Tropic of Death Page 4

  ‘Perhaps no scientific reconstruction can produce human awareness, but computers could become sentient in a new way.

  Which begs the question: when do you assume something has a will of its own? It’s not possible to objectively gauge a subjective presence - there’s a logical contradiction in the terms. And how do you tell the difference between something that’s really conscious and one that appears to be conscious? The Byron in the machine can be very persuasive, insisting emphatically that he’s the genuine individual. He’ll say to you: I spent my infant years being dragged around hippie hotspots by my parents, was schooled in Melbourne, went to Cambridge, studied science, underwent scanning and regained consciousness here in the computer. The process of downloading identity is amazing! You can try arguing, but in the end you’ll go along with what he says. Byron will get pissed off if you don’t.’

  Huxley waited for the laughter to subside before wrapping up his address.

  ‘In our world today, three dynamic forces are converging: the expansion of cyberspace, the refinement of virtual reality and the science of intelligence. The result will be a new wonderland as deceptive and paradoxical as anything Alice encountered. And like Alice’s experiences down the rabbit hole and through the looking-glass, the inhabitants of this wonderland will not necessarily be friendly. While many of us here anticipate what’s coming with a subversive glee, let’s not forget that its power to liberate is matched by its power to control. The future will be just as menacing as the past, especially when the digital dark arts are applied by political, military and corporate oppressors. I’ll just leave you with that Cartesian doubt in mind.’

  As the wave of applause died away and the audience began to rise from the rows of seats and disperse, dozens of admirers milled around the podium, crowding in on the guest lecturer as he closed his laptop and slid it back into its case.

  ‘It’s early days yet, of course,’ Huxley was saying to them. ‘But the new revolution will transform our lives. It’s inevitable.’

  A barrage of questions came back at him from the press of bright young faces. He was hemmed in and would be stuck there for a while, so Rita decided to leave him to it. Anyway, she needed to shower, do her hair and make-up, then dress for this evening’s anniversary celebration. That’s when she’d have him all to herself.

  9

  ‘I wonder where we’ll be a year from now,’ pondered Huxley. Although his words were meant to be reflective, Rita detected something equivocal in his smile.

  ‘Does that mean you doubt we’ll still be together?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, taken aback. ‘I wasn’t assuming one way or the other.’

  He was trying to be tactful, but it was the wrong answer.

  She sighed. ‘It’s about emotions, not assumptions.’

  He realised his mistake. ‘Sorry. I missed my cue, didn’t I?’

  ‘You certainly did,’ she replied, and flicked an ice cube at him.

  It bounced off the lapel of his jacket and he tugged at his shirt collar sheepishly.

  Their anniversary celebration was getting off to a hesitant start.

  As a prelude to revisiting a Victorian suite at the Windsor, scene of their first night of passion, they were sitting in the genteel interior of the hotel’s dining room. Candles flickered on the table. A bottle of champagne glistened in an ice bucket. Murmured conversations came from nearby diners, accompanied by a piano tinkling through melodies from the 1950s. The sedate setting was meant to lend a romantic tone to the evening, but perhaps it was a little too sedate.

  Rita felt restless and Huxley seemed preoccupied.

  ‘Our relationship isn’t based on dependency, is it?’ he asked suddenly.

  The question took her by surprise.

  ‘No, it’s based on love. And mutual trust,’ she added with a surge of alarm. What was he about to tell her - that he was seeing another woman? ‘Neither of us has a dependent personality. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I’ve got some news,’ he answered. ‘And it affects our relationship.’

  Rita felt her mouth go dry. She picked up her glass and swallowed a mouthful of champagne. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’ve been offered a post overseas. Visiting professor, Cambridge University.’

  A wave of relief washed over her. ‘That’s wonderful news!

  When do you go?’

  ‘At the end of this semester. I’ll be there for the English academic year.’

  ‘A year away.’ Her relief was tinged with regret. ‘Wow.’

  ‘I know,’ said Huxley, bowing his head. ‘It’s quite a break. I can’t expect you to join me over there. Not with your own career taking off at last. But I’ll certainly miss you.’

  She reached across the table and put a hand on his. ‘I’ll miss you too. But that means it’s easier for me to make a decision.

  I’m in line for an attachment in Virginia. Now I can say yes. So at least we’ll be in the same hemisphere.’

  ‘On opposite sides of the Atlantic,’ he observed. ‘Not very intimate.’

  ‘But with access to cheap flights,’ Rita pointed out. ‘Think of the anticipation!’ She gave him a teasing smile. It complemented what she was wearing - a low-cut black cocktail dress, tight on her curves, and black high heels.

  ‘Maybe we should treat tonight as a last desperate fling,’ she said. ‘Before your fan base goes international.’

  ‘You’re the only fan I notice,’ said Huxley. ‘Especially when you wear a dress like that.’

  ‘What, my little black number?’

  ‘Yes, with all its revealing calculus.’ He raised his glass. ‘Happy anniversary.’

  Rita echoed the toast, then said, ‘There’s another reason to make the most of tonight. I’m flying up to Queensland on Tuesday and I could be gone a few weeks.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The murders in Whitley. The local police want me to help.

  It’ll be my first case as an official profiler.’

  ‘Now that’s interesting,’ said Huxley. ‘I could’ve ended up working there. They tried to headhunt me for the Whitley Sands research base a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘The defence department, with a lot of money on the table.

  Very tempting. And not just for the financial package. The speech I gave today - about the application of artificial intelligence and so on - scientists there are already doing it.’

  ‘So why didn’t you accept?’ asked Rita.

  ‘The idea of having military masters. It bothered me. It worried me even more after I phoned a former colleague who’s working there.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Konrad Steinberg, a physicist - an expert in electromagnetism.

  He advised me to forget the money, the job wasn’t worth it and I shouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. That’s all I needed to know.’

  Rita was beginning to wonder if Huxley was her mysterious link to Whitley, although she couldn’t see how.

  ‘What makes him so negative about the place?’ she asked.

  ‘For a start, the research isn’t science-driven. According to Steinberg it’s all geared to fast-tracking new technology for use in the war on terror, so they’re cutting corners when it comes to procedures and safeguards.’

  ‘Do you know what sort of technology they’re developing?’

  ‘Steinberg was too nervous to say - national security and all that - but I’ve got a rough idea from what he let slip and from questions put to me by the departmental headhunters. I think they’ve come up with some sort of integrated surveillance system and the data feed is so massive they need advanced AI computing to process it. That’s my informed guess, anyway.’

  ‘You said “for a start”,’ she reminded him. ‘What else doesn’t he like?’

  ‘The security. Apparently the base is patrolled by a specially recruited bunch of military police. Steinberg says they act like fascist thugs who treat the researchers as if they’re inmat
es. It’s a huge establishment with several thousand scientists employed there.’

  ‘Do you know any of the others?’

  ‘A few, but I haven’t kept in touch. One of them - Audrey Zillman - is among the leading experts in the science of intelligence.

  I was on her course at Cambridge. It shows you how serious the base is about using AI, and twitchy with it. Steinberg phoned me a few months ago - back around New Year - to pick my brains about data encryption.’

  ‘Did you ask him why?’

  ‘Of course. He was compiling a confidential report and didn’t want anyone at Whitley Sands to access it. Steinberg said the protesters were making valid points about the environmental threat and things inside the base were getting worse. It all seems a bit nasty.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Rita. ‘So much for the tourist brochures. Whitley sounds less and less like a tropical paradise.’

  10

  On level six, the International Risk Assessment Committee reconvened inside the concrete walls of the conference room. ‘I’d like to say we’re on top of events, with a crisis averted,’ the director-general, Willis Baxter, began. ‘But it’s obvious we’re facing a new set of problems, though the threat posed by the protesters appears to have subsided.’

  ‘Have you identified the leak?’ asked the Englishman, Horsley.

  ‘We have a handful of suspects,’ answered Roy Maddox, the security director. ‘We’ve been watching their work patterns closely and monitoring their behaviour off base.’

  The American, Molloy, cleared his throat. ‘Whoever it is must be dealt with uncompromisingly.’

  ‘Noted,’ said Maddox.

  ‘You’ll be aware of a new headache imposed on us by Canberra,’

  continued Baxter. ‘I’m under instructions to set up a panel to review security and report back to the minister. The constitution of the panel is largely up to me, though there’ll be senior public servants present as observers. I’m inclined to make it as broad as possible -

  invite the local police and emergency services - and give all those on the panel only level-one clearance. Canberra’s intentions may or may not be commendable, but I’m determined there’ll be no interference in what is already a rigorously policed operation.’

  ‘I concur,’ nodded Molloy. ‘The more you turn it into a talking shop, the less intrusive it will be.’

  ‘I trust the Panopticon Project won’t be up for discussion,’

  said Horsley.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Baxter assured him. ‘Its content and purpose will remain top secret and out of bounds.’

  ‘Good. We must keep it that way.’

  ‘As for the panel’s agenda, I’ve been told there are four areas of concern. In practical terms we’re already on top of three: the anti-war protest, publicity control and internal protocols. The fourth, in my opinion, doesn’t fall within my remit, which is why you’re here. I’ve been informed there is now a credible threat of a terrorist presence.’

  The director-general sat back and cast his eyes around the others at the table.

  Molloy responded first.

  ‘Two days ago, CIA eavesdroppers at Langley intercepted a burst of electronic traffic in the Middle East referring specifically to Whitley Sands,’ he said. ‘It’s clear that terrorist overlords are targeting the base. We have the protesters to thank for drawing their attention to it. Ominously, one of the decoded messages refers to a “fixer”.’

  Baxter frowned. ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Like a lot of raw intel it’s open to interpretation, but Langley believes it’s a specific reference to a man. It’s thought he’s on his way here.’

  ‘So who is he?’

  ‘He has any number of identities,’ answered the American, opening a folder in front of him. ‘But we think the Fixer is one Omar Amini, the product of a militant family in Tehran. It’s that Iranian connection again. He’s a specialist operative at the disposal of the global extremist network. Amini works undercover doing advance preparation for an attack - planning, recon, making contacts, exploiting locals. It’s a key role ahead of a terrorist cell being activated and deployed. He’s well educated - Omar and his brothers went to the Sorbonne - so that makes him westernised and adaptable, hard to spot. It’s that old Aryan blood of Persia.

  The one picture we have of him is from his student ID when he was attending the Sorbonne under the name Mounir Al Sahar.

  It’s twenty years old and of little use. He’s a computer expert, fluent in several languages, including French and English, and a combat-trained member of the elite Quds Force, the foreign operations branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which runs Tehran’s covert activities.’

  ‘And if this man arrives on our doorstep,’ put in Baxter, ‘we can’t afford to be distracted by internal housekeeping.’

  ‘Exactly. But, of course, there can be no mention of the Fixer at the security review. The attempt to identify and locate him is strictly classified. And that’s the major problem we face. With his ability to blend in, he could be right under our noses and we wouldn’t spot him.’

  ‘That’s more likely than you realise,’ added Horsley, opening an A4 envelope and distributing photocopies around the table.

  ‘Langley will have to backdate its timeline. This was sent to me a few hours ago at the consulate. A hard copy of a fax has been retrieved by soldiers in Peshawar after a fire-fight near the Afghan border. It’s a map of Whitley Sands and its surroundings.’

  ‘Well that confirms the threat,’ said Maddox.

  ‘It’s worse than that,’ continued Horsley. ‘The fax was dated three months ago.’

  They lapsed into silence until Molloy uttered what was on all their minds.

  ‘We have to assume the Fixer’s already here and well entrenched.

  That means an attack is imminent.’

  11

  On the flight from Melbourne Rita studied the case files that Jarrett had emailed, including witness statements, transcripts of interviews, pathologist reports and crime scene photos. As she scrolled through them on her laptop a disturbing possibility occurred to her. It didn’t originate with any of the material compiled by the police investigation but was prompted by Dr Konrad Steinberg’s misgivings about the research base. According to the files, Homicide detectives could find no motive for either of the murders. That was understandable in the case of ‘the man in the mud’, who still hadn’t been identified. Rita examined the pathologist’s findings again but nothing leapt out at her, though the list of trace elements lifted from the hair and body parts seemed strangely eclectic: sand, seaweed, fragments of shell and coral, glass, nicotine, motor oil, engine grease, cement powder, tar, rope fibre, hessian, tissue paper and effluent. It was an inventory of what the decapitated head had come into contact with, what it had been carried in and wherever it had been rolling around at the mercy of the tides. But with no points of reference, other than the sea, it was hardly enlightening. The identity of the man in the mud - with Rita’s name in his boot - and the reason for his murder remained an annoying mystery.

  But the nail-gunner’s second murder victim was another matter.

  The detectives had returned to Brisbane assuming Rachel Macarthur had been stalked and lured to her death by a psychopath with a sick agenda. His point in placing her head opposite the base gates, they reasoned, was to taunt police and protesters alike, at the same time ensuring his handiwork gained maximum publicity.

  It was a workable theory but Rita had her doubts.

  What worried her was Steinberg’s suggestion that the protesters were right about damage to the environment. In that context the killing of Rachel, the local leader of the protest movement, could have a specific motive. If this was the case, the location of the decapitated head was more than a taunt, it was meant to send some sort of message. It also implied that the base itself was central to the case. Of course, it was mere conjecture at this stage. Rita didn’t have enough information to justify a suspicion either
way.

  As a profiler she needed to examine the crime scenes and start doing her own background work, but she’d already decided that Steinberg would be among those she would approach.

  Another would be Rachel’s boyfriend, Freddy Hopper. Members of the protest movement had told Detective Sergeant Jarrett that Rachel had a secret pipeline to information inside the base, but they had no idea who or what this conduit was, and she’d refused to enlighten them. Maybe Freddy knew. As Rita reread the transcript of his police interview she began to suspect, like Jarrett, that Rachel’s lover was hiding something.

  When the pilot announced they’d be landing in twenty minutes, Rita packed away the laptop and looked out the window as the airliner headed out over the South Pacific Ocean in a wide arc, altering course to make the approach to Whitley airport. Far below, hundreds of islands, reefs and islets dotted the tropical blue water, its glistening surface creased here and there by the wakes of yachts and powerboats.

  As the jet descended, the ragged line of the coast came back into view, indented with bays and rocky headlands, creeks and mangrove swamps. Up ahead the residential sprawl of the town could be seen, dissected by the lazy curves of a river. Its weaving course ended in a broad estuary that spilled into the sea beyond the breakwaters of a man-made harbour where half a dozen cargo ships were docked. The place had the look of a busy port. Its flat storage area was studded with tanks, silos, fuel depots and sugar sheds, linked by a crisscross of rail yards crawling with freight trains.