The Queen of the Night

I finished the first part of this story where I did because that was where I wanted it all to end, but feedback from readers and reality told me that it simply couldn't end there. There had to be permanent closure.

There are several incidents mention in this part of the story that are of historic importance. These are not figments of my imagination, they are based on Commissions of Enquiry held at, or soon after the events took place, and are on public record.

*

Life for us was pretty simple, there was no TV, not because we couldn't get reception, we just didn't want it. We didn't even have a radio so the only news from the outside world was to be had once a week when my mate Ted dropped off our supplies. When I stayed here before I'd installed solar panels on the roof to provide lighting and power for the few appliances we had and to power the pump that pressurised our water system. A solar hot water heater combined with the stove to provide plenty of free hot water. Life for us revolved around relaxation away from the pressures of the city. We slept a lot, we walked a lot through the rain forest, the only downside to this activity being the leaches and the paralysis ticks which, if you don't get them out whole early on can make you very sick.

And then there was the loving. We had well and truly moved on from the first couple of frantic sessions to pure enjoyment, to sex in its most loving form. It was slow, it was thoughtful and it was spontaneous, it just happened, often.

We had drifted in this life for three months and were sitting at the kitchen table reading the latest newspapers when Steph sat upright. "No, it can't be true." She was reading the entertainment pages.

"What can't be?"

"You know Ronnie Bowden?"

"The rock star?"

"That's the one. Well he's one of my regular clients, and it seems that his wife is divorcing him, and get this, she's claiming that he had been having an affair with me whenever he was in Australia. It's not true of course."

"I don't pay much attention to the gossip columns, they're all a load of rubbish." I trusted her implicitly.

"I'm glad because this has got to be a media beat-up, after all I know that he wouldn't cheat on her, he loves her too much for that, plus the fact that it would cost him a fortune if she divorced him and he's nothing if not tight with his money."

As far as I was concerned that was the end of the story but unfortunately it wasn't to be. The following week we read that yet another of her clients was being sued for divorce, also on the basis of an alleged affair with her. "This can't be happening." She was really concerned now. "Why would these women be doing this, I know that their husbands don't cheat on them, certainly not with me, so why this all of a sudden, and who's going to be next?"

We didn't have to wait long for an answer. The following week there was yet another pending divorce, this time an American politician's wife was suing for divorce alleging an affair with Steph. Something was not right about this. I knew Steph well enough by now to trust her when she told me that she had never had anything other than a business relationship with these men. Someone very high up in the food chain was pulling strings, but why?

"I've got a horrible feeling that it has something to do with me."

"What do you mean?"

"Who were you seen with just before we disappeared?"

"You." I could see that she was thinking along the same lines. "And we both suddenly disappeared at the same time and because we were engaged before it has been assumed that we are together now. To flush us out they are using these scandals, thinking that I'm not about to let them rest, after all my job is based on my untarnished reputation. Without that I'll never work again."

"And they know that I can't let that happen. They'll be waiting for us to come out of hiding. You and I are going to take our time and work on a strategy to overcome this. We can't do anything until Ted comes again, so that gives us a week to come up with a plan."

"Do you have any idea who's behind this?"

"I have a very good idea. The same people that set up the raid on that village that was supposed to have my squad killed. I'm sure that the officer that I had the run-in with isn't the only one that they use. What we need to do is to find out who is actually pulling the strings."

"Are you sure that you want to take on these guys?"

"What else am I going to do, I can't stand by and see your reputation dragged into the gutter."

Suddenly our peaceful existence came to a juddering halt and became one of extensive situational analyses, going over what we knew, what we assumed, and working out what to do when our assumptions became facts. We needed help from people we could trust so a list was compiled. Pete and Julie I knew that I could count on, Ted was another and of course our parents but we had to assume that, apart from Ted, they would all be under close watch. We had to contact them without the opposition knowing about it.

I had a list of instructions for Ted, they involved the purchase of several pre-paid mobile phones and directions as to whom he should have them delivered. Each of them would have programmed the number of one that he would bring back to me with instructions for them to call when they had received them. I would then text further instructions. I was working on the assumption that those close to us would already be under surveillance and was working on methods of getting around this.

The next step was how to get back into Sydney without being seen, public transport was out of the question, as was driving back, given that they didn't know where we were so would have all major roads covered. I hit upon a devious plan that would require some outside assistance. It involved the purchase of a yacht and making sure that people knew where we were heading. I drove into Ballina and bought a Sparkman and Stephens design that had sailed in several ocean classics with moderate success, she was sound and had a current survey for ocean sailing.

We arranged for Customs clearance and told the authorities that we planned to sail to Cairns before heading into the Pacific stopping at Fiji, Hawaii before sailing for Panama and on to Europe. The weather forecast was perfect, clear sailing as far as Cairns with a warning to keep an eye on a system developing just south of Noumea that could turn into a tropical cyclone of some magnitude. We carried an inflatable life raft, life jackets, flares and an EPIRB. What we didn't tell the authorities was that the EPIRB that was registered for this yacht wasn't the one that we would be carrying, it would be on another vessel, along with some substantial pieces of superstructure from a wrecked identical yacht. The vessel, a fishing charter boat, would sail as far as was safe into the impending storm, dump the flotsam overboard along with the EPIRB and then advise the Maritime Safety Authority that they were responding to a mayday from a stricken yacht. The MSA would have already picked up the signal from the EPIRB and give the co-ordinates, which will confirm those given in the mayday signal. A search of the area will find nothing for some time but eventually wreckage will be sighted.

We set sail at around noon and as we lost sight of land we were heading in the expected NNE direction. As the sun set we changed our heading to the South this would see us well out to sea when we reached Sydney's latitude. As soon as we were out on a southerly heading I set the auto pilot and we relaxed.

Steph was snuggled against me and her hand was stroking him awake again. "You know when I said that I was giving my body to you? Well it's not just my body that you're getting, it's me, its my life. I thought after you left me that if I found myself alone with you again I wouldn't be able to forgive you, ever. My resolve disappeared the moment I saw you and the more that I'm with you the more that I realise that I had never stopped loving you, I'll never stop." There was something about the movement of the yacht that enhanced our lovemaking, stretched naked on a bunk with the stars overhead and the gentle sound of the bow slicing through the almost dead flat sea, the rocking keeping time with our movements, or was it the other way round? Whatever the situation, our passion for each other washed any thoughts of what lay ahead from our minds, at least for the time being.

It was a difficult job, hanging over the stern changing the name of the yacht. It took several attempts before I was satisfied with the outcome, painting a name upside down isn't easy, but by the time we were ready to head towards the coast she was, to all intents and purposes, the 'Aquila' from San Diego.

Under cover of darkness we entered Broken Bay then steered south up Cowan Creek to moor at Appletree Bay. As we passed the Barranjoey light I sent a text message to Pete and he was waiting for us at the boat ramp in a rental car.

"You look pretty fit for dead guys. The search for you was called off late last night after wreckage was found that was identified as coming from a yacht the same as yours. No life raft has been spotted and the EPIRB has stopped transmitting, all hope for your survival has been abandoned. You were right about the surveillance, they've been watching Julie and I as well as Steph's place and your parents' homes. It's going to be hard to move around without being seen."

"Did you send the messages as I asked?"

"Yes and the waves are spreading all the way from Afghanistan, your squad has approached the brass and told them that, unless the harassment of you stops they will tender their resignations and make public their reasons. The lines of communication between Australian and American commands are running hot. The indications are that Australian command is behind you one hundred percent. The Americans are scared of further embarrassing leaks of sensitive information and have asked for time to resolve the issue. I fear that their idea of a resolution may be detrimental to your health."

"Well, we'll just have to stay one step ahead of them. Now the next phase of the operation is to let them know that we are aware of their activities. What I want you to do tomorrow evening is to get Julie give her watchers the slip and visit my parents to deliver a message telling them that we're safe, she's not to hide her identity, and I want the guys watching my parents to follow her. What I want you to do is to go to a hardware store and buy a packet of 25 millimetre stout clouts, they're rough galvanised nails with a thin flat head used to fix wall sheeting. While they are distracted by Julie's visit you will sneak up to their van and place one in front and behind each of the rear wheels so that it doesn't matter which way they drive one will be lodged in the tyre, the added beauty of these nails is that the head will wear off quickly and the body of the nail will be pushed further with each rotation . It will take some time for the tyres to deflate so Julie will have to drive around in circles for a while to allow that to happen. You will be following them and, when they stop ring her phone, allow it to ring three times and then hang up, she'll know that it's safe to go home."

"What are you two going to do?"

"We'll drop you off somewhere and you can take a taxi home and we'll drive to Steph's. We have work to do and people to contact and a box of mobile phones to use. They won't be able to trace our calls unless we want them to, so we won't be using the land-line any more than necessary."

We didn't attract any attention as we drove into the car park of Steph's apartment building, it was just another anonymous vehicle entering the building. Steph turned on her computer and accessed her emails, scanning through them quickly and ignoring any from un-known sources. One stood out in particular, it was from a client in the States who wanted to know what was going on, it seems that his wife was approached by someone from the government and offered obscene amounts of money if she were to file for divorce on the grounds of his affair with Steph. When she refused there were threats of harm to an unspecified family member. This has scared him and he and his wife have gone to ground until notified that the coast is clear.

"So that's why there's this spate of divorces." She was concerned that marriages were being broken up because of her relationship with me. "What can we do? I don't want any of this to happen."

"I think that it's about time we set up a Facebook page that questions why so many of your clients are filing for divorce and letting the world know that you will be going after the person that approached the wives in question and giving them the totally false information of the alleged affairs. I know that you've kept impeccable records of your business dealings with these men, I want you to catalogue everything and we'll send it directly to them, proving the evidence of an affair to be false and removing the leverage from whoever it was."

"But won't they be able to trace the Facebook entries to us?"

"No, we'll use a third party and change ISP's on a random basis so that they can't home in on us. That should keep them busy."

I made a call and half an hour later Stefan, an IT geek friend, arrived and swept the apartment, not surprisingly finding bugs and cameras in several places. He held his finger to his lips to silence us until he'd pressed a button on his machine. "You can speak now, this has a white noise generator that blankets all sound at normal speech frequencies. They must have accessed the neighbouring apartments to plant these, the listening devices are on the other side of the plasterboard so you can't see them and the cameras are so tiny that you'd miss them unless you were using some form of detection." He pointed to what looked like a fly speck on the wall, it was a camera lens no more than three millimetres in diameter. "That will have at least a ninety degree angle so there are not many places to hide. They were very patient drilling that hole without there being any plaster dust on this side of the wall, they would have had to remove the plaster right up to the paper backing and then push the hole through. Time to make them blind as well as deaf." He took a small spray pack and squirted paint over the lens. He did this to three other cameras in other rooms.

His efforts had a profound effect on the two men in the van across the road. "What the fuck's happening, we heard them come in and no-one has left so we know they're in there, but now we can't hear anything and the cameras aren't working." He was scanning radio frequencies hoping to find one that would restore sound, none did. While they were trying to fix the problem another problem was in the process, a friend of my bug zapper was emptying a whole can of gap-filler foam up the exhaust pipe of the van. When it set the van wasn't going anywhere and it would require a complete new exhaust and possibly, depending on how far the foam reached before it began to set, a new muffler and catalytic converter. This would tell them that they weren't playing with amateurs. On second thoughts, the fact that we didn't blow the crap out of them while we had the chance would tell them that we were not that serious, we might have to resort to more violent responses to their actions.

As we left the building Stefan activated a radio jammer that would have blown their eardrums so that they couldn't radio their controllers that we were on the move but they couldn't follow. By that time that they had given up on the radio and used their mobile phone we were out of sight and free to move around as long as we didn't go near the other sites that they were monitoring.

I needed to contact friends in Army Intel Corps to get a line on who was doing this to us. He wasn't able to help, being bound by restrictions on any activity outside his area of expertise, but he did speak to a friend who worked for Defence Signals Directorate and asked if there were any unusual radio or email traffic that originated from the US that could shed some light on our predicament. Off the record, and because of what had happened to my squad in Afghanistan, he decided to give us the information we sought. Now that we knew for sure who the enemy was we were able to work on a plan to combat this threat.

The conference in my hotel, not my old room, but another booked in another name for me by the concierge in response to my tale of media harassment and a generous tip. "Why are the Americans after you?" Pete asked.

"Our forces in Afghanistan were planning to move on the poppy fields and the people that are benefitting most from the trade weren't happy about it so they leant on their military colleagues to teach us a lesson. It didn't work and, because it was me that had recognised the danger in the operation that we had been asked to carry out and took steps to thwart their efforts, I was removed from my posting. Our command weren't happy about being coerced in this way but went along with it."

"I can't believe anything like that would happen." Steph was having a problem getting her head around that concept.

"Oh you'd better believe it." Pete cut in. "There's a long history of political and military pressure being used to stop us from interfering with drug operations going back to the days of the Vietnam War."

"Really? Tell me more." She was obviously intrigued.

"Well back in the days when the US troops were coming into Sydney on R&R leave. They were being used as drug mules bringing heroin and hashish in with them. It was part of the world wide distribution conduit. Because of pressure from above their bags were not searched by Customs on arrival, merely counted and checked against the manifest. After collecting their bags the men would head for the Cross (Kings Cross, a well known red light district in Sydney) and to a bar run by an associate of one of the partners in a merchant bank, where they would exchange the packages for title deeds to property. Those that survived the Vietcong and collateral damage, and went to claim the land, found that it didn't exist."

"Surely something could have been done to stop this."

"No, while it was commonly known that this was happening, and there was evidence to support that, nothing could be proven and when someone was getting too close he was 'removed'. Believe me their influence is strong, it has even been alleged that they were instrumental by leaking information to the opposition that precipitated the blocking of supply, that led to the deposing of the then government in 1975. It is just an allegation, nothing has been proven. Another allegation was that they were involved in some way in the bombing at Sydney's Hilton Hotel in 1978, again nothing has been proven but there were many inconsistencies that should have been investigated and weren't."

"Now I'm really getting scared, can't we go somewhere where they can't find us?"

"I wish we could. No, we have to fight fire with fire and I'm afraid that it might get a little messy. I want you to head back to the cabin and wait for me, you'll be safe there. I'll contact Ted and let him know that you're coming."

"Damn you Jimmy! I want to stay here with you and I want to be somewhere safe and I know that I can't be in both."

"The decision is no longer yours, I want you safe, and waiting for me when this is over, not here where I'll have to worry about your safety all the time."

"When do you want me to leave?"

"First thing in the morning. I want you to buy a day trip ticket at Central and catch the inter-urban to Lithgow but get off at Strathfield and catch another train back to Central. You will then catch a train that goes up the coast. You'll get off at Mullumbimby and Ted will meet you there and take you to the cabin. There'll be enough food for at least a week, if I'm not finished he'll bring more to you."