by Ann Massey
A transport vehicle was waiting on the tarmac at Pearce, the RAAF’s aerodrome. I asked the driver to stop on the outskirts of the city. Once the jeep turned the corner, I flagged a taxi. “I’m a bit short of the readies, buddy. Do you know any cheap hotels?” I asked the driver in my best American accent.
“There’s the Exchange in Murray Street, but it’s just a dosser for derros[20]. You’d be better off at a Backpackers, mate.”
“No thanks. I’m too old to share a six-bed dorm.”
“Well don’t say you weren’t warned.”
* * *
The Exchange’s foyer was dark and dingy and the reception desk was unattended. No one showed up when I rang the bell. Five minutes later, I opened a side door and found myself in a regular bar filled with a cheerfully noisy crowd. In response to my complaint, the barman said, “It’s lunch time, mate.”
“No worries.” I glanced at the array of taps. It had been a long time since I’d tasted Aussie Lager. I ordered a pint of VB[21], found an empty table by a window and settled down to wait.
Two pints and burger later, the barman came across. “You’re sure yer wanna stay ’ere?”
The icy beer had gone down a treat and the burger wasn’t half bad either. Either Aussie expectations had escalated or mine had dropped. “Yeah, Bud, just for a couple of nights.”
He called out to a waitress clearing the tables. “Keep an eye on the bar. I’ll be back in a mo.”
I grinned. The bartender had used the phrase unwittingly. He didn’t know that joke had followed me from kindergarten, along with moron, mojo and my teachers’ favourite unmotivated. Nor would he ... I had no intention of registering as Geronimo Jones.
“Who sent you to this dump?” he asked over his shoulder, as I followed him into the lobby.
“A cabbie.”
“Well, maybe you should take a look at the room first?”
He was trying to be helpful, but I didn’t think his boss would see it that way. I shrugged. “I’m broke ... how much is it?”
“Fifty dollars a night ... in advance.”
I took out my wallet, hesitating over the notes as I thought a tourist would. “Book me in for three nights.”
He pushed the register towards me. My sole reason for booking into this grungy dump was to avoid providing ID. I signed Pete Mitchell after my boyhood hero, the maverick pilot in Top Gun. I hesitated at the address line. The guy directly above had written no fixed abode. I followed suit and held my breath.
The bartender raised his eyebrows. I thought I was sunk but just then the waitress poked her head through the door. “How long will you be, Tony? I’m needed in the kitchen?”
“Keep your shirt on I’m dealing with a guest.”
He waited until she left before turning his attention to me. “You’re in three, the second door on the right at the top of the stairs.” He handed me the key, a real one not a card, and a rough towel, grayish white and worn thin. “The showers and toilets are on the floor above ... at the end of the corridor.”
He bent down and hunted through a cupboard under the desk. “You better have this.” He handed me a toilet roll. “I’d keep it in yer room if I were you.”
I was hit with the dank musty smell of unwashed blankets when I opened the door. The small square room that was to be my home was bare apart from a bed, and a straight-backed wooden chair. Bedbug territory, I thought eyeing the lumpy double bed pushed up against a damp and mouldy wall; its threadbare cover stained with the lives of its past occupants. The unhygienic conditions didn’t faze me. My shots were up-to-date. I walked over to the small grimy window and tried to raise it by pushing the handles along the bottom sash but it was jammed. No point in complaining. I pushed my kitbag under the bed and set off for my old stamping ground.
* * *
Stirling Highway in Claremont where Beth now resided was around the corner from my old school. I was on tenterhooks. I pulled up my hood and kept my head down. It’d just be my luck to run into a former school mate. Equally concerning, I’d grown up in Cottesloe, an adjacent suburb. My family still lived there. I always stayed with them when I was home on leave. God knows what I’d say should I run into my mother who frequented Claremont’s exclusive boutiques. She’d never forgive me.
I reached Beth’s apartment block without being recognised. School got out at three-thirty. Some teachers beat their pupils to the school gates others stay back preparing for the next day. I reckoned Beth fell into the latter category. As expected, when I rang the bell there was no answer. I settled down to wait. Beth arrived ninety minutes later clutching a tub of student files, with a bulging bag and laptop over her shoulder.
Her face was a picture. “Mo! Is it really you? I can’t believe it.”
“Thought I’d surprise you.”
“Well, you certainly did that!” She dumped the tub and laptop on the garden chair I’d just vacated and began rummaging through her shoulder bag. “Where have you sprung from?”
“Andrews in Maryland. I’ve just concluded a training course on the US’s latest fighter jet.”
She looked up from her search. “And the US air force trusts you with it?”
“They have to take who they can get,” I said, just as straight-faced. “Besides Doug’s ultra-lite is the only plane I’ve crashed.”
“So far...”
The sparkle in her eyes took the sting out of her reply. I grinned and said, “Yikes, you haven’t changed.”
She raised a pair of well-shaped eyebrows. “Humph,” she mumbled and buried her head once more in her bag.
I understood the reason for the aggrieved humph for she had completely overhauled her appearance. While she was preoccupied, I took stock. Beth had gone from a frizzy-haired carrot top to a smooth haired blonde. Her makeup was flawless without a single freckle in sight. The bane of her girlhood, mismatched eyes were now bright blue. The overall effect was stunning, but it was like looking at a stranger — which in a way made what I was here to do easier.
“Eureka,” she said, a few minutes later, jangling an overloaded key-ring, and looking the picture of elegant sophistication in a well-tailored suit and skyscraper heels. In my experience, teachers were on their feet all day — she’d have been better off in flatties. But without them I guessed students would tower over her.
“You’re looking good,” I said as an ice-breaker. “Er ... very stylish.”
“Thanks.” She looked me up and down taking in my faded jeans and the dark hoody I’d worn to hide my face. “Modish it how I’d describe you,” she said, stressing the first syllable.
Beth never could resist making sarcastic comments based on my name.
I uttered a stage groan. “Go on Macbeth, twist the knife.”
“Touché.” She gave me an appreciative grin. “Well we can’t stand out here all afternoon exchanging quips.” She inserted her key in the lock, opened the door and turned around to pick up the tub and laptop but I beat her to it.
She stood back to allow me to proceed her. I gave the open-plan room the once over. “This is nice.”
She shrugged. “I haven’t done much with it. It was my parent’s Perth pad. Now that I’m teaching at St. Agnes’s, Dad lets me live here.”
“I was sorry to hear about your mother.” I meant it. Noelene Godson had been kind to me when most people, most notably her husband, wrote me off as a bad egg. “How are you?”
“Okay ... it’s worse for Annie.”
“Yes, it would be ... how old is she?”
“She’s just turned ten. She was born right after ... well, you know what!”
Without me having to work at it, Beth had provided an opening. “Do you ever think of those days?”
“I try not to.”
“Doug told me you were an aid worker.”
“He told me you dropped bombs on innocent civilians.”
“Doug never said that ... for one thing it isn’t true.”
“Do you deny you flew missions to Syria?�
�
“No! I did ... but never as a bomber. I’m a fighter pilot. It was my job to protect our bombers from enemy fighters.”
“Mo, you enabled the carnage. You must see that you’re as guilty as the bombing crew.”
“For God’s sake, Beth, Assad was using chemical weapons!”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
I had no desire to continue this conversation. Like most civilians Beth had no idea what it was like out there. I said, “I’m not allowed to talk about this.” Actually, there was no regulation preventing me from discussing past missions, I was banking on her not knowing. Then, talk about putting my foot in it, I said, “I’d kill for a cup of tea.”
Fortunately, Beth didn’t notice my poor choice of words. Or else pretended not to. “Sorry I should have offered.”
I was still hugging her work stuff. I followed her through to the galley kitchen. “Where do you want these?”
“Could you dump them in my study? It’s at the top of the stairs, on the right, next to the bathroom.”
“May I use your bathroom,” I asked? A sneaky tip I’d learnt from watching cop shows.
“Of course.”
Instead I entered a small cramped room that was obviously multi-functional. A sofa bed was pushed against one wall. A large desk was crammed up against the one opposite. Above it were shelves jam-packed with books. A large netted trampoline stood in the centre of the room. Its presence surprised me. I couldn’t see bookish Beth spending her spare time on a trampoline. But what did I know? I still couldn’t bring myself to believe she was involved in a terrorist plot.
I dumped the tub on the floor and pushed some trays aside to make room for the laptop on a desk that was chockablock with archaic computer paraphernalia, piles of books and student essays.
Her PC didn’t interest me. ASP already kept track of her blog and browsing history. If there was anything new to be learnt, it had to be on her laptop. I shook my head. If she was a terrorist, she was a downright amateur. Giving me unsupervised access was plain stupid, but then nearly everyone assumes a locked computer is safe.
Before I set out I’d been provided with Spygot, a deliberate misspelling of ‘spigot’, a valve used to turn on, or off the flow of fluid in a water pipe. I don’t know who dreamt up Spygot, but to my mind it was a clever name for an internet tap. Actually, hacking into a locked computer was old hat— reach was the breakthrough. The transceivers for sale on the internet only have a range of eight miles.
It took but a moment to plug the device into the laptop’s USB port. When I removed the dongle ten seconds later, the surveillance code was already installed into the laptop’s browser cache. As I eyeballed Beth’s bookshelves packed with dull looking books of a kind one only reads in school, ASP was already eavesdropping on everything that had ever come across Beth’s laptop. Mission accomplished, I ducked into the bathroom, flushed the toilet and ran the taps.
It was that quick. That easy!
Eighteen
By the time Mo returned, I’d set the table. Dad had insisted each of us should have something personal to remember our mother by. I chose the Cornish pottery dinner set she’d inherited from Granny. Mum used it every day, but I was saving it for best. In fact, this was the first time the service had been out of the cupboard since her funeral. Why I was going to all this trouble; I didn’t know. It was only Mo. And from what I remembered he was a rough and ready sort of guy.
“Sit here by the heater, Mo. It’s like a fridge in here.” I felt self-conscious. This was the first time I’d entertained anyone since I’d moved in. “Sorry the bathroom was a mess. I was running late this morning.”
“If you call that a mess, you’d have a fit if you saw mine.”
“Oh! I thought the air force was all about scrubbing floors with toothbrushes and tight corners on beds.”
“Not if you’re an officer.” His lips twitched. “Rank has its perks.”
“Nice for some.”
“You’re not wrong,” he said with a teasing twinkle in his eyes.
“So what rank are you now?” I asked as I poured his tea.
“Flight Lieutenant ... I’m in charge of a flight of about thirty men.”
Instantly, I pictured him leading raids on Suruç, on the camp’s field hospital, of spearheading attacks on a non-military target ... on Karim. A wave of revulsion swept over me. My hand shook as I offered him a piece of cake.
“I don’t mind if I do,” he said helping himself. “Did you make it?”
“I don’t have the time. I’m run off my feet.”
If he was aware of my hostility, it didn’t show. “As bad as that,” he asked, his face filled with sympathy.
I shrugged.
“You poor thing! Who’d be a teacher?”
Belatedly, I remembered my manners. “Take no notice of me, Mo ... I’ve had a bad day. Actually, as schools go, St. Agnes’s is one of the best.”
“You don’t sound enthusiastic. Isn’t teaching what you want to do?”
His question was a good one. Teaching at St. Agnes’s certainly suited my current situation, but it didn’t provide me with the same degree of fulfillment and purpose I’d felt as an aid worker. I sighed. “Not really ... when I worked for Médecins sans Frontières I was doing humanitarian work ... work I felt passionate about.”
“So why don’t you pack it in?”
“I can’t ... Annie needs me.”
“Isn’t she happy boarding?”
“She loves it.”
“Then what’s stopping you?”
I shrugged. “It’s not an orphanage. There are end of term holidays plus the Head encourages parents to take their kids home for the weekend. You can’t just drop your child off there and pick her up again when she’s eighteen.”
“But Annie isn’t your child. Shouldn’t your father step up to the mark? And what about your sisters, shouldn’t they help carry the load?”
His questions made me uncomfortable. I did indeed think Dad had a cheek. But blood is thicker than water. There was no way I’d admit my father had gone off on a world cruise with the new lady in his life. And especially not to Mo. He’d had a down on Dad ever since he’d overheard him tell Doug not to bring any more no-hopers round the house.
“Annie isn’t a load ... she’s my sister. Having her stay over weekends isn’t a burden. I enjoy having her here.”
“Well that solves that mystery?”
“What mystery?”
He looked at me quizzically. “I was referring to the trampoline in your study ... I thought it was yours.”
“Hardly! It was a gift from me to Annie for her tenth birthday.”
“Wow! It must have cost a packet?”
“The cost is nothing compared to the pleasure it gives Annie.”
“All the same, it must make things difficult for you working in there. There’s hardly room to swing a cat.”
I sighed. “It does but I don’t have an alternative.”
“Of course you do ... you’ve got a laptop haven’t you? What do you need a PC for? If you worked down here on the table, you could turn that room into a nice bedroom.”
“The laptop belongs to the school. I prefer to keep work and my private life separate.”
“Uh ho!” His mouth curved and his roguish eyes twinkled, “I bet you’re meeting guys on-line?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
His mouth curved further. “Ah, then you must be in a relationship. What’s his name?”
“There’s no one.”
“There must be something wrong with the guys you’re meeting ... you’ve turned into a stunner.”
I felt a blush coming on. The creeping heat spread up my neck and into my face. I looked down at my plate annoyed at my body for betraying me. “How about you?” I asked, praying the flush wouldn’t show through the thick layer of foundation I slap on to cover my freckles. “Is there a special someone in your life?”
He shook his head. “I
only have eyes for you.”
“I bet!”
He winked and helped himself to a piece of cake. “So what do you use your PC for if not for meeting guys?”
“What ...sorry, I must have drifted off.” I faked a yawn. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”
My hint passed over Mo’s head. Instead of saying it was time he was going, as I would have in his place, he repeated his question.
“If you really must know, I’m a blogger.”
“Wow! What do you blog about? Africa? Refugees? World Peace?”
“Actually, I’m trying to raise public awareness of the threat of germ warfare.”
His eyes widened. “Jeez, Beth isn’t that risky?”
I knew what he meant. “When it comes to the Official Secrets Act ... I’m well aware of what is and isn’t admissible,” I snapped. “I don’t cross the line. I only comment on articles that are part of the public record.”
“Okay, calm down.” He gave me a bemused look. “What’s your blog address? I’d like to take a look.”
“www.biocide.com, all lower case.”
“That’s easy to remember. I’ll check it out when I get back to my hotel.”
“Aren’t you staying with your parents?”
He shook his head. “They’re out of town.” He groaned. “It’s all been a bit of balls-up. You see I was due some leave, and as a transporter was heading over here, I hitched a ride. I should have checked if Mum and Dave were home first ... but it was a last-minute arrangement.”
“That’s a shame...”
“Yeah! It’s a bummer.”
“So what will you do ... go back?”
“Nah! I thought I’d pay Doug a visit. Why don’t you come with me?”
I shook my head. “I can’t!”
“What’s stopping you?”
“Work ... the school holidays don’t start for a fortnight.”
