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Malone, above the heads of his daughters, studied the two old men. They were the gold, if from opposite ends of the reef, that was the decency of this celebrating nation. Con Malone was the almost archetypal working man of the past: class conscious, prejudiced, scrupulously honest about his beliefs and passionately dedicated to mateship. He had recognized that the world at large had enemies: Hitler, Tojo and, later, Stalin. There was, however, only one real enemy in his eyes: the boss, any boss. Now that he was retired, living on his pension, he sometimes seemed at a loss without an enemy to hate. He and his son fought with words, but he would only raise his fist for Scobie, never against him. Malone loved him with a warmth that, like his mother, he would be too embarrassed to confess to the old man.
Jan Pretorious, too, was retired; but he had been a boss. He had been born in Sumatra of a Dutch family that had lived there for four generations making money out of rubber, tea and the natives. He and Lisa’s mother had come to Australia after Indonesia had gained its independence; he had brought little of the family fortune with him because by then there had been little of it left. At first they had not liked Australia and, when Elisabeth found herself pregnant, had gone home to Holland. A year there had convinced them they could never live in the northern climate and, with the baby Lisa, they had come back to Australia. He had gone to work in the rubber trade, at first working for Dunlop, then starting his own business making rubber heels. By the time Malone had married Lisa, half of Australia, including its police forces, were walking on Pretorious heels. Jan had once had all the arrogance of a colonial imperialist, but Australia had mellowed him; it had been that or get his face pushed in by the likes of Con Malone. He still occasionally dreamed of the old days, but he was dreaming as much of his adventurous youth in the Sumatran jungle as he was of a dead and gone imperialism. He and Con had one thing in common: they would like to turn the clock back, though it would not be the same clock. Scobie did not love him, but he felt an affection for him and a respect that was almost like love.
‘I don’t like the looks of that Madame Timori,’ said Brigid Malone, who read only the Women’s Weekly but never truly believed what it told her. ‘She’s all fashion-plate and nothing underneath it.’
‘She’s just a decoration for him,’ said Elisabeth Pretorious.
Their husbands looked at them, wondering if and when they had been decorated.
How wrong you both are, thought Malone, looking at his mother and mother-in-law.
Brigid Malone and Elisabeth Pretorious had nothing in common except, perhaps, a distant beauty. They had once been pretty girls, but the years of hard work, two miscarriages, another child dying in infancy and her bitter disappointment at the way her trusted God had treated her had crumpled and smudged and almost obliterated, except to the sharpest eye, that Brigid Hourigan of long ago. She now spent her time visiting her grandchildren and once a week going with Con to the senior citizens’ club in Erskineville, where they had lived for fifty years and where she and Con railed against the immigrant newcomers whom neither of them would ever call Australians. President Timori could have been a Catholic saint but Brigid Malone would never have made him welcome, not in Australia.
Elisabeth Pretorious had kept some of her looks. Money and a less arduous life had enabled her to do that; also she had had fewer disappointments than Brigid. Her God had been a comfortable one who, through the sleek smug priest in the suburb where she lived, never asked too much of her. She was a Friend of the Art Gallery, a Friend of the Opera and she was forever mentioning her good friends the So-and-So’s; but as far as Malone could tell she had no friends at all and he felt sorry for her. It struck him only then that she and his mother might have something else in common.
‘Do we have to have them here?’ she said.
Malone shrugged, let his daughters slide off his lap. They jumped back into the pool as if it were their natural habitat. ‘What would you do? Would you let them stay?’
‘No,’ said his father-in-law.
‘They claim they’re political refugees.’
Pretorious gave him a sharp look: almost forty years ago he and Elisabeth had made the same claim for themselves. ‘I think we have to draw the line somewhere. The man’s a murderer. Or his army was.’
‘It’s his army that’s kicked him out.’
‘Are you on his side?’ said Con Malone suspiciously.
‘Christ, no!’
The centurion leaned across and whacked him on the knee with his sword. ‘You told me not to say Christ. That’s swearing.’
‘Indeed it is,’ said Brigid, smiling sweetly at her four-year-old saint.
Lisa had been sitting quietly and Malone knew she was studying him. Some husbands are unfortunate in the way their wives study them, but those wives are those who know they could have done better. Malone knew, however, that he was being studied in a different way: Lisa had come to know him better. He had very few secrets left that she did not know.
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 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.’
3
‘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 any 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.
4
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?’
