Triskellion 3: The Gathering (15 page)

Two minutes later the dispatcher came back on the line and gave her the information. She took down the details, saying “Oh my God” over and over again.

L
aura held a bagel between her teeth and put her latte next to the computer as she manoeuvred herself and her bags into the seat. The internet cafe was quite empty, but she still scanned the room and arranged her things around her like a barricade: employing the caution and fieldcraft that her years with Hope had taught her.

Her mouth dry, she logged on to the Hope Intelligence Terminal. It asked for her password. She took a deep breath, then typed it in:

She held the breath and waited a moment as the progress bar crawled across the bottom of the window.

Laura typed in the word again:
ULURU.

A wheel spun on the screen. So far, so good. Laura waited. A chair scraped behind her and she jumped; turned around. A young guy with a beard, wearing a beanie, got up, slurping a smoothie on his way out of the cafe. A student from the nearby university, she guessed.

She turned back to the screen. The wheel was still spinning. She clicked the
RETURN
key impatiently. Perhaps the connection was slow – but it was more likely that the HIT database was checking and rechecking any incoming information.

The screen cleared and another window opened. The single word
HOPE
appeared in white across the top of the black page and a small box at the bottom of the screen asked:

Laura’s hand trembled over the keyboard. She had not logged on to Hope for over two years. It was not unheard of; people who worked for the Project often disappeared into the field for years on end. Buried deep undercover, with new lives and new identities, agents could sometimes take that long to uncover important information. To gather intelligence from people who were themselves secretive – or had good reason to be hiding.

And the Hope Project was a very patient employer.

Laura typed in her agent identification:
SHEILA.

It was the jokey name given to her by the American who had recruited her from the University of Western Australia ten years before. He had been an older man – in his mid-forties when she was in her early twenties. He had been on a sabbatical from an American university and was already a professor – but he had been good to her. Laura, who had not had a father to speak of, had responded to his friendship, and his protection. He had been very confident and knowledgeable, with expertise in Laura’s field of archaeology, and had been happy to guide her research on ancient sites. And then one day, before he left to go back to America, he had asked Laura whether she would be interested in working for him…

A month later Laura had discovered that sums of money from a company called the Flight Trust were being deposited in her overdrawn bank account. All she had had to do was share her research on Aboriginal Songlines and Bronze Age burial sites across Europe. She had not felt as though she were doing anything underhand or that she was being exploited – this Flight Trust Company was effectively just sponsoring her research, and more importantly, she would have a job with them waiting for her when she graduated.

She hadn’t realized just how undercover that job would be until she had been asked to move to England and pass on information about a certain burial mound in a village in the West Country. A job had even been arranged for her as a producer with a TV company; all the red tape had been cut, taken care of at government level.

Her days in Triskellion seemed like a distant memory as she waited to log on to – or rather, to hack into – an organization she now knew to be more sinister and ruthless than she had ever bargained for.

“Sheila” was eventually recognized and the labyrinthine Hope Intelligence Terminal database opened up in front of Laura’s eyes. The internet cafe computer was not as fast as she was used to. She would have to work as quickly as possible and search very carefully so as not to alert the watching eyes she knew would be monitoring activity on the site 24/7.

There was one thing she would have to risk typing. If the agents who had approached Angie Scoppetone and the NYPD were from Hope as she suspected, then these names would be at the forefront of activity on the database in the past day.

Laura typed
RACHEL AND ADAM NEWMAN.

A new window opened rapidly. A box containing the word
CLASSIFIED
flashed in the middle of the page. Laura clicked on it. Another page opened; this time the box asked for another password.

Laura typed it in:
TRISKELLION.

She waited for a spinning wheel, but this time the reaction was quicker…

Laura thumped the desk. She had been stupid to think that the code word would not have changed in her absence. She tried another route:
CINCINNATI STATION, OHIO.

The screen became a flurry of data and email exchanges. Hundreds of reports had been filed on this topic in the past two days. Good; her enquiries would be hidden among the long list of agent names. Apparently, Hope had deployed thirty agents at the station. Serious questions were now being asked. How had they failed so miserably? Why had their agent let the targets slip through her fingers? Why hadn’t the other agents closed in? How had the incoming train been so effectively sabotaged?

Who was responsible for such an operational disaster?

Laura shook her head. There would be trouble. Heads would be rolling, and once you had been excluded from Hope, the future was far from rosy. New name, new identity, exiled to the back of beyond and, rumour had it, worse. Former agents had died from drug overdoses, car crashes, unfortunate falls and food poisoning. Laura shuddered. She continued typing and then studied the results.

The targets had escaped by car: a taxi.

She opened a new window: one that accessed Hope’s LPR – licence plate recognition – technology.

She typed again.
LPR+TAXI+CINCINNATI+OHIO+TRACKING.

Half a dozen results came up. Hope was tracking cars heading in all directions out of Cincinnati. She narrowed the search:
LPR+TAXI+CINCINNATI+OHIO+TRACKING+STOLEN.

The results filtered down to one. A stolen taxi heading along I-74 towards Indianapolis.

Laura clicked on the licence plate of the listed taxi, and another report appeared:

Laura knew what Level 5 BETA meant. It meant Top Secret. It meant the case was being dealt with by Hope’s most secretive department:

BETA – The Bureau of Extra-Terrestrial Activity.

BETA was based in New Mexico.

Laura quickly punched in
GOOGLE EARTH,
and then she entered:
NEW YORK TO CINCINNATI
.

A blue line, going west, developed across the landscape, linking the towns together. She changed the co-ordinates, tapping feverishly:
NEW YORK TO NEW MEXICO
. The map pulled out wider and the blue line extended across the country – from New York to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Indianapolis, then on to St Louis, Missouri, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Laura felt nauseous as she plotted the last leg of the straight line that ran across America and ended in New Mexico.

It appeared that Rachel and Adam were headed for the last place they should be going.

To Hope’s headquarters in Alamogordo.

Kate was waiting outside, sitting in a hired Ford parked on a meter and sipping coffee.

Laura got in.

“Like the car?” Kate asked. “I got the police scanner from a store on Canal Street. It was made in China but it should be OK.” It had been Laura’s idea and was a way to monitor any police transmissions about wanted Australian fugitives.

“Did you get some supplies?” Laura asked.

Kate gestured to a supermarket bag in the back of the car.

“Good,” Laura said grimly. “We’ve got a long drive ahead.”

Meredith knocked and walked into the director’s office, smiling.

“The HIT monitor has just reported a lot of activity, sir. They wanted to flag this up to you. The system’s being hacked right now.”

The director waved a hand dismissively, his eyes glued to the screen in front of him. “Thank you, Meredith, but I’m already on it.”