Angels of Vengeance: The Disappearance Novel 3

by John Birmingham

  Those who’d washed up here on the Sunshine Coast tended to be the wealthier, luckier ones. There was nothing like the big American ghettos of western Sydney or New Town anywhere near this strip of Queensland coastal heaven. Shah had even told her that the odious St John siblings, Phoebe and Jason, had bought themselves a family compound up in the nearby Glasshouse Mountains. She hadn’t seen those wankers since they’d left the Aussie Rules in Sydney and very much hoped that wouldn’t change while she was in town to visit the Rhino.

  The park ranger had already gone back to pointing out a koala high in a gum tree to twenty or thirty squealing primary school children, so she didn’t bother thanking him for the directions. Jules craned her head back but couldn’t make out the animal within the clutter of the subtropical rainforest canopy. She didn’t think koalas lived in rainforests, even the dry subtropical kind, but there were plenty of gum trees salted in among the screw pine and raintree and bracken fern.

  She took a swig from a water bottle and resumed the trek up the headland. ‘Not a bad day for it,’ she said to herself.

  The coastline curved away in a series of scalloped bays, most of them home to easily surfed point breaks. Those closer to the seaside village of Noosa were crowded with holiday-makers. The further up the trail she climbed, through thick forests of beach lily and passion vine, the more challenging the surf conditions down below seemed to become, thinning out the crowds. Julianne was glad of the shade from the forest, even though the humidity beneath the canopy seemed much worse than it had back on the beach. After five minutes of climbing, her tee-shirt was stained with dark sweat patches, and she had finished most of her bottle of water.

  Joggers ran past her in both directions, drenched with perspiration. Neither the heat nor the climb seemed to bother the surfers, at least those heading out for a ride. They ran nearly as quickly as the joggers.

  Jules was in no rush. As far as she knew there was only one track in and out, so she wouldn’t miss him. She did her best to enjoy the walk. An easterly breeze pushed tentatively into the fringes of the forest, dappling the path with sunlight as the foliage hissed and swayed. Breaks in the vegetation afforded a view to the north, where the coast curved gently around to form what seemed to be a massive open bay. The main tourist beach was crowded with thousands of bathers playing in the gentle surf break. A couple of yachts and some smaller cabin cruisers, one of them hers, rode at anchor further out.

  She found him standing on a sunny platform watching the surf crashing into the base of the rocky headland hundreds of feet below. There was no mistaking Rhino A. Ross. Even after a couple of months of enforced rest, and wrapped in bandages, he looked like a powerful if wounded pachyderm. Leaned up against a safety rail entwined with orchids and guinea flowers, his chin resting on his hands, he presented a lonesome, melancholy aspect.

  ‘Hello, Rhino,’ she said.

  He stood and turned and the woebegone air that had hung around him was banished by smile and a roar.

  ‘Miss Jules!’

  He wore an eye patch – always would now – and you could tell that half of one bandaged hand was missing, but it didn’t stop him wrapping her in a fierce hug and clapping her on the back with strength enough to wind her.

  ‘How are you, Rhino? I called in at Shah’s villa looking for you, but the guy at the front desk said you’d gone for your morning walk.’

  ‘Same time every morning,’ he said. ‘The best way to get your health back is just to get out of bed every morning and chase it. Although I’m not as fleet on the hoof as I used to be.’

  One of his knees was still wrapped in a compression dressing.

  ‘And was that your fine vessel I saw at anchor in the bay this morning, Miss Jules?’

  ‘No, it’s Shah’s. I’m taking it down to Sydney for him. As a favour, you know.’

  The Rhino smiled. During the last month or two, the favours had been a one-way street. The old Gurkha had looked after both of them very well.

  ‘Come sit yourself down in the shade, Miss Julianne,’ he offered. ‘Be a shame to ruin that peaches-and-cream complexion of yours.’

  The Rhino retrieved a dark wooden walking stick from where he’d leaned it up against the fence, waving her off when she tried to lend him a hand.

  ‘Prefer to haul my own fat ass around, if you don’t mind, Miss Jules. No offence. Bad habit for a Rhino to get into, letting others do the heavy lifting for him.’

  ‘Of course,’ she replied, taking a seat on a bench shaded by a small stand of mock olive trees, wrapped in a dark creeper heavy with electric orange flowers.

  The water below them was an opalescent green, fading to a deep blue further out. She wondered how many hours a day he spent up here gazing off towards the horizon. America was out there somewhere beyond the edge of the world, what was left of it anyway.

  He lowered himself carefully onto the perch. Jules winced involuntarily, imagining the discomfort of his burns and all that fresh scar tissue.

  ‘Did you see the news this morning?’ she asked. ‘Henry made the news. The real news, I mean, not just the blogs.’

  ‘Don’t have much time for the news these days,’ he said. ‘Just the weather and the fishing reports, and I can get those by sticking my head out the window or hobbling down to the coffee shop.’

  She took a piece of folded newsprint from the pocket of her shorts. It was damp and frayed, but still legible. Both of his hands were bandaged, and one of them was missing three fingers. Jules unfolded the clipping and held it out for him to read.

  ‘Presidential confidant Cesky to face consecutive life terms,’ he quoted from the headline. A smile formed at the edge of his mouth, but died there. ‘That’s good news, I suppose,’ he said. ‘If they convict him. If I had my way, though, he’d a-been thrown to the sharks. Worthless motherfucker.’

  He read the rest of the report while she held the piece of paper as steadily as she could in the breeze. She was done with crying. She’d emptied herself of tears back in Darwin.

  ‘Still no sign of his daughter, then? Little Sofia,’ he said quietly after finishing the story.

  Julianne didn’t reply. Miguel’s daughter had disappeared soon after his murder. The police and the FBI had listed her as a missing person, but she doubted they were doing much to find her. America was full of missing people.

  ‘Do you think Cesky got her?’ Jules asked.

  ‘I hope not,’ the Rhino said. ‘For Miguel’s sake, I would hope not. That poor family, they were good people. They deserved none of it.’

  ‘This life,’ sighed Jules. ‘Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.’

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Surfers, joggers and bush walkers passed by them in both directions.

  ‘Good of Shah to let you have his place down here,’ she said after a while, for want of anything better to fill the space between them.

  ‘Another good man,’ said the Rhino.

  ‘You think you’ll go back to Darwin when you’re better? Shah says there’s a job for you anytime you want.’

  The Rhino leaned forward and rested his chin on the handle of his walking stick. ‘Yeah, I know. Piloting an armed cruiser for him off Bougainville. The big copper mine up there has had some problems with pirates and gun-runners. It wouldn’t be a million miles away from the work I used to do for the Coast Guard.’

  She closed her eyes and let the sun play over her face. ‘You wouldn’t be working for yourself though, would you, Rhino?’ she asked, reading his mind. ‘Wasn’t that always the plan?’

  ‘That’s the thing about plans, Miss Jules. They almost never survive contact with the enemy.’ He plucked a flower and sniffed it before tossing the bright orange bloom into the undergrowth behind them. ‘And what about you?’ he asked. ‘I don’t see you working as a delivery girl in the long term.’

  She opened her eyes again and smiled. ‘No, neither do I. I had thought I might try my luck back in the States, you know, after they got hold of me to test
ify against Cesky. Bloody video link put paid to that idea, didn’t it.’

  The Rhino nodded. He’d given his initial deposition from a hospital bed in Darwin. Like her, he’d been raped by Cesky’s lawyers.

  ‘Come on,’ he grunted, pushing himself up off the bench, ‘walk back with me. We’ll have an early lunch.’

  They started back down the trail. Jules was forced to fall in behind him every time they passed somebody heading up towards the headland.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘What now for Lady Julianne Balwyn? Back to the ancestral estate, perhaps? I hear the new feudalism is all the rage in old England. Or is it the cruel sea for you again, m’lady? High adventure? Fortune and glory?’

  She laughed. Not loudly and not for long, but she did laugh.

  ‘No, Rhino,’ she said. ‘An early lunch is what now for Lady Julianne. And maybe a nap in the afternoon.’

  ONE YEAR LATER

  The inauguration was a simple ceremony, at Kipper’s insistence. He knew Jed had wanted something a little grander, something more significant, as a way of reassuring people that not everything was lost. And there were times when Kip almost gave in to it, but in the end he went with his gut. That the country was best served by a return to basics. After being sworn in for a second time, President James Kipper gave a brief speech in the drawing room at Dearborn House, before hosting a reception for two hundred guests, all of whom he had personally chosen.

  There were no invites for any of his supporters from ‘the Machine’, as Jed used to call the political movement that had evolved out of the resistance to Jackson Blackstone – a strictly ironic turn of phrase. Jed Culver had not thought much of the Machine. Even though it had delivered two presidential elections.

  His supporters were all hitting it hard at a warehouse party on the other side of Seattle. He’d send a video message later, but he made it clear that as a working parent he wouldn’t be turning up to tie one on. Instead he circulated among the guests at Dearborn with a beer in hand, and an ear for their stories. From the veterans of New York. Militia men and women from the frontier forts. Workers from the railway projects and power plants. Teachers. Farmers. Two hundred Americans, young and old, whose lives, every day of them, were devoted to rebuilding the Republic. His only real concession to politics in this – and something that Jed would have approved of – was making sure that at least half of the guests came from Texas, including the new Governor, an altogether easier-to-deal with retired general by the name of Murphy. Newly returned from a short stint in Vancouver.

  Well, the Texas delegates weren’t his only concession to politics, he had to admit. There were three guests at the reception whose presence was purely political; a statement from James Kipper that he stood by the legacy of his Chief of Staff.

  ‘Thank you, Kip,’ said a quiet and restrained Marilyn Culver. ‘Jed would’ve loved this.’ She gestured around the room with her champagne glass. She’d hardly touched a drop in over an hour.

  ‘No, Marilyn, he wouldn’t,’ replied Kipper. He too scanned the roomful of ordinary people, none of them donors or players or significant for any reason beyond their humble contribution to the life of the nation. ‘He would have wanted to know what these assholes could possibly do for us.’

  He finished by leaning towards her and speaking quietly in a passable imitation of Culver’s Louisiana drawl. A few people, standing close by, trying not to be obvious about eavesdropping, turned towards him. But people, especially in Seattle, were well used to the President’s informal manners. Marilyn squeezed his forearm in thanks.

  ‘It’s still nice for the kids to be here,’ she said. ‘They had a very hard time of it after their father died. Some of the things people were saying about him. The most terrible lies, Kip. You know how kids can be, how they take these things to heart.’

  Kipper fixed Culver’s widow with his sternest, most presidential look.

  ‘Marilyn,’ he told her, ‘you are to pay no heed to any of that bullshit. Jed had enemies because he sought them out. He was a guy who knew right from wrong and he wasn’t afraid to act on that knowledge. A guy like that, he gets people offside. But he does it for the right reasons. A lot of the things Jed did for this country, people will never know about. You and the kids will never know either. That’s just the way it has to be. But what people can know is that I thought Jed Culver was a good man, and he did the right thing.’

  He had to hug Marilyn then, because she teared up and all but fell into his arms.

  ‘Oh God, Kip. I miss the Jedi Master,’ she said, her voice muffled by tears and the lapel of his suit where she’d buried her face.

  Kipper caught his wife’s eye across the drawing room. Barb sent him an unspoken query, asking if he was all right. Did he need her to come and rescue him? The President of the United States shook his head and patted down Marilyn Culver’s hair.

  ‘It’s okay, buddy,’ he said. ‘You let it all out.’

  He had to fend off his protocol chief with a fierce glare at one point, but most people were cool enough to give them some space, even in a very crowded reception room. These were all good people, thought Kip. Real people. The country could do no better than to entrust its future to them.

  He felt ashamed about having to lie to them about what had happened in Texas, and the role his main fixer had played down there. But as he stood comforting Jed’s wife, and he thought of how badly things could’ve gone, James Kipper reconciled himself to the necessity of doing wrong for the greater good.

  Jed Culver would have been proud of him.

  TWO YEARS LATER

  ‘This is the first and final boarding call for all passengers travelling on Japan Airlines flight 16, Sydney to Tokyo, code shared with our One World partners British Airways and Qantas.’

  ‘At last,’ said Sofia as she gathered up her magazine and water bottle from the coffee table in the Qantas lounge, stuffing them into the small backpack she would take with her on the plane.

  ‘What, you’re that keen to be shot of us, are you, mate?’

  ‘Oh, piss off,’ she replied, but without malice. She had grown used to the Australian sense of humour. ‘You just can’t wait to get rid of me so you can get down the pub early.’

  Her Echelon mentor repaid the quick comeback with a smile. ‘You know me too well, Mariela,’ he said, using her cover name. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you down to the gate. Reckon you’ve been just about my worst student ever. Wouldn’t surprise me if you got lost between here and the plane. Fuck knows what’s gonna happen when you get to Tokyo.’

  ‘Ha. I’ll be unpacking truly epic amounts of awesome and win, that’s what. Probably so much that they’ll just give me my black belt as soon as I turn up at the dojo.’

  ‘More like they’re gonna hand your arse to you on a sushi platter,’ he said.

  ‘They’re gonna try,’ she laughed. ‘Caitlin told me all about it.’

  Nick Pappas, Echelon’s station chief in Sydney, nodded at that. ‘You’d do well to listen to her advice, Sofia.’

  They walked out of the club lounge and joined the flow of foot traffic through Sydney’s international terminal towards the departure gate. Neither of them spoke again for a minute. After eighteen months of training at Echelon’s remote Snowy Mountains campus, Sofia Pieraro was entirely comfortable with the exchange of secrets that could be loaded into an unspoken conversation. She was also more familiar with the woman who had saved her from certain capture and execution in Texas. The woman she had possibly saved when she stormed into Blackstone’s residence, intending to die if it meant a chance to settle the blood debt he owed her.

  Caitlin Monroe had been generous about that. Sofia knew her now as both a friend and, somewhat problematically, as an Echelon legend. Almost a figure of mythology. Her own controllers, her trainers and even Pappas – her last mentor and probably her first overwatch controller when she returned from Japan and began to earn her place in the organisation – they ha
d all scoffed at the idea that she’d rescued the infamous Caitlin Monroe. ‘Just got in her fucking way, more likely,’ as Nick had put it. ‘Probably stopped her killing everyone five minutes earlier.’

  Sofia had bristled at first. She was a proud if profoundly damaged young woman when they spirited her away from America, disappeared her as effectively as the Wave had taken hundreds of millions of souls five years earlier. She had done something as a mere girl that the mighty Echelon had dispatched and nearly lost its champion to achieve. She had laid a hard vengeance upon Jackson Blackstone for his crimes in Texas and New York.

  Although, at the time, she hadn’t given a shit about anything but the blood on his hands from the murder of her family and, she’d presumed, her father. Nick Pappas had set her straight on that. She knew it was a purely calculated move by Echelon, assigning him to mentor her through reception and early training. He had witnessed the death of the man who actually had taken Papa’s life, and who had put poor Maive Aronson into a coma, where she still lay.

  Sofia had needed many months to get past the idea that Blackstone had nothing to do with her father’s murder, that it had been this Cesky creature whom Papa had beaten down for causing trouble with Miss Julianne, all those years before in Acapulco. She still remembered very fondly the kind and pretty English lady from the yacht on which they’d all escaped la colapso. For a long time she had wanted to grow up to be just like her. And she still marvelled at the idea that Miss Julianne had killed this Parmenter, shot him and kicked him to death right in front of Pappas, before bringing down the man who had sent him and an unknown number of other assassins out into the world to exact his own petty revenge on those he thought had slighted him.

  The idea that a friend of Papa’s, indeed the original saviour of the Pieraro clan, had exacted their revenge for her finally reconciled Sofia to letting go.