solid steel bench presented a formidable barrier to any intruders trying to rush into this subterranean haven, just as it offered excellent cover for people who might be sheltering here. Especially if those people armed themselves from the gun rack positioned against the rear wall. Julianne was impressed.
‘Nice set-up,’ Pappas agreed.
‘A panic room?’ asked Downing. ‘With a well-stocked bar. Commendable combination.’
‘I prefer to think of it as a stronghold,’ said Shah. ‘It has secure and dedicated communication links, separate to the lines for the rest of the house. It is defended. Although, without prior warning, it would have been of no use last week in the bomb blast.’
‘So, down to business,’ said Pappas. ‘Do you have any beer down here?’
Shah chuckled and moved down to a door at the very end of the line of fridges that held his white wine collection. ‘I have Bintang,’ he called back. ‘From one of the last shipments out of Jakarta before the insurgents burnt down the brewery. Savages. Mr Downing, Miss Jules, would you prefer beer or something more feminine?’
The lawyer smirked. ‘I had been thinking of asking for a nice bottle of Sancerre, as I know Mrs Shah is partial to a drop. But I feel I’ve been rather snookered now. So a Bintang it is. Ms Balwyn?’
‘I’d love a beer.’
Shah brought out four small brown bottles and opened them on the massive slab atop the steel structure, in the middle of the cellar space. Turned out this bench was not a solid chunk of metal, after all. He’d had storage and more refrigeration built into the far side. Possibly more weapons lockers too, if Julianne knew him well.
‘My apologies for all that up there,’ Shah said to her. ‘I had originally intended that we might host you to a small family dinner tonight. But after discussing the matter with Nick and Mr Downing, we thought it better to hide in plain sight.’
She wasn’t sure she followed him. The confusion must’ve shown.
‘The best place to hide a pebble is in a quarry,’ explained Shah. ‘These small parties are quite common among the exiled people here. For those who can afford them, anyway. I do not feel it myself, but many of those upstairs very much feel themselves to be in Darwin under sufferance. They worry that their sanctuary may be denied them on the whim of a politician in the south. The free-port status has brought great wealth to this country in a time when so much wealth has been destroyed. But, of course, it has brought a tide of people with it. Many of them, not the sort of people who would have easily gained entry to Australia in the past.’
Jules took a long pull from her beer, appreciating the cold bite and the lack of fizz. She’d always rated Bintang as a great hot-weather beer, especially in humid climes.
‘The boat people, the real boat people, you mean,’ she said. ‘The poor ones.’
‘Yes. Certainly not the Americans or displaced English folk like Mr Downing here. They have always been welcome. But peasants and coolies arriving in hordes, not as much.’
‘Well, I hardly think that describes many of your guests upstairs. If they’re refugees, they look like they flew here first-class hauling baggage trains of money behind them.’
Nick Pappas stepped in at that point. ‘They did, Julianne.’
‘As did I,’ Shah conceded. ‘The business migration scheme which allowed me to come here with my family was very generous. It gets even more generous, depending on the amount of business you bring with you.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Jules. ‘But why is it relevant, Shah?’
‘Oh, it’s not, I suppose. Not immediately. But it is important that you understand where you are now, Miss Julianne, and how the city works. You and I have a problem, not because of assassins and bomb-makers, no matter how clumsy they are, but because of
Downing hoisted himself up onto the brushed-metal surface of the bench. It seemed unusual, completely out of character for him, thought Jules. But he looked comfortable enough, sitting up there sipping his beer. She had a sudden vision of him as an undergraduate student in cheap digs in London, propped up on the kitchen bench, talking and drinking into the wee hours.
‘Mr Shah is right, Julianne,’ the Englishman said, using her first name for a change. ‘You need to understand that we must be careful. Very careful. This isn’t a problem that’s amenable to being tackled in the same way you’d see off a bunch of pirates. That’s why I suggested the little soiree upstairs. As Mr Shah says, they’re quite common among the emigre population. People like to gather together for support. And it makes it a little less remarkable that I should be here, or Mr Pappas. We both have clients upstairs, and of course Nick is a friend of the family.’
It was Pappas’s turn to take up the chore of explanation. He’d already downed his beer and seemed perfectly relaxed, grabbing himself another one from the fridge at the back of the room, talking as he went.
‘I’m happy to help out, Julianne. A place like Darwin, you have to look out for your mates. I still have a lot of contacts inside the Australian Government, not just the army. It helps that I do a lot of work for them still. But because I do that work, like Shah, I have to tread lightly. If you’re right, and this Cesky prick has your names on a list, that’s bad fucking news. I made a few quick calls today, after Piers brought me in on this. I couldn’t get much because of the time difference. Everyone was asleep in the US. But from what little I could gather, Cesky has burrowed himself right in under the skin of the Kipper administration. I don’t know how close he is to the President himself. But he’s a big donor, a public defender of the government, who’ll take on all comers. And, of course, he put his own blokes on the street back in ‘03, when the Yanks had their little uprising and threw out that mad fucking general who tried to take over. Cesky’s a thug, basically. But a very well connected thug.’
The champagne and beer were going to Jules’s head. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, save for the couple of fishcakes she inhaled just now. It’d been a bitch of a day, after a shitty week back in Sydney. And she was worried about the Rhino.
‘But you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know about this bastard,’ she said, speaking to all three. ‘I knew he was a thug as soon as I met him back in Acapulco. That’s why we didn’t let them on the boat. Jesus Christ, you remember that scene in the bar when we were looking for passengers, Shah, before Miguel beat him down … The guy wasn’t even on board and he was already trying to take over! And hey, I know he’s got connections. They’ve been trying to bloody kill me for months. And now they’re after you.’ She tipped the neck of her beer bottle Shah’s way before going on.
‘What I still don’t know is what we can do about it. Killing his hired help doesn’t seem to discourage him. And I don’t think we have the option of wandering into Seattle to deal with him directly. We are not at sea anymore, nor is this New York. So yeah, you’re right, I can’t just stick a shotgun up his jacksy and let him have a couple of barrels of change-your-fucking-mind-Princess. I mean, Jesus, if he’s hanging around with government types, you’d probably get popped by the Secret Service for even looking sideways at him. They’re a lot more trigger-happy than they used to be.’
Shah and his lawyer looked to Pappas for an answer. The big Aussie folded his arms, creating the impression of a human bulwark of even greater mass and solidity than the steel bench around which they were gathered.
‘First thing is, we need to lay our hands on the blokes they’re using locally. Those two no-hopers they sent around to have a crack at you, Shah, are gone. But whoever went after your mate Rhino, Julianne, will still be hanging around. The guys’ll have to go back at Rhino if he lives. But as long as he’s on that American ship, he’s probably fine. When they move him back on shore into a civilian facility, then they’ll have another go. In the meantime, they’ve got two other options - assuming they picked up the contract on you and Shah. And even if they didn’t, someone has.’
He finished his beer and placed it down in front of him.
‘Shah’s got a couple of dozen heavily armed ruffians looking after him and his family. We lay down some defence in depth around him, and getting at him will be as difficult as you trying to walk into Cesky’s office.’
All three men were now looking at her.
‘But you’re a different matter, Julianne. As far as they know, you’ve only got two friends in this town, and they’ve already taken down one of them. If we can put a little distance between you and Shah, put you out on the range, so to speak, they will come after you. And as long as you refrain from blowing their heads off, we should be able to tackle one of these cheeky fuckers and have a quiet word. Then, if we can start to trace the connection back
