CHAPTER ONE

On Wednesday I left Australia as Denise Cleever, anonymous public servant. I returned on Friday as Dana Wright, only surviving daughter of the notorious Edmund and Salvia Cummins-Wright.

Even though it was just after six in the morning, several international flights had already landed at Sydney airport, and drooping travelers in long queues were clutching various items of cabin luggage, duty-free purchases, passports, and customs declarations.

When I finally made it to the head of my line I smiled at the official standing behind the high counter and wished him a moderately buoyant good morning. His glance slid over me with practiced, weary boredom, but when he flipped open the passport I handed him, his expression changed to narrow-eyed concentration. Surely it couldn’t be the photograph, which deliberately depicted me with blank-faced torpor. And certainly the passport itself was genuine, having been issued by the Australian government. Perhaps he recognized my assumed name, although the Cummins-Wright family was far more infamous in Britain than here.

He tapped my photograph with a blunt forefinger, the nail of which I noticed had a crescent of grime. “You Dana Wright?”

“That’s what it says.”

My airy tone didn’t go down well. His frown deepened, although that may have been because someone in my queue, clearly an Aussie, yelled, “Get a move on, mate! We haven’t got all bloody day.”

“Step to the side,” my official said.

“Is something wrong?”

He jerked his head. “Over there.”

Another man, red-faced and officious, appeared. They conferred at length. An impatient muttering behind me made it clear my fellow travelers weren’t happy. The next in line, a globular woman with a baseball cap and a T-shirt that read, WARNING: I HAVE AN ATTITUDE AND I KNOW HOW TO USE IT, lived up to these words by snarling in a nasal New York accent, “Shit! How long are these assholes going to keep us standing here?” She glared at me. “If you can’t get your documents straight, then you shouldn’t be flying.” Her mouth turning down in righteous condemnation, she added, “Or drugs. Is it drugs?”

I gave her a confiding smile. “Heavens,” I said, “it’s hard to say. Could be either.”

“This way, please,” said the second official, indicating that I should accompany him. He had my passport and entry documents safe in one beefy hand. “You can bring your things with you.”

Obedient, I followed him, aware that a third uniformed figure, a woman, had fallen in behind. This was all seriously irritating. The whole idea had been for Dana Wright to enter Australia like any ordinary Aussie who’d been abroad. True, apart from two visits to see friends, Dana hadn’t returned to her own country for ten years, but I had a good ear for accents, and a voice coach in Los Angeles had given me a quick couple of lessons, so I was pretty well secure that I’d got the slightly clipped intonation that living for some time in Britain would produce.

The very last thing I wanted to reveal was that I was working undercover for ASIO—the Australian Security Intelligence Organization—but if the alternative was a strip search, I was going to be very tempted.

The three of us, me sandwiched in the middle, walked down a corridor of identical closed doors, our footsteps clicking a staccato beat on the polished gray surface. “Exactly what is this all about?” I asked, using a tone of polite outrage.

The stocky guy at the front halted at an anonymous white door. “In here,” he said, handing me my passport and documents. Faintly smiling, he turned the handle and waved me inside. “Have a good day, Ms. Wright.”

The door snapped shut behind me. There was only one person in the stark little room: my ASlO control, Livia. It wasn’t her true name, because it changed with every new mission. With a little ferreting, I’d discovered she was really Cynthia, although to my mind she deserved something rather more edgy and interesting—Justine, perhaps, or maybe Zaneta.

I put down my hand luggage—an overnight bag and an expensive, brand-name shoulder bag. Dana might support antiestablishment groups, but her clothes and possessions were top of the line.

There was a pause while we regarded each other, me standing, Livia seated at a rectangular table, her thin arms folded to rest on its bare polished surface. As usual, she looked totally at ease, as though it could only be perfectly normal to have me yanked out of an immigration line and marched off to see my control.

I didn’t speak, and my expression didn’t change. It was part of my training never to react if there were an unexpected meeting with a fellow operative, control, or instructor outside ASIO walls. I glanced around the windowless white room, then back at Livia.

“Sit down, Dana,” she said, her expressive face split with a grin. “The room’s clear. We can speak freely.”

Livia had been calling me Dana from the moment that I’d been assigned to the mission six weeks ago, a short time after the real Dana Wright had lapsed into a coma after a climbing accident in Scotland had sent her plunging down a cliff. Now I was Dana Wright, activist and suspected terrorist, twenty-four hours a day.

I pulled out a chair, saying, “I was preparing myself for the indignity of a strip search.” The thought crossed my mind that if Livia happened to be the person in charge of such an activity, perhaps the experience might be…interesting.

She was an enigma to me, and I’ve always been challenged by mysteries. Spiky-haired, angular, yet graceful. She was older, I thought, than she looked. Of course fraternizing with one’s control was strictly forbidden, but I’d bent the rules before—

“Something’s come up.”

“Bad?” It would have to be serious for Livia to be here at all. “We’re not going to abort?”

“Norbert Cummins has escaped.”

I stared at her. “Dana’s brother. But isn’t he—”

“In an asylum for the criminally insane?” Livia spread her hands. “He was. But not, it seems, anymore.”

This wasn’t quite as catastrophic as I’d feared. Norbert had been incarcerated in Britain after a trial for killing his parents and one of his sisters. Found not guilty by reason of insanity, he was put away at Her Majesty’s pleasure, which, in effect, meant life imprisonment for Norbert. Now he’d be on the run, his face in every news report, so the chances of his making it to Australia seemed remote.

“How did he get out?”

“Like any intelligent psychopath, he presented himself as well on the way to recovery. Sweet-talked a new, young psychiatrist into believing that he no longer posed a threat, and at the first opportunity, bashed the guy so violently he left him with permanent brain damage, changed into his clothes, and walked out of the place as the doctor. Smooth as silk. He’d been there long enough to know the routines, the security checks. Got away clear in the doctor’s Jag.”

Livia’s face was somber. I quailed at the thought of giving up the mission when I’d spent so much time and effort becoming Dana Wright. “Hey,” I said, “Norbert’s half a world away. He isn’t going to make it to Australia. I reckon he’ll be arrested any time.”

When Livia didn’t look convinced, I added, “And I’ll be safe in the middle of nowhere. Besides, why do you think he’s looking for his sister, anyway?”

Livia tilted her head, pursed her lips. “As part of his treatment, Norbert Cummins kept a diary. The final entry says: ‘Three down and one to go. There’s only Dana left.’ ”