Haha Man

By Sandy McCutcheon

In a marketplace in Afghanistan a young man sees his father die at the hands of the taliban. He races home to protect his wife and children, but it is too late. Devastated by grief, Karim Mazari must flee, but at a time of international uncertainty and terror, compassion can be hard to find. Until he discovers that a passport and a ticket to Australia can be bought ...In Australia anger is growing about the plight of asylum seekers imprisoned in detention centres. Layla, an Afghan migrant, begins an underground campaign to help those behind the razor wire 埡nd is surprised to discover how many Australians are ready to risk everything to support her.Meanwhile, there are reports of an increasing number of deaths from a mysterious virus. Is Australia deliberately being targeted for its involvement in world affairs?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jan 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780730495000

Sandy McCutcheon

Sandy McCutcheon was brought up in New Zealand, but since the early 1970s has lived mainly in Australia. He is the author of more than 20 plays and six novels. Sandy currently lives in Brisbane.

Book preview

PART ONE

It wasn’t the heat but the humidity that hit him hard. The heat he could endure, but the airless oppressive atmosphere was debilitating. Since early morning the oxygen had been drained from the air and replaced with a sticky liquid which seemed intent on clinging to him like a blanket. Within minutes of leaving the house he was drenched in sweat, his shirt sticking uncomfortably to his back, the collar irritating his neck. He had considered rescheduling his meeting, postponing it until an evening when at least the temperature would have dipped below thirty. But it was too late. The contact had been made, the time and place set. Changing things now would have increased the risk and necessitated just as much effort. He couldn’t use the phone in his house — he never did these days — and taking his own car to a public phone was just plain silly. Anyway, at this stage there was no way he could contact the man he was meeting. Long ago they had decided that their own phones were too risky, so now they stuck to encrypted email. Having planned this day so well he would go through with it.

He sat alone in the shade of the bus shelter and waited. Despite the heat he had walked fast and now had ample time to catch his breath and allow the doubts to subside. It was not that he hadn’t hesitated about committing to the meeting in the first place, his better judgement urging caution, but after a year of acquiescence he felt the need to take command of his own life. So much had happened in the last two months and by boarding the bus into the city he was moving towards a career he had never envisaged. It was as though the old Fossey had died and the new one was only partially emerged from the chrysalis, still encumbered by old habits, old ways. His new skin was alien to him, stiff, unyielding. And, he conceded, it might never — probably never — feel entirely comfortable, for he was stepping not only outside his own comfort zone, but into a life that was far removed from anything most people would call acceptable.

He glanced back up the road, looking for the bus. No, he told himself — looking for the police, or at least an unmarked car that would confirm his paranoia. But there was nothing other than a couple of women struggling home, loaded down with plastic supermarket bags, their dresses stained with perspiration on their backs and under their armpits. He watched as they paused in the shade of a straggly jacaranda and rubbed their hands where the bags had cut in. Someone should invent a handle for those bags, he thought. Probably had. Silly that they … He stopped the thought and considered the way his mind had taken the first available exit from the real purpose of his trip. Coward. But still he admired the jacaranda’s vivid flowers, which hung like overripe grapes over the women’s heads. Above the tree, dark clouds were massing.

He had worked his movements out with great care. First leg was a bus ride into the city, followed by a taxi heading in the direction of St Lucia. Then, if everything went according to plan, he would have the one and only face-to-face meeting he had committed to. It was not that he didn’t understand the task he had set himself, but rather that there were subtleties that he didn’t comprehend; things that needed teasing out. Email, for all its convenience, had certain drawbacks … His musing was interrupted by the arrival of the bus. With a casual glance over his shoulder, he boarded and took a seat at the rear.

Mazar-i Sharif, Afghanistan, 8 August 1998

In the mornings, when the sun, still low, threw flat shadows across the land, swallowing the dryness, softening the rocks and painting the trees in a gentle glow, it looked like paradise. The man stood at the second-storey window and gazed out over the groves of almonds. He had other trees, figs, plums and apricots, but it was the almonds, planted by his grandfather over a hundred years before, that he loved. Each March, as they flowered, he would walk up and down the long rows, savouring his first memories, of being a child gazing up at the sprays of blossom. Now, in August, the nuts had formed and yet still he remembered the flowers and his father’s remark that they were the sweetest gift of God. Those memories were now years in the past but still they never failed to draw him at this, his favourite time of day, when he’d completed his sunrise prayers and was enjoying a cup of tea. The view from the window was one he had grown up with and in all his fifty-eight years he had never tired of it.

This year the spring rains had been kind, the trees had blossomed heavily and the limbs were now bowed under the weight of nuts. Last year had been lean and if he only had that crop to depend on he would have been suffering. But Ahmed Mazari was a man of substance whom friends and neighbours respectfully addressed as Ahmed Khan or Ahmed Beg. His nuts, fruit and honey melons represented only a small part of his wealth and it was in another area entirely that his family’s fortune had been made. Allah had been good to Ahmed Mazari. During the time of the Russians he used his brother’s contacts in Pakistan to bring in trucks and spare parts. And his customers, the Mujahedin, had pipelines into which flowed the American money that had sown the seeds of Ahmed Beg’s prosperity; it had also educated Karim, his eldest son, in England.

Karim Mazari had studied English language and politics at the London School of Economics, the LSE, but on his return had thrown himself into the family business and become an expert mechanic. Afghanistan was a country that needed mechanics more than it needed politics. It was, after all, politics that had brought them to the edge of ruin time after time, and politics seemed destined to do so again. A mechanic, on the other hand, was someone useful. There were few who could afford the modern trucks and cars that the Mazaris had at their disposal, and the old vehicles needed every bit of Mazari know-how to keep running. Karim displayed an uncanny ability to diagnose a problem in a matter of minutes and then, often with great ingenuity, fashion parts from whatever was on hand. Shell casings, wrecked Russian armoured vehicles, all yielded up the precious metal which he fashioned to his needs. As the locals told it, if Karim Mazari can’t fix it, it’s dead.

All in all, Ahmed Mazari had reason to be proud of his family’s accomplishments. He turned from the window and crossed the room to the back of the house. Opening a shutter, he looked out towards the city just a few miles away to the north. Earlier, just after dawn, as he completed his prayers, he had heard gunfire coming from the northwest of the city. It was a worrying development, for rumours had already reached him of the growing tensions between the various factions of the United Front. Ahmed Mazari had argued with the commanders that division meant death and thought he had been listened to. The gunfire from Qala Zaini was an ominous sign. The Taliban had taken Shiberghan and there were reports they had moved on Balkh. The one comforting thought was that as long as the main Hizb-I Wahdat force was encamped at Qala Zaini, the walled area west of the city, then Mazar-i Sharif was safe.

Ahmed Mazari was tired of the fighting and felt a sudden premonition that he should have taken his family to the West before now. It was not a question of money. He had enough safely over the border in a Pakistani bank. No, it was this place. He knew that leaving the almond groves would be, at least for him, a one-way trip. This was his heritage and the repository of his life and memories. What would his wife have counselled? He knew the answer. Saleema would have told him to take his son and his family as far from Mazar-i Sharif as possible. He drained his tea and glanced at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock. Karim should be here. Then, as if the power of his thought had summoned it up, he saw the telltale plume of dust that signalled his son’s arrival. Years before, he had purchased part of his neighbour’s land in order to give Karim the adjoining property to set up his workshop.

Ahmed Mazari went downstairs, slipped into his sandals, crossed the courtyard and unlocked the gate. Above his head a hen made its way cautiously along the wall, as though it believed its weight would somehow collapse the thick mud-bricks. As he swung the gate wide his beautiful bushkashi stallion, Sultan, eyed the opening but made no move towards it. On the days when there was a bushkashi match things were different and from early in the morning he would have been pampered, but on this morning, realising his master was not about to take him anywhere, he snorted once and ambled back into the shadows. The chickens scattered as the Toyota Hilux turned in front of the house and came to a stop. Ahmed noted with satisfaction that the reconditioned engine that had been in the rear of the vehicle the night before was gone.

‘No problems?’

Karim stepped from the cab and embraced his father. He was a tall man who looked younger than his thirty-three years. On occasion his father joked that Karim’s time out of the country had corrupted him and that he was no longer a pure Afghan. ‘You have breathed in too much British air. Eaten too much English food.’ Karim secretly agreed. He did feel different, but it was not the food or the air that had corrupted him, it was the inescapable understanding that there was another world outside of Afghanistan. He had travelled to Pakistan, of course, accompanying his father on his business trips, but neither Peshawar nor Quetta had struck him as being ‘foreign’. It was his time in England that had formed much of his character; not just his formal education, but his warm relationship with English friends, one of whom had earned Karim’s deep respect by rescuing him from what might have been a nasty racial incident.

‘No problems.’ Karim took a wad of notes from his pocket and thrust it into his father’s hands. ‘Amin Khan complained about the price.’

‘The old goat. We agreed.’ Ahmed Mazari glanced at the notes and started counting them.

‘It’s all there. He complains, but in the end he pays, otherwise I would have brought the engine back.’

‘And he insists his son can install it?’

Karim shrugged. ‘If not we charge him twice what we quoted.’

Ahmed Mazari tucked the wad of money away. ‘Come, I don’t want to be all day.’

The trip into Mazar-i Sharif took fifteen minutes. Following his father’s instructions Karim parked the Toyota outside his cousin Khidhar’s house in the shade of the tree that hung gracefully over the thick mud wall. Through a well-worn gap in the wall Karim’s two young nephews appeared, tumbling over each other in their eagerness to be of service. They called their dog and took up guard in the back of the pickup and, knowing they would be well rewarded, promised to remain there until the men returned.

As Karim and his father walked towards Rouza-e Mubarak, the shrine in the centre of Mazar, they passed through lines of beggars: women, old men, victims of landmines and horrific war wounds. Ahmed Mazari had a reputation as a hard man for whom compromise was normally not an option, but those close to him knew that he was also a man of generosity and kindness. He would bargain hard and where he was owed would take what was his down to the last pul. Yet when he came across hardship he was the first to give succour and it was well known that his home was open to the stranger and the needy. Ahmed Mazari pulled a few notes from his robes and handed them to Karim. ‘I swear there are more beggars every day,’ he said quietly.

Karim had never really understood the modest streak in his father that made him feel uncomfortable with public displays of charity but he knew better than to question it. He took the money and distributed the notes as they walked.

Even as they entered the bazaar Ahmed Mazari realised something was wrong. He sensed it. Instead of the usual cacophony the bazaar was silent, and for a moment he thought his hearing had gone.

Karim reached out and grabbed his father’s arm. ‘Wait.’

Ahmed Mazari stopped, alert. Vendors and shoppers alike were turned towards the western end of the bazaar. But he didn’t get a chance to see what they were looking at.

At that moment, the first of the mortar shells exploded, shattering the silence and propelling the crowd into wild panic. A second and then a third mortar exploded and from somewhere he heard machine-gun fire.

He turned to push Karim back, but as he did he felt a sudden shocking pain in the side of his head and then nothing.

Karim, shielded by a group of men in front of him, was more fortunate. The men fell like mowed grass, leaving him standing. It was then that he saw what had silenced the crowds and demanded their attention.

Streaming in from the western entrances were trucks and pickups. He only needed one glance to understand. The black flags and black turbans of the men in the trucks were instantly recognisable.

The Taliban were returning to Mazar-i Sharif.

Karim spun around, reaching for his father, but he was gone. Then he saw him, sprawled on the paving stones, blood flowing from his head. He bent down to touch him but around him the initial shocked inaction was replaced by a stampede, as people, galvanised by fear, attempted to escape. On the far side of the bazaar the Taliban opened fire with machine guns mounted on the trucks and Karim was knocked backwards by the surge of people desperately trying to flee. In their panic people kicked and screamed, pushing forward heedless of what lay beneath their feet. Knocked onto the pavement, Karim realised he could die there, trampled by the mob. In desperation he rolled sideways and flailed with his arms, trying to grab onto something, anything, to drag him up from the ground. But it was hopeless; feet and legs knocked him, sending him stumbling and reeling over the bodies of two men, unconscious or dead. Karim didn’t know which.

For a moment the people flowed around the bodies like water round stones in a stream. It was only a moment, but it was enough for Karim to get to his knees and reach out with his arms. Knowing his life depended upon it he lunged forward and, grasping at a leg, at the hem of a garment, clawed upwards, bringing down another man as he did so. The man yelled abuse at him, but Karim was gone, pushed forward by the crowd.

Outside the bazaar it was pandemonium. The streets were blocked with cars and wagons attempting to turn and leave the area. Women and children were running towards the safety of the side streets and alleys where the larger trucks could not enter. Behind them the machine-gun fire was still reverberating around the bazaar. Where were their own troops?

Karim remembered his father commenting on the shots coming from the direction of the Hizb-I Wahdat camp at Qala Zaini earlier in the morning. With a sinking feeling he knew that if the Taliban had reached the centre of the city, then the United Front must have been overrun. He turned the corner to the street where he had parked the truck and stopped dead. A Pajero bearing the black Taliban flag was parked across the road, its motor running. On either side of the street heavily armed Taliban were moving from house to house. Two of them were examining his pickup.

Karim felt a ghastly sickness in his stomach as he recognised the bodies of his young cousins bleeding in the street.

Trembling and shocked, Karim turned and started to walk away as fast as he could without attracting attention, but as he turned into a narrow twisting lane to his right he heard a scream behind him.

‘Hazara Mongol!’

Karim ran, ducking and weaving through alleys and laneways as the cries behind him grew louder. A couple of bursts of automatic fire echoed close at hand and rounds ricocheted off walls and paving stones. He could hear running feet and the cries getting closer. At any moment he expected a bullet would rip into him. He was moving blindly now. This was not an area he knew and the only sanctuary he could think of was the mosque. But in which direction? He rounded another corner and leaned against a wall, gasping for breath. Behind him he heard the Taliban calling to each other. They were spreading out, combing the streets systematically. Karim pushed himself away from the wall and lurched further down the narrow street. It was a dead end.

Then, when he knew he could run no more, a small door in the wall opened and a man gestured frantically to him to come in.

‘God is great!’ Karim gasped and stumbled into a tiny enclosed courtyard cluttered with bicycle parts. The skeletons of old frames were stacked against a wall, and wheels, bicycle seats and inner tubes lay in piles around a small workbench. Behind it was a round building with an opening to an adjacent street; a shopfront. For a second Karim considered running again, but collapsed on the ground, fighting to get air into his lungs.

‘God is not looking,’ his rescuer replied, as he bolted the door. ‘The Talibs are everywhere. I have been watching them from my roof. They are killing every Hazara they come across.’

‘You shouldn’t have put yourself at risk…’ Karim stopped. From outside in the alley came the sound of voices followed by a crash as a rifle butt slammed against a door. There was an eerie silence punctuated by two more shots. The Taliban were working their way along the alley house by house.

‘There is no time,’ the man snapped. ‘Throw this round your shoulders and get some dirt on your hands.’ He pushed a stained and oily shawl into Karim’s hands and, not waiting for Karim to reply, reached out and rubbed his filthy fingers across his face. ‘Start cleaning one of those.’ He pointed to a pile of bicycle chains. They were tangled like a heap of dead metallic snakes.

Karim wrapped himself in the shawl and, squatting on the ground, picked up a rag and started work on a grease-covered chain. ‘Shouldn’t we run?’ It seemed senseless to sit in the dirt waiting for the Taliban to come to the door.

‘Those animals are on a killing spree and you want to go out there? The west of the city is in flames.’ The man shrugged and nodded in the direction of a squalid-looking building to the right of his tiny shop. ‘My wife and two children are inside. If God wants me to die then I die at home.’ There was a sudden loud banging on the door. The man shot Karim a glance. ‘I am Mohammed Sarwar.’

‘I will repay you, if we live.’ Karim put his head down and tried to look as though he knew what he was doing.

‘Insh’allah, Sarwar replied and then called to the men hammering on the door, ‘Be patient, brothers, I’m coming.’

But patience was the last thing the men had in mind. As Sarwar slid the bolt free the door was thrown open and two young Talibs burst in. Karim, fighting to remain calm, stood up to greet them. Breathing heavily, their eyes shining with excitement, neither boy could have been more than nineteen years of age. Before he could move Karim found himself pushed up against the wall beside Mohammed Sarwar.

‘You are Hazara!’ One of the boys chanted, ‘Mongol Hazaras are not Moslem, they are Shia. They are kofr — infidels. The Hazaras killed our force here once before and now we have to kill Hazaras.’ It was like a recitation; something they had learned by heart. All Karim could think of was that these were the people responsible for killing his father. For a second he had a flash of his wife, Saara, and their children, Danyal and Halma. How would they survive without him? But not even that seemed to matter as his mind numbly focused on the barrel of the rifle being pressed against his head.

The traveller had come a very roundabout route. By the time he landed in Port Sudan he was exhausted. Yet there was another journey before he could rest.

In the last week he had met in Switzerland with a hawalader, a man who could move money around the globe. He was expensive, but using the traditional hawala system he left no paper trail, no trace, no electronic footprint. For a five per cent commission plus a deal on the exchange rates, he could transfer funds in twenty-four hours. His agents in one country accepted funds and, in the target country, others paid the money to the designated person, in cash. The traveller, Mohammad bin Ibrahim, considered such expertise was certainly worth paying for. They made an in-principle agreement.

This had been followed by an early morning flight to Hamburg where things were not so smooth sailing. There had been an extremely unpleasant four hours with a Yemeni national, whose contacts in the shipping world could have been a real asset to the mission if the man himself wasn’t such a liability. He was a fanatic whose hatred of the West in general and the United States in particular fuelled more than his endeavours — it fuelled his tongue, and in this game that was likely to prove fatal. The traveller, Mahmud Yassin here, excused himself, and later that day sent a message that would eventually result in the offending tongue being removed.

The next stop had been London, where he introduced himself not as Mr Yassin or Mr Ibrahim, but as Ali bin Saleh. The English were always welcoming of their friends from the Gulf States and they assured Mr Saleh in no uncertain terms that if he purchased an aerosol-manufacturing plant from them they would be friends for a long time. Mr Saleh was duly impressed and left with a promise to confirm the contract once his board had sighted the specifications. The English were so friendly that they included two copies of the technical specifications and a beautifully constructed scale model so that the directors could fully appreciate what they were purchasing.

Then it was across to Nairobi and a leisurely opportunity for the traveller to view some splendid wildlife around a watering hole. The next day had dawned reluctantly under a pewter sky, and then deteriorated. The wind and lashing rain, however, did not deter Hassan al-Mahdi from being picked up from his hotel by a driver. They drove in silence until they came to the game reserve and, after negotiating a muddy track bounded by tall elephant grass, came through a wild electrical storm to their destination. They stopped on a small rise overlooking a dark rain-pocked pool. Hassan al-Mahdi was relieved to find that the weather had acted in their favour. They were totally alone. No tour coaches, no mini-vans, no private cars.

For an hour the driver talked about the mission and what it might accomplish. He listened to Hassan’s report of his previous meetings and went over each of them several times, forensically picking through the information until he was convinced that nothing had been said or done that might compromise his plans. Hassan was in awe of the way the man’s mind could home in on any inconsistency and tease out the implications. Hassan knew that he too was being examined and if he was thought to have failed in any respect he would end up in the elephant grass; carrion for the vultures and hyenas. Yet he had no fear, for he prided himself on the meticulous way he carried out his leader’s tasks. And it was a pleasure to be in his company; to talk with a man whose deeds were legend, even though his name remained unknown to the world. It had been an honour to be trusted to meet like this, and almost beyond belief that he could sit in the back while such a man drove as though he were some lowly chauffeur.

From Nairobi it had been on to Khartoum and a change of aircraft for the trip to Port Sudan. As they circled out over the Red Sea, Hassan the traveller thought how strange it was that he had ended up here, so close to his own home. It was probably no more than three hundred kilometres across the water to Jeddah, and suddenly he longed to be there. He imagined his wife’s cooking and the smell of fresh coffee. He pictured the look on his five-year-old daughter’s face when he walked in. He would scoop her up in his arms and hold her above him and lower her slowly down until she was clinging to his neck. A few more hours, he told himself. Concentrate.

So now he walked to where the car was waiting for him. But a driver was also waiting. That had not been the arrangement. After a brief altercation, and the payment of an outrageous sum, he dismissed the man. For half an hour he drove around the old town, putting on a reasonable show of interest and even stopping to purchase a pretty string of shells for his daughter. But Hassan was too tired to keep up the farcical display and, having known right from the beginning that he wasn’t being followed anyway, he headed out of town to meet Kroger, the man who would deliver the weapon he needed. When their leader had recruited the man he had referred to him as ‘the Chemist’ and, despite the fact that the man’s medical speciality wasn’t chemistry, the name had stuck.

A short distance out of town he pulled up to a walled compound and waited as two armed goons insisted that he be frisked before entering. He knew better than to protest, but made a mental note to repay the Chemist’s hospitality at some time in the future. The frisking was short and professional, then the gates were opened and Hassan directed through to a dusty courtyard. Kroger was waiting for him in the shade of the central building. The man looked even more unkempt than on their previous meeting. Unshaven, shirt flapping from a pair of grubby shorts that looked too small below an expansive belly. Prematurely aged, Hassan thought, looking at the tangled hair. Or gone to seed.

The few people who knew about the Chemist agreed that the man was brilliant in his field, but Hassan disliked him intensely. They had met only twice and each time briefly, but as far as Hassan was concerned the man was obnoxious. For a start he was American. Earlier in his career Tim Kroger had been touted as a wunderkind and received staggering amounts for his research projects at a prestigious American university. There had been a scandal involving drug manufacturing and a side order of rather young boys. Before the ink on the charges was dry Kroger had decamped to Columbia and then, via a circuitous route, had ended up in Port Sudan.

That their leader trusted the Chemist was incomprehensible to Hassan, but he was in no position to argue. He now needed something from the man and if that meant putting up with the offensive body odour and the constant gum chewing, then so be it.

‘Our friend sends his affectionate greetings,’ Hassan said as he clasped the man’s huge hands in his. It never ceased to amaze him that such pudgy hands could do the fine work the Chemist was renowned for.

‘Yeah? That’s good.’ Kroger’s eyes were squinting as though he was a nocturnal creature unexpectedly in the sun.

‘And I have a present for you,’ Hassan said, reaching into the car and taking out the cardboard carton and tube.

They went inside, to a large and extremely untidy workroom. Through double glazing, Hassan could see the tiled whiteness of the outer lab. To his relief, in direct contrast to the workroom, the lab appeared to be in pristine condition. It had better be, he thought. The facility had been built to specifications laid down by Kroger, but the money had all come from the organisation. And it had been a lot of money because the main laboratory contained within it a smaller and much more expensive area where the real work took place. Hassan had a morbid fear of the inner laboratory and what it harboured, but knew that without it their plans couldn’t be realised.

After clearing a space on the table he took the plans from the tube and laid them out for Kroger to inspect. Then he took the scale model of the plant and equipment from the box and placed it beside the plans.

‘That’s it?’

Hassan was taken aback. He had expected that the Chemist would be impressed. Instead Kroger was examining the plans with a look of ill-disguised contempt.

‘Are they not right? Isn’t this what you wanted?’

The American shrugged. ‘It’ll do.’

Hassan clamped down on the anger that had welled up in him. At the moment the man was indispensable. This would not always be so. It would give him great pleasure to kill the Chemist — slowly. To see the look in those piggy eyes as he watched his own blood spilled onto the floor. But he smiled and raised his hand in supplication. ‘Of course if you need a different system, then naturally —’

‘I said it’ll do.’ He looked at Hassan as though saying, What would you fucking know anyway?

‘And your research?’ Hassan asked, curtly now. ‘Will it be ready?’

Kroger snorted. ‘Ready? Come on, I’ll show you.’ But instead of going towards the laboratory, he walked to a side door and swung it open. ‘See?’

Hassan moved forward cautiously and was immediately struck by the smell. It was animal, unclean and unpleasant. He looked out into a small animal enclosure and counted seven mangy-looking goats and two sheep. ‘I’m not sure what this has to do with our —’

‘No, you wouldn’t be. That’s why I’m showing you, pal. Ticks. That’s the vector.’ Without elaborating, Kroger spat his gum out into the yard, shut the door and led the way back across the room to the outer lab.

As the door swung closed behind them, it felt to Hassan as if the temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees. Air scrubbers were humming. The room was spotless. Yet it caused a deeper agitation in him than the filthy workroom. He looked nervously at the airlock through to the Bio Level 4 area and hoped that the seals were working and that the pressure differential was being maintained. On his first visit to the lab it had been explained that, in the event of a breach, air would be sucked into the secure environment rather than expelled. That, at least, was the theory. He had always wondered what happened after that. Surely once the pressure was equalised, anything inside could start to flow outwards?

Kroger sensed Hassan’s unease and eyed him with disdain. ‘Don’t worry, pal, I’ve got the little bastards under lock and key.’ He moved to a computer terminal and with a couple of mouse clicks brought up an image on the monitor. ‘There you go. Cute, isn’t it?’

Determined not to be intimidated by the man, Hassan examined the highly magnified image. It looked like an anorexic sperm with a nasty hooked tail.

‘The Kroger variant.’ The piggy eyes shone in admiration of his own work. ‘I took the basic strain and tweaked it.’

‘The original virus isn’t deadly enough?’

‘It could kill, sure. But I wanted to teach it another trick.’

There was a pause and Hassan knew that Kroger was waiting for him to ask the question so that he could deliver some kind of punch line. He obliged. ‘And what trick is that, Mr Kroger?’

‘I wanted to teach it to fly.’ Kroger dragged up a new image.

Hassan was confused. He looked at the picture on the screen expecting to see nascent wings sprouting from the virus. It crossed his mind that Kroger was mad. He straightened up. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand what you mean.’

Kroger pointed to the screen. ‘That is the Kroger variant, mark four. You probably notice it’s discernibly smaller. That’s not because of lesser magnification. It really is smaller. It is also almost twice as deadly. I am confident we can achieve a morbidity rate of up to sixty per cent.’

‘Yes, but what was that about flying?’

Kroger continued to stare lovingly at his creation, his face pale and glowing in the light of the monitor. ‘Airborne delivery. The perfect delivery system. It has huge advantages.’ Almost reluctantly he closed the image file and turned back to Hassan. ‘The mark four is capable of airborne dissemination not only in the weapon stage, but subsequently from anyone infected to those around them.’ He beamed with satisfaction. ‘Can you imagine how that will increase the death toll?’

Yes, Hassan thought, it would certainly be a benefit. He had questions, a lot of questions, but they could all wait. Now what mattered was that he was convinced enough of Kroger’s claims to give the mission the go-ahead. ‘The theory is fine. But how certain are you that it will work in practice?’

Kroger looked at Hassan as if he had been insulted. For a moment Hassan expected an explosion of anger. But then the eyes narrowed and he gestured for Hassan to follow him. He walked to the wall surrounding the inner lab and unlatched a small observation port. Then he stood back.

Hassan stepped up and found himself looking into a brightly lit cell. On the floor, in a pool of blood and faeces, was a young man. Once he must have been a good-looking African, probably a Dinka from the south of Sudan. But now all he was, was dead. He felt Kroger step up close beside him. Smelt the body odour, felt the breath as the man whispered in his ear.

‘Seven days. My little baby did that in just seven days.’

The ride to the city was uneventful and Fossey spent the twenty minutes retracing the events that had brought him to this moment; a moment when he was irrevocably stepping across a line that he had for so long ignored. Leaving his job in Canberra had been easy. The death of 183 men, women and children on the Sura Star had not, he now realised, been the only