Chapter 2
The coffee hadn’t improved today, and Charlie’s bicycle ride to work had been fraught with cars encroaching into her lane and huge trucks beeping at her just when they got alongside. The drivers were no doubt highly amused as she flinched and veered into the gutter. The only thing keeping her temper at bay was the prospect of some real live law enforcement action in the field.
Where better than Sydney in late Summer to spend a few weeks being the scourge of the virtual world while sunning herself in a cossie on the balcony of a swish beach-front hotel? While cool weather was starting to creep into Canberra, Sydney would be warm for weeks yet. If there was one thing Charlie hated almost as much as child-peddlers, it was cold weather.
The meeting with Charlie’s boss, Alex, went well. The usual imperative to keep a tight rein on expenditure was stressed, but Charlie was given a reasonable budget for discretionary expenses that could be used on anything from taking colleagues out to dinner to hiring informers and agents.
Returning to her desk after a mercifully painless 20 minutes, Charlie went straight online to book flights, vehicle hire and accommodation. She was surprised to find that everything she would have chosen exactly to her taste also turned out to be well within budget. She booked a one-bedroom apartment with en-suite bathroom and a separate luxury spa bathroom, fully equipped gourmet kitchen with laundry, and double-balcony with stunning views of Bondi Beach, for less than half the price she anticipated. Her mood improved even further when she found a new motor-bike and gear hire place at Sydney domestic terminal, offering a special deal if booked before the end of the week. The Canberra to Sydney flight would leave the next day, and the one that left at 10.20am instead of 6:15am was also the cheapest option. Charlie would get to sleep in, work offline on the plane, then charge across Sydney on a 500cc bike, with enough time to have a swim in the afternoon and organise her next few days of contacts and surveillance.
She spent the rest of the day Skype-ing with colleagues in Sydney, briefing her team on the tasks she needed for support while out of the office, uploading all her essential files to the cloud, and finding a pet minder for the duration.
XXXX
Charlie arrived at Canberra airport later than she hoped. The gate was due to open in fifteen minutes, and she was very glad she had decided to cope with carry-on luggage only. She joined the check-in queue and fumbled about in her backpack for her documentation, nearly wrenching her shoulder out of its socket because she couldn’t be bothered to take the back-pack off and look inside properly. She would normally have done all this electronically using the self-check-in terminals, but although they appeared to be working, each one she approached shut-down as soon as she entered her ticket number, with a message that instructed her to see the counter attendant. She refused to get mad, and to take her mind off the possibility, Charlie scanned the airline counters to ensure there was no Douglas Adams-esque large blond man in an extreme fur coat who could potentially put paid to her travel plans. It had, after all, been a rather ‘Dirk Gently’ sort of day so far.
There was now only 6 minutes remaining until the embarkation gate opened, and there were four economy-class counters operating and another one for business and first class. Charlie breathed a little easier. Barring major catastrophe, she would make the flight.
As Charlie waited at the head of the line, a rather stunning individual with a lion’s mane of blond hair, a very tasteful dark grey suit, black Cuban-healed boots, and a black and white striped tank skidded up to the first-class attendant. The woman’s business was concluded swiftly, and soon she turned, and eyed Charlie openly, in fact it might better be described as brazenly, before she stepped gracefully away from the counter and headed for the departure lounge, dragging a tiny carry-on bag in lurid pink. Miss Blond Bombshell was showing just enough cleavage to be alluring yet still remain intriguing. The bag, Charlie concluded as she followed the woman with eyes that seemed to have a string attached directly to her groin, was the only unsophisticated thing about her.
“Next, please – the lady at the top of the line,” Charlie finally heard amongst the noise of blood rushing to her head. At the same time, a scruffy lad behind her gave her a gentle nudge forward.
“They’ve called twice now,” he observed, not unkindly.
“Oh, shit, yeah, sorry…” Charlie stuttered as she leapt towards an attendant, clipped her heal with her bag as she tugged it too hard, and gripped the chest-high counter to retain her balance. She pushed the slightly sweaty e-ticket paperwork to the airline officer, and tried to look cool and casual.
“You’re Ms Parish?” The young attendant, whose name-tag marked her as ‘Janet’, said incredulously.
“Yes, I am. Why?”
“You’ve been upgraded. You are very late, and I’ve tried to rescind the system generated upgrade several times, but it wouldn’t let me. I figured you must have been really important or something, but…”
Janet stalled suddenly when a look from an older, and obviously wiser officer next to her was directed her way, with a vocalised ‘ahem’ thrown in for good measure.
Charlie didn’t care about the implied slight. She was far more interested in the fact that she had been upgraded. It must be to business class, she assumed. It couldn’t be to first class, surely? But as to why she had been elevated at all was beyond her, and there was no time to find out. Janet quickly finished processing and hastily directed Charlie to the now about-to-close departure gate 17.
“Enjoy your flight,” the supervisor offered as Charlie headed off.
XXXX
Normally a highly rationale and devoutly atheistic person, Charlie started to feel a very slight unease that there might be such a thing as fate, and that there was an iota of a possibility that said mystical force had begun to meddle with her. All those moments of envy elicited in previous flights when a uniformed officer would direct the person in front to go left, when she was always directed to go right, melted into mere memories. She smiled dreamily at the flight attendant who not only directed her to first-class, but carried her bag and escorted her directly to her luxury accommodation. Her upgraded seat was within speaking distance of the be-suited and previously admired Ms Bombshell.
It was clear to Charlie that the woman was watching her as Charlie sorted herself out for the flight ahead, retrieving tablet, ear buds, and other necessary accoutrements from her back-pack before another devoted attendant skated up to her to put the pack into an overhead locker. The unwavering gaze made Charlie so nervous that she sat on her seat-belt, and had to wriggle about embarrassingly before she got the straps and herself into a useful position.
Get a grip! Charlie told herself firmly, before dropping her earphones and wincing as they were narrowly missed by another passenger’s wheelie-case.
“I saw you at the check-in as I was coming in, didn’t I?” The voice was smooth, pleasantly British in accent, and deep.
Charlie righted herself after retrieving the aberrant earpieces, and looked across to meet the blond woman’s hazel eyes, which were still unerringly focussed on Charlie as if both their lives depended on it.
“Oh, ah, yes. Yes, you did. I’m Charlie.”
“Charlie. An excellent name for a woman, I’ve always thought. Let me guess, one of your parents wanted a boy?”
Charlie must have looked disappointed at this lead in, since she had, after all, heard it so many times before. The woman saw her blunder, and recovered before Charlie could respond.
“I’m sorry, I bet people ask you that all the time. How utterly inane I must sound. Would you accept a dinner in Sydney this evening by way of apology?”
Charlie’s expression changed to confused scepticism. “I… ah … it might be a little early for that yet. Why don’t we try to get through a flight there first, then I’ll give you my answer. I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Julia. Julia Parish.” Ms Bombshell replied, leaning over to shake Charlies’ hand.
&n
bsp; Charlie was so surprised, she didn’t even notice the offered hand, until Julia pulled it away.
“Julia Parish? Your surname is Parish?”
“Yes, why?”
“So is mine. I’m Charlie Parish.”
“Good God, really? We could get married without ever arguing about whose name we would take,” Julia suggested with a smile that made Charlies heart thump in her chest despite herself. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We haven’t even had dinner yet. How strange that you and I should end up next to each other and both have the same surname.”
“Maybe that’s why I was upgraded,” Charlie mused aloud. “Perhaps the airline recognised the surname and thought we were supposed to be travelling together.”
“Perhaps we are meant to be travelling together,” Julia suggested, with a prophetic lilt to her tone.
“That’s not how I meant it,” Charlie admonished, trying to discourage any further romantic notions of the intervention of cupid and his arrow, both in herself and her companion. She had to think of something to steer the conversation in a different direction, or even to quell it entirely.
“No,” Julia agreed, “I know, but I must admit I am struck by the coincidence. Words like kismet, and serendipity come to mind. I think there is something magical at work in the meeting of two strangers whose natural affinity to each other is so obvious, but whose circles are such that they might never meet otherwise.”
“Natural affinity? Is that meant to be a compliment? How do you know we move in different circles?”
“You just told me so. You were upgraded to first-class, and I could tell by your unease that this does not happen often, if ever, to you. Yet the ease in which you got out your things, all from the same compartment, in that little protective case, speaks of a seasoned traveller. And yes, by the way, it was meant to be a compliment. I believed you were interested in me, and I am certainly interested in you, Charlie Parish.”
“Well, um… yes, you were right. I was interested in you… am interested in you. But I’m on company time right now. I should be working.”
“What do you work at, Ms Parish?”
“I’m a computer scientist. I work for the Australian Federal Police,” Charlie replied, almost defiantly. She liked to play this reveal for all it was worth. It often deterred people, she had noticed, from furthering their advances. In this case, though, she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to put a stop to Julia’s overtures to friendship. What she had said about being on company time was right though. She really did have work she needed to get done before touchdown.
Charlie needn’t have worried. Julia seemed more intrigued than put-off by Charlie’s employer of choice.
“What branch of the Feds?” she asked nonchalantly.
“I can’t tell you. It’s one of the rules.”
“Ah well,” Julia piped, as the pilot started his pre-flight announcement, “It’s of no matter. I will let you work. Feel free to disturb me if you get bored and want to chat some more. My dinner offer is most definitely still open.”
“Ah, thanks,” Charlie said. She felt awkward and giddy in the presence of such an attractive woman, and taken aback by Julia’s self-assurance. Had she just agreed to have dinner with her by default, or would Julia interpret it as merely an end to their current conversation? Charlie found herself hoping it was the former.