by Robert Sims
‘Yes, and they’ve already been double-checked. The apartment block’s security computer is accurate to the second. Why?’
Rita fell silent, unable to decide what to tell him.
‘What is it, Van Hassel?’
‘Forget it, Jarrett,’ she said at last. ‘It’s just me being picky.
There’s no point, really. Do I need to talk to Bryce before I pack up?’
‘No, he’s still turning his best profile to the cameras. As far as he’s concerned, your job’s done and dusted. But I want to buy you a drink before you head back south.’
‘You’re on. I’ll let you know when.’
Rita was in a quandary as she slotted her profiling notes and folders into a sports bag and zipped it up. That was that. Her work here was done. She looked around the exhibit room to make sure she was leaving it just as she’d found it and, with a sigh, walked over to the window and gazed down into the alley, strewn with overflowing bins and graffiti - the detritus of human activity.
She felt defeated, her quest for justice unfulfilled. What made it even less palatable was that she’d been hoodwinked, manipulated.
The fact that she couldn’t prove it only exacerbated her anger.
Rita knew for certain that Billy Bowers as the nail-gun killer just didn’t add up. It meant that her instincts had been right from the start. The killer operated from within the protective shield of the research base and had again retreated behind it. That was where the truth lay. She was shaking her head, convinced she’d never get the chance to expose it, when opportunity came tapping on her door.
‘So this is where you’ve been doing your meditations,’ said Luker, strolling into the exhibit room. ‘Fascinating.’
He was dressed smartly, unlike the last time she’d seen him, in cream trousers and sports shirt under a navy blue blazer.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Rita.
‘Just keeping a watchful eye on the media circus. Making sure there are no slip-ups.’
‘You didn’t have the urge to join in?’
‘Mercifully my days of doorsteps and pressers are behind me.’
Luker wandered along the display cases, scanning the historic items, before stopping to cast his eyes over the nineteenth-century newspaper headlines. ‘Nothing much changes.’
‘Not a lot, no, when it comes to basic human drives.’ Rita looked at him sceptically before asking, ‘What do you make of this?’ She was gesturing at the oil painting over the hearth.
Luker came over, gazed at it and read the title. ‘ The Hunting Party. Grim-looking bunch. Black and white combo. Armed to the teeth.’ He sniffed, as if assessing the context. ‘More like a lynch mob than hunters.’
Rita was impressed. ‘Bravo! You have the skills of a profiler.’
‘So I’ve passed a test.’
‘You certainly have. What you’re looking at is a group of self-appointed executioners. They hunted and killed Aborigines under the leadership of the man in the frock coat, Squatter Brodie.’
‘Should I know of him?’
‘No. Obscure local fanatic in the frontier war.’
‘Does that mean I win a prize?’
‘Yes, you do,’ answered Rita. ‘You get to take me out to lunch.’
‘That’s a much more attractive prospect than anything else in my diary.’ Luker grinned. ‘Anywhere in particular?’
‘The Bierkeller, wherever that is.’
‘Why there?’
‘I’ve heard the beer is excellent.’
‘Good enough reason.’ He nodded. ‘Now that’s the part of journalism I really miss - the liquid lunches.’
The Bierkeller was a theme bar situated among the cafes and fashion shops at the heart of the tourist strip. American sailors drank at outside tables among the pedestrians and the palm trees.
Rita and Luker sat inside under dark wooden beams decorated with steins, cow bells and lederhosen. She’d chosen a table next to a wall recess displaying a bust of Wagner.
They drank from long chilled glasses of beer as they waited for their lunch to be served.
‘Ah,’ Luker sighed nostalgically. ‘Takes me back to the Oktoberfest.’
‘Reporting?’
‘Indulging.’ He put down the glass and got out his cigarettes.
‘So you’re off-duty now?’
‘Off-duty, off attachment.’ She smiled ironically. ‘Disarmed, disbanded. Criminal profiling no longer required.’
‘You sound a little miffed.’
‘I wonder why.’
Luker seemed to think about it while he put a cigarette between his lips out of habit, then grimaced and let it dangle. If he lit up he’d be breaking Queensland’s anti-smoking laws.
‘You’ve hardly touched your beer,’ he observed.
‘I hardly ever drink it.’
‘Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the real reason we’re here?’
‘You don’t know?’
Luker gave a sour chuckle. ‘Am I supposed to?’
‘The surroundings don’t strike a chord?’
‘Either tell me what I’m missing, or give me a hint. I’m not clairvoyant.’
‘No, but you’re perceptive. And given your job, you must be well informed.’
‘This is starting to sound like another profiling exercise.’
‘If you like,’ she said. ‘Let’s see. Professionally you inhabit a looking-glass world. You’re adept at manipulation and deception.
You must be good at it to deal with the in-your-face aggression of people like Maddox. But while he uses brute force to get his way, you choreograph results.’
‘I’m with you so far,’ said Luker, eyes narrowing, ‘though I’m wondering where you’re heading with this.’
‘I’m trying to decide if it’s you who’s been pulling my strings.’
Luker pulled the unlit cigarette from his mouth. ‘If I bluntly deny it, you won’t believe me. So let me put it this way. The looking-glass world, as you call it, has multiple sets of mirrors -
contradictory, distorting, some completely concealed from all the rest. Nobody has the true reflection, never mind the full picture of what’s going on at any particular moment. It’s what James Jesus Angleton of the CIA called “a wilderness of mirrors”. A lot of intelligence work is, at best, inference or second guessing. I’m not just talking about enemies, real or perceived, I’m also talking about officers within agencies, ostensibly pursuing the same goals.’
‘Chaos theory,’ Rita commented.
‘When there’s an international coalition in place, the warping effect is magnified and the grey areas get even murkier. Which is my way of saying I can’t confirm or deny someone’s been pulling your strings. I simply don’t know, one way or the other. If you’re referring to the code red you received, I’ve checked as best I can, and I’ve been told none was issued, to you or anyone else.’
‘Someone sent it in time for me to blow away Bowers,’
snapped Rita.
‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you,’ he responded. ‘Just that it can’t be traced.’
‘Bowers dead is a neat resolution to a lot of problems,’ she went on. ‘And it was you who advised me to use my gun, then conveniently arranged for the details of my involvement to vanish.’
‘So I’m the puppet master, that’s your theory? Let me shoot it down.’ Luker rolled the cigarette delicately between his fingers. ‘A code red delivered to you but not to me indicated extreme danger specifically to you, whether it was genuine or false. And let me point out, it probably saved your life. Next, what you did is not on record - a move you actually suggested - because it would make your role here untenable.’
‘My role has ended.’
‘You and I both know that’s not the case.’
‘That means you are concealing something.’
‘I wouldn’t be much of a spy if I didn’t.’ He chuckled, shoving his cigarette back in the packet as lunch was served.
Rita could
n’t afford to let his engaging personality get in the way of pinning down his true function. She began to eat her salmon salad.
‘I Googled you,’ she informed him breezily.
‘What did you find?’
‘Not much and nothing recent. There were a couple of anecdotal references from journalists’ memoirs referring to a Peter “Filthy”
Luker, who gained the epithet from womanising.’
‘Ah, those were the days.’ He actually blushed. ‘ Mea culpa.’
He began to pick self-consciously at his savoury platter of cheese and German sausage.
Yes, she thought, his apparent sensitivity could easily charm the pants off women, but now the wear and tear of a decadent life was showing.
‘Why’s the review been cancelled?’ she asked abruptly.
‘Huh!’ he scoffed. ‘That’s a perfect example of how intelligence turns out to be nothing of the sort. The terrorist suspects planning to blow Whitley off the map turn out to be innocent kebab vendors. They rolled back up at their shop after a driving holiday up the coast.’
‘What about the evidence?’
‘Complete rubbish. The false documents were dodgy visas, and the bomb-making residues were fertiliser, batteries and wires from a home-made irrigation system for their vegetable plot. They’ll probably face a deportation hearing but they’re no more terrorists than the local hotdog seller.’
‘Embarrassing.’
‘And it shows how an edifice of strategy can be built on miscalculation and stupid assumptions.’
He drank more beer, his exasperation plain to see.
‘I’m trying to find common ground with you,’ she admitted at last. ‘But it’s not easy. Tell me exactly what you’re doing at Whitley Sands.’
‘All right. I’ve been drafted onto the International Risk Assessment Committee. That’s my one and only role within the research base.’
‘Who else is on the committee?’
‘I can’t believe I’m submitting to this interrogation,’ he said with a shake of the head. ‘Can you remind me why I am?’
‘Because I know why we’re sitting here, and you don’t.’
‘Right.’
‘So who are your fellow members?’
‘Maddox, Baxter, Rhett Molloy, his deputy Kurt Demchak and Rex Horsley.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘British consular attache.’
‘And in assessing the level of risk,’ she persisted, ‘has your committee ever discussed the use of lethal force?’
‘Only as a last resort.’
‘Has it sanctioned it?’
‘Certainly not! Why do you ask?’
‘Because somebody has.’
Luker twiddled a fork, toying with his lunch, as he pondered her words.
‘I had a feeling you were going to tell me something of the sort.’ He frowned. ‘And, strange as it may seem, it’s clear you know more about some aspects of what’s going on than I do.’
‘Maddox and Demchak,’ stated Rita. ‘Do they have any other joint role at the base?’
‘Only on the sub-committee.’
‘Which is?’
‘The group that focuses on day-to-day details: the International Risk Assessment Sub-Committee, comprised of Maddox, Demchak and Molloy.’
Rita bowed her head in thought, before raising her eyes to his. ‘That’s it.’
‘That’s what?’ asked Luker, perplexed.
She looked at him coldly. ‘The hunting party.’
Luker sat there glumly for several minutes while Rita finished her lunch with relish, as if tasting a morsel of vindication. He said nothing, just gazed across the bar, fiddling with his pack of untipped French cigarettes.
He broke the silence at last.
‘I’m not saying I agree, but I have certain … apprehensions, shall we say.’
‘Someone put it to me this way,’ said Rita. ‘You’re either part of the con or one of the conned.’
‘Thanks for that. And let me point out that for someone who’s had the gall to accuse me of being manipulative, you’ve been running rings around me.’
Rita laughed. ‘You know how to flatter a girl.’
‘Now it’s your turn,’ he said seriously. ‘Come on, Van Hassel.
Why are we sitting here?’
‘Because this is where it started.’
Luker looked around again, as if trying to spot something he’d missed.
‘Are you a fan of Wagner?’ she asked.
‘All those overblown Aryan themes - no,’ he answered bluntly.
‘Which, of course, brings us to the Rheingold disk.’
‘Yes. And this is where Konrad Steinberg handed it over to Stonefish.’
‘Here, in the Bierkeller?’
‘Yes. For all we know, at this table.’
‘And that’s why your role here isn’t over,’ Luker told her.
‘Retrieving that disk is a national security priority, and you’ve done the best job of homing in on it. Not only that, but you’ve achieved something none of my intelligence officers has managed.
You’ve had direct contact with the two men who handled it - in this very bar, as it turns out.’
‘Now both are dead,’ she said. ‘So are four people who had access to downloads from the disk. All murdered.’
‘The police built a fairly conclusive case against Bowers.’
‘Circumstantial. He wasn’t the nail-gunner. I accused him to his face of the first killing. I realise now he didn’t know he was standing in the murder scene.’
‘That’s your interpretation, not proof.’
‘The proof’s come with the last attack. After I left Ice’s apartment, one other person called on her. He killed her with a nail gun, severed her head and hands, removed her computer and left at exactly eight minutes past four. The time of the penthouse door opening and closing is recorded on the apartment block security computer, something the killer overlooked.’
‘Ah, I see.’
‘As you and I both know, I shot Bowers just four minutes later.
He couldn’t possibly have got from her place to the hotel in that time, so he didn’t kill her.’
‘Who did?’
‘Someone determined to stop the contents of the disk coming out. Someone at the research base.’
While Luker was rubbing his chin at this latest information, Rita’s phone started ringing. The screen on her mobile simply told her a ‘private number’ was calling.
‘Hello, who is this?’ she asked.
‘Maddox,’ came the curt reply. ‘Get your arse to my office, Van Hassel. Now! Don’t make me come after you!’
51
That familiar chill went through her as Rita pulled up again at the gates of Whitley Sands. To her, the checkpoint, the razor wire, the thick mesh of the perimeter fence symbolised not so much security as oppression. Her pass checked, she was waved through. She drove to the car park, got out and walked to the main entrance where the guards were waiting for her. They escorted her to the lifts and up to the fifth floor, then around the gallery, with its view over the circular space of the atrium, and showed her into Maddox’s office. Then they left, pulling the door closed behind them.
Rita found herself in a white-walled room, sparsely furnished, with floor-to-ceiling smoked glass windows overlooking the security compound outside. There were photos of troops in camouflage gear. A glass cabinet displayed regimental trophies and insignia.
Directly facing her, Maddox sat behind a broad desk, flanked on one side by Rhett Molloy and on the other by a powerfully built man with a hard face and thinning hair. She assumed he was Kurt Demchak.
This was more intimidating than she had expected. It meant she had been summoned to appear before the sub-committee which could embody the deadliest presence at the base. For all she knew these three men, acting outside the law and beyond official scrutiny, had the power of life and death over any individual within reach. They sat there unsmiling, plainly hosti
le, with the self-assured authority of judge, jury and executioner.
A single chair had been placed in front of the desk.
‘Sit down, Van Hassel,’ said Maddox.
She put her shoulder bag on the floor and sat, feeling tense, just as she was meant to.
‘Rhett Molloy you’ve seen before,’ he continued. ‘Kurt Demchak you haven’t.’
‘I’ve heard about him,’ said Rita.
Demchak almost smiled.
Maddox tapped a folder on the desktop as if it contained damning material. ‘I knew you’d be a thorn in my side from the moment you arrived. And despite my warnings, you’ve obstructed and compromised national security operations.’
‘In what way?’ she asked.
‘You know damn well. For a start, you lied to me about your contact with Steinberg. You were aware of his treachery and you concealed it. That makes you complicit in his treason. That’s jail time.’
Rita said nothing, just swallowed, feeling a lot less relaxed than she tried to appear.
‘You knew about the Steinberg report, and its damaging content, from the outset. You also found out it was hidden on the Rheingold disk that Steinberg passed on to subversives.
You even tracked its circulation. Yet you failed to inform me or anyone else in a position to resolve the danger it posed.’ Maddox breathed out heavily through his nose. ‘Your behaviour has been contemptible. You’ve shown a level of insubordination that would have you court-martialled if you held a military rank. And all this interference has been based on your own rogue judgement, without deferring to any senior officer.’
‘That’s not true,’ she said.
The rebuttal took Maddox by surprise.
‘Who?’ he demanded.
‘Peter Luker.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Ask him yourself.’ She was more thankful than ever for Luker’s involvement. ‘He approached me at the review and we’ve had a tacit agreement ever since.’
The information seemed to deflect Maddox from the officious line he was pursuing.
‘That still doesn’t justify your actions,’ he said, his anger rising. ‘Anyway, Luker’s essentially an outsider. He doesn’t have a command role in base operations, nor is he responsible for protecting base material.’