Erina turned right off the deserted bitumen road, slowed down and continued along a flat dirt track covered by overhanging foliage, which became thicker and denser the further they moved in.
The four-wheel drive bumped through the shadowy green tunnel for about a hundred and fifty yards until the thick vegetation opened up, revealing a lawn the size of a football field. The track led to a traditional country homestead, complete with sloping red-tile roof, brick chimney and wraparound verandah. Carter spotted several makeshift sensors and security cameras placed strategically around the grounds.
The wooden house stood in front of a hilly ridge that ran along the back of the property. A black four-wheel drive was parked to the left of the house under one of the half-dozen tall gum trees spread around the lawn area. The set-up guaranteed privacy, but Carter reckoned the place would be vulnerable to a well-organized attack. He wondered what had prompted the order to set up a temporary headquarters here.
Thomas would have his reasons.
The tires crunched to a halt on the loose gravel.
Carter looked deep into the shade of the covered verandah. His pulse quickened as he recognized the familiar silhouette.
Thomas Wing stepped out of the shadows.
He walked down the stairs toward them and stopped. Standing just under six foot tall, Thomas wore a black cotton shirt, loose pants and sandals. The early-morning sunlight reflected off his bald head.
His features were distinctly Asian; he took after his Chinese mother, rather than his American father. He was sixty-eight, but could’ve easily passed for fifty.
Erina stepped out of the vehicle, walked round the front and opened Carter’s door.
He breathed in the smell of moist grass. A kookaburra laughed as if amused by Carter’s predicament.
Thomas moved toward him, calm and unhurried, stopping a yard from the open door.
His unlined face looked paler and gaunter than Carter remembered. Thomas’s dark eyes examined him as though probing directly into his soul.
Carter wanted to look away but forced himself to maintain eye contact. Thomas and Erina were the only two people in the world who could throw him off balance with their eyes.
Thomas broke off his gaze, placed his hands in the prayer position and bowed his head.
“My heartfelt apologies,” he said. “Desperation forced our hand.”
“You always said the ends never justify the means.”
“I did what I thought necessary given the circumstances.”
The hint of an ironic smile softened Thomas’s face. He nodded at Erina, who unlocked Carter’s handcuffs.
Carter stepped into the sunlight, kicked his legs out and shook his arms, wrists and shoulders.
Erina got back into her car, turned on the ignition and opened the window.
“Where are you going?” Carter asked.
“Unlike some people, I’ve got a job to do.”
“So the package has been delivered and you move on to the next assignment. Don’t you ever clock off?”
“Life’s too short. I’ll be seeing you, Carter.”
“Don’t count on it.”
She smiled at him and the tinted window slid up, hiding her from view.
The car rolled down the drive and gathered speed. He watched it disappear under the canopy of trees, feeling a curious mix of relief and disappointment.
Carter turned back to Thomas, who stood with his arms folded. A knowing smile broke the smooth lines of the older man’s face.
“What?” Carter asked.
Thomas said nothing, just turned and walked toward the house.
Carter waited a moment and then followed.
8
Thomas led Carter through the sparsely furnished house into an old-style kitchen at the rear. He gestured for him to sit on one of four wooden chairs placed around a rectangular table, bare except for a pile of documents and a slim MacBook Air sleeping at one end. A cool breeze drifted through the sun-filled room.
“I’ll make some tea,” Thomas said.
Carter settled into his chair, stared out the window at the grey ghost gum standing alone against the pale blue sky and suppressed a sigh. Accept what is, is, he told himself. It was the first of the order’s principles and one he had always struggled with. Another was Expect the unexpected. As he considered what had transpired that morning, Carter smiled wryly to himself. He’d clearly let that one slip over the past few months.
The order was based on the thousand-year-old White Pole school of martial arts. It’d been established in 1937 by a consortium of wealthy Shanghai families to protect Chinese citizens from being victimized by Japanese aggressors during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Its initial charter was to serve the weak and vulnerable, regardless of their ethnicity, financial status, political orientation or religious persuasion.
Over a number of decades the order’s role had expanded and they began to operate throughout South-East Asia, guided always by spiritual and altruistic values. Carter’s jobs had included smuggling refugees out of volatile border regions, rescuing women from slavery in the sex industry, cracking pedophile networks and intercepting drug and weapons shipments across unpatrolled seas.
The landscape had changed in the late nineties after the Asian financial crisis. Many voluntary supporters of the order could no longer donate regularly to keep it running. The society was forced to become fully self-supporting and obliged to work for business and government organizations to survive.
Further change had come after the first Bali bombing in 2002, when two hundred and two people, many of them young Australian tourists, were killed at the Sari Club in Kuta. The order had moved its primary base from Bangkok to Bali and started working with the Trident Bureau, an Australian government agency set up to run covert operations to fight terrorism in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. After the second Bali bombing in 2005, the order entered into an exclusive government contract with Trident, even though they did the occasional pro bono case on the side.
The lucrative agreement came with strict guidelines and reporting protocols. Political decisions were made in Sydney and Canberra with little or no regard for the needs of the operatives risking their lives in the field.
Carter glanced over at Thomas, who stood with his back to him, measuring precise quantities of tea into the pot.
After signing off on the Trident contract, Thomas’s approach had changed. He’d always been the leader of the order, but now he became far less inclusive of the team when running operations, adopting a military style and imposing a clear chain of command to make sure that Trident policies were implemented.
Whenever Carter had voiced his concerns, Thomas patiently heard him out, but he never shifted his views or altered his leadership style. He claimed he always did what was best for the order to safeguard its survival. Carter understood where he was coming from but didn’t agree.
And then there was the unwritten principle — no emotional attachments on the job. That one had done Erina’s head in.
She and Carter had first become romantically involved when he was in his early thirties and she was twenty-six. She’d felt guilty about betraying her father and his code. Thomas had been too smart to forbid them from seeing each other, but he never sanctioned the relationship either. He avoided teaming them up on assignment wherever possible and refused to discuss it with Carter, except to say that the order’s principles, including the unwritten one, were there for a reason and it wasn’t Carter’s place to question them.
Ultimately, it was these changes to the order’s modus operandi, Thomas’s increasingly autocratic style and Carter’s torturous relationship with Erina that caused him to walk away and stay away. They’d stopped being romantically involved nine months before he left. He’d felt much better being out of her orbit, even though he knew he’d left the order short handed. At the time of his departure there had been just fifteen active members, including two support staff and four trainees. Before the Asian financial crisis there’d been over two hundred members, many of whom had been volunteers.