Color Of Blood

by Keith Yocum

  “This isn’t a poem, it’s more like a riddle!” she said. “My God, Dennis, I think we found the black program: the Savory Basin!”

  Dennis threw his arms around Judy’s neck. “Not bad for an AFP agent missing the tip of one baby toe.”

  “You bastard,” she said, laughing.

  “And what about the part about Europe?”

  “Well, you said he was a bit of a poet. Sounds like a made-up word that blends ‘Europe’ and ‘opium.’ Perhaps opium’s involved, and it’s being sent to Europe? You’re going to have to figure that out yourself.”

  Judy laughed and pulled Dennis toward her. She kissed him twice; first out of celebration, next out of passion. They fell against the side of the bed and paused, pulling away from each other, panting heavily.

  And then they were at it again. This time they rolled up onto the bed, crushing the map under their bodies as they rolled back and forth over the state of Western Australia. Dennis was consumed with so much passion that he did not stop until they lay naked, slick with sweat.

  Judy’s clothes were strewn all around the floor and on top of the map they had tossed off the bed. She could hardly remember taking her clothes off. She did not know who turned off the light but, she was thankful and a little embarrassed by the mad sex.

  He bent forward and kissed her on the top of her head. They lay there for a while until she fell sound asleep to the crinkling sounds of the map Dennis was reattaching to the wall.

  Chapter 29

  “Hey, Chris, how ya doing? It’s Dennis Cunningham.”

  Judy drank her cup of coffee and toyed with a bowl of hotel granola. Depending on her mood, she alternated between excitement and despair. The excitement came from the policewoman in her that thrilled in solving complicated mysteries; the despair originated from her fear that Dennis was somehow off his rocker.

  Judy did not doubt Dennis was nearly a savant when it came to solving complex, investigative puzzles, but something was peculiar and dangerous about his quest to unearth a black program in the outback. Then again, when she thought of Mrs. Pearson, she could almost justify Dennis’s obsession.

  Almost.

  For the moment, Judy knew she was being governed by her sudden passion for this man; her intellect was officially on hold.

  “Yeah, it would have been a request from the Special Activities Division to alter it,” Dennis spoke into the phone, doodling on a sheet of paper. “Of course Massey approved it. I’ve been detailed to his group, and you’ll see that in the files. I just need you to send me a copy of the official request to Google and any supporting photographs, that kind of stuff. Sure. Well, the sooner the better. I’ll check my email later today. Yeah. Great. Thanks, Chris.”

  He put down his phone.

  “Now the clock starts ticking,” he said. “Massey and Marty will be copied on my request, but I’m hoping that by the time they notice, I’ll have the documents and will be able to pinpoint the area they wanted blocked out. Or that’s the plan, anyway.”

  Judy sipped her coffee, her knees pulled up to her chest and the T-shirt pulled over her knees, stretching the fabric to its limit: her preferred cocoon-like posture when wearing his T-shirt.

  “I don’t understand what Google has to do with this,” she said. “Enlighten me.”

  “It’s the satellite and aerial photos they use for Google Earth. You must have used the program before. Anyone with an Internet connection can zoom in on any location on the globe.”

  “Yes, of course I’ve used it,” she said.

  “Well, Google gets requests all the time to alter a photograph,” Dennis said. “We do it, the French, Russians, Israelis, and everyone else. If a country has a physical site or military complex that they want to keep secret from the public, they make an official request to Google’s legal department to alter a photograph. It’s odd that Google has the most comprehensive public database of photos of the globe, but they do.”

  “So you think that the CIA made a request to alter the Google satellite photos of this secret base here in WA?”

  “Yes, that’s my hunch.”

  “And what would Google do to the photo?”

  “If it’s a request claiming national security concerns, they’ll alter the photo to cover up the site in question,” he said. “It’s not hard. They can do a hundred things, like pixelating it so it looks muddy, or they can replace it with another photo that looks similar; you know, things like that.”

  “But why would Google bother to do this?”

  “To play nice. I mean Google’s more powerful now than most governments and intelligence agencies. Hell, the NSA has to go to Google to retrieve data. We have a joke around the Agency that in the next decade, Google will be given status at the United Nations as a country.”

  Judy laughed. “You’re a font of some of the most perverse knowledge imaginable. I don’t know whether to believe you or not half the time.”

  Dennis laughed, too.

  “Well, if my friend in the legal department at Langley can send me the Google request, it’ll show exactly which satellite photo they wanted altered, and it should help zero in on my search area. But the downside is that Massey will be alerted I’ve made the request, and he’ll go nuts. That’s the sticky part.”

  An hour later Dennis received an email with an attachment that included the official request from the Agency’s legal department for Google engineers to alter particular satellite and aerial photos. Judy looked over Dennis’s shoulder and laughed.

  “My God, you weren’t kidding,” she said. “This is just so unbelievable.”

  They stared at a second document that was a screenshot of a Google Earth map of Western Australia. A circle was drawn around what appeared to be a small construction site. Both Judy and Dennis put their faces within twelve inches of the screen in an attempt to identify where the circled area was in relation to landmarks or towns.

  “It’s hard to see where this area is exactly,” Judy said. “It’s all so barren out there. Wait, look: right there. That says the town is Newton. I know where that is. The photo they’re asking to have altered shows a complex due east of Newton.”

  Dennis and Judy flipped back and forth between the image in the Agency request and Google Earth on his browser. The construction site was no longer on Google Earth.

  Dennis’s laptop suddenly went dark.

  “Your battery just died,” Judy said.

  “It’s not my battery,” Dennis said.

  “What’s wrong with it then?”

  “They shut it down,” he said, closing it and standing up.

  “Who shut it down?”

  “My employer, who else?”

  “They can do that remotely?”

  “Of course they can, with Agency-issued laptops.”

  “Why did they shut it down?”

  “Massey or someone in his group got wind of my request and jumped in. Shit. They’ll have a team in this hotel room in an hour, maybe less.”

  Judy sprang up, spilling coffee onto the T-shirt.

  “What will they do with me?” she said.

  “Nothing. Get dressed and get out of here. I’m going to leave my mobile phone here, and they’ll hit this room first. The rental is packed. Hurry, Judy. You need to get out of here now.”

  She ripped off the T-shirt and dove into her clothes pile. Dennis grabbed the map and as many personal belongings as he could reach and threw them into a canvas duffel bag.

  Before they left the room, Judy stood in front of Dennis and said, “For the last time, will you let this thing go? You don’t have to go north.”

  He shook his head. “We need to go, Judy. Please!”

  Judy begged Dennis to meet her in forty-five minutes at a small coffee shop in Subiaco for a last good-bye. He was so distracted that she gave him handwritten directions and made him read them back to her. Their whirlwind relationship was coming to an abrupt end, and she was determined to see him one last time.

  How utterly
unbelievable, she thought as she raced home. If I didn’t care for this man so much, I’d stay a thousand kilometers away from him.

  Dennis had purchased several prepaid cell phones in Perth. While waiting in the coffee shop, he called his daughter in California.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Why is that important?”

  “You’re not back in Australia again, are you?”

  “Beth, why does it matter where I am? And of all places, Australia.”

  “Don’t ask me why, but something is really bothering me about you being in Australia. Ask Nathan; he’ll tell you. Better yet, don’t ask Nathan. He thinks I’ve been acting a little crazy about your work.”

  “Beth, really, everything’s fine.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I feel great. Better than I have felt in a long time. It’s refreshing to feel so alive and purposeful again.”

  “Gee, it sounds like you’ve met a woman,” she said. “Is that what’s going on?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m a little ambivalent about you finding someone else, Dad. But Mom wouldn’t want you moping around the rest of your life. I’m happy for you. Can I meet her some time?”

  Dennis had never told Beth about Martha’s affair and the true circumstances of her death, nor did he intend to tell her.

  “Absolutely. Think you’d like her. She’s got a healthy stubborn streak, just like my daughter.”

  “Oh that’s not true,” she said. “You and Nathan are in cahoots. I would like to meet this woman. I need some help against the two of you.”

  They talked for a few minutes, and then Dennis tried to end the call.

  “And I wasn’t kidding, Dad,” she said.

  “Kidding?”

  “No, I’m not kidding. Wherever you are right now, you should stop and come home. I don’t have a good feeling about you lately. And I could bet a million dollars you’re in Australia.”

  “Beth, where do you get this stuff from?” he said, scanning the nearly empty coffee shop. “You couldn’t be more wrong about me.”

  ***

  Dennis had grown nervous as the hour ticked away. While he wanted to get as far away as possible from the team being dispatched to Perth, he also wanted to see Judy.

  It would likely be the last time.

  After an hour, Dennis left the coffee shop and quickly scanned around for signs of surveillance. Satisfied he was in the clear, he walked to his car.

  The sound of tires squealing behind made him flinch, and he braced for a confrontation.

  “My God, I thought I was going to miss you,” Judy said, throwing her arms around his neck.

  “I’m glad you made it.” He kissed her forehead gently. “I was getting worried: thought I’d never see you again.”

  “No worries about that, mate,” she said in an exaggerated Aussie accent.

  “Really?” He smiled.

  “Yes, I’ve decided that since you refuse to take me along with you in the bush, I’m going to just follow you.”

  He gently pushed her away. “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Dennis, you’re not going to get rid of me that quickly.” She crossed her arms. “I can tolerate your disapproval, and even your anger, if it means I can help you avoid doing something that will get you lost or killed out there. You’ll die quickly in this heat, so I’ll just tag along. And there’s really only one main highway north, so you can’t outrun me, that’s for bloody sure.”

  Dennis’s face hardened, but Judy was prepared for it.

  “Please don’t do that,” he said sharply. “Good-bye.”

  Dennis got into the LandCruiser and started it up. Judy raced back to her car, backed up several yards, and waited for him to pull out. She saw the back-up lights engage, but the vehicle’s brake lights remained on. After several seconds the back-up lights went off as the LandCruiser’s transmission moved to park. Then the engine turned off.

  Judy squinted to see what Dennis was doing and was surprised to see him open the driver’s side door. He stepped out and walked over to Judy. She wound down her window.

  “Just park and get in,” he said. “Hurry.”

  Judy pulled into an open space, half-expecting Dennis to speed away, but he waited dutifully for her to get a small suitcase out of her back seat and put it in the LandCruiser.

  Before sitting in the passenger seat, she leaned in and said, “Do you want me to drive? The left-hand drive can be tricky on those long stretches.”

  “Yes,” he said, getting out of the driver’s side. “Just hurry!”

  They switched seats, and she drove west down Hay Street toward the Mitchell Freeway. For the first ten minutes, Dennis said nothing. He looked at his watch several times and continued to look in the side mirror at the vehicles behind them.

  “Your phone!” he said, startling her.

  “My mobile phone?”

  “Where is it?”

  “In my purse. Why?”

  “Give me your purse!”

  She tossed it to him, and he rifled through until he found the phone. He flipped it open and then closed it. Without saying a word, he wound down his window and threw her phone into a line of hedges in front of an Anglican church they were passing.

  “What are you doing?!” Judy said. “That’s my service phone. Are you crazy?”

  “They’ll figure out eventually that we’re traveling together and home in on your phone,” he said.

  “Well, you could have just turned it off, Dennis. You didn’t have to throw it out the bloody window.”

  “They can ping your phone even if it’s turned off,” he said. “I left it turned on, and they’ll eventually surround that church back there, looking for us.”

  Judy decided not to argue. It was the first spontaneously brazen thing she’d seen him do, and it troubled her as they drove through the northern coastal suburbs. If what he said was correct, then the phone tossing was probably the right thing to do; yet it was rash.

  They continued to drive in silence while Judy tried to reconcile her decision to force herself on Dennis and his trip north. She could feel his anger but was confident he’d soften eventually. Meanwhile she concentrated on the highway snaking north.

  Every now and then the throb of her toe reminded her of how much had happened in such a short time, but through it all she was certain now that she only cared about Dennis. The hell with Garder, the CIA, uranium mines, drug gangs, and former husbands; except for her family, Dennis was now the most important person in her life.

  Letting him drive away by himself in Subiaco would mean she’d never see him again. This way, if even for another day or two, she would have Dennis to herself.

  After nearly thirty minutes of driving, Dennis said, “I don’t think we’re being followed.”

  Judy had been watching the rearview mirror and agreed that there was no obvious tail.

  “What do you think they’ll do when they see that you left the hotel?” she said.

  “I’m not sure. They’ll either figure out I’m heading north, or they won’t. If they send a team north, then we’ll just have to stay one step ahead. But if they do find us, Judy, promise me you won’t resist.”

  “Not a chance I’ll take them on,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “They can be very rough if they get pissed off.”

  “So I understand.”

  ***

  At first he could not distinguish a difference between the suburbs northwest of Perth and those outside of many American cities. There were fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s and KFC. Granted, most of the single-family homes were very close together, and the majority had red-tile roofs, but there was nothing especially alien or strange about the suburbs, and that comforted him, headed as he was to the outback.

  As they crossed the Swan River at Bassendean, the landscape became decidedly rural. It reminded him of the Midwest, only more desiccated. The farmed countryside was contoured with fences and rows of
brown crops or plowed furrows. Storage silos and water towers broke the dull blue sky. Huge flocks of sheep, like clots of dirty gray puffballs, appeared out of nowhere in enormous paddocks by the road.

  “Dennis,” she asked at one point, driving through the expansive wheat belt northwest of Perth, “are you calm now?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not talking.”

  “Sorry. I was just thinking.”

  “Why don’t you let me in on your thinking?”

  “I would if it made any sense. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to keep you out of this thing. I could tell them I kidnapped you.”

  “No bloody way. I came of my own volition.”

  “You’re not making this easy.”

  “Who said I was going to make it easy?”

  “God,” he said, shaking his head. “Do you have any idea what the AFP will do with you if you get caught with me?”

  “I’ll figure that out later,” she said. “I admit I made an emotional decision to force myself on you, but your decision to go into the bush isn’t exactly a logical one, either.”

  “Agreed, but at least it was just one person who might get in trouble. I don’t want anything to happen to you. I think you may be trivializing what these people are like. If they’re JSOC, they’re very cold, mission-driven people. It’s always the mission they’re focused on, not the people. So they don’t care who they’re dealing with.”

  “You can’t scare me.”

  He sighed. “You remind me of me sometimes.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Right now, it’s bad.”

  They drove on in silence, the landscape a reddish smudge through the side windows.

  After ten minutes, Dennis said, “Do you ever think about what he was like?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Do you ever think about what he was really like—your father?”

  “My father?”

  “Yes, your father. Do you ever think about him?”

  “I told you, Dennis, I was born after he died. I never met him.”