by Jon Cleary
Malone was out of the police car on the run, his gun already drawn. Clements and Graham went out their doors, drawing their guns as they did so. Police were running down from the road-block up ahead.
Dallas Pinjarri sat in the driver’s seat of the Mazda, his hands on the wheel, his seat-belt still on and his face streaked into a horrible mask as if he had run a hand wildly over the paint on it. He looked at Malone as the latter came up beside him, but his eyes were lost in the crazy abstract of his face.
“Thank Christ, mate. I never thought I’d be glad to see youse pigs.”
“Any time, Dallas,” said Malone. “Where is he?”
Pinjarri nodded off to his left. “He went down there. He’s got the Sako and two hand-pieces.” Then, reluctantly, sounding as if it hurt him to warn the pigs, he said, “You better be careful—he’s a cold-blooded bastard.”
“I know,” said Malone, aware of Pinjarri’s awkward gratitude and trying not to sound awkward in return. “We’ll be careful.”
The helicopter had disappeared, but now it came back, riding along the front of the clouds of smoke. Clements was using the hand-radio from the police car. “Where is he?”
There was a lot of static and noise, but the observer’s reply could be heard: “He’s heading south down into a gully. It runs down into the valley proper.”
“Is there any fire down there?”
“Not so far. Keep an eye on us. We’ll hover over him.”
“Watch out he doesn’t start shooting at you. He’s got a high-powered rifle.”
The helicopter swung away, dropping down below the level of the roadway. There was no traffic at all on this section of the highway now; one of the Highway Patrol cars had swung round and gone back half a mile to halt all traffic coming up from Sydney. Beyond the huge fire and the towering boiling smoke the traffic was banked up for at least a mile. Their Big Day, it seemed, had finished before it had even begun. History was just a repeat performance: every summer these fires broke out, homes were lost, people’s lives ruined.
The SWOS men, flak jackets on, properly booted, automatic weapons at the ready, were already leaving the roadway and plunging down the rocky slope towards the deep gully where the trees and bushes were still green and uncharred. Malone, in his dinner jacket and party shoes, his gun in his hand, went after them.
Clements yelled, “Scobie! Where the hell are you going?”
“I’m not going to miss the end of this!”
“Shit!” said Clements and followed him.
Graham looked at the young driver. “There’s no fools like old fools. Right?”
“I know where I’m going to stay,” said the driver, and did.
Down in the gully Seville, the canvas bag hanging by its strap from his shoulder, was beginning to panic again. Suddenly all his confidence had gone; he had chosen the wrong territory in which to match his skill against that of the New South Wales police. He was not a novice in rough terrain. As a youth he had tramped through the Enchanted Valley in Patagonia, through its forests of conifers and false beeches and past its strangely shaped rocks; he had climbed in the Andes that separated Argentina from Chile and had done the same in the Alps of Switzerland when he had lived there some years ago. He had trained in the guerrilla camps of the Bekaa valley, clambering over the rocky, treeless hills above Baalbek; and once, escaping from a betrayed Red Brigade bomb plot in Naples, he had walked over the southern Appenines from Salerno to Bari. But this Australian bush was something else again.
The rocks seemed to have done little to hinder the growth of the forest. The trees appeared to grow out of the rocks; every step between them had to be negotiated carefully. There could be no striding out, no sliding down a leaf-covered slope. And above him the tall canopies shut out all landmarks, so very soon he had no idea where he was heading except downwards.
He could hear the helicopter somewhere overhead and when it swung away he could hear the shouts of men up the steep slope behind him. Though it was still early, down here the heat was humid and heavy, as if the fires on the ridges had kept it from escaping during the night. His knee was hurting, hampering him each time he put weight on it. He was sweating profusely and it shocked him that it was not all from the heat: he was afraid, too. This dense forest was trapping him, closing in on him. He slid off a rock into a patch of dead brown leaves; a thick stick turned into a large brown snake and slid away from beneath him. He gasped, choking on the breath.
Then he came to a rocky stream, narrow and beginning to dry up. He bent down, scooped cool water into his face from a clear pool, then drank some. He straightened up, took the Sako out of the canvas bag and quickly assembled it. He loaded it and shoved the extra ammunition into his trouser pockets. He dumped his jacket and the canvas bag, debated whether to take the second Smith and Wesson with him, decided against it and left it.
The helicopter came back, seen now above the narrow patch of open sky above the creek, and he ducked back under the trees. Then he started to clamber up the opposite slope towards the top of the second ridge. He had no idea how many ridges he would have to climb before he was safe; for all he knew they might stretch to the western borders of the State. He knew nothing of the vast plains that, like the pampas of Argentina, began less than a hundred miles from here. He had not expected to have to battle the continent: he had come expecting to travel no further than the limits of the city on the harbour.
Malone, reasonably fit but no bush walker and certainly not shod properly, was having just as much difficulty as Seville in negotiating the down slope of the gully. The SWOS men, younger and more agile, had gone ahead of him. Clements, younger but out of condition and not in the least agile, was somewhere up above him, stumbling over rock, crashing into trees and swearing all the time. Malone, sweating profusely, tore off his jacket and dropped it over a bush; Lisa, a careful guardian of clothes, would ask him tonight where it was and he had better remember. His party shoes, he knew, would be useless after this, but that couldn’t be helped. If needs be, he would go after Seville in his bare feet. He hadn’t attempted to analyse his passion to capture Seville. He just knew it had to be done and he had to be there when it was done.
He could hear the clatter of the helicopter as he came down to a thin creek; it was up above the facing slope, so that meant Seville was heading for the top of the opposite ridge. He wondered why, as he crossed the creek, Seville hadn’t gone down it: the going would have been easier. Then he heard the automatics firing.
He clambered up between the trees, slipping on the smooth rocks, panting like an old man making love. Christ, he thought, I’m going to die of a bloody heart attack! He paused, gulping for breath, and looked back down through the trees. Clements had just reached the creek. He was lying flat on the ground, like a black crocodile, his face buried in one of the pools of the creek. Then he rolled over and dipped his head backwards into the water. He looked as if he was prepared to lie there all day.
The automatic firing broke out again. Malone turned and clambered on, praying desperately he would be there before Seville died. Sweat was blinding him, his breath came out of his lungs like fire. He came up behind a SWOS man, fell against a tree and managed to gasp, “Where is he?”
The SWOS man, for all his youth and fitness, was also sweating and gasping; Malone felt a little better, psychologically if not physically. The SWOS man pointed and Malone looked up through the striped trunks of the eucalypts. “I can’t see him.”
“He’s in that nest of rocks, sir. He’s just got one of our men.”
“Killed or wounded?”
“Killed, I think. I saw him go down—he’d been hit in the face.” He looked at Malone. “Did you want this guy alive?”
“Preferably.”
The man looked disappointed; he nodded reluctantly. “Okay, we’ll do our best.”
Up in the jumble of rough-edged rocks Seville knew he had at last come to the end of the road. Though he had spent a third of his life in alien lands, often
at risk, it had never occurred to him that he might die in a land as alien as this. Yet he knew it was about to happen. There was no death penalty here in Australia; with the killings he had committed they would send him to prison for ever. Death was a much better prospect than that.
The heat and exhaustion were affecting him; and he could smell smoke, like acrid dust in his nostrils. He looked up, but the trees above him weren’t burning. There were short gusts of breeze and the leaves turned in the early morning sunlight, silver-green like water flung into the air. He reached out and touched the trunk of a tree that grew out of the rocks behind him; its thin grey bark peeled away like strips of sun-burned skin. He could hear no birds, see no animals: they had all fled, fearful of the fire on the opposite ridge. He looked across there, saw the flames and smoke there and imagined he could feel the heat.
But what he felt most was loneliness. He didn’t recognize it at first; it was so long since he had felt lonely. Now all at once he wished there was someone beside him he knew: Juan, his best friend at university, who had persuaded him to join the Tupamaros; Gabriella, the girl he had worked with in the Red Brigade in Milan and with whom he had almost fallen in love; anyone at all from the old days. Even his mother: he looked down the slope and thought he saw her come out from behind a tree. He raised the Sako, but he couldn’t shoot her: she wasn’t to blame for what she had been or what he had become. He began to weep.
Then he heard the faint crackle above him. He looked up, his mind and his eyes suddenly clearing. The tree-tops were bursting into flame. First, there were wisps of smoke amongst the silver-green leaves; then the leaves turned to bright red as if blossoms had suddenly burst. All at once, as if someone had run a giant match along the tops of the trees, the whole top of the ridge burst into flames. Fire took hold of the forest and thick smoke, as if the top of the ridge were a volcano crater, belched into the morning sky.
The crackling roar was suddenly deafening. The air down here on the slope all at once dried out, became a searing pain in the lungs. Seville, terrified, stood up and the one shot from the SWOS man down by Malone hit him in the chest. He shuddered and dropped the Sako and the hand-gun. Then he looked up again, saw the burning limb fall off the tree and drop towards him and he screamed. He began to run, stumble, fall down the slope, sliding off rocks, crashing into trees, but feeling nothing as he tried to flee the worst death of all. The countryside itself was going to kill him.
Malone saw the crown fire break out and was about to turn and race down the slope when he saw Seville plunging towards him. He waited; he didn’t know why. He didn’t attempt to raise his gun; he just opened his arms and Seville ran straight into them. Malone thudded back against a tree, but managed to remain on his feet. Seville’s face was close against his own. He stared into it, into the eyes that were already beginning to empty; there was a flash of recognition, but that was all. Nothing of defiance or surrender: Seville died wondering, as most of us will.
Malone picked him up and carried him, twice falling and losing his grip on the dead man, down to the creek where the SWOS men and Clements were yelling at him to hurry.
He fell the last few yards and two of the SWOS men grabbed Seville.
“The bastard’s dead!” one of them yelled.
“Bring him!” Malone croaked and let Clements help him down the creek towards the deep pool under the overhanging rock where the other SWOS men were already in the water.
The fire came racing down the slope; the very air beneath it seemed to burn. Tree trunks burst into flame as if they had been soaked in kerosene; burning branches fell from on high like flaming spears. There was the terrible roaring crackle and the men in the creek felt the skin on their faces and necks begin to tighten as if about to split. Malone, his lungs on fire, his eyes feeling as if they might boil in their sockets, fell into the pool beside Clements.
“Duck!” yelled the sergeant in charge of the SWOS and everyone fell under the bank and dived as deeply as they could, two men dragging Seville’s body down with them. The fire leapt the creek, killing the air above it; the surface of the water sizzled for a moment, then was still again. The air, hot but breathable, rushed back to fill the vacuum.
Malone, still with a little air in his lungs, half-swam, half-crawled along the bottom of the pool, heading downstream. It was about twenty yards long and ended in a tiny waterfall that dropped about four feet over some smooth rocks. He came up gasping, his lungs on the point of bursting, and slid head first over the slippery rocks and down into another pool. He stood there, aware of the blackened earth on either side of him and the small fires burning in the underbrush, feeling the burning beat and smelling the smoke and scorched air, but knowing that, for the moment, they had survived.
Clements flopped into the water beside him. “Jesus, Scobie, I thought we were gone then!”
The SWOS sergeant was leading the way downstream. “Another hundred yards and we’ll be okay! The fire’s going the other way!”
The two men carrying Seville’s body stopped and looked at Malone. “You still want him, Inspector?”
Malone looked at the soaked and bedraggled figure, at the grey strained face with the staring empty eyes and the open mouth: there was no threat of terror there any more. I’d have liked to say goodbye to you, Seville, he thought with out-of-character malice; but the malice died suddenly, like an aberrant thought. No, all I would have done was ask who was paying you? Was it Madame Timori? But perhaps Seville had never known. Hit-men often never knew for whom they committed their crimes. History was full of innocent murderers.
“Yes,” he said, “bring him along.” He looked at Clements. “Right?”
“Right.”
III
“It was wonderful, Daddy,” said Claire. “Absolutely wonderful!”
“Yes,” he said. “I saw it on TV.”
“Ah, it wouldn’t have been as good on TV,” said Maureen traitorously. “You should’ve been there.”
“Yes,” said Lisa. “You should have been. Instead of where you were. What happened to your jacket?”
“I lost it.” He felt her hand press his.
“Where were you, Daddy?” said Tom.
“At work. Just at work.”
“Everybody was there,” said Claire. “The Prime Minister, the Premier, the Queen, cricketers, golfers, footballers, yachtsmen, jockeys—Captain Mack pointed them out to me when we sailed past the—what do they call it?”
“The „ficial „closure,” said Tom.
“Yes. Everybody’s heroes, Captain Mack called them.”
“No police heroes,” said Lisa.
“I saw it all on TV,” said Malone. “Especially the Prime Minister and the Premier. Everybody’s heroes.”
He had not made it after all to the excursion on the tug-boat on the harbour. It had been almost two hours before he, Clements, the SWOS men and the dead Seville had all been lifted out of the valley into which they had retreated from the fire. An emergency rescue helicopter had flown in and, two by two, they had been hoisted up to the top of the valley’s escarpment. He had been the last to go up, swinging up through the hot smoke-tinged air with Seville’s body in the sling beside him. He had looked down on the grey-green forest below him and then along to the huge black scar where the fire had roared through. The fire was still burning along the tops of several ridges, but a slight wind had sprung up and turned it back on itself. With some luck it may have burned itself out by this evening and the firefighters, professionals and volunteers, could rest up and think about whether they had anything to celebrate.
There had been some bitterness amongst the SWOS men that their dead mate, shot by Seville, had been left to burn in the fire while Seville’s body had been carried out. Why? they asked angrily; and Malone had not been able to answer them. It had nothing to do with justice. On the way back to Sydney, with Seville’s corpse following in an ambulance, he pondered the question. Then he recognized a reason, though it may have been only subconscious. He wan
ted to present Delvina, if only in a photograph, with a view of her employee’s body. It would be some sort of revenge, if not justice.
“Let’s go to the morgue with the body,” he said.
Graham, in the front seat beside the young driver, turned round. “Why?”
“I want his photo in tonight’s papers. And on TV.”
Graham looked blank, then nodded. “Right.”
Malone looked at Clements beside him and grinned resignedly. But Clements, too, looked blank.
There was one press photographer and one TV cameraman waiting for them at the City Morgue. They took their shots and then hurried off. Dead terrorists weren’t as interesting as live partygoers falling off yachts into the harbour or Aboriginal demonstrators being heckled by fellow Aussies, including the lately arrived ethnics. “They probably won’t run it,” said the press photographer.
“They’d better,” said Malone, then added recklessly, “There could be a bigger story to follow.”
“Do you think there will be?” said Clements as the photographer hurried away.
“No.”
They went back to Homicide where Zanuch, out of evening dress now and in uniform, all silver buttons and silver braid, looking as if he was brushed up for more climbing, professional and social, was waiting for them. “Good work, Malone, good work. That wraps it up.”
“We go no further?” Malone all at once found he no longer cared.
“No. The PM has got the Americans to agree to a deal. He’s going to announce it this evening.”
“What deal?”
“Timori is never going to recover full consciousness. He’s out of the operating theatre and in intensive care. But it will be at least a month before he wakes up. He’s going to be a virtual vegetable for the rest of his life, be on a life support system. The Mexicans have agreed to take him and his wife—evidently the Americans put some pressure on. They’re going to put them on some island in the Gulf of Mexico.”