Underground (11 page)

The smile was gone. ‘The foreseeable future, anyway.’

‘What’s the point then?’

‘The point is that until this government is gone, half the damn country has to live in hiding too. So give the self-pity a miss for a moment, okay?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Come on. Our ride should be here soon.’

We followed him up into the house proper. The snooker room must have been a male retreat, because upstairs was a female place, going by all the frills and floral patterns. The owners were waiting in the kitchen. A wizened little old man, and a round old woman, sitting silently over their cups of tea.

‘Our hosts,’ said Harry, as we trooped through. ‘I won’t introduce you.’

The old couple sipped from their cups and ignored us.

Then we were in the living room. Harry went straight to the window and peered through a gap in the curtains. ‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ he told us.

I sat on a plastic-covered couch, stared about at cabinets full of china plates, and at plastic fruit in a bowl on the coffee table, and at faded photos of children and grandchildren, and I wondered about who and what these people were, and why they were willing to help.

Aisha was sitting on the edge of a recliner rocker, colours all clashing violently. I thought about her real name again. Nancy. At least she looked like one now.

I said, ‘What sort of name is Aisha anyway?’

And despite the bob and the make-up, her glance could still be withering. ‘It’s the name of the Prophet’s wife.’

‘Mohammed? His wife?’

‘Actually,’ Harry commented from the window, ‘just one of his wives.’

‘His most important wife,’ Aisha retorted. ‘She helped create Islam itself. After the Prophet’s death, she even led an army against the false fourth caliph. She’s the prime example of how important women are in the faith.’

Harry was nodding. ‘But that’s the problem, isn’t it? She was part of the cause of the whole Sunni/Shiite split. A lot of Muslims hate her. She’s one reason some say women should never be involved in the high matters of Islam.’

Aisha sniffed. ‘They’re wrong.’

I looked at Harry. ‘How do you know all that?’

‘Oh, I’ve met a few Muslims in my time.’ He was still staring through the glass. ‘It’s certainly a controversial name. Especially for an Islamic convert to choose. What was your thinking behind that, I wonder?’

But Aisha only watched him with renewed suspicion.

Then Harry straightened. ‘Here we go.’

I stood up. ‘Now?’

‘Now.’

He led us to the front door, and out into the first open air and sunlight that I’d seen in days. It should have felt wonderful—a big blue sky, a warm breeze with the hint of salt in it, and off in the distance the sparkle of the sea.

Instead, I felt acutely visible, and acutely vulnerable. We were only walking out onto a front lawn in an average small-town street—houses, parked cars, pushbikes in driveways—but
it was an average street in an Australia at war with terror, an Australia nothing like the old one. Every window, every closed curtain—who was hiding behind them, and what could they see? And who did they report to? Everyone knows that it’s more than just the AFP and ASIO and the other security forces these days. There are informers, too. Some paid to do it, some blackmailed, others who simply like to point the finger. Report Anything Suspicious, demand the television advertisements. Anything and anyone. For the sake of freedom, for the sake of democracy. And there were Aisha and me, the two most wanted people of the hour, standing in plain daylight in front of fifty windows, with only our flimsy disguises to protect us. We may as well have let off a skyrocket.

Then it got worse.

An old bus came lumbering up the street. It seemed to be packed with people, they were hanging out the windows. And a big banner was slung from the side. ‘Hervey Bay Patriotic Society.’ With a wheeze of brakes the bus pulled up right in front of us. The door puffed open. And, I swear to God, I could hear the passengers inside singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’.

I glared at Harry. ‘You’re kidding.’

He considered the bus happily. ‘No joke.’

‘The Patriotic Society?!’

‘Fully paid-up members, every single one of them.’

‘But—’

‘It’s cover, you idiot. Now get on board.’

I had a thousand more protests to make, but before I knew it we were in the bus and on our way. It was all heat and sweat inside, people standing in aisles and crammed into overflowing seats, talking, singing, and slapping me and Aisha and Harry on the back like we were the oldest of friends.

I tell you, dear interrogators, I would have felt safer in the hands of the Federal Police. I mean, sure, the Patriots
claim
to be just a society for proud and loyal citizens, but even I know
that they’re really in cahoots with the authorities. It was the Patriots, after all, who were demanding the detention of all Muslims, even before the Canberra bomb. It was the Patriots who lobbied to get the death penalty reinstated as punishment for treason. It was the Patriots who helped run the campaign that introduced conscription. It was the Patriots who forced Christian prayers back into every school in the nation. And it was the Patriots who orchestrated the banning of abortion. ‘Procreation, not immigration!’—that was their motto. (White babies please, not black, brown or yellow.) Even their name is a giveaway. Since when did Australians use a word like ‘patriot’? They’re my brother’s biggest fan club, running dogs and informers one and all. And now we were with a whole busload of them.

Madness. But Harry shepherded Aisha into a miraculously spare seat halfway along the bus, and then ushered me onward, to where another two empty places waited. He took the window seat for himself, and then forced me down. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘This is our best shot to get you through the roadblocks. You and Aisha are just two faces in a crowd now.’

‘But how can you trust these people?’

‘They’re not
real
Patriots,’ he explained, head low to my ear. I noticed that, several seats ahead, Aisha was being similarly instructed by an elderly woman next to her. ‘They’re all members of the Underground. All we did was stack one of the Hervey Bay branches with our own people. Like I said, it’s good cover. Not only does it give us an inside line to what the government’s more radical policy ideas are, it’s also bloody handy for travel. You flash a Patriot card at a roadblock, and half your worries are over. Which reminds me . . .’

He got up and went to the front of the bus. I stared after him. The crowd was chatting and laughing, waving little Australian flags like the good citizens they were supposed to be, and studiously ignoring the fugitives in their midst. Harry came
walking back, paused to hand something to Aisha, then returned to me. He passed over a card that was red, white and blue.

‘Your membership,’ he said. ‘Put it in your wallet.’

I tucked it away, then waved a hand at all the people on the bus. ‘Just how many of you are there in the Underground?’

‘Around the country, thousands. But this is nearly the whole Hervey Bay contingent, right here. And it’s risky, having us all on the one bus. But this way the police at the roadblocks will be too busy vetting everyone else to be looking closely at individual faces like yours. More to the point, travel is restricted in the area right now. We’d have no chance getting anywhere as just average people. But there’s a big Patriot rally going on in Brisbane as we speak, and no one fucks with the Patriots, so a group like this will be let through.’ He glanced around at the crowd, smiled wanly. ‘You know, you owe these people, big time. Not only are they risking their lives for you and Aisha, they’ll actually have to attend the rally. Three whole days of it. And those things are like bloody Nuremberg.’

He fell silent. The bus had laboured through the back streets of Hervey Bay, and was now turning onto the main road out of town. There weren’t many people about—and there wouldn’t be, if travel was restricted—but otherwise it looked like the normal world out there. Petrol stations. Fast food restaurants. But then the bus began to slow. Harry tensed beside me.

‘First checkpoint,’ he said. ‘Just go along with everyone else and don’t do a damn thing to draw attention to yourself.’

Through the window I saw flashing lights, police cars, army vehicles, and black and yellow barricades. Then the brakes squealed as the bus came to a stop.

And I could hear the sniffer dogs barking.

Roadblocks. Checkpoints. Citizenship Verification Stations, to quote an official title. Or another—Designated Freedom Access Points. Call them what you will, we’ve all had to deal with them these last years, in ever-increasing numbers. This one, however, was far bigger than most—not just your half-platoon of bored army conscripts with stop signs and a few barriers. The army was there, sure enough, but I could also see AFP cars, Department of Citizenship vans, and several other vehicles that were unmarked but obviously secret service of some kind. The authorities really weren’t kidding around in their search for Aisha and me.

Uniformed men advanced on the bus from every direction, some already checking under the chassis with mirrors, others opening the luggage compartments, and others again leading the sniffer dogs about. But the weirdest thing was that, when the
doors opened and the first inspectors climbed aboard, the whole bus broke into polite applause.

Hidden away at the back, I glanced questioningly at Harry.

He was clapping too. ‘Remember, we’re all Patriots here. We approve of the roadblocks. They keep us safe from terrorists. We think the inspectors are heroes.’

I nodded. It made sense . . . although it took some effort getting my head around the logic. Still, to give the inspectors their due, they weren’t disarmed by the reception. Their faces remained blank as they waved away the applause.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the leader called. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please. This is a federal checkpoint. Have your Australia Safe cards at the ready.’

He was in a suit, not a uniform, and his two colleagues were the same. Of course, under current law, no official is required to identify himself, so it was impossible to know which body these men represented precisely. But they had the look of Department of Citizenship to me—and that was scary. The AFP might spy on our every move, and the military might have taken over our streets, but Citizenship (or Immigration, as they used to be called) are the ones who, ever since September 11 and its aftermath, have been making people disappear.

The reception for the inspectors died away to a hum, and a general digging into pockets and handbags for personal papers began. I didn’t know where to look. Should I pretend to be talking to Harry? Should I be staring vacantly out the window? Should I be smiling at the Citizenship men? Nothing felt right, and my face had turned into a hot heavy mask.

‘Relax,’ Harry was whispering through an easy smile. ‘They’re not going to pay you any special attention. Trust me.’

And it did all seem very congenial up there at the front. People were cheerfully handing over identity cards, yarning and grinning. The three inspectors were staring at photos and comparing them to faces, taking thumbprints on their little
computer scanners and running the results . . . But had their demeanour softened? Was it possible to be surrounded by so much goodwill without defrosting a
little
?

Then I was staring at the back of Aisha’s head as the first inspector reached her. I could feel that Harry—despite the fact that he was now chatting about fishing with the man sitting just in front of us—was watching her too. This was her first encounter with the authorities since her capture by the OU, and who really knew what her plans were? She could betray us all with a word, yet when the inspector put out his hand, she passed over her papers and pressed her thumb on the scanner. Then, while the man studied the screen—amazement of amazement—she turned blithely to the old woman next to her, said something and laughed. Laughter! From Aisha! I nearly fell out of my seat. And the inspector, with that curt nod that all secret police use when they’re satisfied with something, from the Gestapo on down, handed her papers back and moved on.

Closer to me now. I told myself there was nothing to fear. The OU sympathiser who’d created our new papers must be damn good if Aisha had got through, thumb print and all. We were safely in the system. So the only way we were going to get caught was by a direct identification. And they hadn’t recognised Aisha, so they wouldn’t recognise me. I had to believe that, and stay cool. Only what the hell was my assumed name again? What was my job? Where on earth was I born and raised and how many generations could I boast?

The inspector was in front of me, and I offered up my Australia Safe card.

Did the bus fall silent? It couldn’t have, I know, but it was silent in my head. I thumbed the scanner and he stared at the computer screen. Then at me. Then at the screen. And then, long and straight it seemed, at me again.

‘What happened to your nose?’ he asked.

‘Football injury,’ I heard myself say, through a mouth stuffed with cottonwool. ‘I was a ruckman. Years ago.’

He frowned. ‘It looks recent.’

I opened my mouth, but nothing else came. He knew I was lying. Of course he knew. His gaze was hardening. The farce was over already.

‘Oh
fuck
!’ It was Harry, next to me, slapping his forehead in disgust as he stared at his own papers. ‘Goddamn, I’m an idiot. Officer? Officer?’

The eyes flicked away. ‘What?’

A distressed Harry was waving his identity card. ‘I’ve only just realised. This ID has expired. It’s a month out of date. Jesus, I forgot all about it.’

Annoyed, the inspector grabbed the card. ‘That’s an offence.’

‘I know. I can’t believe I let it happen.’

‘Didn’t you get the letter advising you to renew?’

‘Sure. I think so. It’s probably stuck to the fridge right now. How much trouble is this going to land me in?’

The inspector didn’t answer right away, busy reading Harry’s thumb print. Beneath Harry’s card, he still held mine. Information flashed up on his little screen, and he punched some keys, got more information, then grunted. ‘Well, you check out. But I still don’t think I can let you pass with this.’