‘I do support one,’ Aisha said.
‘Then why wouldn’t you help us? We’re the best bet that Muslims in this country have.’ It seemed that he was a spokesman of some kind for the group, even if he paled in comparison with the other luminaries present. Not the leader of the Underground, I couldn’t believe that, but perhaps one of the philosophical driving forces behind it. Maybe a university lecturer. In radical political science, or some such field. ‘It’s the government persecuting your faith, not us.’
‘You’re still the enemy.’
‘Then what about me?’ asked another man sternly. He was robed and bearded and dark-skinned, but with a deep Aussie accent, and a casual toughness about him that made me think of prison somewhere in his past. ‘I’m not the enemy. I am a Muslim. I live in this ghetto. I represent its interests here.’
Aisha hesitated for only a moment. ‘If you’re a true Muslim, then you shouldn’t be associating with these people.’
‘And who are you to say what a Muslim should or shouldn’t do? How do I even know you’re Muslim yourself?’
‘I belong to the Great Southern Jihad.’
‘Good for you. I’ve never heard of it.’
‘You wouldn’t have. You’re soft. You’re corrupt.’
The man’s expression hardened—and it had been hard enough before. He had the body of a wrestler not long retired. ‘One of the first things a true Muslim is taught is respect for their elders, girl. And don’t pull that hardliner shit with me. I know the hardliners. I used to be one. I’ve probably had contact with every militant Islamic group in Australia, in my time. But I have never, anywhere, at any stage, met anyone who belongs to the Great Southern Jihad.’
Aisha’s chin was out proudly. ‘We’re the new Islam.’
‘There’s a new one, is there?’ The man shook his big head scornfully, looked to the rest of the circle. ‘I wouldn’t trust a word this woman says.’
‘And yet,’ said the famous journalist, speaking up thoughtfully, ‘the whole government is after her. That alone proves she’s somehow important. Plus, she knew about the bomb that went off at the Gabba. That proves she has connections with genuine terrorists. I can’t believe it was her people that nuked Canberra—but they can’t be dismissed entirely.’
‘So where did they come from?’ the ghetto representative demanded. ‘Who runs them? And how come no true Muslim knows anything about it?’
Silence in the room.
I shifted in my seat. ‘You aren’t supposed to know.’
All the faces turned my way, including Aisha’s. And over the next few minutes I repeated everything I remembered about our conversation in the metal box—about Aisha’s recruitment, about Southern Jihad’s secrecy, about its plans for war and revolution, and about the killing of Aisha’s parents.
The room considered her anew.
‘Bloody hell,’ said the Greens senator.
‘Genuine Muslims or not,’ agreed the Labor man, ‘they sound like a real enough terrorist group to me.’
‘Is it possible we’ve got this all wrong?’ asked the football coach. ‘Maybe her people really did do Canberra. And maybe that’s the only reason the government is after her. To drag her in for questioning. In which case, maybe we should never have got in their way. We could’ve just let them have her.’
‘Would’ve saved us a lot of trouble,’ someone muttered.
‘No,’ said Harry, firmly. ‘They don’t want to question her. They want her dead. When the federal agents had hold of Aisha, they were about to execute her, there and then. They weren’t asking any questions. Which makes no sense. It never has. If she’s for real, then the government should want her alive for interrogation. If she’s not for real, then they shouldn’t want her at all. But instead, they’re moving heaven and earth to catch her—and then shut her up.’
‘And let’s not forget Leo,’ said the journalist. ‘He’s not just a passenger here. Look at the chain of events. The government has apparently known about Southern Jihad for ages, but they never worried about them before—not until Aisha’s boys kidnapped the Prime Minister’s brother. That’s when it all changed. That’s when Aisha suddenly became a target. And when Leo himself, who’s never mattered at all, suddenly mattered enough to be declared dead.’
‘Which can only mean one thing,’ the man across the room, the lecturer, concluded. ‘One of these two knows something dangerous, and this something is so dangerous that the government wants them eliminated before they can tell anybody about it. Especially, I assume, before they can tell us.’
Harry nodded sadly. ‘But neither of them has a thing to say.’
Silence again.
We were back to square one. But I was uncomfortably aware of something in all their faces as they stared at us. These were powerful people, desperate in their own way, and hardened to necessity. And I could sense—even though no one had said it, or threatened it yet—that a far more strenuous form of questioning lay in our immediate future. An interrogation, in fact. Possibly not to the point of torture, not like your own tender ministrations, my dear interrogators, but something close. It was the look on Harry’s face, most of all. I’d come to regard him as, if not actually a friend, then at least as someone whose prime concern was my welfare. But there was a withdrawing in him now. A resigned pulling back and washing of his hands. We had become the High Council’s responsibility. And in their eyes I could see no concern for my welfare at all.
I turned to Aisha. ‘For fuck’s sake, if you’ve got something to tell them, then tell them now. These people aren’t kidding.’
A cold pride was in her eyes. ‘They’re not worthy to know.’
Oh shit. Any minute now, the lecturer or one of the others was going to nod, and three or four heavy-set thugs were going to appear and drag us off to a basement somewhere, with a single hard chair, and a bright painful light, and a wire mattress on the wall, attached to batteries.
But the man from the ghetto was leaning back with his huge forearms folded across his chest, studying Aisha narrowly. ‘Tell us about this new Islam of yours. What’s so new about it?’
‘Destruction. Righteous bloodshed. It will be the end of the West and the old Islam alike.’
The man gave an ominous frown. ‘True Islam doesn’t teach violence,’ he stated, sounding like he’d partaken in plenty of it himself, once.
‘True Islam teaches purity,’ Aisha replied. ‘And purity can only come from a cleansing fire.’
‘It doesn’t teach the slaughter of innocents.’
‘No one is innocent, unless they’re with us.’
‘Crap, girl. The Koran says no such thing. Neither does the Hadith.’
‘I wouldn’t know. I haven’t read them.’
The ghetto Muslim stared in amazement. ‘You haven’t read them?!’
‘No. The old texts will burn with the old Islam.’
‘Are you mad? The Koran is Islam!’
‘The word of Allah is a living thing. In our hearts, and in the spoken words of our teachers. It has nothing to do with a book.’
The man spat on the floor. ‘You’re no Muslim. You never have been.’
A blush spread across Aisha’s white face. ‘I’m the only real Muslim here. I know the duties, and I follow the commands!’
‘Is it a duty to murder your own parents? That’s an obscenity. No real Muslim could ever do that. No teacher would ever command it, either.’
And it was that word, I think—teacher. It triggered something in Aisha. A man of her own chosen faith was challenging her credentials. A man who had once, it seemed, been a militant and an activist, like her. She couldn’t let that pass. And maybe too, somewhere deep down, the human being was still there in her, ashamed of her actions and needing to justify them. Or maybe she just couldn’t keep the secret inside anymore. I don’t know. But she made the decision.
‘No teacher?’ she inquired softly. ‘What would you know about teachers? I follow the greatest teacher Islam has ever seen.’<
br />
Her opponent sneered. ‘And what great teacher is that?’
‘You’ll see, when it’s too late for you. He knows about the Great Southern Jihad, and he approves of what we’re doing.’ Aisha was scarily calm. ‘He’s coming to be with us. Coming to Australia. Soon.’
‘So why not tell us his name?’
‘It doesn’t matter if I do tell you. There’s nothing you can do to stop him. Not you, not the government. The Great Hero goes where he wants.’
‘The Great Hero?’ The man faltered, looking puzzled. ‘You can’t mean . . .’
‘That’s exactly who I mean.’
‘You’re insane!’
‘Wait and see then. And burn with the rest of them.’
The ghetto Muslim was shaking his head, disgusted, but Harry was leaning forward now, staring intently at him. ‘Who’s she talking about?’
‘It’s ridiculous,’ the man replied. ‘She’s fucked in the head.’
‘Who’s this Great Hero?’
‘Well, some of the hardliners and militants . . . It’s a name they use for him sometimes . . . But it’s complete bullshit.’
‘Who, dammit?’
The man looked around the room, almost reluctant. Then he shrugged. ‘Well, bin Laden, of course.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
The room broke into laughter.
It came from everyone around the circle, long and bitter, and somehow despairing, too—because if the High Council had needed a final demonstration of Aisha’s delusional state, or proof that they had wasted their time in rescuing her and smuggling her all the way to Melbourne, then this was it.
‘Osama bin Laden?’ the journalist managed to say at last, marvelling at her. ‘You really think he’s coming to meet you? You actually believe that?’
Aisha was bright red. ‘He is.’ But the laughter had hurt her, I could tell. She had revealed her great and deep secret . . . and it was pathetic.
‘He’s dead, girl,’ the ghetto representative said flatly. ‘It’s been years now. The Americans got him fair and square.’
‘You did see that, didn’t you?’ the journalist asked, mockingly polite. ‘You and your crazy friends do read the papers occasionally, and watch the news? The pictures of his body were only on the front page for about two weeks!’
More bitter laughter, but I was watching Harry, who was staring at the floor in abject misery. I knew what he was thinking. All the people who had died to bring Aisha to this point, all the networks that had been unmasked . . .
‘He’s not dead,’ Aisha said.
Resigned groans came from around the room.
‘He’s not!’ Aisha insisted, glowing. ‘That wasn’t him! That was just a man with a beard that looked like him! The Great Hero is alive!’
‘Yeah,’ a voice said dully. ‘And so is Elvis.’
The ghetto Muslim was blunt. ‘We’ve all heard that nonsense. Bin Laden is alive, the Americans didn’t really get him, he outsmarted them again, the Great Hero marches on . . . It’s a fairytale. The body was identified.’
‘It was a trick,’ Aisha retorted. ‘He fooled them.’
‘Sure he did. And when is this casual visit of his supposed to happen? And why, exactly, of all the places in the world, would he be coming here?’
‘He’s coming to meet the faithful, to lead us himself into the new Islam. We were promised. And he’s coming soon. You’ll see, and then you’ll all die!’
To this, no one even bothered to respond. The council members just stared at each other in bleak acknowledgment, and a dismal silence stretched out. From the distance came the sound of a helicopter. The noise grew, as if the machine was flying directly over the hall, and then faded again.
It was the lecturer who finally spoke for everyone, his eyes turned to the ceiling. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’re fucked.’
The football coach had his chin sunk in his hands. ‘I say we clear out of here and forget this ever happened.’
‘Forget the whole damn Underground, frankly,’ added the Labor man. ‘Another week like this last one, there’ll be none of us left anyway.’
‘It isn’t that bad,’ the Greens senator protested.
‘Isn’t it?’
Harry lifted his eyes. ‘What about these two?’ he asked, indicating Aisha and me. ‘What are you going to do with them?’
The group regarded us like the embarrassments we were.
‘Well, obviously we can’t let them go,’ said the lecturer. ‘Not after what they’ve seen here. I suppose they’ll just have to stay hidden in the ghetto.’
The ghetto representative was shaking his head. ‘I don’t want that woman in here. She’s an abomination.’
‘There’s nowhere else they can go. We can’t get IDs or travel papers for them anymore. They’d be caught at the first roadblock they came across.’
‘So you take them and hide them.’
A squabble broke out across the room.
Harry interrupted, his expression pained. ‘No. Stop it. Look, we haven’t finished with this yet. Nothing has changed. We still need to know why the government wants them so badly. Aisha is still the key. She has information, I know it.’
‘Information?’ demanded the lecturer, caustic. ‘Osama bin Laden is alive and well after all, and now he’s coming for a holiday in Australia? You think the government wants her dead because of that?’
‘Okay, so it’s nothing to do with bin Laden. But we can’t ignore her completely, just because her head is half full of rubbish. There must be something genuine in there, something valuable. That’s why she needs a proper interrogation. Covering everything. Over days. Weeks, if it takes that long.’
The plea had an effect. ‘He’s right, of course,’ the journalist sighed. ‘We’ll have to keep her here, and get a proper debriefing team to work. We owe the people who brought her through that much of an effort, at least.’
There were supportive murmurs from around the circle, and nods of agreement.
‘What about me?’ I said, piping up at last.
Harry was rueful. ‘You’re a dead man already. You don’t have any choice but to stay. And there’ll be questions for you too, I’m afraid.’
Damn it. ‘But how long can you keep me here?’
‘You asked me something like that once before, and it’s the same answer. How long is any of this going to go on? How long will the war on terror last? How long will your brother be in power? You tell me, Leo.’
He stood. Other people were also rising to their feet, forming little knots of conversation. The council, for what it was worth, seemed to be breaking up.
‘So that’s it?’ I said to Harry. ‘I’m a prisoner?’
He shrugged in half apology. ‘You aren’t seeing us at our best. It’s been an appalling week. And you two haven’t helped.’ He breathed out, gave Aisha a look. ‘Osama bin Laden? Christ, woman—did you have to say that?’
She was unrepentant. ‘I’ve told you the truth.’
‘Well for your sake, I hope you’ve got something else to tell us, eventually.’
I was mustering another protest—knowing there was no point to it—but just then the youth in the Essendon jersey, who had remained outside on guard duty with his friends during the meeting, hurried into the hall.
‘There’s a man here,’ he announced to the room. ‘He’s just come through one of the tunnels, and he’s demanding to see the council. He’s out front.’
‘What man?’ asked the lecturer.
‘I don’t know him—but he’s one of us. He knows all the passwords. He says he’s just arrived from Sydney. On the run, by the sound of it.’
‘Sydney!’ several people exclaimed.
‘He said he had nowhere else to go.’
‘Nowhere else?’ The lecturer exchanged an alarmed glance with the journalist. ‘C’mon, we’d better check him out.’
They strode together through the doors.
Harry stared after them, hesitant, as if he wasn’t quite
sure what to do with himself. And I remembered—he really had nothing to do. He wasn’t in charge anymore. The decisions were no longer his. His job was over.
‘So what’s with those two?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t know. Except that it sounds bad about the situation in Sydney, if an operative from up there had nowhere else to come but Melbourne.’
‘You have cells up there too, right?’
‘Of course. Or at least we did, but the reports we’re getting say this last week has been as bad in Sydney as anywhere else. And Sydney is the base for some of our major resistance programs. That’s why we’re so worried.’
I looked around the drab little hall. People were draining cups of tea and eating the last biscuits. A few had started stacking the plastic chairs away, but others were lingering, not certain if the meeting was actually over or not. Confusion and disappointment drifted in the air like cigarette smoke.
I said, ‘You know, I’m surprised that the OU headquarters are here in Melbourne. I would’ve thought Sydney was the obvious place.’
‘It would’ve been. That’s why we’re not there.’
‘Ah.’ I considered the man, his depression and his exhaustion, and just for once I forgot about my own pile of troubles. I said, ‘So what happens to you now? You don’t live here. Is it back to Queensland?’
‘I dunno.’ He ran a hand through his thinning hair. ‘I suppose I have to get back to my job soon.’
‘What do you do anyway? I never asked.’
He blinked at me for a long, nonplussed moment. ‘I’m a nurse in a retirement home.’ And then he was smiling, in a small, sad way. ‘Believe it or not, I used up the last of my annual leave to get you two down here.’
We looked at each other.
Then the journalist came rushing back into the room.
‘No one go anywhere! This meeting is reconvened right now!’ People stared at him, wondering at his excitement. ‘This guy outside—you gotta hear what he has to say!’
Harry perked up. ‘What?’
And Aisha was on her feet. ‘Is it about him? Is it the Great Hero?’
The journalist gave her a cutting glance. ‘Christ, no. In fact, Harry, get these two out of here. They’re not part of the council.’
Underground Page 21
