Bring Back Cerberus

by Phillip Gwynne

  ‘Come in!’ said Dr Chakrabarty after I’d knocked on the door to his office.

  I went in. There was tinny music playing – Lady Gaga – and I wondered whether Dr Chakrabarty could possibly be a fan. But then I realised that it was coming from his phone, that it was on speaker and he was on hold.

  ‘Damned Virgin!’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes now!’

  ‘The upgrade?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, the upgrade.’

  ‘I can come back later,’ I said.

  ‘No, no, sit down, Pheidippides,’ said Dr Chakrabarty. ‘We can talk while the Virgin decides what she wants to do.’

  Dr Chakrabarty, it seemed, had an inexhaustible supply of virgin jokes.

  It was the first time I’d been in his office, so after I sat down I took the opportunity to check it out. I’d thought it would be, well, Hogwartian. Piles and piles of dusty books. And other stuff like old statues, old vases, and maybe even some old human remains, bones or something.

  But it was very, very spartan.

  Yes, there were some books, but not that many. And they were neatly ordered on the single bookshelf. There was a set of dumbbells sitting in one corner. They were shiny, as if they were frequently used. And on the wall there were three framed photos. The first one was of a building, the Taj Mahal. And the second one was of a person, Mahatma Gandhi. And the third one was of the earth, a globe of brilliant blue and green, taken from outer space.

  ‘You’re Indian,’ I blurted, and immediately felt embarrassed because it sounded sort of racist.

  ‘I was born in that country,’ said Dr Chakrabarty. ‘And now you’re wondering what on earth an Indian is doing in Australia teaching the Classics.’

  He was right, it was pretty much what I was wondering.

  ‘It’s quite a story,’ he said. ‘But maybe not something we should go into right now.’

  ‘You, my friend, have progressed in the queue and we’ll be talking to you real soon,’ said the young voice on the speakerphone.

  ‘The Virgin,’ said Dr Chakrabarty, managing to raise his considerable eyebrows. ‘Now what can I do for you?’

  ‘You do cryptic crosswords, don’t you, sir?’ I said.

  ‘Indeed I do,’ he said. ‘Or should that be “Did one die scrambled”?’

  Okay, so now he was talking complete nonsense.

  ‘So do you think you could help me with this clue?’

  ‘I could try,’ he said.

  I took out the piece of paper with the clue written on it and placed it on the desk so he could see it.

  ‘I think I know what if that’s the case means,’ I said. ‘And I reckon the rest is some sort of address.’

  Dr Chakrabarty studied it for a while, his head cocked slightly to one side.

  Eventually he said, ‘Next to the tiny Phosphorus Mountains is interesting.’

  ‘I googled Phosphorus Mountains,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t exist.’

  Dr Chakrabarty smiled.

  ‘You’re being far too literal, Mr Silvagni. That’s not the way cryptics work. Do you know your periodic table?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘What’s next to phosphorus?’ he asked.

  I meant I knew what the periodic table was, not what was on it.

  ‘I’ll google it,’ I said, going to take out my iPhone.

  ‘Silicon and sulphur,’ said Dr Chakrabarty, before I’d even got it out of my pocket. ‘And what’s next to a mountain?’

  ‘A valley?’

  Dr Chakrabarty smiled at me in a way that was sort of half-encouraging and half-patronising.

  ‘So if we put them together?’ he said, bring his two fists together.

  His question hung there, in the space between us. Which was pretty convenient because I needed to look at it for quite a while before I could come up with an answer.

  ‘Silicon Valley?’ I said.

  ‘And let’s not forget the “tiny”.’

  ‘Tiny Silicon Valley?’ I said. ‘Where in the hell’s that?’

  ‘Too literal, Mr Silvagni.’

  I could see what Dr Chakrabarty was doing: getting me to exercise my brain rather than just feeding me the answer.

  But I hadn’t come here to be taught, I’d come here, chook-like, to be fed.

  ‘Can’t you just …’ I started, but then I could feel it, a flurry of caffeine-induced brain activity, and smack-bang in the middle of my thoughts was the answer: ‘Little Silicon Valley!’

  It’s what the area south of Brisbane and north of the Gold Coast, where quite a few technological companies had set up, is nicknamed.

  ‘Splendid work,’ said Dr Chakrabarty. ‘Now let’s have a look at the rest of it.’

  He took a pen and underlined all mixed up and said, ‘That’s classic cryptic talk for an anagram.’

  He took another piece of paper and wrote the letters that formed a mundane glove in neat block letters in neat circle.

  ‘Let’s see if we can find an address in here,’ he said. ‘Well, I can’t see a “street”.’

  ‘No “road”,’ I said.

  ‘Or “drive”.’

  ‘There’s “avenue”,’ I said.

  ‘Is there really?’ he said, crossing out the letters A V, E, N, U, and E. ‘So there is!’

  I felt a flush of scholarly pride, not something that happened to me very often within the hallowed walls of Coast Grammar.

  ‘Now let’s see what we can make of these letters we have left,’ said Dr Chakrabarty.

  ‘“Mad long”?’ I said.

  ‘Nice,’ said Dr Chakrabarty. ‘Mad Long Avenue.’

  ‘Or “damn log”?’

  ‘How about “Goldman”? he said. ‘Goldman Avenue?’

  ‘We could look it up on Google Maps, see if it exists,’ I said.

  ‘We could,’ he said. ‘But let’s see if we can work it all out before we resort to Professor Google.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘Bolt’s got the number,’ he read. ‘Now that’s tricky, what number has bolt got?’

  Immediately there was a number in my head.

  It can’t be that, I thought. It’s too random. It’s too me. But Usain Bolt had been all over the news lately because he’d false-started at the world championships and as a result had been disqualified.

  But Dr Chakrabarty was still wearing that encouraging smile, so I blurted it out. ‘Nine point seven two.’

  ‘Where did you get that from?’

  ‘Usain Bolt – it’s his world record for the 100 metres.’

  Actually, it wasn’t: his world record was 9.58, but I didn’t want Dr Chakrabarty, or anybody else for that manner, to know the exact address.

  Dr Chakrabarty smiled at me and said, ‘Great work!’

  ‘That’s it?’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’ he said, writing 972 Goldman Avenue on the piece of paper and handing it to me.

  I thanked Dr Chakrabarty, and when I was outside I took the pen and changed the 972 to 958.

  WEDNESDAY

  THE TWO WARNIES

  A taxi passed and I put out my arm.

  It stopped and I slid into the back.

  ‘Halcyon Grove,’ I told the driver.

  I slumped back and closed my eyes, half-listening to the radio.

  A woman was talking: ‘It has some of the most spectacular diving sites on the whole east coast and it’s an absolute disgrace that this nuclear facility was built there in the first place.’

  I realised that she was talking about Diablo Bay.

  ‘This bill is going to be debated in Parliament this coming week – what do you think the outcome will be?’

  ‘Well, the campaign to close down this facility has such momentum now, I think the Government has no choice but to listen to what its constituents are saying.’

  ‘The phones are open now and we’d like to hear what you think about this hot topic,’ said the presenter.

  I opened my eyes, and noticed where we wer
e.

  ‘Hey, I said Halcyon Grove,’ I told the driver.

  There was no reply.

  ‘Driver, can you hear me?’

  There was a clunk, and a perspex shield appeared between me and the front seat. And then a click as the doors on either side of me locked.

  I bashed my fists against the perspex, I bashed my fists against the windows, but it was no good, I was trapped.

  And the taxi was now barrelling down the freeway, heading south.

  I relaxed – what else could I do? – and thought about who it was that could be kidnapping me.

  The Debt? No, that didn’t make sense. Fiends of the Earth? No, this was too slick, too professional for them. Hound de Villiers? Why would he kidnap me? I was already working for him.

  When we took the Coolangatta exit, I switched back into alert mode – I needed to remember our route.

  We followed this road for eighteen minutes and thirty-five seconds before we took another turnoff, this one signposted as McCallum’s Bluff.

  I smiled to myself – maybe they weren’t as professional, as slick, as I’d first thought. I’d seen enough movies to know that in situations like this it was almost mandatory for the captor to blindfold the captured.

  Then there was a hiss and the back of the taxi filled with a cloudy white gas and I blacked out.

  When I came to, my arms and legs were strapped to a wooden chair in a bare room: bare off-white walls, bare wooden floor, no door, no windows, and a double fluoro on the ceiling that threw a harsh light over everything.

  The door opened and two men walked in.

  They were both wearing Shane Warne masks.

  Which normally would be pretty funny, but right there, right then, the two smiling Warnies scared the crap out of me.

  The Warnies stood in front of me.

  ‘You prefer Dom or Dominic?’ the shorter Warnie asked.

  His accent wasn’t Warnie at all, more American.

  ‘I really don’t mind,’ I said. ‘Are you going to torture me or something?’

  ‘Torture is un-Australian,’ said the taller Warnie, in an accent that was definitely Australian and sort of familiar.

  ‘We’d like you to tell us everything you know about Yamashita’s Gold.’

  And that’s exactly what I did: I told them everything, and I mean everything, I knew about Yamashita’s Gold.

  When I’d finished, the shorter Warnie said, ‘Do you know where Otto Zolton-Bander is?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have the foggiest,’ I said.

  Shorter Warnie nodded at taller Warnie and suddenly there was an electric shock around my groin area.

  ‘You said you wouldn’t use torture!’

  ‘No, what I said was “Torture is un-Australian”.’

  ‘Let’s try again,’ said shorter Warnie. ‘Where is Otto Zolton-Bander?’

  Even though my groin was still tingling a bit, it hadn’t actually hurt that much, but in some ways this was worse, because all I could think was how much it would hurt when it actually started hurting.

  I so wanted to tell the two Warnies where he was, and I was even tempted to come up with somewhere, anywhere, but in the end I said, ‘I don’t know, I really don’t know.’

  I readied myself for another shock, but it didn’t come.

  Instead the taller Warnie brought the piece of paper that had been in my pocket, the one with the address in Silicon Valley.

  ‘Is this where he is?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, and started telling the Warnies exactly what it was, but they quickly lost interest.

  ‘Okay, Dom,’ said the shorter Warnie. ‘You can shut your gob now.’

  They left the room for about five minutes.

  But then the shorter Warnie returned, holding a black Abu Ghraib style bag.

  One part of me said he was going to blindfold me because he was going to let me go. But another part said he was going to blindfold me because he was going to shoot me.

  As shorter Warnie went to put the bag over my head, I tried to remain calm. But it was no good, the they’re-going-to-shoot-me part of my brain took over and tried to stop him.

  ‘You’re not making it very easy for yourself,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said, as I tried in vain to bite his hand.

  ‘If you don’t stop this, I’m going to have to knock you out again,’ he said.

  I didn’t want to be knocked out again, so I forced myself to calm down. Even when the bag slipped over my face, even when the world went Abu Ghraib black. Shorter Warnie then unstrapped me and guided me out of the room and into a car.

  ‘Of course you know it’s for everybody’s benefit if you keep quiet about all this,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, realising then that he wasn’t going to shoot me, because dead men don’t talk, dead boys either.

  And then I got it, then I knew I’d heard his voice before: it was Cameron Jamison! And I almost said something, but I bit my tongue.

  The car trip was about half an hour, forty minutes at the most. And in the beginning I was on high alert, listening for telltale signs that might indicate where I was. You know, the distinctive call of the greater warbler, a bird only found in one particular area of the Gold Coast hinterland, that sort of Sherlock Holmes stuff.

  But I soon got tired of that, and just slumped in my seat and tried to relax.

  Then the car stopped, the door opened and a gruff voice said, ‘This is where you get out.’

  I got out and the car took off with a roar of its exhaust.

  I ripped off the Abu Ghraib bag. I was standing at the back of what I immediately recognised as Robina Mall, and three ratty-looking kids were staring at me.

  One of them was holding a huge party-size bag of jelly snakes.

  ‘Why’ve you got that fing on your head?’ said one of them.

  ‘I’ve just been kidnapped and tortured,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ they said.

  I checked my pockets: my iPhone and wallet were still there.

  I was just about to get going when I had a sudden, intense craving. ‘Can I have some snakes?’ I asked the kid holding the bag.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, digging into the bag, holding the snakes out to me.

  I took them, crammed them all into my mouth at once and made my way to the bus stop.

  By the time my bus arrived the snakes had been ingested, but my mouth was still full of sickly saliva. And my tongue was busy searching for snake fragments lodged in my teeth.

  Later, from my position in the back seat, I thought about what had just happened to me. I’d been kidnapped, I’d received a very mild electric shock to the groin, and then I’d been released.

  Just a small bump in an otherwise smooth afternoon.

  The bus stopped and a mother with two small kids, one on either hip, got on. She put the kids on a seat, but when she got off the bus to get her pram, they started crying. Nobody went to help her, so I got up, jogged down the aisle and picked up the pram for her. She thanked me, and I went back to my tough-kid’s possie in the back seat.

  But when I sat down again, I realised that I had it wrong. It hadn’t been just a small bump in an otherwise smooth afternoon.

  I’d been kidnapped, I’d been tortured, I’d had a black bag put over my head, and I needed to give this the attention it deserved. A full freaking inquiry. Abu Ghraib style.

  It seemed that quite a few people knew I’d been involved with the Zolt.

  Some of these people believed that the Zolt knew where Yamashita’s Treasure was. Yamashita’s Treasure was worth millions. Therefore, if you looked at it from their POV, it wasn’t that unreasonable to think that I might also know something about Yamashita’s Treasure.

  That it would be worthwhile putting on a Warnie mask.

  Kidnapping a fifteen-year-old kid.

  Resorting to un-Australian activities such as torture.

  But why didn’t they go the full Abu Ghraib? Why hadn’t my knurries been turned into p
otato chips? Maybe they, the Warnies, just didn’t have a taste for torture. All tingle, no shock.

  Or maybe they had a better way of getting this information.

  I took out my iPhone and ran the anti-spyware app that Miranda had written.

  Bingo!

  My phone was so infected, it now had something called Spyware Killer on it. Spyware Killer, apparently, was anything but. According to Miranda’s app, it was highly intrusive and very powerful.

  Did I want to remove this spyware? the app inquired. I thought about this for a while before I tapped on Yes. I already had enough people keeping tabs on me as it was.

  By the time I’d finished doing all that I’d missed my stop and had to walk an extra kilometre back home.

  WEDNESDAY

  LYCHEE

  Maybe it was the gas they’d used to knock me out. Maybe it was the tickle to the groin. Maybe it was all those snakes I’d gobbled up. But whatever it was, I wasn’t feeling too good: my guts were gurgling and my feet were dragging as I made my way home.

  Though my phone kept ringing, jumping about in my pocket, I couldn’t even be bothered answering it. Hot bath and then hit the sack, I kept promising myself. Hot bath and then hit the sack.

  It was only when I heard a string quartet playing that stuff that string quartets play that I remembered – goddammit! – that Mom was having people around tonight.

  If this wasn’t annoying enough, there was also the fact that Mom never listened to that sort of music; basically she liked the Beach Boys and the Eagles and stuff like that. But just because she was having people around she had to go all string-quartety.

  The guests were all arranged around the pool. Waiters swanned about with champagne and hors d’oeuvres.

  Just a few people around to watch the semifinal of Ready! Set! Cook! and then a bite to eat, Mom had said.

  Call this a few people?

  Call this a bite to eat?

  A girl was floating towards me in a shimmery dress, high heels, hair up.

  Who the heck is this? I asked myself, before I realised exactly who it was: my daggy sister who never, ever got dressed up.

  Why? I asked myself.