level of inner peace. An hour and a bit later, I was showered, changed into jeans and a plain shirt, and had put my laptop into its simple leather protective pouch. Most of all, my mind was in the right place; I was ready.
CHAPTER 6
The conference venue was a straightforward business hotel called Four Points, a ten-minute walk from my hotel. This distance was short enough to make a foot surveillance detection route, also known as counter-surveillance, challenging. The tradecraft felt good; I’d always enjoyed studying local streets to identify choke points and the other elements that could be combined as the basic foundation of surveillance detection. The goal was to create a pathway between locations that took you through enough choke points to identify if someone was following you without them noticing you were doing that. Simple, in theory at least. Done properly, it was a way to identify surveillance without revealing your tradecraft knowledge.
Once I’d studied it on Google Maps and Street View, I spent most of my first full day on the ground to refresh my area familiarisation, given just how long it had been since I’d spent time in Brisbane. After a few hours, I felt comfortable enough to operate with relative security. It wasn’t perfect, but a bit of fundamental tradecraft paired with experience would see me through.
The short distance between Four Points and the Treasury Casino included the Queen Street Mall, the main shopping area of Brisbane City. That created fantastic opportunities for some of the aspects of an effective counter-surveillance run, including quick turns (where a surveillance team needed to be close to you as there were several exits or egress points after a quick, blind corner or they would be in danger of losing you if they weren’t close by), mirrored returns (where a straight line walk provided a mirrored surface in front to give you a solid look at who was approaching behind without Hollywood theatrics like pausing at a mirror shop), switchbacks (where following a natural pathway had you turning back on yourself, most commonly found in escalators or travelators that turned back on themselves to go up levels, giving you a reason to look back at people behind you) and areas of varying occupancy to vary the depth a surveillance team would need to operate within. This created transitions, where a surveillance team would need to be close to you at certain times and further back at others, all of which created opportunities for confusion, mixed communication and hence identifying your pursuers.
It wasn’t that I expected surveillance associated with the conference. But it was better to be prepared than caught unawares.
Once I was satisfied with five separate planned routes and enough additional features that I could create a counter-surveillance route on the fly if need be, I moved towards the venue. It was in a fairly quiet street away from the centre of the CBD, with cafes and restaurants at one end, a few multi-storey parking structures opposite the hotel itself, and a stretch with office space running down towards the Brisbane River.
I spent some time over the next day with my laptop at a small café called Cheddar that offered an uninterrupted view of the Four Points Hotel from a safe distance. Most laptops had a small webcam above the monitor and mine was no different, though it was covered with a security tab. Mine was also equipped with a disguised camera on the lid of the laptop, facing the same way I was. The clever technical addition meant that as I worked, it captured a live stream of the hotel driveway.
While I was busy with more research on the group that I would be attempting to join, that hidden camera was surveilling my ultimate destination. The camera was high resolution and equipped with video analytics software that automatically grabbed faces and vehicle number plates, sending them back to Philip and Jack for matching.
The waitress brought my first long black of the day and I took a quick sip, determined to make the most of the time before the conference. I needed to better understand WOLF and its motivations, so I started trawling through the internet and a short list of bookmarks Jack had sent me.
Their missive was far from simple. While the group’s underlying message seemed to be anti-globalisation, there appeared to be nationalistic ideals mixed into an odd hybrid with closed-border advocacy that hinted at the use of violent tactics.
There were glossy pictures on a fairly standard webpage of people sitting in groups, laughing and talking. A lot of the publicity was about the group’s leader, Eran Tuso. A self-styled prophet of the new world, Tuso seemed like a typically charismatic figure, linked to a range of legitimate charities and issues over his 50-odd years of life. His credentials and background were vague and appeared to me to be largely smoke and mirrors. Naturally, I disliked him immensely. I wondered whether it was the charities that linked the unlikely pair of Tuso and Edward.
I glanced at the ‘What to expect’ section of the conference information pack. Enlightenment seemed to be the overwhelming achievement. Just what I’d always wanted. I was a little concerned about the potential that this was wasting a lot of time. I had no confirmation that this was actually the group I wanted or that the rebellious lovers would be anywhere near the session. I swallowed my frustration at the assignment, unable to completely dismiss the annoyance at what I saw to be involvement to avoid political embarrassment. If this didn’t work, I had a fall-back plan that was far more tactically focused. There would be an electronic trace of Edward or Jessica somewhere, from a phone, a credit card, a vehicle’s GPS, something. Blanket investigative coverage of every known vector associated with them was bound to find something. Truly going ‘off the grid’ was a near impossibility in the modern age.
So far, my plan of attack was simple. Attend the conference, see what I could find out about WOLF and, if luck reigned supreme, Edward and Jessica might even be in attendance. Slim chance, I knew.
It was remembering Philip’s last words that gave me pause. Any means necessary was our typical rule of engagement, or ROE. But bringing two young adults away from a group that might embarrass their fathers hardly seemed to warrant the use of violence. There was something darker, more sinister about the entire ordeal, and I hated not knowing what that was. It was an itch at the back of my neck that no amount of scratching would remove. I wondered whether Philip knew more about the reasoning behind the assignment than he’d shared.
A few coffees and a light lunch later, and it was time to move on. In truth, I could have stayed longer as I drew very little attention and people avoided the quiet figure with a laptop who was content to order the occasional coffee and some food. But too long on-target before tomorrow and I ran the risk of my presence being seen for what it was by someone who would know.
The conference was due to commence at 0900hrs tomorrow, so I still had some time to work out my story. Cover was fine. I could wear and shed identities with ease after years of covert work. What I wanted to be confident with was a reason, a cause. Something that had driven me into the arms of Tuso and his merry followers. In the intelligence world this was called a pretext – something that initially seemed easy enough but was one of the most difficult skills to master and one that saw more covert operations ruined than any other factor.
A pretext was the story for why you were there. Poor practitioners had stories that were too basic or too complex, or divulged their entire, beautifully crafted story in one long narrative that sounded unnatural and created. A talented practitioner followed the ‘onion’ model of delivery, providing fewer personal details initially, followed by increasingly private or detailed elements of the story when requested or probed by the target. It wouldn’t do to blurt out my entire pretext up front, or they’d know I was lying. But if I could craft a story that was believable and delivered it selectively, I might be able to win enough trust to try to locate the targets. Having gone through my return counter-surveillance route to the Treasury Casino and detecting nothing, I was still preoccupied with my reason when the elevator doors opened on the sixth level of the hotel, my floor. My instinct immediately kicked in and adrenaline started pumping.
Two men in suits were at my door.
They
