Underground (2 page)

I am not a fit man, even for a fifty-nine year old. But fat, they say, makes you buoyant, and I have plenty of that. And while there were probably all sorts of treacherous currents and vortexes in the water, somehow I avoided them all. I do have one memory of staring down into the murky depths and seeing a golf cart tumbling beneath me. But then there was something solid under my feet. Not mud, but bitumen. And thus I waded, completely unharmed, out of the cyclone’s deadly ocean, and onto the resort driveway.

I was laughing. Nothing was going to kill me today. I knew that half a kilometre along the driveway was the front gate, and the security complex, built as solidly as a bunker. I could ride out the storm there. Maybe, if the guards had any sense, there would even be something to drink. I consulted the sky. The walls
of the cyclone loomed with their surreal fixity, and a haze covered the sea—but somewhere out there the other side of the eye was rushing towards me. I took one last look at my resort, the final folly of an age when things like holidays and tourism had seemed to matter. Then I nodded farewell, and turned to the road.

And saw the most unlikely sight of all, on that insane day. A bright red Australia Post van was grumbling down the hill.

Was I hallucinating? There was certainly enough alcohol and cocaine in my system. But no, the vehicle was real enough, a jarringly everyday sight amidst all the chaos. My first thought was—so what were the security guards doing? How had the van got through the gates? The lazy bastards must be hiding away in the office. My second, and far more rational, thought was—what the fuck was the van doing out in a storm like this anyway? The dedication of the postal service was one thing—but no mail was
that
important.

And yet, why the hell not?

Nothing could surprise me anymore.

The van halted in front of me, and two postmen climbed out. Bizarrely, they seemed to take no note of the sky, or the sight of the swollen ocean consuming a resort. Their eyes, under their caps, were fixed steadfastly and seriously upon me, as if we’d arranged this very meeting, long ago. One of them held a package about the size of a shoebox.

‘Mr Leo James?’ the man with the package asked.

‘That’s me.’ Could they possibly be for real? Of course it was me, and I doubted there were many people in Australia who wouldn’t know that. The craziness of it all was overpowering. I even found myself giving a little bow.

Neither one responded, or smiled.

They were odd looking posties, I decided. Their uniforms were untidy, somehow. Ill-fitting. And then I noticed that the package was lying empty on the road, a soggy heap, and instead, the first man was holding a gun.

‘Get in the van, please,’ he said.

I stared. Since when did postmen carry weapons? Was this another state of emergency decree? (I mean, who can keep track of them all?) But in any case, why on earth was he pointing it at me? And from behind now I could hear a sound above the boom of the waves—a rushing and howling that could only be one thing. The armed mailman blinked, a fraction of his weird calm draining away. He was facing the ocean, of course, and could see what was coming.

‘In the van,’ he repeated. ‘Now.’

I gawped at him. And a sudden breeze tugged urgently at my back.

‘I
will
shoot you,’ he stated.

Abruptly the wind was there again, a savage gust of it that made me stagger forward to my knees. Something silver flickered past my eyes, moving so fast it was only a blur, and at the same moment the air was full of noise and water again.

But I was staring at the postie. I’d never seen a man decapitated before—well, not right in front of me, anyway. But that’s cyclones for you. Nothing is more dangerous in high winds than a loose sheet of tin.

The other mailman was gawping now. His colleague’s headless body took a few odd steps against the wind, and then fell over.

‘Ha!’ I cried above the cyclone. ‘Fuck you, prick!’

Nothing
was going to kill me today.

Then the back doors of the van popped open, and two more men jumped out, and these guys hadn’t even bothered with the pretend uniforms. Together, the three of them set to and proceeded to beat the shit out of me. After which they threw me in the back of the van. But I suppose I can’t blame them for panicking a bit. One of them was dead, and that cyclone really was a scary thing, even if it turned out to be on their side.

But no, on second thought, that isn’t going far enough back. My troubles began long before the cyclone. I’ll have to start this again.

For that matter, why am I even bothering to write this down? I know perfectly well that it will never be read by anyone. Except, that is, by
you
, my dear interrogators. You, and maybe a few of your superiors. That’s not much of an audience. And besides, it’s not as if you people need to hear all of this over. You’ve already made me tell you everything. Admit to everything. Confess to everything.

So why?

Well, because here I sit, at this big, empty table, locked away in this giant, empty room, with nothing else to do. And despite the fear and the anger, and the occasional pain, I’m also, mostly, just very bored. No proper books in here, no TV, nothing to
pass the hours between our little talks. Nothing to do but wait, and worry, and stare at my surroundings.

I’m getting very sick of the colour green.

Green leather, green carpet, green walls.

Everywhere I look.

So to occupy myself I’ve decided to commence my memoirs. One thing I do have is plenty of wastepaper and pens. The previous occupants very thoughtfully left them behind. And it seems, too, that I have the time . . . maybe even enough to get this finished, before the inevitable comes to pass.

But how far back should I start? I could go back years and years, no doubt. My current fate, after all, is linked to a much wider history. I could go all the way back, ten years and more, to September 11 and the Twin Towers. (And who’d have ever thought that we’d reflect on
that
particular day as a happier, saner, safer time?) Truth is, I could go back even further than that. But I won’t. I’ll go back just over two years. I’ll start with the dreadful events in Canberra.

I was there when all that happened—as I’m sure I’ve told you. An eyewitness, by chance, to the greatest disaster of the age. It was also the last time I saw my brother. And you know who he is, of course. None of this nightmare would have happened at all, if I wasn’t his less famous sibling. I would never have been kidnapped, yet alone ended up in this curious dungeon of yours. So I guess I have to start with him too.

The Honourable Bernard James, Prime Minister of Australia.

My twin brother, fraternal, I should say.

In fact, Bernard was the only reason I ever went to Canberra. I didn’t much like the place, but for a developer and real estate entrepreneur of dubious repute, like myself, to have the Prime Minister as a brother. . . Well, you can imagine the opportunities. Because of him, I was known the country over, and got to stalk the corridors of power with the best of them. Of course, I had absolutely no power of my own, and everyone else in those corridors loathed the sight of me. Indeed, I was usually being escorted out of those same corridors by overly polite security guards. But access is access—or the illusion of access anyway.

For instance, the day before it all went haywire, I was in town on business, trying to tie down some investments for the resort. The potential investors were a consortium of Fijian politicians who were visiting the capital to negotiate an aid package—their country is sinking—from the Australian government. Much of that package was never going to go
anywhere near Fiji, obviously. The delegation fully expected to reinvest the cash portions of it into various money-making ventures of their own—my resort amongst them. God only knows what happened to the poor bastards. They never did get their money. Now probably half of their islands are underwater at high tide, and there sure as hell isn’t any foreign aid around anymore.

But on that day at least, they were junketing in Canberra, and I, the PM’s cherished brother and confidant (according to my own PR), was showing them a good time. We spent the afternoon boozing and schmoozing around the city’s finest restaurants and bars, with me assuring everyone constantly that I was on the best of terms with a whole raft of government ministers and planning agencies, state and federal. My resort was thus a mortal lock of an investment. None of which was exactly true, but it was all part of my trade—to be a recognisable face, a player who looked connected and sounded influential. And the Fijians obediently lapped it up.

None of us had a clue that we were drinking through Canberra’s last day of normality. Still, by about nine that night (and lunch had started at midday) everyone was well and truly lubricated and I’d been promised wads of cash. Satisfied with my efforts, I packed the Fijians off to one of the better brothels, and swayed drunkenly back to my hotel room.

But even before I took off my shoes, the phone rang.

It was Bernard.

Now, admittedly, I’d just been telling the Fijians that I spoke to my twin all the time, that I had his ear, that he trusted me and
listened
to me. The truth was that in those days a phone call from my brother was a rare event indeed.

Okay, the fact is, we hated each other, and hadn’t spoken in months. I’ll go into all the history of it later, if I can bear to, but to put it briefly, I thought he was a pompous worm, and he thought I was a walking, talking embarrassment to his
position. And we were both right. Still, publicly, it was in our interests to pretend to be civil. So I’d always supported him, the faithful familial booster, on those occasions when reporters sought me out during election campaigns and the like. He was my meal ticket, after all. And in return, Bernard turned a blind eye to the more questionable activities of mine that traded on our relationship. It was, in the best political tradition, a win–win thing. Or so
I
thought. But I was never glad to hear from him.

I said, ‘How’d you know I was around?’

‘How could I not know?’ he replied, coldly. ‘You and the Fijians have been thrown out of half the bars in town today.’

‘But how’d you know I’m here at Rydges?’

‘You always stay at Rydges.’

Well, Canberra was a small city, so he might’ve been telling the truth. My own suspicion was that he had ASIO keeping tabs on me, but I was too drunk to argue.

I said, ‘You gonna give those guys their aid package?’

He ignored the question. ‘I want you to come to The Lodge for dinner.’

‘No thanks. I’ve eaten.’

‘Not since lunch, I’m told.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ I insisted, watching the room spin before my eyes.

‘There’s a car waiting for you, outside the lobby.’

‘Why? What’s so important?’

He had hung up, the little prick.

(By the way, I reserve the right to insert ‘little’ before any term of abuse that I throw at him in the following pages. I don’t mean ‘little’ in terms of ‘short’, because he isn’t. I mean it because he’s my ‘little’ brother. I was born fifteen minutes earlier. And resent it though he does, there’s nothing the little shit can do about it.)

But I made my way to the lobby, all the same. You don’t refuse a call from the country’s leader simply on a drunken
whim, family or not. And besides, it would only impress my backers all the more if I could say (honestly, for once) that I’d dined with the PM just the night before.

The car was waiting as promised, a government limousine. The driver was expecting me, and we whiffed off into the Canberra night. It wasn’t far, just over the lake and then around the parliamentary circle and up Adelaide Avenue to the front gates of The Lodge. Security men peered hard through the windows, and demanded my wallet for identification—as if they didn’t know who I was. Then they looked underneath the car for bombs, and in the boot too, and finally waved us on. More security waited for me at the front door, with a pat-down for weapons, and scans by metal detectors, and anthrax detectors, and lord knows what else, and at last, cleared of everything, I was ushered through to the inner sanctum.

Of course, Bernard would not have been in Canberra, yet alone in residence at The Lodge, if it wasn’t the middle of a parliamentary session. He hated the house, just as, everyone knew, he hated the whole city. He preferred (like many a PM before him) the much grander vistas of Kirribilli House, on the harbour in Sydney. But there he was, waiting for me in the study, very much the Prime Minister after hours, his coat and tie removed, and his sleeves rolled up. Not that this made him look relaxed at all, or casual. He was a man born to wear suits. So bland and nondescript a figure that he might have been a low-grade bookkeeper, not the most powerful man in Australia. He isn’t exactly ugly, I suppose. But to me he’s always had one of those gloomy, stubborn faces. An aggrieved face. A bully’s face. A reflection, in other words, of all that lies in his heart.

I’ve always been thankful, therefore, that we aren’t identical twins. And in our younger days, I was the better looking, no question. Taller, sharper, more hair, more friends, more girls, and far, far more sex. I wouldn’t claim any of that to be true in later years—except maybe the sex, for Bernard was never a
womaniser. But I haven’t aged well, what with my indulgent lifestyle. My brother has always been more careful about his health, in that deadly dull way of his, and has no vices that I know of. Plus, by the time he ascended to the leadership of the Liberal Party, he had a personal trainer and was being groomed immaculately by experts. So he passes. And the raw stench of power, of course, is better than any plastic surgery.

‘I’ve ordered you some coffee,’ he said.

‘A drink would be better.’

‘You’ve had enough already.’

I fell into a chair, disgusted. A more self-righteous man I have never met. And he had no reason to be self-righteous—not considering the opinion polls around that time. Bernard was a Prime Minister in trouble. True, the Liberal Party had been in power for so long it seemed the country had forgotten how to vote for anyone else—but most of that had been with John Howard, the man of steel himself, at the helm. Bernard was the second leader since Howard’s departure, and the gloss was wearing thin. The various wars overseas were a mess, Australian troops were dying in droves, car bombs were exploding on home soil, and the economy was in free fall. My brother’s personal approval rating was the lowest ever of any sitting PM, and on a two-party preferred basis, Labor was leading by nearly twenty points. But if Bernard was worried, he didn’t show it. He seemed a little tired, perhaps, and a little stressed, but emotions of any kind were not his strong suit.