Coast in Queensland, almost an hour north of Brisbane. Each final call was to family members and lasted two minutes and a handful of seconds.
There were also four emails, two from each of the runaways. As Philip had noted, the last from each of them was identical, a short missive with the operative sentence being ‘we have embarked on a Special mission and joined the World Liberation Organization (WLO) and will not be in contact again’.
It was an odd sentence, repeated word for word on both. I didn’t think University graduates would make a silly mistake like capitalising Special mid-sentence for no reason. I was leaning towards the email being written by someone else, which would be the first step in the possibility they had been abducted or were pawns in a broader game.
As I read the other two letters, it struck me that they were almost identical too, containing a request for space or time, some commentary about working for a higher cause, and assurance they were healthy and happy. I frowned and pulled out my laptop, a small HP Spectre with layers of anonymisation and encryption that I didn’t pretend to understand but thankfully Jack did. Using my ghosted iPhone as a data hotspot, I opened the links he had sent me to his basic internet searching. He had discovered nothing for the World Liberation Organization.
There was, however, a substantial amount of information about the World Liberation Front, a group that called itself WOLF. The information was vague and alluded to changing the political order of the world. The more I searched, the more I was convinced that it was the group they had joined. So why the error in the group name, particularly if it was a cause they had adopted as their own?
I read the sentence again. The S stood out to me, as did the use of Organization not Front. The Americanised spelling was also odd. Something clicked in my brain. The S, the O, a Z that should be an S. Was it a coded SOS message? That would be appropriate for the intelligent, educated son of Australia’s spy master. It was also possible that I was reading far more into a letter than was intended. For a moment of melodramatic self-pity, I longed for a return to the murky depths of the East Coast criminal syndicate where my involvement was far clearer cut. I enjoyed investigative activity, but over the last five years drew far more satisfaction from the physical side of our work.
I took note of the next scheduled WOLF ‘exhibition’ date and location – in two days and Brisbane, an hour’s drive from the location of Edward and Jessica’s last cell phone calls. I looked at the scant information they required to reserve a spot, but even that made me pause. Attending would be a good way to either rule the group out, or hopefully locate the missing pair. But if I attended, how would I approach my identity? I had access to a range of alternative identities, backed up with driver’s licences, credit cards and other documents. But false names were becoming difficult from a tradecraft perspective, with the increasingly ubiquitous nature of biometrics and an ability to triangulate people’s details through social media and open source intelligence.
In the end, I settled for an identity I was only slightly more comfortable with than the rest: my own. I had very little real presence on the internet, but with Jack’s help, had put some time into maintaining an alternate life. The internet version of Valen Tyler was a consultant for Department of Defence, specialising in policy around chemical, biological and nuclear weaponry. I had a quiet social life and followed local sports teams in my Canberra home town, including the Brumbies Rugby Union team. In truth, I hadn’t really lived in Canberra, or any one place, for the last five years of working with Philip.
I sent the link to Jack for him to quickly scan the domain registry and site details to see just how open my personal information would be if I entered it. One could never be sure whether the website you were visiting was the real location or a sophisticated mirror set up as part of a phishing attack, the modern terminology for electronic identity and financial theft. Jack sent me a reply saying it seemed fine, so I filled in the registration form, using my real name and a matching credit card.
With registration to attend the event complete, I checked the relatively untraceable email I’d used to sign up and took a screenshot of the ticket on my phone. Two days. Enough time to get to Brisbane, recuperate some more and see what I could find out from the venue. At least it wasn’t in a month or two days ago, though the convenient timing seemed too good to be true. Our cases rarely seemed to resolve themselves so easily. I turned my mind to how to get to Brisbane, two states away from Canberra.
Disrupted by a knock on the door, I immediately tensed at the unexpected intrusion. The knock had been perfunctory, the robotic tap from someone who had done the motion hundreds or even thousands of times. But it was unforeseen, enough for my instincts to kick in. Grabbing the ceramic bladed knife that was typically in my possession, I unfolded the blade and held it in a reverse grip, blunt end tucked along the inside of my wrist.
I headed to the door and glanced at the shadows visible in the small space between the hinges. I avoided the spy hole altogether. It was far too easy to find out where a target was staying, knock on the door and wait for the spy hole to darken before sending a single shot through that glass portal.
‘Yes?’ I asked, keeping my body line away from the door.
‘Front desk, Mr Tyler. We have a delivery for you.’ The voice sounded bored, a little annoyed.
‘Leave it there, please. I’ll be right out.’ I received a muttered grumble of agreement from the other side of the door and heard footsteps retreating. It was probably out of the ordinary for a guest to want it left in the hallway where someone else could steal it, but from the tone of the guy, he couldn’t care less and considered his duty done. I waited another minute before unlatching the security bar and bolt from the hotel room door, waiting a few more seconds to see if I could detect any noise or the subtle vibration of human presence. Nothing. I pulled the wedge out from underneath it and opened the door, keeping the wooden portal as a shield for most of my body mass and glanced out quickly. In the middle of the portal stood a small, carry-on suitcase that I recognised as matching the case Philip had given me. I exhaled a slow breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding. Some would call it paranoia, others tradecraft. I just considered it a consequence of my trade, the level of caution required for everyday activities to ensure I didn’t end up on the receiving end of the same punishment I dished out.
Dragging the suitcase inside and re-bolting the door, I looked at the handwritten tag on the case. ‘Valen Tyler, with compliments, Philip.’ There was a comfort in his familiar, if insecure, wording. The suitcase was secured with a combination lock. I put in our regular numbers – 666. Either Philip missed the irony of me using the devil’s number as our shared code or more likely, he dismissed it as one of the quirks of the assassin in his charge.
Inside were a few changes of clothes, all casual, a couple of suits and another toiletries pack to complement what had been left in the room. Philip was the ultimate personal concierge. In the top of the suitcase was another case, solid-sided and large enough to hold a laptop and range of accessories. It looked like a laptop case designed for someone particularly worried about damaging their device or not trusting airline baggage handlers who should more accurately be called throwers. I pulled out the heavy container and took it into the bedroom. There was no combination lock on this case, but a small LCD panel. I pressed my thumb onto the panel and the locks on either end clicked open.
Inside, nestled among perfectly sized foam inserts, were the tools of my trade. A Heckler & Koch USP Tactical pistol, airbrushed black and chambered for 9mm rounds, along with three magazines and a box of ammunition. It was very similar to the USP that saw service in the specialist response groups of some of Australia’s state and territory police forces, as well as the sky marshal program, which made it a good choice for easily replaceable components and potential cover stories. The Tactical version, however, came with a threaded barrel for fitting a suppressor, a requirement on some of my jobs but almost never in the line of law enforcement duty. It was a weapon I was comfortable with and that had saved my life more times than I could count. I rewarded it with regular maintenance and cleaning.
Also inside the case was the retractable baton I favoured for most jobs. It looked like an innocuous foam handle but with a flick of the wrist snapped out into 24 inches of reinforced steel that could break a bone with ease. There was an empty space for the contact