The Unknown Terrorist

by Richard Flanagan

  It was an old person’s mobile, a clunky, outdated Nokia 3315. Before she even realised what she was doing, the Doll had circled back around, leant slightly in to the woman’s table and, with a movement that surprised her with its deftness, placed a hundred-dollar bill under the stranger’s coffee cup and scooped up her mobile phone. And with that she was walking out of the food court and heading to an exit. As she scurried along she was already dialling a number on the stolen phone.

  “Hello,” said a voice.

  “Wilder?”

  “Oh Jesus, Gina. Are you crazy? Have you seen the news? Are you ringing on your phone?”

  “Wilder,” said the Doll, and she could hear that her own voice was trembling, “have you still got your scissors?”

  45

  The Doll resolved first to head back to her home. If the police had it staked out, she would see them—if they didn’t she would go in, get her cash out before it was too late, quickly grab a few clothes and then clear out to Wilder’s. The cash!—that was what would get her out of this mess, thought the Doll.

  Only two hours before, with Moretti’s money added to what was left from the last two days, she had had eleven one hundred-dollar notes plus change. But the sunglasses had set her back five hundred dollars, and then after leaving the hundred for the phone, the Doll had just four hundred dollars and some change left in her wallet. It was nothing.

  With her cash back at her flat there was freedom, possibilities, hope. And just thinking about all her money there, imagining the feel of those hundred-dollar notes on her body and her body once more relaxed and comfortable beneath them, made the Doll feel better. She didn’t know what she was going to do with the money, but she knew money could buy a lot of things, and the more money, the more you could buy: time, space, people. But without the money she would be lost.

  Feeling she needed to walk, the Doll headed through the city, up William Street, feeling safe in the great onrush of traffic, of crowds looking through and beyond her, reassuring her that she was still unknown.

  It was a long, hot walk, but she didn’t mind. It kept her panic at bay; it made her feel she was doing something, that she was getting somewhere. Her mind clearer, it occurred to the Doll that she still had Tariq’s number and a phone that couldn’t be traced to her. Maybe Tariq felt as bad and as scared as she did. Maybe Tariq knew whatever it was you needed to know at such a time. Maybe Tariq had an idea, a plan.

  Suddenly excited, the Doll searched through her Gucci handbag until she found the crumpled takeaway restaurant menu with the green inked number. ‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘Tariq will know what we should do.’ And in the Doll’s mind it was now not her alone, but her and Tariq, and when she thought about Tariq, she realised what a remarkable and strong man he was, and how together they might be able to sort something out. If he could, she was sure he would find her and help her, and together they might get themselves out of this awful mess. But when she found cover in the shadows of a narrow side street and called, there was again no answer, only the same stupid American voice welcoming her to voicemail.

  She hung up and was making her way along the narrow street, when she heard noises up ahead and came upon a woman squatting in the deep black shadow of a driveway, back against green wheelie bins, knickers around her ankles, a puddle beneath her. Three young boys with skateboards were laughing happily, running in and out of the darkness, yelling at her and giggling.

  “You heap of stinking shit!”

  “You old scrag! Go and piss somewhere else.”

  “Lick it up, Mum!”

  The Doll looked at her watch: she was meant to be at work in two hours. She hurried past, so caught up in her own problems she scarcely noticed the old woman. It was dawning on her that if she was too scared to go to the cops, it would be far too dangerous for her to go to work. And this thought made her furious. How was she to make the money she needed to live? How was she to get the cash she would need for her mortgage repayments? She told herself that perhaps she would still go to the cops when she felt ready, so why not go to work? But in her heart she knew that this was lying to herself. She would never go to the cops now, and she would not be going back to dance. And these thoughts made her far angrier than anything else.

  Once more, her mind returned to Tariq, who by never answering his phone somehow seemed to grow in her mind as the person who could help her out of her ever worsening situation. And the more she kept on ringing him, and the more she heard only his infuriating American voicemail message, the more she realised she needed to speak to him and the more she understood his ongoing silence meant she must turn to him, that she must find him: fate had brought them together, and only together could they alter fate.

  And so as the Doll continued making her way to Darlinghurst, she sought small refuges and nooks where she could ring Tariq’s phone, and each pick-up by his voicemail only confirmed in her own mind the urgent necessity of finding him. And then the Doll would step back out of the shadows with their dead rats and syringes and leaking black plastic bags and resume walking along the sticky bitumen pavements, past the skips with the ice addicts unravelling their minds in their meticulous search of junk, and the Doll began wondering if she was any less deluded than they in her own hunt.

  Still she kept on walking and dialling. After a good half-hour she had almost reached her flat when yet again she took cover to try once more, this time in the alleyway in which the blue Toyota Corolla was still parked, still covered in tickets, its windows now all smashed.

  The alleyway was particularly muggy and there was a bad smell, as if a dead animal were rotting in its shadows. As she reached into her handbag and found the phone, the Doll fanned her face in a pointless attempt to be rid of the stench and the heat. Fumbling around for the Nokia 3315, the Doll realised why Tariq wasn’t answering. It was because she had been ringing from the stolen phone that he hadn’t recognised the number and so ignored her calls. She paused, then grabbed her own phone. If using it was what it took to make contact, she would run the risk. She switched it on, ignoring the missed calls and messages. She dialled, and as she waited for an answer she heard something nearby. It was muffled, at once distant and close, but familiar. Then she recognised the sound. It was Chopin’s Nocturne in F Minor.

  She looked around. There was nothing save walls, some garbage, and the Toyota Corolla. It was a good omen, though, she thought, her thinking of Tariq and hearing Chopin. It meant something was meant to be. The Chopin stopped playing. In her ear the Doll heard the usual voicemail message. She hung up.

  Something that was not a thought nor an idea, but a need without form, an awareness of a desire that had to be fulfilled, came into the Doll’s mind. She took a few tentative steps deeper into the alley, then slid into the small, stinking space between a dark brick wall and the blue Corolla.

  She flicked sweat off her cheek with a finger. With her back to the wall, she redialled Tariq’s number. She didn’t bother raising the phone to her ear. Even with the phone at her waist she could hear the dial tone. Again, from somewhere now closer and a little louder, Chopin’s Nocturne in F Minor began playing.

  As the Doll edged further down the alley, the stench grew worse, and then the music stopped. Down by her waist the voicemail message began. The air was now so bad that for a moment she thought she might vomit. She concentrated on adjusting her vision to the darkness. Her eyes fixed on the car, she hung up without looking at the phone, counted a few beats, and then hit redial. For the third time there were a few seconds of nothing. She rubbed her damp cheek with the phone. She had just noticed that the Corolla’s boot wasn’t properly closed when the ringing tone and the Chopin began simultaneously.

  The Doll slowly stretched out her arm. With the back of the phone she lifted the boot up. A swarm of blowflies rose with it, accompanied by the Chopin, now clear and loud. She moved closer. Just as she glimpsed inside the boot, the full force of the stench hit her. She jerked backwards as if she had been punched. The boot lid dr
opped and then bounced slightly back up. But in that fraction of a second the Doll had seen everything, including the stainless-steel tip of his prized Nokia protruding from his trouser pocket.

  46

  After some time she stepped back, raised the boot lid again and looked inside for a good minute. Tariq’s corpse lay curled up in the boot, clad in the same clothes in which she had met him only two nights before.

  She tried to wave the blowflies away from his face, but her hand passed through the vibrating black cloud as through water. Tariq’s face was harrowed, a husk. His cheeks were hollow and sunken, like an old man’s, as though something had been pulled out. There was a big scab of dried blood on his forehead. It had a tail that ran down the side of his face onto the boot floor where it formed a coagulated puddle that in the darkness glistened dully like wet bitumen.

  The Doll smiled as she had taught herself to smile when things were unpleasant and she didn’t want anyone to know what she was feeling. She forced herself to hold her smile as she looked through the blowflies at his still-open eyes that she wished were not open, at his slightly swollen lips, at the whiteness of his skin that did not seem that of an adult but of a child, a beautiful child sleeping soundly after the longest of days.

  The Bulgari Ipno was gone from his left wrist. But it was his right hand lying open and outstretched across his belly that undid her. Those gentle fingers that she could still feel in her and in her mouth were now oddly stiff and frightening.

  She fell to her knees, hands on the boot sill, and vomited what little she had in her stomach. She knelt in the filth and the stench and the wet heat of the alleyway, head dangling between her outstretched arms, dribbling strings of green bile, trying to get the sensation of his fingers out of her mouth.

  Somewhat unsteadily, she got to her feet, shuffled back between the car and the wall, and walked out of the alley. On the street the full white glare of the day hit her like a spotlight in the club. She felt dazzled. It felt like a punch and she had to take a half-step backwards to get her balance. Her phone rang, she switched it off. It was difficult to breathe the oven-like air. Her mouth still tasted foully of bile; her eyes were still full of blood, there was blood everywhere; the world seemed to need it, thrive on it; up and down the street people seemed to have trouble seeing and breathing, their eyes and throats were so full of it. She would not go to her flat now. She could get the money later, sometime soon. But for now, she felt too frightened and needed to get away. She swallowed another Valium 5. Not having any water, she sucked on her fingers to force the tablet down.

  After a time, it was all good.

  She raised her head slightly, as if she were about to start another show on the table, gave herself over to the sense of oblivion that bright light always brought out in her, and turned away from her apartment block. She caught a train from the Cross to Redfern. There were cops with guns everywhere in the train stations; their eyes darted back and forth, she could smell the apprehension. But the Doll felt momentarily without fear. She expected them to shoot her at any moment and part of her hoped they now would and part of her no longer cared if they did.

  47

  Wilder said nothing when she opened the door and saw the Doll. She hustled her in as quickly as possible and then slammed the door shut.

  Inside, Wilder’s home was as ever: Max’s toys everywhere, a chalkboard, the mess of a family, telly rumbling on in the background. Only Wilder was changed. There was no gin, neither Tanqueray nor UDL. Nor were there any of Wilder’s interminable stories about herself that the Doll listened to as others do talkback radio.

  “He’s at a mate’s,” was all Wilder said when the Doll looked around for Max. Neither knew what to say next.

  Wilder finally came out with it.

  “Look,” she said, “I can do something with your hair, but wouldn’t it be better to turn yourself in before this shit gets any worse?”

  The Doll said nothing.

  “I just don’t get it,” said Wilder. “It’s a fuckup, sure, but in the end it’ll be clear that you’re innocent. Why won’t you trust them?”

  But the Doll was staring at the tv, where a politician was talking, with a banner running across the bottom of the screen declaring TERRORISTS STILL ON RUN. SYDNEY ON HIGH ALERT. He was a large man who had slightly narrowed his eyes, as if he were trying to read an eyesight chart but was having trouble with the finer lines.

  “As leader of the Opposition,” an invisible interviewer was now saying, “what do you say to government claims that your party is soft on terror?”

  The politician leant slightly forward, as if trying to focus better on that tantalising, elusive eyesight chart.

  “Let me just say this: we are not going soft.” He made an emphatic movement with his hand. “Terrorists are not Australians. Australians are decent people. Let me just say also that we welcome calls to change the law to strip any Australian citizen of their citizenship, whether they be native born or naturalised, if they are involved in anti-Australian activities. Either you are with Australia or you are no longer Australian and have lost your right to the rights of other citizens.”

  “My God,” said Wilder, then swung to another station where a current affairs show anchor was talking.

  “Does your government have a shoot-to-kill policy?” said the anchor, and the screen cut to the prime minister who, Wilder realised, was being interviewed.

  “We have an appropriate policy which—” The prime minister never got to finish, for Wilder had already changed stations again. But on the next channel the same armed police were surrounding Tariq’s apartment building.

  “This is insane,” whispered Wilder, once more pointing the remote at the tv with the intention of switching it off, but the Doll pulled her arm down.

  “Let it play,” she said. “I have to watch.”

  And so standing together they watched the same footage run again—the same bomb in the same kid’s backpack; the same bad photograph of the same bearded man in Arabic-looking dress; the same slow-motion grainy images of Tariq and the Doll hugging each other. The repetitive images clicking over filled the tv like loose change filling an empty pokie.

  The Twin Towers fell again; the same children’s bodies were laid out once more in Beslan; the same man or woman dressed in black brandished the same machine gun; the Doll continued dancing naked. And there were new scenes—a murky London tube train moments after it had been bombed; the Sari nightclub burning after the Bali bombing; wounded being taken away from the Madrid train bombing, the montage culminating in a shot that zoomed in on the Sydney Opera House before blowing out to white, a cheap effect accompanied by an ominous rumble.

  The Doll closed her eyes.

  When she opened them, she saw Osama bin Laden. George W. Bush. Missiles being launched. Men in robes firing grenade launchers. Great buildings exploding into balloons of fire. Women covered in blood. Hostages about to be beheaded. New York! Bali! Madrid! London! Baghdad! The Doll disintegrating into dancing squares of colour, herself pixelated, smiling a smile that was never hers.

  A Fujitsu air conditioner ad came on and Wilder switched the tv off.

  “It’s like when I bought my Subaru Forester,” said Wilder after a few moments’ awkward silence, “and all we could see for weeks after were other Subaru Foresters—parked on the street, driving through the city, stopped at lights. But there are other cars, Gina, and there are other stories.”

  This was small comfort to the Doll. There was, she knew, much else on the tv, other headlines in the paper, other voices on the radio talking about other things. But all the Doll could see was her face, her name, all she could hear was one more opinion about her. And it was seizing her like a cold current and taking her somewhere she didn’t want to go, just as the rip had carried Max out to sea.

  “I’m not a car, Wilder, and this isn’t another story,” she said, lifting up a copy of that day’s Telegraph. “Look here.” And there, on the third page, was an article that declar
ed “the story of the homegrown terrorist cell is shaping up to be the story of the year”.

  “And how’s it end?” the Doll asked. “Do I get shot or what? You tell me, Wilder. It can hardly end up as a mistake. That’s not the story of the year—that’s an embarrassment.”

  Wilder went quiet.

  “It happens, Gina. They go crazy for a few days, then they move on like dogs. Besides,” she said, picking up a Sydney Morning Herald and brandishing it like a sacred oracle, “not everyone’s against you. There’s something here saying how there’s a climate of hysteria that could lead to innocent people being persecuted.”

  “Could?” said the Doll incredulously. “What’s with the fucking ‘could’?”

  “It is here,” said Wilder leafing through the pages as endless, as indecipherable, as irrelevant, as a phone directory, “somewhere.” She gave up. “I’ll find it later and cut it out for you.”

  “Wilder, no one cares about a shitty article lost in there. It’s like throwing a corpse in the harbour,” said the Doll. An image sprang into her mind of Fung’s dead face staring out of a wheelie bin. She pointed at the Sydney Morning Herald. “You’re the only person I know who reads it. Everyone else is like me—they just look at the Telegraph headlines and watch Richard Cody and listen to Joe Cosuk.”

  She never spoke to Wilder like this. Both felt a little stunned. With not a word more, Wilder led the Doll into her bathroom. Haircutting was one of a number of unexpected skills Wilder possessed, having done two years of an apprenticeship in a salon, before tossing it in to go to university, before in turn tossing that in to go work with a boyfriend in his landscaping business.

  Wilder bleached the Doll’s hair blonde, making the Doll laugh as she worked. Any story was welcome now. As a hairdresser, Wilder said she was made for landscaping, telling tales of perms gone bad and highlights turned technicolour. For all the stories she told against herself, Wilder proved surprisingly able, trimming the Doll’s hair into a short bob, shaping it with a slant running down the sides, so that it accentuated the Doll’s cheekbones and made her face look different, less heart shaped than the images being run in the papers and on television.