Authors: Keith Yocum
Looking back at the map, Dennis sighed. “If that’s the case, we’re no further along than when we started.”
“And Dennis,” she said apologetically, “please don’t be displeased, but my guess is that the Special Activities Division would have purged any mention of the trip in which he discovered the mine. That’s what I would have done, if in fact the operation were so sensitive. I mean, you said yourself they took the extraordinary step to remove Pearson. For the record, I still can’t believe your CIA would assassinate an Australian citizen like you suggest, but I’m not going to argue with you any longer.”
“It’s not as complicated as you think,” Dennis said. “A lot of this stuff is contracted out, and the contractors think the operation is sanctioned. At the command level it’s not like someone wrote up an order in Langley saying terminate Pearson in Western Australia. No, it’s more like a bunch of grizzled old white men sitting around a table at two a.m. drinking shitty coffee and someone says, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if this guy Pearson were out of the picture?’ And they all nod. And later one of the guys at the table calls someone and says, ‘You know this guy Pearson is a problem for us.’ Before you know it, there’s a contractor who’s been given an assignment, and the contractor’s assumption is that the assignment is properly sanctioned. And two weeks later a guy named Pearson has a heart attack in an obscure pub parking lot across the globe. I didn’t make the rules, but that’s how it works.”
“That’s disgusting,” Judy said, “really bloody disgusting.”
“Well, let’s stop talking about it then,” Dennis said.
“Do you really think that’s how Pearson died?”
“Yes,” he said, yawning.
“Dennis, if that’s true, well, I can’t tell you how angry that makes me. Poor Mrs. Pearson. God.”
“Can we talk about the map again?” he said.
“With relish,” she said. “Bastards.”
They looked at the map in silence.
Judy pulled herself up into a kneeling position.
“You know, the mystery site could be anywhere,” she said, “from the Kimberleys up there to the Bight down there.”
“From the what?”
“The Kimberleys.”
“The Kimberleys?” he repeated.
“Yes, why?”
Dennis stood up, rushed over to a pile of papers and pulled out his spiral-bound notebook. He leafed violently through pages and stopped at a page. He read off the page:
Not Kimberly
Nor the way of the lake
But a Savory treat!
For all Europium
“What is that?”
“Don’t you remember? It’s Garder’s poem. I found it in his office at the consulate. The poetry professor thought it was pretty awful?”
“Right,” Judy said.
She looked back at the map, and Dennis rushed over and kneeled down again next to her. She grabbed a large yellow sticky from a pad and stuck it to the part of the map titled Kimberley region, situated in the northwest section of the state.
“He didn’t spell Kimberley correctly, but perhaps he wasn’t familiar with the region,” she said.
They both bent over the map of mining operations.
“Here!” Judy said. “Lake Maitland and Lake Way—two large uranium deposits next to each other.”
Dennis read out: “But a Savory treat!”
“The Savory Basin!” Judy was bouncing on her knees. “Look, there’s a huge uranium deposit in the Savory Basin. It’s a godforsaken place in the center of the state.” Grabbing the notebook from Dennis, she looked at the lines again.
“This isn’t a poem, it’s more like a riddle!” she said. “My God, Dennis, I think we found the black program: the Savory Basin!”
Dennis threw his arms around Judy’s neck. “Not bad for an AFP agent missing the tip of one baby toe.”
“You bastard,” she said, laughing.
“And what about the part about Europe?”
“Well, you said he was a bit of a poet. Sounds like a made-up word that blends ‘Europe’ and ‘opium.’ Perhaps opium’s involved, and it’s being sent to Europe? You’re going to have to figure that out yourself.”
Judy laughed and pulled Dennis toward her. She kissed him twice; first out of celebration, next out of passion. They fell against the side of the bed and paused, pulling away from each other, panting heavily.
And then they were at it again. This time they rolled up onto the bed, crushing the map under their bodies as they rolled back and forth over the state of Western Australia. Dennis was consumed with so much passion that he did not stop until they lay naked, slick with sweat.
Judy’s clothes were strewn all around the floor and on top of the map they had tossed off the bed. She could hardly remember taking her clothes off. She did not know who turned off the light but, she was thankful and a little embarrassed by the mad sex.
He bent forward and kissed her on the top of her head. They lay there for a while until she fell sound asleep to the crinkling sounds of the map Dennis was reattaching to the wall.
“Hey, Chris, how ya doing? It’s Dennis Cunningham.”
Judy drank her cup of coffee and toyed with a bowl of hotel granola. Depending on her mood, she alternated between excitement and despair. The excitement came from the policewoman in her that thrilled in solving complicated mysteries; the despair originated from her fear that Dennis was somehow off his rocker.
Judy did not doubt Dennis was nearly a savant when it came to solving complex, investigative puzzles, but something was peculiar and dangerous about his quest to unearth a black program in the outback. Then again, when she thought of Mrs. Pearson, she could almost justify Dennis’s obsession.
Almost.
For the moment, Judy knew she was being governed by her sudden passion for this man; her intellect was officially on hold.
“Yeah, it would have been a request from the Special Activities Division to alter it,” Dennis spoke into the phone, doodling on a sheet of paper. “Of course Massey approved it. I’ve been detailed to his group, and you’ll see that in the files. I just need you to send me a copy of the official request to Google and any supporting photographs, that kind of stuff. Sure. Well, the sooner the better. I’ll check my email later today. Yeah. Great. Thanks, Chris.”
He put down his phone.
“Now the clock starts ticking,” he said. “Massey and Marty will be copied on my request, but I’m hoping that by the time they notice, I’ll have the documents and will be able to pinpoint the area they wanted blocked out. Or that’s the plan, anyway.”
Judy sipped her coffee, her knees pulled up to her chest and the T-shirt pulled over her knees, stretching the fabric to its limit: her preferred cocoon-like posture when wearing his T-shirt.
“I don’t understand what Google has to do with this,” she said. “Enlighten me.”
“It’s the satellite and aerial photos they use for Google Earth. You must have used the program before. Anyone with an Internet connection can zoom in on any location on the globe.”
“Yes, of course I’ve used it,” she said.
“Well, Google gets requests all the time to alter a photograph,” Dennis said. “We do it, the French, Russians, Israelis, and everyone else. If a country has a physical site or military complex that they want to keep secret from the public, they make an official request to Google’s legal department to alter a photograph. It’s odd that Google has the most comprehensive public database of photos of the globe, but they do.”
“So you think that the CIA made a request to alter the Google satellite photos of this secret base here in WA?”
“Yes, that’s my hunch.”
“And what would Google do to the photo?”
“If it’s a request claiming national security concerns, they’ll alter the photo to cover up the site in question,” he said. “It’s not hard. They can do a hundred things, like pixelating it so it looks muddy, or they can replace it with another photo that looks similar; you know, things like that.”
“But why would Google bother to do this?”
“To play nice. I mean Google’s more powerful now than most governments and intelligence agencies. Hell, the NSA has to go to Google to retrieve data. We have a joke around the Agency that in the next decade, Google will be given status at the United Nations as a country.”
Judy laughed. “You’re a font of some of the most perverse knowledge imaginable. I don’t know whether to believe you or not half the time.”
Dennis laughed, too.
“Well, if my friend in the legal department at Langley can send me the Google request, it’ll show exactly which satellite photo they wanted altered, and it should help zero in on my search area. But the downside is that Massey will be alerted I’ve made the request, and he’ll go nuts. That’s the sticky part.”
An hour later Dennis received an email with an attachment that included the official request from the Agency’s legal department for Google engineers to alter particular satellite and aerial photos. Judy looked over Dennis’s shoulder and laughed.
“My God, you weren’t kidding,” she said. “This is just so unbelievable.”
They stared at a second document that was a screenshot of a Google Earth map of Western Australia. A circle was drawn around what appeared to be a small construction site. Both Judy and Dennis put their faces within twelve inches of the screen in an attempt to identify where the circled area was in relation to landmarks or towns.
“It’s hard to see where this area is exactly,” Judy said. “It’s all so barren out there. Wait, look: right there. That says the town is Newton. I know where that is. The photo they’re asking to have altered shows a complex due east of Newton.”
Dennis and Judy flipped back and forth between the image in the Agency request and Google Earth on his browser. The construction site was no longer on Google Earth.
Dennis’s laptop suddenly went dark.
“Your battery just died,” Judy said.
“It’s not my battery,” Dennis said.
“What’s wrong with it then?”
“They shut it down,” he said, closing it and standing up.
“Who shut it down?”
“My employer, who else?”
“They can do that remotely?”
“Of course they can, with Agency-issued laptops.”
“Why did they shut it down?”
“Massey or someone in his group got wind of my request and jumped in. Shit. They’ll have a team in this hotel room in an hour, maybe less.”
Judy sprang up, spilling coffee onto the T-shirt.
“What will they do with me?” she said.
“Nothing. Get dressed and get out of here. I’m going to leave my mobile phone here, and they’ll hit this room first. The rental is packed. Hurry, Judy. You need to get out of here now.”
She ripped off the T-shirt and dove into her clothes pile. Dennis grabbed the map and as many personal belongings as he could reach and threw them into a canvas duffel bag.
Before they left the room, Judy stood in front of Dennis and said, “For the last time, will you let this thing go? You don’t have to go north.”
He shook his head. “We need to go, Judy. Please!”
Judy begged Dennis to meet her in forty-five minutes at a small coffee shop in Subiaco for a last good-bye. He was so distracted that she gave him handwritten directions and made him read them back to her. Their whirlwind relationship was coming to an abrupt end, and she was determined to see him one last time.
How utterly unbelievable,
she thought as she raced home.
If I didn’t care for this man so much, I’d stay a thousand kilometers away from him.
Dennis had purchased several prepaid cell phones in Perth. While waiting in the coffee shop, he called his daughter in California.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Why is that important?”
“You’re not back in Australia again, are you?”
“Beth, why does it matter where I am? And of all places, Australia.”
“Don’t ask me why, but something is really bothering me about you being in Australia. Ask Nathan; he’ll tell you. Better yet, don’t ask Nathan. He thinks I’ve been acting a little crazy about your work.”
“Beth, really, everything’s fine.”
“How are you feeling?”
“I feel great. Better than I have felt in a long time. It’s refreshing to feel so alive and purposeful again.”
“Gee, it sounds like you’ve met a woman,” she said. “Is that what’s going on?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m a little ambivalent about you finding someone else, Dad. But Mom wouldn’t want you moping around the rest of your life. I’m happy for you. Can I meet her some time?”
Dennis had never told Beth about Martha’s affair and the true circumstances of her death, nor did he intend to tell her.
“Absolutely. Think you’d like her. She’s got a healthy stubborn streak, just like my daughter.”
“Oh that’s not true,” she said. “You and Nathan are in cahoots. I would like to meet this woman. I need some help against the two of you.”
They talked for a few minutes, and then Dennis tried to end the call.
“And I wasn’t kidding, Dad,” she said.
“Kidding?”
“No, I’m not kidding. Wherever you are right now, you should stop and come home. I don’t have a good feeling about you lately. And I could bet a million dollars you’re in Australia.”
“Beth, where do you get this stuff from?” he said, scanning the nearly empty coffee shop. “You couldn’t be more wrong about me.”
***
Dennis had grown nervous as the hour ticked away. While he wanted to get as far away as possible from the team being dispatched to Perth, he also wanted to see Judy.
It would likely be the last time.
After an hour, Dennis left the coffee shop and quickly scanned around for signs of surveillance. Satisfied he was in the clear, he walked to his car.
The sound of tires squealing behind made him flinch, and he braced for a confrontation.
“My God, I thought I was going to miss you,” Judy said, throwing her arms around his neck.
“I’m glad you made it.” He kissed her forehead gently. “I was getting worried: thought I’d never see you again.”
“No worries about that, mate,” she said in an exaggerated Aussie accent.
“Really?” He smiled.
“Yes, I’ve decided that since you refuse to take me along with you in the bush, I’m going to just follow you.”