“I'm not hiding from anyone,” Michael yelled. “I want you to turn back, right now!”
“Everything is burning and you want to fight them killers?” The old man said, shaking his head.
“They came out here to kill us?” Michael asked, his voice breaking in anguish.
His head was spinning. How could the old man know what was going on? He was only a community elder, responsible for showing tourists around the National Park. How could the old feller possibly know in advance anything about a murderous gang attacking the observatory?
The old man saw the astronomer's face.
“I'm sorry for your friends. Them buggers strike like foxes among rabbits.”
“Why didn't you warn me earlier?”
“It doesn't work that way, boss.”
25
Burning Hill
While the director of Siding Spring Observatory did his best to catch up with the old man hurrying down the peak, Arnold bided his time behind the desk in his cottage. He always delayed the walk from his front door to the observatory. He lived right beside the telescope, and that meant the high probability of crossing paths with someone who wanted to upset the flow of his thoughts. One of those empty conversations that technicians and office personnel seemed to enjoy.
Chatting with people while on the way to work was an irritating waste of time. What was the point in discussing the weather with someone you barely know?
When he heard the knock on the front door he groaned. Determined to ignore the interruption he continued to flick through a folder of papers.
The rapping grew more persistent.
“Hello?” He called out, but there was no answer. He called out much louder the second time. “Hello?”
“I am looking for Doctor Arnold Klein,” a man's voice called.
It was without a doubt one of those salesmen touting their useless software packages.
“I'm busy!” Arnold shouted.
“Are you Doctor Klein?” The man called out in reply.
“Oh, come in!” Arnold shouted and slapped the folder closed.
The figure in the doorway looked disheveled. No, worse than that, he looked lopsided. The man was wearing an open-necked short-sleeved shirt and khaki longs. He resembled nothing so much as a tired passenger who had just disembarked from a long haul flight.
“Doctor Klein?” the stranger asked again.
“Yes,” Arnold snapped. “Yes, I am he.”
The man stood in the door of the study. The dark eyes surrounded by long feminine lashes gazed at Arnold from under a greasy lock of fair hair. A battered beige briefcase dangled from one hand. He looked awkward and ill at ease.
“Well?” Arnold asked, fighting a strong urge to push the interruption back out the front door.
“I am Simon Burns,” the man replied, gazing with evident interest around the room. “I'm from the company,” he said, shifting his attention back to Arnold.
“What company?” Arnold stared at the man. But his amazement at the man's entrance was only momentary, as his irritation at being disturbed flared again. “What is it?”
Burns walked up to the end of Arnold's desk. He lifted an open carton labeled 'Property of the Conrad Observatory of Geophysical Research, Austria' from a chair Arnold had placed against the wall as a temporary shelf. Loops of seismogram paper spilled out as he set the box down on the floor.
“Hey!” Arnold exclaimed, standing up behind his desk. “Don't touch that!”
The man pulled his seat up to Arnold's desk and set his briefcase on the desktop, knocking the folder of papers to one side.
“The company you send your reports to each month, and issues you your instructions. The one that regularly deposits an electronic payment into your Credit Suisse account.”
“Oh, that one,” Arnold said, and he swallowed.
Arnold walked around his desk to peer out the doorway of his office. Satisfied there was no second unwanted guest outside, he pulled the door closed.
“It's all a little unusual. Aren't you supposed to call me first before you show up like this?”
“I assure you, it is quite normal for an accountant to attend to such matters as these in person. Particularly, when—ah—the term of an employee's contract is about to reach its completion date.”
“Oh, all right,” Arnold said. He took a deep breath and sat down, nervously pushed his glasses up the peak of his nose with the tip of an index finger. “So, what can I do for you?”
“The company has made changes to your policy,” he said as he opened his briefcase. “I am here to guide you through a few important procedures.”
Burns glanced up as Arnold shifted in his chair. “Please do your best to relax. This won't take long.”
Arnold noticed the trace of an accent. Perhaps Burns was Swiss or South African. Arnold was no expert on accents and it really didn't matter. That the man represented the company was all that was important.
“Couldn't you have simply—” Arnold began and stopped when he recognized his visitor was not listening.
Burns took out a memory stick and slid it across the desk. He pointed a finger at the screen.
“Close all open folders and locate file A.”
“Would that be A for Arnold or A for accountant?” Arnold asked as he inserted the stick into a spare USB port.
“Double-click the file inside,” the accountant said, ignoring Arnold's attempt to lighten the mood. “Wait for the browser window to open. Enter your usual username and password in the client login box. Then click on the first account button that appears.”
Arnold did as he was told and when he saw the digits pop up, he sat back with a start.
“My gosh! What is that for?”
“That—is for you. It's your completion of contract payment. The account you are looking at is registered in the Cayman Islands. We like to keep the final payment separate from the regular deposits. Taxes and whatnot as you would appreciate. It is—as they say—a delicate matter. I'm sure you understand.”
“I guess so.” Arnold's voice was shaky. His eyes darted several times over the figure on his screen, and he licked his lips.
“You will be able to access this account once we have your final report. Of course, I should not have to remind you of the confidentiality obligations you have signed that will continue in perpetuity.”
“Yes, of course!” Arnold said, breaking his gaze from the screen to stare at the accountant with wide eyes.
Burns glanced inside his briefcase, his long lashes lending him an absurdly demure appearance.
“So, everything is good then?” He asked.
“Yes,” Arnold nodded.
“There is one last matter I must attend to before I leave,” Burns lifted a large brown paper bag out of his briefcase and dropped it with a clunk on the desktop.
“Have you bought me breakfast?” Arnold asked giggling at his own joke.
He was feeling good. With only two months of his project remaining, all he had to do was avoid Boulos. It was true he needed to attend scheduled meetings with the director, but now he was almost looking forward to them. He needed only to remind himself of the small fortune sitting in an account in Switzerland under his name. He felt—expansive.
He peered into the bag and pulled his head back in surprise. Arnold's cheerful mood had vanished.
“What am I supposed to do with that?”
“You take it out of the bag.”
Arnold picked up a corner of the bag and emptied it onto the desktop. Then he sat back in the chair, staring in awful fascination at the handgun that had tumbled onto his desk.
“This is for your protection,” Burns explained. “In recent times, many of our researchers have met with an untimely end. The company suspects a gang is targeting our scientists. It's an extortion racket, you see? The gangsters have moved on from hacking. Now they choose high profile victims and blackmail them for their data. No one can refuse their offer. The company does not want this to b
ecome public knowledge. We do not want people to think we are unable to protect our own.”
“What about the police? I am sure there's an appropriate agency—”
“Doctor Klein, it is our policy to supply individual contractors, such as yourself, with the means to protect themselves,” Burns explained patiently. “We are an international corporation. We do not wish to place the business reputation of our clients in jeopardy.”
“But what if these gangsters show up once I have completed my contract? I can't carry that thing around forever!”
“Then—you give them your account number,” the accountant said with a look that said his patience was not endless. “What you must not do—is speak about your work.”
Arnold wiped perspiration from his top lip with two shaking fingers. “I didn't expect...”
“What were you expecting, Doctor Klein?”
“I don't know,” Arnold said, swallowing his saliva. He rested a shaking hand on the desk, accidentally bumping the gun. The barrel rattled on the wood surface.
“I am required to give you a brief run through on how to handle the weapon,” Burns said and he got up and walked around the desk to stand beside Arnold.
“Is this even legal?” Arnold bleated.
“The company deals with all issues as they arise, including any to do with local laws. Please...” He gestured for Arnold to pick up the weapon.
“I've never fired one before,” Arnold said, lifting the handgun as if it were a rattlesnake.
“We are not going to pull the trigger,” the accountant told him. “Rule number one. Keep the weapon pointed away from you—and me. I want you to aim it at an imaginary assailant in front of you.”
Arnold glanced up at his instructor and leveled the gun at the opposite wall. He wished more than anything he had taken the early morning walk to the observatory.
“Okay,” the accountant said, moving closer. “I can see you're a little nervous. This is to be expected.”
He leaned closer to Arnold's chair.
“What you have in your hand is standard issue for federal agents. Notice—it's not too heavy.”
“But what do you want me to do with it?” Arnold said, his voice cracking as he stared at the weapon.
“First, you learn to hold it with confidence. You must point it like this. Ah—wait a moment.”
Arnold glanced at Burns and saw with a degree of curiosity the man appeared to set the timer on his watch.
“I must follow the correct protocol,” he explained to Arnold. Burns reached into his briefcase to pull out a pair of thin leather gloves, slipping them on and slapping his palms together.
“Right then. Let's get started. May I?” He rearranged Arnold's fingers on the trigger.
“Is there a safety on this thing?” Arnold asked.
From outside the cottage came the shriek of a parrot, like someone in distress. The sound of it at this moment unsettled Arnold.
“It has no safety as such,” Burns said. “Just a decocker. Do you know, you must always treat a gun as if it's loaded?”
Arnold stiffened at the sound of the mechanism chambering a round. “Yes, but I think that...”
He was amazed by the strength and agility of the accountant's hands over his own as they flicked the weapon around. Too fast for him to notice the muzzle now pressed into his chest.
The acoustics of the room reduced the report to the level of a popping balloon. A single soft open-ended bullet smashed its way through Arnold's rib cage and split wide, hot metal shredding the heart and surrounding tissue.
The accountant had thrown one arm around the scientist's head as if the two were the best of pals. Burns was careful to angle himself away from the mess, waiting until the spasms stopped before he let the lifeless body fall forward onto the desktop.
The fist-size hole in Arnold's left shoulder blade dribbled over the keyboard. There was a lot of blood. It ran in rivulets down his arm and off the end of the gun clenched tightly in his hand where it collected in a widening pool under his chair.
Burns retrieved the memory stick and dropped it on top of the crumpled paper bag inside his briefcase. He rearranged the items on the desk to resemble the state it was in before when he walked into the room and pulled the chair he had sat in back to its original position against the wall. All the while he whistled tunelessly.
When he was finished, he turned to walk out the door and hesitated, swearing under his breath as if someone else was present and alive to hear him. He walked back to the desk and picked up the carton and shoved the loops of paper back inside. Then, he tossed it onto the seat where he had found it.
Burns opened the back of the SUV and dropped the briefcase inside. H pressed the stop button on his stopwatch then stared at it with a frown. Cost cutting by management was badly affecting missions like this one with a high-value target. It was a shame the way things were going. Not counting the two in the work truck at the foot of the hill, a team of four would have been optimal for this kind of operation. Perhaps he should consider taking his retirement earlier rather than later. He eyed the other two as they trotted up to the vehicle.
Kowalski was a striking specimen. She was a tall athletic woman who had a remarkable symmetrical shape to her head that was accentuated by a military burr cut. She might have been a model if she had been born anywhere but a small Polish village. She grabbed a bottle of water from inside the cab.
“Kids all settled?” Burns asked.
She screwed the lid back on and threw the bottle onto the back seat.
“All put to bed, except for Boulos,” she said. “We couldn't find him.”
The accountant glanced at Joyce as he stood catching his breath, sucking in lungfuls of oxygen. The kid was too young and had too much energy to expend to suit a mission of this kind. They should have given him more time to mature, soldiering on a more conventional battlefield. But over the past year, Burns had come to the conclusion it was better not to complain about who he was given and simply make do. He turned back to Kowalski.
“Are you sure they weren't hiding him?”
She flashed her teeth at Burns. It wasn't a smile.
“We asked around—several times. They would have said if they knew.”
“Looks like we really fucked up on this one,” Burns muttered. He watched as they tossed their weapons into an open carry bag in the back.
Joyce closed the zip and humped the back over his shoulder. He glanced over at Burns for confirmation.
“Take it into the cottage and scatter them around his desk,” Burns told him.
“There's just the one desk, right?” Joyce asked.
“The one he's leaking all over. You can't miss it.”
“You want me to burn the cottage?”
“Negative on burning the cottage.”
Joyce gave a nod and strode off to Arnold's cottage.
Burns reached through the window for the tactical throat mic and headset sitting on the dash. The most important item on his cleanup list was missing. Could it be their intel was wrong? There were going to be repercussions. He repeated the call sign and waited.
“Kids are settled,” he said when he received the reply. “Dad's not home. I repeat. Dad’s not home. Housework is not finished. Over.”
He closed his eyes, feeling cold sweat trickle down the back of his neck.
“Affirmative. I repeat. Dad is out. We missed him. Over.”
He drew his hand down his face as he listened to the reply.
“Yeah—I know. Roger that. We are on our way. Accountant out.”
He pulled off the mic and threw it onto the dash. Taking a yellow plastic vial from his shirt pocket, he shook out a capsule and placed it on his tongue.
Kowalski squinted up at him. She waved a fresh bottle of spring water at him. “Here,” she said.
He caught the bottle and took several gulps before tipping the rest at his feet. He screwed the cap back on before dropping the empty bottle on the back seat and hopping
in behind the steering wheel.
Joyce ran up the path as if hell itself was following close behind him.
“Let's go, let's go!” The kid shouted.
Burns slammed the driver's door shut, sneering at Joyce as he sprinted to the vehicle. He started the engine and reversed hard.
As Burns pulled away from the cottage, Kowalski held the back door open for Joyce, the kid just making the leap into the cab.
The incendiary devices detonated in rapid succession behind them as they sped away from the observatory.
With a thick pall of smoke curling into the sky, the two workmen at the bottom of the peak collected the road signs and threw them onto the tray of the truck. They didn't look up when the SUV roared by, its tires spinning for several seconds as Burns took the corner under acceleration.
The stench of melted rubber lingered a while over the bushes on the side of the road. It finally dissipated in the unseasonable breeze that swept the outback.
26
Tasmanian Devil
The calm and collected voice of the captain read the imperative to the passengers and flight crew just as he did every time prior to touching down in Canberra.
“This announcement is a friendly reminder from the Australian Capital Territory. The federal government requires all disembarking passengers to have their Australian Federation Cards ready for inspection. You are required to submit to the identification process when passing through the border-guard inspection gates. And—on behalf of my flight crew, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the hub of the nation. We hope your stay in the ACT is happy and secure.”
The security officer directed him to stand in front of a black and chrome panel that towering like a pillar over his head.
Storm stepped into the red square before the flashing block colors. An orange arrow pointed to the shape of two green hands. When he complied, the parameters snapped to the outline of his palm and fingers. The laser penetrated his pupils, racing back and forth as it measured the unique pattern of his retinas. He blinked.
Jubilee Year Page 13
