Underground (3 page)

‘The family in town?’ I asked him.

‘No.’

I hadn’t seen his wife, or his two adult children, in years. For that matter, I hadn’t seen much lately of
my
three ex-wives, or my own three children, either.

We made small talk for a while. Awkwardly, because we had nothing whatever in common. But eventually I said, ‘So what did you want me for?’

‘You have to sign these.’ He slid some papers across the desk to me. ‘It’s the final settlement of Mum’s will,’ he told me, as I read.

Our mother had died six months before—our father having preceded her by several years. There was nothing all that special to deal with, regarding the estate. Just the old family house and some investments. Bernard and I had both been named as executors, but I’d left it up to Bernard to arrange. When it came to dreary legal stuff, he was the expert.

‘There’s a cheque there, too,’ he said.

I took up a pen and scribbled my signature. ‘You could have mailed this to me,’ I said, when I was done.

‘I thought we should finish this in person.’

There was something about the way he said ‘finish’ that caught my attention. ‘Finish what?’

‘Us. This deal you seem to think you and I have.’

I was smiling. Bernard tried this on every few years. ‘C’mon. It’s just been two brothers helping each other out, hasn’t it?’

‘When have
you
ever helped
me
out?’

And he had me there. ‘Doing you damage, am I?’

‘You always have.’

‘So why the fuss now? What, you’re gonna lose the next election and suddenly you think it’s due to me?’

‘I’m not worried about the next election.’

‘You bloody well
should
be.’

But even that bounced off him. ‘You’re on your own from here on in, that’s all I’m saying. No more cashing in on my position. If I hear that you’re telling people you have my special confidence, then I’m going to contact them myself and tell them that I give you no backing whatsoever.’ He tapped the documents. ‘Mum and Dad—they always asked me not to stand in your way. So as a favour to them, I didn’t. But they’re both gone, finally, so enough.’

‘Sounds like you couldn’t wait for them to die.’

‘That’s a disgraceful accusation.’

‘Christ, everything is a disgraceful accusation to you, Bernard.’

‘It is when it’s not true.’

‘Nothing is ever true, either, when it comes to you. You even tried to deny it that time I caught you wanking in the back shed. Dick in your fucking hand.’

A dead smile broke out on his face, and from there I probably would have received the usual lecture about responsibility and hard work and so on, and that would have been that. We were family, we’d argued like this for decades. But whatever he might have replied, he never got the chance, because right then the doors burst open and security personnel flooded the room. Bernard stared in angry surprise, and then a man was whispering in his ear. I hadn’t moved, and was amazed to see my brother’s eyes go wide with shock.

‘It can’t be for real,’ he said.

The man shrugged. ‘That’s what we have to find out.’

Bernard struggled to regather himself. ‘Leo, you’ll have to go.’

I rose, our argument forgotten. Was he actually scared? ‘A problem?’

He only shook his head, distracted.

The security men had me outside before I could say anything else. The Lodge seemed to be exploding into life. Phones were ringing everywhere, and personnel were dashing back and forth. My limousine and driver were waiting, and I was bundled inside. As we roared up the drive I was astonished to see an army truck pulling up at the front gate—loaded with soldiers.

Then we were back on Adelaide Avenue and racing towards the circle again. Away from the residence, the rest of Canberra seemed as quiet as ever. The giant Australian flag flapped high above Parliament House, and orange lights glittered in the still waters of the lake.

Minutes later, I was back in my hotel room, sobered and bewildered.

Must be something serious, I decided.

But it wouldn’t be until next morning that I found out just
how
serious. That’s when my brother went on TV to address the nation.

I don’t remember much about how Cyclone Yusuf ended. My abductors didn’t exactly beat me unconscious, but by the time they threw me into the postal van I was bruised and bloodied and dazed, with my hands tied. Two of the men climbed into the back with me, while the third got behind the wheel. From there we drove for a time, the rain and wind buffeting the vehicle while the driver swore ceaselessly. They were
all
swearing—unnerved and furious about the decapitation. But I don’t recall anything particular they said. Only their desperation, and their eyes watching me hatefully from under dripping wet hair, as the van rocked and swayed.

It might have been about an hour that we drove, and I don’t know in what direction, or where we finished up. My resort was north of Bundaberg, so if you want to know (you hear me, interrogators?) look at the map and work out the possible locations yourselves. A bunch of shitty little towns is all you’ll find, somewhere between Gladstone and Gympie.

One thing I can tell you, I sobered up a lot in that hour and, even knocked silly as I was, started to get scared. These guys were obviously terrorists of some sort, and I knew as well as anyone the unhappy fate of hostages in this day and age. I had no desire to be blindfolded, dressed up in orange and ritually beheaded. (But lord, how weird was that flying piece of tin!) And yet, right from the start, I could tell there was something strange about my captors. For one thing, they were very young. Not much more than boys really. But much stranger, they didn’t look at all Arabic or Asian, nor did they speak with any sort of accents. They looked like typical anglo-Aussies to me. Of course, if they
had
looked or sounded Islamic, then they wouldn’t have been there in the first place. They’d have been safely detained in the ghettos, along with all the rest.

And they hadn’t blindfolded me. That was either a very dire sign for me, or it was a sign of incompetence on their part. And I suspected the latter. Honestly, what sort of half-arsed caper was this anyway? To grab the Prime Minister’s brother in the middle of a frigging cyclone? I’ll admit that the postal van was cute, it normally would have blended in quite anonymously, but when you’re the only vehicle on the road during the mother of all storms, you’re going to look suspicious, mail or no mail. But then again, who else would be on the roads to see them? Not only would there be no traffic, none of the usual roadblocks or checkpoints would be manned either. When better, then, to kidnap someone? Perhaps my captors were actually masterminds. But somehow it didn’t feel that way to me.

Indeed, when we finally stopped there was more confusion. One of my guards popped open the back door, but then his companion was yelling at him and slamming it shut again.

‘Dickhead! You want him to see the house?’

So they’d wised up at last.
Then
they whacked a bag over my head. The doors opened again, and I was manhandled
across some sort of muddy yard. The rain was still pelting down, and the wind was blowing, but the deeper violence was gone from it now. Either the cyclone was in decline, or we’d driven some distance inland; I couldn’t say which. They dragged me up a short flight of stairs, and we were indoors. The floor was wooden. For a moment, anyway, then it was down a longer flight of stairs and onto dirt. They dumped me there, then I heard them clump away up the stairs, still muttering and swearing, and leaving me, apparently, alone.

I lay motionless for a while, catching my breath. The bag was a loose cotton thing, and not tight. After a few minutes of listening—footsteps and voices from above, but nothing nearby—I decided it was just me in there. My hands were still tied behind me, but by dragging my head across the ground and then shaking it wildly (and painfully) I managed to get the bag off. I was in a basement, or maybe a storage cellar, small and dim. The walls were made of concrete blocks, the floor was raw earth, and a single bulb hung down from the ceiling. There was no furniture, no decoration, only a staircase climbing to what looked like a very solid door. I assumed it was locked fast. My abductors might be rattled, but that stupid they couldn’t be.

I lay there, breathing.

Kidnapped.

It’s such a sign of the times that it’s almost a cliché, and yet of course you never think it could actually happen to
you.
And there’s no need here to get into the terrors and doubts I felt in those moments. (We all know I didn’t end up dead, right? Not then, at least.) Either way, I could think of nothing that might help me, no clever escape plan. Getting the bag off my head was one thing, but my hands were tied hard, and no amount of wriggling made a difference.

I waited. Staring. Listening.

A long time seemed to pass. Above me, the footsteps and murmured voices went on. At some stage I heard doors slamming, and then a new round of arguments broke out, quite fierce. I gazed at the ceiling and could discern, to my surprise, the shrill voice of a woman rising angrily above the rest. Then everything fell quiet again.

And after that, believe it or not, I must have fallen asleep. Maybe it was the drugs and alcohol still in my system. Maybe it was shock. Or maybe it was that deeply ingrained human thing that refuses to believe something this bad could really be happening, so let’s close our eyes and wake up when it’s all over.

But when I woke up it wasn’t over. I was still in the basement, and things had become strange indeed. A chair had been brought down to my prison, and seated upon it was a woman dressed in a black, full-length burqa—nothing of her visible at all except a pair of eyes staring out from a narrow slit in her veil.

I blinked at her in disbelief.

She said, ‘You are being held by forces of the Great Southern Jihad.’

Christ. Well, I’d suspected all along that these people were Islamic terrorists, and that name, and the burqa, only confirmed it. Still, she didn’t sound at all foreign. Her accent was sharply Australian. And there was something about her eyes. They were a very pale blue, and the skin around them was powder white, almost albino-looking. Certainly not Middle Eastern.

Odd, too, for Islamic extremists to send a woman to guard me.

She might have been reading my mind. ‘I’m in command here.’

I struggled for a futile moment against the ropes, then lapsed again. ‘That doesn’t make any sense at all,’ I croaked, my throat very dry.

The freakishly white eyebrows lifted. ‘You don’t think so?’

‘Men are in charge with you lot, not women.’

‘The men do what I say.’

‘Tell them to let me go then.’

She didn’t reply, only watched me. Burqa or not, I could sense that she was tall, even when seated, and slender too.

‘You’re thinking about my body, aren’t you?’ she said. Her tone was convinced and utterly humourless.
She’s mad
—that was my first real thought about her. ‘You’re wondering if I’m naked underneath, and what my breasts look like.’

Oh dear . . . Barking mad.

‘What do you people want with me?’ I asked.

‘
I
didn’t want you at all.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

She shifted in her seat, leaning back and crossing her legs, a position that looked incongruous in the burqa. I could see now that she was wearing black leather boots, long ones that disappeared up into her robes. That was incongruous too.

‘I was away,’ she said. ‘Those idiots upstairs did this on their own. Without any instructions from me. They were supposed to be lying low for the time being, but they got wind that the Prime Minister’s brother was staying nearby, all alone at his empty resort, and then with this cyclone clearing the roads . . . Well, you know the rest. It’s very annoying. I had other plans for the postal van and the uniforms.’

‘So like I said, let me go.’

‘You’re certainly a problem to me, I’ll admit that.’ But there wasn’t any hint of impending freedom in her statement. There was only an implication that some problems can simply be disposed of, not solved.

‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘You can’t be an Islamic group. They’re all locked up. They got all of you.’

She shook her head. ‘No one knows we even exist.’

‘But you
are
Muslims?’

‘We are. We’re warriors for Allah.’

‘Warriors? You lot?’

She leant forward again, those pale eyes flaring. ‘Don’t think we won’t kill you. We’ve killed before. Our hands are red with blood.’

‘What use am I to you dead? I assume your men grabbed me so they could bargain with my brother. He’ll want me alive. And unharmed.’

‘Your brother hates you. My men might not know that, but I do.’

And that really did scare me, because it was perfectly true, but I’d been praying that no one else was aware of the fact.

I swallowed drily. ‘I could use some water, you know.’

She considered. ‘Yes . . . I don’t think we need to make any decisions right this minute, and in the meantime we may as well let you live.’ She called out, and I heard the door at the top of the steps open. ‘Bring him some food and water!’

There was a bustle from the upper floor, and then my original three abductors trooped down the stairs carrying bottles of water and sandwiches and guns. They all looked even younger, suddenly, and abashed, avoiding their leader’s glance.

‘Untie him,’ she instructed, ‘but keep a gun on him.’

‘What about the hood?’ one of them asked.

‘Forget it. He’s already seen your stupid faces.’

The boy nodded, going red. In minutes the ropes were off, and I was gulping water gratefully. (The hangover had settled in now, well and truly.) I was sitting against one wall, and the gang watched me from the other side of the room. Three nervous boys with guns pointed my way.

‘They’re certainly a fine-looking team,’ I said to the woman.

‘They’ve made a mistake,’ she corrected. ‘But don’t judge us by these three here. Or by their deceased brother back at the resort. We are a deadly organisation, and we have powerful friends. The most powerful in the world.’