Tropic of Death (19 page)

‘Oh, shit,’ Rita groaned. ‘Maddox wants to carpet me offi cially.’

‘Calm down,’ said Jarrett, placing a hand on her arm. ‘It’s not about that. It’s the upgraded terror alert. The government’s ordered an urgent security review of Whitley Sands and surroundings, including the town itself. The introductory session is this afternoon and we’ll all have a level-one clearance. Looks like there’s a good chance we’ve got a terrorist cell in our midst. A review panel’s being organised with base security to include emergency services, the local council and police - and we’re on the list.’

‘Why me?’

‘Yeah, that’s got Bryce flummoxed. He’s none too pleased to be conscripted himself but says your inclusion smacks of an ulterior motive. “Wire-pulling” he calls it.’

‘I think he’s right.’

28
Rita felt a chill go through her as the police car stopped at the security barrier of the Whitley Sands research base. It brought back the brutal experience of two nights before and Dr Steinberg’s allusion to the Stasi. This time, though, she wasn’t heading to their compound but to their citadel. From the car windows she could see the chain-link perimeter fence stretching in either direction, topped with a frill of razor wire. Tall metal poles, each with a brace of cameras, flanked the fortified checkpoint where the guards inspected ID before waving them through.

Jarrett was at the wheel, looking uncomfortable in a suit and tie, with Inspector Bryce in the passenger seat beside him wearing full uniform. Rita was in the back seat on her own. She’d put on the pale turquoise linen suit that usually gave her an edge in male company. It was light, cool and showed off her curves. It was also a way of making a statement of self-assurance to Maddox and his ilk.

A small procession of civilian delegates was winding from the car park to the entrance of the main building. As the three members of the police contingent got out of the car, Bryce turned to Rita.

‘This isn’t meant to sound condescending, Van Hassel,’ he began, ‘but my advice to you is to say nothing unless you’re asked a specific question. This meeting is fraught with pitfalls, not least for you.’

‘I agree, sir.’

‘This applies to you too, Jarrett. No uninvited comments. Don’t offer advice. Don’t expand on police tactics.’ Bryce straightened his jacket with a tug. ‘This review is ostensibly in response to an upgraded alert but don’t doubt for a moment we’d be safer off paddling with stingers. We’ll be dealing with military administrators and federal apparatchiks who didn’t get where they are by being nice. Lethal politics is second nature to them. They’re experts at the blame game. What makes it worse is that we’ll have our civilian colleagues as an audience.’

With a sigh, Bryce led the way to the front doors of the administrative block that sat atop the seven underground levels where the R&D was housed. Once inside they joined the queue of emergency service and civil authority officers being processed with base security tags - photos, digital codes and fingerprint biometric data. When it came to Rita’s turn she was presented with a ready-made smart card.

‘We’ve already got your details, Van Hassel.’

A thick-necked guard gave her a cold look of recognition, one that lingered, as he handed her the card. She took the pass, slapped it against a digital pad to open glass security doors and walked through into a cavernous atrium. It stretched six floors up to a glazed roof and two floors down to a basement cafeteria furnished with tables, chairs and rubber plants. The building’s interior was circular, with galleried walkways and glass-walled offices on each floor. Suspended in mid-air, like a satellite above the atrium, was a sphere ribbed with CCTV cameras. The elevator hall was clad in marble.

As she leant on the railing, craning her neck upwards, Rita could see grey clouds scudding overhead through the glass panels of the roof. Figures, some in military uniforms, were walking along the upper galleries. In a ground-floor meeting room, on the far side of the atrium, men in white shirts were seated before a flip chart.

On the floor below technicians were adjusting cameras and lasers in some sort of open studio. All of this, of course, was basic office work. Below the open basement floor stretched the underground chambers where all the restricted work occurred.

The place was unusual and deceptive. While the building’s exterior was bland and rectangular - a functional block of concrete and smoked glass - inside it was something of an architectural showpiece, albeit inward-looking and vertiginous at the same time.

And with a gasp of recognition, Rita saw the symbolism of the design. The Whitley Sands building was a physical expression of the secret project being developed beneath it.

The structure was a clever adaptation of the model prison advocated by eighteenth-century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham - a type of penitentiary that he called a Panopticon. The name came from the Greek word for ‘all-seeing’. The layout was circular, with the prisoners in their cells around the circumference and the officers, concealed from view, in an observation tower at the centre. The aim was to convey a sense of permanent surveillance or, as Bentham put it, a ‘sentiment of a sort of omnipresence’.

The Whitley Sands structure even mimicked a central watch-tower with its nest of security cameras.

Someone came and stood beside her at the railing. She turned to see the unsmiling face of Captain Roy Maddox.

‘This time we’ve let you in the front door,’ he said. ‘So you’d better behave yourself.’

Instead of military apparel, now he was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt and precisely knotted tie.

‘Captain Maddox,’ replied Rita. ‘I didn’t recognise you out of your interrogation garb.’

‘Come on, Van Hassel. Let it go.’

‘I already have.’

‘Good girl.’

‘But if you go on patronising me,’ she added, just above a whisper,

‘I might not think twice about kicking you where it hurts.’

‘I’d like to see you try.’ Maddox let out an unfriendly laugh.

‘But let’s be straight with one another. Like it or not, we’re about to work together.’

‘Straight, okay,’ said Rita, folding her arms. ‘What’s the real reason I’m part of this review?’

‘Because you’re a random element in an unorthodox theatre of war,’ he growled. ‘And your path has already crossed mine.’

‘You don’t trust me,’ she said.

‘I’ve got enough to worry about without trying to second guess what your investigation will turn up. For all I know, you might stumble on something relevant. To put it bluntly, I don’t want you interfering wherever your female instincts lead you. I’d rather have you in the loop.’

‘That’s almost flattering.’

‘Well, it’s the only flattery you’ll get from me.’ He turned aside as Bryce and Jarrett approached. ‘Here come your colleagues.’ He reached out and shook their hands briskly as he eyed their security tags. ‘I see you’re equipped with your new dongles.’

‘My old dongle’s still in working order,’ put in Jarrett.

Bryce cut him dead with a look before turning to Maddox.

‘This is all a bit short notice,’ he said.

‘That’s why it’s called urgent,’ retorted Maddox. ‘Get used to it, Bryce. Things are hotting up around here.’ He gestured towards the lifts. ‘The review’s being held in the Situation Room, so we’re heading down to level one.’

They filed into the lift with a handful of other delegates, glided three floors down and emerged into a long, high corridor that seemed to stretch for a kilometre in either direction. The floor was covered in linoleum and the walls were painted battleship grey. Maddox led the guests past several steel doors, some of them ajar, showing rooms where staff were busy at keyboards.

An intersecting corridor brought them to double doors, through which they entered the Situation Room. It was a broad, carpeted space dominated by a large oval table around which a couple of dozen people were milling, looking for their names in front of their allotted chairs. The room had a high ceiling and no windows, the walls were hung with flat screens and maps. A bank of computer monitors and digital communications were recessed into one of the walls in the form of a master control desk.

‘Right, we’re all here,’ announced Maddox, as the doors closed with an air-tight hiss. ‘Let’s get this show on the road.’

There may have been an irksome quality to Bryce, an undue formality in the way he approached his duties, but Rita decided he was right about the type of meeting they were now locked into. She’d been to taskforce briefings before, crowded squad rooms with too many detectives pumped up and edgy, yet none had prepared her for this. This was like a war summit. Those at the head of the table interpreted the rules of battle, government observers took notes, and the rest were there to follow orders or face the consequences. The setting was intimidating, like a hi-tech bunker, and the mood oppressive. The room itself was filled with an airless hush, a strain of expectation.

More than thirty people sat in silence at their allocated places as the man presiding rose to his feet.

‘Thank you all for coming so promptly,’ he began. ‘Let me introduce myself. I’m the director-general of the Whitley Sands Defence Research Establishment, Lieutenant Colonel Willis Baxter.

It’s my honour to be the man in charge here and the convenor of this opening session of the security review, ordered by the federal government. A heavy responsibility is being placed on the shoulders of all of you in this room, and I expect nothing less than total commitment to the task at hand.’

The introductory remarks confirmed Rita’s assessment. The format was rigidly institutional, with all that implied in terms of conforming to the rules. Failure to comply would invite censure or worse.

‘In addition to your normal duties,’ Baxter continued, ‘those of you employed by the civil authorities will be required to familiarise yourself with the directives, procedures and responses stipulated under the stages of the alert. I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to remain vigilant at all times. All reports of suspicious acts must be followed up. No threat, whether actual, potential or merely perceived, can go unchecked. I hope I make myself clear.’

What was becoming clear to Rita was Baxter’s sense of his own importance. He expected obedience. He saw himself as a martial overlord who projected a natural air of authority. His adjustment from active service to defence industry administration was an ongoing process. The way he addressed the meeting -

standing stiffly, hands clasped behind his back, chin thrust out, his message conveyed with a crisp, no-nonsense delivery - was the way he would have rallied his troops. Like Maddox, military logic controlled his thinking. But unlike his security director, Baxter assumed an aura of upright command, leadership with a refined sense of supervision. Tall, almost aristocratic in profile, he possessed a weighty voice, icy blue eyes and jet black hair. It was probably dyed to maintain an imposing image, consistent with his tailored black suit and regimental tie. While Rita recognised that Baxter cut an impressive figure, she couldn’t help feeling there was an element of pose, a certain vanity, in the way he conducted himself. In any commander, that was a dangerous flaw.

‘Before I proceed with the terms of the review,’ Baxter went on, ‘I want to go around the table and register each delegate’s presence. I’ll start by introducing the three men seated beside me.

Each is an expert in security and intelligence matters and has an intricate working knowledge of the research base. To my right is the Whitley Sands security director, Captain Roy Maddox.’ Maddox nodded grimly. ‘To my left is our international director, Rhett Molloy, who hails from Washington, and next to him is a senior adviser on counter-terrorism, Peter Luker from Canberra.’ Luker offered a smile of acknowledgement; the others remained stony-faced as Baxter continued. ‘Now, going in a clockwise direction, I want each person to state, for the record, their name, function and area of specialisation.’

It took several minutes as, one after the other, those around the table explained who they were and what they did. The police were well represented, with delegates drawn from the specialist squads in Brisbane as well as the AFP. There were officers from the emergency services - ambulance, fire brigade and hospitals - as well as members of Whitley Council’s Local Disaster Management Committee. Together with Defence, various federal government departments had also sent officials. It seemed like a comprehensive and dynamic gathering. Or was it, Rita wondered. Perhaps, with its ensemble approach, it was destined to be the very opposite.

When it came to her turn she stated briskly, ‘Detective Sergeant Marita Van Hassel, Criminal Profiler, Victoria Police.’

With the introductions complete, folders were distributed, stamped on the front cover with the words
Commonwealth of
Australia - Confidential
. Each folder contained nearly one hundred densely printed pages, which attempted to anticipate any and all exigencies. The rule book, thought Rita.

‘Read it carefully after this meeting,’ instructed Baxter. ‘At tomorrow’s session I will expect to hear a range of suggestions on how we can apply or adapt the measures covered, or reinforce the strategies already in place.’ He waited for the ripples of shuffling and murmuring to subside around the table. ‘Very well, then. Down to business. Those of you who have been invited to participate in the review are here as guests of this establishment.

As such you have been issued with a level-one security clearance, giving you access to the building’s superstructure and as far down as this level. Everywhere else is out of bounds. If you should stray to the underground levels below us you’ll be subject to mandatory arrest. So while you can feel free to go up at Whitley Sands, please don’t attempt to explore downwards. The R&D activities conducted on the lower levels are classified, highly sensitive and potentially dangerous to the uninformed. That warning aside, we felt it appropriate to convene here, in the Situation Room, because of the gravity of the threat confronting us.’

Baxter took a deep breath and drew himself up to his full height.