The Haha Man

by Sandy Mccutcheon

  ‘So, how do you survive?’

  ‘I’m on a three-year temporary visa, so I can’t do much. But we help each other. We study English. We play soccer …’

  ‘Soccer? Really?’

  ‘In Centennial Park each Sunday.’ Sayyid smiled broadly, happy to change the subject. ‘You should come along. We are all Hazara and afterwards we have a barbeque. You would enjoy it.’

  ‘Yes, I’d like to come. I have things to take care of first, but later. Maybe in a month.’

  ‘You would be welcome. Maybe one day we will have a proper team and can play a real game. I think we would win a lot.’ His face beamed. ‘And soon I may have a job.’

  ‘Yes? What kind?’

  Sayyid hesitated, obviously embarrassed by the nature of the work. ‘Casual work. It doesn’t sound much, but the pay is good and the people who own the business are good Moslems. They are trying to find work for quite a few of us.’

  ‘That’s good. It doesn’t matter where you start as long as you do start,’ Karim said, aware for the second time that day of how much like his father he sounded.

  He bought them both another drink and for half an hour they talked quietly about the war in their home country and the scattering of the Taliban. Then Sayyid scribbled down a phone number.

  ‘I don’t have a phone myself, but this is for Amir — he’s Iraqi and a good friend. He can get a message to me.’

  Karim wrote his own number down and handed it to Sayyid.

  ‘Thank you …’ Sayyid began.

  ‘I told you he was waiting for you!’

  Karim looked up to find Malcolm standing over him; his precious radio clutched in one hand, a polystyrene cup in the other.

  ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ Malcolm said and shuffled towards the door. ‘I’ve gotta go and listen to the news.’

  Karim watched him make his way across the road and wondered if it would spoil things if someone bought Malcolm some fresh batteries.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Her tone was gentle, the smile warm and open.

  You are so beautiful, he thought, knowing again that marrying her was the best thing he had ever done. He pushed his chair away from his desk. ‘I’m fine. Tired is all.’

  ‘It’s good to be home together.’ Layla came up behind him and ran her fingers through his hair. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so busy.’

  Fossey laughed. ‘You? It’s been both of us.’ He leaned his head back, anticipating her kiss.

  ‘You going out tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Giving myself a break.’

  ‘Me too. I thought we could open a bottle of something.’ She kissed him. ‘I’ve been guilty of neglecting you.’

  Fossey swung his chair round. ‘Why don’t we cook together?’

  It was strange, he thought later, that she should claim for herself what he had been feeling. It wasn’t just the work with Ray Gilbert. He had been spending time working on stories for the Sydney Morning Herald. But since leaving the minister’s office he had found it harder to place stories. A couple of times the knock-backs were pointedly political.

  ‘You’re not exactly flavour of the month with the powers that be,’ one features editor had told him.

  ‘So what flavour would that be?’

  ‘Shit, Fossey. Your name’s shit.’

  ‘With you?’

  The man looked at him sadly. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Fossey said. ‘I don’t. A story is a story.’

  ‘Yeah, but the word is out from on high. You’ve pissed the minister off, big time.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The minister speaks to a friend and the friend speaks to the boss. Christ, you know the drill. We need access. We run your stuff and that access dries up. End of story.’

  ‘For how long?’

  The man laughed. ‘How long’s a piece of string?’

  Earlier in the day Fossey had boarded the CityCat, the catamaran ferry that serviced the Brisbane River, at Brett’s Wharf, and Ray had joined it at the Hawthorne Terminal on the opposite side of the river. For a couple of stops they rode separately. Taking in the view, checking out the other passengers. There had been a huge storm the night before and the day felt cleansed and fresh, the temperature down almost ten degrees from the previous week. Above them the sky was polished blue; rain-washed. Finally Ray meandered out of the cabin and settled himself on a seat in the stern.

  ‘You have the list?’ he asked as Fossey joined him, well away from prying eyes and ears.

  Fossey put the computer disk down on the seat. ‘Fifty names. Forty men and ten women.’

  ‘Good. Rabia will be relieved. She’s all set to go at the beginning of February.’

  ‘That soon?’ Fossey noticed that the disk was no longer on the seat. He watched as they approached the Southbank Terminal. Most of the passengers disembarked. There were now only five people left: three Asian students, deep in conversation, and two elderly women. Nothing to stress over.

  ‘Wednesday the sixth of February, they leave; aiming to get to Woomera on Sunday the tenth,’ Ray said, never taking his eyes off the river.

  ‘I didn’t realise she was moving that quickly.’

  ‘Has to. Any longer and the leaks would start. Bound to.’

  ‘Leaks?’ Nobody had mentioned anything about leaks.

  ‘Relax, Fossey.’ Ray scowled. ‘You’re so damn jumpy you make me nervous.’

  ‘Well, for Christ’s sake, Ray. It’s my arse that’s on the line. Your name’s not on any bloody bits of paper, not on any frigging emails —’

  ‘And yours is?’ Ray looked concerned. ‘Aren’t you using the Haha Man tag?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s on my computer. What the hell happens if there’s a bloody bust and my hard drive gets taken away by the boys in blue?’

  ‘Nothing, if you’ve been following the instructions about deleting and doing a disk-wipe.’

  Fossey shrugged, unconvinced. Sure he was doing the disk-wipe every night, but just because the computer flashed up a message saying the wipe had been successful didn’t convince him it was actually true.

  A police speedboat powered past them as they pulled out of Southbank. Fossey waited until they were in the middle of the river before he spoke again. ‘Our friend Rashid is a little restless.’

  ‘Rashid?’ Ray looked at him, his face blank. Then he made the connection. ‘Oh, our first customer.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s he doing? Nothing that will attract attention, I hope.’

  Fossey snorted. ‘He wants to locate his father.’

  ‘What? Back in Afghanistan?’ Ray couldn’t imagine how anyone could be traced there now. Even though the bombing had stopped and a jerry-built coalition was supposedly in power, the place was a basket-case.

  Fossey waited until a passenger who had wandered out from the cabin had returned inside. ‘Hardly. It appears his father is in Woomera.’

  ‘Christ!’

  ‘He wants to get him out.’

  They sat in silence, watching the river.

  Eventually Ray spoke again.

  ‘I suppose we could make it fifty-one.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I could add his name to the list for Rabia.’

  Fossey thought about it for a while. He was still unconvinced that this woman’s plan would turn out to be anything but a huge disaster. It confounded him that anyone was taking it seriously. Still, as long as he was miles away and not connected …

  ‘Yes. Suggest it.’

  ‘Will you tell him?’ Ray asked.

  ‘No. Let’s not get his hopes up. If it happens it happens and he gets a nice surprise; if it doesn’t then he can just wait until his father is released.’

  As they pulled into the ferry terminal at St Lucia, Fossey got to his feet.

  ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  Ray shook his head. ‘Best leave it for a few days. I have a hunch that Smith and Smith are nosing around.’

  ‘T
hey’ve visited you?’ Fossey asked, failing to keep the concern out of his voice.

  ‘Relax, Fossey. They’re kindergarten spooks. I doubt they’ve been in ASIO long enough to get potty-trained.’

  ‘But did they visit you?’ Fossey persisted.

  ‘No. They seem to have taken a liking to parking in cars and watching my mother’s place. She has them sussed. Raw young recruits. Mangoes, she calls them.’

  ‘Mangoes?’

  ‘Yeah. Green on the outside and yellow on the inside and too many of them will give you the shits.’

  Fossey stood in the shade of the trees and watched as the CityCat turned slowly and headed downriver. Ray was still seated in the stern looking just like any other tourist enjoying a round trip on the Brisbane River. After the ferry was out of sight Fossey looked up and saw that it really was mango season.

  In the beginning Ted Bishop had been sceptical. Apart from the fact that it didn’t make any bloody sense, any one of them could have bought and sold him a dozen times. For a start they had turned up in an XJ8 Jaguar.

  ‘You’re Ted?’ asked one of the four women.

  ‘Yeah. How can I help you? I’m actually expecting some blokes any moment …’

  She pointed to a group of names on the blackboard behind his desk.

  ‘Are these the blokes you’re waiting for? Bryson, Waxman, Colbert and de Villiers?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ted.

  ‘That’s us.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Ted exclaimed, then brought his greasy hand to his mouth.

  The woman who had been driving the Jaguar slowly counted out fifteen hundred dollars onto the table.

  Ted, dumbstruck, looked at the women. Then he looked down at the crisp new hundred-dollar notes.

  ‘That’s just a tip.’ The woman smiled. ‘You see, we very much want to get our licences to drive buses and semi-trailers by the beginning of February, at least a week before the ninth.’

  Ted looked again at the money. A tip, she had called it. For a second he imagined being up in the cab with any one of these women. His mouth was dry, but he found his voice.

  ‘Not a problem. Davo … Mr Steele is my usual driving instructor, but I think I can probably handle this.’

  ‘Starting today?’ one of the women asked.

  Ted laughed. ‘With a tip like that, ladies, I reckon I could start yesterday.’

  They laughed politely.

  ‘If you care to follow me, I think we might begin with an introductory tour of the driving circuit in the big Scania.’ Jesus H. Christ, Ted thought. Just wait till the boys in the pub hear about this.

  Rabia’s problem was how to take the next step. She couldn’t simply sit down and explain it to the others. At least, not if they were to remain convinced. Their belief was absolutely vital. And yet there was a gap. Everything else was in place. God knows what acts Wilna de Villiers had performed on her husband, Michael, but he had come to the party and provided a beautifully shiny Volvo B7R coach with fifty-five luxury reclining seats, and a jet-black truck — a Mack EM7 ten-speed.

  Rabia worried away at her problem for a few days, then decided that Chloë would be the logical person to ask. It meant bringing her into a deeper level of the plan, but there was little time left and content was content.

  Chloë listened in amazement. ‘Rabia … I’m speechless …’

  Rabia smiled. ‘But can you help?’

  ‘Sure. I know just the person.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘She’s in Sydney at the moment. And going home on the weekend.’

  ‘But who is it?’

  ‘Aunty Pearl. She’s a Nunga woman.’

  ‘Nunga?’ Rabia had never heard the word before.

  ‘Yeah, an Aboriginal woman from South Australia. I’m not sure how near Woomera, but don’t worry, she’ll be into it.’

  ‘Aunty Pearl … nice name. Can you set it up then?’

  ‘Ninth?’

  ‘Not a day before — not a day later.’

  It took Chloë seven phone calls to track Aunty Pearl down. Two hours later she dropped back in to see Rabia.

  ‘Aunty Pearl is a starter. But what are you going to do with them afterwards?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll come up with something.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. After all, one of us has to concentrate on the details and the other on the big picture.’

  Chloë rolled her eyes.

  Rabia crossed to the fridge and took out two cans of Coke. She handed one to Chloë, then sat down on the lounge. ‘I still have to find a way of convincing the other women to put themselves in the firing line. You want to do that? You’re welcome.’

  ‘Nah.’ Chloë flopped down beside her. ‘I’ll be too busy with my details, I’m afraid.’

  For the first time in months, Sayyid was feeling on top of the world. The tentative offer of a job had firmed up and, although the work was only casual, it was his. He skipped the regular Sunday soccer game in order to get his best clothes ready and his shoes polished. Installation work was all he had been told, but the man had stressed that he must be dressed in neat and tidy clothes.

  When he arrived at the warehouse in Robert Street he found nine of his Hazara team mates, also ready to start work. They had only just exchanged greetings when a car pulled up and two men got out.

  Inside the building it was dim and cool. As far as Sayyid could see there was nothing in the space except two pallets of boxes. At one end an office had been constructed of pre-fabricated partitions and, above it, up a flight of stairs, was a small mezzanine.

  The men introduced themselves as Marzuq and Basim. From that point, the younger of the two, Basim, took over. Marzuq simply watched as Basim explained the business and took them through the simple installation procedure. It was a small enterprise, he said, but with great potential. The company had been lucky in outbidding its competitors and now had several dozen contracts, one of which was to be their concern.

  Basim took them over to where a small rectangular device was attached to the wall beside the pallets.

  ‘This is the basic unit.’ He gently pulled the cover free, revealing an aerosol can fitted below a small black control box. ‘You can see we have the canister or dispenser. It just pulls out from the base. There’s no need to use force. Then place the new canister in position. Now, this is important. Check to make sure that the spray nozzle is pointing outwards.’ He looked around the faces. ‘Don’t worry, you will have plenty of time to practise on the sample here.’ He removed the canister and pointed to the control panel. ‘There are two batteries at the back. You remove them and replace them. The top of the battery — that is the positive terminal — points out from the wall. Anyway, you will know it is in the right way because the LCD display will flash on and off with a row of zeros.’ He checked again that the men were following him, before continuing. ‘The four blue buttons are for setting the rate at which the dispenser works. In most cases our competitors had them set to spray one-second bursts every ten minutes. We are going to do better. We will be setting ours to give a two-second burst every five minutes.’

  Sayyid watched as Basim demonstrated setting the dispensing rate. It all seemed very simple, but Basim spent more than two hours making them go through the procedure time and again. By the time they were finished they and the room smelled overpoweringly of Wild Vanilla air-freshener.

  Once he was satisfied that the men could perform the task, Basim handed out brand-new sets of overalls, printed with the company name, Pacific Fresh, and boxes containing ten canisters and a supply of batteries. On the top of each box were the delivery addresses.

  ‘We would like you to start tomorrow and return the old canisters and boxes with the name of each customer ticked off. Any questions?’

  ‘When do we get paid?’ Sayyid asked.

  ‘When you return the boxes.’

  After the men had left, Marzuq embraced Basim. ‘Nothing can stop us now.’

  ‘God is great,
’ Basim whispered.

  ‘Fourteen days … just fourteen days.’ Marzuq moved to the desk and put a cross on the date. ‘Tomorrow is the twenty-ninth …’ He flipped the calendar on fourteen days and added a large exclamation mark.

  ‘Now that the decoy is launched,’ he said, turning back to Basim, ‘let’s deliver the canisters for Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. Then we can set about finding someone to install our products in the main target.’

  For Sayyid and his friends the job went without a hitch. In each of the outlets they were shown to the bathrooms and left to install the dispensers. Each of the men did a thorough job, remaining long enough to make certain the units were functioning properly. Each time they stood and listened for the almost indiscernible hiss and the recognisable smell of Wild Vanilla.

  They returned the old canisters and found to their disappointment that they were asked to hand in the overalls. There was no more work for a while.

  ‘But,’ Basim told them, ‘we’ll be in touch.’

  The upside was that they were paid — in cash.

  Ted had never had such a good time. The women arrived every day and took to the heavy vehicles as though they’d been born to them. In all his years he’d never seen drivers that learned as fast. And as news of his star pupils spread, he found that their circuits were being watched by a growing number of onlookers, who whistled and carried on as he helped the women down from the cab at the end of each lesson. When they all passed their tests without a hitch, he found himself the recipient of another large tip.

  It was the day after the women’s last lesson that he was greeted at the door by two very dour-faced individuals. Bugger them, he thought, I’ve enough cash for a good holiday. Davo was fully booked and … well, they would just have to wait. But it wasn’t lessons the men were after.

  ‘We’re from Canberra.’ One of them flashed an ID too fast for Ted to get a good look. ‘I’m Smith and my colleague is Brown.’

  ‘Canberra?’ Ted flinched. What the hell had he done now? His mind raced over the log books, tax returns, GST …