Their pursuer was lying on his side with a smallish wound in his chest over his heart and a large exit hole in his back. Diana glanced at the mountain. Tom and Billy were approaching the fence, running a bit, then coming timidly forward. Billy was carrying her slide-action rifle. “No!” she said. “No!”
Romanus came up beside her. “Did the kid shoot him?”
What have I taught them? she asked herself. Billy has killed a man! When Michael touched her hand, she snatched it away as if he’d burned her. “He couldn’t have, not with that rifle,” she said. She nodded toward the twinkle in the sky. “It must have been one of them.” She felt panicky and began to hurry toward the fence. It was 7:00 A.M. “I’ve got to make a phone call.”
An alert went out on Friday for Kalair’s Cessna 421, but it gave the real registration, not the new one that Kerry had painted on. It also described the Kalair logo, now missing from the aircraft’s tail.
Larnach made a refueling stop in Weewaa and flew on to Queensland. Parker and Sonja then moved in on the boys, all of whom were sleepy or asleep. It was easy to inject two of them with Pentothal and Thiobarbital. Freddie, waking as Parker was injecting Steve in the neck, shouted, “What are you doing!” but Sonja was ready with another syringe, and Freddie went down with almost no struggle. “It’s for the best,” Parker said. “They had no future.”
Kerry was frightened when he discovered what had been done. “Y’ didn’t say you were gonna murder them,” he whined to Parker.
“Don’t be melodramatic,” Parker said. “It didn’t hurt. Anyway, we’re going to ditch them. You’ve been complaining about the weight.”
It was a calm, clear, moonlit night over the Coral Sea; the empty black water glistened peacefully as the plane descended. Kerry carefully depressurized the cabin.
“We’d better slit their stomachs first, or they’ll float,” Sonja said.
“You think of everything,” her husband replied. “But do we want them to sink? Won’t it look more like a crash if they float?”
She gave him a knowing smile. “What if they’re found quickly and a postmortem reveals they died from cardiac infarction, not trauma? We can’t rely on sharks, you know.”
“You’re right, as usual.”
By now the aircraft was flying at two hundred meters. Parker went forward to ask Kerry when he could open the door.
“Another three minutes. Here—take the Avgas and pour it out. And that other stuff—the life jackets and clothes.”
Parker returned to the aircraft door, checked his watch, then turned the handle to open it. They were so low, he could see the bright, puckered surface of the sea rushing below them, glowing red, green, and white from the aircraft’s navigation lights.
“Here goes,” he said to Sonja. “Give me the knife.”
He made a fast, deep incision below Steve’s breastbone, then shoved him through the open door. The air rushing past made the body rise for a moment before snatching it away into the dark. “Next,” he said. Phil went. Then Freddie. “Avgas,” he ordered. He had to cling to the doorway as he sloshed it out onto the rushing black air. “Life jackets!” She handed them to him and he flung them through the door. “Mailbags.” They took some effort to push out.
“That’s that,” Sonja said.
Parker edged back from the doorway. “Want to look?” he asked. She peered forward and down into the dark and took a small step, one hand grasping the doorway. The plane began to circle again. Sonja tried to grab the other side of the door with her free hand, but her foot slipped on spilled Avgas as she moved. Suddenly both feet slipped and she lost her balance completely. As the aircraft turned more sharply, her legs flew from under her, out the doorway into the rushing air. Both shoes were ripped off. “John!” she yelled in panic. He reacted so quickly that she did not realize what was happening until she felt the explosion of his fist in her face. His other hand chopped at her fingers. The next moment, she was spread-eagled above the glistening sea. She twisted, trying to fly back to the plane, but it was rising and she was falling, and all the events of her life were rushing in pictures through her mind—terrible pictures, for everything she had done to others was now happening to her. “You murderer!” she screamed. Curses shot like sparks around her head.
From the cockpit came the sound of Kerry shouting, “Mayday! Mayday!”
The Cessna rose to five hundred meters. Parker ducked his head as he entered the cockpit, where he lowered himself into the copilot’s chair. “We’ll enjoy Thailand,” he said.
After a while, Kerry asked, “Where’s Sonja?”
“She’s lying down.” Parker yawned and massaged his knuckles; a delicious sense of relaxation spread through his limbs. He luxuriated in daydreams of the future: an outbreak of White Eye, not in a monkey house, as Otto Grossmann had planned, but in a city. Hong Kong, with all its air-conditioned buildings, would be ideal. Thousands would die in the first twenty-four hours—but somebody had to make a sacrifice. Meanwhile, all over the world, pictures of the effects of White Eye would be appearing on television screens. He would go to Grossmann and say, “You must act! If this is traced to Siam we’ll be executed. Act! Say we have a vaccine.”
The Chinese government—any government—would grab at a vaccine, waiving bodytext medical safety controls. Every other government would be urged to follow suit. Grossmann, of course, would not know that now only Vaccine II existed. But when the mass vaccinations were under way, Parker would tell him, “You must speak publicly again. You must cite the experience with chimpanzees and warn that vaccination may cause sterility.” Sterility? The world was stampeding in panic, demanding vaccination. Nine months later, labor rooms from Helsinki to Hobart would be silent. The reign of the monster would have come to an end.
Parker stretched and gave another yawn.
Joe Miller had had to abandon his trip to Sydney because of the security crisis on Good Friday. In the afternoon, he rang Weasel’s flat and left a message on her answering machine. When she had not returned his call by Saturday night, he grew impatient. He telephoned her twice on Sunday, but it was not until 6:00 A.M. on Easter Monday, when she did not arrive at work, that alarm bells rang. At midday her body was found, and that afternoon, with a team of thirty Homicide people on the case, Deborah Smith identified Sila Somchai as the man Parker had met in the zoo. His knife was found to be the same size as the knife that had killed Weasel. The attorney general, who had been keeping Senator Olfson informed of legal developments, summoned her to Canberra.
That evening, Hilary Olfson put out a terse but dignified press release announcing her resignation as minister for science, technology, and the environment. She was looking forward, she said, to spending more time in her garden and helping the unemployed. During the media conference on Monday night, a reporter questioned her about her younger sister, Sonja, whose body, along with other wreckage from an aircraft, had been found by Taiwanese fishermen in the Coral Sea. Did the senator believe that her sister was involved in the deaths of Dr. Carolyn Williams and Jason Nichols? the reporter asked. Hilary’s principal private secretary said, “Don’t answer that, boss.” She motioned to him to be quiet. “My sister always expected the worst of life,” Hilary said. “And she was an unhappy person. From my observation, unhappy people are often cru—” The senator lifted a large white hand to cover her twitching mouth. Her body shook uncontrollably as she stood and hurried from the room.
In Thailand, the chief executive of Siam Enterprises, Otto Grossmann, announced an inquiry into apparent wrongdoing by Siam staff employed at its primate breeding station north of Bangkok. He promised that if company investigators discovered that primates had been shipped without observing the CITES regulations governing endangered species, those responsible would be handed over to the police. Meanwhile, Siam was donating four million baht to a reforestation program in the northwest, an area damaged by logging. An Italian journalist stationed in Bangkok asked Grossmann about the death of his chauffeur: Was it true th
e chauffeur had murdered an Australian policewoman in Sydney? And that he had assassinated the wildlife photographer Raoul Sabea? The chief executive of Siam replied in Italian, “Tiziano, you’ve lived here a long time. How can you ask such irresponsible, crazy questions? I don’t understand a mind like yours.”
In Australia, it remained unclear how Somchai had been shot. Ballistics experts found the spent cartridge from the bullet that killed him and reported that it did not come from Diana Pembridge’s rifle, which had not been fired recently anyway. A detective complained to his inspector, “Getting info out of people in the bush is like throwing eggs at a wall.” The investigation team decided to accept, in theory, that someone on the airplane had shot the Thai, perhaps while aiming at Michael Romanus.
For two days following their meeting, Diana and Michael were never alone. At first they were with Research security guards, then it was Kalunga police, then Homicide detectives. Back in Fig Tree Gully Road, Diana’s house was a turmoil of bird-watchers and visitors wanting to find out what had happened. Romanus needed medical treatment for his wounds. He was ordered to rest for twenty-four hours, which he did, in the Kalunga Motel. All that time Diana was in his mind, sometimes above, sometimes just below the surface of his thoughts. Sometimes he laughed aloud at the Spaniard’s cunning: Raoul had never let on that La Loca was the blonde in a black dress whose photograph he kept most prominently beside the bed.
Diana, meanwhile, had to entertain the bird-watchers. Grace had run the tour by herself on Friday, but on Saturday Diana had to do her share. By nightfall she was so tired she dragged herself into bed. On Monday morning, the bird-watchers departed, and Michael left his motel room and came to the house. His neck and hands were patched with adhesive bandages. Grace watched him as he strolled around the gallery, and noticed the way Diana’s blood came and went in her cheeks as she looked at him. The colors around her body throbbed and flowed, rose-red, rose-pink, violet around her shoulders, orange around her head, and around her hands a bright, clear green.
“I must shower the eagle,” she said abruptly, hoping he would ask to see it. When he did not try to follow her, she asked, “Would you like to … ?”
In the aviary, he stood looking around, impressed. Diana had gloved up and strapped the belt and cantilever around her waist. She carried the eagle out of the mews. “Do you want to give her something to eat?” she asked. She removed the hood. As soon as the eagle saw Michael, she crouched like a snake, her eyes bitter. “She’s tame,” Diana said. He gave a skeptical laugh, and as if to prove he was right, the bird reared her wings open and jumped toward him.
“I think I’ll wait outside,” he said.
When Diana came out, her hair sparkling with droplets from the hose, he put his hands on the ti tree on either side of her head. Up close, she felt frightened of him. He appeared almost monstrous, with the bar of black brows across his forehead, the mane of thick hair. She turned her face away, thinking of Raoul, who had opened her up, then tossed her away. Michael bent and kissed her neck.
“I really came to say goodbye for now,” he murmured. “I’ve hired a car, and I’m driving to Queensland. I’ll ring you from up north. I need to see my family.”
That evening, after she had brought the eagle back from the flying ground, Diana sat in the study, staring at the colored spines of books above her desk. There were scores of volumes on birds, and several on falconry. The words of a troubador song lilted through her head. She searched for the book in which she had read it, whispering lines she remembered: “‘Alas for me, who loved a falcon well. So well I loved him, I was nearly dead. Ever at my low call, he bent his head and ate of mine; not much, but all that fell. Now he has fled, how high I cannot tell.…’” She began to cry—for Raoul, and for the man Raoul had sent her. She searched on but couldn’t find the book.
Next morning, her mother arrived. “You need a break,” she said. “I’ll look after the animals and help Grace with the gallery. You take yourself off somewhere. Go to Byron Bay or Queensland. The weather’s lovely up there at this time of year.”
“No!” Diana said. “I’ve got to rehabilitate the wedgetail.”
“You’re more important than a wretched eagle.” Her mother frowned and went down to the vegetable garden to talk to Grace. She was gone for a long time. When she returned, she did not refer again to Diana’s need for a break. Instead, she hired a man to clean all the windows, while she took everything out of the kitchen and washed the shelves with scouring powder. At the end of a fortnight, she had turned the house upside down and was digging up the garden. Diana made weak protests, which her mother brushed aside with a calm smile. Under this domestic onslaught, life, Diana realized, was being worked back into an ordinary rhythm.
In the mornings, she took the eagle to the flying ground and after an hour’s exercise left her there, tethered on a twenty-meter crance. It was good for the bird to be back in her territory, spending hours in observation, becoming reaccustomed to open space. In the evenings, Diana returned and they worked again. Sometimes there was an empty container of tea or sugar near the fence, but no other sign from Morrie.
After a week Michael rang her from Brisbane. At the sound of his voice, her pulse raced. “Good drive?” she asked.
“Not bad. How’re things?”
“Fine.” There were a thousand interesting things she had been saving to share with him, but they all flew out of her head.
He said he planned to stay three months in Queensland, getting together the photographs for a book on nature parks in Thailand and spending time with his mother. “How about you?”
“I’ll be here,” she said. “I’m always here.”
“You never migrate? You’re not like a tern?”
“Not me. I stay put.”
“Ah,” he commented. “I’ll ring you again, soon.”
Every day, when she returned from the flying ground, she ran up the stairs to her study, to listen to the answering machine. After a week she stopped running. Her mother returned to her house at Noosa, leaving behind a pantry full of preserves and a linen cupboard full of new towels and sheets. The day she left, she took Diana’s hands, her cool gaze searching her daughter’s face. “Sometimes we just must forget,” she said. “I had to. But you were so young when it happened. It was such a shock. One minute he was taking you everywhere with him, teaching you to shoot foxes and ducks, and ride the motorbike, and mark the lambs. And next minute he was—”
“Blown in two by a shotgun,” Diana said evenly.
Her mother’s calm, mild eyes turned to the direction of the lake. Diana had been twelve when her father was found lying in trampled bulrushes, with the headless body of Louise Williams nearby. I should have sold up and taken her to live in Europe, Joan Pembridge rebuked herself. But she had stayed on, running the property herself until Diana was old enough to leave school and work on the farm full time. It was a mistake, she thought, as she looked at her daughter, so smooth and polished on the outside, yet so vulnerable.
The eagle was sleeker now, with a shallow crop, her breastbone almost outlined beneath her plumage. Diana weighed each gram of food the bird ate, thinning her down to hunting weight. Every morning, the eagle cast a neat package of feathers and fur, always at 6:00 A.M., twelve hours after her evening meal, and having cast was keen for food and exercise again. Now when Diana went to the flying ground she dressed in a leather jacket to protect her back from a strike, and took with her a rabbit-skin lure to which she tied small pieces of meat. She stood the eagle on a fence post, clipped on the hundred-meter creance, and sprinted away, swinging the lure above her head. As the whoomp! whoomp! whoomp! of wings came up behind, she zigzagged and jinked. The wings beat so strongly, their tips almost brushed the ground.
After ten days the bird was flying with such power, Diana could not run fast enough to make chasing the lure worthwhile. The bird was striking on one out of five attempts, which was excellent, for in the wild a hunting eagle missed nine out of ten animal
s it tried to kill. Rehabilitation had passed the halfway mark.
Her weeks were busy but lonely, for day by day her hope of speaking to Michael faded, turning first to disappointment, then to resignation. When a month had passed, by which time she was ready to start training the eagle in vertical flight, she told herself she had been right to reject him. Yet his memory became a background noise, which she could ignore but not eliminate. She drove back and forth to the flying ground holding angry conversations with him.
When he did phone, her attempt at coolness was shattered by his voice. She clung to the receiver, her heart bumping. His mother had been in hospital. “You step out of life in those places,” he said. They spoke for a few minutes about this and that, when suddenly he added, “I’ve been thinking about you all the time. I’ll be there next week.” Diana felt her body shimmer and shine.
By the time he arrived, which was not one but three weeks later, because he was detained by the death of his mother, the wedgetail was capable of powerful vertical flight. Diana could stand on the stepladder and hold out her hand, and the eagle would beat straight up with great lashing strokes of her wings. At first she could do this only once or twice in a session, but after a fortnight she could make repeated vertical flights with ease. Her whole body was now hard with muscle, and she was looking like a wild eagle again. Diana had to be careful that she did not let the bird become too hungry. There was no word in English for yarak, the hunting frenzy of falcons, and Diana did not know if an eagle could go into yarak; but she sensed a lustful violence as the wedgetail went for food. It was time for “entering.”
On the day before Michael was due to arrive, Diana went rabbit catching with Tom and Billy on the camping ground by the lake. The boys netted four rabbits in half an hour. Even Grace was impressed.
Michael arrived just after midday. To Diana he seemed relaxed but introspective. He had brought his tripod and a brace of cameras. “Thought I’d shoot some transparencies,” he said. After lunch he helped her stow the rabbits and four buckets in the van, and they set out. She was so excited at seeing him again, she could barely talk. “Was your mother … ?” She did not know what she was trying to ask.
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