Chapter 13
Steep forested hillsides gave way to fields, before houses began to dot the landscape. David had started to think the South Island was just a vast landscape of verdant bush and tree covered mountains. Finally here was a proper town, with buildings higher than two storeys and what looked like some kind of civic clock tower.
This was Nelson; the town they intended moving to. Somewhere in the port, the container with all their possessions was safely stored. It felt wrong to be seeing it like this, as a hostage in a truck full of terrorists. This was not the first impression of a new home anyone should have to experience.
“We’ll go straight to the house,” directed Ed
Hone turned at a roundabout and headed away from the City Centre. David looked back over his shoulder above the buildings. Between them and the sky was an expanse of yet more vibrant green tones. Nelson was bordered by the same mountainous green forests he had been seeing all morning, bearing down on the city like tremendous freeze dried tidal waves.
The air clarity sharpened the contrast between the bright green hills and the pristine blue midday sky. It reminded him of seeing colour TV as a small child, and turning up the colour to maximum. It was as if the over the top of the South Island colour had been turned from ‘natural’ to ‘extreme’.
David recalled the long winter evenings spent planning once they had been offered work. He and Katherine both thought Nelson looked a little isolated on the maps, although it had the amenities and infrastructure they needed to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.
Now he was actually here, he could see a map couldn’t possibly convey the vast impenetrable undulating wilderness that lay just beyond the boundaries of the city and continued all the way to Christchurch, over four hundred kilometres further south. A million people on an island the size of England. Now he was beginning to get a sense of what that actually looked like.
The road curved between the sea and an outcrop of sandstone cliffs. Expensive-looking houses perched precariously close to the edge high above. Tasman Bay curved into the distance before appearing again on the western horizon opposite.
On the other side of the bay, snow-capped mountains, jagged blue silhouettes rising from the sea, headed south, forming the skeletal-white backbone of the island. David could see why people risked building million dollar houses in such an earthquake-prone area, for the pleasure of waking up to a view like that each morning. The sunsets must be spectacular;
“Before we get to the house, we need you to see something.” Ed nodded to Hone, who turned the Hilux sharply up the steep curving narrow road cut into the sandstone cliff. Again the Ute twisted and turned, climbing higher with each sharp bend, before emerging in a small car park built as a lookout at the very top of the cliff, facing the sea.
At the wooden rail on the cliff’s edge. Hone pointed out the Boulder Bank; a thin ribbon of shingle beach that acted as a natural barrier protecting the inner harbour from the open sea beyond. Between the end of the Bank and a small tree-lined Island was a breach in the shingle through which the open sea spilled in from Tasman Bay.
Below them, the rocky shoreline gave way to an expanse of clean yellow sand that stretched for miles into the distance before blurring into yet more trees. A backdrop of increasingly misty hills blurred into the snow-covered mountains crowning the vista.
David always enjoyed sea views. He found it hard to comprehend this fabulous sea and mountain panorama was completely devoid of any obvious commercial encroachment - no hotels, no holiday villas, not a single cruise ship, or indeed any ship, in the bay. The scene reminded him of the Mediterranean, but apart from the road below, and the crane in the port, the only indications of human activity were faint wisps of smoke from agricultural bonfires on the far side of the bay.
“Stunning, isn’t it?” commented Ed. “Still takes my breath away every time I stand up here, and you know what? Come back in an hour and it’ll look completely different. The tide will have turned and the sun will have moved, changing the whole perspective of those mountains. It’s literally a different view every time you look. This is what we are trying to protect, Hone, show him why.”
Hone stepped forward, pulling a pair of binoculars from a small brown case and handing them to David. “Ed’s right, Bro’. Take a look over there,” he said, pointing south along the coast to where the bay began to curve away into the distance; “See that big plume of smoke? Take a closer look.”
David scanned the shoreline. He saw half a dozen smoke trails that rose before heading north, driven by the constant southerly breeze.
But whereas the others appeared to rise from inland and had the distinct blue tinge of wood smoke, the one that Hone was directing his gaze to, he could tell, even with the naked eye, was different. Not one trail, but three, and not blue, but white, more like steam than smoke. He put the binoculars to his face and focused on the source of these plumes.
Large steel chimneys surrounded by metal buildings rose from the shoreline amidst this otherwise unspoilt picture of perfect clean green spectacular scenery. What was this bloody great industrial blot doing right in the middle of this pristine landscape? He lowered the binoculars to see the others staring, waiting for his reaction;
“How the hell did they allow something like that in a place like this?”
“It was originally built about twenty years ago. It’s been gradually added to over the years as demand has increased. It’s used for producing medium density fibre board - MDF. They mince up wood pulp, compress it into sheets and ship it all over the world for making cheap furniture, or for building. Apart from being a huge eyesore, the factory itself is not really a problem - the current operators have done a lot to keep the environmentalists sweet - but we’re more worried about the long term plans for the plant. The building’s already there, so no debate about that. No need to apply for planning consent. No environmental impact reviews required. The machinery takes in huge quantities of low grade pine and spits out the finished MDF. So the basic infrastructure is in place. Switching production to bio-fuel can be done at a relatively low cost. When the time is right, Cowood will make a few fairly inexpensive modifications to the equipment and, within a few months the plant will re-open and start pumping fuel processed from the wood pulp through feeder pipes out across the bay, joining up with the other pipes coming from the other plants along the coast. Cowood’s dream of making New Zealand the world’s primary source of bio-fuel is another step closer. We reckon they’ll need to build another six or maybe seven similar size processing plants around this bay alone to make it a viable proposition. The pipes running out along the seabed will need to be vented, so there’ll be dozens of stacks rising up into the air, climbing about twenty metres. A constant plume of vapour will either drift back towards the city or out into the bay. These stacks will have to be floodlit as a warning to shipping and fishing boats, and they’ll probably have some kind of security cordon round them. Imagine that factory times seven; with vertical and horizontal pipe work criss-crossing the ocean floor and most of the surface of the bay lit up like a Christmas tree, out of bounds to leisure craft, commercial and sport fishing. No more kayaking from the National Park on the other side of the bay. Multiply the combined effect of that by fifty similar sites around the country. That’s just trees. Don’t forget the ethanol production from milk you already know about. That’s what we face.”
David looked out into the bay, trying to visualize all that Ed had described pasted onto the scene of natural perfection before him. It was all so obviously wrong in such a stunning location. But David was still not convinced it was inevitable, or that it was worth killing in order to stop.
They drove back down. Five minutes later they had pulled into a quiet side street, onto the drive of a badly maintained weatherboard house. Getting out of the truck, David looked along the street. Each house was distinct and different from its neighbour. All except this one appeared freshly painted, with a neat well-kept garden.
David looked across the badly cracked drive, the swathe of green in front of the house a mass of healthy weeds, not grass. The windows were opaque with dirt, wooden frames cracked and rotting. It looked as if bed sheets were being used in place of curtains. The tin roof was dented, rusting and blackened with soot, or possibly mould. As safe houses went, it didn’t look very safe, at least from the outside.
Inside was no better. Stepping into the gloom of the hallway, there was an overwhelming smell of damp mingling with decaying food. There were three bedrooms, each with two rough looking beds covered by dirty bed linen, and a lounge area with two ancient armchairs and a flattened ochre carpet that couldn’t even be bothered to reach the edges of the room and, in stretching to do so, had managed to tear a number of ragged holes into the fabric through which bare wooden boards could clearly be seen.
A filthy bathroom and a tiny kitchen area, identified as such only by a chipped ceramic sink and food-encrusted cooker, completed the scene of domestic hell.
“You can share with me.” Ed directed David to the bedroom at the front of the house. He threw his bag, claiming the cleaner looking of the two beds, and then followed it.
“Think I’ll have a nap,” he said, looking at his watch and noting it was nearly three in the afternoon.
“Good plan,” agreed Ed. “I’ll get one of the boys to go and stock up for the next few days. We can get take-away for tea.” The bedroom door clicked as Ed shut it behind him.
There were two possibilities for escape. Firstly David could play along for the rest of the evening before creeping out in the dead of night. Then he would have to get past a sleeping Ed, out of the door and away. He intended to head back towards the port, which he estimated was probably a half hour’s walk away. Then he would have to wait around until the offices opened in the morning.
The second idea was to go now, or at least as soon as someone went to get supplies. They were bound to take the Hilux. Once his escape was detected, the others would either have to follow him on foot or wait until the car came back. This would give him time to get away. He could get to the port before the offices shut for the day and locate the shipping company who were looking after his container.
David lay perfectly still, listening to the others moving around the house. With the bedroom door shut, voices were muffled. He heard keys jangling. The front door on the other side of the bedroom wall banged shut. There was the clunk of a car door, the chugging of the engine and the nostril-tingling exhaust fumes seeping in through the cracks around the window frame.
David listened intently, trying to guess the sounds the house was making. Two people were moving around. There was a rattle as a door opened, the glass jarring in its frame as the door was unstuck with a forceful tug. Someone had gone into the back garden. There was a hissing sound which turned into splashing. They were taking a shower.
This was his chance. The bathroom sounds were masking all the others the house made. David could not tell when the person who had been in the garden might wander back into the house. Slowly he sat up, aware that for every movement someone made in this house, it appeared to make a corresponding one, generating a creak or a groan.
Collecting his bag, he put his weight on both feet and slowly stood. The longer he took to creep out, the more likely it would be that his escape would be discovered.
It was four carefully placed steps to the bedroom door. He pulled on the handle. For a moment he thought Ed had locked him in. The door was old. A keyhole would have gone right through to the other side. There was no keyhole on his side. There was no lock. He pulled harder. The top of the door moved away from the frame but the bottom quarter was wedged against it.
He took a breath, pulling the door forcefully but continuously, trying to avoid wrenching it. He would close the door behind him so they would still think he was in there, asleep.
He took three steps to the front door, two down the concrete steps then, increasing the pace down the drive, turned right, back down the street.
He had run fifty metres before realising he had left the front door open. This was a heck of a long street. If the car drove back in the next ten minutes he would easily be seen. .
The purposeful run slowed to a puffing jog. He continued on, carefully admiring as many gardens as possible, trying to keep his face turned away from the sight of any oncoming car drivers.
He came to a junction. Ahead of him the busy main road that ran along the base of the cliffs and around into the city centre. He could either take the footpath next to the road or walk down the steps to the beach below and continue, hidden from the road.
Luckily, the tide was out. He left the footpath and made his way down onto the solid tidal sand.
From here it looked as though he could safely walk all the way along to the port. He could see cars on the road above. Any driver looking down would be looking straight into the late afternoon sun and see him only in silhouette.
The beach gave way to jagged slippery rocks and his gentle jogging became two handed clambering. Finally the rocks fell away into gently lapping waves. At this point, even at low tide, the sea came all the way up to the wall beneath the road.
He looked for a path through but there was no way of telling how deep the water would get as the sea wall curved around a gentle bend. A concrete staircase led back up onto the road. There was no other choice. He would have to make his way back up and walk as quickly as he could to the dock gates.
As his head reached the level of the pavement above, his heart sank. By now it was the start of the afternoon rush hour. On the other side of the road, the traffic heading out of the town was creeping slowly home, nose to tail. With their vehicles travelling at walking pace, the drivers had little incentive to concentrate on the road ahead. They were texting, talking, staring out into the bay or watching people walking along the beach.
There was no way he would be able to walk past without being spotted. They could casually step from the Hilux, drag him kicking and shouting back across the road, and bundle him into the back before the car in front had even moved forward.
Two joggers overtook him. David decided to match their pace, staying close enough behind so, from the road, they appeared to be a trio. He kept pace and managed to make up a hundred metres before, without warning, they crossed over and disappeared up the driveway of one of the expensive-looking houses that nestled at the base of the cliff.
Head down, not daring to meet the gaze of any driver coming the other way, the jogging continued, The path curved more sharply now. David knew this meant he was near the port. He could clearly see cranes and shipping containers. Finally, with the sea wall now behind him and the town centre within sight, a sign pointed to the next road on the left, PORT ENTRANCE.
He slowed, catching his breath, hoping to appear casual, not bright red and wheezing, before asking the gate keeper for directions to the shipping company who had handled their container of possessions.
“Third building on the right,” he said, looking slightly perplexed as the pedestrian ducked under the barrier that he usually had to raise to allow people through.
David felt the need to apologize having denied him the chance of performing this most important task. “Sorry, just arrived, no car yet.”
“How are ya?” enquired the young lady behind the reception desk of Alexander Shipping.
“Um, I’m fine.” He hesitated, realising he had no paperwork or means of proving who he was. “My name is David Turner and I think my container may have arrived. Your company is handling it for me. The thing is I need to get into it quite urgently. There are some bits and pieces I need and … ”
Whilst he had been talking, the receptionist had scanned her computer screen. She interrupted him. “Yes, David, your items were landed three days ago. We needed the container for another urgent shipment, so all your stuff has been checked by Customs and it’s sitting in our secure warehouse in Tahuna.”
“Where?”
“You drive round Rocks Road and the warehouse is just off Parkers Road.”
“But I don’t have a car. “ The thought of retracing the walk that had just taken him half an hour was not appealing and the warehouse would be closed by the time he got there.
“Not a problem, David,” she said. “It’s on my way home. Just let me call John the warehouse manager to let him know you’re on your way and then I can finish up here and drop you off. I’m Debbie, by the way.
David waved appreciative thanks to the mystified-looking gatekeeper. A few minutes ago the guy had no car. Now Debbie from Alexander’s was driving him around.
As he made his way along Rocks Road for the third time that day, David carefully explained how they had arrived earlier in the week, flown down from Auckland and were staying in a motel.
“Which one?” Debbie was trying to make polite conversation, little realising that David was making the whole thing up as he went along.
“The one near the airport.” He had seen several large passenger planes come in low over the beach whilst making his way to the port and, not having heard a thunderous crash behind him, could only assume they had landed safely. There is always a motel near an airport. So that, he lied, was where they were staying.
“Cool, so are you planning on living in Nelson?”
His mind raced with images of what had happened in the past week - murder, international intrigue, the future of the world’s fuel source. All she needed to know at that moment was that, yes, they were planning to buy a house in Nelson.
Debbie’s car joined the queue of slow moving traffic. She pointed out Tahuna Beach, the plantation of pine trees half way around the bay and the mountains, silhouetted in grey-blue between the sea and late afternoon sky, the Western Ranges, which in turn joined the Southern Alps as they snaked their way southwards.
“You certainly picked a good spot in the world.”
If only you knew.
They pulled into the car park of an industrial warehouse unit. The warehouse manager greeted them and Debbie drove off.
David was taken across the large, cold empty warehouse to a gloomy corner. He could make out packing cases and cardboard boxes of various sizes. There were shapes wrapped in brown paper that were comfortingly familiar. A lampshade, a wheelbarrow and, propped up against a wall, the package he was looking for.
David began pulling at the stiff corrugated cardboard, searching for a loose edge to tear. Even though he knew exactly what to expect, it still felt like Christmas morning.
Finally the last piece of brown tape was carefully removed. His motorbike was unwrapped and gleaming like new, even in the dim half light of the warehouse.
The warehouse manager helpfully checked down the manifest. “Your helmet should be box number thirty four …. there you go.” He plucked the box from the top of a pile of similar sized boxes. David bent down and reached beneath the rear mudguard until he found the spare ignition key exactly where he had taped it weeks previously. He put the key in the ignition and turned it to unlock the handlebars, then pushed it off the centre stand and wheeled it away from the rest of his belongings. He stood back admiring it.
“Shame you can’t just ride her away.”
He was right. In his eagerness to reclaim his independence, David had completely overlooked the fact that in order to ship his bike safely, he had removed the battery and drained every last drop of petrol, oil and brake fluid.
In her present state, she was useless. The warehouse manager must have seen the look of disappointment on his face. “Not to worry, Dave, I’ll give Greg at Lightning Bikes a call if you like. They’re only just up the road. You can wheel it up there and they can have you back on the road in a day or so.”
A day or so was not soon enough. David needed to be able to ride her away now. Escape was not really a viable option if he had to push 160kgs of motorbike around with him.
“Greg says take her over and he’ll have a look at her now for you.”
David walked the bike to the other side of the warehouse where he opened a large sliding door leading out onto the street. He signed for his bike. The signature matched the one on the original manifest that David had completed himself as the boxes were packed into the container, back in the UK.
“Take a right at the end of the street. Lightning Bikes is about three hundred metres down. Greg’s expecting you.’
As he walked his machine towards the line of perfectly parked motorbikes, another problem dawned on him. David had ridden this bike overseas many times before - in France, Belgium and Germany. But here, in New Zealand, he could not ride on his British plates. They would be plainly obvious and eventually he was likely to be stopped by the police. As he had permanently imported the bike, he would have to register it. That would involve getting a new set of plates. It could take days. His carefully considered plan to regain his freedom was looking worse by the minute.
By the time he reached the bike shop, Greg, a short rotund, bald Englishman, was already waiting to greet him. As he rested the bike on its stand and offered his hand, another plan had just about formulated in David’s head.
There were two things about Greg that helped to crystallise plan C. He was obviously a passionate biker, and the Union Jack above the shop doorway, together with the Triumph dealership sign, indicated their shared heritage.
David explained he had collected the bike straight from the warehouse as soon as he had arrived in Nelson and he needed it urgently. His wife was still in the North Island with the ownership papers. Greg gave the bike a cursory check over. “Well, she’s certainly survived the trip alright. Nice bike. Don’t see many of these over here. If you ever want to sell her, let me know. Give us a call in three days and she’ll be good as new. I’ll get a WOF done as well.”
“A what?”
“Warrant of fitness, like the MOT back home, shows she’s safe and roadworthy.”
David feigned his best startled look, He was familiar with the warrant, having checked all the red tape before even considering bringing his beloved Triumph with him, but he had to fake complete ignorance if the plan was to work. “Any chance you can lend me a bike? Sorry, I didn’t realise I needed to do all this and, to be honest, I completely forgot the bike wouldn’t just be ready to ride away straight out of the container. The thing is I promised my wife I would sort out some sort of accommodation by the time she arrives tomorrow, so I need a set of wheels to get around. No point hiring a car when there’s a perfectly good 650 straining at the leash.”
David had successfully pushed all the right buttons. There was no hesitation from Greg in agreeing to lend him a late model Suzuki for three days.
David signed the paperwork and Greg directed him to the nearest filling station. He sped away, exhilarated. On a New Zealand registered bike, the helmet and borrowed leather jacket completing the cloak of invisibility, for now, he was free.
* * *
The official website of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service states:
Established in 1956. Prior to that, national security was taken care of by a branch of the police, except for a brief period during the Second World War.
During the period 1939 to 1945 the British Government took a lead from their American Allies. It’s now widely known the United States recruited native speaking Indians into special units within the army and navy, using their language and tracking skills to run covert operations within both Europe and the Pacific regions.
At that time there had been very little study into these unique and obscure dialects, and the American Indian soldiers were able to freely transmit important intelligence about enemy movements and send coded messages from the battlefront back to their commanders, simply by speaking to each other in their own language, using their field radios.
The British searched their dwindling Empire for subjects with similar skills and soon realised they enjoyed the loyalty of the native New Zealand Maori people. They too possessed a fierce warrior spirit, legendary tracking skills and a spoken language largely incomprehensible to the rest of the world, and in particular the axis powers of the northern hemisphere.
The skills of the American Indians were used in the South Pacific islands, geographically New Zealand’s closest neighbours. Here Japanese commandos were known to be landing by submarine in order to gain intelligence necessary for any potential invasion which may be launched against Australia or New Zealand.
Suitable Maori soldiers were recommended by their commanding officers, to join the elite Z Force. Nowadays this sounds more like a creation of Marvel Comics. In reality It was a joint British, New Zealand and Australian commando force which carried out over 280 covert operations in the South Pacific theatre during World War Two.
When the war ended, the Intelligence Service was once again absorbed back into the New Zealand Police. An exclusive unit of fifteen Maori marines, highly trained, highly motivated and a valuable asset, were retained as a solely Kiwi version of Z Force; a secret unit, within the Army.
When the NZSIS was established in 1956 Z Force changed its name to Te Kowhiti Matauranga Tuke, roughly translated as special knowledge service, or KMT Division. The use of the Maori language was unusual in the white 1950s New Zealand, but reflective of the strong tradition which had already built up in the Division.
To this day, the KMT has only ever operated with a maximum of fifteen personnel at any one time, recruiting its elite membership, by discrete invitation only. Their skills are exploited in covert operations around the world and their cultural knowledge and appearance helps them blend in, when required, on their home soil. Since 1945, the KMT have been involved in operations in both the Korean and Vietnam wars, as well as back home, most notably during the now infamous Springbok tour in 1981.
This tour by an all white South African rugby team took place at a time when apartheid was still an integral part of South African society, yet reviled by the majority in the western world. Despite international condemnation, New Zealand allowed the whites-only team to tour the country, sparking a fury of protest never before seen in this small pacifist island nation and catching the Government of the time off guard, badly misjudging the mood of its people, misinterpreting tolerance for acquiescence.
During the tour, the KMT had one of their own in the New Zealand All Blacks rugby squad, acting as a clandestine liaison between the hapless players and the security forces trying to protect them.
The KMT takes great pride in the fact that their small elite division number just fifteen, coincidentally the same number as in a rugby team, the beloved national game of New Zealand.
The Acronym KMT is recognised in Egyptology as the shortened version of ‘kmet’ the name the ancient Egyptians gave to Egypt. Literally translated it means ‘Black Earth’ or ‘Black Land’.
As much as they love their country, and their rugby, the KMT take quiet satisfaction in this happy linguistic coincidence. They consider themselves to be the true All Blacks, protectors of all the people of New Zealand/Aotearoa, whether Maori or white ‘pakeha’, and the soil beneath their feet.
* * *
Captain Brent Piri joined the New Zealand Army straight from Auckland Boys College where he captained the first fifteen rugby team and excelled academically.
His forebears had fought against the first European settlers in the so-called musket wars. His great-grandfather, Maui Piri, had been part of the Maori Pioneer Battalion Force and fought at Gallipoli in World War One. The Maori fighting spirit was in his blood. He was proud of his heritage and fiercely patriotic. Brent’s superiors had recognised the young soldier’s mana tangata, his leadership skills, early on and knew that, given the right nurturing, he would have a future in the KMT.
So he was more than a little surprised some years later when his first overseas assignment as a Captain found him in the northern hemisphere summer of 2002, a stinking mop in his hand, cleaning the restrooms in Terminal Four at Heathrow Airport.
The briefing at Waiouru Army Camp had been concise. Fly to London; make your way to the safe flat in Earls Court, then liaise with the contact in the personnel department of Airclean Services. They would provide work for two cleaners at Heathrow. He would be given a file of photographs. The aim would be to confirm the identity of each of the targets as they moved through the Terminal.
This seemed an impossible task, given the tens of thousands of people who passed through the Terminal each day, although he did have assistance from an unlikely, but officially sanctioned, source.
During the summer of 2002, the production crew from the film Love Actually had been given permission to install high quality video cameras in the arrival and departure halls at Terminal Four. The intention was to capture the emotional greetings and farewells of unsuspecting members of the public and to use some of the best footage under the end credits of the film.
To avoid too much disruption and cabling, six cameras had been set up, each beaming images to a hard drive recorder installed in the boot of a car parked nearby. At the end of each day, a member of the film crew would plug a laptop into the recorder and transfer the raw data which would eventually be edited down into the final four minute sequence.
An NZSIS officer on duty at the Air New Zealand check-in desk had noted the installation of these cameras, as had a number of other agents whose cover was the uniform of their own respective national airline. They all had the same concern; that their country’s agents, entering or leaving the country, could potentially find themselves unwitting extras in a major movie production.
Back at Waiouru, Piri’s commanding officer scanned his copy of the weekly intelligence report from London and realised that, with some assistance from Tech Ops, they could probably tap into the wireless feed from the film company’s cameras, giving them not only the eyes of Piri and, on the opposite eight hour shift, his compatriot, Maaka, but also pictures from the cameras positioned in the departure lounge.
The day after the cameras had been installed, a Tech Ops officer from the New Zealand Embassy spent fifteen minutes sitting in the departure lounge coffee shop, sipping cappuccino and working on his laptop, hacking into the wireless camera feeds and uplinking them via a microwave transmitter placed inside one of the Air New Zealand check-in computers, back to the Embassy, in Central London. Here, the footage was fed through new facial recognition software developed by a team at Dunedin University and lent to the New Zealand Immigration Department for evaluation.
A face passed in front of the camera. The image was sent from Terminal Four to the Embassy, and then through the software, which checked the facial image matching it to any known targets already held in its database. The image, the target’s name and GPS position were then sent straight back to the airport by text message, to be received by the phone in Brent’s or Maaka’s pocket. This was supposed to take no more then fifteen seconds
By the time the phone beeped, the target had usually walked no more than twenty metres past the camera. The message indicated which camera had taken the shot and the direction in which the target was walking.
Both officers had practised using unsuspecting members of the public. Over several weeks they had managed to perfect the ‘eyeball’ within a minute of the person passing any one of the three cameras. Once actual visual contact was made, their job was to confirm the target’s intended airline, flight and departure gate.
Both agents had been working at the airport for eight days. The modified phone which they shared for eight hours at a time had not beeped once, except during practice runs. When they finally got a ‘live’ message, they expected to find themselves following a target to the departure gates of one of the three airlines that flew into New Zealand from London.
Neither officer knew why they had to identify particular targets. They had only discussed why KMT officers had been given such a mundane surveillance task. After a few days cleaning restrooms and emptying rubbish bins, the conclusion was, having noted the other employees of Airclean Services, they simply had the right skin colour for the job.
The New Zealand Immigration Service was concerned. In the weeks immediately following the events of 11 September 2001, their website was getting fifteen thousand hits a day. This in itself was not surprising, given the country’s staunch anti-nuclear policy and overt pacifist stance. People simply saw it as a potential safe haven in a time of world crisis.
Within six months, the torrent of website hits was beginning to translate into a steady stream of applications for residency visas. The High Commission in London alone was receiving seven hundred applications per week. The interest in New Zealand as a preferred emigration destination was further heightened by the release of the first in a trilogy of movies based on Tolkein’s ‘Lord of the Rings’, in December 2001, just three months after 9/11. The film, shot entirely on location in New Zealand, had grossed forty seven million dollars in its opening weekend in the US alone, and had served as a three hour travelogue, showing the stunning and varied scenery of both islands on a scale never before appreciated by such a huge worldwide audience.
The Immigration department was caught on the back foot by so much sudden serious interest in the country and simply did not have the capacity to deal with the flood of residency applications. They sought assistance. Victoria University’s Sociology Department agreed to work with the Census Office, filtering out applicants at an early stage who were unlikely to be granted residency. They did this by compiling a profile of the ‘ideal’ New Zealander using link analysis software being developed by the Department as a result of their research into social network analysis theories.
The first set of results, based on data from their London Embassy and presented a month later, was unexpected and startling.
According to the statistics, eighty-five percent of the UK applicants between September 2001 and January 2002 lived within a seventy five mile radius of the capital city, not a surprising statistic in itself, given that London has the largest population of any city in the United Kingdom. From the fifteen hundred applications processed, nine hundred and forty-five came from two very specific areas. In twelve cases they found multiple applications from the same street. It was as if a significant proportion of the applicants knew each other, almost as if the decision to emigrate to New Zealand had become a word of mouth phenomenon.
The statisticians were unable to explain this first set of results. The next detail, however, was more sinister, particularly given the heightened state of paranoia brought about by the events of the previous September. Seventy-three per cent of the applicants who had applied, from the sample of fifteen hundred, had paid their application fee either using a credit card issued by a relatively obscure bank, not one of the popular ‘big five’ UK banks.
A large proportion of the applicants had downloaded the application paperwork from the official Immigration website. These people were internet savvy. The Government decided to interrogate the internet usage of a cross section of the fifteen hundred.
As expected, many had looked at websites to do with job vacancies, schooling and real estate - nothing untoward on the face of it. A wider search also revealed extensive interests in Lord of the Rings websites, regular visits to current news sites, and multiple hits on sites relating to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
Email accounts were also hacked. Many of the applicants had been sent unsolicited mail in the previous twelve months with headings such as ‘Thinking of emigrating?’, ‘Is your lifestyle getting you down?’, ‘Thinking of switching banks?’ The contents were designed primarily to unsettle, to make people question, to sow seeds of doubt.
To the analysts, these clues were subtle but they were there. More disturbing was the fact that these emails had begun in December 2000, gradually increasing throughout the year before stopping abruptly in January 2002. The filtering software that was supposed to make the job of the Immigration Department easier, had thrown up a number of unexpected, inexplicable, but potentially linked results.
The Prime Minister convened a meeting of the Cabinet. The Immigration Minister presented the information. “We’ve been able to track back and these emails have all originated from one source - a computer server in California, probably Los Angeles, and possibly within a university complex. Furthermore, the bank which all these people have used to pay for their applications, although called The Associated Bank of Monaco in the UK, is actually a US institution, based out of Baltimore. Since this data was analysed, we’ve also run the program against a batch of emigration applications received via our German, South African and US embassies, and the results are similar enough to give cause for concern. The content of the emails is virtually identical, and the bank, although using a different name in South Africa and America, is actually the same corporate business. We’ve also conducted more research using our sources working in the postal services of each of these countries. They’ve confirmed this bank has been sending out a significant quantity of targeted mail shots over the last year.”
The Prime Minister interjected. “Why would someone, or some organization, apart from us that is, spend so much time, effort and money persuading people to move here? We have our own publicity through Tourism New Zealand. The 100% Pure campaign has been running successfully since 1999.”
“That’s fine for the tourists, but we’re talking about people actually wanting to come and live here permanently.”
The Deputy Prime Minister spoke. “Look, are we saying we actually have an issue here? After all, at the end of the day, The Immigration Department has the final say as to who comes to live here.”
“That’s exactly the point,” replied the Prime Minister, “We think we’re having the final say. But what if the applicants have largely been pre-determined beforehand, surely then someone is making that decision for us? The data seems to speak for itself; someone or some group is clearly targeting a preferred group, for whatever reason, to move here.”
The Immigration Minister took her turn. “To a certain extent, Prime Minister, we already do that ourselves. The points system is a rigorous process designed to ensure that we accept people who are suitable educationally, financially and morally - people who are prepared to contribute to our multi-cultural society.”
The Prime Minister continued, “But these targeted applicants already probably fulfil those criteria. They are being attracted here for another purpose. I don’t know if it’s political, social or what, but I think we do need to start some kind of random monitoring of some of these people, once we have accepted their applications and they are in the country. I want to know what happens once they get here. In fact I think it would be prudent to monitor them before they get here. I would suggest we get the NZSIS onto it straightaway.”
Merely confirming arrival in Auckland would not allow surveillance during transit. The monitoring of incoming emigrants would begin at Heathrow.