Heaven is a Place on Earth (9 page)

Her hand went to her pocket and he saw the fabric move as she grasped something long and hard – a gun, maybe, or a knife. His heart thumped in is chest. Thumped again. He couldn't speak. His throat was so tight he could barely breath. A gun. Or a knife. It was happening again. Just like Melbourne. He stepped back. His vision twitched, a wave of light-headedness washed through his mind. Memories flashed, assailing him like attacking birds. Memories of fear. Memories of pain.

He fought against the rising panic. This wasn't Melbourne. This woman wasn't Sam Hopwood.

“OK,” he gasped. “I'm going. It's all right. I'm going now.” He realised the woman was watching him, squinting at him as if he'd grown an extra head. He backed to the door, not daring to look away. He stumbled but his back hit the wall saving him from a fall.

“
What the fuck is wrong with you?” Tonia said. She took a step towards him and panic overwhelmed him. He saw the door handle beside him, grabbed it, and tore the door open. He remembered leaping down the stairs with Tonia shouting “Hey!” behind him.

Then he was outside, panting and lost, with a pain in his left ankle and no idea how he'd got there or how far he'd run. The folder was still in his hand, trembling because his hand trembled. He squeezed his eyes shut as if he could squeeze out the fear and humiliation, but with his eyes closed, he saw Sam Hopwood again, a smile on his face, and a knife in his hand.

-oOo-

Rafe tipped his head back and let the warmth of the bathwater seep into his bones. He straightened a leg and the water chinked and made ripples that lapped on his chest. His hotel room felt anonymous and safe. Even so, he had balanced a beer bottle on the door handle so that he would have some warning if anyone tried to sneak in. He'd seen the trick in a Chinese spy interactive when he was just a boy and had been so impressed, it had stuck in his memory.

There's too much stuck in my memory
, he thought.
That's the problem
.

He thought again about calling Dr. Godleigh and again dismissed it. If Becky thought he couldn't cope with the job, she'd put him back on sick leave. Or fire him. And he needed to work. He needed something to occupy his thoughts besides the memories of that time in Melbourne. Anyway, he knew what Godleigh would say, “Time and patience, Rafe. That's what will heal you. Give yourself the space you need in your life and let your mind heal itself.” She'd go nuts if she knew he was back at work and on the trail of a criminal conspiracy to fix a vote in parliament. She'd tell him what a complete idiot he was being. Well, maybe she wouldn't say it. But that's what she'd think. And it was true, of course, but what could he do when something like that just dropped into his lap?

Run a mile, you dickhead. That's what you could do.

He squirmed in the bath, the noise of it echoing around the tiled room. Maybe he should take that job on the political desk, writing fluff pieces quoting the opposition's sound bite of the day, getting excited about which politician was rorting their expenses that week, which family values minister was screwing his interns, or which political adviser was writing her memoires. Maybe he couldn't do this any more. Maybe he never did have the stomach for it.

He was forty years old and he should be near the top of his profession. He was no failure. He'd done well, but he had not done really well. He hadn't done anything they'd give him an award for. The Sam Hopwood story had been it. That was the one that would have made his name. It had the lot, sex, big business, drugs, illegal brain mods, but most of all it had Sam Hopwood, the dashing, charismatic psychopath who had drawn so many people into his net and systematically corrupted and debased them. Rafe had picked it up when no-one else was even sniffing around it. He'd dug deeply in the mire that surrounded the man until he'd pieced together the whole story. And then he found Angel, Sam Hopwood's ex-wife, and persuaded her to talk. He had been so close to nailing it.

But then Hopwood had found him.

The torture had lasted three days. Mostly Hopwood had used knives, all kinds of knives, in all kinds of places. Sam Hopwood had wanted Rafe to give him the names of all his sources, so he could hunt them down too and make sure none of them could ever testify against him. And Rafe had resisted. He'd kept quiet. He'd endured the unendurable pain for a whole three days before the pain had become so intense, the exhaustion so numbing, he could no longer remember why he was there or what he was protecting. He'd told Hopwood everything, even making up things to tell him so that he would stop the pain and let him sleep. And Hopwood had smiled and smiled and said what a good boy he was being and that he could die now. And if there had been any joy left inside Rafe, he would have welcomed the release. As it was, he simply waited for it to happen, not caring either way.

When the policeman lifted Rafe's head and said, “Holy crap, he's still alive,” Rafe could tell by the horror in the young man's eyes that the torture had been just the beginning, his suffering had only just begun.

He got out of the bath and towelled himself down, trying not to look at the scars.

“
You're a bloody hero, mate,” one of the cops had told him, sitting beside his hospital bed after yet another operation. Rafe's three days in Hell had given the police the chance to find Angel and, through her, Sam Hopwood. It saved Rafe. Several people owed their lives to Rafe, the cop said. But all Rafe could think was that someone else was writing his story. In the weeks of his hospitalisation and the months of his recovery, the feeds had fed. They'd been like crows on the roadkill of Rafe's big exposé. There was nothing left for him. He was interviewed and lauded, but it was no longer his story. He had become its subject, not its author.

He moved quickly to the bedroom, putting on the pyjamas he had laid out. He always slept in pyjamas now so that he could not see what Hopwood had done to his body. Even so, the awareness of his graven flesh rarely left him. He snatched up the folder Tonia had given him, tossed pillows against the bed head, and sat down to read, determined not to think about those three days.

The documents inside were printouts from newsfeeds, business communications, excerpts from parliamentary white papers, personal messages from and to people he'd never heard of, hand-written notes in various hands, most of them unsigned and undated, photographs, extracts from software design documents, and other, less identifiable diagrams and descriptions. There seemed to be no order to it all and no sense.

Looking at the jumble of apparently unconnected and no-doubt illegally obtained information, it occurred to Rafe that Tonia Birchow might simply be a lunatic. He'd met many such in his time. Once you had your by-line on a high-traffic newsfeed, you were targeted by every conspiracy nut, UFO believer, and wannabe Deep Throat on the planet. Finding the reliable sources who were really onto something among all the crazies was a key skill in his line of work. Maybe this time his instincts had let him down.

The very idea that he might be losing his touch knotted up his stomach. He screwed up his eyes and fought down the fear. Self-doubt had been his constant companion since his encounter with Sam Hopwood. Sometimes it overwhelmed and crushed him. For a man who had been confident to the point of arrogance all his life, this fear of his own incompetence was perhaps the deepest scar that Hopwood had inflicted.

He snarled with anger at himself and spread the contents of the folder across the bed. If there was something here, he would find it. If he didn't find it, it would be because he had let his eagerness to get back into the saddle lead him astray. He'd just go back to Canberra and start again, pick up a new thread, unravel some other story. A false start was no big deal.

He began sorting the documents into piles by type. After two minutes, he stopped and put them all together again. Then he started laying them out again, this time putting them in chronological order. The oldest documents were news stories from the USA that were more than twelve years old. They were all about the introduction of anti-terrorism legislation much like the bill Australia was about to vote on. They had a familiar tone. The legislation seemed like overkill, it involved terrible infringements of civil liberties and personal privacy, it gave the Government extensive powers to monitor people and to interfere with their network activities, all in the name of security. As with the current legislation, there was widespread support across the country. Then the vote came and the bill was unexpectedly thrown out.

There was a similar clutch of news reports from the UK. The government there had tried to put up a similar bill ten years ago and that too had been voted out. Since then, there had been votes in China, Russia, the other European countries, all over the place, in fact, and each time the same kind of legislation had been proposed and rejected by the people. It was a story Rafe already knew well. Even so, the Australian government was determined it would be the first to succeed, and it looked as if they had the numbers on their side. He could understand why Tonia had said the bill would be voted down. It seemed that, wherever it was put to the vote, people who were all for it beforehand, changed their minds when it came to the crunch. People seemed unable to bring themselves to give that much power to their governments.

Beneath the row of newsfeed reports, he laid out the other documents, the messages, the notes, the diagrams and so on. All the documents with no dates, mostly the hand written ones, went into a separate pile. A definite pattern emerged. Most of the computer design documents clustered around the UK vote. So did most of the commercial correspondence. Then there was a gap before a slow build-up of correspondence and other news reports, unrelated to the legislation, began to pile up around the present day.

He looked again at the names in the current correspondence and that from ten years ago. Only one name occurred in both places, Cal Copplin.

He spent another hour laying the sheets out in different orders, by people they mentioned, by locations they related to, by subject, by sender, by recipient, trying to find other patterns. Then he lay back against the pillows and worked his way through the notes. Most of them were short and cryptic. People, places, perhaps projects were referred to by code names. Several mentioned September 10, or S10, which got his attention. September 10 was the government's favourite whipping boy at the moment, any act of terrorism against the national communications network was blamed on them. In fact, it was the organisation most frequently trotted out to justify the current cyberterrorism proposals.

He turned another page and read, “Approached by CC (S10 UK?) Provided docs attached. Poss. recruit this cell. Need more background. Pls advise. TB.”

He put it down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. What the hell had he stumbled into? Was the woman he'd met today running a terrorist cell? Was all this some kind of confession? Evidence against her own people? If so, why go to a reporter and not to the police? The more he thought about it, the more agitated he grew. If this material was all from September 10, he was sitting on a goldmine. Or a ticking bomb. He had never heard of September 10 killing anybody but then he hardly knew anything about them at all. Political scandals were his thing, not terrorist organisations. He was definitely out of his depth and the thing he should do, right now, not even waiting for the morning, was to go to the police and dump the whole lot, get on the first flight to Canberra and keep his head down.

The next document was a letter, in a different hand from the previous one. It had no date or address. Rafe read it.

Tonia,

I did as you asked but I've got to say I'm shaking all over still. I wish I had your nerve but I don't. It looks like you got Dad's genes and I got Mum's. I don't know if I'm cut out for this, Ton. I mean, I believe in The Cause and everything but I just don't have what it takes to do what you do.

I got that little gizmo you sent that looks like a gold crucifix on a chain. The guy who brought it said I should wear it all the time – even in the shower – to establish a credible pattern or some such. Then, when I get the tag removed, the device takes over as me and I can leave it at home when I go out to do secret squirrel stuff. He made it all sound so mundane – and I suppose it must be for you and him and the others. For me, it's just another scary reminder of my scary new life.

Anyway, I'm booked in with your doctor friend to have the tag removed next Friday. I hope she knows what she's doing. But I suppose she must since she did you and didn't manage to fry your brains – not so you'd notice. Look, I wish we could meet up and talk. I'm going nuts thinking about all this on my own. I can't remember the last time I got a good night's sleep. We can't all be fearless warriors, like you. Some of us need our hands holding while we save the world from injustice.

Don't worry, I won't do anything stupid. Just drop by one day, alright?

Love,

Gav.

Rafe woke up on the bed with crumpled documents all around him. Through the window of the hotel room, he could see the sun already high above the bay and its long, low islands. The view itself meant nothing, the room probably didn't even have a window, but auged illusions tended to stay in sync with local time. He glanced at the bedside clock – another aug illusion – and was astonished to see it was nearly eight AM.

Cursing, he jumped up, showered, crammed the documents back into their folder, stuffed the folder in his bag, and hurried out. He called a cab and was back at Tonia's unit within an hour. This time, no-one answered the doorbell and no-one came when he pounded on the door. He went out to find something to eat and failed. When he returned, there was still no answer. He sat in the hallway and waited for four hours before he gave up and left.

He found a stall selling food from a printer at the airport, so he printed off a meat pie and a custard slice and ate them as he pondered his next move. He could go back and wait for Tonia Birchow to reappear, or he could go home and forget about it. Going home was by far the more attractive option. Yet he lingered through two cups of coffee that only a man with no other option could drink, and went out to the taxi rank, unable to give up on the story until he had at least spoken to Tonia again. The documents she had given him were teasers. He couldn't make them add up to a coherent picture. They told him Tonia was a terrorist, probably the leader of a September 10 cell, and that she was concerned about the upcoming vote on the anti-terror bill, connecting it obscurely to other, similar pieces of legislation all over the world. There were links to other people, her brother, Gav – Gavin? – and the Brit, Cal Copplin. But what did any of it mean?

He wished he knew more about September 10, but he daren't look up anything on QNet for fear of setting off alarms in government basements where, no doubt, computers watched night and day for any mention of terrorist organisations. If he were in Canberra, he could ask Jan, she tracked all this stuff for the Sentinel. She'd have all the background. Dare he call her and ask? Not unless she'd agree to a quantum-encrypted call and if he asked for that, she'd know something funny was going on.

He took a cab back to Tonia's unit and spent another three hours sitting outside her door. By then, he was convinced the fearless warrior woman wasn't coming back. He was also wishing he had printed off a couple of extra pies. He leafed through the documents as he waited, hoping for fresh inspiration but the only thing he found was a page from a small notebook with the name and street address of a woman called Virginia Galton. The page carried no hint of who she might be or what her connection was to September 10. Perhaps she was the doctor Tonia's brother had visited to get his tag deactivated. Perhaps she was Tonia's dentist. The only thing that made Virginia Galton stand out was the fact that hers was the only address in the folder, and she lived right there in Brisbane.

“
Bugger it,” he said, climbing to his feet. His back ached and his legs were stiff. He'd missed the only flight to Canberra for the day – perhaps for several days – and he needed to find a hotel and somewhere to eat. He wrote a virtual note and fixed it to Tonia's door. He might have used paper since he was carrying so much of it around with him, but he had no pen or pencil and had no idea where he might get one. If Tonia had any kind of aug, she'd get the note. If not, well it was probably better if he never met her again. The note said, “Call me. Rafe.” It seemed safest not to say anything else.

He went back to the same hotel and they put him in the same room. He spent the evening reading through the contents of Tonia's folder again, this time setting up a whiteboard in his office so that he could draw timelines and lists of names and the places and organisations they were associated with. He wrote it all in code, Tonia was Warrior, Cal Copplin was Recruit, and so on. He didn't use the hotel's tank, but stayed on the bed, slipping in and out of his office and the hotel room, not daring to take images of the documents into VR with him, but memorising the content, in case those computers in the government's basement were snooping around.

It was seven PM when he started. When he checked the time again it was past midnight. The virtual whiteboard in his office had multiplied. Luckily virtual spaces could expand as required. Each board was full of notes and figures, every detail hard won from the jumble of documents Tonia had given him.

He was certain now that Tonia ran a September 10 cell, that she had recruited her reluctant brother and probably Cal Copplin. There were other members too but It was Cal Copplin that was central to what they were planning. Rafe went to stand in front of board number five. At the top of the board, he'd written “Master Plan” and underneath were several islands of information associated with references to action that he'd seen in the documents. He still had no clue as to what Tonia had in mind, but he could see it was going to happen soon – before the vote on the anti-terror bill.

On the board labelled “Membership”, in large capital letters, was the word “Pocahontas” with a large question mark after it. It was his code name for Virginia Galton. Tomorrow he would visit her and see if he could get some answers.

Reluctantly, he left his office and sat up on the bed. As before, it was littered with paper. This time he tidied it away and slept under the covers. But his sleep was broken and shallow. The material in the documents went round and round incoherently, but no new insights came. He kept coming back to the Galton woman. Would she be another hard-faced terrorist with a concealed weapon and eyes that watched you like a cat watched mice? Was she the doctor who had hacked Tonia's brother's tag? He hoped it was the latter. He could deal with a doctor. He didn't know whether he could face another cold hard criminal. If Galton was like that, he'd just turn around and walk away. If he spotted even a hint of a weapon, he'd get out of there, go home, and hand the whole thing to Becky to reassign as she saw fit. As for him and his career, well maybe that was all over anyway. He'd panicked when he met Tonia. He'd run like a rabbit. He'd lost his bottle. He should look for some other line of work. Something that kept him safely out of the way of crazies and crims and terrorists.

Maybe.

Tomorrow would be the decider. Tomorrow, if he could face Virginia Galton and do his job without cracking up, maybe he could stick with it.

He fell into a fretful doze, a drugged misery of memories and fear, the old dreams of Sam Hopwood and his knives, the dreams that had plagued him asleep and awake ever since he'd regained consciousness in that Melbourne hospital all those months ago.

-oOo-

“Virginia Galton?”

The woman let out a cry and jumped back, trying to shove the door closed. He rushed forward and put his foot in the jamb to prevent her.

“I'll call the police!” she shouted.

“
You're breaking my foot,” he shouted back.

“
Get away. Leave me alone.”

“
I just want to talk. I'm a reporter with the Sentinel. Rafe Morgan. Maybe you've heard of me? I'm chasing down a story about the new cyberterrorism bill. Your name came up. I'd just like to ask you a few questions.”

“
My name? I've got nothing to do with terrorists.”

Despite the pain in his foot, Rafe noticed she had answered a question he hadn't asked. “I don't think you're a terrorist, Ms Galton. Can we just talk, please?”

“I don't believe you. Go away. I'm calling the police now.”

“
What don't you believe?”

“
I don't believe you're a journalist.”

“
Look me up. My picture's in the Sentinel brochures.” He was pretty sure he could push the door back and get in, but that would just scare the woman even more. “Please open the door, Ms Galton. I'm Rafe Morgan, a journalist. I've been out here ringing your bell all morning. If I'd been a burglar, or whatever you think I am, wouldn't I have broken in before now?”

“
You waited for me to come out and ambushed me.”

“
I was waiting for you to come home. I thought you were out.”

“
Why would I be out?”

Rafe took a deep breath and tried a new tack. “I got your name from Tonia Birchow.”

There was a gasp from the other side of the door and then silence. Rafe cursed himself. It seemed the lovely Tonia had the same chilling effect on all her acquaintances.
Ah well, in for a penny...

“
You know Tonia Birchow then. And her brother, Gav?”

“
Gavin,” said the woman behind the door. There was a hollowness in her tone, a hint of despair. “Who are you? What do you want?”

This was getting silly. “Look, Ms Galton. I'm a reporter. I'm going to take my foot out of your door now and let you close it. Please just check my credentials and confirm what I say. I'll wait out here while you do that.” He pulled at his foot but couldn't get it out. The damned woman was pushing on the door with all her strength. “You'll have to ease off on the door a bit so I can get my foot out.” There was no response from the other side, just the unrelenting pressure on his foot. After a while, he put his shoulder against the door and shoved hard enough to push both door and woman a few inches into the apartment. He yanked his foot back as fast as he could, almost losing a toe as the door slammed shut with a force that shook the wall.

He limped across to the other side of the hall and sat down to check his foot for broken bones. Whatever kind of reception he had expected, this was not it. The woman was scared out of her wits. The good news was that she obviously knew something. The bad news was that she wasn't being exactly cooperative.

Seconds ticked by, turning slowly into minutes. He got up again, wondering whether to try ringing the bell, but it was hardly as if the woman would have forgotten he was there. No, patience was the only way. Even so, what the hell was she doing that was taking so long?

The door opened a crack and a woman's face peered out at him. He stepped towards her and she slammed the door again.

“
Ms Galton?” he called through the door. “Just check my credentials. Please.”

“
I did.”

“
Then may I come in, please?”

“
Credentials can be faked.”

“
Oh, for God's sake!”

She opened the door again, a bit wider this time. It was his first good look at her – a woman in her early thirties, slimmish, longish dark hair, probably not bad looking if you took away the suspicious frown and the bruises under her eyes left by too many sleepless nights. He knew those bruises. He saw them in the mirror every day. In his own case he knew full well why that was, but what was keeping Virginia Galton awake at night?

“I phoned your editor,” she said.

“
Becky? Then you know I'm who I say I am.”

“
She said to get your useless arse back to Canberra and stop pestering women while you're on her expense account.”

“
Well that sounds like Becky all right. Can I come in now?”

She held the door wider but didn't move to let him enter. “Why didn't you call, or visit me at my office?”

“I'm sorry but I want to use QNet as little as possible. It's the story I'm working on. I was worried that if we met in VR or even if we talked on the phone, people might be able to listen in. I don't want that. Not yet. I need to find out who's who before I trust anybody – even the Government.”

He saw her mouth twitch. “You're even more paranoid than I am,” she said.

“You don't know the half of it.”

He stood there waiting while she stood there weighing him up. He had time to notice the hand that was holding the door. It was a beautiful hand, long, with delicate tapering fingers. An artist's hand. At last, she stepped back and he went in. Crisis over, he looked around the apartment and realised there were other pressing needs. “Do you mind if I use your bathroom, only I've been hanging around in your hallway for hours.” She looked taken aback but waved him towards a closed door beside what he could see was the bedroom. “And I couldn't beg a cup of coffee off you, could I? I'm dying of thirst.”

-oOo-

“
So?” she said, putting Rafe's coffee down in front of him. “What do you know about Tonia and her brother?”

Rafe shook his head. “I want to know who you are first. Then I'll answer your questions.”

She sat down in a chair opposite him. He could see she was keeping her distance. “You've got a bloody nerve,” she said, but seemed to accept his condition.

“
What do you do for a living, Virginia?”

She gave him a baleful stare. “If we're on first name terms now, Rafe, you'd better call me Ginny. Only my mother calls me Virginia and I've just had three glorious weeks of it.”

“Right. Ginny, then. What business are you in?”

“
Why don't you read my bio?”

“
I would normally, believe me, but I can't do that without a QNet query. And that might bring me attention I don't want. For that matter, it might raise a few flags against your name and maybe you don't want that either.” He was fishing for a reaction but he didn't get one. “So we need to do this the old fashioned way, through conversation.”