Underground (26 page)

And then, as the street ran down towards the city, I saw ahead of us the south wall of the ghetto. It was a rigid barrier of upright concrete slabs, maybe three times man-height, topped with barbed wire, the inner side of the wall festooned with graffiti. There were two guard towers visible, about a hundred
yards apart, and I could see men up there—soldiers or police, I couldn’t remember right then who was responsible for the precincts. But even as shadows they did not appear threatening, they were just shapes leaning on railings, seeming to stare out in indifference. And amidst the throng, still far away from them, I had no fear of being seen.

A yelling voice caught my attention. It came from an old man standing outside a brightly lit shop. He was bearded and dark and dressed in some sort of traditional Middle Eastern garb, and was declaiming to his audience in bad, heavily accented English. A kind of street preacher, I decided, reminded of the Christian ministers who always ranted and raved on the steps of Flinders Street Station. I couldn’t really catch what he was saying, only that he was angry, and that the shop behind him was the source of his anger. It was a music and video store—and the music pulsing from inside was unmistakably modern. Young folk were coming and going through the door, and the preacher glared at them one by one, pointing and shaking and promising—so it sounded—all kinds of eternal damnation.

The Essendon boy was watching me with a knowing expression. ‘He’s here every night. He thinks dance music comes straight from Satan. They find it the toughest in here, the old hardliners. They can’t believe that, seeing we’re all Muslims in the ghetto, we haven’t brought in shari’a law yet.’

‘Are there many like him around? Extremists?’

He didn’t seem to like the word. ‘Not so many. How could there be? Anyone like that the government had marked down years ago. They’re in the high security centres now, or they’re dead. They’re not in places like this.’

‘So, it’s mostly just the average Muslims left?’

‘I dunno. What’s “mostly”? What’s “average”? We’ve got about fifty nationalities in here, and about twenty different languages. We’ve got Shiites and Sunnis. We’ve got all five major legal schools. We’ve got a dozen mosques and just as
many colleges, all with different imams. We’ve got conservatives and moderates and liberals and everything in between. It’s a mess, really. The only thing anyone in here agrees on is that God is great, and that your brother is a total dickhead. And you could probably find people to argue even that.’

‘So what are
you
?’

He thought, and then shook his head. ‘I’m sick of this, that’s all I am. It’s so stupid. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of these people are completely harmless. The government knows that. They could open all the ghettos tomorrow and not a thing would change. It’s all just for show.’

‘You think it’ll ever happen? Opening the ghettos?’

‘Why not? This isn’t the way Australia is meant to be. The rest of the country just let itself be taken in by a prick of a Prime Minister. People will wake up. That’s why I’m in the Underground. Overthrow this joke of a government and get a proper one in, and half the problem would be solved.’

I wasn’t convinced. ‘What about Canberra? I don’t think anyone outside is going to be forgiving or forgetting that event any time soon.’

He frowned. ‘That was a fuck-up, I won’t argue. I knew we were stuffed when that mushroom cloud went up.’ He stared about in perplexity at his fellow inmates. ‘But it’s the weirdest thing. I’m not one of those conspiracy idiots who think that the West is behind everything bad. I know it had to be fanatics from our side that did it. But I’ve met a few of the militants left in here. I’ve talked to them. And hey, they loved the bomb. They thought it was great. But they don’t have any idea who actually did it. It wasn’t any of their own people.’

I glanced back at Aisha. ‘She says her people did it.’

He followed my eyes, startled. ‘Her lot?’

‘It might not be true. Harry doesn’t believe her. But either way, it all goes back to Islam in the end. And that’s what scares
the rest of the country. As long as cells like hers remain, they’ll never let you out of here.’

‘Maybe,’ he said, disheartened.

We walked on. A thudding sound rose in the air, and a helicopter hove into view over the wall, flying north along Sydney Road. The crowd barely paused to acknowledge it, but a few eyes turned up, cold and disapproving. A spotlight beam leapt down from the aircraft, probing the street, but it seemed almost disinterested as it flicked about. There was nothing to be seen anyway. Except people. Life. Normality.

The Essendon boy spoke again. ‘I’ll tell you this, though, that girl of yours is a puzzle. Okay, so she’s supposed to be some sort of Islamic activist. But I’ve been listening to her this afternoon. And like I said, I’ve met militants before. They’re crazy as loons, no mistake, but they
are
Muslims. They’ve warped it and twisted it into something else entirely, and what they do is far more political than religious, but at least you can recognise their starting point.’ He shook his head. ‘But that chick there . . . I don’t have the remotest clue what she’s on about.’

The meeting took place in a church hall.

Of course, the church to which the hall was attached—St Ambrose’s Catholic Church on Sydney Road—had been abandoned by its parishioners when the ghetto walls went up. It had since been converted into a mosque. My Essendon friend gave me a look through the doors as we passed by. The pews were all gone, along with the altar, as well as any statues of Jesus or Mary—and the stained-glass windows were hidden by wall hangings that bore verses from the Koran.

‘We haven’t done any permanent damage, though,’ he said. ‘Like, we haven’t removed the crucifixes from the roof.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s just polite. The Catholics will be wanting this place back one day.’

‘Ah,’ I said.

One happy day when the ghetto was thrown open, he meant. And it was good to see him optimistic again, even if history
would suggest that ghettos didn’t often get thrown open—usually they just got liquidated.

But I let it go. We moved around to the rear of the church and entered the hall. And church halls, let’s face it, are never inspiring places. The echoing wooden floors, the peeling paint, the dusty windows, the memory of a thousand dreary functions that have taken place in years previous. This one was no different. As for the High Council of the Australian Underground—well, at a glance, they looked for all the world like a meeting of some church fete cake-stall committee. There were about twenty men and women waiting there for us, perched on plastic chairs arranged in a circle, sipping tea and coffee from old chipped cups. They could have been anyone. It was only on closer inspection, when their faces turned as we entered . . .

But I don’t really need to go into names here, do I, interrogators? I mean, you
know
, don’t you? Harry was there, of course. It was the others, however, that surprised me. The faces I recognised. The famous investigative journalist. The famous football coach. The famous film director. I mean, I hadn’t expected celebrities. Not to mention the High Court judge, or the three serving senators from the emasculated Federal Parliament—two from the Labor side, and a Green. And even the people that I’d never seen before—they weren’t just your average street-level resistance fighters. They were older, sober figures, most of them in suits, as if they’d come to the ghetto straight from their work in the high levels of state bureaucracy, or in the senior financial realms, or in the law.

This was no bake sale committee. These people represented money and influence. And that was a shock. I suppose I’d got used to the idea of the Underground being a collection of anonymous nobodies. Like Harry. Like the wiry old truck driver. Like Staff Sergeant Daphne. Like the bus full of fake Patriots back in Hervey Bay. Small folk—in useful positions,
perhaps, but basically just angry individuals thumbing their noses at the authorities. It had never occurred to me that the Underground would include members of the establishment. Or that they might represent—in embryonic form, at least—an actual alternative national government.

That awed me a little. As did their expressions, as they studied Aisha and me. Because there was no doubt about the hostility in their eyes.

Harry indicated seats waiting for us.

‘I won’t make any introductions,’ he said. ‘Those you don’t know, it’s better they stay that way.’

I looked around at the council. ‘So what have I missed?’

Harry didn’t smile. ‘I’ve been filling everyone in on our adventures so far. And catching up on other developments.’

‘There’s bad news?’

‘There’s no good news.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘You two happened,’ said a man from across the room. He was no one I recognised, but he had gaunt gloomy features, and the look of academia about him. ‘Ever since you first came into our hands, the Federal Police have launched an all-out attack on the Underground. Following pretty much in your wake, as it happens. The Patriot cell in Hervey Bay has been arrested. Our sympathisers in the army are under investigation because of that whole debacle with the refugees. Our contacts in Citizenship have disappeared. And our other networks are in trouble right across the board. Raids, arrests, ambushes, cell after cell going down. It’s like we stirred up a hornets’ nest out there. All for the sake of keeping you two alive.’

‘They’re hoping,’ said Harry, fixing me with hollow eyes, ‘that whatever it is you know, it was worth it.’

I swallowed, spoke to the circle. ‘I’ve told Harry all along, I don’t know anything. If I did, I’d help. I’ve got no reason not to. I’m no friend of my brother’s government.’

‘We don’t mean you,’ the man across the room replied. ‘We mean her.’

The whole room was staring at Aisha.

My heart fell. One young girl. And a lunatic at that. If all their hopes were pinned on her, then I couldn’t see what chance any of us had.

Aisha herself inflated with the attention. ‘I have nothing to say to this council.’

‘You claim to support a Muslim cause?’ the man across the room asked.

‘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.’