As they were leaving the pub, Tony Buchanan offered a final defence of Nick Loukakis. They were standing in the shade of the pub awning, pausing before having to once more move in the heat.
Out on the pavement a short, stocky man, clad only in board shorts, came hurtling along on a large skateboard pulled by a dog in a harness. He was travelling at such speed that a woman stepped back into a pavement table to get out of his way. Tony Buchanan looked up and shook his head. Siv Harmsen yelled out, “Fuckwit!” then turned back round.
“Listen, Tony, even if you’re right,” he said, “you couldn’t change any of it. This story, you know, it serves a bigger purpose, the big picture, right?”
Tony Buchanan watched as Siv Harmsen used his fingers to extract a shred of steak from next to his eyetooth, and then swallowed the rag of recalcitrant meat.
“Let’s suppose we’re wrong,” said Siv Harmsen, closing in now. “Just for a minute, let’s suppose that. You with me?”
“Guess so,” said Tony Buchanan.
“And you know what? It’s still important that the public know these bastards are out there. That this is going to happen here. And that they need people like us to stop it. It’s important that the public know they have people like us looking over them. That’s very important. I’m sure you can understand that. How bad would it look if we were wrong? What a victory for bin Laden’s bastards that would be! People out there don’t understand all the threats, all the issues, how we have a war between good and evil happening here. How can they? People are fools, and we need to give them lessons as to what is important and what isn’t, don’t you think?”
“I think people need to know the truth, Siv.”
“Look, mate, I went to Bali. I saw what the arseholes did. That’s truth. But Australia didn’t see that truth. Not the bits of charred goo that was someone yesterday. The terrorists want to turn all our cities into Baghdad. It’s bloody frightening, Tony, and people need to be frightened. And that’s part of our job, too.”
“I thought you just said people were already frightened,” said Tony Buchanan.
“Not enough,” said Siv Harmsen. “Never enough.” He sprayed some breath freshener into his mouth, put the spray back in a trouser pocket, then extended his hand to shake farewell and smiled. “People are fools. It’s the Rohypnol rape decade, Tony. People can’t remember anything. They just have a vague idea something bad’s gone down. Stiff titties. Unless they’re terrified, they won’t agree with what we do and why we have to do it.”
A strange and terrible thought formed in Tony Buchanan’s mind.
“Those three bombs, Siv,” he said. “Who did make them?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The truth,” Tony Buchanan said, surprised to hear himself repeating what now sounded a trivial point. He realised his voice sounded thin and unconvincing.
“Anything is better than another Sari Club,” Siv Harmsen said evenly. He gave a strange smile, an expression of weariness and knowledge that unsettled Tony Buchanan. “Australia feels like me, Tony. Just think about it.”
And so Tony Buchanan shook hands and went back to work. He did think about it. The air con was off, the office a furnace. He had a new wife, an over-extended mortgage and alimony payments. He had a new thirty-five-foot yacht. He had taken out a second line of credit for it, secured against his Elizabeth Bay home, debt chasing debt. He was still a chance, distantly, it was true, but still a chance for an assistant commissioner’s position sometime in the next five years. He would do nothing, he reasoned to himself, for what else could he do?
And then he had the answer.
He would go sailing on his next free afternoon. The thought of sailing always calmed him, and he imagined himself out on the water, thinking how beautiful Sydney was and how so few people really got to see its full charms, and how lucky he was to be able to enjoy it.
Yet something made Tony Buchanan ring Siv Harmsen one last time. He had been thinking of Tariq al-Hakim, how his murder was said to be the work of the woman, how Nick Loukakis had thought it an underworld job, but now he could see another darker, far more sinister explanation.
“Who killed Tariq al-Hakim?” he asked.
There was a strange laugh at the other end of the line, a how-fucking-dumb-are-you? laugh, and then Siv Harmsen said, “I would say people with an interest in terror did that. Wouldn’t you, Tony?”
“There’s always a paper chain, Siv.”
Siv Harmsen said nothing. Tony Buchanan recognised the old interrogator’s trick, of Siv waiting for him to implicate himself in a nervous rush of words. But this wasn’t an interrogation.
“Always documents.”
“I was an altar boy, Tony, you know, a child of God. Did I ever tell you? And the needs of the state, Tony, are like they used to say about God: everywhere apparent and nowhere visible.”
“Always a record, something, Siv, that connects the highest to those who have to get their hands dirty.”
“Once upon a time,” said Siv Harmsen finally, “maybe. I wouldn’t know. But now, mate, there’s just people like us. We don’t even have to share our knowledge verbally. We just have to share an understanding.”
Tony Buchanan felt himself filling with terror.
“You get me?” asked Siv Harmsen. Then he hissed one word that suddenly sounded so sinister. “Mate.”
And Tony Buchanan finally connected with Siv Harmsen at some deeply buried place where he understood that to share power was to share guilt.
“This heat,” said Tony Buchanan, pulling at his collar.
“Yeah,” said Siv Harmsen. There was another long silence. Then Siv Harmsen spoke again. “There’s drinks at the minister’s office next Thursday. Why don’t you come?”
“It’s getting unbearable.”
“Yeah,” said Siv Harmsen, his voice as flat as Bankstown. “Unfuckingbearable. Six pm. I’ll send a car for you.” He hung up.
Yes, of course, thought Tony Buchanan, that was the solution: he would go sailing, not sometime soon, but now, today, this very evening. In such stinking heat the harbour would be particularly glorious. It was extraordinary how many millions of people lived in Sydney and yet never used the harbour. If only they knew how foolish they were! He would let the spinnaker out, feel the sail belly, the yacht yaw like a great beast waking, and as the yacht pulled forward toward Shark Island its acceleration would push him slightly back and he would feel the salt breeze on his face. Life was beautiful in this most beautiful of places where it was possible to forget everything.
He smiled to himself, leant back in his chair, dreaming of sailing, dreaming of passing Sydney by.
‘No doubt about it,’ thought Tony Buchanan, ‘people are fools.’