by Ann Massey
“Yes, Sir.”
He glanced down at the open file on his desk. “As a manager you were clearly out of your depth.” His voice was matter-of-fact.
I blinked at his bluntness.
He paused considering me. “However, you did a good job identifying the bomber and his accomplices.”
“If it wasn’t for Beth, I’d never have found them.”
“We have the algorithm to thank for identifying her,” he said with a satisfied smile. “How is she?”
“She’s taken a year’s leave from teaching ... to finish that book she’s writing.”
Lee raised an inquiring eyebrow at me. “I thought she’d sworn to stick it out at St. Agnes’s for her sister’s sake.”
I explained that Beth had phoned her father when the QE2 docked at Southampton. To his credit, Frank had abandoned his cruise and flown home accompanied by his wife and former neighbour. The newlyweds had been married on board by the Captain, but as a marriage at sea isn’t official, they had held off contacting their families until the marriage could be ratified in Australia.
“Now that Annie’s living with her father and step-mother on the farm at Geraldton, Beth has no incentive to stay on at St. Agnes’s,” I concluded.
The general took a moment to process the information. “Home’s the best place for the little girl. I understand she suffered no ill effects physically from the ordeal. How is she emotionally?”
“Annie’s doing fine. She has no recollection of the operation. She believes her blackout was brought on by the bug that affected her couple of weeks earlier.”
And she swallowed that?”
“One hundred per cent.”
He acknowledged my reply by a brief smile. Niceties over, he told me to take a seat while he familiarized himself with my dossier. Taking a folder from a tray on his desk, he began reading with the intense concentration that characterized his whole approach. Finally he looked up. “It’s unfortunate that you didn’t bring the terrorists in alive.”
“I didn’t have any choice. I didn’t have radar. They could have been anywhere and we were flying in a busy air route. You’re a pilot, Sir ... in my place wouldn’t you have aborted the chase?”
He nodded his agreement. “Mo, would you consider withdrawing your resignation and transferring to our counter-terrorism unit?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. To pre-empt dismissal, I’d resigned to avoid the humiliation of being fired. “But I let you down, Sir.”
“Ah! Just as I thought. You blame yourself, don’t you?”
“How can I not? All leads to the terrorist cell died with the fugitives.”
“Enough. No blame attaches to you. On the contrary, Chief Superintendent Leeke said it would have been a bloodbath if not for you. He thinks you have the makings of an outstanding field operative.” He glanced at me appraisingly. “As it happens there is an undercover job that only an agent with a pilot’s licence can carry out.”
“Go on,” I said, unable to hide my curiosity.
“We, that is to say the US and Australian security services, want to uncover the ringleaders behind the plot to assassinate world leaders that attended the G20 summit in Perth. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has identified the charter company that owned the chopper. We suspect Crescent Air Charter of smuggling drugs and ferrying extremists around the globe. They’ll be short a pilot.” His eyes glinted. “I want you to apply for the position. Currently, we are monitoring them electronically but what we need is a man on the inside. Will you take it on?”
Excitement gripped my innards. I could still uncover the ring leaders — a hope that had died with Karim. I said, “I am tempted, Sir. But there’s a fly in the ointment ... I don’t have a helicopter licence.”
“You will have by the time we send you over there ... if I have to instruct you myself. Besides they only ever had one chopper. Right now, their fleet consists of four Learjets and a newly acquired helicopter, a Bell 206.” The corners of his mouth turned up. “To take the place of the one scattered all over the Darling Range.”
“Surely, they’ll have replaced the deceased pilot by now.”
“There’ll be a vacancy when you apply.”
I knew better than to ask.
“Well what’s it to be Flight Lieutenant? Yes or no?”
What the general was offering was a life filled with danger, stress and pressure. For an extreme risk taker, it was a no-brainer.
“Yes, Sir,” I said.
Thirty-seven
I opened the wardrobe door and stared at the contents. The smart business clothes I wore when I was a teacher wouldn’t do for this job interview. After a moment’s contemplation, I tossed a pair of stretch jeans and a black tee-shirt on the bed, and then dug out a pair of thigh-high boots with stiletto heels. Bought on impulse and worn once, they languished in my wardrobe as an expensive reminder of the lure of a bargain. Once dressed, I piled my hair on top of my head, and secured it with a scrunchy. Then I pulled out some wisps. I’d washed my hair and hadn’t straightened it. The tightly curled ends frizzed attractively round my forehead and the back of my neck. I looked critically at myself in the wardrobe’s mirrored doors. Did I look tarty enough to get the job?
Crescent Air was looking for a cleaner and according to Mo, the guy in charge of hiring and firing, was a sleaze. He’d advised me to play the part of a dipsy blond. I never go braless. Ever! But desperate times call for desperate measures and infiltrating a company suspected of links with al Qaeda fitted the bill. Without a bra my nipples stood out against the tee’s clinging fabric. I finished the look with three coats of mascara, a slash of crimson lippy and blingy earrings, the dangly kind. Hell’s bells ... if Miss Clare could see me now.
The charter company was based at Perth Airport. My BMW, though an old model and a gift from my parents on my twenty-first birthday, conflicted with my impression of a hard-up bimbo. I parked it in the Airport’s public car park and set off for the general aviation terminal, used primarily by charter aircraft. As I minced my way through the crowded car park, I distracted myself from the torture of incredibly uncomfortable boots by mulling over the previous night’s conversation with Mo.
He’d arrived in the evening bearing gifts, a bunch of flowers and a bottle of red. When I opened the door, I couldn’t hide my surprise. I didn’t know he’d returned from the States. He poured me a glass of the smoothest Bordeaux I’d ever tasted. His voice was a little shaky as he revealed that he worked for the NSA.
“Isn’t that the organization that spies on people?” Suddenly everything fell into place. “Don’t tell me they were spying on me.”
He nodded. “You were identified as a person of interest.”
“Me? The NSA was snooping on me? That’s incredible!”
“Not really. You accessed some pretty dodgy sites.”
“But that was research for my novel.”
“Don’t get mad Beth,” Mo said, eying me warily. “Heads of states and royalty were in Perth for the G20 and you’d looked up how to make a bomb.”
I didn’t answer him immediately and instead of flying off the handle, I gave the matter some thought. Like most progressives I was outraged when Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA spied on its citizens. I’d believed it was proof that the world was moving closer to the repressive society depicted in George Orwell’s dystopian novel. I’d told my students that we were living in a 1984 world. But after I’d seen first-hand what the likes of Karim were capable of, I’d realized that electronic surveillance was an essential tool in the war on terror.
I said, “Relax Mo, I’m not angry. Maniacs like Karim have got to be stopped.”
Mo’s anxious face cleared. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Oh?”
“What I’m about to tell you is for your ears only, Beth. I need your word this will go no further.”
“You’ve got it.”
Mo knew my word was my bond. He went on to tell me that the real reason he’d r
eturned to Perth was to infiltrate the company that had owned the helicopter used as a getaway vehicle by the terrorists. “Suicide bombers are expendable ... there’s hundreds, maybe thousands of misguided guys willing to replace Karim. We have to hook the big guns, the instigators behind the plot ... and right now our only lead is Crescent Air Charter.” He then proceeded to tell me that the charter company was the only link to the higher-ups that had planned the attack on the G20 — the ones with the influence to guarantee their suicide bomber was appointed to the role of director of the RTU.
It turned out that Karim’s female accomplice at the hospital was too low down the chain to know the person above her. And as for his parents, the poor things believed their son had died at Suruç. There was no partner in Cairo and no fiancé. Looking back, I thought Karim must have made up the false story on the spot when we’d run into each other at the children’s hospital.
“Why have you told me?” I asked when I’d recovered from the shock of Mo’s revelations. “Surely what you’ve told me is classified information.”
“I wondered ... if you’d help me bring the ring leaders to justice. You see as a pilot, I don’t get an opportunity to snoop around the office, not like a cleaner who’s in there and unsupervised most of the time. The current cleaner is going to receive a job offer she can’t refuse, Beth,” he said, taking my hand in his, “I know it’s dangerous and I shouldn’t ask ... not after what you’ve been through. But there’s no one else I’d trust.”
I didn’t allow him to finish. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than bringing those evil bastards to justice,” I said and meant it. Karim had been a decent human before he was brainwashed by those mongrels. I blinked back tears as I remembered the caring young doctor I fell in love with at Hagadery.
“Count me in, Mo!”
* * *
“Do you have any vacancies for a cleaner,” I asked the receptionist.
The middle-aged woman in a prim blouse and skirt at the reception desk gave me a disapproving glance. “Not right now.”
My heart dropped. Mo had led me to believe I’d be welcomed with open arms. “May I leave my details?”
She opened a drawer and handed me a form. “Fill this in.”
I fumbled through my fringed shoulder bag. “Do you have a spare pen?”
She tutted and handed me a black biro with Crescent Air Charter in red on the side.
I was filling in the form when a red-faced man burst out of the facing office. “Would you believe it, the cleaner’s just resigned. Just like that ... she said she’s never coming back.”
“But she has to give notice.”
“Well she’s not going to. The bitch starts a new job today.”
The receptionist sighed. “I’ll call the agency.”
“Excuse me,” I said addressing the male. “I couldn’t help overhearing. I’m a cleaner and well ... if you’re stuck, I could start today.”
He looked me over slowly and smiled. “Okay we’ll give you a try. Irene make coffee for this young lady and me.” He turned back to me, “I like mine black and strong. I’m guessing you like yours sweet, darling.”
I fluttered my eyelashes at him and moved a fraction closer. “It depends ... sometimes I like it strong.” Inwardly, I shuddered at my behaviour.
“Come through to my office and I’ll explain your duties.” And just like that, I was in.
Through the fly-spotted window I saw Mo coming out of a hangar wiping his hands on light blue overalls. The misgivings I experienced when the slimy creep who’d employed me placed a hand on my back as he guided me to his door were put to flight. I knew Mo was ready to take on the worst that this mob could dish out. And so was I. One day this sleaze would lead us to his evil connections. I crossed my legs causing my short skirt to ride up even higher and altered the course of my life.
FOR A TASTE OF THE THIRD BOOK IN THE TRILOGY
Read on...
Jihad
AN EXTRACT: Chapters One and Two
One
In a bio-warfare lab in Western Australia’s goldfields
Dear God, if only I had a gun! Of course she didn’t. Life as a secret agent in no way resembled the cloak and dagger novels a younger Beth had once loved. None of which, recent experience had taught her, was based on reality. At least, not reality as she’d come to know it.
Code breaking, deep-cover ops, risking your life on a daily basis was thrilling but only in the pages of books. Cowering under a bench, in a place she had no right to be, she felt wretched and appallingly vulnerable. She thought if this was a movie, right now was when the creepy music would start, the kind of music that meant something the complete opposite to happy was about to happen.
For the last thirty minutes, she’d been contemplating death. Her own. The likelihood of which loomed large, considering the proximity of the cold-blooded assassin sitting at a desk with his back to her, studying the biology of disease-causing agents. He’d missed catching her installing spyware by the skin of his large horsy teeth.
When Mo, her ... Beth hesitated, finding it impossible to identify exactly what he was to her; they were close ... though he’d only recently come back into her life after a gap of ten years. But it was a closeness based on a long history rather than a friendship of like-minded people. The quintessential Aussie larrikin, Mo was rash and reckless, close to fearless. His ready smile and easy-going nature drew women to him in droves. But Beth was attracted to earnest, educated men who were politically and socially conscious. She thought the fighter pilot turned CIA agent was shallow and ethically irresponsible. And yet whenever she was in perilous circumstance — like right now, there was no-one she’d rather have by her side. In fact, her indebtedness to Mo for saving her adored ten-year old sister from a horrific death at the hands of a crazed terrorist — a crazed terrorist she had once loved —was the reason she was in this present fix.
For when Mo, for want of a better descriptor, her ‘go-to-person in times of strife’, of which there were more than she cared to remember, asked her to pose as a cleaner at Crescent Air Charter, a company suspected of having links to al Qaeda, she’d imagined herself searching through waste-paper baskets and attempting to decipher the writing off blotters. But then, Shining Through, her all-time-favourite female spy novel, was hardly the ideal training manual for a latter-day Mata Hari[i].
Much later, she knew it was much later because the shouts of late night revellers had long since stopped; her anxious thoughts were abruptly cut short, leaving her with only the throbbing pain in her cramped thighs. The monster she likened to Adolph Hitler because he had no qualms about finishing what the psychopathic dictator had started, put down the file. Getting to his feet, he stretched and yawned, then strode soft-footed, rubber soles creaking, in her direction. Panic threatened to choke her. A tremor as nasty as the one she’d experienced seconds before she took cover under the bench fluttered throughout her chest. Her laboured breathing was as loud as a person on the point of death. Terrified he’d hear, she pressed her hands hard against her mouth.
Fortunately, not a hint of suspicion that an intruder was so near ever crossed his corrupt mind. His thoughts were on tomorrow’s task — removing the Biological Warfare agent from the fermentation tanks to sub-ambient temperature controlled Dewars[ii] for shipment to a similar facility in Zukriti. Under his supervision, albeit from a safe distance, the transfer would be carried out by his assistants. The pair of labourers that the hard-hearted terrorist thought of as one step up from morons, had been plucked from the smelter for that very reason. For like many people of low intelligence they were good at simple routine work. And better still, they swallowed without question the line that the Research and Development department was engaged in metallurgical research, and that the solution bubbling away in tanks was cyanide, widely used to extract gold from ore, hence the need for full protective gear.
A minute, maybe two passed. She squirmed around and poked her head out. It was much better than she
had hoped for. He was about fifteen feet away in the disrobing area taking off his rubber boots. Her heart rate dropped back to almost normal. Beth was still thanking her lucky stars when a phone began to ring. She recognized her cell’s jaunty ring tone. Damn, she screamed inside her head. Ripples of shock ran through her like the unremitting waves following an earthquake.
With one arm already out of his protective suit, he turned.
‘God help me,’ she whimpered.
Two
Three Months Earlier
Mo was sitting restlessly on a garden chair outside Beth’s apartment in green and leafy Claremont, one of Perth’s affluent Western suburbs. As he watched the stop-start traffic on the Stirling Highway, he presumed she was caught up somewhere in commuter chaos and settled down to wait. It was twenty-to-eight before Beth finally turned her car down the narrow driveway that ran the length of the block and edged into a measly gap in the rear car park. She killed the engine, turned off the lights, picked up her shoulder bag and an Indian take-away from the passenger seat. After four and half hours spent vacuuming floors and emptying bins she was looking forward to an early night. Her face dropped when she spied her visitor. ‘Hello. What a pleasant surprise,’ she said dredging up a smile.
Swiftly relieving her of the take-away container, Mo said, ‘You look pooped. How come you’re working so late?’
‘There’s no way I can get through my work in the two hours they pay me for,’ she said, searching through her bag for her keys. ‘It’s just as well I’m also being paid by the NSA[iii], I couldn’t afford take-away on what Crescent Air shells out. I hope they pay their pilots better.’
