The Delta Chain (9 page)

‘Not normally,’ Hunter gestured toward
Westmeyer. ‘When this one’s around, the talk usually turns to the
horses.’

‘You’re a betting man?’ asked Hadley.

‘Nothing relaxes me more, Bill.’

‘I hadn’t pegged you as a gambler.’

‘Oh I don’t consider it gambling. It’s a
science. I study the form, read up on the trainers and the riders,
and I make educated guesses.’

‘A man after my own heart.’ Hadley warmed
more and more to his hosts as the lunch progressed. He hadn’t
imagined he would so enjoy the company of a bunch of scientists. He
noticed that even Meredith was relaxing and knocking back the
wine.

Hadley didn’t imagine for a moment he was in
the hands of a master manipulator. Westmeyer’s investigators
supplied intensive background on every one of the guests. He’d
never been to a racetrack in his life but he knew Bill Hadley lived
there on weekends. Westmeyer noted that, as usual, Hunter was
enjoying this game as much as he loved the lab.

Hunter’s attention was momentarily drawn to
Kate Kovacs as she passed with her plate of food. ‘Kate, join us,’
he called, catching her eye. He suppressed a cynical grin as he
watched her stifle a frown and then force a smile. ‘Oh, hi
Stephen.’ She nodded to Westmeyer. ‘Fantastic spread, William.’

‘It’s a sensational day all round, I couldn’t
be happier,’ Westmeyer replied.

Hunter shifted his chair, creating a space
beside his and reached back to pull in a spare chair from the table
behind. ‘There, sit down. I’m sure our friends here have heard
quite enough about blood work and genetics and would be equally
fascinated by your line of expertise.’ He introduced Kate to Hadley
and Meredith.

‘Kate’s our resident IT guru, on assignment
from A.B.C.S.,’ Westmeyer added.

‘Ah, computer systems, now that’s a little
bit closer to home, eh, Meredith,’ Hadley said.

‘Yes,’ said Meredith. ‘A big job,
trouble-shooting the system at a research facility. Excuse me for
saying so, but you seem a little young for such a role.’ She
delivered the words with a warm smile but with a cool edge to her
voice. It was a sound Bill Hadley had heard before, whenever a
younger, prettier woman joined him and Meredith in a group.
Sometimes he found it amusing but at other times, like today, it
irritated him.

‘Oh, I started young,’ Kate responded without
a trace of cattiness, ‘and I’ve been with A.B.C.S. for several
years. Me and the megabytes go back a long way.'

Hadley leaned forward over his plate. ‘Now
what’s this business William was on about earlier, regarding your
software speeding up the progress of the research?’

‘A.B.C.S. is known for business solutions,’
Kate said, ‘and tailoring our own brand of software intelligence to
suit the requirements of our clients.’

‘Makes sense.’

‘But it’s hardly a new concept,’ Meredith
said.

‘No. But it’s both the sophistication of our
systems and the personal on-site service where A.B.C.S. differs.
There’s a growing demand for that today.’

‘Can’t argue with that.’ Hadley was clearly
on side. ‘Your boss, James Reardon, has quite a reputation. Whizz
kid and all that. The financial press loves reporting on him. I
believe his firm has more than doubled in size in the past two
years.’

Kate ran her fingers through her blonde hair,
sweeping it back. ‘Yes. It’s been an exciting company to work for,
Bill, and an incredible learning curve. Anyway, getting back to
what you referred to on speeding up the research…’

‘Yes.’

‘Genetic research is complex beyond my
understanding, I don’t mind admitting, and it relies heavily on
computing solutions. I’m talking about applied mathematical
formulae and algorithms. Are you familiar with concepts such as
high-end digital software that applies those techniques?’

Hadley laughed. ‘Only in layman’s terms. Not
so much of the techno jargon, eh.’

‘Okay.’ Kate smiled, took a deep breath and
searched her mind for the most suitable approach. ‘Let me use as an
example, a scientist and his experiments in an earlier age. How
about Thomas Edison, regarded as
the
scientific wizard of
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Discovering electric
light meant conducting a series of experiments, each one of which
tried out a combination of various compounds to see whether they
would produce the sought-after result. The fact is, Edison and his
team conducted over ten thousand experiments over a period of
decades, slowly and surely narrowing the odds.’

Westmeyer and Hunter shared a grin at the
retelling of this famous story.

‘Yes. Extraordinary,’ said Hadley.

Kate continued: ‘Even today, all scientific
and medical advances come from seemingly endless tests and trials,
and the use of computers to analyse pieces of information along the
way has sped up the process. A.B.C.S. has developed a method that
James Reardon calls DataStorming…’ she pulled one of her funny,
expressive monkey faces, ‘…okay, so it’s a bad word play on
brainstorming, but I think it’s kinda catchy.’

‘It’s catchy,’ Hadley agreed.

‘We’ve created a DataStorming information
bank specifically for the Westmeyer Centre. It holds a complete
encyclopaedia on every branch of science and medicine. Utilising
that knowledge, the software analyses data and formulates the most
potentially successful results that can be achieved.

‘What that means is that Dr. Hunter can
advise DataStorming he wishes to isolate the gene most responsive
to fighting leukaemia and to engineer a set of much stronger
leukaemia fighting genes. He programs the system to digitally
conduct thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of hypothetical
experiments and to analyse the hypothetical results. From these,
DataStorming then advises the most likely combinations for
undertaking the real laboratory experiments.’

‘I’m with you,’ Hadley said. ‘So, for
instance, Dr. Hunter and his team begin testing with a hundred or
so experiments suggested by the DataStorming analysis, as opposed
to many more thousands of possible experiments?’

‘Exactly.’

‘There are, of course, no guarantees to
getting the required result,’ Hunter said, ‘but DataStorming’s
success rate in other fields is high – sixty to seventy percent –
and the incredible thing is the enormous amount of time saved for
research teams. In some cases we’re talking about saving decades
spent on unsuccessful experiments.’

‘I could talk computers all day,’ Kate said,
‘but I’d love to hear a bit about a day in the life of an
investment banker.’

‘You’ve echoed my exact thoughts.’ Westmeyer
lied with the grace of the perfect host. Bill Hadley took the bait
and the talk drifted to world developments in the money markets and
the changing face of the multinationals.

When the lunch was over and they were
returning to the boardroom for the final presentation, Hunter
leaned toward Kate, his voice a husky whisper. ‘You haven’t been
returning my calls.’

‘You got that right.’ Kate allowed her
irritation to show. It was always the ones who thought they were
irresistible to women who couldn’t take “no” for an answer.

‘I don’t know whether you listened to the
messages I left on your answering machine-’

‘Actually no.’ Now she directed a flippant
grin at him, ‘I deleted them. That was half the fun.’ She’d made it
clear, after their last date over a month ago, that she didn’t want
to pursue a relationship.

‘Okay, okay, I know I came on far too strong
on that last date and that’s why you backed off. That’s what I was
saying on those messages. Look, Kate, we really relaxed and enjoyed
ourselves at first, didn’t we? At least grant me that.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Well, I really did. And I respect that you
want some space, fair enough, but I’d really like to try it again.
Take it nice and slow.’

‘Stephen, I’m seeing some-’

‘Hear me out. Look, I know I can get be
overbearing.’

Kate’s raised eyebrow revealed her surprise.
Stephen Hunter had never struck her as the sensitive type.

‘Anyway, why don’t you at least give it some
thought.’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘By the way, you were great
with those bankers. William will be very happy.’

‘He doesn’t need my help to win over the
bankers, he does it brilliantly on his own. I’m here strictly for a
limited time to sort out the system problems.’

‘I think he’d like you to stay around
permanently. So would I.’ He gave her a carefree wave as he moved
off into the crowd. ‘Think about what I said.’ He may be a
brilliant researcher and a real hunk, Kate thought, but he really
was an arrogant, self-centred man. She knew he’d been play- acting.
What was it with him? Couldn’t bear to have had a potential
conquest see right through him and get away? Years ago she’d seen a
girlfriend get mixed up with a similar character and it had an ugly
end.

She didn’t need
that
in her life.

After the final presentation, Kate hurried
back to her office. She wanted to zip through her work and leave
early. She called Betty, who confirmed she’d retrieved the diary
back-ups and sent them to Kate’s laptop. Kate wanted to get home
and start checking those files.

She was about to leave when the desk phone
rang. ‘Kate, we’re running through some DataStorming results and
the data’s going crazy…’ It was Stephen Hunter.

‘Don’t panic…’

‘It’s this damned virus,’ he shouted into the
phone.

‘I’ll be right there.’ Kate knew Westmeyer
was taking his guests on a guided tour. Hunter’s lab would be one
of the star attractions, so this was the worst possible time and
place for another virus attack.

She ran to the lifts and headed up to the
second level.

Robert Parker, Communications Officer for the
Northern Territory Wildlife Preservation Commission, was grim faced
as he entered the office of Commission chief Harold Letterfield at
10.45. ‘Sir, I believe Conway advised you we didn’t receive this
morning’s radiophone check-in from Kovacs. There’s been no further
word since and all our attempts to raise him have met with
static.’

‘Damn,’ said Letterfield.

‘We can keep trying…’

‘Yes, keep trying, but in the meantime I’m
getting the chopper crew out there. There’s no way Greg or Walter
would miss contact unless something was wrong.’

Fifteen minutes later the Commission’s Bell
Ranger helicopter lifted off its pad in the town of Settler’s
Gorge, carrying pilot Ron Mahoney and senior ranger Trish Watts
north- east.

They followed the Adelaide River into the Van
Diemen Gulf.

At first, they were afforded a bird’s-eye
view of undulating plains cut by low mountain ranges and rocky
hills. Later, the landscape became flood plains and wetlands with
areas of monsoon forest.

The Northern Territory’s Top End is drained
by several rivers flowing into the Gulf. The Adelaide River rises
near Mt. Smith, to the south of the Adelaide River township, and
runs a strong course through a landscape rich in eucalypts,
paperbarks and pandanus palms, constantly brimming with its own
ecological melting pot of water birds. Flocks of pelicans, herons
and jabirus drifted by and it occurred to Trish Watts that the Bell
Ranger, with the mechanical whirr of its rotor blades, was like an
unwelcome alien to this vast stretch of wilderness.

‘There’s the Rover,’ Mahoney said, spotting
the four-wheel drive. Kovacs and Coolawirra had left it by the side
of a rocky trail that was an offshoot of the Arnhem Highway. The
chopper flew low, following the river.

‘Like looking for a needle in a bloody
haystack,’ Trish Watts shouted over the constant roar of the rotor
blades. She trained her binoculars on the riverbank, sweeping her
view in an arc, back and forth, over the mangroves. The special
gyroscope, fitted to the binoculars, allowed her to zero in for
close-ups. Trish was an earthy, energetic young woman who’d grown
up in the Northern Territory and who’d been a friend to both Greg
and Walter for a number of years. She began to feel stabs of
anxiety as, kilometre after kilometre, she saw nothing but swamps
and lagoons and pockets of forest; flocks of birds, wild pigs and
rabbits. No men. And no watercraft – this was too far north for the
tourist cruises and pleasure boats of the Adelaide River
region.

Later in the afternoon, with twilight not too
far away and the fuel gauge low, Mahoney put the Bell Ranger into a
360- degree turn and headed back to Settler’s Gorge.

Walter Coolawirra heard the faint strains of
the helicopter, somewhere in the distance. A soft, almost
imperceptible sound that only a trained bushman’s ears would
detect. He stopped, cocked his head slightly and listened with a
new intensity.

But the sound faded further, and then was
gone.

He pushed on, drenched in the cold sweat of
fear, keeping to the edge of the mud flats, away from the river
bank, cloaking his movements with the long, broad leaves of the
trees and the intermittent sprays of tawny bottlebrush. He didn’t
want to be in the possible view of the hunters if their boat was
following the same direction on the river. He knew they would kill
him, but he couldn’t be sure if they were on the water, or tracking
him by foot, or both.

He’d covered a great deal of ground, stopping
for only a few hours in the dead of night so they wouldn’t hear his
movements, but not sleeping. Sleep seemed to him an impossible
dream, something he would never know again.

He was certain the chopper he’d heard was
evidence the Commission was out searching. But it was getting late
in the day and they would’ve turned back now, intending to refuel
at Adelaide River. He knew he had to reach an open area, as close
as possible to the four-wheel drive, so that they’d be able to spot
him in the morning. In the meantime he couldn’t stop. He ached all
over, every muscle dragging as though weighted by slabs of stone,
every nerve end screaming for relief, but he could not stop. He
couldn’t take the chance the hunters would catch up to him. There
was something uncanny about the way they’d known he and Greg were
out there, and then pinpointed their location in the dark.