Clive Cussler: Zero Hour

Bradshaw offered a grunt in response and opened the file. He leafed through the pages quickly, studying what the ASIO knew about Mr. Kurt Austin of the American organization NUMA. His activities read like a series of high-stakes adventure novels. Before that, he’d apparently had a successful career in the CIA.

Bradshaw couldn’t imagine what strange permutations of fate had brought Austin to this very spot at this precise moment, but it just might have been a break the ASIO desperately needed.

Austin might do, Bradshaw thought to himself. He might do very nicely.

“Keep an eye on him,” he ordered. “If he’s as smart as the file shows, he’ll be trying to get information out of Ms. Anderson in no time. He does that, you bring them both to me.”

“Why would we want to do that?”

Bradshaw glared. “Did you get a promotion I’m not aware of?”

“Um… No, sir.”

“And you’re never going to if you keep asking stupid questions.”

With that, Bradshaw slapped the file back into the agent’s hands and moved off down the hall.

Across the plaza, Kurt sat beside Hayley as a paramedic treated her for a number of scrapes and abrasions and then checked them both for shock.

In the midst of this treatment, a ranking detective from the Sydney Police Department grilled them about the event. What did they see? What did they hear? Why on earth did they do what they did?

“Look at the damage,” the captain said, pointing to the ruined façade of the Concert Hall. “You’re lucky the building was empty.”

Indeed, Kurt felt very lucky on that score. But he also felt he had little choice but to act. “Would you rather I’d just let them keep shooting?”

“I would rather…” the detective began, “… that both of you had stayed inside until proper tactical units arrived.”

Kurt understood that. Police were no different than any other group of trained individuals. Leave it to the professionals. Something Kurt would have been glad to do except there hadn’t really been any time. Besides, he was getting the feeling there had been other professionals on-site anyway.

“Next time,” he said, “I promise.”

“Next time?” the detective muttered. He shook his head, closed his book, and moved off to check with another witness.

Left alone for a moment, Kurt studied Hayley. “You’re a brave woman.”

She shook her head softly. “Not really. I just… Never mind.”

“You ran right through a hail of bullets to rescue a guy you’ve never seen before,” Kurt said. “That’s pretty much the definition of brave.”

“So did you,” she pointed out.

“True,” Kurt said. “But I thought the helicopter was out of the picture. You dragged that guy behind that planter while they were actually firing at him.”

She looked away. She’d been able to clean her face with a water-soaked cloth, but her dress remained tattered and covered in blood. The victim’s blood.

“A lot of good it did,” she said.

There was definite sadness there. More regret than one usually felt for an unknown man.

“How long were you waiting for him?” Kurt asked.

“What are you talking about?” she replied.

“You were sitting out here all by yourself,” he reminded her. “As soon as I showed up, you tried to get me back inside. I’m guessing you didn’t want me in the way because you were waiting to make contact with our friends in the boat. More than likely, they chose a public place where they figured they’d be safe. You chose a white dress so you’d be easy to spot when everyone else was wearing black or gray for the gala ball tonight. You sat out here on the wall so you could watch anyone approach.”

She tried to smile, but it looked forced.

“Either you hit your head very hard or you have an active imagination,” she said. “I’m here for the conference. The Muldoons are old family friends. I chose white because I like to stand out, and because it’s summer here, and because someone recently told me white is the new black.”

He shrugged and turned away. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe it is just an overactive imagination. Tell me, though, whatever happened to the papers?”

“What papers?”

“The bloodstained pages our dead friend was grasping when he spoke his last. I notice the police haven’t asked us about them. Me and my overactive imagination think someone might have misplaced them before the police arrived. Maybe even handed them to the two guys in suits who came running toward us but stopped when they realized it was too late.”

The false smile vanished, replaced by a look of surprise and then almost tears. Kurt sensed her reaching out to him. “I didn’t—”

Before she could say anything more, a young man in a dark suit appeared on the steps beside them. Kurt could see the bulge of a shoulder holster under his jacket and the earbud in his right ear.

“Could your timing be any worse?” Kurt muttered.

The man ignored him. “Ms. Anderson, Mr. Austin, come with me.”

Hayley looked as miserable at this suggestion as she had about the possibility of answering Kurt’s question, but she stood dutifully, and Kurt did the same.

Two minutes later, they were inside one of the undamaged structures. One of the agents, who’d run their way and then stopped during the incident, let them into a conference room.

Kurt followed Hayley inside. There, two other men and a woman stood around the table, examining the bloodstained pages. They used tweezers and wore gloves. One of them seemed to be taking photos of the contents under a UV light. In the far corner, a second woman tapped away on a laptop.

“Nothing on that,” she said, answering some question that had been asked before Kurt and Hayley entered. “Next line, please.”

The group froze at Kurt and Hayley’s arrival.

A stocky man with rolled-up sleeves and a buzz cut stood at the head of the table. “Clear the room,” he grunted.

This was the boss, Kurt guessed. He looked none too happy.

The others began to move, putting down whatever they were working on and filing out one by one. The last one to leave pulled the door shut.

“Are you okay?” the burly man asked Hayley.

“No, I’m not okay,” she said. “People are getting killed right in front of me now. You said nothing like this would happen.”

“I thought this would be the last time,” the man said.

Kurt had guessed right. Some kind of rendezvous was in the works, but the way Hayley was acting, she didn’t sound like an operative.

“Don’t mean to be rude,” Kurt said, “but would someone clue the dumb foreigner in as to just what’s going on here?”

The boss man turned toward Kurt. “You’ve walked yourself into a dangerous situation, Mr. Austin.”

“You’d be surprised how often that happens.”

“Actually,” the man said, “in your case, I wouldn’t be. I’ve read your file. Trouble seems to find you. And when it doesn’t, you go looking for it.”

“My file?” Kurt asked. “Why would you have a file on me?”

“Because I’m Cecil Bradshaw, deputy chief of counterterrorism for the ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. And you are a wayward member of the National Underwater and Marine Agency as well as a former specialist with the CIA.”

“I agree with everything but the wayward part,” Kurt said. “I’m here on vacation.”

Bradshaw looked like he didn’t believe that. “Really? And your vacation just happened to land you in the middle of the most sensitive operation we’ve conducted in years.”

Kurt could imagine how it looked, especially considering his background. “Bad timing,” he insisted. “I’m not a spy or anything. I’m a nautical engineer and head of NUMA’s Special Projects Branch, which generally involves research and development, though we do get into our share of scrapes. As for the CIA, I did salvage work mostly. Refloating sunken ships. Retrieving important parts from inside them, or blowing them up to keep others from doing the same. And even that was a long time ago.”