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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.
