The Delta Chain (18 page)

‘Oh dear God, Adam. What’s wrong? Where’s
Alana?’

‘I can’t find her.’

Joyce Bennett, a pretty, slightly built
woman, began calling out her daughter’s name. As she did, lightning
ripped across the evening sky.

Adam’s memory of the hours that followed were
much less clear, just fragments really. Some of it made sense, some
didn’t. He often wondered, years later, how much of the reality was
replaced by the fantasy of his nightmares, blending fact and
fiction until he couldn’t be certain which was which.

His father’s return. The frantic phone calls
from the kitchen. Adam’s mother screaming at him for his
disobedience. His father’s harsh words to his mother. Alana’s
anguished face, which he imagined bobbing up and down at the
window.

When the searchers came there were dozens of
them, men and women with determined faces, dressed in storm weather
gear, a community bolstered into action.

Adam’s strongest recollection of the search
was of the flashlights. Dozens of wide, high intensity beams
cutting a swathe through the darkness, illuminating patches of the
rain swept woods. He stood on the back porch, with one of the
searchers wives, watching the arcs of light. Above the sound of the
downpour he thought he heard Alana’s voice on several occasions.
‘Coming, coming, ready or not, coming to get you with all that I’ve
got.’ Was Alana still playing the game and searching for
him
now?

Why couldn’t they find her?

Adam woke with a start and wiped a layer of
sweat from his forehead. He could hardly believe it. Over seventeen
years had passed since he’d had the nightmare with such force, such
clarity.

The searchers had found Alana’s shoes and
bracelet on the wet sand just a few metres from where the old jetty
jutted out from the secluded beach. The Bennett family knew Alana
loved to spend time on that old jetty. Sometimes she hid – she was
small enough – behind one of the fat timber poles that held the
structure in place.

It was clear the girl had run to the jetty
and scrambled into her favourite hiding place. She must have been
buffeted by the strong winds, lost her footing, been swept out to
sea. That night the ocean had been plagued by hundreds of powerful
rips.

As he rolled over and tried to sleep,
attempting to force the images from his head, Adam recalled once
more how Brian Markham had sat with him on the steps of the back
porch, gently breaking the news.

Despite an exhaustive search over the days
that followed, Alana Bennett’s tiny body had never been found.

There were many things at which Melanie Cail
was very good. One of them was covering her tracks. She did not
want the faxes she was about to send to be traced back to Northern
Rocks. She drove all the way in to the city of Brisbane, knowing
there were still a few libraries and shops that had a fax machine
on their premises for use by the general public.

Melanie sent the first half dozen faxes from
a library in the city region known as Fortitude Valley, the next
half dozen from a store several suburbs away, then another 10 from
two instant print shops to the south of the city.

The one page fax – her copy of the single
document she’d taken from Stephen Hunter’s study, was sent to the
biology professors at five universities, the CEO’s of several
Government and private research establishments, including the
CSIRO, and to the science editors on a number of daily
newspapers.

She knew that the sequence of letters on the
page were DNA codes relating to the blood work Stephen was doing.
She knew it wasn’t for consumption by the scientific community, as
yet, or by the media. This would cause serious ripples – tremors
actually – indicating there was an industrial traitor within the
Westmeyer Centre. The Institute had a high profile and news of
trouble inside would draw huge media interest. As a reporter on the
local newspaper, Melanie was in the box seat to file reports for
her potential future employers in Brisbane.

She smiled wickedly to herself. It was one of
those ideas that struck on the spur of the moment. The delicious
thing was that she’d never be suspected – no one knew she’d been
seeing Stephen and what possible motive could she have anyway? News
of the security leak would appear first in the major city
newspapers. It was only then she would enter the fray, simply
because she worked locally and was on the spot to follow up.

Now, all she needed was to get Eddie to run
her angle on the Jane Doe drowning and she’d be riding the crest of
two major and very different breaking stories. With the passage of
the past few days behind them, Eddie had already agreed to a follow
up article.

She was feeling incredibly horny as she drove
back to Northern Rocks at high speed. She called ahead on the cell
phone and spoke to Stephen. He confirmed he wasn’t planning to work
late at the lab that night. It’s all going my way today, Melanie
thought.

When Hunter arrived home at 6.45 that evening
Melanie was already waiting in his apartment, stripped down to lacy
black underwear and ready to pounce like a cat injected with speed.
‘You don’t want to eat just yet, do you?’ she whispered in his ear,
the tip of her tongue touching the side of his neck.

Hunter grinned. ‘What are you on?’

‘Adrenaline.’ Her voice was a purr.

‘You must’ve had a good day.’

‘Great day.’ She undid the buttons on his
shirt, sliding it off as their bodies crushed together, her mouth
covering his. They crashed down onto the sofa, Hunter slowly
positioning his body over hers. Then, as his excitement soared to
fever pitch he ripped her panties away from her crotch with a
strength he hadn’t possessed just minutes before.

Westmeyer’s home was twenty minutes drive
away from the Institute, in an exclusive section at the far
northern end of the town. His spacious, two-storey house, with its
Mediterranean design, was on a shelf of land that overlooked the
ocean. A walkway led down to a private beach with a jetty and the
boathouse that stored his small cabin cruiser.

Before Meredith Seals was due to fly home,
Westmeyer had arranged for his secretary to call and invite the
investment banker to a small dinner party at Westmeyer’s home.
She’d agreed and, according to the secretary, sounded flattered –
as Westmeyer knew she would.

She’d arrived by taxi at Westmeyer’s home,
dressed in a smart, conservative black dinner dress, her make-up a
little too heavy. Westmeyer invited her in to the front sitting
room and fixed her a cocktail. Then he apologised: the husband and
wife neighbours whom he’d also invited to the dinner party had
cancelled at the last moment, a problem with one of their children
or some such thing. ‘So I’m afraid it’s just you and me and that’s
hardly a dinner party…’

‘I understand. It’s quite all right,’
Meredith smiled, trying hard to mask her disappointment.

Westmeyer swirled the liquid in his glass,
then took a sip. ‘It’s a bit of a quirk of mine, I tend to get a
little lonely, just me in this great big house with a part-time
housekeeper and a part-time chef. I often throw these sudden
dinners, phoning people up on the spur of the moment. Usually they
happen okay, sometimes they don’t.’

‘It’s really quite okay. Surely, though, you
don’t get too lonely…?’

‘I know what you’re thinking – doesn’t quite
fit. Busy man, running a research centre, lots of overseas trips,
lots of acquaintances. But I was never the one to settle down,
never married, devoted to science I suppose and…silly as it sounds,
I can get quite lonely in the quiet times. And one thing that
really relaxes me is straightforward conversations over
dinner…’

‘I think it relaxes most of us.’

‘Look, I’ve dragged you out, you’re all
dressed up. I’ve sent the chef home, so perhaps I could take you
out for a meal. There are some lovely a la carte restaurants in the
town.’

‘That would be fine.’

‘What would you like to eat?’

Meredith shrugged. ‘Well…’

‘Italian? There’s a terrific Italian place,
they serve the best Veal Florentina on the coast…’

‘Sounds good.’

There had never been any other invitees to
Westmeyer’s “dinner”; there was no husband and wife next door – it
was simply typical of the many ploys he used, to engineer
situations the way he wanted them. He was in the mood for some
female company and the reasonably attractive, fortyish banker was
just what the mood required.

William had always been one for romancing the
ladies. With his lifelong dedication to his Institute and his role
as a senior statesman in the biogenetic community, it had suited
him to remain single. He enjoyed the freedom and excitement of
brief affairs without the greater emotional depth of long-term
relationships.

And he had felt that way, without regret,
since the loss of the one woman he had truly loved.

The dinner went well. Westmeyer enjoyed the
process of coaxing the somewhat wooden Meredith to relax further,
to smile, to open up about herself. By the time they left the
restaurant Westmeyer was touching her briefly and gently from time
to time, on the arm, the shoulder, the hand. He read the tentative
signals in her eyes – she had a melancholy side and she was
flattered by the attention. The added bonus, to Westmeyer, was in
influencing her to agree to the bank’s investment.

He drove her to her hotel room and suggested
she stay in town for a few more days. ‘I owe myself a little time
off,’ he said, ‘but I need to be in the Institute in the morning. I
was thinking of taking my cruiser out tomorrow afternoon.’

The weather turned too blustery the following
afternoon and Westmeyer had to turn back to shore earlier than
expected. ‘Not to worry. We’ll do it again tomorrow.’

They dined together again that night.

‘You’re obviously an ambitious and driven
man,’ Meredith said, ‘but I sense that sometimes, like tonight,
there’s another side to you that sneaks out for a breather. You
mentioned you get a little lonely…but there’s more to it than that.
Something worries you.’

Light, romantic music played in the
background, matching the ambience of the restaurant. Westmeyer
smiled at his date’s sensitivity. He hadn’t expected that, but he
didn’t mind it at all.

There were times when he needed to open up to
someone – preferably a woman, and preferably one he wouldn’t be
romancing again.

‘You’re very observant. Every now and then –
not too often I might add – the scared little boy inside pokes his
head out for a look at what his future self became.’

‘Well put. I’m sure we all have that child
inside, stepping out from the distant past for just a moment.’

‘
I was a restless, frustrated child, a
science prodigy sent to a private, specialist school. My father
tried to hide it but I could sense it was a financial struggle for
he and my mother. My Dad was the original Mr. Nice Guy. Always
trying to do the right thing by others, always putting himself
last.’

‘A good man.’

‘Yes, but he was a very frustrated man who
never achieved any of the things he really wanted in life. He was
also a scientist, with his own hunger for research and development.
He was an intelligent, organised, meticulous man, worked as a
laboratory manager for a pharmaceutical products firm. He worked
for them for thirty years, but never advanced beyond the middle
management lab work because of that very reason – he was Mr. Nice
Guy. Never pushed, never trod on toes. Never took any chances
because he wanted to ensure he provided for my education.
Eventually he was forced into retirement and he dropped from a
heart attack a week later, the same week I started Uni.’

‘And you never wanted to end up like that.
And you didn’t want to let him down.’

‘I excelled at Uni and when US Defence
offered support for special projects in return for serving with
them in various capacities, I jumped at the chance.’

‘You’ve achieved a hell of a lot, William,
but you’re not satisfied, are you?’

‘I’ve achieved very little.’

‘I think you’re scared that the Mr. Nice Guy
in you is fighting to get out.’

‘I’m making certain he stays locked inside,’
William revealed. ‘He’s no help out here in the real world, no help
when you’re reaching out to accomplish a major scientific
breakthrough.’

‘You know, of course, that I read up on you
before I came to town.’

‘Of course.’

‘And I see you served in Vietnam. You don’t
speak much of that.’

‘Another era, another country, but it might
just as well have been another planet.’

‘I’ve known some men who served there. One of
them said he felt like an alien in those jungles.’

‘You didn’t just feel like an alien, you
became one. Sanity and insanity merged over there so that you
couldn’t tell one from the other. For a while you became someone
completely different.’

‘What happened over there?’

‘I met some very strange and interesting
people,’ Westmeyer said.

This time he took Meredith back to his house
and to his full expectations she’d responded hungrily to his
advances.

Since his arrival in Australia, Westmeyer had
developed a genuine love of the Queensland coastline, beautiful
everywhere, breathtaking in parts. He was making the most of their
second day out on the cruiser. Meredith had to fly out the next
morning, and he would then need to devote his full energy once more
to the Institute.

It was late afternoon, and a breath of balmy
breeze wafted through his bedroom window. He’d showered in his
ensuite, shaved, dressed and had stopped for a brief, reflective
moment. On the dresser, against the room’s west wall, stood the
framed photograph of Hoang Thi Mai. How many private moments had
there been, gazing at her picture, at the soft, soulful eyes, her
warm, unaffected smile, the gentle crease that crossed the tops of
her cheeks? The photo was the one and only item to survive, in his
possession, during the long trek that had seen him exit a war-torn
Saigon decades before.