‘Ah,’ said the Ranger, bowing formally again. ‘You are to be investigating this bandit fool Morales, yes? We have heard about you. Temple is very small town. Smaller even than my home in Poland. No. I will not speak of it. You will mispronounce name if I try to tell you. It translates roughly as “Little hamlet of hovels at the foot of the big hill, smelling of sulphur, where it rained all the time and nobody had enough to eat”.’
‘So, you must feel at home here then, Master Sergeant.’
Milosz grinned appreciatively. ‘An air force colonel with wit! This is exceptional improvement to fortunes of Milosz. Do you read, madam Colonel? I have explored ruins of local library. There are many well-preserved books for to be found there. So few of my comrades here read or wish to discuss ideas if ideas prove unrelated to strange football games with body armour or the salvaging of old cars for purpose of racing in circles.’
Caitlin put up her hands. ‘Master Sergeant, take a breath. I am indeed a reader. When I get the opportunity. But, I’m afraid, on this trip all of my reading will be for work.’
She took a step to signal her intention to keep moving.
‘I wonder though, Master Sergeant,’ she said, ‘whether you’ve ever tried your luck over in Killeen or Fort Hood? There’s a lot more people over there. I’m sure they could find both pulled pork and a good book.’
A shadow darkened the Ranger’s face. ‘I am afraid Milosz is not welcome in the kingdom of Blackstone,’ he replied. ‘At first I thought his stupid TDF troopers were prejudiced against Poles because of our superior intellect and handsome looks and winning ways with the ladies. But then I realise pretend soldiers of TDF simply prejudiced against everyone. So like everyone, I stay away from Fort Hood.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Master Sergeant,’ she told him, aware that she’d better head back and change for the meeting with McCutcheon. ‘Tell you what, though, I have a meeting with Mr Blackstone’s aide later this evening. You can rest assured that I’ll see to it you can move freely around Fort Hood.’
The diminutive senior non-com appeared to stand a foot taller as he smiled. It was an almost cartoonish grin that lifted Caitlin’s spirits for no reason she could identify. ‘That would be most excellent, madam Colonel,’ he said. ‘I shall continue my walk and hope to see you again.’
They bade each other goodbye without military formality and Caitlin resumed her journey back to the hotel. She was intrigued by Milosz’s mention of the two smugglers in New York … Could they be connected to the pair of clowns she’d encountered when looking for Baumer’s command post on the upper eastside? Or was it even those two themselves - the shifty Sloane Ranger and her idiot Viking sidekick, that slob with the busted-ass novelty cowhorn helmet. Jesus what a fucking pair of retards.
She made a mental note to contact Vancouver to request an encrypted burst of Master Sergeant Milosz’s service record. If she had even an indirect connection to him via those looters, she’d need to be careful about maintaining her cover here.
The refurbished lobby of the Kyle Hotel was alive with activity, for Temple, on a wet weekend afternoon. Ten or more people were enjoying a drink in the bar that Musso told her they’d built from salvage collected around the city. It was a comfortable but eclectic space, unsurprisingly, with no theme to tie the disparate elements together. Was it a sports bar, a ladies’ reading lounge, a Victorian-era gentlemen’s club or a military mess? Depending on where you looked, it could’ve been any of those things. It worked as a social space, however. Food, drink, company. All you had to do was ask.
Caitlin drew a few looks as she hurried through the lobby. A new face always would in an environment like this. She took the elevator to her room on the fourth floor and ran a hot shower. She’d read McCutcheon’s profile in the briefing package back in KC: air force major; forty-two years old; unmarried at the time of the Wave; no children; working on secondment as Blackstone’s aide at Fort Lewis; resigned his commission the same day as the general and followed him down to Texas, where he ran Mad Jack’s successful campaign for governor in ‘05. A fixer, in the style of Jed Culver, if she wasn’t mistaken.
And a pants man.
Would’ve been easier if he was gay, she thought, as she stepped under the hot water. It felt scalding on those parts of her body that had been exposed out in the cold air. Her fingers, her face and neck. After a few seconds she grew used to it, appreciating the way the heat worked out some of the cramps she’d picked up on the flight down here.
After towelling off, she debated what to wear to the meeting, eventually going with casual drill pants, a black tee-shirt and her leather jacket. After all, it was just a getting-to-know you drink on a slow Sunday afternoon. She didn’t want McCutcheon thinking that Colonel Murdoch had gone to any special effort for him.
At 1800 hours sharp - Katherine Murdoch was nothing if not punctual - she stepped out of the elevator into the lobby and made her way to the bar. She saw Musso straightaway, sitting with an athletic-looking middle-aged man, who seemed a couple of years older than forty-two because of his iron-grey hair. Major Tyrone McCutcheon.
The two men stood as she approached, while being observed by everybody in the bar. The crowd seem to have swelled to two or three times the number she’d noted earlier.
‘Colonel Katherine Murdoch,’ said Tusk Musso, ‘I’d like you to meet Governor Blackstone’s senior aide, Ty McCutcheon … Mr McCutcheon, Colonel Murdoch has joined us from Dearborn House to have a look at the situation with Roberto. I’m hoping you’ll be able to work well together.’
‘So am I,’ replied McCutcheon, smiling.
She took his hand.
‘That depends on whether or not you’re going to try to shake me down with all the chickenshit security theatre you’ve been using to make everyone’s life a fucking misery around here,’ she spat, before sitting herself down and signalling to the waitress that she was ready for a drink.
She was only the person moving or making any noise in the room.
35
DARWIN, NORTHERN TERRITORY
Shah’s men were good. Julianne slept through the night, and when she awoke - well after dawn, to judge by the brightness of the morning light streaming in around the edges of the curtains - she realised with a slight start that they’d been in her room. In just a few hours, her fusty, crushed, stinking clothes seemed to have been quietly spirited out of her small backpack, laundered and returned, crisp, dry and folded. A small selection of other items of clothing, all of them more suited to summer in the tropics than her rags, hung from the door handle or lay draped across the back of the room’s only chair.
She put aside her surprise, however, and any natural disquiet. Birendra was supervising them, after all, and these men had gathered around her in a protective shield at the behest of Narayan Shah. At any rate, her concern was marginal. After years of shipboard life, she had a high tolerance for people messing around in her personal space. Sometimes it was necessary. No point in being precious.
Jules swung her feet out of bed and padded over to the windows to edge the curtain open a few inches, just enough to brighten the room so she could move around without tripping. While she was mixing and matching outfits from the pieces scattered around, she noticed a couple of significant accessories. A mobile phone and a handgun. The phone was a Nokia, one of the new models with a large colour screen and internet access. Sitting next to it on the dressing table was a SIG Sauer pistol, with three spare clips of ammunition. The shotgun that Granger had given her was gone. Fair enough, she thought. Darwin was a frontier town, entirely feral in parts, but she doubted the local wallopers would stand for her walking around with a sawn-off elephant gun.
In the bathroom also, she found evidence of unusual thoughtfulness on the part of Shah’s men. Or perhaps the beautiful Ashmi had been in their ears. The cheap no-name toiletries supplied by the motel had been replaced by body gel, shampoo and conditioner from Crabtree & Evelyn. Jules nearly swooned.
She towe
lled off her damp hair after a long shower, turning her mind to the practicalities of having burnt her fall-back ID, the increasingly compromised Julia Black. She had just over a thousand dollars in cash, which wouldn’t last long in Darwin. On the other hand, she had three credit cards in the name of Ms Black. Three cards she could no longer use, because they’d automatically give away her location to any interested parties. Shah would undoubtedly support her, but she’d need to be able to look after herself.
The answer, at least a temporary one, slipped under the door as she was getting dressed. A large white envelope, with her name inked on the front. Jules finished buttoning up the sky-blue linen shirt she’d thrown on over a pair of khaki shorts, before retrieving the envelope.
Inside she found two thousand dollars Australian in ‘pineapples’ - the bright yellow, plastic fifty quid notes they used down here. There was also a note from Nick Pappas and a printout of a Microsoft Where 2 map downloaded from the web. The map showed her the route to a waterfront cafe where she should meet Pappas in half an hour.
She fitted a holster for the pistol to the thick, soft brown leather belt Shah had supplied. The gun sat comfortably in the small of her back, covered by the long tail of the shirt. She found the placement awkward, having carried her weapons openly for the last few years. But then, for the last few years, she had mostly been travelling well beyond the edge of the civilised world.
She finished lacing up a pair of sturdy comfortable walking boots, divided the cash into three lots, adding some to the thousand dollars in her wallet and securing the rest in two pockets she could zip closed. Her complexion had tanned to a deep caramel over the years of shipboard exposure, but she took the time to apply a layer of moisturiser with a high UV rating anyway. In her opinion, Australian women had old rhino hide for skin, and Julianne did not intend to emulate them for want of five minutes’ basic skin care.
That thought led naturally to worrying about the Rhino, and wondering how she might be able to contact him. Those two rozzers up at Bagot Road obviously hadn’t come through with anything for Piers Downing. Reminding herself to ask Pappas, Jules left the room.
Her bodyguards were nowhere to be seen outside. The note from the former SAS man told her they would be around, but she couldn’t see them at all.
*
She joined Pappas at his table, tucked into a back corner of a dining room that enjoyed views over the ocean. The Sirocco Cafe, according to the Australian, was a real-world example of how the power structure of this city had been wrenched free of its moorings by the Wave. Change had come quickly. And it had run deep.
‘The army used to own all this land,’ he said, waving his fork back in the direction of the long, low-lying headland along which she had just walked.
It was not yet nine o’clock, but already the heat was stifling. Jules was frosted with drying sweat as she fanned herself with the menu and leaned back to allow chilled air to spill over her from the air-conditioning vent directly above their table. Bi-fold doors retracted to open the Sirocco up to a vista that stretched from the million-dollar yachts anchored in Cullen Bay around to the open waters outside Darwin Harbour. The water translated from the striking, almost opalescent green of the shallows close in-shore, to a deep cerulean blue a few hundred metres out.
‘I spent a lot of time here at the end of the ‘90s,’ he added. ‘At the barracks down at the start of Allen Avenue.’
‘The old brick buildings I walked through, the shops.’
He grinned as he carved up a thick rasher of bacon. ‘Yeah, the frock shops and wine bars and little trinket places. Pretty, weren’t they?’
They were indeed very pretty, and looked hideously expensive with it. Not that the Sirocco was a greasy spoon, with its dark, bentwood chairs, fresh white linen and a minimalist fit-out that suggested an architect had been paid a lot of money to do nothing. However, the patrons and trophy wives sunning themselves and enjoying breakfast out on the terrace, while looking well fed and content, didn’t seem to be in the same league as the new money she’d seen flaunting itself down on Allen Avenue. Even so, many of them were probably the well-insulated, well-off types who never let the cares of the world affect them.
‘This whole headland used to be mostly open ground,’ said Pappas, his big, rugby player’s frame expanding as two arms stretched out to provide some idea of the size of the area being discussed. ‘It was the barracks, some pretty dreary housing, and a lot of brown grass keeping the dust down.’
That didn’t describe the neighbourhood she had just walked through. It looked to have been extruded, fully formed, within the last twenty-four hours, from the wet dreams of a property developer with an Ayn Rand fetish. Condo complexes, pucka low-rise residential villages, stand-alone mansions of steel and glass, implying astronomical power bills to keep them cool, satellite dishes, in-ground pools and long tidy avenues shaded by old-growth trees. The sort of trees you could transplant, but only at massive expense.
‘Seems a short time for such a complete makeover, though, right?’ asked Jules. ‘New money, I suppose?’
‘Like you would not believe. Hundreds of billions of dollars poured in here, looking for a safe haven. It was like a tsunami, a blast wave. It swept everything away. There’s an army base about thirty clicks outside the city, replaced the barracks here. There are two infantry divisions out there, one armoured regiment, and a Marine Expeditionary Unit that the Yanks kicked in to give the Combined Fleet an amphibious assault capability. And, of course, because they couldn’t afford to run an MEU themselves anymore, the Pacific Alliance now picks up the tab. Anyway, all of the infrastructure, all of the materiel, every bloody cubic metre of concrete, every nail, everything - it was all paid for by the development authority.’
‘Just like the Old Bill’s nick yesterday,’ Jules ventured, nodding slowly. ‘All on account with the FPDA.’
‘Too right. Except we call ‘em brown-shirts here,’ he added with a grin. ‘And all just so they could get the military out of the city and the developers onto the headland. That’s how much money they have, and that’s how much power it brings.’
He began forking his bacon onto a piece of toast, which he dunked in the yoke of a fried egg. ‘Still,’ he said with a shrug, ‘I suppose it makes sense. If anybody ever decided to lob a couple of cruise missiles at that base, at least our cafes and resort-style executive residences would be spared.’
She had the distinct impression that Nick Pappas did not approve. She scooped up the last of her yoghurt and muesli, and washed it down with a sip of English breakfast tea. They were alone in their darkened corner of the Sirocco. The whole terrace was well shaded and comparatively cool, despite lying beyond the chilled air curtain protecting the interior of the cafe. Most of the other customers preferred to take their leisure out there, and Pappas seemed to know the proprietor well enough that he and his guest enjoyed an exclusion zone around their table. He had taken a seat in the corner, affording him both a clear tactical overview of the room and an exit through the door to the kitchen, just a few feet away.
‘So what now?’ Jules asked.
‘A couple of things. For you, unfortunately, a nervous few days, or hours, or who knows, maybe even minutes, while we wait for these pricks to have another go at you.’
‘Hmm. I can’t honestly say that the sit-around-and-wait-to-get-slotted plan is filling me with confidence, Nick.’
Pappas finished his breakfast and began patting down his pockets as though looking for something, before stopping, frustrated. ‘Bugger,’ he muttered. ‘I keep forgetting I’m supposed to be giving up the smokes … No, look Julianne, it doesn’t really appeal to me either, so I think we need to get on the front foot. Shah’s given me a pretty good backgrounder on this bloke Cesky, and your past with him. But what would really help is sitting down with you now and working our way through everything you know. Not just about him, which I’m assuming isn’t much more than I already know. But also about everybody you had on that yac
ht who you reckon he might have it in for. If this bloke is working through a revenge fantasy, it’d help me to know who he’s likely to hit, and where I might find them. Or what’s left of them.’
Jules adjusted her chair so that she wasn’t looking directly into the fierce glint of the sun coming off the water. ‘Do you have a pen and paper?’ she asked.
He produced a notepad and a small digital recorder and over half an hour she told him everything she could remember about the week they had spent in Acapulco at the end of March ‘03.
Cesky hadn’t even figured that much in her calculations at the time. He’d wanted to get his wife and four daughters to Seattle, she recalled. Some crap about big business opportunities there, with that shimmering death-haze on its doorstep. Proved himself to be an instant pain in the arse - well, a bigger one than most of the passengers she eventually took on, which was saying something - and Miguel Pieraro had done her a solid favour by beating him down when he did. She knew Cesky was hanging around the Fairmont on the day when Shah came in to evacuate the paying passengers, and Miguel’s extended family. She smiled fondly at that - extended family, he couldn’t have extended the numbers much further - although she’d been furious at the time. Apart from that moment, neither Shah nor the Mexican had had to deal directly with him. Miguel had given old Henry a pretty good scare, not to mention a public humiliation. The vindictive little prick had then blasted out text messages all over the city saying that anybody who needed to be evacuated could rely on Julianne Balwyn to get them out on her boat. Thousands turned up.
Being honest about it, Jules could see why Cesky would imagine he owed them some payback. Any normal person would feel the same, especially if they’d been abandoned in a dangerous shithole teetering on the edge of collapse. But normal people wouldn’t take it any further than that.
And normal people, she had to admit, probably wouldn’t have got themselves and their families out of Acapulco. They’d have died there. Cesky had shown himself to have the balls to cope with being kicked off her boat, and to leverage himself and his family onto another one. A pity it sunk and one of his kids drowned. Perhaps if that hadn’t happened, she wouldn’t be sitting here talking to Pappas. Perhaps he could’ve just let it go and been content to have escaped.
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