audience members, who were bewildered at the sudden shutting out of the lights and were tending to mill around. Wallace was still clutching the small article in his hand. It was a computer flash drive; Wallace didn’t need to look at it to ascertain what it was.
As Roeg’s shape crystallised behind the lectern Wallace paused, bent down and slipped the drive into his sock, pushing it well down into the shoe so that it reposed under the arch of his foot. Then he followed Roeg and emerged into the corridor. There were still the sounds of running feet echoing on the concrete floors, this indicated that the man in the shirt, whoever he was, was still on the loose and had successfully made his escape from the auditorium. Wallace hoped he made it, not only for his sake, but for Wallace’s as well.
Roeg shook Wallace by the hand when they reached the foyer, the previous act in transferring the removable computer drive had been a wise one otherwise Roeg would have been mystified by what fell into his palm. There was some light here, and Roeg’s features could now be perceived.
‘Thank you for speaking to us,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘It is good for people to see someone from Australia, maybe one day we shall all be one people.’
Wallace smiled and nodded as if in agreement, frankly he could not have disagreed more strongly. The idea of thuggish looking men, presumably servants of the state, chasing citizens all over public buildings and city streets was not an endearing one. The small package in his heel was scraping his ankle every time he took a step and it was an effort not to limp.
‘What happened to the lights?’
‘It happens now and again,’ said Roeg. ‘We can’t complain this time as it happened just as we finished.’
‘Who was that man?’
‘What man?’
‘The man who asked the questions about the two Australian houses of parliament,’ Wallace asked.
‘No idea,’ said Roeg.
‘I thought you might know him.’
‘No!’ Roeg shook his head. ‘What was he talking about? It just seemed to be a succession of jumbled names. I couldn’t quite make it out.’
No more could Wallace but he smiled and shook his head.
Roeg escorted Wallace to the front steps of the building where there was a taxi cab outside waiting.
‘Did you send for that?’
‘Yes,’ Roeg nodded and smiled. ‘It’s all paid for, all part of the service.’
They said their farewells and Wallace leapt into the cab with alacrity. He was anxious to be away from the place as soon as possible. As the cab took off he thought about Roeg’s demeanour. For a professorial type organising a lecture, he had not seemed unduly shocked when the lights had gone out, his calmness in steering Wallace to the exit had been such that Wallace wondered if Roeg had had fore knowledge of the illumination failure. Within ten minutes he was outside the hotel, but when he glanced through the rear window he saw that another car had drawn in behind. He studied it out of the corner of his eye as he alighted from the cab, but nobody got out from the other vehicle, it just sat there.
He began to feel shivers up his spine. As he mounted the hotel steps the doorman saluted him and opened the main door. As he did so Wallace caught a glimpse of the reflection of the car in the front window, two men had alighted and were climbing the hotel steps.
Wallace went inside and up to the reception desk and asked for his room key. The two men loitered by the lift shaft, seemingly deep in conversation. He felt himself starting to faint and fought it off by the apt means of leaning heavily against the reception desk and taking deep breaths. He gave the matter urgent thought. He was not going up to the room, being alone and isolated was the last thing he wanted at present. But where else could he go? He decided to visit the bar first while he thought about it, was there another way out of here?
He ordered a glass of lemonade, initially he had started to order a Scotch and then thought better of it; he wanted a clear head. There was enough burning acid in his stomach as it was; the acid of fear. The two men hesitated within the foyer, they were clearly undecided whether to come into the bar or not. Perhaps they were Muslims and didn’t enter bars.
He struggled to think whether there was another exit from the hotel. There must be one somewhere as they could hardly bring kitchen stocks through the main door. But where was the rear exit, could he find it without being stopped either by the two men or by kitchen staff? Clearly he had to be rid of this damned package tonight, the sooner the better. Being caught with it could ensure several years in jail. To hell with bloody Bramble!
What should he do? Mail it? Too risky, that necessitated the purchase of envelopes and stamps first, from where? Hide it in a flower pot! And what if the cleaners changed the pots? Could he make a run for the embassy?
The last had possibilities providing that he could dodge the two men, but they didn’t look the types who could be easily dodged. What about phoning the embassy, now that had possibilities. What the hell was in that blasted flash drive? It seemed to be more than economic data judging by the interest shown in it by his two followers.
Wallace soundly cursed Bramble and Major Lincoln again.
They had used him because they didn’t want any embassy staff to lead any watchers to their contact. The reverse had occurred, their contact, damn and blast the bloody man, had done all the leading!
‘Hi Harry…whaddya doing tonight?’
Chapter 4
Why Wallace didn’t die on the spot as a heavy hand descended upon his shoulder and swung him about he never knew. Numbness cascaded all the way down his body as he degenerated into a state of sheer shock and fear and he uttered a yelp of fright. As his eyes focussed he found himself facing Warren Hamilton. Warren was accompanied by three others who from their dress and crew cuts were plainly Americans, two of them Wallace had met before when he and Hamilton had had coffee.
‘Sorry Harry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. We’re going out on the town. Wanna come?’
‘Well, I hadn’t really thought about…!’
‘Great, join in with us…have you gotten that cab yet, Jack?’
The man named Jack nodded vigorously and Warren clapped Wallace on the back.
‘Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!’
The five of them were walking through the foyer in a solid phalanx before Wallace was really au fait as to what was going on, but if he had been taken by surprise so had his two shadowers. Whether they possessed the powers of arrest was not put to the test, the quintet was out of the main door and down the steps and into a waiting cab before Wallace or his two pursuers had time to register what was happening.
The cab pulled away from the kerb with an acceleration that would have done credit to a drag racer, looking through the rear window Wallace could see his two followers had scampered down the hotel steps, had boarded their vehicle and were trying to pull out into traffic, but they seemed to be hemmed in.
‘Who were those two guys?’
‘I don’t know,’ Wallace had been about to ask: ‘What guys?’ but decided against it. He still needed help and to ask that question could have negated it. ‘They seem to have been following me around.’
‘Why?’
‘Search me,’ he said, and realised this reply could have likewise rejected the thought of any assistance, but how could he broach a subject like this? In fact he found it difficult to believe it himself.
‘It’s probably nothing.’
‘Probably,’ Wallace agreed without much conviction, and had another look. The other car had managed to pull out into the traffic; had caught them up, and was still following.
As a drinking spree it was not a success