Sword of Allah

Townsville, Queensland, Australia

It had never happened before. Annabelle Gilbert was late getting to the station. She leapt from the taxi and flew through reception, running onto the set trailing a make-up artist who fussed with a tube of mascara. This was not good enough, she told herself, and there was no excuse. Okay, so Saunders had taken her to lunch, told her she had the world at her feet, and the two bottles of vintage merlot had worked their magic, dissolving her guard and melting time. Suddenly, it was five thirty-seven in the evening and the red light on the camera facing her would wink on in exactly twenty-three minutes. No, correction, twenty-two and a half minutes, she realised, glancing at her TAG Heuer.

‘Shit,’ she’d said, jumping up from the table, teetering on heels that clattered across the restaurant floor as she headed for the front door. Fortunately, as she’d run down the steps, a taxi arrived dropping off a couple of businessmen. One of them held the door open for her as she jumped in. Annabelle hoped the alcohol wouldn’t be noticed when she read the news — it was a sackable offence to be drunk on camera, and quite righly, too. The realisation that she had broken a number of her own professional and personal rules made her furious, white circles on her usually rosy cheeks the only indication of the anger welling inside. No time to prepare. No time to get her thoughts in order. Only time to wing it.

‘…and five and four and…’ The assistant producer held up three fingers silently, then two, then one, finishing the countdown pointing at her.

‘Good evening. This is Annabelle Gilbert with the six o’clock news. Tonight, anger at the pumps as petrol prices surge to as much as a dollar fifty-five a litre, huge seas batter the New South Wales coastline, and an IVF chimp gives birth to triplets.’

Gilbert turned to face another camera as its top light flicked on, and assumed her most serious face. A brief pause in the rolling script on the autocue glass in front of the lens allowed her an extra second to suitably compose herself. ‘The Israeli army today claimed a major victory in the war against terrorism, swooping on members of the radical groups Hamas and Hezbollah in Ramallah on the West Bank. The daring raid, utilising infantry, helicopters and tanks, cornered the terrorists as they met in a deserted apartment block…’

As Gilbert read the lines, footage of the attack played across the monitor facing her. Israeli soldiers dropped onto a rooftop from a helicopter. Then suddenly it was night and the black sky glowed orange with a massive explosion. The picture cut to show weary Israeli soldiers stepping out the back of a tank. Gilbert froze. One of those soldiers was Tom. Annabelle’s mouth went dry and her skin crawled with a cold sweat. The footage continued and showed Tom assisting a wounded soldier.

‘More than a dozen Israelis were killed in the assault on the terrorist stronghold,’ she read, not realising she was doing so. ‘Israeli officials claim that one of the terrorists killed in the raid was Kadar Al-Jahani, the man US intelligence experts believe masterminded the recent bombing of the US Embassy in Jakarta, causing the deaths of at least one hundred and thirty-seven people…’

Through sheer professionalism, Annabelle Gilbert had somehow managed to keep it all together during the half-hour bulletin. But when the floor producer drew his finger across his throat and gave the thumbs up signalling the end of the broadcast, Annabelle rushed from the set violently sick.