Julianne changed motel rooms after the interview at the police station, a precaution, and an easy one. She was travelling light. She arrived outside Shah’s house in The Palms as the sun was dropping low over a wide bay, in which a few dozen sailboats and larger yachts lay at anchor. The burnt orange light of sunset had already coloured the green waters to a sparkling copper sheet.
Looking up from the street at the modern pole-and-beam home, Jules couldn’t help thinking that a spectacular view awaited her on the open-plan area that defined the upper storey, where a few people were already enjoying drinks and chatting in small groups. She’d been expecting a quiet family dinner, with perhaps Birendra or even Downing in attendance. But it seemed that a cocktail party was underway.
She guessed that the interior of the house opened up onto a vast, shaded platform enjoying clear views across an undeveloped strip of coastal scrub. From down here at street level, however, she couldn’t tell where the inside became the outside. But there was no mistaking the scar left behind on the footpath by the attempted bombing. A patch of grass, roughly six or seven feet across, had been charred down to burnt red earth on the verge in front of the post box. Or what had been the post box. The blast had torn huge chunks out of the sandstone plinth that served as a mailbox.
The killing heat of the afternoon no longer hammered down out of a hot, grey sky. But stepping out of her air-conditioned taxi onto the dark scab of scorched earth where Shah’s would-be assailants had fumbled their package and destroyed themselves, Jules still felt the crush of hot, moist tropical air. Her light silk shirt, the one she had borrowed from Ashmi, was sticking to her back by the time she’d walked up the driveway to the front door. Shrapnel from the explosion, stone chips and small pieces of metal, still pitted the dark wooden double doors. She was reaching for an antique iron knocker when the door opened and Shah greeted her, smiling effusively.
‘Come in, come in, Miss Julianne. The others are already here, having a drink upstairs. It is not a very large gathering, just some friends, people we can trust. And there’s somebody I want you to meet. He may be able to help.’
Unsettled for a moment – she hadn’t expected to have to socialise – Jules apologised for not bringing anything with her. ‘Oh Shah, if you’d said something, I would’ve picked up some wine.’
The host dismissed her concerns. ‘Pah! I shall not have you placing me further in your debt, Miss Julianne, when I already owe you so much,’ he said. ‘Come through, please. As I recall from our time on the golfer’s boat, you were always fond of bubble drink, and I have some very good French champagnes in my cellar downstairs. I always wanted a cellar, and now I have one. Let me send one of the girls down to fetch you something. Do I remember correctly, Pol Roger was your favourite? . . . Ah, here is my wife, Pasang. Please, say hello.’
She had been about to say that only French bubbles could be called champagne, and that yes, she shared a love of Pol Roger with Winston Churchill. But before she could throw the switch to small talk, a diminutive Nepalese woman, exquisitely dressed in European clothes – French, too, if Jules’s eye for fashion did not mislead her – appeared at Shah’s elbow bearing champagne flutes.
‘Miss Julianne Balwyn,’ she said with the tone of someone reading from a script. ‘Please excuse my English. Unlike husband, I am not longed with speaking it. But I practise and learn every day so that once I may thank you for taking him home to me and our daughters. And for the . . . the honouring of arrangements you make. You always in a special place for our family’s heart.’
Pasang passed her a drink and performed a small bow. Jules found herself strangely touched, which wasn’t like her at all. Shah had already thanked her for sticking to their original deal, as difficult as that had been after the Aussie Rules was impounded. She’d known that he and the other Gurkhas still had a long and dangerous, perhaps even impossible, trek in front of them to make it home to Nepal. After everything that had happened, making sure they got paid as agreed just seemed the decent thing to do.
So no, not at all like her.
‘Thank you,’ she replied, faltering briefly over the woman’s name, ‘. . . Pasang.’
‘Thank you, thank you. You are the Deliverer, Miss Julianne.’ The Nepali’s pretty, jewel-like eyes sparkled with delight.
Shah gave his wife a peck on the cheek before taking Jules gently by the elbow and steering her into a large reception room, with Pasang following closely behind. Dark slate tiles had soaked up the chill from a silent, invisible air-conditioning system. After the uncomfortable humidity of the street, it was blissful to walk into a space that seemed to breathe a gentle, almost wintry gift of frost onto her exposed, sunburnt skin. She sipped from her champagne, struggling with the urge to throw down the whole glass in one go.
The antechamber was quite beautiful. A few pieces of modern art hung on the white walls, offsetting a couple of artefacts that had obviously travelled all the way from their home village in Nepal. Julianne had to admire the restrained taste. She would never have thought it of someone like Shah, a rough-handed soldier, and a former non-com, not even an officer.
But with that unworthy thought came immediate embarrassment. Who was she to be judging others on their aesthetics? She had spent the last five or six years mostly unwashed and dressed in stinking rags. First as a smuggler with Pete and Fifi, then as a pirate, a glorified looter in New York, and of late as a fugitive, scurrying from one bolthole to the next. Shah was a fine man. Someone who had taken whatever talents he had been gifted and done his best with them to secure a good life for his family and, from what Jules could see at the compound, for anyone who worked for him.
‘This is a lovely home, Pasang,’ she said quietly. ‘Shah . . . um, Narayan tells me you built it yourself.’
Pasang took Jules by the arm and patted her like a child.
‘No, no. We did not build this. We paid the men to build it. You are hungry? I have made food.’
‘That would be lovely,’ Jules answered.
A brief, whispered conversation followed between the former Gurkha and his wife as the three of them passed out of the greeting hall and into what looked like an open lounge or family room. They proceeded up a brushed-glass staircase, which took them through another entrance guarded by heavy mahogany doors and into the small crowd that had gathered out on the . . . gallery? The balcony? It was hard to say. White cotton drapery hung from the ceiling, swaying in a warm breeze and seeming to define a point at which the room flowed outside.
‘I must see to the guests,’ said Pasang. ‘And to something to eat for you.’
With that, she disappeared into the crowd, halting briefly to say hello to some of the people she passed.
Jules saw Birendra, and thought she recognised one of the men he was talking to. It looked like Thapa, who had also been with them on the massive super-yacht. Birendra waved when he saw her and the other man turned around. It was indeed Thapa. Shah had brought another of her old crew-mates with him to Darwin. It gave Jules pause. She had lost so many friends over the last few years. Fifi had had quite a crush on Thapa.
‘Over here is the man I wish you to meet, Miss Julianne,’ said Shah.
He guided her towards the buffet table. There, she spotted Piers Downing, picking at a pile of sticky blackened chicken wings and talking to a thickset, middle-aged man with iron-grey hair and the build of a rugby prop whose championship days were behind him, but not too far behind.
‘Ah, my junior has arrived,’ quipped Downing.
The lawyer was looking much less buttoned down than before, having discarded his suit for a pair of cream-coloured moleskin pants and a white cotton shirt that was more poolside bar than Old Bailey. More guests arrived as Shah introduced her to Downing’s companion.
‘Miss Julianne, this is Mr Pappas.’
‘Nick Pappas,’ the man added, as he held out his hand.
Jules returned his strong grip. Years of boat work, and more recently of hauling herself and bags of
loot and weapons through some of the worst places in the world, had given her a stronger grip than many men. Nick Pappas, however, was possessed of giant bear paws, one of which could probably enfold both of her hands and crush them to bone splinters. She could feel a lot of restrained power idling at low throttle within his massive frame, but Pappas appeared to be one of those big men who had spent his life learning to be gentle.
‘Nick knows about our complications, ‘ said Shah. ‘In the past he has helped me out with similar problems. Business problems, not personal. But similar.’
Julianne thought she understood what he meant. She wondered about the people standing around out here, talking amiably, laughing and drinking Shah’s excellent wine and grazing on the food his wife and maybe his daughters had prepared. Were they all somehow connected to his business?
‘So how do you two know each other, if that’s not a little awkward?’ she asked.
Both men grinned. ‘Timor,’ they answered in unison, before Shah deferred to the Australian.
‘I was in the army, in those days,’ Pappas began.
‘SAS,’ prompted Shah.
Pappas gave him a look that said he was quite capable of doing his own bragging to the pretty girl, thank you very much. He continued. ‘We ran into each other outside a militia shithole called Los Palos. Gurkhas had long-range patrols encircling the place, as did we. The Indonesian battalion based there was raised locally. Timorese traitors. Not a good look for them once the Indons pulled out. Or for the pro-Jakarta gangs that were always hanging around like scabby dogs. We had the devil’s own job stopping them from killing every peasant within twenty miles. Still . . .’ – he dropped one meaty hand on the shoulder of his old comrade – ‘we did good. I looked up my little mate here as soon as I knew he was in Darwin. He tried to offer me a job, the cheeky bugger!’
The two ex-soldiers shared some private joke at that.
‘So you’re a security contractor, too, Nick?’ Jules asked.
‘No, not really. I do risk management now. A lot of assessment for the mining companies, the big migration agents, some work for the government along with some risk mitigation. Removing the sources of risk,’ he added, pausing to let her understand the import of the euphemism. ‘From what I hear, you could do with some help.’
Guests continued to arrive through the heavy wooden doors. A pleasant draft of chilled air wafted over her every time a newcomer entered the Shah family’s huge entertainment space. Jules estimated that maybe twenty-five or thirty people were here now, half of them locals, judging by their accents, most of the others neighbourhood people or possibly business contacts. Shah had told her that the majority of his neighbours were Chinese and Javanese exiles, and she’d already spotted more than a few of them in attendance. The Javanese made her uneasy. She had never been back to Indonesia after a crooked general had run them off a few months before the Wave.
‘It’s quite noisy up here,’ said Downing, who had been hovering at the edge of the conversation without saying anything. ‘Perhaps you could show us this wine cellar you’re so proud of, old boy? I’d be very interested to see it. I’ve had some diabolical difficulties convincing the local yokels that serving pinot noir at room temperature doesn’t mean serving it up like a goblet of hot blood.’
‘But of course,’ replied Shah. ‘You must come also, Nick. Perhaps we can teach you to drink something more than beer, now that you are a sophisticated businessman who no longer sleeps in his boots.’
‘Doubt it,’ he scoffed. ‘But do your worst.’
As instructed by their host, Jules abandoned her champagne flute there at the buffet table, which was so heavily laden with food, she had trouble finding a spot for the glass. She was hungry, starving actually, and grabbed a couple of small fishcakes before their small group made to leave. They tasted beautiful, still warm and springy, and spiced in a way she’d never come across before. Jules didn’t imagine that fishcakes featured heavily in the national cuisine of mountainous Nepal, but perhaps Pasang Shah had picked up the recipe while they’d been stationed in somewhere like Singapore.
Their home was decorated throughout with objets d’art, photographs and mementoes from all over the world. Shah seemed to have travelled even more extensively than her, although the Englishwoman was sure that if she asked, she’d find that every piece told the story of a posting with the Royal Gurkha Regiment. Even the construction of the house looked like it had been undertaken as an exercise in storing memories within architecture. They passed an internal garden she recognised as a common feature of many Arabic dwellings, while the formal dining space reminded her of tribal long rooms she had seen in Borneo. Nothing so gauche as crossed spears or shields hung from the walls here. It appeared to Julianne that the Shahs had spent a lot of time discussing the significant moments of their shared life with a very expensive architect. A life that had been spent in the service of a regiment that had dispatched them from one end of the world to the other.
Julianne had grown up around money, or in her family’s case, the memory and the carefully contrived appearance of money, and she recognised the real thing when she rubbed up against it. Shah had done very well for himself. She was happy for him.
The wine cellar was indeed a cellar, rather than merely a temperature- and atmosphere-controlled room crammed into a downstairs or underground living area as an afterthought. The four of them – Jules, the two old army pals and Shah’s lawyer, the displaced pantomime Englishman – proceeded in single file down a narrow staircase that doglegged back on itself before reaching a heavy steel door. This Shah opened by tapping a code into a wall-mounted keypad.
‘You must have some exceptionally good wine stored down here, my friend,’ Downing said.
‘I do,’ replied Shah. ‘To be truthful, I do not care for it myself. But then, I am the only man in the house, and I’m sure Miss Julianne will tell you that the ladies do enjoy a nice glass of wine.’
‘In a climate like this,’ Jules chimed in, ‘I can imagine I’d have a glass permanently in hand. Need to drink it fast, though. It would lose its chill very quickly.’
Hidden bolts clunked somewhere inside the heavy steel door before it whispered open at a touch. Soft lighting flickered on inside the cellar, dimly at first, before warming and brightening. As they trooped in, she saw immediately that Shah had built not just a wine cellar, but a safe room. Climate-controlled refrigeration units lined both main walls, with red wines marching away to the left and white wines to the right. In the centre of the room, a solid steel bench presented a formidable barrier to any intruders trying to rush into this subterranean haven, just as it offered excellent cover for people who might be sheltering here. Especially if those people armed themselves from the gun rack positioned against the rear wall. Julianne was impressed.
‘Nice set-up,’ Pappas agreed.
‘A panic room?’ asked Downing. ‘With a well-stocked bar. Commendable combination.’
‘I prefer to think of it as a stronghold,’ said Shah. ‘It has secure and dedicated communication links, separate to the lines for the rest of the house. It is defended. Although, without prior warning, it would have been of no use last week in the bomb blast.’
‘So, down to business,’ said Pappas. ‘Do you have any beer down here?’
Shah chuckled and moved down to a door at the very end of the line of fridges that held his white wine collection. ‘I have Bintang,’ he called back. ‘From one of the last shipments out of Jakarta before the insurgents burnt down the brewery. Savages. Mr Downing, Miss Jules, would you prefer beer or something more feminine?’
The lawyer smirked. ‘I had been thinking of asking for a nice bottle of Sancerre, as I know Mrs Shah is partial to a drop. But I feel I’ve been rather snookered now. So a Bintang it is. Ms Balwyn?’
‘I’d love a beer.’
Shah brought out four small brown bottles and opened them on the massive slab atop the steel structure, in the middle of the cellar space. Turned out this be
nch was not a solid chunk of metal, after all. He’d had storage and more refrigeration built into the far side. Possibly more weapons lockers too, if Julianne knew him well.
‘My apologies for all that up there,’ Shah said to her. ‘I had originally intended that we might host you to a small family dinner tonight. But after discussing the matter with Nick and Mr Downing, we thought it better to hide in plain sight.’
She wasn’t sure she followed him. The confusion must’ve shown.
‘The best place to hide a pebble is in a quarry,’ explained Shah. ‘These small parties are quite common among the exiled people here. For those who can afford them, anyway. I do not feel it myself, but many of those upstairs very much feel themselves to be in Darwin under sufferance. They worry that their sanctuary may be denied them on the whim of a politician in the south. The free-port status has brought great wealth to this country in a time when so much wealth has been destroyed. But, of course, it has brought a tide of people with it. Many of them, not the sort of people who would have easily gained entry to Australia in the past.’
Jules took a long pull from her beer, appreciating the cold bite and the lack of fizz. She’d always rated Bintang as a great hot-weather beer, especially in humid climes.
‘The boat people, the real boat people, you mean,’ she said. ‘The poor ones.’
‘Yes. Certainly not the Americans or displaced English folk like Mr Downing here. They have always been welcome. But peasants and coolies arriving in hordes, not as much.’
‘Well, I hardly think that describes many of your guests upstairs. If they’re refugees, they look like they flew here first-class hauling baggage trains of money behind them.’
Nick Pappas stepped in at that point. ‘They did, Julianne.’
‘As did I,’ Shah conceded. ‘The business migration scheme which allowed me to come here with my family was very generous. It gets even more generous, depending on the amount of business you bring with you.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Jules. ‘But why is it relevant, Shah?’
Angels of Vengeance: The Disappearance Novel 3 Page 32
