by Graham Potts
She dusted herself off and walked to the back of the shop, pushing through the exit.
And I’m going to burn it all down.
CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA FRIDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 11:56 AM AEST
Lee Singh shoved his way through the entrance of Agency Headquarters, unbuttoning his jacket as he marched towards the security gate. He opened his jacket for the security guards, showing the badge clipped to his belt and his holstered pistol, and walked through without breaking stride.
Singh elbowed his way through a bustling column of agents and walked towards the bank of elevators. The doors opened and a flood of suited agents poured out. Emily Hartigan was standing at the back of the lift, her hand on the rail.
She cleared her throat, walking towards the door.
Singh slapped his hand against the side of the elevator, blocking her path. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Get out of my way, Lee.”
He pushed her back into the elevator and pressed the button to close the doors. “Did you or did you not release a Be-On-the-Look- Out today?” He poked the button for Hartigan’s floor.
“You know, I believe I did.” She shrugged. “But you only care about what I know, not what I believe.”
His jowls tightened. “Tell me what you know about this person of interest.”
“Jesus, Lee,” Hartigan groaned. “I got a lead on a guy called the Bear. He’s Chechen and fought in the war for independence back in the day,” she said. “He joined the Organizatsiya and Nikolay Korolev made good use of his skills.”
The elevator doors opened, revealing a young trainee agent waiting to get on.
“Take the next one,” Singh snapped, closing the doors. He turned back to Hartigan. “You found this guy on file?”
“No, we don’t have one.” Hartigan leaned against the handrail. “But Russian intelligence was more than happy to give me everything they had on the guy, and I mean everything. It turns out they don’t consider the Bear a citizen because he fought on the wrong side during the Chechen wars.” She smoothed out a wrinkle in her blouse. “One of the things I found in their file was a list of known aliases and associated passport imprints.”
Singh put his hands into his pockets and jingled his keys.
“I contacted our guys at Immigration to get the Bear’s passport numbers on the database. It took some effort, but I got them added and they immediately scored a hit.” She paused to take a breath. “The Bear entered the country through Melbourne three weeks ago. That’s when I had the boys release a BOLO.”
Singh started pacing the elevator’s small floor space. “You know airports have been digitally archiving their CCTV footage since the war, right?”
She held up a hand. “Stand-alone servers, yes. We checked it out to see if we could discover where he went after he arrived. They got a few frames of him climbing into a taxi and they managed to get a fleet number. I called the dispatcher and it turns out the cab company keeps digital archives for employment performance reviews. I got the drop-off address.”
“Where?” The elevator doors opened and Singh placed his hand on Hartigan’s back, pushing her in front of him.
“A restaurant in an inner-city suburb of Melbourne. I contacted state police and ordered them to activate their tactical response unit.” She untied her hair and smoothed it out, pulling it tight behind her head. “They said they’d contact me when they had the Bear in custody.” She retied her hair, frowning when she saw a group of analysts crowded around the wall of televisions.
“Where have you been the last twenty minutes?” Singh asked, guiding her towards her cubicle.
“I went for a walk to clear my head.” She sat down on her chair. “Why?”
Singh gestured towards the bank of screens.
Hartigan turned and the blood drained from her face. The news channel had a helicopter in the air above Melbourne and the footage showed the remains of a building, though only one wall was still standing. Bricks were strewn across the street and all of the windows in the area had been shattered. A fountain of fire spouted from a gas main, a row of police vehicles had been crushed on the esplanade, and paramedics were desperately sifting through the dust and stones to find survivors. A crowd of people were gathered in the park across from the restaurant. Nearby, empty body bags had been placed in a neat line on the grass.
“See what happens when you keep me out of the loop,” Singh said.
Hartigan doubled over, vomiting into her rubbish bin.
“Emily!” Singh said, his hands on his hips. “I need you to focus.” She raised her head and wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand. “But I did everything right,” she said. “This was good police work.”
“And you thought that was enough?” Singh scoffed. “You should’ve told me what you had and we could’ve prevented this.”
She ran her hand over her hair, her eyes searching for something to drink. “I did everything…” She found a mug of cold coffee on her desk and gulped it down.
“Emily!” Singh swivelled her chair around and snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Snap out of it. It’s time to move forward.”
“Move…”
“I need you to get all the files together. We have to go and we have to move quickly.”
Her gaze fell to the floor. “They died because of me,” she rasped. “I put them there. I ordered them to…”
“Hey! Emily!”
“…dead because of me.”
Singh stood up. “Clean yourself up. We have to go.”
“I can’t…”
“Get your shit together, Emily,” he said firmly, checking his watch. “Be ready in forty-five minutes.”
Hartigan nodded and stood up, dropping her empty mug on the carpet. “Clean myself,” she mumbled, staggering towards the bathroom.
Singh crouched to collect Hartigan’s coffee mug and stopped to find space for it on her desk. The workspace was piled with reams of paper, thick files, and stacks of books. Sachets of sugar, a jar of coffee, a box of instant soup, and a half-empty bag of jellybeans crowded the computer monitor. Post-it notes bordered the screen, reminders to collect dry-cleaning, buy milk, and pay bills, mixed up with notes about persons of interest, websites, and article references.
He placed the mug on the mousepad, noticing a slip of paper sticking out from under the keyboard. It was a lengthy note scrawled in pen and he unfolded it, smoothing it out on the desk.
Singh read and reread the note before filing it in his jacket pocket. The computer monitor burst into life, and he realised he must have roused it by moving the mouse. He grabbed the mouse, hovering over the shutdown button, but he noticed that a program was open on the task bar: a media player. He clicked on the tab and the program filled the screen. A DVD was cued so he pressed play.
It was footage of Simone Elliot in a jail cell. She had been stripped naked, her hands and ankles cuffed, and she was hanging from a rafter. Her body was a sweaty wreck, her skin mottled with bruises, blood and urine dripping from her toes. Her mouth was covered with tape and she was breathing deeply through her nose, her chest rising and falling quickly, her shouted curses muffled as she fought against the restraints.
Two police constables were pounding her with telephone directories, their uniforms soaked from the exertion. Elliot shouted through her gag, the veins bulging in her neck. Singh skipped forward. They used coaxial cables next; then ice-water; then capsicum spray. He paused the video. There was a face in the foreground, red with rage, and demanding a confession.
Emily Hartigan’s father.
And she was watching this shit at work.
“You fucking idiot, Hartigan.” Singh ejected the disc and placed it in a case before pocketing it inside his jacket. He straightened his tie and looked up at the news bulletin playing on the television.
The story had changed, the newsreader telling the viewers about something more hopeful. Singh tilted his head.
“…that China has officially announced the
y will be ceasing trade with Russia due to what they characterise as exorbitant transit tariffs. While Beijing hasn’t ruled out revisiting the energy partnership in the future, sources say that Titan Energy CEO Geoffrey Geldenhuys is already scheduled to visit China on Monday to sign a ten-year deal.”
“Shit,” Singh muttered. He turned away from the wall of screens and marched towards the elevator.
The office door opened and Singh leaned forward in the leather chair, pushing a button on the phone and placing the receiver down. He propped his elbows on the deputy director’s desk.
The deputy director entered cautiously. “I don’t remember arranging a meeting with you, Lee.”
“I need to talk to you,” Singh said.
“Did you need to do it while sitting behind my desk?” Singh steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “I need to ask a favour.”
“Okay,” the deputy director said slowly. “But I’m unlikely to grant you any favours until you bring me up to speed. I distinctly remember telling you to be discreet, and that attack on the hotel was anything but.”
“I’ll come to that.”
The deputy director frowned. “Keep it brief, Lee.”
“I need to use the agency’s charter jet.” Singh folded his arms on the desk. “I need to go to Moscow.”
The deputy director snorted. “The charter is booked,” he said. “It’s going to Melbourne.”
“I know. I’m going with it. Then I’m going to Moscow.” The fish tank gurgled and the deputy director stopped in front of the glowing glass. “No, you’re not.”
“You should reconsider your answer.”
“Or what?” The deputy director inspected the fish in his aquarium.
“Or I’ll inform the National Security Committee that you told them what they wanted to hear because you were too embarrassed to tell them you had no reliable information.”
A large fish drifted in clumsy circles inside the aquarium, its mouth opening and closing slowly, its empty eyes surveying its empire. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You called her personally.”
“What?”
“Emily told me that when I first met her,” Singh continued, “but she’s just a junior analyst, so why would you do that? Then you asked her that question during the brief about the potential threat to our oil trade, and she had no idea what you were talking about.”
Other tiny fish darted around the tank in all directions, swimming circles around the big fish. The deputy director reached for a bottle of fish food.
“I got curious so I asked around.” Singh reclined in the chair and laced his fingers together behind his head. “You gave the prime minister a report authored by Emily Hartigan. I got a copy of it and it’s full of excerpts from her thesis. It concludes that the Organizatsiya is made up of men who had rough childhoods and would whine if they lost their money, but they ultimately pose no threat to our national security.”
The deputy director used his thumb to pop the cap on the bottle.
Singh swivelled on the chair and placed his feet on the desk. “Then Volkov came to town,” he continued. “And you phoned Hartigan personally because the NSC told you to get her back on the case. Her name was all over the report and she was being called in to reassess the threat.” He shrugged. “But she didn’t know that.”
The deputy director sprinkled food into the aquarium and watched the fish chase the crumbs around the tank.
“You arranged the brief so you could ask her that question, hoping she’d put her name to your bad analysis right in front of everyone. Meanwhile, you called me in to operate in the background, hoping I’d clean up if your mistake put us at risk.” Singh straightened his tie and stood up. “You must’ve been praying that we’d catch Volkov. If he had told us there was no threat, you could stand by your analysis, even if he lied. And if he had warned us about impending danger, you could blame Hartigan for bad analysis and still have time to save the day, taking all the credit.”
The deputy director studied Singh cautiously, his tongue pushing against the inside of his cheek.
“Tell me, do you feel a little bad for being this fucking stupid?” Singh asked.
“You have no evidence that I—”
“I have her thesis, a copy of the report, and a contact in the prime minister’s office.” Singh walked around the desk and tugged at the cuffs of his jacket. “I want my flight to Moscow.”
“Fine.” The deputy director tossed the bottle on the table and raised a finger. “But on one condition.”
“I wonder what that could be.”
“If there’s an inquiry—”
“When,” Singh said. “When there’s an inquiry.”
The deputy director frowned. “I need you to provide a statement that supports my position.”
“Why should I?”
“Because the agency is dead if you don’t,” the deputy director said, pointing at the ground. “They’ve been throwing money at us since the war, but our focus has been narrow. This question came out of nowhere, and the Russian desk is staffed by two analysts who have worked there since the fucking nineties, and one kid who believes in unicorns.” He rubbed his throat. “But Hartigan knows her stuff and said all the right things in her paper. It was the best analysis I had. And then Volkov had to kill that bastard in that fucking pub.” He threw his hands in the air. “I thought it would be nothing, but I needed you around if it spiralled out of control.”
“So you were going to throw your mistake in my lap.”
“This is what you were hired to do and I told you to do it quietly.” He waved towards the window. “And now we’ve got bombs going off.”
Singh shook his head and ran his hand down his face. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, coming from you,” the deputy director said. “What’s your angle? Why Moscow now?” He stuck out his chin. “You’re up to something.”
Singh folded his arms across his chest.
“I need some kind of status report, Lee.” He shrugged. “How else am I supposed to explain your excursion to the NSC?”
“The embassy in Moscow is pushing for talks with President Nevzorova.” Singh glanced at his watch. “If the embassy succeeds, I can be there to explain what the agency has learned so far, and maybe do some work behind the scenes.”
“Wow, that’s actually…” The deputy director clapped his hands together and grinned. “That’s perfect! How did you find out about that?”
Singh walked to the door. “The NSC told me about it when they ordered me to go to Moscow.”
The deputy director’s mouth opened and closed quickly. “What?” he choked.
Singh placed his hand on the doorknob. “You can ask them if you like.” He dipped his head towards the desk. “Your speaker phone’s on. The NSC is on line one.”
He slammed the door behind him.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA FRIDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 6:04 PM AEST
A crisis centre had been set up in the art gallery near the restaurant. Sculptures and glass cabinets were shoved against the walls. A triage centre had been set up in the main hall and the art house cinema was being used for nursing the injured. The gallery’s lobby had been commandeered for use by the authorities.
Singh unbuttoned his jacket and cast his eyes over the entourage of agents that had followed him into the lobby. All around them dishevelled intelligence personnel and police officers were darting between the desks and pinning things to maps. Photographs were stuck to a whiteboard decorated with scribbled names and question marks. Telephones rang, ashtrays overflowed, and sheets of paper and empty coffee cups littered the floor.
“Wait outside while I sort this out,” Singh said.
Hartigan stared at him numbly and nodded in surrender, pulling her coat tighter around her shoulders and leaving the lobby. She slowly descended the steps to the pavement and studied the scene before her.
The restaurant was no
w a pile of rubble and rescue workers were trying to clear it away. Earth-moving equipment thundered around the wreckage, shifting debris to waiting trucks, while small front-end loaders whined over the mounds of brick and twisted metal, clearing space for men to search for remaining survivors. A crane was parked on the cobblestones, its long arm reaching up into the sky while the steel cable tugged at girders and beams, lifting them from the ground. Meanwhile, a chain of workers passed pieces of shattered furniture and brickwork away from the pile to a waiting skip bin.
Hartigan ran her hands through her hair and glanced around. Diesel light-sets rumbled at each corner of the block, carving a dome of artificial daylight in the dusk. Lights were flashing everywhere: the orange lights of the earth-movers; the red and blue lights of emergency vehicles, paramedics, and police officers; the pale yellow beam of the rescue workers’ torches, shimmering above the wreckage as their operators listened over the din for any calls for help beneath their feet; and the white bulbs of camera flashes as journalists took photographs for the news agencies.
A young boy was sitting on the kerb. He looked to be about twelve and was wearing an oversized jacket and a baseball cap pulled down tight over his shock of orange hair. He was tugging on the sleeves of his jacket, his back straight, his unblinking eyes watching the rescue workers as they rummaged through the rubble. A broad-shouldered police constable stood guard over the boy, his arms crossed.
Hartigan approached the constable, flashing her badge. “Agent Hartigan,” she said. “What’s going on here?”
The constable pointed at the boy. “We caught him in the triage centre,” he explained. “His name’s Rusty and he has form, shoplifting and pick-pocketing mostly. We found 200 dollars on him when we nabbed him.”
“Where did he get it?” she asked, peering down at Rusty.
The constable shrugged. “He said a friend gave it to him.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“He’s obviously lying.”
“It’s also obvious that there are more important matters to attend to, constable. Why don’t you leave Rusty to me?”