Zero Hour

FOUR

Red and blue lights flashed across the famous sails of the Opera House in series of intersecting patterns, while blinding white spotlights illuminated the wreckage of the powerboat and the charred shell of the dark blue helicopter. They remained where they’d crashed, smoking and smoldering, as fire trucks poured waves of foam onto both vehicles to prevent any chance of reignition.

The spectacle drew a crowd from both the land and the water. Police tape and barricades kept the shore-based onlookers at bay, but the number of small boats crowding the harbor had grown to more than a hundred. Cameras and flashes snapped in the dark like fireflies.

From the shadows of a doorway, Cecil Bradshaw of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation studied the man responsible for all the damage.

An aide handed him a dossier.

“This is awful thick,” Bradshaw said. “I need only the highlights, not every bloody clipping on the man.”

Bradshaw was a stocky man in his mid-fifties. He had pile-driver arms, a thick neck, and a short buzz cut. In a way, he resembled a giant human bulldog. He liked to think of himself in similar terms. Get on my side or get out of my way, he often said.

The aide didn’t stammer in his response. “Those are the highlights, sir. If you’d like, I have another fifty pages I could print out for you.”

Bradshaw offered a grunt in response and opened the file. He leafed through the pages quickly, studying what the ASIO knew about Mr. Kurt Austin of the American organization NUMA. His activities read like a series of high-stakes adventure novels. Before that, he’d apparently had a successful career in the CIA.

Bradshaw couldn’t imagine what strange permutations of fate had brought Austin to this very spot at this precise moment, but it just might have been a break the ASIO desperately needed.

Austin might do, Bradshaw thought to himself. He might do very nicely.

“Keep an eye on him,” he ordered. “If he’s as smart as the file shows, he’ll be trying to get information out of Ms. Anderson in no time. He does that, you bring them both to me.”

“Why would we want to do that?”

Bradshaw glared. “Did you get a promotion I’m not aware of?”

“Um… No, sir.”

“And you’re never going to if you keep asking stupid questions.”

With that, Bradshaw slapped the file back into the agent’s hands and moved off down the hall.

Across the plaza, Kurt sat beside Hayley as a paramedic treated her for a number of scrapes and abrasions and then checked them both for shock.

In the midst of this treatment, a ranking detective from the Sydney Police Department grilled them about the event. What did they see? What did they hear? Why on earth did they do what they did?

“Look at the damage,” the captain said, pointing to the ruined façade of the Concert Hall. “You’re lucky the building was empty.”

Indeed, Kurt felt very lucky on that score. But he also felt he had little choice but to act. “Would you rather I’d just let them keep shooting?”

“I would rather…” the detective began, “… that both of you had stayed inside until proper tactical units arrived.”

Kurt understood that. Police were no different than any other group of trained individuals. Leave it to the professionals. Something Kurt would have been glad to do except there hadn’t really been any time. Besides, he was getting the feeling there had been other professionals on-site anyway.

“Next time,” he said, “I promise.”

“Next time?” the detective muttered. He shook his head, closed his book, and moved off to check with another witness.

Left alone for a moment, Kurt studied Hayley. “You’re a brave woman.”

She shook her head softly. “Not really. I just… Never mind.”

“You ran right through a hail of bullets to rescue a guy you’ve never seen before,” Kurt said. “That’s pretty much the definition of brave.”

“So did you,” she pointed out.

“True,” Kurt said. “But I thought the helicopter was out of the picture. You dragged that guy behind that planter while they were actually firing at him.”

She looked away. She’d been able to clean her face with a water-soaked cloth, but her dress remained tattered and covered in blood. The victim’s blood.

“A lot of good it did,” she said.

There was definite sadness there. More regret than one usually felt for an unknown man.

“How long were you waiting for him?” Kurt asked.

“What are you talking about?” she replied.

“You were sitting out here all by yourself,” he reminded her. “As soon as I showed up, you tried to get me back inside. I’m guessing you didn’t want me in the way because you were waiting to make contact with our friends in the boat. More than likely, they chose a public place where they figured they’d be safe. You chose a white dress so you’d be easy to spot when everyone else was wearing black or gray for the gala ball tonight. You sat out here on the wall so you could watch anyone approach.”

She tried to smile, but it looked forced.

“Either you hit your head very hard or you have an active imagination,” she said. “I’m here for the conference. The Muldoons are old family friends. I chose white because I like to stand out, and because it’s summer here, and because someone recently told me white is the new black.”

He shrugged and turned away. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe it is just an overactive imagination. Tell me, though, whatever happened to the papers?”

“What papers?”

“The bloodstained pages our dead friend was grasping when he spoke his last. I notice the police haven’t asked us about them. Me and my overactive imagination think someone might have misplaced them before the police arrived. Maybe even handed them to the two guys in suits who came running toward us but stopped when they realized it was too late.”

The false smile vanished, replaced by a look of surprise and then almost tears. Kurt sensed her reaching out to him. “I didn’t—”

Before she could say anything more, a young man in a dark suit appeared on the steps beside them. Kurt could see the bulge of a shoulder holster under his jacket and the earbud in his right ear.

“Could your timing be any worse?” Kurt muttered.

The man ignored him. “Ms. Anderson, Mr. Austin, come with me.”

Hayley looked as miserable at this suggestion as she had about the possibility of answering Kurt’s question, but she stood dutifully, and Kurt did the same.

Two minutes later, they were inside one of the undamaged structures. One of the agents, who’d run their way and then stopped during the incident, let them into a conference room.

Kurt followed Hayley inside. There, two other men and a woman stood around the table, examining the bloodstained pages. They used tweezers and wore gloves. One of them seemed to be taking photos of the contents under a UV light. In the far corner, a second woman tapped away on a laptop.

“Nothing on that,” she said, answering some question that had been asked before Kurt and Hayley entered. “Next line, please.”

The group froze at Kurt and Hayley’s arrival.

A stocky man with rolled-up sleeves and a buzz cut stood at the head of the table. “Clear the room,” he grunted.

This was the boss, Kurt guessed. He looked none too happy.

The others began to move, putting down whatever they were working on and filing out one by one. The last one to leave pulled the door shut.

“Are you okay?” the burly man asked Hayley.

“No, I’m not okay,” she said. “People are getting killed right in front of me now. You said nothing like this would happen.”

“I thought this would be the last time,” the man said.

Kurt had guessed right. Some kind of rendezvous was in the works, but the way Hayley was acting, she didn’t sound like an operative.

“Don’t mean to be rude,” Kurt said, “but would someone clue the dumb foreigner in as to just what’s going on here?”

The boss man turned toward Kurt. “You’ve walked yourself into a dangerous situation, Mr. Austin.”

“You’d be surprised how often that happens.”

“Actually,” the man said, “in your case, I wouldn’t be. I’ve read your file. Trouble seems to find you. And when it doesn’t, you go looking for it.”

“My file?” Kurt asked. “Why would you have a file on me?”

“Because I’m Cecil Bradshaw, deputy chief of counterterrorism for the ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. And you are a wayward member of the National Underwater and Marine Agency as well as a former specialist with the CIA.”

“I agree with everything but the wayward part,” Kurt said. “I’m here on vacation.”

Bradshaw looked like he didn’t believe that. “Really? And your vacation just happened to land you in the middle of the most sensitive operation we’ve conducted in years.”

Kurt could imagine how it looked, especially considering his background. “Bad timing,” he insisted. “I’m not a spy or anything. I’m a nautical engineer and head of NUMA’s Special Projects Branch, which generally involves research and development, though we do get into our share of scrapes. As for the CIA, I did salvage work mostly. Refloating sunken ships. Retrieving important parts from inside them, or blowing them up to keep others from doing the same. And even that was a long time ago.”

“So it says in your file,” Bradshaw replied.

“Look,” Kurt said, “I’m just here for the conference. And, once it’s over, I plan on surfing, diving, and knocking back a few Fosters. But I don’t stand around and watch people burn to death or let them get shot, if I can help it. That’s how I got involved.”

Bradshaw seemed to be weighing this, perhaps acknowledging Kurt’s actions in his mind. His tone softened a bit, but his face remained gruff.

“Okay, Austin, I’m going to cut you a little slack,” he said. “I’m also going to assume you’re not dumb enough to open your mouth about what you’ve seen here. But if you’re not sure you can stay quiet, I can find a nice ovenlike jail out beyond the Black Stump where you can sit and think about it to your heart’s content.”

Kurt wasn’t sure where exactly the Black Stump was, but it sounded far away. Like a trip to Siberia only hotter.

“I remember the drill,” he said. “You want me to sign something? See a hypnotist to forget this ever happened? That’s fine too. Just show me the way out, and I can head to the beach like I intended. But you might want to check your own ranks for a leak because someone knew this little meeting of yours was going down.”

Hayley and Bradshaw exchanged a glance. Something unspoken passed between them.

Bradshaw turned back to Kurt. “Not likely,” he said with a smug look on his face, then changed subjects. “But since you’re here, maybe you’d care to offer your professional opinion.”

“On what?”

“Start with the dead man’s last word: Tartarus. Does that mean anything to you?”

Kurt looked at the setup once again. They were prepared to digest a lot of information. At least three analysts were on-site, plus Bradshaw. Whatever they were hoping for, it came in short. Way short.

“Only what I told Hayley,” he said.

“We’re dealing with a threat to Australian national security,” Bradshaw insisted. “Maybe even to other countries. We have four dead contacts, two before this event. One of them led us to a shipload of exotic mining equipment. You said Tartarus was underground.”

“That’s right,” Kurt said. “In Greek mythology.”

He glanced at the desk where the laptop was. “As you’ve no doubt discovered, it’s a mythological prison for the gods. But unless you know something I don’t, it’s not real. Whatever that guy was trying to tell you, I doubt he meant it literally. Tartarus is probably a code word or a cipher for something. Maybe related to the papers he gave you.”

Bradshaw took a second to digest this and then waved Kurt over to the conference table. “You claim to be an engineer. These look like schematics to me. You see anything here that might ring a bell?”

Kurt studied the cryptic papers. There was so much blood on them, the writing was obscured and smeared in places. What he could see looked like gibberish. He saw complex equations populated by symbols he didn’t recognize. The second page was definitely part of a schematic, but it seemed to describe a circular-shaped dome.

“Afraid not,” Kurt said. Despite his earlier guess, he couldn’t imagine a single word unlocking the clutter he was looking at.

“What about the boat?” Bradshaw asked. “Did you see anything in it before it burned? A backpack? A suitcase? A computer?”

“Is that what they were bringing you?”

“Just answer the question.”

“No,” Kurt said, “I didn’t see anything like that.”

“What about the driver?”

Kurt’s mind drifted back to the scene on the promenade. “He asked me to leave him and help this guy. He called him Panos.”

“That’s it?”

“We didn’t exactly have a long conversation.”

Hayley looked away sadly, and Bradshaw sighed with disappointment. “Well, you’ve been a tremendous help,” he said sarcastically.

“He did save my life,” Hayley pointed out.

“That he did,” Bradshaw agreed, speaking with a note of humility in his voice for the first time. He stepped toward the door. “Sorry to be so nasty, Mr. Austin, but it’s been a damned awful day. Enjoy your vacation.”

“Hold on a second,” Kurt said.

His mind was drifting back to the incident. He couldn’t recall any luggage in the boat or anything else out of the ordinary except that he remembered Panos wincing in pain when he was dragged from the boat. He recalled the odd way the man’s fingers had curled up and how he struggled to walk. There was something strange about his hunched-over appearance as he lumbered away from the boat. Something familiar too. Kurt had seen that gait before.

“That guy was your informant?”

Hayley went to speak, and Bradshaw stopped her.

“Come on,” Kurt snapped, “either you want my help or you don’t.”

“The dead men were couriers,” Bradshaw said reluctantly. “Bringing us something.”

“Do you know where they came from?”

Bradshaw shook his head. “If we knew that, there would be no need for this lovely conversation.”

“I suggest you start looking underwater,” Kurt said, “because that man was suffering from DCS.”

“DCS?”

“Decompression sickness,” Kurt said. “Bubbles of nitrogen in the joints. It causes horrendous pain and a hunched-over appearance — if the patient can even walk, that is. You get it from deep, prolonged diving, then surfacing too quickly. Normal treatment is one hundred percent oxygen and time in a hyperbaric chamber to force the gas back into suspension. But wherever this guy came from, I’m guessing he didn’t have the time to go back down. Kind of hard to do when you’re running for your life.”

Bradshaw all but snickered. “He’d just been in a crash, playing stuntman without a seat belt or a helmet. More likely, he was injured in the wreck.”

“He wasn’t limping,” Kurt noted, “he wasn’t favoring one side. He was bent over like the Hunchback of Notre-Dame and unable to straighten up. Those are the most typical effects of a disease commonly called the bends.”

Bradshaw seemed to be considering Kurt’s guess. He sucked at his teeth and then shook his head. “Not a bad thought,” he said, “but here’s why you’re wrong.”

He pointed to a brownish red smear on the bloodstained papers. It was oddly iridescent under the light.

“He was covered in this,” Bradshaw said, “every pore, every fiber of his clothes. So was the last courier we found dead.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a type of soil, called a palaeosol,” Bradshaw explained. “Common in the outback. Not found underwater. If it tracks with the other guy, it’ll contain a mix of heavy metals and various toxins, including traces of manganese and arsenic. Which tells us these guys are operating in the desert somewhere. Not from a submarine.”

“He could have been in a lake and gotten dirty afterward,” Kurt pointed out.

“Have you ever been to the outback?” Bradshaw asked. “The lakes out there are mostly transient. Even during the rainy season — which it is not right now, by the way — they’re shallow and wide. Like your Great Salt Lake.”

Kurt was stumped. “Don’t know what to tell you,” he said, “but I’d stake my reputation on it. That man came up from a depth where he was exposed to great pressure.”

“Thanks for your opinion,” Bradshaw replied. “We’ll be sure to check into it.”

He waved a hand toward the exit.

“So this is what it means to be shown the door,” Kurt said.

Hayley looked as if she’d have preferred to leave with him. Kurt felt differently about her now. A damsel in distress. He wondered once again what her deal with Bradshaw might be.

“Good-bye,” she whispered sadly. “Thank you.”

Kurt hoped it wasn’t quite final. He guessed that suggesting as much would annoy Bradshaw. A win-win situation.

“Until we meet again,” he said. And then he stepped out through the door and left her and Bradshaw behind.