WHERE THEY FALL, page 18
“Do you follow the footy?” Jake asked.
“What sort of question is that right now? You just told me Allan Simpson is dead!”
“Do you follow the footy or not?”
“Yes, mate. Yes, of course.”
“What team? The Adelaide Crows?”
“Nah, mate. Port Adelaide.”
Jake stayed silent for a moment. He had always been a passionate football supporter. He was the guy that retained all the statistics and facts about the game.
“Okay. I’m changing channel now. Hopefully you remember the last time Port Adelaide won the AFL Grand Final. That’s where I’ll be.”
Jake didn’t wait for a reply. He switched from channel seventeen. The Port Adelaide football club had only won the AFL premiership once in the club's lifetime. 2004. As the radio channels were two digits, Jake clicked through the channels until he reached 04. He wanted to be sure that he didn’t stay on seventeen. Anyone could have been listening.
Silence.
Thirty seconds passed. A minute.
Static hummed. “Jake, are you there?”
Jake laughed. “You are a Port supporter.”
“I said I bloody-well was! Now, am I going to help you or not?”
“Where are you coming from?”
“Marree. I’m about twenty kilometres north of Lyndhurst at the moment.”
“There are four bodies there at the servo. I wouldn’t stop.”
“Four bodies? What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know. I think they’re military? Maybe government. One of them is my best friend. They blew his brains out for no reason.”
“Jesus. This sounds insane.”
“If you pull over on the highway a few kilometres south of Lyndhurst, I’ll come and find you. What does your truck look like?”
“Wait a minute! How do I know I can trust you?”
“Me? Are you for real? They have kidnapped my missus. They have killed my best friend. I need help. Please…”
Silence.
“Yeah, okay. It’s a big, dusty road-train with a red chassis and a white trailer. Can’t miss it.”
“Okay, I’ll be there within the hour. Are there cops we can trust?”
“Jesus, I don’t know, mate. You said these guys could be government?”
“Well, we need somebody’s help.”
“I think I know just the people.”
“Okay. Thanks, Ryan. I’ll see you soon.”
“Hey, Jake Gibbs.”
“Yep.”
“Be safe out there.”
TWENTY-NINE
Cynthia had complained and cursed, but agreed to come over.
Cole crept into Jenny’s room, gave her a kiss on the forehead and was in the Ranger, on route to Blake’s apartment by 11:40. Given that she lived on the second storey, he raced up the stairs while she remained in the car. He returned with her pistol and her badge, a carry bag with a bunch of clothes shoved into it and a box of ibuprofen.
Blake got into more suitable clothing in the apartment building parking lot, again with Cole’s help. A few awkward minutes later and Blake had her clothes on. She winced, casual olive green pants pressing against the raw grazing on her leg. Cole had to put her hair up for her. As she only had one functioning hand, she couldn’t get her hair into a ponytail, nor tie the hair tie around it. Given that Cole had raised a daughter, he proved to be competent at the task.
They reached Holland’s office at the Victoria Police headquarters a little after midnight. The front foyer to the three-storey building never closed, with the desk staffed by two junior constables less than a year out of the academy. Thrown into the graveyard shift to pay their dues, they had little life experience, and even less in policing. They studied Cole and Blake as they entered. Their eyes lingered on Blake, limping through the electric doors with her arm in a cast and her face a mess.
“Evening,” Cole said, placing his badge on the countertop. One constable approached. He was short, with a clean-shaven face covered in blemishes. He had a long nose and eyes too close together.
“Major crimes?” He studied Cole’s badge. “What can we do for you, Detective?”
“We need to deliver something to Inspector Holland’s office. Something classified.”
The young constable narrowed his eyes and turned to his colleague. “Seems a weird time to be dropping off parcels. If you leave it at the counter, we can make sure it gets into the right hands.”
Cole leaned over the navy-blue laminate counter-top. He looked at the young officer’s badge.
Dorsett.
“We work major crimes, Dorsett. I’m not sure if they forget to tell you down at the academy, but crime doesn’t sleep. It might be a weird time for you, but for us, this is standard. We’re here now, on this side of town. We need to investigate some things outside the city and we won’t be back tomorrow. So we’re going to head upstairs to Holland’s office and drop off this parcel.”
It wasn’t a question.
Dorsett’s face reddened. “Okay, sure. Do you know where you’re going?”
“Holland has been our boss for years,” Blake said with a welcoming, warm smile. “We’ve spent more time having meetings in that office than you’ll ever understand. The guy enjoys talking.”
The edge of Dorsett’s lips lifted into a slight smile.
“No worries,” Dorsett said. “Sorry for the attitude. It’s my second day on the desk.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed,” Cole whispered as he walked towards the elevator.
The door to Holland’s office was closed, but not locked. Outside his room, the hall was eerily quiet. The stench of vacuum cleaner dust and disinfectant hung in the air. Cole and Blake stepped inside the office and pushed the door closed behind them. Despite being the only ones on the entire floor, they felt the need to be cautious. What they were doing was a total breach of their duties. Illegal even. Suspension wouldn’t be their only reprimand. What they were doing reeked of dishonourable discharge.
Cole didn’t waste time. He clicked on a small coffee table lamp in the corner of the spacious room and searched his boss’s office under the dim glow of the light. Blake gravitated toward his desk, cold, metal and uninviting. She winced as she sat in his chair.
“Look for the letters,” Cole said, flicking through documents on his side table. Blake opened drawers, searched his desktop, and thumbed through his diary. Even though the police force used online cloud-based calendar software, Holland kept a black leather diary and entered everything by hand. Blake flicked through it as Cole searched the room. She studied his handwriting, admiring the patience he displayed with his perfect cursive.
“Hey,” Blake said. “Check this out.”
She had gone back a few months in the diary. “He was in Hong Kong for a supposed workshop back in April. And he was there last year, too.”
“Fishier than a Vietnamese wet market,” Cole said. “Can you log onto his computer? We might find something else.”
“Man, this is so wrong,” Blake said, opening up Holland’s laptop. “We’re gonna lose our bloody jobs.”
“Not if we catch him. Then we’ll be heroes and he will lose his job. Rach, they took us off the case. You were driven off the road. Don’t lose sight of how fucked up this is.”
Cole searched the cupboards while Blake worked her way into the back end of the Windows software. She got through Holland’s user password as an administrator and pulled up his personal desktop.
“I’m in.”
Blake searched through the drives on Holland’s desktop. It didn’t take long for her to navigate through layers of folders until she paused.
“Cam! Look here.”
Cole joined Blake and stared at the screen. She hovered the cursor on a small yellow folder titled PT.
“Could that be Prime Technologies?”
“That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Well, it could be his personal training program?”
Blake clicked on it. An alert appeared across the screen. The folder was password protected.
“Take the whole laptop, Rach. And the diary, too. This is evidence if I’ve ever seen it.”
“You want to steal our boss’s laptop?”
“Do you want to find Harvey or not? Fuck Holland.”
Cole didn’t wait for Blake to approve. He pulled the charging cord from the silver Dell and scooped it from the desk.
“Let’s go. You can try to hack into the folder while we drive. We’re going to South Australia.”
Blake placed her free hand on Cole’s arm. “Are we really going to do this, Cam?” Her tone possessed a calm and controlled volume. “If we’re wrong, and we’ve somehow overlooked something, then by doing this we’re throwing away our careers. We’re stealing from a Police Inspector and we are absconding from our jurisdiction.”
“I know we’re not wrong, Rach. I can feel it. Now come on. Let’s go save the biologist.”
THIRTY
Cole tucked Holland’s laptop and diary into the waist of his chinos and pulled the office door closed behind him.
The two detectives appeared from the elevator and b-lined straight for the front doors. Dorsett looked up from his phone screen as they walked across the lobby as fast as Blake’s limping would allow. The other officer was busy with an elderly gentleman at the counter.
“Thanks,” Cole yelled from across the foyer. “See you next time.”
Dorsett went to speak, but Cole and Blake were outside before giving him the chance.
A few cars crowded the curb, parked under the orange glow of streetlights, but the sidewalks were free of pedestrians. Everyone was at home in bed. Cole’s watch had just beeped 1:00am.
The day had been long. It felt like three days ago he had picked Blake up from her apartment. Now, after seventeen hours on the go, they committed to the long haul west across the state of Victoria, along the Duke’s Highway to Adelaide.
Cole needed more coffee.
They stopped at a truck stop on the highway big enough to be its own township. With a McDonalds, a Subway and a small convenience store all under the same roof, it spoiled the two detectives for choice. Cole couldn’t help himself. He got a coffee and a spicy chicken burger. Blake opted for the coffee alone. She stayed in the car and tried to get into the PT folder while Cole went inside. Blake navigated her way into the back end of the Windows administration pane and used HTML code to rewrite the security level of the user account, therefore removing all password requirements on the whole device.
She clicked restart at the same time Cole returned.
“Let’s hope this works,” she said as she took a coffee from Cole with her functioning hand. “Damn, Cam. Do you need to eat that shit in here? It stinks like deep-fried filth.”
“That’s because it is deep-fried filth, Rach. And yes. I’m eating it in here. We don’t have time to sit around and eat.”
Cole gripped the burger in one hand while using the other hand to juggle the steering wheel and the gear stick. Blake placed her coffee in the centre console and clicked Holland’s user account. She let out a small shriek of excitement.
“I’m in without a password. That should mean the folders are no longer protected.”
Cole nodded with a mouth full of burger.
Blake navigated to the PT folder and double-clicked. The folder opened, revealing dozens of other folders, many of them containing saved emails and PDF documents. Holland had named all the files with numbers.
“It has to be dates,” Blake said aloud.
She clicked the first email saved in a folder named 120218.
“Bingo!”
“What?” Cole asked, impatient to know.
“I’ll bet your left nut you can guess who the email is from,” she said.
Cole swallowed his mouthful of chicken burger. “Info at prime?”
“Yep. It’s about arranging a meeting. But the email has gone to Holland’s personal email, not his work one.”
“Is it like mine? Lover boy sixty-nine?”
“No, Cam. Not every bloke has the mind of a thirteen-year-old boy. It’s J underscore P underscore Holland. Which actually benefits us. If it were his work email, he could deny it, saying hackers have breached the server. This is his personal email. We’ve got him, Cam. Red fucking handed.”
“Good. Now we need actual information. There’s nothing incriminating about a meeting with a shell corporation. Keep digging. Find something that will help us bring Lachlan Harvey home.”
Blake opened up one of the PDF files. 220219. Prime Technologies letterhead. Classified in large red letters swallowed the better half of the page. Blake read the small paragraph of text aloud.
“The construction phase is complete. The facility is now operational. We have acquired candidates suitable to fill the positions and plan to commence engineering phase one within the month. We request a meeting to complete arrangements ASAP. Speak with AC. Must be face to face.”
“AC,” Cole said. “Alexandra Chung?”
Blake nodded. “Bloody hell, this is big.”
“What facility are they talking about? What positions are they filling?”
“Cam, if these file names are dates, then this is from three years ago.”
“So Holland’s been in on it since the start. I wonder why?”
“Money, probably. There’s other classified letters that refer to Project Alpha several times. And AC again. Alexandra Chung is the missing piece of the puzzle that we need.”
“You need to forward this on to my buddies in the Australian Federal Police,” Cole said, wiping his greasy hands on the leg of his pants.
“You sure?”
“Yep, we need to be protected. Holland will come for us now. There’s no telling how far they will go or how dirty the Victorian PD is. This could get messy, Rach.”
“What? Messier than being deliberately run off the road?”
“Look, just do it. I’ve got a mate. You remember Jonesy? From back in the Uni days.”
Blake nodded with vague familiarity.
“Anyway, he’s a First Class Commander with the AFP now. He knows the right people in Canberra that can protect us.”
“If Holland is in on this, who says the AFP isn’t in on it as well?”
“They might be. But Jonesy isn’t. He’s as straight as a bloody Mormon.”
Cole handed his phone to Blake, who juggled Holland’s laptop and her coffee on her lap.
“His email address is in my contacts. Send him an email from me. Tell him that the Victoria Police Department is covering up some sinister shit. Attach a few of those files. Let’s blow this open, Rach.”
“It seems a little sloppy of Holland,” Blake said. “Having these files on the computer that he uses every day for work just seems a bit…”
“Lazy?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“With power comes complacency, Rach. Why would Holland ever have his computer searched? He wouldn’t. He’s an Inspector with the Victoria Police Force and the head of Major Crimes and Missing Persons. For all intents and purposes, he’s untouchable. Maybe he was more careful to begin with, but you know, why bother? And sometimes shit is best kept in plain sight.”
“I wonder how many others officers are involved? I wonder who we can trust.”
“For the moment, Jonesy. That’s it. The AFP will look after us, Rach. They have to.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Blake attached several classified PDFs to an email and sent it. By the time she pushed the laptop closed, they were halfway between the satellite city of Ballarat and the famous Grampians National Park. The Ranger’s bright LED screen glowed 2.14 am.
“Let’s hope you’re right,” Blake said, shuffling to get comfortable.
“I am,” Cole replied. “Now let’s head to the city of churches...”
THIRTY-ONE
Stephen and Lawrence busied themselves in an annexe of the main laboratory in preparation for the extraction of the usable eggs.
Lachlan arrived a short time later, unaware of the day’s proposed procedure. He entered the annexe to find the men standing between two gurneys prepped for surgery. White sheets and pillows draped over the surgical beds. An armed mercenary had escorted Harvey through Area C. Despite his compliance, Alana had ordered some of Marc’s men to keep tabs on him.
Stephen readied equipment that looked foreign to Harvey. He noticed an ultrasound machine on a steel table between the two gurneys. He studied a series of tubes attached to what looked like a flexible hose with a needle fitted.
Translucent solution in a small bag hung from a pole above one gurney, an IV drip coiled and waiting for use. He read the small black text on the bag. Propofol. He knew little about the medical sector, but he knew enough. They used Propofol worldwide as a general anaesthetic.
“What is it you plan on doing here?” Lachlan asked, worry rising.
“Transvaginal egg retrieval, Mr Harvey. The Project Alpha subjects appear to be infertile. We want to see how their bodies go accepting fertilised eggs we can manage in vitro.”
“Fertilised eggs?” He looked from one gurney to the other. “Whose eggs?”
The door opened behind him. Harvey turned on the spot to see two mercenaries drag a woman into the annexe. She slumped forward, her toes dragging on the shiny linoleum. She wore a light-blue hospital gown, tied loosely from the back. The mercenaries picked her up and lowered her onto the closest gurney. She slumped onto the white bed sheets, unconscious.
Harvey watched the process, unable to act, as if he were observing through a television lens. The women had straight blonde hair. She looked to be in her mid-thirties. But she had sun spots, a mole on her chin and a hardened scab on the crown of her head, dried blood caking to her hair. He could tell right away that whoever she was, she wasn’t a Project Alpha subject.
