The Unknown Terrorist

by Richard Flanagan

  As the cops went by, as the dog sniffed around her ankles, the Doll tried to keep her hand steady, her breathing slow, and concentrate on the newspaper. She opened it up, aiming to find something to distract her. One page had the headline—

  OUR TOP 10 TARGETS

  and under it the Sydney Opera House with a bullseye printed over it.

  Further in, there was a cartoon she didn’t really follow, showing women in burkahs pole dancing, with the caption—

  THE MULLAH’S LOUNGE

  Simultaneously, a memory and a feeling of dread came over the Doll. She remembered what Tariq had said to her only two nights earlier about raster graphics—how it was what they—the powerful—would like to do with real people if they could. But Tariq only changed images, dot by dot, until Elvis was an ostrich. They were doing something far bolder: turning her from a woman into cartoons, headlines, opinions, fears, fate. They were morphing her pixel by pixel, the Doll realised with terror, into what she wasn’t, the Black Widow, the dancer of death, the unknown terrorist.

  She looked up from the newspaper. At the end of the carriage a mother was telling her small son stories in loud Vietnamese, oblivious to the cops and dogs. Every so often they would both burst out giggling, and the son would repeat something the mother had said, and she would nod agreement, pretend to frown, or to be angry, and then she would continue as if it were all very serious. The little boy looked up at his mother with the broad, open face of complete trust and love.

  And the Doll had the overriding sense that, though she was full of many faults, she, like the Vietnamese woman and her son, was love. But for reasons that were not clear to her they would not let her love. Whatever it was—life, the world, fate—it had not let her love the father she had wanted to love. It had not let her love the son she had wanted to love. It had not let her love Tariq whom, perhaps, she would have liked to have loved. Then they lied to the world that she was hate, and deserving only of hatred. Hate was to be hunted with hate and, when found, destroyed.

  She returned her gaze to the newspaper. The dog moved on and its handler with it, and then the cops and the dog passed on into the next carriage. Within the newspaper was a celebrity magazine. Here, thought the Doll, was some relief. She flicked through articles on Hollywood stars’ battles with cellulite and eating disorders, somebody’s bulimic daughter, Princess Mary’s depression, and then there, spread over the centre pages, was the headline:

  POLE DANCER’S SORDID PAST

  There were photos of whorish-looking pole dancers, and one of the Doll where something strange had been done to her eyes to make her look cold and nasty.

  “Jodie McGuinness,” the article began, “one-time close friend of pole dancer cum Australia’s top terrorist suspect, Gina Davies, said, ‘She used to make jokes about threesomes.’”

  The Doll knew she should stop reading, find something else to read or do or think, anything else. But she didn’t. She read on.

  “Those who worked with Gina Davies at other pole dancing venues said that ‘some rich clients would pay very well for group sex and Gina loved making money.’”

  78

  After the Counter Terrorism Unit summit meeting, Tony Buchanan went for lunch with Siv Harmsen, who was there as ASIO’s delegate on the committee. Siv Harmsen was to Tony Buchanan a mystery. At thirty-eight he had an ungainly gut and had grown fleshy, but this seemed only to accentuate his baby face. Once a champion cricketer, for a short time even being rated a chance for the national team, he had started out in the force, a strange cop, but since becoming a spook he had grown a lot stranger. He had risen rapidly in the security services as they swelled post-September 11 and his youthful looks and bad suits belied the high standing he now enjoyed. These days he was said to be close to the attorney-general and sometimes even have the ear of the prime minister.

  They went to a bad pub in Darlinghurst because Siv Harmsen claimed the steaks were good there. The steaks were awful, but Siv Harmsen’s enthusiasm was unaffected. They talked generally at first: property prices, wives, cop gossip. But all the time Tony Buchanan was thinking about what Nick Loukakis had told him. He had run interference for his Greek mate before. Mostly Nick Loukakis was right. Occasionally he was wrong and when that happened, he, Tony Buchanan, had paid the price. But this time, Tony Buchanan felt he might just be right. When he had finished telling Siv Harm-sen the story Nick Loukakis had told him, Siv Harmsen burst out laughing.

  “We’ve got the biggest national security threat in our history,” Siv Harmsen said, “we are in the second highest stage of security alert, there’s a lunatic stripper about to blow God knows how many innocent people up, and you want me to believe some copper who’s been busted twice and nearly got thrown out after the Royal Commission?”

  “I’m just saying it doesn’t add up,” said Tony Buchanan.

  “Tony, have you followed this thing at all? In the papers, the talkback, the telly? I mean, people are seriously frightened. Do you think we could get something so important so wrong?”

  “It’s possible, Siv, that’s all I’m saying. Possible.”

  “You’ve gotta be fucking joking,” Siv Harmsen said, looking Tony Buchanan in the eye, “if you think this is a mistake. Everyone from the prime minister to fucking Richard Cody agrees on this one.”

  Tony Buchanan averted his angry gaze. Below the pocket of Siv Harmsen’s peach-coloured polyester shirt, he noticed little flecks of pepper sauce spreading an oily areola. He looked back up at Siv Harmsen.

  “I trust Athens on this,” said Tony Buchanan.

  “That dick for brains,” said Siv Harmsen, “has got an SBS mind in an MTV world.”

  “What if he’s right?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Siv Harmsen. “Gina Davies has got motive, she’s got contacts, and we can trace a connection through the people she’s been with and who they’ve been with directly back to terrorist groups in the Middle East. The experts, the psychologists, have been telling us for a while how a terrorist today doesn’t look the way a terrorist did yesterday.”

  Tony Buchanan cut a larger portion of his steak into several smaller portions, biding his time.

  “Sure, she’s not Muslim,” said Siv Harmsen. “Sure, she’s Australian. But she’s a loser, Tony, and she wants to settle scores and prove something, and she fell in with the wrong crowd, who have shown her how to get back at the world. Do you seriously think the nation’s top security bodies could have this so wrong and one half-bent, dopey Greek copper be right?”

  The knife was blunt and the gristle was formidable, but Tony Buchanan kept cutting the meat into ever tinier pieces, feeling such activity was preferable to swallowing.

  “I’m telling you, Zorba’s a gyros strip short of a souvlaki. Tell him to lay off banging his bouzouki and get back to his real job.”

  “What if it’s true, though?”

  “You want what’s right, Tony? You want what’s true? Kill a dozen or so Poms and you’re Ivan Milat and in prison. Kill a hundred thousand Iraqis and you’re George W. Bush and in the White House. One’s powerful, one’s not. Do you know who gives a rat’s? No one. Besides,” said Siv Harmsen, his tone altering from being aggressive to something gentler, albeit slightly mocking, “she can turn herself in. She can prove to us she’s innocent.”

  “How?” asked Tony Buchanan, piling all the little pieces of gristle into a mound of watery fat at the side of his plate. “How can she, Siv? What if she’s too scared? What if she thinks, God forbid, that she might just be about to get fitted up? What if she does a runner somewhere and somebody shoots her?”

  At the mention of the Doll being shot, Siv Harmsen looked up with mild amusement.

  “The little cunt getting shot might just be the best solution all round,” said Siv Harmsen, smiling. He tapped the edge of Tony Buchanan’s plate with his grease-smeared steak knife. “Not hungry?”

  79

  Sitting on the train, the Doll realised she no longer had anywhere to go. Her
home had been raided, Wilder’s was being watched, and her hotel room, she guessed, would well and truly have been staked out by the security forces now. And after the cops had been by with their sniffer dog and pole mirrors, the Doll realised that she simply wanted to be free. Her freedom, about which she had never thought, now seemed to her the most precious thing in her life.

  The Doll decided she would spend whatever time she had left just wandering the streets of her old haunts. If she was recognised and caught or shot out there, so what? Until that moment she would be free. She wanted to have a good day, a perfect day—who knew? maybe even a few days, a week or two?—determined not to acknowledge what was happening around her. She would have a coffee. See a movie, maybe. Go window shopping. It was crazy, of course—random, as Wilder might have said—but then, what wasn’t?

  And so when she walked up out of the city train station, she went straight into a café, determined to enjoy a moment of normal life. But as she approached the counter, she looked up and saw on the wall behind a plasma screen. A uniformed cop was on, saying that police had reason to believe Gina Davies was armed and dangerous.

  Outside, there was a screeching noise of tyres braking too quickly, then the abrupt sound of colliding metal and shattering glass. Inside, the waiter behind the counter had come between the Doll and the tv and caught her eye, and it was suddenly too late and too difficult to leave without drawing attention to herself. The Doll knew she was shaking. Her nerves were shot. The waiter had to ask her twice what she wanted. Maybe, she told herself, they would just think she was one more junkie needing a fix. Christ knows, she probably looked like it. She sat down at a table. She tried to avoid the tv and people’s eyes by staring at a small stand of free postcards that sat next to her table.

  “Turn it up,” barked a middle-aged man at the counter, “this is important.”

  She wanted to be free, to once more do the simple things free people do. One postcard oddly moved her and she took it down and, with a pen from her bag, began writing on it, in order not to see, in order not to listen, in order to be free. But it wasn’t possible. The waiter had turned the tv up and how could she not listen? The world insisted you listen. And it was, after all, thought the Doll, about her. She stopped writing. What if they finally admitted it was a mistake? Or suggested there was now some doubt about the Doll’s involvement? What if there was some vital piece of information that might prove her innocence?

  When she heard the cop say how the New South Wales police force was “interfacing with over sixteen different state and federal agencies in the hunt for Gina Davies” she had to look back up from her unfinished postcard. The day before they had merely wanted her to assist with their enquiries. Now they were hunting her like a dog, a mad dog. Watching the cop on the tv, the Doll was convinced that the world no longer existed for any reason other than to destroy her. She was just waiting to be found, for police to come crashing in, for shots to sound; preparing herself to run, to freeze, to hide, to do something, to do nothing. And part of her wanted that confrontation, that moment of destiny to come, so that it might be over.

  Perhaps in consequence, her body felt astonishingly alert. Her eyes darted everywhere, her ears tuned in and out of conversations around the room. She could feel the smallest breeze caused by someone moving past her, could sense anger, affection or weariness in each person sitting near her. She was in a bizarre way aware of everything. And above all, what her hyped-up body could sense was fear—that this same fear that had hold of her was in everyone. It seemed so tangible, she felt she could smell fear and taste fear, all this fear they were breathing in, drinking up and eating, all this fear they lived by and with.

  And then she wondered: what if people could not live without such fear? What if people needed fear to know who they were, to reassure themselves that they were living their lives the right way? If they needed a hit of fear even more than a hit of coffee or beer or blow? For without fear, what meaning was there to be had in anything?

  On the tv a large, florid man had replaced the cop. His name and the words “American Ambassador” appeared across his suit jacket. He welcomed the effort of Australian authorities in their counter terrorism work; indeed, he went on, in his experience Australia was almost unrivalled in its homeland security measures.

  “It is not policy,” he said, “to disclose what American agencies do or do not do with the agencies of friendly countries when dealing with the terrorism question.”

  These words, terrorism question, thought the Doll, what do they mean? She mulled over them as the waiter arrived with her order. But try as she might, they made no sense to her. She repeated them over and over, till they sounded in her mind like just another trance beat to which she had once danced in the Chairman’s Lounge. Everyone else seemed to understand what the words meant, and it was clear to the Doll that it must only be because she was particularly stupid that she couldn’t.

  Sitting in that café, looking at her undrunk macchiato, flicking her uneaten focaccia with fingers still grubby from grave cleaning, trying and failing not to see, not to hear, not to be afraid, waiting for a cry, an accusation, a shot, she had the odd idea that the terrorism question had become a fad, like body piercing or flares; a fashion that had come and would go like this season’s colours. Maybe, thought the Doll, if it was just like fashion, it was simply about a few people building careers, making money, getting power, and it wasn’t really about making the world safer or better at all. Maybe it was like Botox, something to hide the truth.

  The Doll wiped her mouth with the tips of her fingers and felt the grit of the city of the dead rubbing, wearing away at her skin. It was a stupid idea, really, but it made her smile. The stupid idea, she thought, of a stupid woman. But if it were true, she sensed that perhaps these few people needed terrorists, for without the terrorists what would they do and where would they be? And part of her felt oddly, stupidly, proud, as if she had been specially chosen for this clearly necessary role.

  The tv said: “And now we have the man who has done more to put this incredible story together than any other, Richard Cody. Good to see you again, Richard.”

  “Good to be here, Larry.”

  Richard Cody looked far younger and more vibrant than he had that night in the club. It was as if the terrorist story were for him an elixir of youth.

  “Richard, the question I suppose on everyone’s mind is why? Why would an Aussie girl allow herself to get mixed up in all this madness?”

  “What the experts are telling us is how terrorism constantly mutates,” said Richard Cody, “like a super virus—a bird flu of the soul, if you like. So, first, it was a Middle Eastern phenomenon; next it spread to countries like Chechnya. Then in Britain we saw English-born Muslims turning into suicide bombers. In Gina Davies we are seeing the latest morphing, with an Australian woman—not, as far as we know, of Islamic belief or ethnic background—making common cause with the terrorists. This is an entirely new phenomenon, and it is why Gina Davies is viewed by the authorities as so dangerous.”

  “It’s shocking to think an Australian—one of us—could do this, Richard.”

  “Indeed, Larry. And when people see our Unknown Terrorist special tonight, they are going to be well and truly shocked. I know I was. It’s sad, it’s disturbing, and it’s on tonight at six-thirty.”

  80

  As they were leaving the pub, Tony Buchanan offered a final defence of Nick Loukakis. They were standing in the shade of the pub awning, pausing before having to once more move in the heat.

  Out on the pavement a short, stocky man, clad only in board shorts, came hurtling along on a large skateboard pulled by a dog in a harness. He was travelling at such speed that a woman stepped back into a pavement table to get out of his way. Tony Buchanan looked up and shook his head. Siv Harmsen yelled out, “Fuckwit!” then turned back round.

  “Listen, Tony, even if you’re right,” he said, “you couldn’t change any of it. This story, you know, it serves a bigger pur
pose, the big picture, right?”

  Tony Buchanan watched as Siv Harmsen used his fingers to extract a shred of steak from next to his eyetooth, and then swallowed the rag of recalcitrant meat.

  “Let’s suppose we’re wrong,” said Siv Harmsen, closing in now. “Just for a minute, let’s suppose that. You with me?”

  “Guess so,” said Tony Buchanan.

  “And you know what? It’s still important that the public know these bastards are out there. That this is going to happen here. And that they need people like us to stop it. It’s important that the public know they have people like us looking over them. That’s very important. I’m sure you can understand that. How bad would it look if we were wrong? What a victory for bin Laden’s bastards that would be! People out there don’t understand all the threats, all the issues, how we have a war between good and evil happening here. How can they? People are fools, and we need to give them lessons as to what is important and what isn’t, don’t you think?”

  “I think people need to know the truth, Siv.”

  “Look, mate, I went to Bali. I saw what the arseholes did. That’s truth. But Australia didn’t see that truth. Not the bits of charred goo that was someone yesterday. The terrorists want to turn all our cities into Baghdad. It’s bloody fright-ening, Tony, and people need to be frightened. And that’s part of our job, too.”

  “I thought you just said people were already frightened,” said Tony Buchanan.

  “Not enough,” said Siv Harmsen. “Never enough.” He sprayed some breath freshener into his mouth, put the spray back in a trouser pocket, then extended his hand to shake farewell and smiled. “People are fools. It’s the Rohypnol rape decade, Tony. People can’t remember anything. They just have a vague idea something bad’s gone down. Stiff titties. Unless they’re terrified, they won’t agree with what we do and why we have to do it.”