The Delta Chain

by Ian Edward

  Before Adam could question her, Meredith Seals rang off, her heart beating furiously and her nerves on edge. She was satisfied, though, that she’d done her bit as a concerned citizen. Putting Westmeyer momentarily out of mind, she prepared to go to the office where her report would strongly suggest against her bank investing in the Westmeyer Research Institute.

  Walter directed Kate to turn the vehicle off the road, into the same secluded spot where he and Greg had parked. Off the Arnhem Highway, the small road led to thickening brush, edging an area where the Adelaide River wound through the wetlands and north into the gulf.

  Retrieving their backpacks, they began their own trek into the wilderness.

  Walter revealed his theories on the hunters’ methods to Kate. He was convinced they had camouflaged their boat to avoid being seen by aerial searches. He also suspected they used long-range binoculars to scan their surroundings. It had to have been an uncanny piece of bad luck that he and Greg had been spotted.

  Despite the odds of it happening again, Walter was adamant they would take no risks.

  He’d simply told his family of a need to go ‘walkabout’ to deal with his grief over Greg. A visit to old friends on a distant outstation was a plausible excuse to keep their minds at rest.

  But his own mind would know no rest until he returned safely with Kate.

  Walter couldn’t know how wrong he was about the men with binoculars.

  The deck of their craft contained, instead, a series of long range, infra-red surveillance cameras, their constantly changing images cast onto video monitors in the communications cabin below.

  These cameras were programmed to automatically change focus to the direction of an “active’ signal.

  The moment Kate and Walter’s vehicle had entered the clearing it activated the electronics.

  Embedded in the ground at the clearing’s entry point was a small metal disc. Attached to one side was a thin strand with a bulbous end, containing an array of tiny sensor heads, and a micro antenna that sent the sensor-activated signals via radio waves.

  Dozens of these sonic sensors lay hidden at the most accessible points, east, west and south of this particular area along the Adelaide River’s course. Each unit had a sensing range of several hundred kilometres both horizontally and vertically. An alert inferred the possibility of vehicles approaching the region where the poachers were operating.

  Once activated, the signal was relayed north, to the communications cabin on the six- metre, multi level cruiser. The cameras were already switching to the direction of the ‘active’ signal.

  The stubble-chinned man on duty in the cabin noted the signal and, as per procedure, sounded the alert to his captain.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  The Keeper named Scanlon handed the newspaper, open at the article about the unidentified corpse, to Warren Ethers. ‘It won’t be hard to find the boy,’ he said. With his right index finger he stabbed at the illustrated likeness of the drowning victim. ‘Wherever he is, Daniel will be reading the papers, even watching the TV news if he gets access to it. There’s a strong chance he’ll see this and head to Northern Rocks.’

  Ethers shot back a disagreeing look. ‘You think so? He knows we’re on his tail. He knows we’ll see this too and head for the same place.’

  Scanlon sighed. A wry smile twisted the corner of his mouth. ‘Think about who we’re discussing here, Warren. The boy is young, unworldly, totally out of his depth. He wouldn’t think the way you just suggested, now would he?’

  Ethers considered this a moment. ‘No. I guess you’re right-’

  ‘Believe me, it won’t be long before we have the boy, not long at all.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  Adam wracked his brain but couldn’t think who his anonymous caller might have been. A disgruntled employee at the Institute? One of Westmeyer’s former lovers? As these thoughts flashed through his mind, it occurred to Adam he knew little about Westmeyer, outside of his scientific reputation.

  The obvious person, for general info on Westmeyer, was Kate.

  Unable to raise Kate’s mobile phone, he called her family’s home in Sydney.

  Kate’s father came on the line. His voice sounded small. ‘No, Adam, Kate left the day before yesterday, headed back to Northern Rocks. There was no point in her haunting the halls around here. I’m already doing that. Better for her to keep busy. She said she’d visit again next week.’

  ‘And how are you and Mrs Kovacs coping, John?’ It was a hollow, useless question – Adam realised that the moment it left his lips. What could you say in situations like these?

  ‘Not so good, truth be told.’

  ‘Our thoughts are with you,’ Adam said by way of signing off – another totally inadequate comment. He wondered why Kate had changed her plans so suddenly. She’d given him to understand she’d intended staying with her parents.

  She should be back in town by now and he wondered why he hadn’t heard from her.

  He dialled her apartment. No answer. He tried her cell phone again, only to get the familiar recorded message that her phone was either switched off or in a non-receptive area. Surely she hadn’t really gone back to work so soon? He phoned the Institute and was put through to James. The A.B.C.S. boss confirmed he was standing in for Kate and wasn’t expecting her back for at least another week.

  Adam leaned back in the chair, frustrated and puzzled. Something didn’t feel right about this. Where was Kate and why hadn’t she called him?

  Brian Markham walked in. He sat down and gave Adam the once over. ‘Weight of the world?’

  Adam offloaded his frustrations, about Kate, and about the anonymous call. As he did, one of Kirby’s young probationary constables delivered a file to his desk. ‘Just in from Records, detective. Senior constable Harrison asked me to bring it to you the moment it arrived.’

  ‘Thanks, Beth.’

  Markham quipped, ‘…and the winner is…’ as Adam opened the file, eyes rapidly scanning the information. He reread the data a second time, as though suspecting his eyes had played a trick. ‘The registered owner of the Hoang Thi Mai’ he said, ‘is Dr. William Westmeyer.

  Westmeyer’s PA, an efficient, middle aged local woman named Noelene, looked in through the doorway of her boss’ spacious, and as she thought, far too lavish, office. ‘I have a Professor Nigel Shalot on the line for you.’

  ‘Put him through.’ Westmeyer had met Shalot a few times, most recently at a biogenetics symposium in, of all places, Tucson, Arizona. An Englishman who’d settled in Australia fifteen years earlier, Shalot was professor of biogenetics at the University of Sydney. ‘Nice to hear from you, Nigel.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m calling with a bit of nuisance news,’ said Shalot, his British accent still evident. ‘Someone over there’s been pushing the wrong fax number buttons, I suspect, so I thought I’d better let you know. Give them a rap over the knuckles, eh?’

  ‘You’ve received a fax from here?’

  ‘Yes, has all the Westmeyer copyright and corporate jargon up in the right hand corner, anyway. Just one page. Sequencing data from your blood cell research and development lab, I’d say. Seems you have some interesting recombinant DNA/haemoglobin work going on. Something I’m sure you’d like to keep under wraps from competitors, not that we’re competitors here, of course-’

  ‘Nigel, could you scan that fax and then email it to me? Just so I can identify the specific lab team it relates to.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘And Nigel, thanks for letting me know.’ There wasn’t any research data from the Institute that should have been faxed to anyone, anywhere. And the faxes were rarely used these days. Any data sent out in personal correspondence was always encoded in an email attachment. What the hell was this all about? A moment later Shalot’s email arrived and Westmeyer printed off the attachment. His face reddened with anger as he identified this was recent, active Project Delta Chain information. He then looked to the tiny call sign signatory i
n the upper left hand corner of the page. Nigel Shalot had assumed the fax was sent from the Institute. The original page, Westmeyer observed, had actually been sent to Shalot from a number somewhere in the city of Brisbane, a number Noelene was able to check and confirm as belonging to a public library with a public fax service.

  Losing control, Westmeyer roared at his personal assistant: ‘I want Stephen Hunter, Jackson Donnelly and Tony Collosimo in my office – now!’

  Before she could place her telephone summons to the three men, Noelene answered an incoming call. ‘It’s the Chief Executive Officer of the CSIRO in Sydney,’ Noelene told Westmeyer.

  The CSIRO is one of the country’s foremost Government scientific research establishments. Fearing the worst, Westmeyer instructed Noelene to put the call through.

  Senior journalist and former chemistry graduate Robbie Coltrane had a number of duties at the Brisbane City Chronicle, one of which was writing the paper’s weekly Science News column. He was sitting in the office of editor Hugh Maxwell, after handing Maxwell the fax he'd received the day before.

  ’Am I supposed to understand this gobblydegook,’ said Maxwell, a burly, bushy haired man.

  Coltrane, thin and intense, was used to Maxwell’s impatience. ‘It’s not gobblydegook. This is highly sensitive blood cell DNA research data from the Westmeyer Research Institute. Westmeyer’s a renowned American researcher in biogenetics who moved his institute here from the U.S. a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I remember. Why did he come to Queensland?’

  Coltrane shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but I assume it’s got something to do with running costs. More economical here. And we certainly have an enviable record of research achievement in this country. But the point is, this isn’t the kind of classified data you go sending around the country, let alone by antiquated fax machines. The second page is a transmission report from the sender, showing this page was sent, not just to me, but to other establishments all over Australia.’

  Maxwell wasn’t getting the point. ‘Maybe I’m still pissed from last night, but just why would they do that?’

  ‘That’s the thing. It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve discovered this was sent from a public access fax in a newsagent on the other side of the city, not from the Institute.’

  Hugh Maxwell’s brow furrowed as the pieces of the puzzle came together. ‘Industrial sabotage?’

  ‘I’d say so. And potentially a very big story.’

  ‘But where’s the point in sending just a page of incomplete data to a whole bunch of other organisations?’

  ‘This saboteur doesn’t seem interested in revealing the full data, or maybe they’re not yet able to do so. But they’re certainly sending a message that the Institute has a problem, an in-house leak.’

  ‘Which could seriously affect both its reputation and funding.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you contacted this Westmeyer yet?’

  ‘That’s my next move, once I’ve confirmed with the other numbers on this transmission report that they’ve received the fax.’

  Maxwell cupped his chin in his hands, gazing momentarily at the ceiling. ‘I’ll phone this Westmeyer, get his initial comments and get him to agree to speaking with you, on site. It will be in his own best interests to have us on side, to lead the reporting in his favour. You hop a plane to this place…’

  ‘Northern Rocks.’

  ‘Right. There’s a reporter there, a Melanie Cail, who’s under consideration for a position with us. She can fill you in on local colour, that sort of thing. But if we’re really going to make this a big story, we need some dirt on why this Institute’s got a saboteur problem.’

  ‘Looking forward to it,’ Coltrane said with a grin.

  Walter knew this was the last time he would venture into the Marrakai flood plains. Even here, before the Adelaide River had reached into that steamy heart of the northern wilderness, the surroundings were charging his memory, filling his mind with images of Greg’s horrific death. For Walter, that landscape – the dense mangroves, water holes and pockets of creek dotting the flat marshes; the humidity; the vibrant wall of bird chatter from distant trees – would forever be a place of nightmares.

  One last time. For my friend…

  They had been hiking all day. Walter was impressed by Kate’s stamina and her determination to keep going, but on a few occasions they’d stopped for up to twenty minutes while Kate lay panting, catching breath, gulping down water. Sweat covered her lithe body like a liquid stocking, drenching her hair and matting it to her scalp. But she would not give up, or complain, and Walter saw in her the stubborn tomboy Greg had once described.

  Late afternoon. From a vantage point that gave him a long view of the river Walter scanned the horizon with powerful binoculars. Against the sky a flock of birds formed a moving pattern over twisting columns of cloud. There was nothing to suggest even the existence of the human race. And yet it was out here that Walter had witnessed the worst possible example of Man’s inhumanity to Man and the menacing images filled his mind once again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  Westmeyer was seething as he stormed into the boardroom, slamming the door behind him. ‘I’ve just got off the phone to the editor of the Brisbane City Chronicle,’ he said to the gathering of Donnelly, Hunter and Collosimo. ‘His science reporter will be here in the morning and they’re pressing me to meet with him and discuss our information leak. And I’ve got a message to call that damn woman reporter on the local Express.’

  At the mention of that, Jackson Donnelly flashed a dark look at Stephen Hunter.

  ‘What’s this all about, William?’ Hunter asked.

  ‘It’s about this!’ Westmeyer slapped his copy of the fax down on the shiny mahogany table. ‘I’ve had calls this morning from the CSIRO and the Uni of Sydney, as well as the media. More than twenty major companies or institutions nationally received this yesterday, sent from various public fax machines in Brisbane.’

  Hunter picked up the fax, his eyes widening as he recognised the data.

  ‘Someone is playing industrial saboteur,’ Westmeyer said. ‘Apparently with the simple intention of making us look like damn fools to the outside world.’

  Collosimo screwed up his face in total bewilderment. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a thing. Where’s the gain for someone in doing that?’

  ‘One possibility,’ Westmeyer answered, ‘is that someone from Stephen’s lab has some reason to hold a grudge-’

  ‘No one in my lab has a grudge,’ Hunter countered, ‘and besides, this could have been done by anyone in the Institute that’s devious enough to access the data. Perhaps this Reardon guy from A.B.C.S. can help us find out how they did it.’

  ‘We’ve had an odd history with A.B.C.S.,’ Collosimo pointed out. ‘The first freelance consultant from there dies on us, the second has to run off suddenly when her brother dies, we’ve had this ongoing virus that can’t be fixed, now their boss is here troubleshooting just as we get a ridiculous act of sabotage. Maybe we should be taking a good hard look at A.B.C.S.’

  ‘I’ve known Reardon for years,’ Westmeyer said, ‘and I’ve always found him to be a straight shooter. Besides, we’re his clients. He’s nothing to gain from a pathetic act like this.’

  ‘There is another possibility.’ Jackson Donnelly, silent until now, spoke up from the far end of the table. The others turned to him expectantly. ‘It strikes me this makes a pretty good story for the local media. This reporter that left a message, William, I presume it was Melanie Cail?’

  ‘Of course it was.’

  Donnelly noticed Hunter stiffen at the mention of Melanie’s name.

  ‘I heard the mayor was being hassled by the very same Ms. Cail, about the local drowning victim, last week. She published an article this morning suggesting a link between that and another case. No wonder the mayor was agitated, with the tourist trade and the upcoming festival at risk of being affected by a media-induced panic.�
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  ‘Where are you headed with this, Jackson?’ Hunter’s question revealed his irritation.

  ‘Seems she’s one for stirring up juicy stories. Could she be the culprit, creating a sensational news story for herself?’

  ‘How would this Melanie Cail have access to our data?’ Westmeyer wanted to know.

  ‘Haven’t I mentioned to you that Stephen has been seeing Ms. Cail socially, that she often stays over at his apartment-’

  ‘You’re way out of line on this, Jackson,’ Hunter cut in.

  ‘You take your laptop to and from the lab, don’t you? And you’d have printouts at your apartment?’

  ‘I’m the senior researcher with this facility, the team leader on Delta, of course I work from home. We’re not nine to fivers -’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you are.’

  ‘And my private life, who I see, who I screw, is my business and my business alone-’

  ‘Not when it conflicts with Institute security!’ Donnelly shouted him down, his contempt obvious.

  ‘That’s enough from the both of you,’ Westmeyer said, remaining calm. ‘Stephen, I understand this isn’t easy for you, particularly if you have strong feelings for this young woman, but let’s look at this quietly and logically. She’s a journalist, and an ambitious one. Is it possible she’s been able to get hold of this information from your apartment without your knowledge?’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Hunter lied. He’d no sooner answered the question before rearing on Donnelly again, stabbing at the air, voice raised. ‘And what gives you the right, you pervert, to go spying on me in my own time?’

  ‘Grow up, Stephen. This is an internationally renowned centre with blue chip clients, working on highly sensitive experiments. We don’t have spiky topped steel fences or armed sentries, we’re low-key in that regard because we keep quiet and we’re in quiet surroundings. But Tony and his team keep an eagle eye on everything. As a matter of routine we conduct random watches on all staff, management included, and their associations with others.’