Dragons at the Party (22 page)

“What does Paturi want? Does he want us to hand over Timori?”

“I don’t think so. The last thing they want is any sort of political trial—they might have to shoot Timori. They wouldn’t want to do that in public. No, Paturi wants us to say we’ll freeze all the Timori holdings here in Australia and return them to Palucca.”

“
That could take years!”

“Maybe. Even if it does, it’s the appearance of things. The generals would be seen to be
doing
things, they won’t lose face. Neither shall we.” Losing face had never worried Kissing, he had become used to it. It was bums on seats, on a chair in the Cabinet room or here in the Prime Minister’s residence, that counted.

They were in Norval’s study in The Lodge. It was not a large room, not as big as his study in his own home back in Sydney. It had been decorated by Anita Norval in what one critic from a women’s magazine had described as Network Moderne or Commercial TV Chic. The Lodge, it seemed, was continually being redecorated as each new tenant moved in; the taxpayers, it was said, only voted to re-elect an incumbent to save some of their own money. The study was in bright colours, the studio for an up-market TV host. The paintings on the wall were modern but not abstract, the carpet and the drapes were of best merino wool, the desk and chairs and table of the best native timber. There was only a small bookshelf, but Anita knew camouflage could be taken too far.

“Timori will never forgive me if I see Paturi.”

“Does that matter? Nobody ever looks for forgiveness in foreign affairs—I’ve never met a foreign minister who could even spell absolution. Except maybe the Vatican’s and he’d keep his fingers crossed while he gave it to you.”

“What do I tell Paturi then?” He was lost without his advisers. He had come down to Canberra only for a couple of hours and had told them there was no need for them to accompany him. He had been attracted to politics by the theatrics of it; he was still ill at ease with the problems. He had no burning beliefs; his conservatism was simple-minded. His minders acted as his conscience, which meant it was best that they had none of their own. “He’s sure to want a quick answer.”

“Agree to whatever he asks—that is, unless he asks for Timori. Much as I’d like to, I don’t think we can hand him back. But the six or seven hundred million that’s rumoured to be here—”

“We can’t hand that back! We’ll have the pensioners and the education gang and the bloody social workers on our back—”

“
They’re all supposed to be small
l
liberals—they’re not supposed to be on Timori’s side. In any case, we don’t physically hand it back.” He wondered who took care of Norval’s finances; it must be Anita or a good agent. “We just persuade him to leave the holdings here, but we change them into the name of the new government. Or their nominees.”

“Who’ll they be?”

“Him and his mates, possibly. We don’t know yet how honest they all are.”

Norval sighed; the demands of office were sometimes too much. “Okay, I’ll see him. But you stay with me, just in case.”

“Just in case what?” But Kissing smiled, went to the door and told the secretary on duty to phone General Paturi and tell him the Prime Minister would see him.

General Paturi arrived ten minutes later; he must have been poised on one foot waiting for the call. He had had the good sense to wear mufti; his embassy had told him that Australians, especially politicians, were always uncomfortable in the presence of uniforms. He was a small man with sleek black hair and skin much darker than his ex-President’s. He came from an up-country family that had given up head-hunting only after the turn of the century when his grandfather had come back from a Dutch-paid trip to Europe and reported that heads had no value in the outside world and were not considered trophies unless they wore a crown. In his own language Paturi talked a blue streak, most of it in blue words, but he was hesitant and circumspect in English.

“Mr. Prime Minister, you do me an honour. You too, Mr. Kissing.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, General.” Norval had spent all his adult life practising social lies. But he decided to be blunt: “What can we do for you?”

Paturi was a career military man, but he was accustomed to circumlocution: it had gone with the climate in Palucca. He blinked, then decided to be blunt in return: “It would please us if you kicked out our ex-President.”

“We’re trying to find somewhere for him to retire to. But as you understand, it isn’t easy. You wouldn’t take him back?” He smiled to show he was joking.

Paturi
was not used to joking in serious matters; he looked affronted. “Never! Our people would never have him back—”

“Of course not,” said Kissing, feeling a little diplomacy was needed.

“It is a pity the assassination attempt wasn’t successful.” Paturi was not going to waste any more time in diplomacy or niceties.

“That’s pretty brutal, isn’t it?” said Norval. After all, Abdul Timori was supposed to be a friend.

“I’m a military man, Mr. Prime Minister.” Perhaps he should have worn his uniform with the double row of ribbons, all won without honours but not dishonourably. “Brutal solutions are sometimes the best.”

“That sounds like a military solution.”

“It is.” If he hadn’t fought a war, he at least knew what a gun was for.

“Do you know who might be trying to have him assassinated?” said Kissing.

“Yes,” said Paturi. “Himself.”

“Himself?” Norval almost fell out of his chair; even Kissing was shocked at such a suggestion. But then neither of them understood the Asian mind. “Timori
himself
?”

“He’s a cunning man, Prime Minister, as cunning as a serpent. He could have arranged it so that it looked as if he was the one to be killed. Instead poor Mr. Masutir got the bullet.”

“Got the bullet. A pretty drastic way of being fired.” Norval looked at Kissing and smiled; he could never resist a joke, in poor taste or otherwise. Kissing did not smile back.

“What would it achieve, General?” he said.

“Sympathy.”

“Not here, General. Most Australians are sorry the assassin missed.”

Paturi raised his eyebrows. He had been told most Australians were good sports, whatever that meant. “Back in Palucca there would be sympathy in some quarters. I have to confess, not everyone was glad to see him leave. There are many ignorant people in our country who believed everything he and Madame Timori told them. We have to educate them,” he said and made it sound like a gigantic task.

Kissing
knew what he meant: even the voters here needed educating. “If what you say is true, maybe you should talk to him, come to a compromise.”

Paturi shook his head emphatically. “We could never trust him, Mr. Kissing. Nor that woman—” The disgust in his voice was like a dry retch. “She is the one we’d never have back. She is worse than he is. She is a foreigner, too.”

The two foreigners nodded. Norval said, “So what do you want?”

“All their assets in this country frozen. I am here to talk with lawyers. Once we have established what is held, we shall claim it. Then we shall sell all of it to you.”

“Us?”

“The Australian government. We shall sell you all the holdings, whatever they are, and you will give us the money. I have read in the newspapers that there may be seven hundred million dollars’ worth held here. It is not much to a wealthy country like Australia. Petty cash, I think you call it.”

“General Paturi,” said Norval, “this isn’t some quiz show.”

“Excuse me, Prime Minister?”

“What the Prime Minister means,” said Kissing, who wished Norval would forget what he had once been, “is that this isn’t some sort of prize money we can hand out. The government can’t buy the Timori holdings—for one thing, we don’t believe in the government owning anything. We can possibly freeze the assets, I don’t know the drill on that, but we could never
buy
them. You’ll have to find your own buyers.”

“It would be much simpler—” Life in a democracy was complicated: he did not look forward to the future back home.

“Of course it would,” said Norval, who saw the opportunity for another joke, but resisted it; to Kissing’s relief. “But that’s not the way we work here. Leave it with us, General. I’ll get our Attorney-General or whoever to look at it.” He stood up, put out his hand. “I’m sorry. I have my plane waiting to take me back to Sydney in half an hour.”

General Paturi was not used to being dismissed so abruptly, but he swallowed his resentment.
“
I, too, am going back to Sydney. Perhaps—?”

Norval was deliberately slow; but Kissing was quick as a fox: “Of course! The Prime Minister will be glad to give you a lift. It will give you the opportunity to get to know each other better for the future.”

“Will you be coming, Mr. Kissing?”

“Alas, no. A pity. The celebrations, you know—I have to go back to my electorate, not fifty miles from here.” He grinned at Norval, having stabbed him in the back. “You should get an electorate closer to Canberra, Phil.”

Norval, not normally a vicious man, gave him a look that would have severed his head from his body had looks been steel.

“I understand there is a Bicentennial Ball this evening,” said General Paturi on their way out of the study. “I have been invited.”

“Who by?” Norval missed his step in surprise.

“I have never met the gentleman. The invitation came to the embassy by telephone. From the Premier of New South Wales, Mr. Vanderberg.”

Behind them Kissing had a sudden fit of diplomatic coughing.

6

I

SEVILLE PULLED
the blue Honda Accord into the kerb in the quiet suburban street. He had arrived here almost like something caught on a wayward breeze; he only knew he was in the municipality of Randwick because a council street sign told him so. He did not know he was only half a dozen blocks from the street where Malone lived, but he would not have been surprised if someone had told him so. Accidents of geography no longer amazed him, coincidence was part of the pattern of life.

When he had driven out of the city parking station he had known he would have to dump the stolen Honda as soon as possible. Though he had immediately headed north towards the Harbour Bridge, he had soon turned east and driven through the central business district of the city. Before long he had picked up what seemed to be a main stream of traffic. It had taken him through some inner city streets, where the houses were crowded together without front yards and the doors of some stood wide open like dark mouths gasping for breath in the hot morning. Then he was driving down a wide tree-lined avenue past what looked like a huge sports complex. A cricket Test was taking place there, but it meant nothing to him.

The Sydney Cricket Ground was no mecca for him; no cricket ground anywhere in the world tempted him. His father, the Englishman twice removed by birth from England (the family name had been Saville till his mother, the Argentinian, had changed it after his father’s death), had done his best to teach his only son a love of the game; as a boy he had been taken each weekend by his father to the Hurlingham club and made to watch while his father played, usually badly. All he could remember from those hated weekends was the ignominy of watching his father fail week after week (“Jolly hard luck, old chap, better luck next week”) and the once confided secret regret by his father that he had never scored a
century.
The old man was dead now, buried in the mausoleum in Recoletta, remembered for his decency, his love of things English and his disappointment that his son, the natural athlete, had never wanted to take advantage of his prowess. For his father’s sake he had played the game at St. George’s School in Buenos Aires, always scoring well but never a century; twice he had been within sight of the hundred runs and twice he had got himself out deliberately. He had never attempted to analyse, because he had not wanted to know, whether he had committed cricket suicide to spite his father or out of respect for him. His father had tried so hard to be as English as possible, but there had been the
machismo
streak in him and he might have felt more hurt than pride if his son had achieved something that he had longed for and to which he had never got even close.

Seville drove on past the Cricket Ground, passed a racecourse on his right and climbed a ridge to a shopping centre. There, at some traffic lights, he turned left and went looking for a quiet street where he could leave the car. But first he had to look for a house with a
For Sale
sign on it. He found such a house, had driven past it a couple of times, then driven on another mile or so to abandon the car.

He got out of the Honda and locked it. Then, carrying his brief-case he walked back to the vacant house. He made sure no one was watching him; there was no one in the front gardens of the surrounding houses. They were all solid one-storey dwellings with orange-red tiled roofs, built in the 1920s: unpretentious, boasting nothing of their owners’ ambitions, if indeed they had any. Music was blaring from a radio in the house immediately opposite, but the houses on either side of the house for sale had their windows closed and their blinds drawn.

He opened the front gate, walked across the narrow neglected lawn and round to the back of the house. He opened the brief-case; it was a small portable tool-shed. He had refined the case over the years, eliminating some equipment, adding other items. He took out a small leather wallet and in thirty seconds had opened the back door and was stepping into a back veranda that had been glassed in and converted into a room.

He went further inside and found the bathroom. He clicked on the light switch, but there was no electricity. The bathroom was dimly lit by sunlight through the narrow frosted window, but he would
have
to put up with that. He relieved himself, feeling both mental and physical relief as the fluid ran out of him. He was surprised and upset at how tense he had become.

Then he got to work. He propped up his remaining passport, the mark of his last emergency identity, and compared the photograph in it with the face that looked back at him from the dusty mirror over the bathroom sink. He had to change from the blond Michel Gideon to the dark-haired Martin Dijon, a French national born in Belfort. He took out the hair dye and the rubber gloves.