Dragons at the Party

by Jon Cleary

  Later, after the Malones and the Pretoriouses had left, when the children were asleep and the old house was showing its age as the heat of the day creaked out of its timbers, she said, “You wish you weren’t on this case, don’t you?”

  “A holiday weekend—what do you think?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  They were in bed in the high-ceilinged main bedroom, a sheet covering only their lower halves. The house was not air-conditioned; they had an air-conditioner mounted on a trolley, but they rarely brought it into the bedroom. Malone, an old-fashioned man in many ways, had a theory that air-conditioning only brought on colds. He was also sensual enough to like a sweaty woman beside him in bed, a compliment that Lisa at certain times didn’t always appreciate.

  He said slowly, “I think I could be getting into a real mess with this one. Nobody seems to care a damn about the poor bugger who was shot.”

  “I met Delvina once.” He turned his head in surprise, looked at her profile against the moonlit window. They had not drawn the drapes, to allow some air into the room, and he knew they would be woken early by the morning light. “I did a PR job for the dance company when she was with it. We didn’t get on well—I featured another girl instead of her. I thought she was too obvious, didn’t give the company the right image.”

  “Where’s the girl you featured, now?”

  “Probably married, with three kids and living in the suburbs. Delvina was never going to finish up there, in the suburbs.”

  “She may finish up with her head blown off.” He lifted the sheet and fanned himself with it. “I’ve never worked on anything like this before. It’s all strange territory.”

  “Here be dragons.”

  “Eh?”

  “On ancient maps, when they came to the unknown parts they used to write, Beyond this place here be dragons. Australia would have been one of those places once.”

  “Tell that to Phil Norval. He claims to’ve got rid of inflation and everything else. He can add dragons to the list.”

  “Delvina has probably already told him. She used to sleep with him when he was still in TV. Mrs. Norval would be able to tell you about that.”

  III

  “I can’t back down now, Russ. I’ve got to walk tall in this.”

  “For crissake, Phil, you’re only five feet eight—forget about walking tall!”

  Philip Norval and Russell Hickbed were in the Prime Minister’s private residence, a property he had bought at the height of his TV fame and to which he retreated on the rare occasions when he wanted to escape the trappings of his office. It was a large mansion in grounds that held a hundred-foot swimming pool, an all-weather tennis court, a Jacuzzi, a sauna and, as one TV rival remarked, everything but his own natural spa.

  “We’ve got to get him back to Palucca,” said Hickbed. “Christ knows what those bloody generals will do. They’re already talking to Jakarta!”

  “Is there much danger in that?” Foreign affairs were not Norval’s strong suit; Jakarta had never figured in the ratings. “I’d better talk to Neil Kissing about that.”

  Kissing was the Foreign Minister and no friend of Hickbed. “Leave him out of it. We don’t want Cabinet interfering in this—you’ve got too many do-gooders in it.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind who. Just let’s keep this between you and me. We’re the ones with something to lose, not the bloody government. Have you talked to Delvina?”

  “Not alone—I haven’t had a chance. Abdul doesn’t seem to want to talk. Except about how the Americans let him down.”

  “So they did. If they’d sent their Fleet in, a couple of thousand Marines, the generals would have stayed in their barracks and Abdul would still be in Timoro Palace sitting pretty.”

  “Fegan would never have sent the Marines in. He told me last September in Washington that he wanted Abdul out of the way. He’s an embarrassment, Russ—”

  “Who—Fegan?”

  “No, Abdul, damn it. He’s so bloody corrupt—”

  “Now don’t you start being mealy-mouthed . . . Phil, corruption is a way of life up there. Everybody’s underpaid, so you slip ‘em a bit on the side to get things done.”

  “How much did you slip Abdul? The Herald this morning said he’s rumoured to have three billion—three billion—” Like all TV chat hosts, and politicians and priests, he had been taught to repeat points: one never knew if the audience was dozing. Though he had never known Russell Hickbed to be anything but wide awake. “All that salted away in Switzerland or somewhere. That’s quite a bit to have made on the side. More than you or I ever made.”

  “Unless we get him back to Palucca we’re going to make a bloody sight less. Or I am.”

  “Just what have you got there in Palucca, Russ? You’ve never told me.”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  “Meaning it’s none of my business? I think it is, if you want me to shove my neck out on this. My popularity rating is dropping, Russ—it went down three points last week, just when it should be going up, with the Bicentennial going on. They don’t think I can walk on water any more. If this Timori business goes on too long I could be up to my arse in water in a leaky rowboat. And I don’t think you’d be rushing to bail me out.”

  Hickbed took off his glasses and polished them. They were in the library, a big room stacked on three walls to the ceiling with books and video cassettes; on close inspection one saw that virtually all the books were to do with some sort of show business and the cassettes were of Norval’s own TV shows. The few novels on the shelves were detective books and popular bestsellers. It was not a room where its owner got much mental exercise, but he had never sought it.

  There was the crunching of gravel on the path outside as two of the security men went by. This was a safe area, but one never knew. This was the North Shore suburb of Killara; North Shore being a social state of mind more than a geographical location, since its boundaries began some five miles from the northern shores of the harbour. Kirribilli, for instance, right on the north shore, was not North Shore. Killara itself had once been considered the domain of judges and lawyers, a leafy outpost of the courts and chambers of Phillip Street, the city’s legal centre. It was said that at Christmas the local council workers shouted, “Let justice be done!” and the judges and barristers, mindful of their sins of the year, rushed out and thrust Christmas boxes on the jury of dustmen. Of later years advertising men, TV celebrities and even successful used-car salesmen had moved into the suburb: the tone may have been reduced but not the wealth or the status. It was still North Shore, safe and secure.

  In the big living-room across the hall from the library one of the house’s six television sets was turned on; four of Norval’s staff were in there. Hickbed looked at the blank screens of the two sets in this room, then he looked back at the Prime Minister, the puppet who was now trying to jerk his own strings.

  “If it hadn’t been for me you’d still be in that awful bloody studio hosting your awful bloody TV show and going in five mornings a week to listen to dumb bloody housewives on talkback.”

  “I was making a million bucks a year. It bought all this—” he gestured around him; he needed his possessions to identify himself “—and a lot else besides.”

  “When you retired from all that, who would remember you? Yesterday’s TV stars are like Olympic swimmers—nobody can remember them when they’ve dried off. You always wanted to be remembered, Phil—you love being loved by your public. You’ll be remembered as the most popular PM ever. That is, unless you stuff up this Timori business.”

  “You still haven’t told me what you’ve got there in Palucca.” Norval looked genuinely stubborn and determined, something he had always had to pose at on camera.

  Hickbed put his glasses back on: he was getting a new view of his puppet. He liked Norval as a man, as did everyone who met him: the TV star and the politician had always been more than just professionally popular. He had, however, never had an
y illusions about the PM’s political intelligence and, indeed, held it in contempt. It struck him now that Norval might have learned a thing or two since he had been in office.

  “I’ve got a twenty per cent interest in the oil leases off the north-east coast.”

  “Who has the eighty per cent?”

  “Who do you think? The company’s registered in Panama, with stand-in names for me and the Timoris. I’ve talked to them about it and there’s five per cent for you.”

  Norval wanted to be honest, to be pure and uncorrupted; but he had been asking questions all his professional life. “How much is that worth?”

  “Several million a year, if we put the Timoris back in Bunda. Bugger-all right now, since the generals have confiscated everything. I’ve got nearly sixty million tied up there one way or another, the oil leases, construction, various other things. I’ll be buggered if I’m going to lose all that without a fight.”

  “How did you get in so deep?”

  “Who do you think’s been staking the Timoris since the Yank firms were warned to pull out by Washington? Delvina came to me—what could I say? You know what she’s like.”

  “Don’t we all,” said a woman’s voice.

  Hickbed turned as Norval’s wife came in the door. “Hello, Anita. Just got in?”

  “I’ve been visiting Jill and the grandchildren.”

  There was no love lost, indeed none had ever been found, between Anita Norval and Russell Hickbed. When she had met Norval she had had her own radio programme on the ABC, the government-financed network, and when she had married him there were those on the ABC who thought she had married beneath her. She had truly loved him in those days, as had millions of other women; the other women might still be in love with him, she didn’t know or care, but she knew the state of her own heart. There had been a time when she had thought she could rescue him from the trap of his own self-image; then Russell Hickbed had come along, taken the image and enlarged it till even she was trapped in it. She would never forgive Hickbed for making her the Prime Minister’s wife.

  “Nobody would ever take you for a grandmother. Neither of you.”

  “Thanks,” said Norval drily.

  He had stood up beside Anita; she knew they made a good-looking pair. He handsome and blond, she beautiful and dark, both of them slim, both of them expensively and elegantly dressed even on this warm holiday night: the image now, she thought, had become a round-the-clock thing. They had a daughter who had married early and a son who worked in a merchant bank in London: both of them had escaped the image and refused to be any part of it.

  “What’s happening with the Timoris?” she said.

  Norval chose a problem that had not yet been discussed this evening. “We have to find them somewhere else to stay. We’re supposed to move into Kirribilli House on Monday.”

  “You should never have put them there in the first place.” She didn’t want to crawl into a bed where Delvina Timori had slept; she had, unwittingly at the time, done that years ago.

  “It was all that was available. Everything else is full—hotels, apartments, houses. They would land on us when Sydney’s never been more chock-a-block.”

  “Why can’t we move them in here?” said Hickbed.

  “No!” Anita almost shouted.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea, Russ,” said Norval, not wanting another problem, closer to home.

  Anita recovered, said sweetly, “What about your place, Russell? You’d have room for them in that barn of yours.”

  “A good idea!” Norval was almost too quick to support her.

  Hickbed shook his head. “What about security? It’d be too risky.”

  “That could be fixed,” said Norval. “I’ll get the Federals to double their detail. It’s the solution, Russ, I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before—”

  “It’s no solution. It’ll just be a bloody great headache.”

  Then Dave Lucas, one of the PM’s political advisers, short and lugubrious-faced, a basset hound of a man, came to the door.

  “There’s just been a news-flash on TV. The Dutchman’s put out an announcement that it was that guy Seville who tried to murder Timori.”

  “Shit!” said Hickbed, who didn’t speak French.

  “Not on my carpet,” said Anita Norval and left the room, all at once glad that everything was going wrong.

  IV

  It took Miguel Seville some time to reach Dallas Pinjarri. The Aborigine, it seemed, moved around as much as the Argentinian: militant radicals were the new nomads. But at last he had Pinjarri on the phone, though the latter sounded suspicious and unwelcoming. “Who’s this?”

  Seville knew better than to identify himself: none knew better than he that yesterday’s ally was often today’s betrayer. “A friend in Libya gave me your name.”

  “What friend?”

  Seville named a man in the Gaddafi camp, the contact who had sent him to Australia two years ago.

  “You still haven’t said who you are.”

  “My name is Gideon, I’m from Switzerland.”

  “Swiss? That’s a new one. I always thought you jokers just went in for watches and cheese and fucking law and order.”

  “Some of us have other ideas. Can we meet?”

  There was silence at the other end of the line; Seville guessed a hand had been put over the mouthpiece. Then: “Okay. You know the Entertainment Centre? No? Well, get a taxi, the driver will take you there. Eight o’clock. Wait in the lobby in front of Door Three. What do you look like?”

  Seville described himself, having to close his eyes in the stuffy phone-box while he tried to remember his new looks. It was curious that he had never become accustomed to the sight of himself, when he looked in mirrors, in the various disguises he had to adopt.

  “Okay, but you better be fair dinkum, mate. You’re not fooling around with a tribe of fucking amateurs.”

  Seville smiled to himself: Pinjarri hadn’t changed. “I’m sure I’m not.”

  That evening Seville caught a taxi into the city, but, having looked up the Entertainment Centre in a directory he had bought, had the taxi drop him some distance from the Centre and walked the rest of the way. He took off his jacket and carried it over his arm: even the Swiss were known to relax occasionally.

  He passed a gun shop on the way, but didn’t pause. He had gone looking for such a store when the city had closed for Saturday afternoon; he had found two, including this one, but his practised eye had told him they were too well secured to be broken into. It was then that he had at last decided he had to risk contacting Pinjarri.

  On the last part of his walk he was drawn towards the Entertainment Centre by the crowd heading there. He went down past Chinese restaurants and shops; a dragon with illuminated red eyes stared at him from a window and in the doorway beside it a Chinese girl smiled invitingly. Then the Centre loomed over him, an auditorium that looked like a dozen others he had seen in other parts of the world. An ideal place for a bomb scare, he remarked automatically. Just like all the others.

  The crowd was pouring into the big building. All of them young, some of them bizarre in their dress; he stood out amongst them as if he were in fancy dress. Tonight was the first night of the Australian Pop Festival: the stars of the show were Dire Straits, direct from their American tour. Affronted nationalism hadn’t kept the hordes away; they poured into the wide lobby as if the First Fleeters had come back to play the Top Ten of 1788. Seville took no notice of the irony: he was the true internationalist in the crowded lobby, the terrorist without patriotism.

  He had been standing below the steps leading to Door 3 less than five minutes when he felt the tap on his elbow. “Mr. Gideon?”

  The Aboriginal boy could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen; he was light-skinned and he reminded Seville of the Arab boys he had seen in the guerrilla training camps in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon. He looked just as serious and apprehensive as those boys.

  “Yes,
I’m Gideon. Am I supposed to follow you?” The boy looked surprised and Seville smiled. “I’ve done this before. Many times.”

  They pushed their way through the crowd, going against the stream. I may be in dire straits myself before the night is out, thought Seville wrily; but danger was an old ambience and he never felt uncomfortable in it. He followed the boy out into the busy street and they turned left. Five minutes’ more walking brought them under what Seville took to be a traffic fly-over. There the boy, without a word, suddenly darted away.

  Seville moved into the shadow of a pylon, stood waiting. He flexed the calf of his right leg, felt the knife in its sheath strapped there. If Dallas Pinjarri brought trouble, he would be ready for it.

  Above his head he could hear the swish of tyres and the occasional rumble of a heavy truck. Through the pylons he could see the bright lights of the Darling Harbour complex, a new development since he had last been in Sydney. All cities, he decided, were beginning to look alike with their tourist projects; you travelled thousands of miles to look at buildings and display temples just like those you had left behind. In a thousand years, digging amongst the ruins, archaeologists would wonder in which country they were working.

  Pinjarri appeared as silently and swiftly as the Aboriginal boy had disappeared: maybe it is an Aboriginal thing, Seville thought. He came through the bands of light and shadow; Seville thought he saw other shadows within the shadows, but he could not be sure. He waited, wondering if he would have to use the knife.

  “Mr. Gideon?

  “Hello, Dallas. Have you brought some friends with you, back there behind those pylons?”

  Pinjarri peered at him in the shadows, “I don’t recognize—”

  “I had another name when I was here two years ago.” He could not remember whether he had used his own name; his memory must be going. “I also wasn’t blond or Swiss—”

  Pinjarri peered even closer. Then: “Shit, is it really you? Miguel?”