Heaven is a Place on Earth

by Graham Storrs

  The cab – which, he thanked God, was air conditioned – took him, at the leisurely pace of all robotic vehicles, on a long, meandering tour through the Brisbane suburbs. It was a big, sprawling city and he'd had enough of it by the time he reached Portland Apartments, a three storey, nondescript block of units in dazzling white. He stood in the shade of the entrance porch avoiding the sun and looked around. He liked to get a bit of atmosphere when he interviewed people, some feel for where and how they lived, a few seconds of recorded visuals, a few comments to remind him. Today, he said, “Boring, stifling, anonymous suburb.” Then he rang the bell.

  A woman's voice said, “Come in. Up the stairs. Unit 6.”

  There was something hard about the voice. The door clicked open and Rafe felt his stomach knot. He hesitated, remembering. He had never hesitated before. The old Rafe would have pushed his way in and bounded up the stairs, keen to get on. But the old Rafe had been invulnerable, untouchable. The old Rafe had been a fool.

  Steeling himself, he opened the door and stepped inside. The hallway looked harmless, clean and modern, with no deep shadows. He swallowed and walked to the stairs, grasping the metal handrail and pulling himself forward. He'd come a bloody long way for his nerve to fail him at the last minute, he thought, his feet mounting the steps as if they had no significance. If he just kept going, putting one foot in front of the other, he'd get through it and out of there. And, if he did, the next one would be easier. If he didn't, if he scurried back to Canberra now, he might as well climb into his tank and stay there forever.

  The first floor corridor was much like the one below. He took a breath and walked slowly along it until he stood facing a plain brown door with a brass number “6” screwed onto it. He waited for his heart to slow down. It's just an interview, he told himself. Just someone with information they want to get off their chest. You go in, you make small talk, you ask your questions, you leave. You've done it a thousand times before. So why did it feel like the first time? Why did it feel like putting his head in a lion's mouth?

  Of course, he knew exactly why.

  The door flew open and a woman stood there, scowling at him. He stepped back in alarm, almost ran.

  “What the hell are you doing out there?” she asked, sounding as cross as she looked. She stepped towards him and he stepped back again as she peered past him, then over her shoulder, checking the corridor was empty. “You're Morgan, right? From the Sentinel?” He nodded, trying not to behave any more stupidly than he already had done. She studied him briefly. “You OK?”

  He snapped out of his funk. “Yes, yes, I'm fine. It's... It's the heat or something. I just needed to take a moment You're Tonia Birchow?” He held out a hand, realised how damp his palm was, wiped it on his chest and held it out again. The woman looked at it with distaste, then at him, showing no inclination to touch him. He withdrew his hand, feeling ridiculous.

  “Come in,” she said and walked away into the apartment.

  He dropped his bag inside the door and closed it after him. Then followed her.

  She was a small woman, thin and intense. Her hair was tied in a ponytail which made her look a little younger than she probably was. About thirty, Rafe guessed, although her dark eyes and furrowed brow suggested someone older. She stood facing him in the lounge room, appraising him.

  “Where are you staying?” she asked.

  “A hotel in the CBD,” he said. He found he didn't want to say which one.

  “You're not auged,” she said. It was clearly a challenge to explain himself.

  He shrugged. “I usually conduct my interviews on minimal aug. I like to see what people really look like. When you're latched it's too easy to...” He cast about for the word.

  “To be deceived,” she said. He nodded.

  “How are you going to vote?” she asked.

  “Vote?” If this was the woman's idea of small talk, she could probably use a few lessons. He hadn't even been invited to sit down yet. “In the plebiscite? I dunno. Against, I suppose.”

  “Why's that?”

  “Look, Ms Birchow, maybe we could get started on the interview?” Her look told him to shut up and answer the question. Irritated, he said, “Because the government's got enough damned power as it is without giving them the right to do whatever the hell they like just on the suspicion of criminal activity.”

  “You're in a minority. It's in the bag. Isn't that what all the polls say?” He considered trying again to get the conversation back on track, but the woman seemed obsessively interested in what she was saying. “You're a journo. You've probably written loads of pieces about what a dead cert the new bill is. Is that right?”

  “Not me, but – ”

  “Well, you're all wrong. The bill won't pass. You'll see.” She glared at Rafe, as if daring him to contradict her. Then she nodded and went over to a cupboard where she pulled a folder of papers out from under some other junk and brought it back to Rafe. “Here,” she said. “Take it.”

  He took it. “What's this?” He opened the flap and looked inside. There were pages and pages of paper documents. Paper documents. He looked up at her.

  “That's everything you need,” she said. “When you've read it, you should probably burn it.”

  “Paper?” he said.

  “You'll find its safer than electronics. Less chance of it leaking out onto QNet.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Read it and you'll see. OK. That's it. Time to go.”

  “Go?”

  “Yeah. Out the door. On your way.”

  Rafe blinked at her in confusion. “But what about the interview?”

  “What interview?”

  “The one I just flew twelve hundred kilometres for. You said you had information about the terrorism bill. You said there were secrets you needed to pass on. My contact in Canberra said I should listen to you. He said you were the real deal, whatever that meant. Now you won't even talk to me?”

  “Everything you need is in that folder.”

  “What if I have questions?”

  “You won't.”

  “Oh yes I will. Can I come back here tomorrow?”

  She thought about it. “Sure. No worries. Come back tomorrow. All right?”

  He didn't like what was happening. He held out the folder. “You could have sent this by courier.”

  Her expression had so far been closed. Now it was turning to anger. “Read that lot tonight and come back here tomorrow with your questions.” He was still reluctant to leave. He still didn't trust this odd turn of events. His hesitation seemed to infuriate her. “Why the fuck are you still here? I told you to get out. Did I pick the wrong journo? What kind of moron are you? You've got the story of a lifetime there in your hands. Just go and fucking read it.”

  Her hand went to her pocket and he saw the fabric move as she grasped something long and hard – a gun, maybe, or a knife. His heart thumped in is chest. Thumped again. He couldn't speak. His throat was so tight he could barely breath. A gun. Or a knife. It was happening again. Just like Melbourne. He stepped back. His vision twitched, a wave of light-headedness washed through his mind. Memories flashed, assailing him like attacking birds. Memories of fear. Memories of pain.

  He fought against the rising panic. This wasn't Melbourne. This woman wasn't Sam Hopwood.

  “OK,” he gasped. “I'm going. It's all right. I'm going now.” He realised the woman was watching him, squinting at him as if he'd grown an extra head. He backed to the door, not daring to look away. He stumbled but his back hit the wall saving him from a fall.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Tonia said. She took a step towards him and panic overwhelmed him. He saw the door handle beside him, grabbed it, and tore the door open. He remembered leaping down the stairs with Tonia shouting “Hey!” behind him.

  Then he was outside, panting and lost, with a pain in his left ankle and no idea how he'd got there or how far he'd run. The folder was still in his hand, trembling because his hand
trembled. He squeezed his eyes shut as if he could squeeze out the fear and humiliation, but with his eyes closed, he saw Sam Hopwood again, a smile on his face, and a knife in his hand.

  -oOo-

  Rafe tipped his head back and let the warmth of the bathwater seep into his bones. He straightened a leg and the water chinked and made ripples that lapped on his chest. His hotel room felt anonymous and safe. Even so, he had balanced a beer bottle on the door handle so that he would have some warning if anyone tried to sneak in. He'd seen the trick in a Chinese spy interactive when he was just a boy and had been so impressed, it had stuck in his memory.

  There's too much stuck in my memory, he thought. That's the problem.

  He thought again about calling Dr. Godleigh and again dismissed it. If Becky thought he couldn't cope with the job, she'd put him back on sick leave. Or fire him. And he needed to work. He needed something to occupy his thoughts besides the memories of that time in Melbourne. Anyway, he knew what Godleigh would say, “Time and patience, Rafe. That's what will heal you. Give yourself the space you need in your life and let your mind heal itself.” She'd go nuts if she knew he was back at work and on the trail of a criminal conspiracy to fix a vote in parliament. She'd tell him what a complete idiot he was being. Well, maybe she wouldn't say it. But that's what she'd think. And it was true, of course, but what could he do when something like that just dropped into his lap?

  Run a mile, you dickhead. That's what you could do.

  He squirmed in the bath, the noise of it echoing around the tiled room. Maybe he should take that job on the political desk, writing fluff pieces quoting the opposition's sound bite of the day, getting excited about which politician was rorting their expenses that week, which family values minister was screwing his interns, or which political adviser was writing her memoires. Maybe he couldn't do this any more. Maybe he never did have the stomach for it.

  He was forty years old and he should be near the top of his profession. He was no failure. He'd done well, but he had not done really well. He hadn't done anything they'd give him an award for. The Sam Hopwood story had been it. That was the one that would have made his name. It had the lot, sex, big business, drugs, illegal brain mods, but most of all it had Sam Hopwood, the dashing, charismatic psychopath who had drawn so many people into his net and systematically corrupted and debased them. Rafe had picked it up when no-one else was even sniffing around it. He'd dug deeply in the mire that surrounded the man until he'd pieced together the whole story. And then he found Angel, Sam Hopwood's ex-wife, and persuaded her to talk. He had been so close to nailing it.

  But then Hopwood had found him.

  The torture had lasted three days. Mostly Hopwood had used knives, all kinds of knives, in all kinds of places. Sam Hopwood had wanted Rafe to give him the names of all his sources, so he could hunt them down too and make sure none of them could ever testify against him. And Rafe had resisted. He'd kept quiet. He'd endured the unendurable pain for a whole three days before the pain had become so intense, the exhaustion so numbing, he could no longer remember why he was there or what he was protecting. He'd told Hopwood everything, even making up things to tell him so that he would stop the pain and let him sleep. And Hopwood had smiled and smiled and said what a good boy he was being and that he could die now. And if there had been any joy left inside Rafe, he would have welcomed the release. As it was, he simply waited for it to happen, not caring either way.

  When the policeman lifted Rafe's head and said, “Holy crap, he's still alive,” Rafe could tell by the horror in the young man's eyes that the torture had been just the beginning, his suffering had only just begun.

  He got out of the bath and towelled himself down, trying not to look at the scars.

  “You're a bloody hero, mate,” one of the cops had told him, sitting beside his hospital bed after yet another operation. Rafe's three days in Hell had given the police the chance to find Angel and, through her, Sam Hopwood. It saved Rafe. Several people owed their lives to Rafe, the cop said. But all Rafe could think was that someone else was writing his story. In the weeks of his hospitalisation and the months of his recovery, the feeds had fed. They'd been like crows on the roadkill of Rafe's big exposé. There was nothing left for him. He was interviewed and lauded, but it was no longer his story. He had become its subject, not its author.

  He moved quickly to the bedroom, putting on the pyjamas he had laid out. He always slept in pyjamas now so that he could not see what Hopwood had done to his body. Even so, the awareness of his graven flesh rarely left him. He snatched up the folder Tonia had given him, tossed pillows against the bed head, and sat down to read, determined not to think about those three days.

  The documents inside were printouts from newsfeeds, business communications, excerpts from parliamentary white papers, personal messages from and to people he'd never heard of, hand-written notes in various hands, most of them unsigned and undated, photographs, extracts from software design documents, and other, less identifiable diagrams and descriptions. There seemed to be no order to it all and no sense.

  Looking at the jumble of apparently unconnected and no-doubt illegally obtained information, it occurred to Rafe that Tonia Birchow might simply be a lunatic. He'd met many such in his time. Once you had your by-line on a high-traffic newsfeed, you were targeted by every conspiracy nut, UFO believer, and wannabe Deep Throat on the planet. Finding the reliable sources who were really onto something among all the crazies was a key skill in his line of work. Maybe this time his instincts had let him down.

  The very idea that he might be losing his touch knotted up his stomach. He screwed up his eyes and fought down the fear. Self-doubt had been his constant companion since his encounter with Sam Hopwood. Sometimes it overwhelmed and crushed him. For a man who had been confident to the point of arrogance all his life, this fear of his own incompetence was perhaps the deepest scar that Hopwood had inflicted.

  He snarled with anger at himself and spread the contents of the folder across the bed. If there was something here, he would find it. If he didn't find it, it would be because he had let his eagerness to get back into the saddle lead him astray. He'd just go back to Canberra and start again, pick up a new thread, unravel some other story. A false start was no big deal.

  He began sorting the documents into piles by type. After two minutes, he stopped and put them all together again. Then he started laying them out again, this time putting them in chronological order. The oldest documents were news stories from the USA that were more than twelve years old. They were all about the introduction of anti-terrorism legislation much like the bill Australia was about to vote on. They had a familiar tone. The legislation seemed like overkill, it involved terrible infringements of civil liberties and personal privacy, it gave the Government extensive powers to monitor people and to interfere with their network activities, all in the name of security. As with the current legislation, there was widespread support across the country. Then the vote came and the bill was unexpectedly thrown out.

  There was a similar clutch of news reports from the UK. The government there had tried to put up a similar bill ten years ago and that too had been voted out. Since then, there had been votes in China, Russia, the other European countries, all over the place, in fact, and each time the same kind of legislation had been proposed and rejected by the people. It was a story Rafe already knew well. Even so, the Australian government was determined it would be the first to succeed, and it looked as if they had the numbers on their side. He could understand why Tonia had said the bill would be voted down. It seemed that, wherever it was put to the vote, people who were all for it beforehand, changed their minds when it came to the crunch. People seemed unable to bring themselves to give that much power to their governments.

  Beneath the row of newsfeed reports, he laid out the other documents, the messages, the notes, the diagrams and so on. All the documents with no dates, mostly the hand written ones, went into a separate pile. A definite pattern emerged.
Most of the computer design documents clustered around the UK vote. So did most of the commercial correspondence. Then there was a gap before a slow build-up of correspondence and other news reports, unrelated to the legislation, began to pile up around the present day.

  He looked again at the names in the current correspondence and that from ten years ago. Only one name occurred in both places, Cal Copplin.

  He spent another hour laying the sheets out in different orders, by people they mentioned, by locations they related to, by subject, by sender, by recipient, trying to find other patterns. Then he lay back against the pillows and worked his way through the notes. Most of them were short and cryptic. People, places, perhaps projects were referred to by code names. Several mentioned September 10, or S10, which got his attention. September 10 was the government's favourite whipping boy at the moment, any act of terrorism against the national communications network was blamed on them. In fact, it was the organisation most frequently trotted out to justify the current cyberterrorism proposals.

  He turned another page and read, “Approached by CC (S10 UK?) Provided docs attached. Poss. recruit this cell. Need more background. Pls advise. TB.”

  He put it down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. What the hell had he stumbled into? Was the woman he'd met today running a terrorist cell? Was all this some kind of confession? Evidence against her own people? If so, why go to a reporter and not to the police? The more he thought about it, the more agitated he grew. If this material was all from September 10, he was sitting on a goldmine. Or a ticking bomb. He had never heard of September 10 killing anybody but then he hardly knew anything about them at all. Political scandals were his thing, not terrorist organisations. He was definitely out of his depth and the thing he should do, right now, not even waiting for the morning, was to go to the police and dump the whole lot, get on the first flight to Canberra and keep his head down.