“Great Leader.” Jones looked directly at Lee without a hint of uncertainty. “It’s done. The machinery is now in play.”

The world was about to be ‘botted’.

23 - Where’s Wiley?

Jack and Cath arrived back in the office just before lunchtime, refreshed after the brief trip to the Sunshine Coast. Tiredness lingered in the background, a mind-induced tiredness, a God-versus-aliens tiredness.

They’d just got to their desks when Cath’s phone rang. “Unknown number. Odd.” She answered. “Cath speaking.”

He raised his eyebrows and opened his hands.

Who is it?

She signalled a spherical shape with her free hand. A sphere? The asteroid? He was never any good at charades. Now she looked like she was eating. That made no sense.  She rolled her eyes and reached for her notebook.

“May not be anything.” Cath was nodding.

Soft murmuring came from her phone.

“Yes, I can imagine you would be fine-tuned, considering what has happened.”

Jack had no idea.

“Yes, text me his name and whatever else you have on him.”

A few pleasantries, and she signed off. “Thanks for the call, Walt.”

Got it. A sort-of sphere. Watermelon. Walter Melon.

“That was Walter Melon.”

Jack nodded. “Thought so.”

Cath gave him the ‘I don’t think so’ look. “John attended an emergency disaster planning meeting last night. One of the members asked irrelevant questions regarding the use of drones in their emergency situation. He was interested in the payload they could carry—said he was thinking of a starting a pizza business.”

“An emergency meeting, and this guy was talking about pizza? That’s a red flag.”

“John agrees. His police sonars went off. He sensed something more underlying and says we should check the guy out.”

“Does he think the guy might be into terror attack stuff?”

“Could be.”

“That’s not our area, but I know someone who can help. Let me find his details.” Jack did a quick search in the system and found the appropriate command group.

He tapped his screen. “Got the contact here. Gavin Sargent, Counter-Terrorism Investigation Group. I’ll send you his email address.”  

Cath sat down at her desk and Jack returned his focus to his computer screen. Dreaded email catch up time.

Jack called the team together for an update at noon. He stood at the front of the room, greeting his team members as they entered. Cath was missing but he needed to get things underway. It was lunchtime, and people were hungry.

“Won’t keep you long.” He opened up his notebook. “Our trip to Noosa generated some leads, and we still believe Wiley is in the area.” Jack looked around the team. “Any news on the items we forwarded?”

One of the young detectives opened the folder in front of him. “We were able to track the vehicle heading out of Noosa using the transport’s department CCTV system. We lost the vehicle at the Sunshine Beach turnoff. Some cameras were out of order due to the earthquake. The vehicle could have taken a number of routes from here. We can’t put too much pressure on for assistance at the moment as their priorities are elsewhere. We will need to start considering using private CCTV systems. So still some work to do.”

“Understand. Thanks, Matt.”

The detective sitting next to Matt spoke. “We’re waiting to receive some location data so we can get the phone number he was using. Then we’ll bring up a call log. This should only be a few hours away.”

“Good stuff, Tracey,” Jack said. “Whoever made that call is going to be a big piece of the jigsaw.”

“We got an updated image of Wiley from the Sunshine Bus service CCTV,” Matt said. “It’s not great quality, but it’s more up-to-date than what we had.”

Cath entered the meeting room, nodded to him, and found a seat. She didn’t look good. She looked harassed.

Matt was doing something with his computer and some images came up on the large screen behind Jack. He turned to look. A frozen image appeared of people on a street.

“You’ll want to look at this. We were able to pick up Wiley on some city CCTV.”

Jack nodded.

A grainy image appeared, of people walking in both directions. A tall thin man stopped, looked in both directions, then entered a well-concealed door between a hotel and a café. Matt stopped the video at that point. It was definitely Wiley.

“We did some snooping around. The door leads into a stairwell, then to a narrow back lane that provides rear access to a number of other buildings. This might be about the secret society you asked us to look into. If it is a secret society, they’d have certain rituals they follow when meeting. We’ll keep our eye on the area and do more research.”

“All good. I think the phone number is the key. Let’s put our energies into that.” Jack nodded at Cath. He needed to check if she was okay. “Let’s call it quits for now. Have lunch and keep up the good work”.

Jack raised his hand, indicating Cath should stay seated, and waited for the others to leave.

“You okay?”

She took a deep breath. “Dad’s been arrested by the feds.”

It took a moment to register that she was referring to the Australian Federal Police. “What? Why?”

“Mum said it was related to national security.”

“It’s the images, Cath. They were obviously classified. He did mention it could be a security breach.”

“I agree. They’ve confiscated his gear. Mum said she overheard them asking if anyone else had seen the images. She said he would feel bad because he lied.”

Could the technology be traced?

Cath read his mind. “They’ll be able to trace the communication between Dad and me. So we may be approached.”

“Maybe not. Someone is bound to leak the images to social media, whether to show the aliens or make it appear to be a hoax.”

“And you, Jack? What do you believe?”