Underground by Andrew McGahan Page A

electronically created false identity. Impressive. (Very impressive, obviously. Otherwise, interrogators, you wouldn’t have been so interested in this part of my story during our chats. But I’ve told you everything I know on that score. Several times, as I recall. Once courtesy of cigarette burns.)
    Anyway, we were ready to face the great outdoors.
    Or at least to leave the snooker room.
    ‘Our first objective,’ Harry told us before we climbed the stairs, ‘is to get you out of the immediate area. We’re aiming for Brisbane on our first leg.’
    I said, ‘You haven’t told us exactly where we are
now
.’
    ‘I haven’t? You’re in Hervey Bay.’
    Ah. So in all my recent travels I hadn’t come far at all, and Brisbane was still three hours to the south. Not that I knew Hervey Bay very well. It was a tourist town of sorts, but too sleepy for my tastes. It had a nice enough beach strip, and some whale-watching tours in the bay itself, but otherwise it was just a sprawl of retirement housing and caravan parks. The surprising thing to me was that the Underground had safe houses here. If the OU was active in such a backwater, then the movement had to be a widespread thing indeed.
    ‘So how do we travel?’ I asked.
    Harry smiled. ‘We’ve got something special in mind. And we’ll need it. There are roadblocks on every road out of town, and then more on the highway all the way to Gympie. That’s about as far as they think you two could have made it.’
    ‘And if we get to Brisbane?’
    ‘We’ll move on again. We need you right out of Queensland in the end. A safe house in New South Wales or Victoria where there’ll be time for a proper debriefing.’
    A depressing thought struck me, standing there in my long socks and sandals. ‘And after that? I mean, what sort of outlook is there for either of us? How long, exactly, are we going to have to spend in hiding?’
    The smile was gone. ‘The foreseeable future, anyway.’
    ‘What’s the point then?’
    ‘The point is that until this government is gone, half the damn country has to live in hiding too. So give the self-pity a miss for a moment, okay?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Come on. Our ride should be here soon.’
    We followed him up into the house proper. The snooker room must have been a male retreat, because upstairs was a female place, going by all the frills and floral patterns. The owners were waiting in the kitchen. A wizened little old man, and a round old woman, sitting silently over their cups of tea.
    ‘Our hosts,’ said Harry, as we trooped through. ‘I won’t introduce you.’
    The old couple sipped from their cups and ignored us.
    Then we were in the living room. Harry went straight to the window and peered through a gap in the curtains. ‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ he told us.
    I sat on a plastic-covered couch, stared about at cabinets full of china plates, and at plastic fruit in a bowl on the coffee table, and at faded photos of children and grandchildren, and I wondered about who and what these people were, and why they were willing to help.
    Aisha was sitting on the edge of a recliner rocker, colours all clashing violently. I thought about her real name again. Nancy. At least she looked like one now.
    I said, ‘What sort of name is Aisha anyway?’
    And despite the bob and the make-up, her glance could still be withering. ‘It’s the name of the Prophet’s wife.’
    ‘Mohammed? His wife?’
    ‘Actually,’ Harry commented from the window, ‘just one of his wives.’
    ‘His most important wife,’ Aisha retorted. ‘She helped create Islam itself. After the Prophet’s death, she even led an army against the false fourth caliph. She’s the prime example of how important women are in the faith.’
    Harry was nodding. ‘But that’s the problem, isn’t it? She was part of the cause of the whole Sunni/Shiite split. A lot of Muslims hate her. She’s one reason some say women should never be involved in the high