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.
‘
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 testify 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.’
