He heard the opening line of “Auld Lang Syne”: “Should old acquaintance be forgot …”
He thought of his friend Jacko, of Muklas, Wayan and Djoran.
They’d all shown ultimate courage in playing their role. Any success he’d had that night was founded on their sacrifice.
The ugly truth was not everyone made it home.
Another explosion rocked the night.
The Harbour Bridge erupted with showers of dazzling pink, green, purple, red and orange.
Waves of sparkling silver stars shot into the night, exploding with bursts of color.
A moment of quiet darkness followed. Then, as if out of nowhere, two bright pink hearts burst in front of the bridge, surrounded by an orb of golden light.
Blue lights spelt out one word.
LOVE.
He released Samudra’s head, and his lifeless body floated to the surface and drifted away.
33
Carter trod water, watching the spotlight from the police launch speed across the harbor toward him.
Erina stood in the bow, composed but smiling.
The launch swerved and slowed to a halt, sending a bow wave of broken water toward him, lifting him up and then dropping him down gently.
Erina, still dressed in her wetsuit, climbed onto the gunnels and dived into the harbor.
She disappeared under the water and surfaced a few feet from him, pushing the hair out of her eyes.
He swam toward her and, with one arm, gathered her around the waist.
They bobbed up and down with the gentle swell, locked in each other’s embrace and cocooned in their own private world.
She kissed him gently on the lips. “We got it done.”
“At a cost.”
“It’s who we are.”
“I know.”
He held her tight.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too, Russell Carter.”
EPILOGUE
Darkness was fast approaching on a big Sunday out the back at the point of Lennox Head.
There was not a breath of wind. The water was smooth as glass and the dying sun was only minutes from slipping below the green hills running behind the town of Lennox.
Carter sat alone in the take-off zone, watching a swell roll in from the north-east, hoping to catch a final wave before the light disappeared altogether.
It’d be his last surf at Lennox for a few months at least. He was heading to Bali in the morning to train some new recruits for the order and, to his surprise, was looking forward to the challenge.
In the gathering gloom a familiar voice yelled out to him. “Hey, Carter!”
Carter turned to see Knowlsie pulling up next to him.
“Haven’t seen you around for yonks,” Knowlsie said. “You been on holidays?”
Carter paused a beat. “Something like that. What’ve you been up to?”
“Visiting the rellies in Perth. And I’m now in Year Ten. Man, it’s full-on.”
“You’ll be sweet.”
“Dunno about that.”
“Just do what you do in the surf. Charge every test. You’re a smart kid.”
A broad grin spread across Knowlsie’s face and his eyes dropped as if embarrassed.
“Hey,” he said, changing the subject, “one of my mates reckons he eyeballed you arm-in-arm with a hot-looking woman. Is that your new girlfriend or something?”
“Wouldn’t say that exactly.”
Erina had left the day before for Burma — there was trouble on the Thai border at the refugee camps — and he didn’t know when he’d see her next. He’d miss her, but their relationship was what it was.
Both needed to do what they needed to do. Their duty to the order came first.
Thanks to Callaghan the order had more autonomy now. And Thomas had undergone his own personal jihad, becoming far less autocratic and more willing to listen before making decisions.
He’d begun to trust the group’s intelligence, rather than dictating to it. That was, in part, due to Kemala’s softening influence. She and Thomas were now “officially” in a relationship.
Kemala was the first woman to be endorsed as head of the Sungkar clan and was in the process of reforming it, endeavoring to instill in all its members the profound spirituality at the heart of Islam — something many in the West could learn from, including Carter himself.
“Hey, Carter,” Knowlsie said, pointing out the back. “Big set coming.”
A snarling double overhead wall of water reared up fifty feet out to sea, promising to form a perfect arching barrel.
“It’s all yours, big guy,” Carter said, expecting it to be the last rideable wave of the day.
Knowlsie gave Carter a grateful nod, turned and started stroking hard for it.
The wave reared up. Carter took great pleasure in watching the kid leap to his feet, gun his board down the line and charge like he’d always told him to.
Carter turned back out to sea.
From nowhere another perfect wave rolled in from the deep, the biggest of the session. It rose up and towered triple overhead, the size of a small building, forming a steep wall of water.
He spun his board around, powered into the wave and sprung to his feet in one fluid motion.
The lip curled. His board raced across the near-vertical wall of smooth water. He dropped down the face and lined up the barrel peeling in front of him.
The board accelerated. He crouched even lower and charged forward.
A thick wall of water broke over his shoulder. He entered deep inside the holy vortex of the green room, covered by a cascading curtain of crystal liquid.
For some reason unknown to him, a reason that had nothing to do with Islam, Christianity or any other religion, he thought of Djoran and whispered, “Allah akbar.”
ROLAND FISHMAN
Roland lives in Sydney with his partner Kathleen Allen, who was integral to the writing of No Man’s Land.
In 1992, Roland founded The Writers’ Studio, a creative writing school that runs classes both live and online.
Like Carter, Roland, a former sports journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald, has surfed since age 10 and sees the sport as a metaphor for life.
To read more please visit:
www.rolandfishman.com.au
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
No Man’s Land has benefited from a lot of input and I’d like to thank and acknowledge everyone who has helped me on the journey.
First and foremost I want to thank everyone who has ever participated in a creative writing class at the Writers’ Studio. You’ve been instrumental in maintaining my love and passion for fiction.
A special thanks to Joanne Symonds for all her help at the Writers’ Studio and for having my back when I had to really focus on getting the final edits done.
I feel very fortunate to have had Elizabeth Cowell as my editor. She understood my characters and what I was trying to do with the story, and never settled for anything less than the best I was capable of, for which I am very thankful.
Elizabeth and proof-reader Kevin O’Brien were painstaking in picking up inconsistencies and errors. Any mistakes that may remain are solely my responsibility.
Finally, I wish to thank my partner in life and at the Writers’ Studio, Kathleen Allen. She is responsible for giving the story heart and emotional depth. Most importantly, she dedicated herself to making the novel as good as it could be. I literally couldn’t have written this book without her and am very blessed to have her in my life.