marking the place in some legal tome. Resting on the vital precedent, perhaps.’
‘Before the night’s done,’ said Drew, ‘my sensitive fingers may well have tested a vital precedent or two. Although I hasten to add that I don’t set out with ambitions of precedent-testing. Not at all. More an exchange of pleadings.’
‘Close encounter of the fourth kind?’
‘Indeed. With what I gather is called a babe.’
‘The word is banned. Recent third encounter, would that be?’
‘In Georges yesterday. Stunning creature in black. We fell to talking about the coincidence of both ordering portions of smoked eel.’
‘Goes beyond coincidence. Weird. Four first choices and you both go for the eel. I’d be frightened. Want to come to the footy tomorrow?’
He sighed. ‘Going on with this madness, are you? How can I go to the footy when I don’t give a shit who wins? I don’t have that love-to-see-a-great-game, don’t-care-who-wins mentality. That’s all absolute bullshit.’
‘Come.’
Pause. ‘Christ, I don’t know, I may not have got out of bed by then. Could be in a love knot. Where?’
‘Waverley.’
‘Settles the matter. Another time perhaps.’
‘Sure?’
‘Waverley? That’s love. You go to Waverley because you love your team. Out there, in the wind and the rain, two sides you don’t give a continental shit about? I give you an unequivocal sure, Your Honour.’
‘So. Live a pointless life. Enjoy it. She’s probably a hooker. Lots of hookers do lunch at Georges. Saw you coming. Is she tanned? Don’t take her on a shopping trip.’
Instant of hesitation. ‘You shit. Poison any well, wouldn’t you? How’s your personal life?’
‘If a champion of justice changes his mind,’ I said, ‘the convoy leaves the Prince around 12.15.’
‘Properly speaking,’ said Drew, ‘one old Studebaker Lark full of geriatrics isn’t a convoy.’
‘Fleet of memories.’
Comfort food, I needed comfort food. Eggs. I had eggs. Farm eggs, home-delivered in the heart of the inner city. The little old lady down the street sold me half a dozen a week, complete with authentic-looking substances stuck to the shells. She got them from her granddaughter, who was battling on a small farm on the way to the snow. That was the story. I liked it, paid six months in advance and she left them in my mailbox every Thursday.
An omelette, a simple cheese omelette, made with Parmesan melted in a little white wine. If I had any Parmesan left. Yes, rock hard and sweaty but otherwise in reasonable condition. Would that that could be said of me.
The phone rang. Simone Bendsten.
‘Some progress,’ she said.
‘I might step around.’
Now she was dressed for business: cream high-necked blouse, black linen trousers. I sat in the same chair.
‘Drink?’ She pointed at an open bottle of red wine on the kitchen counter. I nodded, watched her go. Even in low heels, she had an unusual leg-torso ratio for a small person.
She came back with two long-stemmed glasses, gave me one, fetched a big wirebound notebook, sat down opposite me.
‘Carlos Siebold,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I turned up a Carlos. There’s an outfit in Washington called the Richard Nixon Institute for Truth in Government.’
‘Very droll.’
‘Yes. Joke name but they’re serious. Monitor the US Congress, the Washington bureaucracy. Huge database, most of it stuff on the public record, some definitely not. Some from really obscure sources. Carlos Siebold comes up in the hearings of the US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the International Narcotics Trade in 1989. A witness says he was with a Filipino called Fidel Ricarte, he calls him a President Marcos crony, and he says, I quote: “Fidel said the money should go through Carlos Siebold in Luxembourg because the President trusts him.’’’
It crossed my mind, not for the first time, that the pursuit of Gary Connors was getting completely out of hand. ‘What money is he talking about?’ I said.
‘Marcos’s cut of profits from drugs being exported through Manila International Airport and Clark Air Base. The US air base.’
‘Right.’ Out of hand was putting it mildly.
‘A Carlos Siebold also shows up in the London Sunday Times database,’ she said. ‘In a story on the arms trade written in 1990. The writers say a Tamil Tiger agent said under interrogation…’
‘They were interrogating him?’ I said. ‘Tie him to the footrail in some Fleet Street pub. Flog him with sodden bar towels. Is that ethical for journos?’
She allowed me a smile. Somewhere between a polite smile and an amused smile. Self-contained person, Ms Bendsten. ‘They don’t say who was doing the dirty work. Only that the man said he negotiated with a Carlos Siebold in a hotel in Zurich to buy Russian-made weapons. The writers spoke to the office of a Carlos Siebold in Hamburg. An associate said Mr Siebold was a commercial lawyer with no links to arms dealings of any kind.’
‘That’s it?’
‘For now. Plenty of other places to look. Then I did Major-General Ibell.’ She looked at her notes. ‘US Marine, active service in Vietnam, served on the staff of General Edwin F. Black, head of the US military in Thailand. Later on the staffs of the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Military career seems to end in the mid- 1970s. I found a Nixon Institute reference to him as president of a company called Secure International with offices in Washington, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Manila, Teheran and Sydney.’
‘And the other bloke?’
‘Winter, Charles deForest. One reference so far. Story on the CIA in the Washington Post in 1986. He’s listed as one of about twelve high-ranking CIA officers purged in 1978 by the Carter government’s new head of the CIA, Admiral Stansfield Turner. Winter’s described as a covert operations specialist involved in CIA operations in the Philippines and Iran.’
None of this could possibly connect with Gary Connors.
‘Want me to go on?’ Simone said. ‘It hasn’t cost much so far.’
I didn’t really but I couldn’t bring myself to say so. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘See what you can do. And can you look for any reference to something called Black Tide. Australian reference.’
She wrote it down. We made some small talk, I said my thanks and went home down the dark streets, party sounds here and there, rain like mist around the streetlights, oilslick rainbows on the tarmac.
I made my omelette, ate it in front of the television, went to bed with my duelling book. As I drifted off, I was thinking that what I really wanted to do was write out a cheque for $60,000 payable to Des, bugger Gary and Dean and everyone else.
End of matter.
25
The youth club were looking more cheerful than I’d seen them at any time since the Fitzroy Football Club went tropical. After a small scuffle, Norm O’Neill won the front passenger seat. Argument about the day’s racing at Caulfield resumed.
‘Blind some people,’ said Wilbur Ong from the back. ‘Can’t see the elephant till it farts. Clarrie Kendall is Croft’s brother-in-law. This horse of Croft’s turns up in three of the last four Kendall’s got nags in. What’s his job? His bloody job’s to see Kendall’s ponies get a run. And you keep backin the thing. Just a bloody donor, that’s what you
