12
In an office on the first floor of the Australian Federal Police Headquarters located in the Edmund Barton Building in Canberra, the nation’s capital, Superintendent Vaughn Millard’s cell phone rang. The phone was a pre-paid, cheap, ‘throw-away’ he disposed of and replaced often. He had a telephone in front of him, on his desk, but all internal phones in the building were linked to a computerised recording device located in a special room deep in the bowels of the building. This was a conversation Millard did not want recorded. He glanced at the caller ID, frowned, and answered the phone.
“Yes,” he asked quietly.
“Ee ees gone,” Rodolfo Herrera announced, in a strong Mexican accent.
“Dead?” Millard said.
“No, senor. Ees not dead. Ees gone.”
“Gone! Gone where?”
“Eef I knew where, s
