He went to the counter to order, turned and saw her halfway to the door. In two strides he had caught her.
‘Sit down!’ he said. ‘I want you to hear me out. If you feel you must go after that, I won’t stop you.’
More tears now, her unquestioning belief in the Party and its chairman destroyed, but Richard felt better than he had for weeks. He had seen the faintest possibility of helping her and that prospect sent adrenaline racing through his blood.
‘Will you sit down and wait for me?’
He held her by both arms and all his body was shaking with the vehemence of his feelings.
Eventually she nodded.
‘Say it.’
‘I will wait.’
They went back to their table. Unbidden, she sat down, head bowed. He did not think she would try to leave again. He ordered the coffee, carried the mugs back to the table. He was conscious of eyes watching him – many of the students knew something of her problems – but nobody spoke.
He sat down and took her hands in his. ‘Look at me,’ he said.
She did so, eyes swimming with tears.
‘What will happen to you if you go back to China?’
‘My father has been banished because of his connection with Minister Deng. I think I shall probably be banished, too. If I am lucky.’
‘And if you are not?’
She bit her lip. ‘Anything.’
‘Anything? Prison? Rape? Murder?’
She sat with bowed head. Tears were falling on her hands and she did not speak.
Now the vision that Richard had discerned became reality. It was very simple, now he had found the courage to speak the words. ‘I will not allow it.’
‘How can you prevent it?’
‘You will come with me,’ he said. ‘It will give you time to decide what you need to do.’
‘Come where?’
‘I shall take you north.’
She shook her head, unable to grasp what he was saying.
‘I cannot –’
‘You have your passport?’ he asked.
‘No passport. But I have a letter of identification that I was given before I left China. With my photograph.’
‘How did you get here?’
‘By car. The men who have been guarding me came with me. They are waiting for me now. They didn’t want me to come at all but I could not leave without saying goodbye.’
‘It is not goodbye,’ said Richard. ‘But thank you anyway.’
‘I said I had to fetch some personal papers. I must get back or they will come looking for me –’
Panic was building.
Richard tightened his grip on her hands. ‘You’re going nowhere except with me.’
‘I must get my clothes, personal things –’
‘If you go back, they’ll make sure you’re on that plane. Is that what you want?’
‘But –’
‘Is that what you want?’
‘No,’ she whispered, her face tragic. ‘The way things are in China at the moment, I would be frightened to go.’ Suddenly she froze. ‘There is one of them,’ she whispered.
Richard did not turn his head.
‘Where?’
‘In the doorway.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
Which meant the other man must have stayed with the car. Or so Richard hoped.
‘Has he seen you?’
‘Not yet.’
The cafeteria was not big enough to hide anyone for long.
‘Keep your head down,’ he said.
He walked over to the group of students whose eyes had followed him sympathetically ten minutes before. He spoke to them in a low voice for a few minutes, then went back to Su-Ying.
‘What is happening?’ she asked in a frightened voice.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Be ready to move when I say so.’
He sat, blood pulsing in his ears. The group of students edged casually towards the door where the Chinese man was turning his head this way and that, trying to see where Su-Ying was.
Suddenly the students turned on each another, shouting and barging, throwing punches… Inevitably innocent bystanders were caught in the fray. Within moments the group, Chinese man and all, had swept out through the cafeteria door, which banged shut behind them.
‘Now!’ Richard said.
He leapt to his feet, Su-Ying beside him. In seconds they were across the room and out the second door by the kitchen before anyone could stop them.
‘Run!’ he shouted.
Run they did: down the grass slope and on to the footbridge that spanned the river and led to the students’ car park on the far side.
They were halfway across the bridge when they heard a yell and, turning, saw the second man racing down the slope behind them.
‘Come on!’
They raced across the car park to Richard’s car, parked – thank God! – close to the exit. Doors banged as they flung themselves into the seats and Richard took off, aiming for the road, when the man appeared directly in front of them, screaming incoherently and brandishing a –
‘A gun?’ Richard was incredulous; more, he was outraged. ‘You don’t wave guns around in this country, mate!’
He rammed his foot down on the accelerator and drove straight at him. Su-Ying screamed, hands covering her eyes; at the last moment the gunman threw himself sideways; the car cleared the exit and turned down the road in a screech of tyres.
‘Welcome to the wild west,’ yelled Richard, grinning, adrenaline levels through the roof. ‘We’ll show the bastards!’
They reached the highway and headed north. As promised.
Now she was over the initial excitement Su-Ying was as limp as rags.
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘My family’s got a cattle station in the Pilbara called Miranda Downs. My mother spends most of her time in Perth these days but she’s up there at the moment. She’s looking forward to meeting you.’
‘She’s expecting us? How does she know we’re coming?’
‘It’ll be our little surprise for her.’
‘Then how can she be looking forward…?’
But gave up. The hows and whys could wait. For the moment, she saw, Richard was beyond explaining anything.
Richard laughed; he felt he could spend the rest of his life doing nothing else. Why not? He had got Su-Ying away from the men who were trying to kidnap her; he had defied a gunman and got away with it; after months of frustration he had finally done something decisive. Most important of all, he had beside him the woman he adored above all others. Why shouldn’t he laugh?
And laughed again, to prove it.
They stopped overnight in Geraldton, two hundred and sixty miles north, so Su-Ying could buy clothes.
‘Underclothes, at least,’ she said. ‘And something to wear when I meet your mother.’
‘You have money?’
‘Oh. They would not let me have any,’ she said.
‘Take this.’
He gave her some; it was lucky he had some to give.
While she was in the dress shop, Richard phoned Bella at Miranda Downs. ‘Where are you?’
‘In Geraldton.’
‘Coming to see me? How nice! Any reason in particular?’
‘I have a girl with me.’
‘That Chinese girl you’ve been telling me about? The one whose father is caught up in this Cultural Revolution business?’
‘Yes.’
‘How exciting! Anything I should know?’
Richard smiled into the receiver. Matchmaking mother… That was a new role.
‘I’ll explain when I see you.’
‘It’s too late to get down there today. The plane will pick you up in the morning.’
Su-Ying wanted it to be all very righteous.
‘Of course I must have a room to myself,’ she said. ‘What will the world think if we spend the night in the same room?’
Richard would not have a bar o
f it. ‘And if those men track us here and come after you in the night?’
‘How will they be able to do that?’
‘I don’t know. But it’s not a risk I’m willing to take.’
She wasn’t happy about it but Richard refused to give way.
‘I promise not to lay a finger on you, but I’m not leaving you unprotected overnight.’
In the end he got his way, sharing a room but with separate beds and not even a good-night peck on the cheek to speed them to dreamland.
* * *
The plane arrived at midday. They stood outside the airport buildings, Su-Ying in a sky-blue dress patterned with yellow flowers. The Cessna taxied to a stop and Richard stared in astonishment as Bella climbed down from the cockpit and came running towards them, her face one big smile and her arms open wide to hug her son.
‘How wonderful to see you! And looking so well, too!’
She turned to Su-Ying, taking her hands in her own. ‘I am so pleased to meet you.’
‘Since when have you been able to fly?’ Richard asked.
‘Your father taught me years ago. I neglected it until recently, then I thought how handy it would be for nipping around between Miranda Downs, the mine and the new loading terminal we’re building near Port Hedland, so decided to get myself taught all over again. After I’d done that it seemed sensible to change your father’s plane for a more modern one.’ She threw out her hand. ‘Allow me to introduce my new toy,’ she said. ‘Your father called his first plane Minnie. This is Minnie Mark II. Faster, more economical and with a range of seventeen hundred miles. Plus loads of new safety features, most of which I do not understand.’
‘Do not believe a word she says,’ Richard told Su-Ying. ‘If there’s one feature on that crate she doesn’t understand I shall be very much surprised.’
‘You underestimate my ignorance of things technical,’ Bella said. ‘And don’t call her a crate: she’ll be offended. Well, hop aboard,’ she said briskly. ‘We need to get moving if we want to be home before dark. What a pretty dress,’ she said to Su-Ying.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
While they waited for Comrade Fang’s summons Bella, Richard and Su-Ying made use of the car he had kindly provided.
They had visited what remained of the ancient summer palace outside the city. They had taken a trip on the lake in a dragon boat. They had admired the marble vessel, constructed by order of the Concubine Empress Tzu-Hsi, that lay securely berthed alongside the bank. They had lunched at a restaurant recommended by the hotel.
‘Do you remember any of this?’ Bella asked Su-Ying.
Su-Ying shook her head. ‘So much has changed.’
‘But not the Summer Palace.’
‘I never went there,’ Su-Ying said. ‘I remember my father took me once to the grave house of one of the Ming emperors.’
But that, she had discovered, had been vandalised during the Cultural Revolution.
Safely back at the hotel, Bella looked out through her window. Everywhere the darkness was broken by the glare of arc lamps from construction sites and she wondered at how things had changed since Mao’s time. There would have been no shortage of seemingly insurmountable problems in those years yet somehow they had overcome them. It is nothing short of a miracle, she thought. It was an inspiration to her because China’s troubles, although incomparably greater, seemed in some ways to mirror her own. She had certainly known testing times in the battles she had waged to defend her company and her legacy from the predatory assaults of BradMin and its CEO.
Pete Bathurst, she thought. Now there’s a piece of work.
Bella lay on her bed and revisited the first days of the Carlisle Mine and a few of the landmines that Pete Bathurst had sown in her path in the years following Garth’s death.
On her return from Japan in 1964 she had told Rory McNab they would need to get their skates on to fulfil the contracts she had won in Japan. She had also said that Pete Bathurst would be fit to be tied that she had got into the Japanese market ahead of him.
She had been right on both counts.
China might now be the gateway to the future – whether to catastrophe or triumph remained to be seen – but back then they had indeed got their skates on. Then as now the problems had seemed insurmountable but somehow Rory McNab had found his way around them, working twelve and sometimes fifteen hours a day and motivating his workforce to do the same. Even a week before the first delivery deadline Bella would not have bet her life on their meeting it yet somehow they had and for the first few years of operation the Japanese contracts had kept them afloat.
As for Pete Bathurst… He had indeed been fit to be tied. He had done everything he could to bring Tuckers down, but Bella had a spy in BradMin’s offices and that had helped. She heard how Pete Bathurst had instructed Sinclair Smythe to find a way to challenge Bella’s decision to break away from BradMin, and how Smythe had told him there were no legal grounds for objection.
‘Keep trying, anyway. Any woman can be made to panic,’ Pete had said. ‘All we gotta do is find the right button to press.’
Smythe had sent Bella the letter, as instructed, and Bella, forewarned, had handed it to Owen Freeth. Owen had contacted Sinclair to point out the flaws in his argument, flaws that the courts would be certain to confirm, and that had been that.
Pete had then tried to charge Bella an extra levy for track maintenance; that had got nowhere, either.
Finally he had come up with another plan that he hoped would cause Bella at least some inconvenience. He sicked Billy Gould on her.
Bella stared at the hand-delivered letter that had arrived that morning. So Billy Gould still fancied his chances of overturning Garth’s will, did he? They would see about that.
She had more than enough to occupy her mind without Billy’s nonsense and would normally have passed it to Owen to sort out, but the lawyer was travelling interstate and she had no intention of leaving it until he got back. She picked up the phone.
‘Deborah, bring me that report Gayle Hastings did on the asbestos poisoning at Van Damm Siding.’
Deborah brought the report. Bella read it carefully, then phoned Billy Gould’s lawyer.
‘My legal adviser is away,’ she said.
‘How very convenient for you.’
The sassy voice of a man who expected her to settle rather than put up with the expense and inconvenience of a court action. A man she would derive great pleasure from disappointing.
‘You are right,’ she said. ‘If he were here I would feel obliged at least to listen to his advice but since he isn’t I can speak freely. I have three things to say to you. One. Your client will shortly be involved in a number of civil suits relating to serious injury incurred by a number of his former employees. The charge will be negligence and the damages substantial. Two. I have no intention, now or at any time, of settling any claims Mr Gould may think he has against my late husband’s estate. Three, if you want to go ahead, be my guest. But a word to the wise: make sure of your fee first.’
A prolonged silence greeted her words. When the lawyer eventually spoke, it was in a very different tone. ‘I shall take my client’s instructions.’
You do that, mister, thought Bella savagely as she slammed down the phone. One question remained. That lawyer would never have agreed to act unless his fee was guaranteed. Gayle had told her that Billy’s asbestos mine was on the rocks – he had even been forced to dispose of his sugar interests to cover its losses – and Gayle had discovered no other sources of income. So who was paying the lawyer?
Who would be interested in helping Billy Gould? Or, perhaps more relevantly, in hurting her? She could think of only one candidate.
Again she lifted the phone. ‘Can you talk?’
Two hours later…
‘Thank you for coming back to me so quickly, Tania. Yes, I guessed Pete was behind it but it’s always good to have confirmation. If you want to drop in this evening, I’ll let you have your money. Of course in ca
sh. Everything as usual.’
She put down the phone and sat unmoving. Another bimbo de luxe from Pete’s past, still employed by BradMin, boiling with resentment and only too willing to spill the beans. You’d think he’d have the brains to keep his prick out of the payroll, she thought, but some men never learn. Rory McNab had said a more ruthless bastard than Pete Bathurst never walked. Well, that was all right; she could be pretty ruthless herself.
Lying on her bed in the Beijing hotel, Bella sighed. So it had continued to this day. It was why she was here now: problems created by Pete Bathurst.
Given Comrade Fang’s tirade at their last meeting, it looked as though the wretched man might have beaten her at last. If Beijing refused to back her, there was no more she could do. But let Beijing’s own triumphant record be her inspiration. She had been waging war all her life: against the countess, the Johnsons, the Cockatoo Club. More recently against sexist prejudice, the banks and the politicians. The Chinese would not have brought her here simply to dump her. No, the field was still hers, the battle not yet over.
Give up now, against a thug like Pete Bathurst? Not in a million years, she thought. On the contrary: if things worked out as she still hoped she would make it her business to destroy him.
Thank God I am a fighter, Bella thought.
There was a knock on the door. Bella looked up from the bleakness of her thoughts. ‘Come in.’
It was Su-Ying.
‘I wish they would make up their minds,’ Bella said. ‘This waiting is bad for the nerves.’
‘That is why they do it,’ her daughter-in-law said. ‘To wear you down. It is the Chinese way.’
‘I know, and they won’t succeed. But it’s not easy. What can I do for you anyway?’ she asked.
‘I came to ask your permission to visit my father.’
‘You don’t need my permission. Of course you may visit him, if you wish. Why not?’
‘No reason why not. And it is my filial duty.’
‘I understand.’ Bella smiled. ‘Perhaps you can persuade him to put in a word for us.’
‘That would be most improper,’ Su-Ying said.
‘I know.’
‘It might even be counter-productive.’
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