The former NCO held up one, huge brown hand.
‘You are not to blame for the death of the child, Miss Julianne. I remember discussing this Cesky with Mr Pieraro after we had escaped Acapulco. He told me he faced down Cesky because he knew the man would have brought us all to grief.’
‘Yeah - Miguel,’ sighed Jules. ‘He was a good bloke … Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’ve been so fucking selfish. Cesky will have Miguel at the top of his list. Unless he’s saving him until last. Shah, I have to warn him.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘I have absolutely no idea. I know he and his family were here for a while, in Australia. They were working on one of the government farms down south. I heard he’d applied to go back to the US, as a settler. Well, not
Shah grunted and lifted his shoulders as a signal that she should move on.
‘They’ve been in the US for a few years now. Homesteaders. Running cattle, of course. I wouldn’t know how to begin looking for him. It’s not like the old days. You can’t just open a phone book. It’s more like the really old days of the bloody Wild West. He’s probably on some ranch in the middle of an awful fucking cowboy movie somewhere. Contactable only by smoke signal and pony express.’
As she began to babble, Shah patted the air in front of him, making a shushing gesture. A couple of police cars screamed past, their blue lights and sirens going.
‘I have contacts in both Seattle and Fort Hood,’ he said. ‘They are both customers, although I must admit, Governor Blackstone is the more reliable. He pays in cash, whereas in Seattle they often try to haggle concessions on salvage as payment. It is most difficult. But I do have contacts. If Mr Pieraro is registered as a settler, I am sure I can find him and you can get a message to him.’
‘Thank you, Shah,’ she said, feeling some measure of relief for the first time that day.
The traffic thickened up but flowed more swiftly as they headed out towards the airport, leaving behind the stop-start driving of the city proper. For a while there was very little sign of the great changes that had remade the face of Darwin in the few years it had been operating as a tax-free entrepot and more recently as a home port for the Combined Fleet. The suburbs were older, more settled, with less evidence of rapid redevelopment. Out near Darwin International Airport, a long stretch of the highway was bounded on the southern side by light manufacturing and wholesaling businesses. A huge pornography supermarket painted bright yellow and pink nestled in next to rival pool-pump vendors and a piping supplier. Out of her window, on the northern side, Jules could see an enormously fat military plane parked on the tarmac at the airport. Light armoured cars bounced down a rear ramp while, in the background, giant bulldozers scraped away at the red earth to build the new, third runway.
‘It’s a pity about those morons blowing themselves up at your place, Shah,’ she said. ‘Not that I’d have wanted them to succeed, of course, but it would’ve been useful to have had a chat. Three times these buggers have had a go at me and I’ve never yet been able to confirm they were Cesky’s hires. Except for one idiot in New York who gave it away before Barbie slotted him.’
‘How so?’ asked Shah as they pulled up at an intersection. Two more Land Rovers pulled in and flanked them. Shah nodded to the drivers, his drivers, and Jules tried to spot Birendra, but he didn’t appear to be in the small convoy.
‘How’d she slot him? … No, sorry. Silly question. You mean how did he give it away? The cartel guys opened up on us as we were heading to a prearranged address, where our entirely fictional client had promised there was fortune and glory awaiting us if we could retrieve some documents from a safe in his apartment. Well, not
‘Did you investigate the claim?’
Jules smiled bitterly. ‘Our investigation consisted of sneaking into New York and getting our arses shot off. Look, I’ll admit, my due diligence wasn’t the best. But it was a plausible story. Establishing exactly who owns what in America right now is a nightmare. Anyway, long story short, we were duped into a free-fire zone by this Rubin character, or his pretend lawyer at least, and there was a team waiting for us near the apartment we were supposed to clean out. Neat, really. I mean, who’s going to notice two more dead bodies in New York? They could’ve dropped anvils tied to elephants on us from the top of the bloody Chrysler Building and nobody would’ve batted an eye. But anyway. They thought they had us and one of these losers called out, “Mr Cesky sends his regards!” Would have been all over red rover if Commando Barbie hadn’t stuck her psychotic, perky little nose in at that point.’
The car grunted forward again and they turned off the main strip into a warren of dusty streets, crowded with light trucks and four-wheel drives. It was a busy part of town, if not the most salubrious locale.
‘You mention this commando named Barbie, again,’ said Shah, looking intrigued. ‘Surely Barbie had a name tag if she was a soldier? A unit patch? Did Mr Rhino not take note of his rescuer?’
Jules smiled, but she was tired and distressed and the gesture faded before reaching her eyes. ‘Again, sorry, Shah. We’ve been picking it over for months now. “Commando Barbie” is just a nickname I gave her. I have no idea who she was, but I’d bet the family silver - if my family still had any - that she was no garden-variety squaddie. She was too good for one thing, and she was operating alone, deep in the badlands. She went through our would-be executioners like a dose of salts, and for a while I thought she might very well neck us too, just for the sake of convenience. No name tags. No unit patches. Just urban-combat battle dress and enough artillery to kit out the Brigade of Gurkhas, with a few whizz-bangs left over for shits and giggles. She never gave us a name, but in the helicopter I thought I heard one bloke call her Cate, or Katie, or something like that.’
The trio of Land Rovers rolled past the Winnellie Hotel-Motel, which seemed to be enjoying full occupancy, to judge by the car park full of pick-ups and utility vehicles, and then turned right into a dogleg corner. A high steel fence, topped by razor wire protected the compound into which they drove. A pair of armed guards, both of them looking like ex-Gurkhas as well, waved them in. The men wore kukri daggers at the hip, although the submachine guns both carried impressed Jules more.
‘The ruse of sending you to New York is interesting,’ said Shah. ‘Quite an elaborate cut-out scheme. If Cesky is behind this, he will be standing well behind. He has much to lose now, being such a prominent figure. I wonder who is acting as his agent, assuming a now respectable businessman would not hold meetings in his office with potential contract killers.’
Jules shrugged. ‘Couldn’t tell you. Maybe the same guy who fronted us on behalf of Rubin. Who knows? But Cesky’s not that respectable. He’s in construction, for God’s sake. My father dealt with a few of them, said they were all crooks. The unions, the bosses, the companies - all of them. And Cesky wasn’t shy about putting muscle on the street in Seattle when Kipper led his little people’s uprising back after the Wave. He made quite a show of it, I heard. Having dealt with him just briefly, Cesky didn’t strike me as being squeamish about using the strong arm to get his way.’
The three heavy vehicles pulled into parking bays on a dirty concrete slab outside a remarkable office that had been constructed from shipping crates. Jules had heard of apartments in Europe fashioned the same way before the Disappearance, but they were high-end architectural experiments. This looked like frontier engineering. Shah’s headquarters was literally pieced together from metal shipping containers like a giant’s Lego set. He’d had doors and windows cut out; one container had been dropped on top of another, which had been joined end-on-end with a third. The old Gurkha saw her examining the unusual arrangement and smiled.
‘We took over this lot when building materials were in very short supply in Darwin,’ he explained. ‘This was cheap and very easily run up. It works well, although the air-conditioning is a heavy power drain.’
‘I can imagine,’ she replied, as they stepped out of the chilled interior of the vehicle. The oppressive, damp heat of the tropical afternoon slammed down and wrapped itself around her in a heavy shroud. The compound covered a few hundred square yards, and three newer buildings, all sheds, were of more conventional appearance. She had half expected to find a small regiment of armoured cars, even tanks in here, but instead she saw only more off-road vehicles. Land Rovers, a few anonymous sedans, and flat-bed pick-up trucks loaded with crates and strongboxes. At least half of the personnel were Nepalese, like Shah, but the rest, maybe a dozen or so that she could see, were a mix of locals and imports.
‘Come through,’ said Shah, leading her towards the sliding glass door that gave entry into the reception area of his security firm. ‘We shall have some tea, and get properly reacquainted. We have had no chance to do so yet, with the rush of the day. And then we shall set ourselves to determining whether this Cesky creature truly is behind the attempts on our lives and what we might do about it.’
