IT DIDN’T LOOK RIGHT

He’d been under surveillance for some time now. He was in their sights.

He was up to no good. That much was clear. Lurking here. Skulking there. Bespectacled. Dandruff. Frequently sitting in coffee shops surrounded by books and papers. Always writing. Disheveled in appearance. Always with that tattered old brief case. And often near strategic locations.

What they weren’t certain of was what, exactly, he was up to in behaving like this. But they had a pretty good idea.

It was in the end it was his proximity to the strategic locations that most worried them. Why was he spending so much time near them? It was definitely not explainable in terms of the normal course of things. It couldn’t have been coincidence. It warranted scrutiny.

By then no one in the section could remember exactly how he had come to attention in the first place. The paperwork attaching to the initial information – including the informant’s affidavit testifying as to the suspicious behavior of the suspect - had been lost some time ago. But they had a general idea. Probably one of those thousands of calls in on the hotline they thought.

It had, indeed, been an alert and responsible member of the public that had put the authorities on to him.

At first this informant had been reluctant to ring the hotline. ‘Maybe I am overreacting’, she thought. But the suspicion lingered and was eating away at her peace of mind. What if something awful happened that could have been avoided if she had raised the alarm? So, she changed her mind. The moment had arrived for her to do her bit in what was, when it was all said and done, a war situation like any other

It was time to overcome her nervousness and do something about it. Time to alert the authorities. Time to ring that special number.

She rang the number. Someone with a pleasant voice answered. The tone was official. Matter-of-fact. Yes, she had done the right thing. No, no – she wasn’t overreacting. The service depended very much on information from the public – from people such as herself. Certainly, it may amount to nothing. But they wanted to know anyway. Information that initially may appear insignificant could eventually prove to be of immense value when considered with other information coming their way. It was all a matter of putting two and two together. ‘That’s how intelligence gathering works’, he said.

And so the surveillance had begun – and had been going on for some years.

The specific paperwork on the initial phone call that triggered the surveillance had long been buried and forgotten somewhere in the section along with the rest of what had been an avalanche of tip offs from a post 9/11 population believing itself under siege from within.

Not that it mattered now. It wasn’t any one piece of recorded behaviour on its own that was important. Eventually it could be dug out if necessary to complete the picture. Much of his activity was, it was true, inconsequential in terms of the suspicion in their minds. But it was the aggregation of all the bits of information about him that was significant. It was this accumulation of intelligence that spelt out the danger – which was making up the case for some sort of action to protect the community.

All those in the section agreed: the more his behaviour was scrutinized the more dangerous and suspicious it appeared to be. A definite pattern was starting to emerge. The picture was becoming clear. They would have to be careful. Delay could be costly. Could cost lives and property. Extreme vigilance was the name of the game.

His file told much of the story.He’d gone to a lot of bother to get hold of a book on Islamic extremism. For some literary thing he was writing. That’s what he had said any way when questioned by one of their undercover men. But the section had its doubts about that. And the record showed that he’d been seeking information on terrorist attacks – including the planning of the same – from the Internet. The section boffins – its computer whizz kids – had got onto that. And he’d recently done a trip to the Middle East - ostensibly as a tourist. But again: the Section was skeptical.

They had questioned the people in the book shop. They hadn’t been able to add any detail as to what aspect of Islam he was researching. But they had been able to confirm that the staff who served him did find him eccentric. ‘An odd ball’, one of them had said: He continued:

‘A bit, you know … sinister. Do you know what I mean? Nothing I can put my finger on. But, you know… like it says on the tele. It didn’t look right. That’s why I thought I’d ring that special number.’

‘Did you?’ Another undercover person asked the question. This time a woman.

No. In the end he didn’t.

‘Maybe I should have’, he said.

‘Now that you mention it. My apologies for that. Why, what’s he done? Is he on a wanted list or something? Because if so I’ll watch out for him again.’

That summer was another hot one. The city was on edge. There was a mood of brittleness about … well, about everything. Hard to put the finger on. Just everything in general. Most people were holidaying locally. Overseas travel warnings were dire. And another big terrorist attack close to home had triggered a national mood of nervousness.

This was as true of Adelaide as it was of any other capital on the Australian continent. But Adelaide had its own special frisson when it came to this. Dear little old Aunty Adelaide. City of churches and pubs. Where extreme virtue and evil marched side by side. Where religiosity and the most gruesome and bizarre murders – often sexually motivated – were two sides of the same coin. The city where, in 1948, as the city was in the very early stages of reaching some sort of accommodation with its own experience of the barbarous war that had ended three years previously, a mysterious body had turned up on the city’s Somerton beach whose identity, and cause of death, has remained a mystery ever since.

The authorities didn’t understand this mood. But they were alert to it and had taken steps. Indeed, the whole population was on alert. Everyone was on the lookout. National duty they said. In our best interests, they warned. Be alert but not alarmed.

So in the midst of all this there he sat. At a table in the Airport at some distance from, but in full view of, the security people with their apparatus checking people onto their flights. Brazenly, there he sat, writing and drinking cappuccino. Certainly it surprised them that he should be so bold in his subversive activity. But that only added to their suspicion that his apparently timid disposition concealed a dangerously aggressive intent.

But, at that point it was still only suspicion. Beyond that they were still unsure.

What was he doing at the airport? What relevance did it have, if any, to the flights of that day? They had, of course, considered pulling him for questioning. Heavens knows they had enough grounds for this. Reasonable grounds they called it. But they had made a strategic decision not to declare themselves and their surveillance at that point in time. Not to show their hand too early lest he duck for cover and evade them.

All those involved in the investigation were now very worried. If something happened and it came to light they had suspected and failed to act …. If a plane blew up and it became known they could have prevented it … A decision had to be made. Backsides had to be covered.

This anxiety had gone right to the top of their organization. The Minister had been informed and he, too, was now pressing for decisive action.

They weren’t a prosecuting authority themselves. For them it was an investigation only. As with all their national security cases they were responsible for preparing the case against this suspect – the brief as it was called – to be handed over to the police and the DPP for the actual prosecution of the case and it was the latter, especially, that was starting to apply pressure to complete the investigation and to come up with something definite that could be acted on.

To add to the tension a phone call had been intercepted suggesting a plot to blow up a plane sometime in the near future. The pressure was on from all directions to come up with a result and for decisive preventative action.

But it was difficult. While they had been investigating the case for nearly a year now their prosecution brief was still underdeveloped. They now had the DECS – the statements – from the initial informant, the people in the bookshop – and several others testifying as to his eccentric behavior that ‘didn’t look right’. And the lost paper work from the initial information – including the informant’s affidavit – had been found. But it was no more than a circumstantial case against him at best and it was touch and go whether a prosecution would succeed. The DPP had asked for more and they hadn’t been able to do so. If something happened it seemed unlikely they would be able to directly link him to the crime. Some thought had been given to trying for a conviction for a preparatory offence – to try to lay the basis for the suspect being involved in a conspiracy to commit the crime. But the suspect was clearly a loner without friends and acquaintances – without contacts – and so a conspiracy charge didn’t have legs either.

In the end the pressure to act got too much and they decided to move on the suspect – even at the risk of blowing their cover and generally losing their covert investigative advantage. Several officers approached him. They identified themselves and their purpose in speaking to him. Their manner was stiff and formal. He was being investigated under the new anti-terrorism act. He’d been under observation for some time and certain things needed to be clarified. Did he mind if they had a look inside the brief case? They had the authority under section something or other of the Act to do so.

On being given permission a man with a puffy face and bulging eyes – he was the one in charge – took the brief case and opened it up – gingerly. He removed its contents. The book on Islamic extremism. Aha! Just as he had thought! Also: a tattered manila folder. It held several sheets of paper – downloads from the Internet. With any luck these would be identifiable as relating in a practical way to terrorist activity. He thought he caught the word ‘Al-Quaeda’ in English, but he couldn’t be sure on a cursory glance.

Not all the contents were incriminating. Inside were the remains of a half-eaten packed lunch. Some of the butter had got onto the papers. And a bundle of year 9 English assignments – some had been marked – were held in another manila folder.

But overall it was looking good. If this kept up a prosecution seemed likely. No wonder the suspect looked agitated. No wonder he was getting nervous.

Perhaps they had caught him red handed about to do whatever it was exactly that he was going to do. No doubt they’d find more evidence when they conducted a search of his home – a dingy flat near the seaside where he had lived alone since his marriage break up and his mother’s death - both in the same year. With any luck they would be able to announce publicly that a terrorist plot had been foiled just in the nick of time. But that was looking ahead a bit too far. The most important thing now was to establish whether he was an immediate threat to the airport and what steps were necessary to counter it the evidence suggested he was. If he was not about to launch an attack of some sort right there and then there was still the matter of whether he was a threat to national security in the longer term. In that event if they had enough evidence to sustain ‘reasonable suspicion’ – and clearly they did have enough such evidence – then there next step would be to question him at length and in some depth down at HQ – and under the new legislation they had considerable power to do this.

They continued searching the brief case. There was no further evidence. But by then they had made up their mind.

The man with the toad face squinted at the front cover of the incriminating folder. A label had been written in black texta across its front cover in block capitals. The folder was upside down.

The Toad turned the manila folder up the right way and read the label: ONLINE CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP: ALL RESEARCH AND DRAFT MATERIALS PERTAINING TO TERRORISM SHORT STORY.