Dragons at the Party

by Jon Cleary

  She smiled a policeman’s wife’s smile: that is, it was cynically sceptical, like a defence lawyer’s. “A promise?”

  “A promise. Now what does everyone want?”

  He went up to the counter, taking Maureen with him, and they came back with two loaded trays. He and Lisa had finished their hamburgers and were sucking on their thick shakes when Lisa put her hand across the table and took his.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Erk!” said Tom, but the two girls looked on with shy pleasure.

  “I don’t know why,” said Malone.

  “Because you’re decent.”

  “Yes,” said Claire. “That’s what you are. Decent. You’re a pain in the neck when you’re bad-tempered, but you’re nice and decent.”

  “What’s decent?” mumbled Tom, mouth full of ice-cream.

  “Whatever Daddy is, is decent,” said Lisa. “And don’t any of you forget it.”

  “What’s Mummy?” said Maureen, suddenly a defender of equal rights.

  Malone looked at his wife. “Lovely. That’s all—lovely.”

  She gave him a smile that turned his heart over. Then one of the McDonald’s boys, who knew them as regulars, came to the table. “Mr. Malone, you’re wanted on the phone.”

  Lisa’s face clouded. “You didn’t tell me you’d given them this number.”

  “I had to, darl. I’m on this Seville case round the clock, you know that.”

  “Just as well we didn’t go to Eliza’s—I’d have been stuck with the bill.”

  He had let them, and particularly her, down again. The food in his stomach suddenly seemed to turn sour. He got up and went behind the counter and picked up the phone. Clements was on the line.

  “Sorry, Scobie. But Zanuch has called us all in. Get into your monkey suit—we’re all going to the Bicentennial Ball.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Christ knows. General Paturi, this guy from Palucca, is going to be there with The Dutchman. Zanuch evidently thinks Seville might try to gate-crash, looking for the Timoris.”

  “Are they going to be there?”

  “Not as far as I know. But I’ve given up guessing on this case. Oh, another thing. Joe Nagler called. He’s got that information from ASIO. They’d been tapping Kirribilli House while the Timoris were there. There were two calls to Beirut. Joe has got copies of the tapes, but it’s all under the lap. Officially they don’t exist.”

  “What time are we expected at the ball?”

  “Nine o’clock. Oh, don’t bring Lisa. Zanuch said no women. We’re supposed to dance with each other.”

  He laughed; but Malone couldn’t. He said miserably, “Okay, I’ll be there. But Lisa and the kids are going to boil me in oil.”

  “I know,” said Clements sympathetically. “It’s times like these when I’m glad I’m not married. The rest of the time I envy you.” He hung up abruptly, as if embarrassed by his sentiment.

  Malone went back to their table and explained the situation.

  “You’re going to the Bicentennial Ball without me?” said Lisa. “The biggest function in two hundred years and you’re taking Russ Clements, not me? Did we say he was decent, kids?”

  “He’s not any more,” said Claire.

  “Is it going to be on TV?” said Maureen.

  “Can I have another ice-cream?” said Tom.

  Malone looked mournfully across at Lisa. “I wish I could take you. But—”

  “But what?”

  He shook his head and Claire said, “He doesn’t want to tell you in front of the children. He’s going with another woman. A police lady, I expect.”

  “Is that so?” said Lisa.

  “I told you, I’m going with Russ Clements. He’s a good sort, but we don’t hold hands.”

  Then Lisa, whose immediate disappointment had slowed her reflexes, caught on. She reached across and put her hand on his. “It can’t be helped. But be careful, darling. Be careful.”

  “Is he decent again?” said Tom.

  “Yes.”

  Why do I love them all so much? He knew, however, that it was a stupid question.

  7

  I

  THE BICENTENNIAL Ball was being held in the Exhibition Centre in the middle of the Darling Harbour complex, a monument of festival gardens, tourist markets and various halls that Hans Vanderberg had built for himself. His name was on various foundation stones, like that of a graffiti artist given his head. The Exhibition Centre was a huge hall, more than two football fields long, and was ideal for the occasion, the biggest social event ever held in the State. Several of the biggest hotels had lobbied for the function, but their ballrooms, like tight jeans, were not large enough.

  The tickets were fifty dollars a head and they had been distributed evenly across the social scale; a small percentage had been set aside as free, so that the very bottom of the scale could be represented. Dress ranged from white tie and tails and ball-gowns to T-shirts and jeans; nobody was excluded because they couldn’t afford to dress up. Four bands had been engaged and the music ranged from hard rock through country and western to schmaltz waltz. The only time the music was common was when the four bands simultaneously played “Advance Australia Fair.” A forgetful cornetist in the old-time band then went into the first bars of “God Save the Queen,” but found he was playing solo and only those at the Returned Servicemen’s table were standing to attention. He gurgled away into silence. Four thousand dinki-di Aussies weren’t going to waste their night celebrating their ties to Britain, especially those natives with names like Castellari, Stefanopoulos, Pilsudski, Jagonovich and Van Trung.

  Bunting covered the upper reaches of the huge hall; flags hung like green-and-gold guillotines above the heads of the dancers. Five thousand bottles of wine and champagne were on hand, five hundred gallons of beer, seven tons of food: another miracle of loaves and fishes would not be needed tonight, as the Cardinal, an honoured guest, remarked to his host. Five hundred waiters and waitresses and twenty-five maîtres d’ whizzed amongst the tables, doing their best to look happy in what they were doing and, for the most part, failing miserably. There would be no tips tonight.

  Philip and Anita Norval arrived to a fanfare from one of the bands; the other three, being unionists intent on their work practices, had chosen that moment to knock off for a smoke-o. There was not a better-looking pair in the whole huge hall than the PM and his wife; he handsome in white tie and tails, she beautiful in a green and gold gown by Mel Clifford, one of the nation’s top designers. They walked from one end of the vast indoor field to the other, acknowledging the applause; the Prime Minister, heady with the occasion, turned to retrace his steps, but Anita, already footsore, grabbed his arm and guided him to their table. A Labour voter from the western suburbs remarked that if Anita had not been with the PM, he would have worn his jogging shoes and done a dozen laps. A few boos were heard, but Norval had a politician’s ear, selectively deaf.

  The host for the night, Hans Vanderberg, was already at his table with his wife, a homely soul famous for her pavlova cakes, her pot plants and her potted wisdom. She had once remarked that egalitarianism only worked when it had an elite to run it, an opinion that had brought a demand that she be expelled from the Labour Party. She had sent the man a kiwi fruit pavlova, a pot plant and a note saying she had never belonged to the Party; he had withdrawn the motion. The Dutchman was in black tie and a dinner jacket, aware that in mixed political company one could take dressing up too far. Gertrude, his wife, was in plain pink, not a designer’s gown but something run up by her local dressmaker and looking none the less attractive for that. She had never been beautiful and she had the sense to accept the advice her mirror gave her and not try for the unattainable.

  It was still too early in the evening for any mixing of the classes. The silvertails stayed at their tables or danced with each other; the poorer voters did the same. Occasionally one couple would bump into another on one of the dance floors and there would be a
n exchange of smiles such as one might get across the Russian-Chinese border. Relations would warm up as the night went on, but for the moment everyone seemed afraid of being rebuffed. The Stefanopouloses and the Gore-Hills hadn’t yet run up the Southern Cross and saluted it together.

  General Paturi had arrived in full dress uniform and looked out of place, as if he had been bound for a fancy dress ball and had got off at the wrong hall. He was sitting at the Premier’s table, lost and embarrassed; he had nothing in common with either The Dutchman or his wife. He had brought no female partner with him; he could not dance, so he did not ask Mrs. Vanderberg if she would like to go out on the floor. The music deafened him and the dancing looked obscene and insane. So he sat at the table and nodded while Mrs. Vanderberg tried to explain, across him, the method of making a pavlova cake to the wife of the Minister for Water Resources. When the Norvals arrived and made their progress up the middle of the hall he stood up and saluted.

  “Sit down, General!” snapped Vanderberg, horrified at such homage to the enemy.

  Paturi slumped back in his seat. “You don’t salute your leader?”

  “Only when we’re burying him. Did you salute President Timori every time he appeared?”

  “Of course. He insisted on it. Or rather, Madame Timori did.”

  The American ambassador passed by, avoiding Paturi’s eye. The Dutchman, grinning maliciously, called out an invitation to join them, but the ambassador was too quick. Diplomacy is as much acts of omission as of commission.

  “Did you get to the Prime Minister today?” Vanderberg said to Paturi. “What did you talk about?”

  Paturi was not altogether a fool in politics. “I think you must ask him, Mr. Premier.”

  “No politics tonight,” said Gertrude, turning away from the subject of pavlovas. It was a night for enjoyment, for gossip, one of the best enjoyments: “What is Madame Timori like?”

  “Evil,” said General Paturi, who had no small talk and so tended to turn conversations into large silences.

  “Oh no,” said Mrs. Water Resources, a feminist and not to be silenced. “Women are always less evil than men. Isn’t that so, Gert?”

  “Of course,” said Gertrude Vanderberg and looked at her husband for corroboration and as proof. She had no illusions about him. She loved him, but sometimes it was a strain.

  “Speak of the she-devil,” said the Premier and couldn’t believe his luck.

  There had been a break in the music and the dance floors had begun to clear. Slowly at first and now all at once quickly, as if all the dancers had decided the spotlight should not be shared, least of all by them. They paused on the edge of the dance floors and all heads turned in the same direction.

  Delvina Timori had entered on the arm of Russell Hickbed. She was dressed in a shimmering gold gown that clung to her body so that she looked as if she had been sprayed with gold-leaf, like one of the statues in the palace in Bunda. She wore a single large emerald, bigger than anything anyone in the hall had ever seen, on a heavy gold chain round her neck. Her dark hair was adorned with a thin gold tiara. On her wrist was a thick gold bracelet set with emeralds and the one ring she wore was also set with an emerald. She had been careful to show restraint.

  “Green and gold,” said Gertrude. “Is she turning out for the Olympics? Where are you going, sweetheart?”

  “I can’t miss this,” said her husband, moving out of his blocks like an Olympic sprinter. “I’m going to introduce her to Phil Norval.”

  “Wait till she comes up against Anita,” said Mrs. Water Resources. “She’s going to make Anita’s little green-and-gold number look like last year’s gym suit.”

  Hickbed, aware of the sensation they were causing and unexpectedly revelling in it, marched up the middle of the hall with Delvina gliding along beside him. There was no applause, no booing, nothing but silence from four thousand guests; it is a phenomenon of science that silence is magnified by the number who create it. Hickbed had stood in the deserts of central Australia at night during an inspection of one of his mineral holdings; the silence then had been a thunderstorm compared to this. It was difficult to tell whether the utter quiet was hostile, appreciative, curious or just plain amazed at something so totally unexpected. Perhaps it was just a silent cheer for a local girl who had made good, in a bad way. The cutting down of her as a tall poppy, a national sport, would come later in the night.

  There were two vacant places at the Prime Minister’s table. They had been reserved for Hickbed and one of his current mistresses. The lady in question had been unceremoniously dumped for the evening and was now in bed in Double Bay with a migraine that would get worse when she tried to explain why a substitute had been called in for tonight’s game. It would do nothing for her reputation that she had been supplanted by Madame Timori, a higher-priced whore.

  Vanderberg caught up with Hickbed and Delvina when they were still some distance from the Norvals’ table. “Madame Timori, welcome to our ball. I’m Hans Vanderberg, the host for tonight. G’day, Russell.”

  “Hello, Hans,” said Russell Hickbed, willing to be friends with anyone tonight. “I thought Madame Timori would like to join in our little celebration. After all, she is half-Australian.”

  “I’d like to think of myself as all-Australian this evening,” said Delvina, making herself sound like a football fullback. She smiled at Vanderberg and he smiled back, not taken in.

  “Where is the President?” he said.

  “Matters of state,” said Delvina, and The Dutchman, still in power, wondered what matters of state could occupy a man so out of power as Timori.

  “We also thought it would be asking for trouble,” said Hickbed, who sometimes could not help telling the truth. “That guy Seville is still on the loose.”

  “He might even be here,” said Vanderberg and looked around with an ugly grimace of hope. “Well, let me escort you to your table.”

  “Do you need to do that?” said Delvina, who had decided she did not like The Dutchman. “Isn’t it beneath your dignity as Premier?”

  Vanderberg took no notice of the insult. “Dignity never won any votes, not here in Australia. You’d have learned that if you’d had honest elections back in Palucca. Ah, here we are. Phil, Anita—here are your guests. Everybody smile!”

  Photographers had appeared like mosquitoes around a swamp. Lights flashed and so did teeth; the smiles in tomorrow’s papers would look like a tossed box of cutlery. Vanderberg shook hands with everyone and then paused in front of Norval.

  “Get ‘em out of Sydney as soon’s you can, Phil,” he said quietly and threateningly, but smiling as he said it, aware of the photographer behind them. Next day the caption under the photograph would read: The Prime Minister and the Premier exchange a joke at last night’s ball. “You’re over-working my police force.”

  “Too bad, Hans,” said Norval, more than matching Vanderberg’s smile. “You shouldn’t have made Sydney the best city in Australia. Isn’t that what you claim?”

  “If Timori finishes up as a corpse, it won’t do you any good, whether he’s in Sydney or Oodnadatta. Get him out. Get your friend in Washington to take him.”

  “I’m doing my best,” said Norval, suddenly backing down.

  “Do better,” said The Dutchman. “And don’t sit too close to the whore. That assassin may be gunning for her, too.”

  He smiled at everyone at the table, then went back down the long hall, walking alone down the wide space of the empty dance floors, king for the night.

  II

  Malone and Clements, both in dinner jackets, had met at Homicide where Clements produced copies of the ASIO tapes. “These are strictly unofficial, Scobie. We can’t use them for anything, not as evidence, nothing like that.”

  “Two calls to Beirut? Were they ISD calls?”

  “Yes, but all calls out of Kirribilli House are monitored, anyway, through a central switchboard. They’re not taped, just a record kept of where the calls are to.”

 
; “Did you get the numbers?”

  “The same number each time. Beirut 232-3344.”

  “Righto, let’s have a listen.”

  Malone at once recognized the voice at the Australian end. “That’s Sun Lee!”

  The tapes were clear, though at times the voice in Beirut faded a little:

  Sun: “Mr. Zaid, we spoke the other day about a certain matter in Palucca.”

  Zaid: “Ah yes, sir. I gather from the news that the target is no longer in Palucca.”

  Sun: “No, he is here in Sydney. Can you get in touch with your client?”

  Zaid: “I’m afraid not. I don’t know where he is.”

  The rest of the first tape was inconsequential, although Sun sounded as if he were upset. The second tape, like the first, was short, as if Sun were trying to sneak the call in without being overheard:

  Sun: “Mr. Zaid, I am calling again from Sydney.”

  Zaid: “Good evening, sir. Has my client turned up in Sydney?”

  Sun: “Yes. He has made a terrible mistake. He killed the wrong man.” There was silence for a moment. “Mr. Zaid? Are you there?”

  Zaid: “I am here. That’s most unfortunate. It is not like my client—he is usually so reliable. Are you sure it is him?”

  Sun: “The police have identified him, though they have no proof.”

  Zaid: “What do you want me to do?”

  Sun: “Is he likely to be contacting you?”

  Zaid: “It is very unlikely. I am just his agent, not his control. What did you want me to tell him?”

  Sun: “I shall call you again.”

  The second tape ended abruptly there. Clements said, “Sun hung up. ASIO thinks he was interrupted by someone. I’m a bit surprised he made the calls from Kirribilli House.”

  “I’ve got the feeling he doesn’t think much of us out here, that we’re just a mob of innocents. Maybe he thinks we don’t know how to tap a phone. The Chinese are a superior lot of bastards.”