Terror Stash (6 page)

He turned and headed back for the car, Chris slogging through the sand beside him. “That was her, wasn’t it?” he asked quietly. “The wind-surfer?”

“What about her?”

“Your girlfriend.” Chris grinned.

Steve sighed theatrically. “Y’know, I mentioned her—what?—once, maybe twice, nearly a year ago. When are you going to stop giving me shit about it?”

“Never, mate. Never.”

* * * * *

Montana watched the two officers walk back to their cruiser. The older one kept turning his head, taking in the people accumulating on the beach. It was going to be a hot day. The beach was filling up despite the high waves and choppy crosscurrents making the water a mess for both surfers and swimmers. He was checking them out, looking for potential trouble.

He was clearly good at his job. He could have been much more arrogant and overbearing. She closed her eyes for a second, let the gold badge on his pocket slide back into her mind’s eye. She reread the inscription there.
Cpl. S. Scarborough
. She had been careful not to focus sharply on it while they’d been talking because she hadn’t wanted him to notice her attention to such a detail.

“You really work for the American consulate?” Bruce asked.

“I really do.” She looked at her watch. “What time’s drinks at the Pink Galah tonight?”

“Oh, four-ish. Session times. You know.”

She did. It was Sunday. Pubs in Western Australia only opened between four and seven-thirty on Sundays—the notorious Sunday Session when regular drinkers packed the bars, getting their quota for the day. Good pubs would lay on a decent live band, put on a wild party and sell as much alcohol in those few hours as they did all day long during the week.

“So, we’ll see you there?” Bruce asked.

“Sure.” Keeping it really casual, she added, “Oh and hey, do you know a guy called Stewart Connie?”

Bruce shrugged. “Sure.”

“You do?” She was astonished. Finally, was she about to get a break here? “You’re the only one around here that does. Is he here today? He’d have to be one the hardest guys in the world to find.”

This time, it was Bruce that was astonished. “
You’re
looking for him? Stewart Connie?”

She could feel caution flood her. “Sure. Is that a problem?” There was something going on here that she didn’t understand. Bruce’s face was normally open, good natured and as easy to read as a book but now it was like an internal shutter dropped down behind the back of his eyes.

He shrugged. “I haven’t seen him here today, but he’s most prob’ly going to be at the pub tonight. He likes to hang out where there’s lots of folk.”

“Like there isn’t here?” The beach had quickly filled with weekend tourists, families and casual swimmers. The surfers were filtering away. Their best hours were early and late in the day.

Bruce was already heading for the car park, leaving her question unanswered. “Bruce?” she called.

“Later!” he called back. It was friendly enough.

Caden found Ria in the garden, sitting in the dense, cool shade beneath the pergola. She had been repotting something unrecognizable, but sat back and pulled off her gloves when he sat at the table opposite her.

“You’re just in time for lunch.” Then she pressed her forefinger against her pursed lips. “Oh, dear,” she said. “You don’t look very happy, Caden.”

“I’m not,” he growled. “I found out this morning that Stewart Connie has started up business again.”

“Dear me.” She sighed. “Didn’t you make...an arrangement with him a few years ago?”

Caden almost smiled at her euphemism. “You could say that,” he agreed. “I’ve been floating around Margaret River and Yallingup for the last couple of hours, looking for him, but he’s changed his locale since the last time we chatted.”

Ria lifted her eyebrows. “I do hope you’re not asking me where you might find him. I would be one of the last people to know something like that.” She gave a delicate laugh.

“Not him specifically, but his clients. You know the type, at least. Where do the surfers tend to hang out now? The nonink crowd?” The euphemism was one that he and Ria used between them. In the Margaret River-Yallingup area, there were a significant number of people that fell into the low income-no income bracket. They lived off the land and most often it was a deliberate lifestyle choice.

Ria put her hands together neatly in her lap. “Oh, I should think the Pink Galah would get most of their business.”

“Still at the Galah, huh?” Caden knew the place well. He glanced at his watch. “I have a bit of time, then.”

“You’ll have lunch with me?”

“Sure.” He grinned easily.

Ria began collecting up her gardening implements and gloves, dropping them into the basket on the table. “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of doing further business with that Connie man, either?”

Caden’s grin broadened. “Ria, Ria,” he chided. “I thought you knew me better than that.”

“Alas, I do.” She gave a delicate sniff. “You can’t blame me for trying.”

He sat back. “I stopped handing out blame for anything when I was ten. It doesn’t fix a damn thing.”

* * * * *

Montana knew the location of the Pink Galah well enough. Anyone who had driven through the town of Margaret River at least once knew where it was. In the late eighteen hundreds the corrugated iron building had been an open-walled logging shed. A mad Englishman who had intended to ship the excellent Karri hardwood in the area back home had built it. It straddled the riverbank, in a perfect position to snag felled logs as they floated down the river...only the river never flowed. Margaret River was a high-season-only waterway. For most of the year the water lay still, a breeding ground for frogs and mosquitoes.

After changing owners a dozen times, the shed had acquired an outer shell of corrugated iron cladding and other accessories. The current owner had slapped a dash of neon pink paint on the iron cladding, hoisted a “public bar” sign onto the roof, installed a beer tap or two and opened the doors.

That had been thirty years ago, but the Pink Galah was still the most popular watering hole in the district. Perhaps its marginal location on the very edge of the town, straddling both water and land, was what drew the fringe folk. Customers included surfers, people living off the land and do-it-yourselfers who had caught the religion enough to sell up everything and move to Marg’s. Also loners, outcasts, the occasional brave tourist, a dozen or so hippie wannabees who wished fervently that it was still the sixties—and those who had mentally never left the sixties despite mourning John and George every time they heard a Beatles tune.

Montana looked around and catalogued the creeds and philosophies represented in the bar. What was missing were the middle-of-the-road, respectable, salaried business professionals and yuppies. It was most definitely not that sort of a bar.

For a start, most of the customers were outside, under the wisteria-covered lean-to. It was explosively hot inside under the iron roof and no one lingered there.

Nearly all the customers had kicked off their shoes and were padding barefoot about the packed earth floor. Sometime in the past, the owners had cut a long rectangular flap in the iron cladding, added a couple of hinges and pushed a cabinet up beneath the new window. That became the bar that served the rickety pergola. A dozen barbecue tables with attached benches were the only seating on offer. There were no small tables for little groups.

The noise spiraled. No band played. She doubted there was a single electrical outlet available out there and any band would have had trouble being heard, anyway.

She asked for a glass of white wine and watched the barmaid with the henna-red hair pour a glassful from a four-liter cardboard box of non-vintage—the sort of wine that sold for eight dollars at any liquor retailer.

“That’ll be three dollars, luv.” The barmaid’s voice was guttural and deep. If she’d spent many years lifting her volume above this noise, it was little wonder. She was in her late fifties and very tanned. Her skin had leathered, worn-in wrinkles from a lifetime of harsh sun. She looked like she had seen more than anyone at this bar could ever bring on.

A bright young thing behind the bar would have lasted five minutes. Maybe.

Montana picked up her drink and looked around.

“Hey!! Montana! Over here!” It was Bruce, waving and shouting. There were a handful of people with him, also waving to her eagerly.

It reminded her sharply, again, of the
police constable calling her a hero. She kept returning to the memory, turning it over. She didn’t consider what she had done even remotely heroic. She’d always thought of herself as what Australians like to call a ‘gutless wonder.’ She didn’t deal well with crises and conflict. Hell, she didn’t deal well with people, period. Her training as a diplomat gave her superficial skills in set circumstances and her experience with the consulate had given her practice but underneath she was still afraid of her own shadow. She only had to recall Khafji to know the truth.

This morning she had just done what needed to be done. The task had been physically demanding, but it was nothing like facing down another human being. Not even close.

Montana recognized most of the people waving at her, including the South African guy...damn, what
was
his name? It vexed her that she couldn’t remember. A diplomat was supposed to remember names. Nicollo would have remembered.

She weaved around the long tables and placed her computer in the space they opened up for her at the end of the furthest table from the bar. She found herself sitting across the table from Greg and smiled genuinely at him. “They let you out?”

“Mild concussion,” he answered, “and a bloody great headache. But no permanent damage. Still, I have to stay off the sauce for a while.” He looked down at his glass, which held what looked like Coke, and grimaced. “But thanks. You saved my butt.”

“Hey, I just happened to be out there, that’s all,” she said, opening up the computer. No question, there would not be a public wireless network here, but she had battery power and things to do. It was also a great way to escape unwanted conversations.

Greg dug into his back pocket. “Whatcha drinking?” he asked.

“Just wine.”

“Hey, Greg, if you’re buying, I’ll ‘ave a beer!” Bruce declared.

Greg turned back to face the table. “You know what? Whatever you want. You got it. All of you. Fire away.”

There was a tiny little silence. A tick of appreciation. They all knew that Greg was thanking them—possibly the only way he knew how to do it.

“
Riiiight
,” Bruce said, rubbing his hands together. “I’ll have a Harvey Wallbanger with a beer chaser.”

“B52!” someone else called out. The orders came fast, without hesitation. There was no polite refusal to take him up on his offer, no protest that he was as broke as most of them. They were going to let him thank them.

Montana swiveled the screen around and laid it flat over the keypad, just as the South African slid onto the bench beside her. “Now, that’s something,” he said, staring at it.

“It’s just a Tablet PC,” she told him, pulling out the stylus.

“Yo, Jacko!” Greg called. “What’s yer drink?”

The man beside her turned his head slowly to look over his shoulder. “I’ll have a double shot of Glenfiddich.”

Jacko.
Yes, of course. He was a single-malt scotch drinker. Most of them were into coolers and mixers—thirst-quenchers with a lighter kick.

He was half-turned to face her, one upper arm across the table, his head on his fist. His eyes really were light blue. They looked like the irises had been painted. “You were very smart, very cool out there today. I wanted to tell you that.”

Montana hid her dismay. She used a distant manner and props like computers as a hedge and went out of her way never to encourage this sort of attention. Now Greg’s rescue had gained her more than Greg’s thanks, and from Jacko, too. How strange. He was one of the quiet ones who always listened more than he spoke, watching and absorbing data with his painted eyes...perhaps that was why he sought her out now. He’d watched enough and absorbed enough to have made up his mind.

She booted up the scripting program, using the stylus to tap her way through the menus, and opened up the current file. A hand—not Greg’s—placed another glass of wine next to hers and conversations were starting up around the long table, across it, and even between the tables.

“What in hell is
that
?” Jacko asked, leaning over her shoulder. “It isn’t email.”

“It’s a Perl script I’m building.” She scrolled to the bottom of the file and tapped the stylus against her teeth for a second, sorting out the next needed command.

“A script for what?”

She shrugged. “I’m building a honeypot for the Leave Worm, amongst others.”

The girl across the table widened her eyes, but Jacko frowned. “A what?” he asked.

“A honeypot,” she repeated and went on before he could respond, “
Well, to be absolutely correct, I’m developing an automated project command module. It’ll sit on top of the highly flexible second-generation honeypots they have out there, these days. The ones based on virtual-machine technologies. It’ll oversee the deployment and operation of a large number of honeypots across a large number of organizations, which gives you enough data for quantitative analysis to provide statistically significant results.”

They were both staring at her now. She hid her smile and continued. “It’ll help analyze the worms that modify registry keys and hide themselves inside root directories. Some of those scripts have text strings that are really sniffing routines that scan for IP addresses of remote computers and can replicate themselves on those computers. They can also create, move, delete and execute files on the affected computer and launch denial-of-service attacks. Analysis of honeypot data will tell me how any new-generation scripts do it and help shut them down.”