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Three Months Earlier
Mo was sitting restlessly on a garden chair outside Beth’s apartment in green and leafy Claremont, one of Perth’s affluent Western suburbs. As he watched the stop-start traffic on the Stirling Highway, he presumed she was caught up somewhere in commuter chaos and settled down to wait. It was twenty-to-eight before Beth finally turned her car down the narrow driveway that ran the length of the block and edged into a measly gap in the rear car park. She killed the engine, turned off the lights, picked up her shoulder bag and an Indian take-away from the passenger seat. After four and half hours spent vacuuming floors and emptying bins she was looking forward to an early night. Her face dropped when she spied her visitor. ‘Hello. What a pleasant surprise,’ she said dredging up a smile.
Swiftly relieving her of the take-away container, Mo said, ‘You look pooped. How come you’re working so late?’
‘There’s no way I can get through my work in the two hours they pay me for,’ she said, searching through her bag for her keys. ‘It’s just as well I’m also being paid by the NSA[iii], I couldn’t afford take-away on what Crescent Air shells out. I hope they pay their pilots better.’
‘Not nearly enough for a fighter pilot. But then I didn’t include my service record on my CV. Management thinks ferrying businessmen around the state is a step up for a cow-cocky crop duster.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘It’s maddening when the other pilot talks down to me; I’m a decorated fighter pilot. Lennox is nothing more than a glorified taxi driver.’
Beth’s feet were killing her. She kicked her heels off. ‘If you think that’s bad, you should see how the clerical staff treats me. How much longer do I have to keep up with the bimbo act?’ Her low top and tight, skimpy skirt had brought forth disapproving looks and cold shoulders from the prim, middle-aged book-keeper and her sycophantic assistant.
Mo’s own lips pursed. Beth was a thoroughly nice girl, having her dress and act like a flirtatious floozy didn’t sit well with him. Earlier that morning he’d overheard the mechanic telling the other pilot what he’d like to do to her. It had taken all his will power to restrain from punching his lights out.
‘I asked General Lee that self-same question today. He said, as long as it takes to get the goods on Crescent.’ Mo groaned. ‘So far I’ve got nothing. All I’m getting are routine jobs. Anything out of the ordinary goes to Lennox. I tried pumping him about Pete, the pilot who lost his life when the chopper carrying the terrorists crashed. I didn’t get anything out of him.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Crescent provided the pilot and the chopper. They have to be involved, but nobody’s talking.’
Beth sat down heavily, as if her knees had given way. It was only two months since Dr Al-Karim Farouk, the mastermind behind the foiled attempt to bomb the G20 Summit was killed together with his accomplices while making their getaway. Mo’d forced the chopper they were using out of the air using fighter-pilot techniques perfected flying missions in Iraq and Syria.
No-one, not her family — not even Mo knew she grieved for Karim. She longed to tell him. But she couldn’t. He’d think she was soft in the head if he knew she mourned the loss of the dedicated Dr Jekyll that was Karim before he became Mr. Hyde — the unfeeling monster that’d surgically implanted a body-cavity bomb inside her little sister.
But the pain of her lover’s betrayal, though deep, was beginning to ease. She was no longer coming apart at the seams from the strain of keeping her feelings hidden. What she felt now was weary acceptance laced with bitter regret at the loss of the dedicated volunteer doctor who’d worked tirelessly in some of the most deprived refugee camps before ISIS, al Qaeda or whoever it was, turned him into a terrorist. The chance to uncover whoever had done that to him was the reason she’d taken this job where she was paid peanuts, belittled by the office girls and seen as fair game by the sleaze who managed the office.
She straightened her back and lifted her head. ‘I haven’t found anything incriminating either and I scrutinize every scrap of paper that ends up in the bins.’
‘What about his desk’s drawers?’
‘They’re packed with contract forms. I found little of a personal nature except for some indigestion tablets, a retractable tape-measure and a red tie. That was about it. No letters, no accounts, no private correspondence of any kind.’
‘You need to get into Stanton’s computer ... if there’s anything linking Crescent to the heavyweights behind the attempt that’s where it’ll be.’
‘How can I access his computer? I don’t know the password?’
Mo grinned. ‘Giving you unsupervised access to his office is plain stupid, but then everyone assumes a locked computer is safe.’ He produced a small device from the pocket of his jeans. ‘Everyone is wrong. Do you want to know why?’ Beth shook her head, tiredly. ‘Not before I’ve had a long shower and something to eat.’
* * *
Beth yawned, stretched looked down at the dongle in Mo’s hand and finally said, ‘So have I got this straight ... all I need to do is plug that thing into the computer’s USB port for ten seconds.’
Mo was quite startled at her transformation and didn’t answer immediately. Beth was wearing an oversized tee-shirt, her damp hair had frizzed in the shower and the freckles that were the bane of her life stood out in her freshly scrubbed face. She looked as fetching and wholesome as the feisty squirt he’d fallen for when he was a lad of sixteen. Forget it, I’m not her type and besides the job is hard enough without allowing anything personal to complicate it further.
He pasted a neutral expression on his face. ‘You betcha ... when you remove the dongle, one of the Geeks at the NSA will have started scrutinizing everything on Stanton’s computer.’
‘Dave Stanton might be a sleaze but he’s not an idiot,’ said Beth, disenchantment and fatigue flattening her voice to a dull monotone. ‘He’s bound to have deleted anything implicating Crescent ... I would’ve, if I were him.’
‘Ah, but this gizmo was developed at the NSA.’ he said half-grudgingly. Six months ago Mo was the head honcho at ASP, the Australian Surveillance Program. Australia was one of the countries participating in Five Eyes a secretive intelligence agency run under the auspices of the NSA. He wasn’t up to the job and his boss, General Lee, had booted him out. Mo hadn’t gotten over it. For though he was now a field operative, a role for which he was better suited, his demotion still rankled.
Catching himself drifting, he pulled his mind back to the present. ‘Once the surveillance code is installed in a computer’s browser the NSA has access to everything on the hard drive, including deleted files and stored data.’
Beth was dubious. ‘It sounds too easy.’
‘It is. That’s the beauty of it ... moments after I installed Spygot on your laptop...’
Beth’s face contorted into a fierce frown. ‘You did what...’
Mo cut her off before she could continue. Bracing for the storm, he said, ‘It was to remove you from the list of possible suspects. I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d react like this.’
‘Mo! For goodness sake how could you even think I’d ever be party to a terrorist attack on the Heads of Government at the...’ She broke off. She’d never doubted Karim and look how that had turned out.
Gaining control of her temper, she said in a low voice. ‘I get it ... you can’t afford to trust anyone in your line of business.’
Mo heaved a small sigh of relief. Beth was prickly and her anger easily aroused. He’d expected her to hit the roof. His first impulse was to drop the subject and move on but his gut told him that was a mistake. He attempted to mollify her by explaining that though he’d been seconded to Counter-Intelligence, he was still a serving flight lieutenant in the Air Force and the order to install the spyware came from his commanding officer.
‘Beth,’ he went on in a determinedly reasonable tone, ‘you’re in this line of business now and you’re going to have to do things that you don’t like, in the same way as spying on you didn’t sit well with me.’
She shrugged. ‘Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die[iv], eh?’
Mo rolled his eyes in parody of himself as a youth when Beth’s penchant for quoting from the classics at the drop of a hat drove him to distraction. To tell the truth, he was pleased that she was still the same little show-off who’d stolen his heart when he was a lad. All the same he was wary and considered his answer carefully.
On the face of it her reply was nothing more than an acknowledgement of a fact of life — a fact he’d taken for granted in the Air Force and now in the CIA. But knowing her argumentative nature from old, he interpreted her ‘eh’ as confrontational.
‘That was in the bad old days, Beth. Devices like Spygot have made surveillance safer for field operatives.’
‘If you say so,’ said Beth, who wanted nothing more than for him to leave so she could go to bed.
‘So ... are you up for it?’
She put her head to one side, considering. But not for long. Mimicking the North Atlantic twang he’d picked up in the States and she thought pretentious, she said, ‘You betcha, bud!’
