demure reserve Jules thought characteristic of many Asian societies. Shah smiled at her while she poured.
‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said as the young Nepali withdrew.
‘You are welcome, Father,’ she replied, answering a question Julianne had kept to herself.
‘It is a rough environment for a young lady, I will admit,’ said Shah, once the two of them were alone. ‘I hire the best men I can find, and I insist on civility in the workplace. But this business attracts a very particular type, and I worry sometimes about exposing my daughters to that.’
Julianne leaned forward and carefully picked up the tea. The simple pottery mug had no handle, forcing her to hold it carefully around the rim, lest she burn her fingers.
‘But you would rather have your girls close by,’ she ventured. ‘It’s nice, Shah, and understandable, especially now. My father did something similar, although his motives were less admirable.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘He often dressed me up to distract the chaps from whom he was intent on milking funds.’
Shah grinned so widely at this that his head - which had always reminded her of a giant, inverted brown pot - seemed to split right open.
‘Ah, Miss Jules, I do recall with fondness the many stories you told of your father on our voyage to Australia. Hard times they were, but very simple in some ways. Sail the boat, fight the pirates, do not die. Now …’ He waved his hands around the room, encompassing the unseen compound, and perhaps the whole city beyond it. ‘Now complications are all I have.’
Jules took a cautious sip of her drink. She didn’t much fancy green tea, given a choice, but this blend was sweeter and less smoky than usual. She would’ve preferred a pot of Taylors Scottish Breakfast Tea, with milk and sugar, but found herself taking longer drafts of Shah’s brew as it cooled down. It settled her nerves.
The space in which they sat was fiercely utilitarian, with very few flourishes of decoration. A calendar, with photographs of interesting golf courses, on the wall behind Shah; a sheathed kukri dagger in a glass-front box hanging beside it. Nothing else. Not even a few family photos.
‘How long have you been here?’ she asked. ‘In Darwin, with your business, I mean.’
‘Nearly two years now,’ Shah replied. ‘The city was perhaps half its current size when I arrived. Even then, it had grown significantly. I remember it from the Timor mission in ‘99, when it was much smaller. Many of the Americans who were caught in this region after the Disappearance found their way here. A large number remain, although more were just passing through on their way to the southern cities, and I suppose, like our friend Miguel, many have returned home now. But Darwin was growing when I arrived, Miss Jules, one of the few places that was. The granting of free-port status amplified the rush of money and people seeking haven here after the Wave. It seemed a good choice to locate my business. There was much demand for security contractors then. There still is.’
He emptied the last few drops from his cup before refilling it. The absence of a handle did not seem to bother him, Jules noted. He held the scalding-hot vessel in his thick, brown fingers with no discernible discomfort.
‘I must thank you again, Miss Julianne, for the opportunity you offered us back in Acapulco. My comrades and I did well to cross your path, and great honour accrued to you for ensuring our contract was fulfilled, even after the authorities in Sydney seized the
She waved off the compliment. ‘Daddy would have disowned me if I hadn’t learned at a very young age how to hide a few baubles and trinkets from the old Bill. Anyway, you and your chaps earned it, Mr Shah. We wouldn’t have made it to Sydney without you. Not all of us did, of course,’ she added with residual sadness.
‘To absent friends,’ he said, raising his cup.
Jules returned the toast and then set the empty cup aside. ‘So, this is your main place of business now?’ she asked. ‘It’s not an idle question. You said you’d had dealings with both Seattle and Fort Hood. Do you do much work in the US? Do you have a profile there? I’m just wondering how it was that Cesky drew a bead on you, all the way down here in Darwin.’
Shah was not a demonstrative man. An almost imperceptible downturn of the mouth, the faintest shrug - they were his only reactions.
‘I have a small office in Seattle, yes,’ he said. ‘We have contracts to provide security for some of the reclamation crews working the West Coast cities. We do recruit in the US, mostly ex-military people, especially if they are familiar with the territory in which we are operating. But as far as possible, I try to use men from the regiment. The income they remit home is important, as I said.’
‘And in Fort Hood?’
Shah gestured as though he was swatting away a fly. ‘A two-man operation. Or rather, one man and his wife, working as his secretary. I have no other personnel permanently stationed in Texas. The administration there controls access and movement very closely. Blackstone’s people are very businesslike, very easy to make a deal with in many ways. But the men I send there fly in, do the job, and fly out again. Fort Hood is open for business, but not always … welcoming. Perhaps if I hired more men from the local military population …’
‘Whitey, you mean?’
He nodded slowly. ‘So you noticed.’
‘The Rhino and I were down there for a few weeks after New York. It was like taking a little holiday in GI Joe World at Disneyland in, like, 1953.’
‘Mr Ross was with you, when you were attacked by Cesky’s men in Texas?’
Julianne’s eyes crinkled with delight. ‘God, I so rarely hear the Rhino referred to by his real name. I doubt his parents even used it.’
She noticed then that her hands were shaking - delayed shock, she assumed. Well, it wasn’t the first time something had blown up in her face.
‘Do you mind?’ she said, standing up and heading to the window. ‘I need to move around. Bit of nervous tension to burn off. And I’m very worried about him.’
‘Of course. His injuries were severe.’
She remembered this about Mr Shah. He didn’t sugar-coat things.
She paced the room for a few seconds before leaning up against the window that had been cut into the side of the insulated shipping container. Shah’s office looked down over the concrete slab where they had left the car, and afforded him a view into two of the large sheds in which some of his heavier vehicles were undergoing maintenance. The glass was cool to the touch thanks to the air-conditioning, but she could feel the fierce Darwin heat beating against it on the outside. She was up high enough to see over the rooftops of buildings in the surrounding streets. A heat haze shimmered over all of the corrugated-iron and aluminium sheeting. There was very little greenery in this older, industrial subdivision.
‘The guys who came after us at Galveston were even more hapless than those losers in New York,’ Jules continued, still taking in the vista. ‘We were on our guard, as you’d imagine. Even though we weren’t really expecting anything to happen down there. Seattle and Texas are different worlds, and Cesky is very much a Kipper man.
‘Anyway, these blaggers, ex-military both of them, fronted us in a bar. We were just playing pool, and they came in and laid down some coins, reserving the table. The Rhino got talking to them, as he does, the friendly fucking pachyderm.’ She smiled again, as if thinking well of him might speed his mending. ‘Then, after a few minutes, one of them insists on buying him a drink, on the basis that his old man had been in the Coast Guard, just like Rhino, and he makes a point of buying a round for every old salt he meets. Problem was, though, this bloke’d already had a few himself, as had his skeevy mate, and neither the Rhino nor I had ever mentioned anything about him being in the Coast Guard.’
Jules turned away from the window now, propping herself up against the sill and folding her arms to steady her hands.
‘We couldn’t get rid of them. “Farts in a telephone booth” doesn’t even begin to describe their stickiness. The bar closed, and they insisted on coming with us, their new best friends and all, for one more drink. They knew a place, naturally. We thought, fuck that for a game of tiddlywinks, and invited them back to where we were staying. It was isolated, well away from the militia’s usual patrol routes. God, Shah, it makes me sick just remembering it - we knew these cheeky fuckers were going to try it on, probably as soon as we were out of public view. But better on our ground than theirs.’
He nodded to indicate she should keep going. ‘I assume you did not give them the chance to try it on,
