State of Fear

by Tim Ayliffe

  ‘And what is Facebook, anyway? It doesn’t make anything. It’s like a giant leech that keeps growing, sucking the soul out of media businesses until we’re all dead –’

  ‘Bailey.’

  ‘I don’t care what people eat for lunch, whether someone on a bus has garlic breath or the things people love about Fridays.’

  ‘Bailey, seriously, can we –’

  ‘This used to be about keeping the public informed, reporting on the good and the bad, holding people accountable! Now, it’s only about giving readers whatever will get the most clicks. The world’s going to shit!’

  If management really was about to clean out the place, maybe it was time to get out. But what would he do?

  ‘Lower your bloody voice, would you?’ Gerald grabbed Bailey by the arm, leading him to a corner of the room where no one else could hear them. ‘What’s wrong with you? This obviously isn’t just about the raid in Roselands.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Then I don’t know what to say, mate. I’m fearing the worst here, for me too. I don’t know any more than what I told you last night.’

  Bailey let out a long breath, shaking his head. ‘I’m not changing.’

  ‘Is that even possible?’

  Bailey was so fired up he missed his old friend’s joke.

  ‘I’m writing this story the only way I know how. And if that really is the future’ – Bailey was pointing at Nicki on the other side of the room – ‘I don’t want to be a part of it.’

  ‘And I won’t judge you for that.’

  Gerald was clearly allowing him to talk himself out now, and Bailey didn’t like it.

  ‘We’re wasting time, anyway. I’ve got a story to write.’

  Bailey walked to his desk and sat down, clearing away the unopened mail from his keyboard. He started tapping away, writing about what he’d seen. A counter-terrorism operation, suspects known to police. One of them shot by a special ops marksman from the roof of a BearCat. The fact that it was Dimity Clay’s house gave the story an extra edge and a good headline. No one else had that angle, yet.

  In under an hour, he was done. He thought he’d better give Dexter a call before submitting the story for edit, just in case she had something new for him. He dug his mobile out of his jacket pocket and noticed a message waiting on the home screen. He opened it.

  Tariq wasn’t here

  Looks like he made a video

  Get on to the family, he might get in touch

  Things not adding up

  Not for print

  Alongside the message was a picture of a camera pointing at a chair beneath a flag commonly used by the Islamic Nation group.

  He pressed Dexter’s name on his phone, it didn’t take long for her to answer.

  ‘I was expecting a call from you half an hour ago. What took you so long?’

  ‘Only just saw the message. Have you watched the video yet?’

  ‘No. The card’s missing from the camera. We’re still looking for it.’

  ‘I’m going to Omar’s house. Meet me there?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dexter said. ‘And Bailey?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The prime minister’s office is about to put out a statement. Gardner’s fronting the cameras in an hour – they’re raising the terror-threat level to expected.’

  Nicole Gardner had only been prime minister for a few months, but she knew how to play the politics of fear. Look strong, get out in front of a story. Be a leader who knows how to protect the public. Someone who’s good in a crisis. A fixer.

  ‘Remind me, how high’s expected on the chart?’

  ‘One down from certain, which is where it’ll go if we don’t find Tariq inside the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Can I print that?’

  ‘I want you to print it. I want it out before the PM’s statement to neutralise the politics of this, source it to a senior police officer.’

  ‘Why don’t you just write the story?’ He regretted the words as soon as they came out.

  ‘Do you want this or don’t you?’ Dexter said, sharply. ‘We’re all sick of politicians using incidents like these to create a scare. Politicising security.’

  She was right. Although he’d seen the cops do the same thing when they wanted the public to know who was in control. But he bit his tongue. ‘Okay. Okay. Give me what you have.’

  ‘You can say the threat level is expected to go up, that there’s an ongoing counter-terrorism operation. That police say the threat is real. Hold fire on the rest.’

  She meant everything they knew about Tariq.

  ‘Got it,’ Bailey said. ‘See you soon.’

  Bailey re-nosed the top of his story. He hadn’t been sure how to write about the fact that police were still dealing with a threat without mentioning Tariq. Now he had a way in.

  ‘Symonds!’ Bailey yelled across the room. ‘Story’s done! I’m on my mobile!’

  He knew that Symonds would want to talk about the story when it hit the subs’ desk and he didn’t have time. He headed straight for the elevator, ignoring the voice calling out for him to hang around for a few minutes. He needed to get back to Wiley Park.

  CHAPTER 22

  Meandering his Corolla through the poky underground carpark at The Journal, Bailey sped up the ramp, driving so fast that he almost missed the hulking figure of Ronnie Johnson standing in the middle of the driveway at the top of the hill. The old spook had a knack for turning up unannounced.

  Bailey wound down his window. ‘That’s one way to get killed.’

  ‘In a hurry, bubba?’ Ronnie said, tapping his hand on the roof.

  ‘How could you tell?’

  ‘Got something for you.’ Ronnie handed Bailey a large yellow envelope. ‘Your file.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Bailey took the envelope and threw it on the seat beside him. ‘Anything interesting in there?’

  ‘Forgot how much of a nobody Mustafa was back then, compared to Al Qaeda and the others,’ Ronnie said. ‘But there’s a lot in there about what happened to you. Too much, maybe.’

  That was Ronnie’s way of warning Bailey about whether he needed to go over all that old ground again.

  ‘I want to read it.’ Not surprisingly, Bailey was going to ignore the warning. ‘Something in there has pissed off Mustafa. Somehow it’s personal. I want to know.’

  ‘Okay, bubba. I’ll keep asking questions.’ Ronnie tapped the roof again. ‘Just thought I’d warn you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Bailey headed up Sussex Street towards the turn-off for Anzac Bridge and the City West Link. Traffic permitting, he’d make it to Wiley Park inside forty minutes.

  There was no sign of Dexter’s blue unmarked Holden when he arrived outside the Haneefs’ house. He had promised to meet her out the front before they went inside. He’d wait.

  Bailey cut the engine and picked up the envelope, slicing it open with his finger. It was a slim document. Four pages. No, five. Single-sided. Written in an old-fashioned type.

  CIA

  CLASSIFIED

  Date: 28 January 2005

  Location: Baghdad

  Subject: Interview with former hostage John Bailey (Australian citizen)

  Bailey flipped over the page, skipping past the agency jargon on the coversheet.

  Subject kidnapped while on embed with 1st Marine Division US Army in Fallujah on 5 April 2004. Journalist Gerald Summers – Australian – also present. Truck seen driving away. Marines engaged in heavy combat at the time. Two Marines killed. Five injured.

  Bailey stopped reading and looked out the window. US soldiers killed because of him? The document wasn’t clear. He remembered a lot of noise before he was taken. Heavy gunfire. Bombs. Him and Gerald being separated. Bravo Company had been engaged in a heavy battle with insurgents. He remembered it like yesterday.

  He kept reading.

  Subject estimates that he met Mustafa al-Baghdadi for the first time later that day, or the following day (6 Apri
l) in a room, location unknown. Subject believes that he may have been drugged. Subject says he was tied to a chair and forced to watch the execution of Douglas McKenzie, a US Marine who had been kidnapped by an insurgent group in Mosul six months earlier. Video later released of McKenzie beheading. Subject recalls Mustafa al-Baghdadi’s anger about US occupation of Iraq and the growing support for his ‘movement’. Subject cannot recall name of group.

  He skimmed down the page.

  Subject moved several times during ten months of captivity. Transported in the trunk of a car, always restrained. Gagged. Blindfolded. Subject recalls the first time he was tortured was in a house that he later discovered to be in Mosul.

  It was the only location he could be sure about, other than Baghdad. Bailey had spent most of his time in captivity locked in rooms without windows.

  Subject says that his captors were all men. Torture sessions often lasted many hours during consecutive days. Subject confirms subjected to waterboarding but cannot recall how many times (estimates more than ten). Garden tools used to extract fingernails. Russian Roulette (weapon described as old pistol). Subject regularly beaten. Subject became emotional. Break requested. Interview terminated 28 January at 1905hrs.

  Arseholes, thought Bailey. Of course the ‘subject became emotional’. Try spending ten months with those animals and then being asked to recount what had happened in detail. Of course he was fucking emotional.

  Interview resumed 29 January at 0800hrs.

  He skipped past the rest of the torture stuff, flipping a sheet, scanning the document until a sentence caught his eye.

  Subject recalls the second time he met Mustafa al-Baghdadi was several months later in Mosul. Subject recalls date palms. Bridge over Tigris River. Grand Mosque in the distance. Subject believes he was standing on a rooftop in the city’s right bank. Location confirmed by key landmarks. Subject believes he was allowed outside to witness a car bombing at a US Army checkpoint on the bridge. Confirmed casualties. Presumed dead. Subject recalls Mustafa al-Baghdadi boasting about his growing army. Subject recalls first hearing Mustafa al-Baghdadi mention the word ‘caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria.

  Bailey kept going down the page.

  Interview turns to day of rescue. Baghdad, 27 January, 1000hrs. Release negotiated by CIA Station Chief, Ronald B. Johnson. $US1m cash exchange confirmed. Provided by Australian citizen, Gerald Summers. (Australian Government refused ransom request.)

  Bailey stopped reading. Ronnie had never told him where the money had come from. Gerald. The guy who backed him, helped rebuild him when he was a drunken, dysfunctional mess. His closest friend. Gerald had money, no doubt. But a million dollars? No one had that much to spare. Bailey could never have repaid that debt. It was probably why Gerald had never told him.

  He wiped the moisture that was building in his eyes and kept reading.

  Subject recalls final conversation with Mustafa al-Baghdadi about the insurgent leader’s past. Following detail unverified. Mustafa al-Baghdadi born in Baghdad suburb of al-A’miriyah. Father was an influential Sunni businessman with ties to Saddam Hussein regime. Father became informant for CIA. Father, mother and three older brothers killed by Saddam forces either late 1991, or start 1992. Unclear. Mustafa al-Baghdadi a small child at the time. Escaped and smuggled out of Iraq by family. Lived with wealthy uncle in London, educated at good schools (unnamed). Became a doctor. Radicalisation of Mustafa al-Baghdadi happened during unspecified time. Subject says following 2003 war, Mustafa al-Baghdadi began spending more time at Finsbury Park Mosque (North London). Returned to home country soon after and began working in hospitals treating wounded Iraqis.

  Bailey tossed the file onto the seat beside him. He’d read enough.

  There was nothing there that he couldn’t remember. Nothing he could pinpoint that would give Mustafa al-Baghdadi a reason to reach out and call him.

  I know what you did.

  He leaned up against the window, closing his eyes. Mustafa’s words sounding, over and over in his head. Bailey had no idea what they meant. He was desperate to find out.

  CHAPTER 23

  Tap, tap, tap.

  The ring on Dexter’s finger amplified the knock on the window, making Bailey jump in his seat.

  ‘Gave me a fright there, detective,’ he said, one foot out the door.

  ‘Not like you to scare so easily.’

  Bailey stepped onto the grass beside her, closing the car door.

  ‘I’m getting soft.’

  ‘Yeah, you are,’ she said, patting his stomach with her hand.

  He sucked in his gut and smiled. ‘More to cuddle.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Dexter’s face hardened as she noticed the file with the CIA insignia sitting on the passenger seat. ‘Something from Ronnie?’

  ‘My file.’

  There was no point keeping it from her.

  ‘What file?’

  ‘About what happened . . . in Fallujah, the kidnapping. All that.’ He was done reliving it. Done reading about it. Done talking about it. ‘Nothing in there you don’t already know.’

  ‘Then why’d Ronnie give it to you?’

  ‘Someone leaked it.’

  ‘Leaked it? Where?’

  ‘It turned up in a trove of documents dumped on the internet by those fuckwits at Wikileaks.’

  Bailey hated Julian Assange and his Wikileaks organisation. Sure, governments around the world got up to no good from time to time. But you don’t dump millions of pages of sensitive material online for anyone to sift through. Innocent people die. Like the dozens of CIA informants in China who were murdered after Wikileaks published their names in US State Department files about Beijing’s alleged violations of human rights. Assange and his mates were reckless arseholes.

  ‘The phone call from Mustafa al-Baghdadi.’ Bailey was speaking in a hurried voice. ‘Ronnie thinks it might be linked to something in my file.’

  ‘If there’s nothing in it, why would Mustafa care?’ Dexter said.

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’

  Bailey turned and started walking towards the house.

  ‘Bailey?’ Dexter grabbed his hand, stopping him. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  The nightmares were back. He wasn’t fine.

  ‘Remember, you can talk to me. Or go to one of your AA meetings?’ As much as Dexter loved him, she was done with the booze. ‘You said they were helping.’

  ‘Caught up with my sponsor yesterday. You don’t need to worry about me.’

  ‘That’s great, Bailey. You know you can talk to me too?’

  ‘I know.’

  He knew what the next question would be.

  ‘By the way, who’s the sponsor? You haven’t mentioned them before.’

  There was no simple way to answer this one other than to tell her the truth.

  ‘A woman called Annie Brooks.’

  Dexter looked at him like she was waiting for him to finish the sentence. ‘How do I know that name?’

  ‘She used to be on TV.’

  ‘The newsreader?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Right,’ Dexter said. ‘You two used to know each other, right?’

  ‘We were both stationed in Beirut a long time ago.’ Bailey pointed at the house. ‘Time to go in, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, of course.’ Dexter started walking and then stopped again. ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Come off it, Sharon.’ Bailey could see the change in her face. ‘Don’t tell me you’re jealous. It’s not your style.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  He wasn’t about to mention the fact that he’d kissed Annie Brooks in Centennial Park the night before. Annie had been low. It was nothing. Just a kiss. An interrupted one at that. He’d stopped it. Really it was half a kiss, if there was such a thing.

  ‘So let’s move on then, shall we?’ Bailey was desperate to talk about something else.

  ‘Okay.’ Dexter start
ed walking towards the house again. ‘I’m glad you’re still doing the AA stuff.’

  Hallelujah.

  ‘What else can you tell me about what you found at the house?’ Bailey said.

  ‘Off the record?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Explosives. Pressure cookers. Looks like they were making bombs in the backyard.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Bailey was surprised that she shared that part. Maybe it was an attempt to make Bailey understand how serious the situation had become so he’d share anything he knew. ‘Do you think there are bombs out there?’

  ‘We’ve seized three.’ Dexter went quiet for a moment before speaking again. ‘There’s evidence suggesting that another two may be out on the street.’

  ‘With Tariq?’

  ‘No one’s going that far, yet.’

  ‘What do we tell the Haneefs?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, catching his eye. ‘And leave the talking to me.’

  Dexter opened the screen and banged on the door with the ball of her fist.

  Within seconds, they heard footsteps tapping the tiles inside. The door was opened by an unfamiliar man dressed in a cream-coloured thobe.

  ‘Hello. Can I help you?’

  Omar appeared over his shoulder. ‘Is it Tariq? Have you found him?’ He looked even more tired than he had the day before. And more desperate.

  ‘No, mate,’ Bailey said. ‘We haven’t.’

  ‘Can we come in?’

  The man standing in front of Omar held out his hand towards Bailey. ‘I am Hassan Saleh, a friend of the family.’

  ‘John Bailey. And this is –’

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Sharon Dexter.’ She stepped in front of Bailey, holding out her hand.

  ‘Detective Dexter, hello. Please.’ He gestured for them to follow him into the lounge. ‘I am here to help the family during this difficult time.’

  ‘What’s happened? Where’s Tariq?’ Noora got up off the sofa, eyes red, looking just as tired as her husband.

  ‘I’m sorry, Noora,’ Bailey said. ‘We haven’t found him yet.’

  ‘But you know something, why else would you be here?’ Omar said. ‘Tell us, please.’

  ‘It’s probably best if you sit down.’