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And there was me, a prisoner now of the group responsible.

  SIX

  I don’t know how long I was down in the cellar. It must have been a couple of days at least. They treated me well enough—gave me food and water and a bucket to shit in. But I didn’t see the burqa woman again for some time. It was just the boys, still angry and waving their guns around in embarrassment. Or was it sexual frustration? I know that these holy war types get the seventy virgins and all that when they die, but in the meantime—well, surely holy warriors don’t play with their dicks. No doubt all the poor bastards had to keep them going at night were dreams about pale eyes in a veil, and fantasies about leather boots that went up Christ only knew how far.

  I did try to talk with them occasionally, but aside from frowns and the odd kick, they ignored me. So no, I can’t tell you a thing about them, interrogators. Not their names, not their backgrounds, nothing. You could ask them yourselves, except that of course all three of them are dead and with the virgins now. Good luck to them, too.

  By my guess it was about the third day when the burqa floated down the stairs again. And for me it had been three days of fairly intense thought. Could any of it be true? It was one thing to imagine these guys as some lunatic little terrorist cell. But part of a group with the clout to mastermind a nuclear bomb? That was something else. True, the specific terrorists who blew up Canberra had never been found or identified. But my mind baulked at believing it was this lot.

  And, I won’t deny it, I was thinking about those boots too.

  Then there she was, sitting on the chair in front of me again. Her three lovesick henchmen lined up behind her, sweaty guns all erect and at the ready.

  ‘Have a name, do you?’ I asked.

  She said nothing, a black ghost with white eyes.

  And it was hard to meet those eyes. I babbled somewhat. ‘You ever take that thing off? I mean, I’ve already seen the others’ faces, so what does it matter? Or is it a religious thing? You’re not allowed to be seen by males or something?’

  ‘No one here is allowed to see me.’ That voice—so cold. She might have been a priestess invoking a ritual sacrifice. Then she shrugged, practical. ‘It’s not a religious thing. We’re Muslims, but we’re not in the Middle Ages. It’s a security measure. The men in this cell have never seen my face. That way, even if they’re caught, there’s no way they can identify me.’

  Ah. No wonder they were scared to death of her.

  She watched me. ‘We’ve decided what to do with you.’

  ‘Who has?’

  ‘Me. And my superiors.’

  ‘So you’re not the boss of all this?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Once more, it sounded like she was smiling. And you know, people have got it wrong. A burqa doesn’t stop a man lusting after a woman, if that’s what the burqa is supposed to do. No—instead it drives a man mad wondering what the hell is under there, so after a while you’re just itching to yank the damn thing off and see. But maybe that was the whole idea. Maybe we didn’t understand the Muslim world at all. Maybe it was all about sex for them too.

  ‘No,’ she repeated, as I imagined lips as white and severe as her eyes, ‘I have people above me.’

  ‘And who are they?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you their names, even if I wanted to. But they’re rather concerned about your capture. It wasn’t planned, as I said. And they don’t like things that aren’t planned. Especially now. These are very delicate times.’

  ‘Why delicate?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Did you guys really nuke Canberra?’

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘It’s kinda hard.’

  ‘Why? It happened. Someone did it. Why not us?’

  ‘Where the hell did you get the bomb from?’

  ‘Somewhere. A place we can get more, if we want.’

  ‘And how did you get it into the country?’

  ‘In a shipping container.’

  ‘Bullshit. They have detectors for that sort of thing. They have screenings.’

  ‘No one screened this container. From there it was put into a van and driven to Canberra. It was hidden in a house.’

  ‘That’s way too simple. It couldn’t have worked.’

  ‘Obviously it did.’

  ‘Why give the three-day warning then? Your sort have never cared about killing people before. You didn’t even make any ransom demands. So why risk it being discovered in those three days? Why not just detonate it?’

  For the first time since meeting her, I saw the certainty in her eyes go cloudy, the blue fading out of focus. ‘That wasn’t my decision.’

  ‘So you wanted to kill three hundred thousand people?’

  No response.

  And it suddenly struck me that her willingness to tell me this—to tell me everything—was a very poor sign indeed for my long-term survival.

  I was all out of conversation. ‘What are you going to do with me?’

  She stood up. ‘We’re taking you for a drive.’ She nodded to one of the men, and he produced a familiar-looking hood, and some ropes.

  A drive? Fuck. I knew what that meant. I should have struggled, I suppose. But there were three of them, and they already didn’t like me much. No doubt they’d have killed me there and then, given any sort of excuse. And maybe a drive didn’t have to mean death. You never knew. I was the Prime Minister’s brother. Surely I had some use to them alive.

  They tied me up and put the hood over my head. Then it was back outside to the van. My senses were heightened now, in the way they are when you think you’re about to die, drinking in every last moment. It was very quiet. No sound of traffic or people nearby, only a bird singing sweetly (at that stage, a crow would have sounded sweet) and, somehow most heart-rendingly of all, the clock of an axe against wood, somewhere far off. And it was hot. I could feel the sun on me, the rain and the cyclone long gone, although there was still the smell of mud about. And damp grass, and gum trees steaming, and old manure. If you want my guess, they’d held me in some sort of farmhouse, one of those little properties in the tangled Queensland hinterland. With hippies and gun nuts and bitter old dairy farmers for neighbours, all of whom would diligently mind their own bloody business. I didn’t even bother yelling for help.

  They threw me in the back, and we were on our way. It sounded like all four of them were there, the driver up front, and the woman and the other two guards with me in the rear. I wondered a moment—why wasn’t she sitting up forward? But then I realised. A burqa in the front seat of a postal van? Nothing suspicious about that.

  Still, they couldn’t be planning to take me far. With the cyclone gone, the roadblocks would be back in force, and even an Australia Post van couldn’t rely on getting through them without being searched. Sure, there were always the back roads, but it would be impossible to get near a town of any size without identity checks and vehicle inspections. Then again, if their aim was merely to find the first bit of dense bush in which to dump a body, what did it matter?

  We drove, and I dwelt upon the shabby facts of my life.

  Was I a good man? Not really. I couldn’t think of a single thing, right then, that I’d done for someone else’s sake. And my ex-wives, and my daughters—well, I knew what they would say. A successful man? Hardly. Oh, I’d always scraped out a living. I always had money. Lots of it, at times, from a dozen different careers. But none of those careers were what you would call honourable, and three quarters of them were only a step above outright fraud. A shark-like existence, that’s what it had been, always in motion, always hungry. So . . . a man who would be mourned by his friends? Ha. What friends would that be?

  But it was the only life I had, my life, and there had been some fine wine in there, and good food, and the sun on beaches, and bright lights in casinos, and even some wild nights of fucking that I would never forget.

  And oh boy, I did not want to die.

  ‘You don’t need to kill me,’ I said, trying not to actual
ly beg, but feeling very low. ‘If you let me go, I wouldn’t tell anybody.’

  The woman answered. ‘That’s the problem with you faithless people. When your time comes, you can’t even face it with dignity.’

  An insane thought came that maybe, if I promised to convert to Islam, then they would let me live. But it seems that even in terror, my hypocrisy stretches only so far. I could feel my mind going a deathly blank colour. And tears were close.

  Then all calamity broke loose.

  The van was screeching to a halt and we were all flying about the cabin, the air filled with yelling. For a moment I was sure my head was up against a female breast. Then there was a booming, tinny voice outside. Someone on a megaphone. More yelling, from inside the van and out. And then shooting. Lots of it. Metal ripping. Thuds. Shrieks. The name of Allah, taken in vain.

  An explosion like a grenade. Then silence.

  I lay there, wide-eyed and panting. And not, by the feel of it, riddled with bullets. The back door of the van was torn open and I was dragged out. Hands fumbled at my ropes and lifted the hood from my head. Sunlight dazzled me. I saw a narrow country road. Scrub all around. The postal van, parked askew, bullet holes in the side, two of its tyres deflated. Dead bodies, male, my young abductors, one sprawled half out of the driver’s seat, the other two contorted in the back. The smell of shit and piss. A car blocking the road in front of the van. Another behind it. Gas drifting from a canister in the gutter . . .

  This was no normal roadblock. This was an ambush—I recognised it even then. And uniformed men were everywhere. Federal Police. Such a wonderful, wonderful sight.

  A man was shaking my shoulders.

  ‘Leo James,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Federal Agent Spencer, sir. Glad we weren’t too late.’

  And above it all, the sound of a female voice I knew, screaming.

  SEVEN

  The Australian Federal Police.

  You know, I can remember a time when they must have numbered less than a thousand. You hardly noticed them, outside the Capital Territory. Now—between the massive recruitment since Canberra, and the subsumption of all the state police forces into one body—there’s over eighty thousand in the AFP. Backed up by the all-powerful state of emergency laws, and answerable to only one man. The Minister for Freedom. Who happens, of course, to be the Prime Minister.

  Some cynical folk call them Bernard’s private army. His black shirts.

  Right at that moment, ambush complete, I called them my saviours.

  Indeed, the commander of the rescue squad, Federal Agent Spencer, looked every inch like one of the new breed. He couldn’t have been more than thirty. Clean-cut to the point that you could nick yourself on his jaw, taut, compact and fit, resplendent in his blue combat fatigues, and smelling impressively of gunpowder, aftershave and adrenaline sweat.

  I smelt somewhat less pleasant, hunched by the roadside after an attack of vomiting, trying to get my breath back. Agent Spencer crouched casually beside me, sympathetic, patient, and smiling at his men as they cleaned up the aftermath.

  ‘Thank you,’ I managed to say eventually.

  He tipped a finger to his cap. ‘No worries, sir.’

  It was a glorious, sunny day. Not a cloud in the sky, and everything a riot of green. But I couldn’t really see much of the surrounds, for the ambush had taken place where the road passed through a cutting, heavily overgrown. Now there were about a dozen agents busy on the scene. An unmarked van had driven up, and my erstwhile abductors were being tagged and body-bagged and loaded into the back of it. The burqa woman had stopped screaming. For the moment they had her locked in the disabled postal van. From time to time a thump and a shriek came from inside, but nothing else.

  I waved an unsteady hand at it all. ‘How did you know?’

  Agent Spencer was chewing a stalk of grass. ‘Information received.’

  ‘My security people, from the resort, right?’ It suddenly seemed rather obvious to me. Help had been coming all along. ‘They must have reported me missing. And of course, you would’ve found the body, in a postman’s uniform . . .’

  He glanced at me coolly. ‘Your people at the resort reported you dead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Decapitated. During the cyclone.’

  ‘That wasn’t me! That was one of these bastards.’

  A shrug. ‘Hard to tell, with no head. They still haven’t found it.’

  ‘What about the uniform?’

  ‘The body was just mincemeat, after the storm. Who’s to say what it was wearing?’

  ‘You really mean people think I’m dead?’

  ‘They must. It was on the news.’

  Jesus Christ. ‘But you guys knew I wasn’t, right?’

  ‘It came to our attention.’

  ‘And my brother. He knows, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, sir. This operation took place under his direct orders.’

  Well, what did you know! It seemed I owed Bernard one.

  A yell went up from the other men, and laughter. They were lifting the last corpse. The young man had been shot through the neck—by something big enough to obliterate his spine—and his head lolled from his body by the merest shred of flesh. Even as they lifted him it dangled elastically for a moment, and then came away completely, rolled off a distance, and halted face down in the dirt. The agents laughed again, and one of them gave it a kick, sending it skidding across the road. Another man kicked it back towards the first, soccer style.

  ‘Hey,’ I said.

  Agent Spencer watched on. ‘What?’

  ‘They shouldn’t be doing that, should they?’

  ‘Why would you care?’

  ‘But you’re the police!’

  He spat the stalk of grass from his mouth. ‘Right. And those men just saved your life, sir. They’ve been in the line of fire, for your sake.’ Then he sighed, and raised his voice. ‘All right you lot, time’s important here. Get on with it.’

  The men subsided, and the head was stuffed into a bag.

  But questions still rattled around my mind. Three dead bodies, just like that. ‘So, what, did you have these guys under surveillance or something?’

  ‘These are security matters, sir. I can’t discuss them.’

  ‘But . . . look, they told me things. I think they were planning to kill me, so they didn’t care what I knew. They’re called the Great Southern Jihad.’

  ‘You’ll be fully debriefed, sir.’

  ‘No, listen, they said they were the ones who nuked Canberra.’

  He gave me a somewhat pitying look, then cleared his throat politely. ‘I expect a lot of people say the same thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take it from me, sir. When it comes to terrorist groups and what they claim . . . well, every man and his dog nuked Canberra.’

  ‘Hey, seriously, they told me how they did it.’

  His expression was setting firmly now. ‘Sir, this is really none of your concern.’

  ‘Not my—? They kidnapped me!’

  ‘Yes, but we’ve resolved that situation.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, looking along the road.

  A long, black car was approaching slowly. Time was, you saw very few black cars in Australia. Now they seem to be everywhere. With darkly tinted windows. Just like this one. It pulled up beside us, and Agent Spencer rose to greet it. A rear window rolled down, and looking out was an older man’s face, expressionless behind sunglasses as mirrored as the windows.

  ‘Status?’ he inquired.

  ‘Green, sir,’ Agent Spencer replied.

  ‘Excellent.’ The sunglasses turned towards me briefly. ‘And the package?’

  ‘Undamaged.’

  ‘Even better.’

  The man in the car was American, his accent southern and lilting, almost slurred. He was dressed immaculately in a black suit, his countenance lean and lined, with a wave of grey hair. But the left side of his
face did not seem to move. A stroke victim, perhaps. And one of our bosom allies, I assumed, from the CIA—or from some other such secret service.

  ‘I’ll inform the interested parties,’ he told Agent Spencer. ‘And the status of the target participants?’

  ‘Three terminally degraded, sir. And one in detention.’

  The man frowned, a distorted twist of half his lips. ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s the woman, actually.’

  I glanced towards the postal van, and was alarmed to see a white face, bloodied and furious, staring out at us from the rear window.

  ‘I understand,’ the man in the car said, and he was looking at the face too. His infirmity made him sound drunk in some genteel fashion. ‘Well, you have your orders.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’d like to borrow some of your men, if I may. We should sterilise the house.’

  ‘Yes, sir. We’re nearly done here.’

  ‘Four should be enough.’

  ‘I’ll have them follow you.’

  ‘Well done, agent.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  The window rolled up, and the car pulled away. Agent Spencer turned to his men and barked a string of orders. Four of them climbed into a car, and drove off in pursuit. That left only six, and the whole area was looking different now. The smells of gas and gunpowder were gone, as were the bodies. Only the bloodstains remained, darkening slowly towards black.

  ‘So who was that?’ I asked Agent Spencer.

  ‘Look, sir, you can ask all these questions when we get you home to base.’

  ‘And where’s that?’

  ‘Classified, sir.’

  ‘You can’t even tell me where I’m going?’

  But he seemed to have lost interest in me completely. He walked over to the postal van and opened the rear doors, looked in. ‘Get her out,’ he told his men.

  Two of them reached in and dragged the woman forth. They’d already removed her burqa, and it turned out that underneath she was simply wearing black jeans and a red T-shirt. And the boots, after all, only went up to her knees.

  Still, she came out like a wildcat, kicking and cursing, a whirl of long limbs and tangled white hair. I don’t think she was an actual albino, she was just one of the palest people I had ever seen. Eventually the agents got her upright between them, and she stood there, glaring at us. And Christ, she really wasn’t much more than a girl. A tall, wild girl, with a livid bruise on her forehead and blood on her hands and arms.