The Delta Chain (21 page)

‘Right. In the meantime these bastards will be long gone. If they aren’t already.’

‘And your friend, the detective…?’

‘Adam doesn’t know about this. If he did, he’d make sure neither of us attempted it…’ She momentarily glanced at her cell, its top protruding from her handbag, switched off since she’d left Sydney so Adam wouldn’t be able to get in contact.

Walter pondered a while longer.

‘Kate, all sense and logic shouts at me to say no to this. I have my family to think about…’ He spoke slowly, each word carefully considered. Kate nodded her understanding as he spoke. ‘…and you really don’t know that the coppers might not find them. But still, like you, there’s a part of me that wants to do this for Greg, to make sure these murderers are found. But I would not take you out there-’

‘I have to, Walter. I have to be there to operate the Landscan, to ensure the set-ups are correct, that
can’t
be an issue-’

‘So dangerous, Kate.’

‘We’d plant the transmitter from a safe distance and then be out of there. With infra-red night goggles, which I’ve also brought, we could even do it in the dead of night.’

‘Your brother said you were into all the technical stuff. A cyber-tomboy, he once called you.’ Again he flashed his impish bushman’s grin. ‘My wife and kids mustn’t have any suspicion what we’re doing. I don’t want them sitting here, worrying, expecting the worst.’

Kate’s expression brightened. ‘You’ll do it?’

‘If they’re still out there, I’ll find them again. But on one condition. When we do, Kate, we have just one shot and less than ten minutes. That’s all. We leave, before there’s any chance of them knowing we’re there, regardless of whether the shot worked. No argument on this. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ she said, her heart beating rapidly to a new and disturbing rhythm, fear mixed with the unfamiliar vibration of vengeance.

PART TWO

POWERFUL FORCES

Adam was at the Northern Rocks station early, instigating a trace for the registered owner of the
Hoang Thi Mai
. He’d no sooner put that in motion when Kirby strode in. ‘Had a call from the big boss in the big smoke. He tells me you’re playing a role on the task force he’s formed.’ Kirby’s tone was a thinly disguised scowl. ‘Which is all very lah-de-dah for you, but leaves me with a station having to rely on the sub they’re sending in.’

‘What an inconvenience, Arthur,’ Adam shot back. He’d be damned if he was going to keep playing it politically correct with the station chief’s worsening attitude.

Kirby gave him a look that should have been able to kill. ‘Careful, Detective Bennett, or your true colours may start to show.’ Kirby left the office but the tension remained in the air. Adam’s phone rang and he picked it up, saying ‘Yes?’ too quickly and curtly. But his attention was swiftly focused when the female voice on the line, remaining anonymous, told him of the dialogue she’d heard between William Westmeyer and another male she couldn’t identify, in a place she wasn’t prepared to disclose.

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.

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.’

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 in 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.’