Chapter 4

The phone answered on the first ring. The feminine voice only talked in monosyllables, mainly yes or no, a silence then another ring. The smooth modular tones of Jimmy the Greek were a welcome sound, just his talking to me saying categorically that I was still in the good books; so far anyway. He was only rung number three yet Jimmy knew exactly who to talk to and whom to be out of the office for. To be still in his position after twenty-five years showed a sense of self-preservation to be admired however I did have an in as I had brought him into the company in the first place. In the long run however he would drop me as quickly as look at me if push came to shove yet his talking to me was a good sign. After the initial pleasantries were put out of the way I told him I had to speak to his boss. He hesitated; I knew this meant that Roy was listening and decisions were probably being made way above Roy's head. Jimmy himself had no idea whom this was and he didn't care. "Talk." A voice that always effected me like fingernails scraping down a blackboard, it was Roy's immediate superior, and it told me that Roy had just been countermanded and had his nose rubbed in it. I explained my situation as succinctly as I could to the man who spoke directly to the Prime Minister of the day. "Ring," and quoted a Perth number, "tomorrow at this time." The phone went dead, not, and he hung up. The phone I was on became instantly inoperable. I replaced the receiver onto its cradle and thoughtfully took another mouthful of my drink.

The phone that I hung up did not exist. The line was routed via a computer in a bank in Los Angeles and then to an answering service in Madrid, to a further computer in an ISP in Johannesburg. Hence at least two other switchboards in two companies in Sydney who didn't even know that it was possible to do what I was doing no matter who was doing it. I had a cut off switch in Johannesburg if a trace was detected and this was undoubtedly what caused the disconnection. The phone I was actually talking on was double connected to another phone at the local Telecom office and went directly to a satellite dish and hence a satellite used exclusively for secret US government communications. I was sitting in a tiny air-conditioned office attached to the rear wall of the aforesaid Telecom office at Lightening Ridge which in the backside of nowhere in outback New South Wales.

Time to decamp to my next cut out position a good two days drive away in Broome. If the current technology could reach the Jo'burg cut out that fast I may have to route the next call with security uppermost in mind. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Driving through the bulldust of the outback roads at one O'clock in the morning reminded me why I moved to where I did, as far away from this type of country as you could go. Some idiot poets, novelists and politicians spout romantic crap about it but I personally would hand the complete lot back to the blacks. If we did that we would be probably charged with causing harsh and excessive cruelty to them as even they only wanted the same good bits as we do. They may be black but they weren't stupid. Suddenly my field of vision tunnelled into a flashback almost removing my view of the road and I decided to pull in into the passing lonely roadhouse the sight of which caused the de'ja vu in the first place, before I killed myself or anyone else. The more fatigued I was the worse the flashbacks were and the more often they occurred, this one was about an occurrence in another place very similar to where I was now and not being able to control it I let it run its course. I realised as I did so it would place my time-table completely out of whack as I has needed to drive all night to make my destination on time but my choices have just been reduced to zero.

Five O'clock next morning I woke with the birds about the same time as the roadhouse was opening for business. I climbed stiffly out the car, yawning and stretching in the cool of the half-light. The vehicle was parked on a haphazard angle across the front of their bowsers. It was going to be a scorcher the heat from the half light already creating a burning presence. As I entered the restaurant the young waitress was ineffectually wiping a layer of red off the tables and I ordered breakfast and coffee. She went out the back to cook it and I realised she probably also filled the cars and cleaned the toilets. High tech this wasn't but if she did all this she probably knew everyone locally, what and who did who and what. I leant my old frame over the kitchen servery as she banged a frypan onto the old wood-fired Kookaburra stove and asked if she knew anyone locally who had a plane for hire or simply could use some money for two days use of their wings. An hour and two phone calls later she introduced me to Fred who quoted what was to him an incredibly high sum and he almost fell over when I doubled what he asked for, for his silence and his complete attention that I gained immediately. I told him I would be requiring his wings for three days, if he asked no questions and simply went where and when I asked I would add a bonus. We reached Broome with two hours to spare and a rough old landing, no flight logs made and his girlfriend back at the roadhouse thought we were heading to Darwin.

Half way down the main drag I entered the office I had rented ten years ago and which had been accruing rates and cleaning charges ever since. These, and the rent, were being paid by a solicitor's office in Adelaide who received a cash sum directly from a bank in Melbourne. Their statements were being sent to a PO Box in a post office in Brisbane where one of the staff received a small sum each month to simply change which box they went into. They were then collected by my solicitor's secretary to be scanned and faxed directly into my computer at home. All my correspondence was routed via this method to make my life less complicated.

That the Broome office hadn't been cleaned in weeks was self-evident. While I'm in town I will make my presence felt with the cleaner, luckily up here work was scarce and unemployment a real fear. This office was attached to the Commonwealth Bank sidewall and the phone lines I had wired to use a common switchboard and communications dish on the roof through to their head office and automatically rerouted to, see the previous sequence. This phone had to be made five minutes earlier than the dictated time due to the length of time it took to reroute the separate phones and computers changing the route from the Jo'burg to the Paris cut out and hence after that the Sydney companies to a mobile phone in a locked drawer in this office. If this phone did not answer on five rings it automatically transferred to Lightening Ridge etc. The phone in this office I will destroy with its illegal unlisted number immediately after the call and replaced by another in my pocket both from a stolen batch I liberated from a consignment to the head of the local Sydney organised crime gang. I'm sure he won't complain. The phone numbers themselves are easy to arrange once you know someone at an exchange and it was easier to destroy the free phone than stuff around with changing numbers and phone internals.

The voice on the other end still made my blood run cold. "Still punctual, good." He was wasting time, as this was one man who never made small talk.

"Save it, different cut-out same thing will happen. Where and when if at all."

An amused sounding snort, "have it your way, ring," he named a shrink and a phone number, "he will be expecting your call..." I think he was going to say more however he would be talking to a dead phone. I placed the new phone without battery into the drawer and relocked it. The council incinerator was on the way to the cleaner's house so I took care of both problems at the same time. The cleaner was in bed with a new baby when I dropped in. It had been a bad pregnancy and birth in the primitive local hospital and it would be weeks possibly even months, if at all, before she could even contemplate working again. I subcontracted the work through her to a sister who lived next door with a major bonus as long service leave for the arranging of the subcontract. Seeing both she and her sister together made me wonder at the racial mix in this area.