‘Shit!’ said Kerrie. ‘You’d better pull over.’
Craig drove on another hundred metres or so then stopped near a dirt driveway with a tin drum for a letterbox. He cut the engine and the two ASIO officers turned around and stared out the rear window.
‘Lucky the green car was only going slow,’ said Craig.
‘Yeah, they’re lucky, all right,’ agreed Kerrie. She turned to Craig. ‘What do you think we should do?’
Craig shrugged. ‘Nothing much we can do. Just wait here till they get their shit together. Then get on their arse again.’
‘I’ll ring Blessing,’ said Kerrie.
A few people came out of the service station when they heard the noise. But there didn’t appear to be anything major, so after a quick look they went back inside. Several passing cars slowed down for a moment, then after satisfying their curiosity continued on their way.
‘Okay. Now everybody stay cool,’ said Agent Moharic.
‘Stay cool,’ echoed Agent Coleborne. ‘Jesus Christ, Floyd! You nearly got us all killed.’
‘Twice,’ said Agent Niland.
‘All right.’ Agent Moharic gestured defensively. ‘It was my fault. But let’s just get out of the car, go talk to the driver and try and sort this out. And remember. We’re all here working for the Lord.’
‘Talking about the Lord,’ said Agent Niland. ‘Who’s gonna ring Sierota?’
‘You can,’ answered Agent Moharic.
The three agents got out and inspected the damage. The Cherokee’s back door was stoved in, but it still opened; the Rover had a crumpled right mudguard and the headlight was smashed with the rim hanging down. Mrs Winters was sitting behind the wheel with her seatbelt on, unhurt and staring into space. She looked up when she saw the three men approaching in their black suits.
‘It’s an old lady,’ said Agent Coleborne. ‘Looks like a nurse.’
‘I don’t think she’s hurt,’ noted Agent Moharic. He approached the driver’s side window. ‘Hello, madam,’ he said unctuously. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, yes. I think so,’ replied Mrs Winters. ‘I’m just a little shaken. That’s all.’
‘I’m terribly sorry about what happened,’ apologised Agent Moharic. ‘But a kangaroo jumped out in front of me.’
‘A kangaroo?’ said Mrs Winters.
‘Yeah. A big grey thing,’ said Agent Colborne. ‘Looked like a mouse on steroids.’
Mrs Winters stared up at Agent Moharic. ‘Are you Americans?’
‘Yessir, ma’am,’ smiled Agent Moharic. ‘We’re with the church. We’re Mormons. I’m Elder Gorgel. This is Elder Caleb. And that’s Elder Bozidar.’
Mrs Winters rolled her eyes. ‘Oh my God!’
‘That’s him,’ smiled Agent Moharic. ‘Always there when you need his guidance. Here. Let me help you out of the car.’
Agent Moharic opened the door and helped Mrs Winters out of her seat. She straightened herself up and inspected the damage.
‘I’ve been driving almost fifty years and never had an accident,’ she said. ‘I don’t quite know what to say.’
‘Yes, well, there’s not much damage,’ said Agent Moharic. ‘And praise the Lord, no one got hurt.’
‘Yes, thankfully,’ agreed Mrs Winters.
‘So there shouldn’t be any need to call the police. We’ll just give you our particulars and be on our way.’
‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Winters. ‘I’ll have to call the police. I don’t want to lose my no claim bonus.’
‘But,’ pleaded Agent Moharic, ‘it was all our fault. And we’re fully insured.’
‘That’s right,’ said Agent Coleborne. ‘I mean, if you can’t trust three men working for the Lord, who can you trust?’
‘Exactly,’ said Mrs Winters. ‘No. We’ll call the police,’ she insisted. ‘Your friend’s got his mobile phone out now. We’ll use that. They won’t take long to get here.’
Agent Moharic gritted his teeth. ‘Very well, madam. If you insist.’
In the air-conditioned comfort of Bible Bungalow, Zimmer Sierota had his eyes closed as he held the phone and spoke to Agent Niland. ‘You what?’ he moaned.
‘We had an accident,’ said Agent Niland. ‘Floyd hit an old lady driving some sort of British car.’
Sierota shook his head. ‘Don’t try and tell me he was driving on the wrong side of the road?’
‘Well…yeah, boss. But only for a couple of seconds.’
‘Jesus H. Christ!’ exclaimed Sierota. ‘Was there much damage to the car? Is anybody hurt? Are the police there?’
‘No. It’s only a small thing. But the old broad wants to call the highway patrol.’
‘Shit!’ Sierota thought for a moment. ‘Okay. There shouldn’t be a problem. But if there is, get back to me. You got that?’
‘Yessir.’
A couple of hundred metres away in the white Commodore, Craig and Kerrie were still following proceedings back at the accident. Officer Cozens was watching through a pair of binoculars.
‘What are they doing now, Craig?’ asked Officer Ryman.
‘The mobiles are out. So I’d say they’re calling the police.’
‘I wonder how long that’s going to take?’ asked Kerrie.
‘Dunno.’
‘How about we duck back to that service station while we’re waiting and get something to drink.’
‘Okay. Ring Blessing first and give him an update.’
Seated at her table in Muswellbrook Library, Jesse was steadily ploughing through the reference section on old Muswellbrook. She hadn’t found anything that pointed directly to where the mysterious Klaus Slate had left his doomsday machine, but she did photocopy something interesting that cross-referenced with the contents of one of the old briefcases.
Down at the pool, Mick read his book, swam two kilometres, and splashed around in the beautiful clear water enjoying the afternoon immensely. Until he’d met Jesse, Mick had never been much of a reader. But having a girlfriend who owned a bookshop, he had no choice. Jesse started him off with a few easy reads, and now Mick rather liked a good book. At the moment he was reading Jabberrock, by Obstfeld and Fitzgerald, The Ultimate Book of Rock ‘N’ Roll Quotations. Two quotations Mick found amusing. One was by Frank Zappa:
‘Rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.’
Another from Elton John:
‘Sometimes when I’m flying over the Alps I think, that’s all the cocaine I sniffed. We once tried to figure out how much money we spent on coke and alcohol. We were so disgusted that we stopped.’
Sergeant Bob Schueling was a big, easy-going country cop with thinning brown hair who’d seen all sorts of things after twenty-five years in the Force. He was on his own in the small police station when the call came in that there’d been an accident not far from Branxton. Once Sergeant Schueling had established it wasn’t serious, he replied that he’d be there the first chance he could; which meant as soon as he’d eaten two massive corned beef sandwiches and a home-made lamington, washed down with a huge mug of strong tea; followed by a long, relaxing dump while he read the paper.
Back at the scene of the accident, Agents Coleborne and Moharic were sitting impatiently in the Jeep Cherokee when Agent Niland returned from the garage with several bars of chocolate. They looked up from whatever they weren’t doing when he climbed in the back.
‘Hey guys,’ he said, handing round the chocolates. ‘You’re not going to believe this, but I thought I just saw Vincent and his girlfriend drive out of that gas station in a white car.’
‘In a white car?’ said Agent Moharic.
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Agent Coleborne.
‘Well, I’m not a hundred per cent sure, because I was expecting him to be driving that yellow Buick. But goddamn! It sure looked like them.’
‘Did you get the number?’ asked Agent Moharic.
Agent Niland shook his he
ad. ‘No. But there was another car in there like the one they were driving. Called a Holden Commodore.’
‘Christ!’ said Agent Moharic. ‘That’s all we need now. They’re driving a different vehicle.’
Mrs Winters was seated patiently in her Rover reading the latest Mills and Boon by Valerie Parv, when Sergeant Schueling pulled up behind her and got out of the patrol car with his notebook. Mrs Winters put the book down and removed her reading glasses.
‘Well, what do you know,’ said Agent Niland. ‘Here’s the pride of the Noo South Wales highway patrol now.’
‘About friggin’ time,’ said Agent Moharic. ‘Christ! How long does it take these hillbillies down here to respond to a call?’
‘You want to know how long, Floyd?’ said Agent Coleborne. ‘Check the size of this guy’s ass. The words “move it” wouldn’t be on his radar.’
‘All right. Come on,’ said Agent Moharic, opening his door. ‘And be cool with this guy. Okay? Very friendly. And very cool.’
‘Cool and friendly it is, Elder Gorgel,’ said Agent Niland.
By the time Mrs Winters got out of her car, and the agents theirs, Sergeant Schueling had established the accident wasn’t more than a bingle and close enough to a waste of his time having to drive out there. But at least the people involved appeared to be solid citizens who were all calm and collected.
‘Looks like you’ve had a bit of bad luck there, people,’ he said, taking out a biro. ‘Okay. Who wants to tell me what happened?’
‘Officer,’ said Agent Moharic. ‘We’re church elders. I was driving, and it was entirely my fault.’
‘He said a kangaroo jumped out in front of him,’ voiced Mrs Winters.
‘A kangaroo?’ Picking up on Agent Moharic’s accent, Sergeant Schueling turned back to him ‘Was it a red one, or a grey one?’
‘I’m not sure,’ replied Agent Moharic. ‘It all happened so fast. Sort of in between. Reddish…kinda grey.’
‘Did it have stripes across its back?’ asked Sergeant Schueling.
‘Yeah. It could have.’
‘Sounds more like a Tasmanian Tiger,’ Sergeant Schueling nodded sagely. ‘We get a lot of them up here this time of year.’
‘Then that’s what it was,’ said Agent Moharic. ‘A Tasmanian Tiger.’
‘Came right on out of nowhere,’ added Agent Coleborne.
‘Darndest thing I ever did see,’ said Agent Niland.
Sergeant Schueling knew the three American Bible bashers were lying. But they were no doubt only attempting to hide their embarrassment at causing the accident. So he considered it no big deal. Nevertheless, Sergeant Schueling wrote it down in his report exactly as Agent Moharic stated. Driver of black vehicle swerved to avoid large Tasmanian Tiger. The big Sergeant would Xerox that when he got back to the station and pin it up on the wall, then tell everybody he knew when he went for a beer after work. Apart from that, everything was fine. Neither driver had been drinking, Agent Moharic’s driver’s licence was in order, the car was registered and insured, and Mrs Winters definitely wasn’t a menace to society. Of course if Sergeant Schueling had bothered to search the Jeep Cherokee and found a compartment in the back full of guns and ammunition, it would have been a different story. Instead, he rummaged around in the boot of the patrol car till he found a roll of duct tape and, with the help of the three concerned elders, secured Mrs Winters’ headlight till she could get her car to a garage.
Finally, Mrs Winters was on her way, Sergeant Schueling was on his way, and cool and friendly to the end, the three elders were on their way also, although beneath their smiles, the agents would have liked nothing better than to have shot both Mrs Winters and Sergeant Schueling. Between her ringing the police, Sergeant Schueling getting there and moving around like a sloth with a haemorrhoid problem when he did, the agents were now hours behind time and it would be dark when they arrived in Muswellbrook trying to find a yellow 1936 Buick and somewhere to stay for the night.
It was late and the pool was filling with children being coached in the finer arts of swimming when Mick folded his towel, marked the page in his book and put it in his backpack. He drove back to the hotel and went straight to his room. After a quick shave in the shower block he changed into a pair of jeans and a grey Powderfinger T-shirt, then plugged in his radio. Mick was lying back on the bed listening to James Blundell on a country music station when Jesse came in the door. She had a newspaper in her bag and an odd look on her face.
‘Hey. How did you go?’ asked Mick.
Jesse handed Mick the newspaper and tossed her bag on the other bed. ‘Read that,’ she said, without bothering to sit down. ‘It’s the afternoon edition. Have a look on page three.’
Mick switched off the radio and took the Newcastle paper. Andrew Johns had cut himself shaving, so that was splashed all over the front page. A captured tiger shark at Stockton Beach was on the second page. But the top half of the third page was a graphic photo taken at the Fenton Avenue crime scene, with the story taking up the bottom half of the page. Mick sat up on the bed as Jesse sat down on hers.
‘Holy bloody hell!’ said Mick. ‘That’s…’
‘Your place,’ nodded Jesse.
‘And that’s…’
‘What’s left of your van.’
‘Shit a brick!’
‘Something like that. Yes,’ said Jesse.
With Jesse watching him impassively, Mick read the report, then read it again before putting the paper down and staring at her across the short distance between their beds.
‘It says they arrested Andrew. But his mother rang me after the funeral and said not to take any notice of what he said. And when I bumped into him in the street one day he apologised. Why…?’
‘Mick,’ Jesse said quietly. ‘There’s a couple of things I’ve been meaning to tell you…dear.’
‘Meaning to tell me,’ echoed Mick. ‘Like what…Oz?’
Jesse looked at the floor for a moment then looked up at Mick. ‘Mick. The Pentagon have got an open file on Tesla with NORAD called Assignment Arragon.’
‘NORAD?’ enquired Mick.
‘Yes, Mick. The North American Aerospace Defence Command. Underneath Pikes Peak in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. It’s part of their Star Wars defence shield.’
‘Star Wars. Okay. And what’s this Assignment Arragon?’
‘Assignment Arragon,’ said Jesse, ‘is to do with Tesla’s death ray machine. When he died, trunks of his papers went missing. The Russians got some. The old Yugoslavia got some. The Yanks got a few. But the important ones are still missing. Whoever finds them, finds the key to the ultimate non-nuclear weapon.’
‘So that’s what we’re looking for now?’ said Mick. ‘A box of papers.’
Jesse shook her head. ‘No. Tesla built a death ray machine out here all right. Assignment Arragon is mainly the search for the instructions on how to build it. What they don’t know is the thing’s already built. Or maybe they do know, but they don’t know where. Who knows what they know?’
‘And they being NORAD?’
Jesse shook her head. ‘No. I believe it’s the NSA.’
‘The NSA? Who’s the bloody NSA?’
‘That’s the other thing I have to tell you, Mick. Remember round your place on Wednesday night, I looked up Project Piggie on the internet and the monitor went all funny?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I said it was a power surge.’ Jesse pointed to the paper. ‘After reading that, I reckon the NSA hacked into your computer.’
‘Hacked into my computer?’ Mick shook his head. ‘Christ, Oz! As well as worried, I’m getting a bit confused. All right. Who’s the bloody NSA? And what’ve they got to do with Project bloody Piggie?’
‘Okay,’ replied Jesse. ‘The NSA is the United States National Security Agency. The Yanks set it up after 9/11 along with the Patriot Act.’
‘Go on,’ said Mick.
‘These people are like the right-wing weirdo that organised them. Crazy. They
see terrorists under every bed. In their cornflakes. Down the dunny. Up their grandmother’s dress. And as well as being crazy, they’re ruthless. They don’t give a shit who they kill or kidnap in good old Uncle Sam’s war against terrorism.’
‘Not to mention freedom and democracy and God bless America.’
‘Yeahhh. Well, yuh got that right, pilgrim,’ drawled Jesse.
‘Okay,’ said Mick. ‘Now back to Project Piggie.’
‘All right,’ said Jesse. ‘Project Piggie has to be a spin-off from Assignment Arragon. Tesla might have alluded to it at some time. Now it’s keyed into a Pentagon search engine. I triggered it at your place. And bingo! They zeroed in on you and sent someone to stop you from finding it. In other words, Mick, the NSA is on your arse. And mine too, you can bet.’
Mick stared at Jesse for a moment. ‘In other words, Oz, we blew it. All that talk about saving our arses is out the window. We’re rooted.’
‘Yes,’ Jesse replied slowly. ‘You could pretty much say that.’
Mick stood up and threw his hands in the air. ‘Well, that’s it. We got to get home. And we got to go to the police. And you’d better ring your parents. I’ll ring my sister.’ Mick reached for his bag. ‘Where’s my phone?’
Jesse shook her head firmly and stopped him. ‘No,’ she emphasised. ‘Using your mobile’s the worst thing you can do. If they could find you through your computer, they’ll trace you even quicker on your mobile.’
‘Then we’ll go to the local police,’ said Mick. ‘Come on. They’re just up the road.’
‘No,’ said Jesse again. ‘Mick. This is that big, you can’t even trust the cops.’
‘Can’t trust the local wallopers? Well, if you can’t trust them, who can you trust?’
‘No one,’ said Jesse. ‘We’re on our own.’
‘On our own? Oh shit! That’s just great.’ Mick looked directly at Jesse. ‘So what are we gonna do?’
‘Do? Nothing,’ replied Jesse.
‘Nothing? What, just let them shoot us or blow us up? Yeah, pig’s arse. You’re talking to a Newcastle boy here, woman.’
The Tesla Legacy Page 11