Authors: Keith Yocum
“NASA has a satellite station near Geraldton, north of here,” he said. “Have you heard of it?”
“Yes. They use it for the space station and satellites, things like that.”
“Adjacent to it is also a listening post for the National Security Agency. They listen to everything—especially in Asia—and catalog all of it into massive databases. I just asked a friend of mine to dig out records on two numbers that were picked up at the listening post.”
“You mean your NSA is listening in on domestic calls in Australia?” Judy said.
“Australia is one of the Five Eyes, correct?”
“You’re talking another language. I don’t work for the Australian Signals Directorate or any of the intelligence services here. I’m a policewoman. And don’t look at me like that, it’s condescending.”
“I’m sorry. The Five Eyes include the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK. We all share signals intelligence at a very high level. One of the ways each country gets around its own internal laws against eavesdropping on their citizens is to tap into signals intelligence from one of the other Eyes. So we’re scanning everything in Australia, and then we later share it with Australia if they request it. That’s how it works.”
“Is this public knowledge? I don’t remember reading anything about this.”
“All I know is you’re one of the Five Eyes,” Dennis said. “Let’s just stop there.”
“And the NSA is monitoring every phone call in Australia?” she said.
“To my knowledge, they’re listening in to every call everywhere in the world, so the distinction of country of origin isn’t really important. Now can we get going on these records? There’s something here I need your help on.”
“I’m not sure I should be looking at these records,” Judy said. “I’m fairly uncomfortable with this, Dennis.”
“I have a theory about who your snitch is inside the AFP in WA, and why you were picked by Voorster,” Dennis said. “You can either help verify my theory, or we can stop. You can call your friend back east and go another route. Your call.”
Judy sat back in her plastic chair. The fish-and-chips shop was busy with take-away orders, and a constant stream of people filed through. She sat there, looking down at the columns of data.
“Sometimes you just have to do what you think is best,” Dennis said. “In my world it’s never black or white; it’s always gray. But that’s my world. I’m not here to contaminate you with my way of thinking. I’m here on my own personal mission, and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing in a fish-and-chips shop in Western Australia showing you NSA intercepts. Actually, I take that back: I know what I’m doing, but I’m not sure why I’m doing it.”
A teenage boy and his girlfriend walked into the shop to order take-away. As they flirted at the register, Judy made up her mind.
“Let’s see the reports,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Dennis pushed his chair around the small table so that they sat next to each other. He had used a yellow highlighter to box in the dates he wanted her to concentrate on. Methodically he showed her that Phillip had made many calls on both his personal and business mobile phones the day of the famous PowerPoint presentation by Miller.
“What time was the presentation?”
“Umm, let me think. It was ten o’clock. Yes. Ten a.m.”
“How long did it last?”
“About ninety minutes,” she said.
“All right, so here we are at Phillip’s mobile phones starting at eleven thirty a.m.,” he said, pointing with his right forefinger. “To set the scene: the presentation is over, and my guess is some folks at the office are going to lunch and others are back to work, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Now let’s look at Phillip’s outbound calls after eleven thirty on his work line. Do you recognize any of these numbers?”
Judy ran her finger down a list of numbers.
“Ah, here’s one I know. It’s Martin in our office. An investigator: does mostly white-collar crime.”
“Why is Phillip calling him?”
“Oh, Phillip knows half the bloody office. He’s a solicitor in a small town, Dennis. Knows everyone; I’m not surprised. It was awkward at times, but I only had to recuse myself in a handful of cases. You’re not suggesting this is a big clue?”
Dennis ignored her comment. “And these calls, they have the same prefix. Are they going to the AFP office here?”
“Yes,” Judy said. “Ha. That’s going to Stephanie, one of the admins: probably shagging her as well. God. And this one is to Patrick. He’s on the drug squad.”
“What would he talk to them about?” Dennis asked.
“Everything and nothing. It’s just Phillip; he’s always poking around, always looking for business. What can I say? He’s a slick solicitor with the gift of the gab.”
“Now look at his personal mobile number,” Dennis said, moving another sheet to the top of the pile. “Not many calls on this one line, as you can tell. Let’s start looking at calls after eleven thirty a.m. on the same day, OK?”
“Sure.”
“OK, here at two thirty-three p.m. he makes a call to this number. It’s an international number. It lasted for almost five minutes.”
“All right.”
“At three eleven p.m., there is an inbound call from that same international number. And look down here, later, at seven fifty p.m. he makes an outbound call that lasts twenty-two minutes to the same international number.”
“Who is he calling?” Judy asked. “Surely with your vast network of Yank spies and banks of supercomputers you know who he’s calling?”
Dennis smiled for the first time that evening. “The number is listed to a company called Learmouth Importers Pty Ltd., headquartered in Singapore. But that’s it. Singapore records are hard to penetrate—I mean not as bad as the Swiss, but that’s all I could get right now.”
Judy suddenly could not handle sitting in the small shop any longer. “Let’s go for a walk, Dennis,” she said, standing. “I can’t breathe in this place.”
The sun had set, but there was still an ochre glow on the horizon. She led him down the street until they were walking parallel to a beach. The breeze off the ocean was cool, and she let it lift the smell of fried fish off her clothes and skin. Her mind raced as she thought of the phone calls. She did not understand where Dennis was going with this information, but she was worried nevertheless. She did not know why she was agitated, but she was.
Judy found a bench, and they sat facing the darkened beach a hundred yards away. She could smell the thick, sweet ocean air. In the distance she could make out the white foam at the water line and heard the waves thumping the sand, one after another in an endless array.
“OK, I’m waiting,” Judy said, picking out a strand of her hair that had whipped into her mouth. “What’s your theory? I can’t figure it out, if indeed there’s anything to figure out.”
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Dennis said.
Judy noticed he seemed energized the more he talked about the phone calls and the clues. Now, as he defended his dissertation, he was almost buoyant.
“I don’t think there’s a mole inside the AFP office in WA at all,” he said. “But before I go on, I want you to agree to be open-minded about what I’m going to say.”
“Just proceed,” she said.
“All right. I think Phillip is the mole.”
“Oh God, Dennis,” Judy said, throwing her head back. “Phillip?”
“Just listen. My guess is that Phillip has been informally representing this gang for some time, troubleshooting, making suggestions, and maybe feeding them some information whenever they need it. When you and Daniel investigated the murder of that Asian, the old guy Lynch on your team said there was probably another man in the room that was being warned. My guess is that the guy being warned was Phillip. He must have pissed them off or owed them something. Who knows?”
“Phillip? Dennis, please!”
“He’s probably into this group in a big way—maybe he’s borrowed money from them or who knows what. But once that big cache of drugs was discovered on the freighter and you arrested Wu at the airport, all hell broke loose. Voorster is their leader, or one of their leaders. He leaned on Phillip to help them stop these seizures. It’s costing too much money for them not to do something radical. They need a snitch inside the AFP to tip them off in the future, and Phillip probably volunteered you.”
“Stop, Dennis; this is silly.”
“Think about it. He’s desperate, and he sees you as weak, susceptible to pressure. Phillip tells them that the one thing that would turn you upside down is a threat to Simon. He knows that, but he also knows they’d never really do anything to Simon—or he convinces himself that’s the case.”
Judy turned to look at Dennis. She could see his eyes shining like wet marbles, a street lamp the only illumination.
“Now, the only way they can stop you from going to Miller, or anyone else in the AFP, is to convince you that they have a snitch inside. So they concoct a scheme to scare your parents, knowing you’ll turn around and raise hell back at the AFP, which you did.”
“Go on,” she said.
“And Phillip dutifully keeps calling around the office—like he always does—waiting for someone to tip him off to the AFP response
.
I mean, if they knew that you were going to raise hell about your parents, they must have also known that the AFP would respond in a big way. Voorster was going to use whatever facts Phillip could pick up from his calls to convince you they had a snitch inside the AFP. You said yourself that when they had you tied up, the only proof they mentioned about a snitch was that there had been a presentation. They didn’t quote your boss or provide any additional details, right?”
“That’s true,” she said, craning her head slightly to see his face in the darkness.
“So Phillip reports back to Voorster about a PowerPoint presentation, which is all they have to go on. Then they grab you from your house. And one more thing, Judy. You thought you heard someone say ‘No’ when this guy cut the tip of your toe off.”
“Yes,” she said. “And let me guess; you think that was Phillip?”
“Yes. He was there. They decided to disguise their voices because Voorster’s accent is distinctive, and maybe they were worried that Phillip would say something stupid, which he did.”
“Why did he yell ‘No’?”
“They must have told him they were just going to scare you about cutting off your finger, which they did. But when they took off your shoe, he realized they were going to hurt you, and he told them to stop.”
For the next five minutes Judy and Dennis sat on the bench, staring at the Indian Ocean on a moonless night. The low marine haze obstructed the horizon, but looking directly up, Dennis could see several bright stars.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me that we need to find out if that international number Phillip called is Voorster’s?” Judy asked.
“Yes. Did you find out if he’s still in the country?”
“He’s renting a private residence in a ritzy suburb not far from here,” she said.
“Then we watch him someplace public and call that international number,” Dennis said. “If we see him answer, and hear his voice, he’s our guy. I can verify it afterward with another call to my friend.”
“No more ‘we,’” Judy said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll do the rest.”
“Don’t you want my help?”
“No, you’ve already done enough. I’ll finish it.”
When Judy dropped Dennis off at the hotel thirty-five minutes later, she said, “Dennis, I don’t know whether to hug you or hit you right now. I’m very confused, and angry with everyone. I’ll call you in the morning. Goodnight.”
Dennis watched her drive quickly out of the entrance, his gaze following her disappearing red taillights.
He went back to his room, undressed, poured himself a dram of Macallan and sat in front of his wall map. He picked up his notepad and began to review his notes and his map.
***
The pearl-white Mercedes E-Class sedan backed out of the driveway and sped off. Two men were in the car, but she could not tell if either was Voorster because of the tinted windows. Immigration records showed he had given this as his address in the Peppermint Grove section. She was well acquainted with tailing methods and had no trouble staying far enough away. She drove a brown Toyota Camry and knew she would not stand out in the ebb and flow of suburban traffic.
The Mercedes traveled across Stirling Highway, down Keane Street toward the Swan River. Near the edge of Manners Hill Park, the car entered the Esplanade, then quickly exited and stopped near a modest outdoor coffee shop. Two men got out and sauntered over to one of the tables with a view of the Swan River basin.
Voorster sat down first and said something to his partner, who left to order at the counter. Judy’s breathing grew shallow as she looked at the man with the short bleach-blond hair. She nervously bit the inside of her lip, over and over.
Grabbing her new disposable mobile phone, she took a piece of paper out of her blouse pocket. When Dennis had shown her the phone numbers at the fish-and-chips shop, Judy had memorized the international number and repeated it to herself so often that by the time she dropped Dennis off, she could recite it backward. When she got home, she wrote it down just the same.
She dialed the number, and the signal bounced its way from cell towers to a satellite, back to cell towers, and eventually connected to a telephone. It rang once, then again, and then again. Judy could clearly see Voorster sitting alone at the table, drumming his fingers on the tabletop and looking like a man without a care in the world.
When Voorster hadn’t moved after the fourth ring, she panicked. Voorster suddenly reached into his front shirt pocket and looked at his phone. Judy knew he could not identify or trace the number.
“Hello,” he said.
“David?” she said.
“No. Who is this?”
“I’m looking for David.”
He hung up, looked at the phone number again, and then put the phone on the table. His partner returned with two flat white coffees, and they spoke for a minute. Both looked at the phone. Judy slowly drove back to the AFP office.
She walked into Miller’s office without knocking. He looked up and smiled.