes sense but I really don't care. I'm intent on being long gone before they carry out whatever they're planning."
Victor Elliott really couldn't get a handle on his compatriot. Taciturn at best and frighteningly self-contained, he had resisted Elliott's best efforts to befriend him, preferring to remain a lone wolf for all that there was something simmering away at great depths in his soul. He had given up hope of trying to figure out the truth about West – the man was always distantly polite but that was about it – and tonight had just been an opportunity to needle him, on the off-chance that he would get a reaction, but his singular lack of success merely confirmed that the other was an odd fish. The bottle of bourbon in his refrigerator was calling him so he ground out his smoke, said,
"That makes two of us. See you in the morning," and disappeared into his own room through the adjacent door.
Lucas heaved a silent sigh of relief and went inside, locking the door behind him. Flicking the light on, he glanced around the impersonal room, automatically scanning for anything out of place but there was nothing. Just the old fake-timber veneer walls, slightly warped from years of extreme weather and vibrating slightly from the box air-conditioner mounted above the window opposite the bed; faded curtains over the two windows; the extra-large single bed, dressed in dark green linen but with a brightly covered doona adding a festive splash, crammed in next to a small bedside chest of drawers, and an equally small flat-screen television on top of a bar-fridge next to the desk and chair on the wall opposite the bed. A wardrobe crammed in next to the fridge completed the furnishing for the room and, to his right, another door led through to his tiny en-suite, consisting of a shower cubicle on one side of the door and the toilet on the other with a wash-basin in between. He had been surprised by the accommodation, actually: it was elderly but functional and serviced regularly by the small on site catering/cleaning crew whose main job was to support the groups of genuine Indonesian and Malaysian agriculture students who passed through the place on six-weekly rotations, as well as seeing to the permanent station crew, and the television was connected to the satellite service at the main homestead so the entire set up was significantly better than anything he had experienced in eight years in Russia. But then again a bark humpy of the sort belonging to one of Brendan's ancestors back in the Dreamtime would have been an improvement on Russia…
He retrieved a Coca Cola from the fridge, settled himself back on the bed and thumbed the remote control, switching on the television. It was the news on one of the local stations, the presenter going on about the unfathomable local football code, so he channel-surfed until he came across a wildlife documentary and let that run, sound turned down, while he focussed on reviewing what else he had learned about Harry and Ruth's new life. For the former there had been little more apart from the vehicle registration and co-ownership of the property: Council approval for the building plans on the property and registration as a cattle farmer and bee-keeper were about it but there had been a little more on Ruth. Or, he should say, Iona Camille Stafford. She owned a car – a 2002 Subaru Forester bought in Brisbane last year, presumably after they had just arrived – and had recently started a PhD in geopolitics at the local university campus in Cairns. Presumably that's where she had been when he had seen her with the bag full of books the other day. On top of that he had come across a small article in the on-line site of the small local newspaper noting that she had started a job at the local hospital a few months back and seemed to be occasionally involved in fund-raising activities for the hospital. And that was all. It seemed that they were living a quiet, largely self-sustainable lifestyle up there in their little piece of rainforest heaven and it suddenly occurred to him that it would be unfair of him to drag them out of it and back into the murky world of terrorism. He would have to find something concrete to take with him, rather than just the vague suppositions that he had at the moment, to make it worth-while. As long as he could convince Harry to not kill him on sight.