“Pause it a sec,” Rafe said and Copplin's image froze in the act of drawing its next breath. “Is that your friend? Does he seem to be normal? Does he always talk in that pompous, convoluted way?”
Ginny gave him a frown. “Do you always put other people's friends down before you even get to know them? Yes, it sounds like Cal. Maybe he does sound a bit up himself. I always made allowances because he's a Brit.”
And a control freak too, Rafe thought. The whole recorded messages from beyond the grave thing seemed just a bit over the top. Still, it takes all kinds... He nodded at the message display. “OK.”
Ginny scowled at him but he pretended not to notice. After a moment, she continued the playback.
“I hope you're all right,” Copplin said. “Gavin's a nice guy – that's why I sent you to him – but some of his associates can be a bit overwhelming. Maybe Gavin told you what this is all about. If so, I hope you'll have the sense to keep quiet about it. If not – trust me – it's better if you don't know anything – or anyone, especially if the police ask you. In this matter – as in so much else – the police are not necessarily going to act in your best interests.
“Obviously, I have no idea what kind of trouble you're in. Maybe you're just nosy and looking for clues. Maybe you're on the run and your life is in danger. Whatever you need from my flat, just take it. I won't be coming back. If you pull the dishwasher out from under the counter, you'll find some useful items taped to the back of it. That's about all I can do for you, I'm afraid. Oh, I should say this, though: nothing is what it seems. If you have to trust anybody, the only person I know who won't lie to you is Gavin's sister, Tonia.” Rafe and Ginny exchanged glances. “She might shoot you, but she won't lie.
“You might also want to consider leaving the country. Ask Tonia if you want to know which countries are safe, I've lost track myself. The thing is... Well, I'm doing what I can, but my success is not guaranteed. Things might easily fail to go as planned. Goodbye again, Ginny. Take care of yourself.”
“That's it?” Ginny cried, addressing the sad-eyed image in the air before her. “A load of vague rubbish? How's that supposed to help me? You fucking bastard! You knew you'd dropped me right in it, didn't you?” She turned to Rafe. “That's why we just happened to meet by chance. That's why he came on all flattering and flirtatious. That's why – ” She stopped herself on the cusp of a sob. “He just used me. He just set me up and strung me along, just in case he needed a favour one day. That's all it was ever about.”
Rafe had to agree it seemed very likely. The guy in the recording might have said he was sorry but he certainly didn't look it. There was no remorse in Copplin's manner. He was just a control freak tidying up some loose ends, well aware he'd probably wrecked this woman's life and doling out his bullshit advice as a sop to his own conscience. It seemed incredible that Ginny hadn't spotted it sooner. Even so, he said, “I'm sure there was more to it than that.” It was all he could bring himself to say.
Ginny went to slump down into the sofa, probably to consider why her taste in men was so shockingly poor, while Rafe went to the kitchen and wrestled with the dishwasher until he had it clear of its housing. On the metal plate at the back of the machine were taped a small silver cylinder, a small black box, a folded wad of paper documents, a semi-automatic handgun, and two spare clips of ammo. “Christ,” he said, looking at the gun.
He heard Ginny's footsteps as she came up to see what he'd found. “I'm going back to Canberra,” he said. “On the next available flight.”
-oOo-
They hardly spoke that evening. Ginny watched news feeds and immersed herself in entertainment worldlets, but Rafe didn't want news and he was in no mood to be entertained. The sight of the gun had deeply unsettled him. Ginny had taken everything off the back of the dishwasher and laid it all out on the kitchen counter. Rafe didn't even feel tempted to look at the documents. He just wanted nothing to do with them. Now the gun was a constant presence in his mind. It seemed to be calling to him from the kitchen, saying, “What are you doing here, you fool? Get out now. Go to the police. This story will get you killed. Or worse.”
Unfortunately, he shared Cal Copplin's view of the police. Even under existing anti-terror laws, Rafe could be held for weeks without access to lawyers on the mere suspicion that he knew more than he was telling. And that's if they bothered to follow their own procedures. Worse than that, with a co-operative judge to keep extending his interrogation, he could be held indefinitely. Being a journalist wasn't likely to help him much, especially since he had been loudly critical of police corruption and police incompetence in the past.
Of course, it would all come right in the end. He really believed that. His story would be believed, his innocence would be obvious, and they'd let him go. But Rafe didn't think he could face an interrogation, however short, however gentle. He'd had enough interrogation to last him a lifetime. A single moment handcuffed to a table while someone threatened him and bullied him would be like a month in Hell. The very thought of it set his heart thudding and his stomach knotting. He'd go mad. He'd rather be dead.
He couldn't go to the police. Not with all these unanswered questions. Guilt by association was a police investigation technique he knew only too well.
And that left getting on the next flight to Canberra with his tail between his legs and telling Becky his lead was a dead end. Lying. Letting September 10 do whatever they were planning. Keeping his head down, saving his own skin at the expense of whoever else might get hurt. But it was the best he could do. Anyone who knew – really knew – what he'd gone through at Sam Hopwood's hands would understand. No-one would think he was a coward. He'd come back too soon. The scars were – literally – too fresh. He saw that now. He just needed to take it easy for a while. Ease back into it slowly.
And there was always Ginny. She could go to the cops. She could do the right thing. It wasn't all on his shoulders. He looked across at the woman lying on the sofa, completely unlatched, deep in some VR fantasy world, seemingly unconscious. That was because the strange Mr. Copplin didn't have a tank. Who in the world didn't have a tank? That, right there, was a sure-fire sign that the guy was a crazy terrorist. The government wouldn't need its new anti-terror legislation if they just rounded up and locked away all the creeps and misfits who didn't use a tank. How do you work, how do you have any kind of social life without a tank?
And yet Copplin had managed it. At least enough to seduce this poor naïve woman and drag her into his insane conspiracy. Rafe felt sorry for Ginny. How could he not? But not sorry enough to hang around and let her drag him into more trouble. Staying in Copplin's unit had seemed like a neat solution to his problems for a while there, but now there was that gun, yelling at him from the kitchen, and yet another wadge of incriminating documents that he daren't even look at in case they contained more names he shouldn't know, more facts he shouldn't be aware of.
Ginny's eyes popped open and she caught him staring at her. A small frown crossed her face and he fought the urge to explain himself, as if she'd openly accused him of leering at her while she was unlatched.
“Got to have a pee,” she said, sitting up. “I'm hungry too. I can see why they invented tanks.” She got up and went to the bathroom. When she came out, she went to the kitchen and poked around in the fridge. “There's a few microwave meals in the freezer, do you want one?” He told her no. He was hungry still, but he couldn't face eating. Five minutes later she was back on the sofa, forking something that smelt like Thai food into her mouth. The smell made his stomach heave.
“You still going back to Canberra?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Then what?” He must have looked as puzzled as he felt. “Then what?” she repeated. “You write your story and move on? Is that how this works?”
“Not quite. I won't be writing the story.”
She nodded as if she understood. “And what about Richards?”
“What about him?”
�
��He followed you here. Maybe he'll follow you home. He just has to hang around at the airport when the Canberra flights leave, or, better still, wait at Canberra airport for you to fly in.”
Rafe didn't like this. “Why should he? He was only tailing me so he could get to Tonia?” At least, that's what he'd assumed.
“So why was he still following you after you went to Tonia's place yesterday?”
“Did you think of this while you were playing ScareWorld III?” It was a stupid dig, but he was irritated, not least, he now realised, because Ginny was clearly more calm than he was.
“I was at a J. C. Bach concert, actually. Listening to classical music helps me relax.”
Rafe clenched his teeth. Why did he follow me? “Maybe he found Tonia. Maybe I did lead him to her. Maybe he killed her or spooked her and that's why she wasn't around this morning. Maybe he wanted to know if I had any other September 10 contacts in town.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he thinks you're one of them. Maybe he's from a rival gang, or Tonia's lot managed to upset the September 10 hierarchy somehow.”
Rafe got up and strode across the room. You could go mad wondering what the hell was really going on here. The apartment felt small and claustrophobic. He wanted to unlatch and find somewhere with room to breathe, to shake this feeling of the walls closing in on him. He even thought about going outside. But Richards could be out there, waiting for him.
He went into the kitchen and snatched up the silver cylinder. It looked like a single, seamless piece of metal. He tried pulling it and twisting it. Ginny was watching him from the door. “You should be careful with that,” she said. “What if it's a grenade or something?” He froze, then put the object back on the counter. Damn it, the woman was right. It could be anything, a tube of nerve gas, or a phial of some hideous doomsday virus.
“The only way past this is through it,” he said.
“What?”
He tried to unclench his jaw. “We're in this up to our eyeballs and we're stumbling around like bloody sheep. We need to know more. For a start, we need to know who the players are and what they're after. It's only by getting in deeper that we'll ever be safe again.” He looked at the little black box and decided not to touch it. Then he looked at the wad of paper. His eyes wouldn't look at the gun. They kept flinching away from it.
“All right,” he said. “How about this? We camp out here for a couple of days while we put this all together, work out as much as we can. If we need more, we'll go out into QNet and get what we need. We shouldn't be pussy-footing around. We're already in more danger than either of us can cope with. We can't make it much worse, but maybe we can make it better.”
“You mean we should go to the police?”
“No!” He took a breath. “No, I don't think the police would be a good idea right now. They'd probably burst in here and arrest us both for aiding known terrorists, or whatever.”
“But there's that detective, Chu, the tagger. He seemed OK. Maybe if we – ”
“No. Remember what Cal said. We can't even trust the police.” He really needed to convince her of that. “We need to do this without them. You know what they're like when they hear the word 'terrorist'. We'll be locked away for weeks with no civil rights and no hope of clearing up this mess.” Ginny looked unhappy but didn't argue. Relieved, he tried to give her something in return. “It'll be all right. We'll do this together. We're safe here for now. We've got some time to get to the bottom of it. Maybe the stuff Cal left us will fill in the blanks. Look, I want to show you something.” He passed her the address of his office. “Unlatch and meet me there, OK?”
She nodded and went to lie down on the sofa again. Rafe went to the bedroom and lay on the bed. In a moment, he was in his office, with Ginny at the door. He let her in and stood back to reveal all the whiteboards summarising the information he had from Tonia.
Her eyes were wide as she took it all in. “This was all in that folder from Tonia?”
“We should read the stuff Cal gave you and see if we can do the same with it, add it into this lot. Then we might see what it's all about.” He explained the name swaps for her so she could make sense of it.
She stood in front of the timeline that showed the progress of anti-terror laws around the world and matched it to the involvement of the various players. He could see her look from the first occurrence of Cal Copplin's codename – Recruit – in the UK ten years ago to the more recent ones in Australia. He sat down in the big, leather swivel chair from which he did most of his work and gave her time to soak it all up. She moved on to another board and then another, eventually returning to the timeline.
“Tonia says the bill won't pass in Australia,” he said.
She didn't turn away from the board. “I'd vote for it.”
“So would eighty percent of the country, according to the polls.” He glanced at the calendar on his wall. “In fact, we'll know in a couple of days. The plebiscite is on Saturday.”
“Then what? If people say yes, then what happens?”
“Then it goes to the parliament. The bill is tabled in the lower house for Monday. If it passes, it will go up to the Senate, but that's just a formality given the government has a majority in both houses. It'll be law before you know it.”
She turned to look at him and it struck him that she was subtly more attractive in VR, a better match for her beautiful hands, slightly taller, slimmer, longer legged. He was subtly better looking too, of course, and for the first time felt a little ashamed of himself, a little embarrassed for Ginny. Such a small, everyday deception, and one he wouldn't have noticed except they'd spent most of their time together so far on minimal aug.
“I don't really know what the bill's about,” she said. “I mean, I'm always hearing people going on about being for it or against it, but I don't remember ever hearing any details, just that it's supposed to help government agencies fight terrorists.”
“Yeah, well, that's what it's supposed to be about, and it's probably a good thing, really, only there's a few clauses in there that have the civil rights people up in arms – and with good cause.”
“Like what?”
Reluctantly, he asked his office librarian for a copy of the bill. He didn't want to spend his time educating someone who couldn't be bothered to check on what her government was asking her to vote on. In his view, people should take the trouble to keep themselves across that stuff. It infuriated him that, when it came to elections, his vote only counted as much as some moron's who watched the news once in a blue moon and didn't even know what the issues were, let alone where they stood on them. But that was democracy for you. Half the country thought whatever the tabloid feeds told them to think.
He tossed her the document. “It's clause 23.b.iii,” he said as she picked it up. “Nicely buried where few would bother to look. I forget the wording but it's something to the effect that 'in the national interest' and in matters of 'national security', the government has the right to monitor and filter any information on QNet to prevent the spread of sensitive information, or to modify such information so as to disguise the truth from or to mislead those who might choose to act against the State.”
Ginny shrugged. “Sounds OK to me. What's so bad about that?”
He made an effort not to sound as irritated as he felt. “It's the vagueness. The whole thing is wide open to abuse. A filter on the whole QNet? With the government able to change information to suit whatever it thinks is in the national interest? Doesn't that make you the least bit anxious? You do realise that everything goes through QNet these days, newsfeeds, financial transactions, all our aug and VR? Even the parliament itself meets in VR nowadays.”
“I think you're overreacting a bit, aren't you? The bill is about stopping terrorists. If the police feel they need more powers to manipulate the information these people are getting, I'm perfectly happy to help them out.”
“If I may say so, that's a very naïve position. If you give the government new powers, sooner or later
they'll start using them. Maybe not the present government – although I wouldn't put anything past that lot – but maybe the next one, or the next. What if, down the track, a right-wing religious party got in power and they thought it wasn't in the national interest to let atheists become teachers? How would we ever find out if the filter changed every atheist's job application to show they had criminal records for child molestation when the interviewer saw it, but then changed it back again when the applicant looked at it?”
Ginny put the bill down on a table. “Now you're just being silly. And paranoid. Is this why September 10 is against the bill? Or is it just because they're terrorists and they're protecting their own interests?”
Rafe gave up trying. He knew this was a no-win argument, having had it so many times before. Besides, he needed to get Ginny focused on the material on the whiteboards and how they could turn it into something more substantial. “I don't know,” he said. “But they've been tracking similar legislation all over the world. It's extremely important to them. Do you know where the name, September 10, comes from?” Perhaps sensing another lecture on its way, Ginny shook her head and looked away. “September 10 was the date of the vote in the US House of Representatives on their own equivalent of that.” He tapped the bill on the table.
Ginny frowned. “That's not what I read. Anyway, if they're a US organisation, what are they doing here?”
“Good question. Let's find out.” He jumped up and blanked out all the whiteboards. “Time we got an expert opinion.” He made a call to the Sentinel office and was routed to Jan, the feed's terrorism specialist. “I've been avoiding making this call,“ he told Ginny, “but it's time to start shaking things up. Jan? How's it going? That's the way. Look, can you pop into my office for a sec.? I need to pick your brains about something I'm working on. Yes, I'm sorry it's so late, but this will really only take a minute.”
A woman appeared at the door, young and pretty, and Rafe let her in. “Jan this is Ginny. Jan is our terrorism expert, aren't you mate?”
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