by John Marsden
And there he was. Someone I’d never expected to see again. Someone I’d almost forgotten about. Someone I despised so much I felt giddy and faint at the sight of him.
‘Ellie, my dear girl,’ Major Harvey said. ‘Do come in. How nice to see you.’
There was a horrible silence. Although I hated to seem weak I had to put one hand on the frame of the door to hold myself up, to keep from falling over. I started to realise now just how deep was the trouble we were in, just how dangerous was our situation. I felt defeated and hopeless.
Major Harvey was sitting at a big shiny black desk. There was nothing on it but a clock, a ruler, a fountain pen and three piles of paper, arranged with perfect precision. Behind him were two officers. One was the man with the gold braid, whom we’d seen when we arrived; the other was a woman with almost as much gold. They were standing and gazing at me with expressionless faces.
I forced myself to look at Major Harvey’s eyes. They were dead and empty. I wondered if there was a person inside, or if he was just a dark devil from Hell itself. At least the soldiers were fighting honestly, under their own flag. This man was a foul shadow of a human being. I knew he would crush me as easily as I would kill a blowie, and I also had an inkling that he would get some kind of perverted pleasure from doing it.
I made myself stand a little taller. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me; those black beady eyes that seemed not like eyes at all. It was like his skin had been pierced at those two points in his face and I was getting a glimpse of what lay inside: an empty ugly darkness.
When I did straighten up, I noticed a quick movement around his lips. It was almost a smile, as though he’d expected me to do something very like that. I did not respond. How could I? I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, vomit would come from it; the vomit of fear, the vomit of hatred.
Major Harvey moved his right arm and slid open a drawer in the desk. He brought out a small silver tape recorder and placed it in the middle of the big desk.
‘Sit down, Ellie,’ he said.
I obeyed, slipping silently into the nearest chair, a trendy grey one made from cane and steel. I gripped its armrests tightly, knowing I was leaving clammy wet sweat on it, but appreciating its coolness and strength. Major Harvey turned the tape recorder on.
‘Now, Ellie,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you’ll have many surprises for us. We know just about everything. But for the record we do require a full statement, detailing your activities. You can start with your name, address and age, then work backwards from the Cobbler’s Bay attack. And, please, don’t forget to mention the officer and two other ranks you killed in cold blood when you stole the Holden Jackaroo.’
I sat there staring at him. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think. I had no idea what was best for me, whether to say nothing, whether to tell him everything, whether to put together a mixture of lies and truth. It was quite likely that he did know most things, especially if he’d already questioned the others. If I got caught telling lies I suspected he’d treat me very badly. I didn’t want to make him angry.
So I said nothing, not because I wanted to be a hero, but because I couldn’t think of what to say. Then I decided that silence was probably quite a good strategy.
He waited for a minute or so. Then he said: ‘You know, Ellie, the first time I met you, you struck me as a particularly rude and pig-headed young lady. It is unfortunate for you that you were raised in a society where standards have been so corrupted that behaviour like yours has been tolerated. But you are a child no longer. You will be treated here as an adult.’
He paused. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything. So he continued.
‘When a child commits an offence he is punished. But the punishment an adult would receive is modified for the child, who is judged not yet responsible for his actions, not able to grasp the full extent of what he has done.’
He seemed to be quoting from a textbook or a speech or something. I still didn’t know where this was heading but I was frightened in a cold sickening way, like no fear I’d felt before. It was like the chill of death was already moving through me, turning my skin white and liquefying my insides.
‘We believe in adult punishments for adult acts. You have, for a long time now, acted in a thoroughly irresponsible, destructive way. You have committed appalling crimes. You can, of course, no longer expect to be treated as a child. I’m sure you wouldn’t wish to be. We have reintroduced capital punishment to deal with crimes such as murder, terrorism and treason. I’ve talked to your friends at length today and formed an accurate picture of what you’ve been up to. I wasn’t surprised to learn that you and the Greek boy are the ringleaders of your little group. The only thing I really require from you is a list of these crimes, for our records, and the details of how you committed them, so that we can improve our security. In particular, we are concerned about the acts of terrorism at Cobbler’s Bay. In supplying this information it may be that you will make us aware of circumstances that might incline us to consider clemency in your case. We are considering that for one of your companions who has been especially helpful, instead of the extreme punishment that, frankly, is well deserved; in fact has been earned many times over.
‘So, Ellie ...’ He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms behind his head. Up till then I’d thought he was perfectly relaxed, completely in command, but, when he lifted his arms, I saw huge sweat patches in the armpits of his shirt, stretching almost to his waist. It made me feel a fraction better.
‘... I understand you are something of a writer – the record keeper for your little bunch of hooligans.’ He peeled a sheet of paper from the pile on the desk and placed it in front of me. From his pocket he drew a cheap grey biro, with the words state government written in red down its side.
‘Stealing pens,’ I said. ‘That’s a criminal offence.’
It was the first thing I’d said since coming into the room, and it was a pretty dumbass comment. Major Harvey just smiled, and shook his head.
‘People don’t change, Ellie, do they?’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’ll ever change. And I feel sorry for you, I really do, because things might have gone easier for you if you had. Well, there’s your paper, and here’s a pen. As I said, you can start with the mess you caused at Cobbler’s Bay. We’re particularly anxious to know how you got in there, what explosive you used, and how you got that explosive. We’ll leave you alone for an hour. I suggest you write fast. The only chance you have is to write down everything. Everything, you understand?’
He said the last three words with sudden ferocity, taking me by surprise, but I tried not to show it. Instead, I gazed sulkily at the floor as he and the two officers left the room. They shut the door behind them and I heard the key turn.
I sat gazing at the paper. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t imagine how to put down so much on paper in just one hour. I’d need months, and hundreds of thousands of words. It seemed pointless anyway. I didn’t have the energy to write anything.
Chapter Twenty-four
Major Harvey picked up the piece of paper. ‘I see writing on this paper,’ he announced.
I didn’t say anything; I assumed he was going to make some dumb comment about the blank sheet.
‘Yes,’ he said, putting it down again. ‘I certainly see writing on it. I see your death warrant. That’s what it says to me.’
He looked at me, waiting for a reaction. I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of one. I was very confused, uncertain, of what I should do; the only thing I was reasonably sure of was that whatever Major Harvey wanted me to do, I wouldn’t.
‘A very well-written death warrant,’ Major Harvey concluded, milking his little joke for all it was worth.
He sat at the desk again. The woman officer was there too, and she sat down this time, in a chair in a corner of the room. Major Harvey continued to talk to me.
‘I’m a very busy man, Ellie,’ he said
. ‘I’m trying to help you but I’m not going to spend day after day persuading you to save your own life. If you’re not interested in doing it, I don’t see why I should be. You’re a very silly, very stubborn girl, and I can tell you now that you’ll be shot before the week’s out if you don’t make the effort to tell us what we need to know.’
I wanted to believe I had a chance, but I couldn’t. If they were going to shoot me, a few little details about Cobbler’s Bay weren’t going to stop them. At the same time there was no point in not telling him.
‘It’s no big secret,’ I said. ‘We got into Cobbler’s Bay in the back of a broken-down container truck that they towed in. We’d stuffed the container with anfo, and when they loaded the container onto a ship we blew it up.’
‘Anfo? What’s anfo?’
‘You ought to know. You were in the Army, weren’t you?’
He flushed a little. ‘Just answer the question,’ he said stiffly.
‘It’s ammonium nitrate, fuel oil. You use a detonator and that sets off the anfo, and the whole thing blows sky high.’
‘How did you get that material?’
I shrugged. ‘You can get stuff like that on any farm.’
‘How did you know this? How could you make a bomb of that force?’
‘My father used anfo all the time. To blow up tree stumps, stuff like that.’
His head came forward and his small black eyes glittered at me.
‘But when I spoke to you and your friends the very first time, on that memorable occasion in the Holloway Valley, I distinctly remember you told me you knew nothing about explosives. “We don’t know anything,” was the phrase used, I seem to recall.’
I was silent. I sat there blushing, caught out in the lie, and unable to explain it away. I was trying to protect Kevin of course, but I was off to a bad start. The Major pressed home his attack.
‘You spoke of “we” when you described the actual attack. Who are the “we”? How many people attacked Cobblers Bay?’
‘Oh sorry, it was just me. The others helped me get a few things together, that’s why I said “we”. But I did it on my own.’
He laughed, but with no humour.
‘You’re not doing a very good job.’ He waited a moment without looking at me, then leaned forward again.
‘I’ll tell you what really happened,’ he said. ‘Somehow you have managed to link up with trained soldiers. I’d guess, saboteurs of the New Zealand Army who parachuted in. We know they’re in this area. You met them and you’ve been working with them, under their orders, and when you were caught last night you were either on your way to rejoin them, or you were in the middle of a mission that they’d sent you on. Which is it?’
I sat there open-mouthed.
‘I know you’re trying to protect them,’ he said. ‘But I warn you for the last time young lady, your life depends on telling me everything. So far you’ve told me nothing.’
I struggled to get a voice.
‘Why ... What makes you think we weren’t on our own?’ I finally managed to ask.
He gave a tight little triumphant smile, as though I’d confirmed his theory. I think the way I had asked my question made him think he was right; that he’d busted me.
‘Quite simple,’ he said. ‘You are six school students. I’ve been working with young people since I left Teachers’ College at the age of twenty. I know what they can and cannot do. These things you and your friends claim to have done are simply impossible. When I first met you, and you made various boasts about attacks you’d made on the Wirrawee bridge and so forth, I dismissed them as typical teenage bragging.
‘Later, some time after the battle in which I’d assumed you were killed, I found out that the Wirrawee bridge had in fact been destroyed, and at least two girls were witnessed running from the scene. I knew then that I’d underestimated your group, and I realised that you must have had Regular Army support.
‘Then there was the explosion in Turner Street
– you had some involvement in that, didn’t you? That had all the hallmarks of professional terrorists. The attack on Cobbler’s Bay. The attack and destruction of a grounded helicopter by a New Zealand Air Force jet: that was just a pleasant coincidence for you, was it? Is that what you seriously expect me to believe? The ambush and slaying of the officer and two soldiers: you think a bunch of kids could catch professionals that way?
‘No, Ellie, the truth is that you’ve become involved in something much bigger than you realise, something that’s gone way beyond your control.
‘And if you want to still be alive this time next week, you’d better tell me everything and tell me fast. We need to know where to find these people right now. If we don’t find them then you’ll be dying on their behalf, and I don’t think you want that, do you? You’re very young, too young to die, if you’ll forgive the cliché. These people you’ve been working for, these people who have in fact exploited you – if only you could see it – they’re professional soldiers. They accept dying as an occupational hazard. They know that when they sign up. You don’t have to take any responsibility for them.’
It all made a weird kind of sense, that was the terrible frightening thing about it. I could see exactly how he would have arrived at the conclusions he’d reached. In a way he’d paid us a compliment, by being unable to believe we could have achieved what we had. By being such bloody legends we’d got ourselves into an awful mess.
I didn’t know where to start. I began by being rational. I tried to explain to him how we’d gone about our attacks. But I was too tired and scared, and the words came out badly. I couldn’t remember half the things we’d done or the order in which we’d done them, and within three minutes I was floundering, tying myself up in a fishnet, almost feeling the lines cutting my throat. I switched from rational to begging, at last dropping my pride to the floor and pleading with him for my life. The only thing I didn’t do, the only way I kept any self-respect, was not to dob in Homer about Cobbler’s Bay or Kevin about the explosives. Perhaps I would have if I’d thought it might make a difference, but I knew it wouldn’t. The best story I could finally come up with was to tell him about Chris, and to say that Chris taught me about explosives. But, as Major Harvey said, if that were the true story I would have told him straight away. I had no reason to protect Chris.
There was nothing I could say to that, because it was true.
At one stage, sick of being picked on, I said to him, ‘Why don’t you ask the others? They’ll tell you the same thing.’
That’s when he told me that they were in the hands of other interrogators; he’d spoken to all five of them but he’d saved me for his own special attention.
We went on for hours until the Major started to look as exhausted as I was. The woman left at some stage; I was hardly aware of her going. The soldiers who’d escorted me lounged around in the corridor outside, glancing into the office occasionally. In the end I gave up. There seemed nothing I could say that would convince Harvey we’d acted on our own. I sat there in grim silence as he tried and tried again to convince me to tell him everything.
I think he honestly believed his own theory. But I also think he had something to prove. I wondered if he were under pressure himself, maybe to prove to the soldiers that he was loyal to them, and good at his job. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care a lot. I had enough problems of my own.
The only thing I was grateful for was that it hadn’t occurred to him that our attack on Turner Street
was aimed right at him. We’d set out deliberately to kill him; that was the main point of it. We’d failed, but in our failure we’d apparently achieved something dramatic, because right at the end of the session he said to me: ‘And the attack on Turner Street
, that was another coincidence, I suppose, was it?’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked tiredly. It was the first time I’d bothered to respond to anything he’d said for fifteen minutes.
‘How
did you know General S – was there?’
I couldn’t pick up the name he said; it was not an easy one to pronounce.
‘Who?’
‘You see, that’s yet another reason I know you’re lying. Or are you going to tell me your little gang had an intelligence network as well?’
‘What?’
‘Ellie, it took a very sophisticated intelligence network to know that the General was in Wirrawee that night. Most of our own soldiers didn’t even know. But you knew. You and the people who planned that attack. Sooner or later you’re going to tell me about that too, how you got that information. It’s very important to us. But the most important thing right now is to know where the New Zealand soldiers are. We want them Ellie, can you understand that? And we’re going to get them, whether you’re alive or not to see it.’
And on that cheerful note I was returned to my cell.
I had a bit of a reaction in there. I was totally exhausted; I had no resistance left. I wanted to crawl under the bed and go into a foetal position. As there was no ‘under the bed’, all I could do was huddle in a corner. I didn’t cry; but I shook a hell of a lot. I wanted to pull myself together because I knew I’d need all the strength I could get but there was no strength there. So I huddled and shook.
They were still feeding me, which was surprising, and when they brought tea in, it motivated me a bit. I didn’t get up or even look at them while they were in the cell, but after they’d gone I staggered up, went to the desk and forced myself to eat the meal. I didn’t know when I’d get another one. Major Harvey obviously wasn’t pleased with me.
Less than an hour later I got taken back to his office. I felt there’d been a very slight change, though. He seemed more resigned, less urgent. Gradually, listening to his threats and insults, I realised what was happening. By then six of us had been through hours of questioning and all six of us must have shown such complete amazement at the New Zealand commando theory that they were starting to doubt it themselves. There was no suggestion that it was going to make any difference in the long run but it did mean that the pressure on me was fractionally lighter. He still ranted and raved but without quite as much confidence. The stumbling block for him was the idea that we could have done so much by ourselves. Because he refused to believe that, he had to look for another explanation and, as they’d caught everyone else in the Stratton-Wirrawee district, he thought it had to be the Kiwis.