79

Sitting on the train, the Doll realised she no longer had anywhere to go. Her home had been raided, Wilder’s was being watched, and her hotel room, she guessed, would well and truly have been staked out by the security forces now. And after the cops had been by with their sniffer dog and pole mirrors, the Doll realised that she simply wanted to be free. Her freedom, about which she had never thought, now seemed to her the most precious thing in her life.

The Doll decided she would spend whatever time she had left just wandering the streets of her old haunts. If she was recognised and caught or shot out there, so what? Until that moment she would be free. She wanted to have a good day, a perfect day—who knew? maybe even a few days, a week or two?—determined not to acknowledge what was happening around her. She would have a coffee. See a movie, maybe. Go window shopping. It was crazy, of course—random, as Wilder might have said—but then, what wasn’t?

And so when she walked up out of the city train station, she went straight into a café, determined to enjoy a moment of normal life. But as she approached the counter, she looked up and saw on the wall behind a plasma screen. A uniformed cop was on, saying that police had reason to believe Gina Davies was armed and dangerous.

Outside, there was a screeching noise of tyres braking too quickly, then the abrupt sound of colliding metal and shattering glass. Inside, the waiter behind the counter had come between the Doll and the tv and caught her eye, and it was suddenly too late and too difficult to leave without drawing attention to herself. The Doll knew she was shaking. Her nerves were shot. The waiter had to ask her twice what she wanted. Maybe, she told herself, they would just think she was one more junkie needing a fix. Christ knows, she probably looked like it. She sat down at a table. She tried to avoid the tv and people’s eyes by staring at a small stand of free postcards that sat next to her table.

“Turn it up,” barked a middle-aged man at the counter, “this is important.”

She wanted to be free, to once more do the simple things free people do. One postcard oddly moved her and she took it down and, with a pen from her bag, began writing on it, in order not to see, in order not to listen, in order to be free. But it wasn’t possible. The waiter had turned the tv up and how could she not listen? The world insisted you listen. And it was, after all, thought the Doll, about her. She stopped writing. What if they finally admitted it was a mistake? Or suggested there was now some doubt about the Doll’s involvement? What if there was some vital piece of information that might prove her innocence?

When she heard the cop say how the New South Wales police force was “interfacing with over sixteen different state and federal agencies in the hunt for Gina Davies” she had to look back up from her unfinished postcard. The day before they had merely wanted her to assist with their enquiries. Now they were hunting her like a dog, a mad dog. Watching the cop on the tv, the Doll was convinced that the world no longer existed for any reason other than to destroy her. She was just waiting to be found, for police to come crashing in, for shots to sound; preparing herself to run, to freeze, to hide, to do something, to do nothing. And part of her wanted that confrontation, that moment of destiny to come, so that it might be over.

Perhaps in consequence, her body felt astonishingly alert. Her eyes darted everywhere, her ears tuned in and out of conversations around the room. She could feel the smallest breeze caused by someone moving past her, could sense anger, affection or weariness in each person sitting near her. She was in a bizarre way aware of everything. And above all, what her hyped-up body could sense was fear—that this same fear that had hold of her was in everyone. It seemed so tangible, she felt she could smell fear and taste fear, all this fear they were breathing in, drinking up and eating, all this fear they lived by and with.

And then she wondered: what if people could not live without such fear? What if people needed fear to know who they were, to reassure themselves that they were living their lives the right way? If they needed a hit of fear even more than a hit of coffee or beer or blow? For without fear, what meaning was there to be had in anything?

On the tv a large, florid man had replaced the cop. His name and the words “American Ambassador” appeared across his suit jacket. He welcomed the effort of Australian authorities in their counter terrorism work; indeed, he went on, in his experience Australia was almost unrivalled in its homeland security measures.

“It is not policy,” he said, “to disclose what American agencies do or do not do with the agencies of friendly countries when dealing with the terrorism question.”

These words, terrorism question, thought the Doll, what do they mean? She mulled over them as the waiter arrived with her order. But try as she might, they made no sense to her. She repeated them over and over, till they sounded in her mind like just another trance beat to which she had once danced in the Chairman’s Lounge. Everyone else seemed to understand what the words meant, and it was clear to the Doll that it must only be because she was particularly stupid that she couldn’t.

Sitting in that café, looking at her undrunk macchiato, flicking her uneaten focaccia with fingers still grubby from grave cleaning, trying and failing not to see, not to hear, not to be afraid, waiting for a cry, an accusation, a shot, she had the odd idea that the terrorism question had become a fad, like body piercing or flares; a fashion that had come and would go like this season’s colours. Maybe, thought the Doll, if it was just like fashion, it was simply about a few people building careers, making money, getting power, and it wasn’t really about making the world safer or better at all. Maybe it was like Botox, something to hide the truth.

The Doll wiped her mouth with the tips of her fingers and felt the grit of the city of the dead rubbing, wearing away at her skin. It was a stupid idea, really, but it made her smile. The stupid idea, she thought, of a stupid woman. But if it were true, she sensed that perhaps these few people needed terrorists, for without the terrorists what would they do and where would they be? And part of her felt oddly, stupidly, proud, as if she had been specially chosen for this clearly necessary role.

The tv said: “And now we have the man who has done more to put this incredible story together than any other, Richard Cody. Good to see you again, Richard.”

“Good to be here, Larry.”

Richard Cody looked far younger and more vibrant than he had that night in the club. It was as if the terrorist story were for him an elixir of youth.

“Richard, the question I suppose on everyone’s mind is why? Why would an Aussie girl allow herself to get mixed up in all this madness?”

“What the experts are telling us is how terrorism constantly mutates,” said Richard Cody, “like a super virus—a bird flu of the soul, if you like. So, first, it was a Middle Eastern phenomenon; next it spread to countries like Chechnya. Then in Britain we saw English-born Muslims turning into suicide bombers. In Gina Davies we are seeing the latest morphing, with an Australian woman—not, as far as we know, of Islamic belief or ethnic background—making common cause with the terrorists. This is an entirely new phenomenon, and it is why Gina Davies is viewed by the authorities as so dangerous.”

“It’s shocking to think an Australian—one of us—could do this, Richard.”

“Indeed, Larry. And when people see our Unknown Terrorist special tonight, they are going to be well and truly shocked. I know I was. It’s sad, it’s disturbing, and it’s on tonight at six-thirty.”