Prohibited Zone (8 page)

‘Did he escape from Woomera?'

‘We know quite a bit about you, West,' said Hindmarsh, as if I hadn't spoken. ‘Thirty-two years old, former Australian Football League star, mining engineer at Olympic Dam.' He was still staring at the photo as though he was talking to it. Then he looked up. ‘That's all correct, right?'

‘I wasn't really a star,' I said modestly.

‘Everyone knows you,' said Hindmarsh. ‘You've got a good job, good prospects. You wouldn't want to jeopardise that. Do you know that assisting an escaped detainee is a criminal offence?'

‘No doubt.'

‘Punishable by lengthy jail terms.' He put the photo back in his pocket. ‘You're not married, are you?'

I shook my head.

‘Why is that?'

‘No particular reason.'

‘Not a pillow biter, are you?'

‘No. Not that it's any business of yours.'

He made a show of looking at his notes. ‘Ah, that's right. You've got a woman in Adelaide, haven't you, who you visit every few weeks. Bored housewife. And you sleep around a bit up in Roxby, too, I believe.'

‘That satellite of yours
is
bloody good.'

He killed his cigarette on the laminated surface of the table. ‘You're a smart-arse, aren't you?'

‘None of this is any of your business.'

He exhaled his last lungful of smoke. ‘Everything is my business.'

I laughed. It sounded tinny in the tiny room. Hindmarsh looked as if he was weighing something in his mind. It seemed to weigh a lot. The cigarette butt was lying like a plane wreck on the table, still smoking.

‘You must not divulge to anyone what I am about to tell you,' he said. ‘It
will
be covered by the Official Secrets Act, or more accurately by the Commonwealth Crimes Act, and therefore if you repeat this information outside this room you will be prosecuted.'

‘I'd rather not hear it, then.'

‘Nevertheless, it is in the national interest that I tell you.' He took the photo from his pocket again and threw it on the table, face up. ‘His name is Amir Ali Khan. He is a suspected radical Islamic terrorist. We know that he trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and we are almost certain that he knows bin Laden himself. Al-Qaeda, as you know, likes to blow people up. Have you ever seen the aftermath of a bomb site, West? I have. A few. It isn't pleasant. Pieces of flesh all over the place. Sometimes you can even tell what they used to be. Yesterday this man' – he stabbed the photo with his finger – ‘escaped from the Woomera Detention Centre. We believe he is a major threat to national security.'

‘Not to mention to your job.'

Tarrant shifted in his seat.

‘The country has just gone on extreme terror alert, West,' said Hindmarsh. ‘You seem to think this is funny. When a bomb goes off in the Sydney CBD, tell me it's still funny. Maybe you would like to help piece together the bodies.'

‘If this guy is a fair-dinkum terrorist I hope you catch him,' I said. ‘But I don't know him and I haven't met him. I still don't see why this is my business.'

‘He is a close associate, guardian and probably fuck interest of Saira Abdiani.' The room was hot and the smell of sweat was starting to dominate over the smell of smoke. Hindmarsh was unpleasantly close to me. He had developed a sheen; I probably had, too. ‘Maybe you see the point now.'

I had come this far with the lie. I didn't like Hindmarsh. He didn't like me. I lied again.

‘No, I don't see the point, since I don't know Saira Abdiani or whatever her name is. If you knew her boyfriend was al-Qaeda, why didn't you arrest him and send him to Guantanamo Bay or one of those US prisons that don't exist? Why leave him in a refugee detention centre?'

‘If you help this woman you're committing a criminal act,' he repeated. ‘You could even be committing treason, the penalty for which is life imprisonment. Aiding and abetting terrorists – how does that sound?'

‘If I see her I'll give you a call.'

‘You do that.' He handed me a card with his name and a phone number on it.

‘Officer of the Commonwealth of Australia,' I read aloud. ‘Sounds self-important.'

‘You might be surprised at what I am authorised to do.'

‘For example?'

‘Shoving a hot iron up your fucking arse if I need to. For
example
.' Intense heat was emanating from his red, sweating face. ‘You know something? Smug bastards like you really
piss
me off
. We are talking about a major threat to national security and an al-Qaeda operative running around loose. Thousands of lives could be at risk, and you sit there with a vacant smirk on your face and lie to me. You cock.' One of his eyelids began twitching. He stood abruptly and walked behind me. I made the mistake of not keeping my eyes on him. Instead I looked at Tarrant.

‘I've had enough . . .' It was as far as I got before Hindmarsh king hit me.

He hit me just above the left ear, I think with a back swing of his right elbow, hard enough to knock me to the floor. It took a few seconds to work out what had happened. My head was humming what might have been a C sharp; you could have tuned a guitar on it. Above the hum I heard the door open and close. I felt the side of my head. A lump the size and consistency of half a ripe mango had appeared there. I sat up. Tarrant was still sitting where I'd left him, his face still devoid of expression. Hindmarsh was gone.

‘Is
that
covered by the Crimes Act?'

‘The guy's on edge. We all are.'

Tarrant looked as on edge as a clump of spinifex. And not nearly as keen.

‘Maybe I should make a complaint,' I said.

‘You'd be struggling to prove anything without witnesses,' he replied. ‘But go ahead. We should get around to investigating it in a year or so.'

‘You're not a witness?'

‘Not until we put a couple of stray terrorists behind bars.'

‘So you believe this guy Amir is al-Qaeda?'

‘I believe we'd better find him and ask him.'

He asked me where I would be staying in Adelaide in case he wanted to contact me, and I gave him my brother's address. Then he showed me the door, which I negotiated like a drunk.

7

M
Y HEAD WAS STILL HURTING
when we climbed into the ute, but at least the humming had stopped and Kara was quiet for a change. I backed out and headed down Commercial Road towards the highway. I turned right onto the Stuart and drove along the causeway across Bird Lake, stepping up the speed from sixty to eighty and then to a hundred and ten as we passed the prison and left town. To the right, the state's largest power station stood flush against the gulf, spewing steam and coal dust into the air; the north wind was blowing it all to Adelaide. We crossed the railway line that fed the power station with outback coal.

‘Have fun in there?' I asked.

‘Not exactly.'

‘Who did the questioning?'

‘An Adelaide cop called Pinchbeck and a federal cop whose name I forget. There was another guy, too, the guy you thought was CIA, but he didn't say anything.'

‘I don't suppose you said much, either?'

‘Not much. Nothing important. They said they knew we'd picked up Saira, although how they knew I don't know. I just denied it. I hope you did, too.'

‘Are you going to tell me what all this is about?'

‘I already told you.'

‘I don't think you've told me everything.'

‘For example?'

I snorted. ‘That pretty little Saira is the consort of a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist. For example.'

‘Oh, that.' I waited for her to elaborate but she was silent, staring diffusely at the highway ahead. I couldn't tell whether she was dreaming up a story to tell me or deciding how much of the truth to let out, or if she had her mind on something else altogether.

‘I think I have a right to know,' I said.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘I said I think I have a right to know. I've lied to police, for Christ's sake. I could go to jail for that. I even took a king hit for you. Can you see the bruise?' I took my hand off the wheel to touch the lump on my head. She leant across and peered at it, parting my hair with reasonably gentle fingers to get a better view.

‘That's a beauty,' she said. ‘Who did it?'

‘An arsehole called Hindmarsh. The guy at Spuds you thought was ASIO.'

‘Was he?'

‘He didn't say. I assume so.'

She finished her inspection. ‘You should put some ice on it,' she said, yawning. The road stretched out ahead, the traffic heavier now that we were south of Port Augusta, which meant we passed an oncoming vehicle about every minute or so. We had a strong tailwind but I kept to the speed limit; I didn't want to see any more cops today. To the west, Spencer Gulf was a shimmering blue. To the east, a long, jagged chain of hills undulated against the horizon.

‘Is he a terrorist?' I asked.

‘I doubt it,' she said. ‘She's not his consort, either. That's such an old-fashioned word, anyway. He looks after her. Has done since she was a little girl. He was the one who helped her escape Afghanistan.'

‘How do you know he isn't also screwing her?'

‘Because he isn't. Trust me on that.'

‘Why not? I've trusted you on everything else so far, despite having no reason to trust you at all.'

‘She's really quite an extraordinary young woman, you know.'

‘Why?'

‘You wouldn't believe what she's gone through. She's incredibly resilient, incredibly strong.'

I moved into the right lane to overtake a Commodore towing a caravan with a Victorian number plate – the grey nomads from last night, probably heading home. No doubt their friends and family were eagerly awaiting the PowerPoint evenings.

‘She needed to be,' said Kara. ‘Strong, I mean. You wouldn't believe what goes on in the detention centre. You know there are women there who are sewing their lips together? I saw one ten-year-old boy with cuts and bruises all over his face. His mother told me he had been headbutting a door jamb. I've seen kids eating rocks and their own shit. Every child has mental problems. Saira's been there nearly two years, with no end in sight.'

‘So she decided to speed up the process.'

‘Can you blame her? When the Minister of Fucking Immigration sits on his fat arse in Canberra and says that the detainees might all be murderers and terrorists? And when more atrocities are committed inside their so-fucking-called safe haven?'

‘I suppose not.' I was feeling hot. I turned up the power on the air conditioner and took a swig of water from my bottle in the central console. I offered some to her but she ignored it. ‘What atrocities?'

‘I'll tell you later.'

‘No, tell me now.'

‘No.'

We bypassed Port Pirie and moved inland from the gulf. Soon we had bypassed Crystal Brook as well. The land was flat and barren; the only features were salt lakes and salt pans, where the bitterness of the earth concentrates. It was sheep-grazing country, but only just. If you raked all the friable soil on one of those hundred-hectare paddocks into a heap you'd barely have enough to fill a garden pot. The occasional farmhouse was still occupied, but many had been abandoned, their limestone walls crumbling. Good luck earning a living out here. In the 1860s a surveyor called George Goyder had drawn a line across the state that ran roughly east to west through Crystal Brook. Don't bother sowing crops north of it, he told farmers, because the rainfall is too low. But most of them had to find out the hard way.

‘So did you orchestrate the whole thing?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Did you stage the protest to help her escape?'

‘No comment.'

I glanced her way; she had a determined profile and a small mole on her cheek I hadn't noticed before. I wondered how much of yesterday had been planned, including her encounter with me.

‘Poor bastards,' I said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean that you've given them all false hope. You incite them to escape, and then what? They'll have a miserable time on the run, hiding in culverts, eating ants and drinking their own piss. You might not have noticed but it's summer. It's hot out here. Not a good time to be wandering around lost. And if they don't die they'll be recaptured and put in prison and have bugger-all chance of ever getting a visa. And they'll find out that people like you have gone and found other things to do.'

‘Are you always such a cynic?'

‘Are you always so sanctimonious?'

For twenty minutes the conversation dried up, like a salt lake. We approached Snowtown, where it probably hadn't snowed for ten million years.

‘Wasn't Snowtown where –'

‘Yes. It's renowned for its novel method of storing human remains.'

A few years ago, eight bodies had been discovered rotting inside plastic barrels, which were stored in a disused bank vault in Snowtown. The victims had been tortured and murdered by four men, who had done it partly for the pensions of the victims and partly for the sheer fun of it. In total they'd killed at least eleven people, some of whom had been stored elsewhere. Most of the murders had been committed in Adelaide and the victims moved to Snowtown for safekeeping.

We passed a large sign advertising the no-doubt luxurious Snowtown accommodation. ‘Feeling tired?' it said. Someone had scratched underneath: ‘Of life?' We crossed the railway line and continued south past salty Lake Bumbunga through the hamlets of Lochiel and Nantawarra.

She pulled out a small penknife from her satchel and started peeling her mango. Using the tip of the blade she etched longitudinal lines down its full length and then pulled three segments back, revealing the pale orange flesh beneath. Her fingers were nimble and efficient. She offered me a slice and, when I nodded, popped it into my mouth.