Comfort Zone by Lindsay Tanner Page A

to something more adventurous.
    He tried kicking one of the tyres, but that didn’t help either. All in all, it was extremely depressing. And as he searched, he noted that the cab was due for a good clean, and remembered that it was his turn.
    Jack’s phone was almost part of him, like a fifth limb. If given the option of spending a week without it or his pants, he would have let his passengers put up with the sight of his knobbly, hairy knees. His entire existence was embedded in the phone. Losing it was a catastrophe.
    He spent a couple of directionless days alternating between romantic dreaming about Farhia and fuming over the lost phone. He tried to rationalise the disaster as some kind of helpful warning, the gods preventing him from blowing his chances with Farhia by calling her again too quickly. That didn’t work very well, though. He was still cut off from the rest of the world.
    He did get through a couple of solid shifts and regulation changeovers with Ajit, though, so he caught up on the slight loss of fares over the previous days. He decided that if his phone hadn’t turned up by the end of the week, he would have to do something about getting a new one. He managed to get by without it, in a manner of speaking, as he didn’t have many people to call. Apart from his passengers, his day-to-day contact with other human beings was limited. But without his phone it was almost non-existent, and he had all kinds of numbers stored in it. And he needed it for his pursuit of Farhia. All in all, the loss of his phone was a devastating blow.

4
    Entanglement
    Late in the afternoon of the next day, Jack had an unusual visitor.
    He didn’t get many visitors at the flat, not real ones anyway. Jehovah’s Witnesses and candidates door-knocking during council elections didn’t count. One or two of his pub mates had dropped by, and his taxidriver mate Rocco had even joined him for dinner once — admittedly only Chinese takeaway, though. Rocco had moved out west, chasing mining-boom money, and Jack hadn’t heard from him since.
    The knock on the front door was subdued but insistent. It didn’t sound like a canvasser, and it was far too regular and orderly for it to be one of his mates. Jack was intrigued. Maybe it was a new tenant from downstairs dropping by to borrow a cup of sugar.
    He only had to walk about a dozen paces from the armchair to the door, so his mystery visitor didn’t have to wait long. He must have been impatient. Just as Jack grasped the door-handle, he knocked again. It was more insistent this time, with an air of ‘I know you’re in there’ about it. This visit was definitely something out of the ordinary.
    As he opened the door, Jack saw a tall, well-groomed man in a smooth suit looking straight at him. It was already gloomy outside, and the light on the landing wasn’t working — as usual — so he was only able to get a vague impression of his unexpected visitor.
    â€˜Jack van Duyn?’ he asked softly. He pronounced Jack’s surname ‘doyne,’ much to his annoyance. He’d spent his whole life dealing with multiple mispronunciations of his name — everything from ‘done,’ ‘deen,’ ‘dine,’ ‘dan’, and more — and he still hadn’t got used to it.
    â€˜I’m Robert Jeffrey from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. You may know of us as ASIO . Is it alright if we talk?’
    â€˜Ah, yeah, guess so. What about?’
    â€˜Can I come in?’
    Jack reluctantly gestured for Jeffrey to follow him over to the lounge area. His visitor walked slowly towards the couch, carefully taking note of his surroundings as he did so.
    Seeing that there was little point in being obnoxious, Jack invited him to sit. His curiosity was beginning to overshadow his natural apprehension when anyone associated with law-enforcement was around. Jeffrey was some kind of spook. Jack