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talk to bin Laden’s ghost.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    And I could swear she was smiling at me now.
    ‘You’re fucking crazy,’ I said.
    That was too much for the boys. They muttered in fury, and one of them advanced across the room, his gun aimed.
    ‘Leave him be,’ the woman snapped. She rose from the chair, and stretched, arms above her head, as if she’d gone stiff from sitting. And it was the weirdest thing, but for a moment the burqa draped closely about her in a way that I’d thought burqas were never supposed to, showing off far too many curves, and damned if it didn’t seem that she really
was
naked underneath, apart from those leather boots that appeared to go right up past her knees. And her men weren’t watching me anymore. They were watching her. Hopelessly. Desperately.
    Her arms came down, and she was covered in shapeless black again. ‘You’ll see how sane we are, soon enough.’
    ‘Sure,’ I said, throwing out my last barb. ‘You and your three little friends. You’re the great destroyers.’
    Her voice went low. ‘We are.’
    And she was leaving now, sailing serenely towards the stairs.
    ‘For a start—we’re the ones who nuked Canberra.’

FIVE
    Poor old Canberra.
    How did that joke go, afterwards?
    What if they blew up the capital city, and nobody noticed?
    Well, it wasn’t quite like that. And I was there, remember.
    I woke up in my hotel room, after the night with my brother, to the sounds of yelling and hurried movements throughout the building. I switched on the TV and there it was, blazing across the news on every channel. An Islamic terrorist group, who gave no name, claimed to have planted an explosive thermonuclear device somewhere in Canberra. More than just ‘claimed’. They had sent photos of the bomb, and blueprints of it, to the Federal Police and to all the media, just so people knew it was for real. And it was set to detonate seventy-two hours after the first warning.
    I hardly need describe the bedlam that ensued.
    Mind you, it struck me at the time how forbearing the terrorists were being. Why give the three-day alert? Why not just nuke the place and be done with it? They weren’t even making any demands, like the release of al-Qaeda prisoners or the withdrawal of troops from the Middle East. It was just the blunt warning—in three days we press the button. Strange. And there were certainly plenty of people who thought the whole thing was a bluff. But while the police and the army searched madly for the bomb, and my brother made defiant speeches about not being cowed by terrorist threats, there was no choice but to evacuate the town.
    And the thing was, three days was plenty of time. I don’t mean that there wasn’t panic in the streets, but if ever a city was made to be abandoned quickly, it was Canberra. (That was another of the jokes, even on the first morning.) A mere three hundred thousand people, spread across sprawling, spacious suburbs, surrounded by wide empty freeways and native bushland. And for all that the city was almost a hundred years old, it wasn’t really a place that many residents had a
history
in. Primarily, it was only ever a garrison town for the public service, and like troops decamping from a military compound, people loaded up and got out fast.
    So overall, the evacuation was surprisingly orderly. I made my own escape late on the first night, crawling patiently along in my car amidst tens of thousands of other vehicles, all of them jammed with people and property. There were only three routes to choose from: north-east along the Federal Highway to Sydney, south-west along the Hume to Melbourne, or dead south into the hills, along the Monaro. I opted for Sydney, where, by decree, every hotel room and dormitory had been thrown open, free of charge. And as I crept along in first gear, I watched an unbroken stream of commandeered trucks passing by in the opposite lanes. They were heading
into
Canberra, destined for the National Gallery, or for the