Dragons at the Party. Jon Cleary
their sins of the year, rushed out and thrust Christmas boxes on the jury of dustmen. Of later years advertising men, TV celebrities and even successful used-car salesmen had moved into the suburb: the tone may have been reduced but not the wealth or the status. It was still North Shore, safe and secure.’
In the big living-room across the hall from the library one of the house’s six television sets was turned on; four of Norval’s staff were in there. Hickbed looked at the blank screens of the two sets in this room, then he looked back at the Prime Minister, the puppet who was now trying to jerk his own strings.
‘If it hadn’t been for me you’d still be in that awful bloody studio hosting your awful bloody TV show and going in five mornings a week to listen to dumb bloody housewives on talkback.’
‘I was making a million bucks a year. It bought all this –’ he gestured around him; he needed his possessions to identify himself ‘– and a lot else besides.’
‘When you retired from all that, who would remember you? Yesterday’s TV stars are like Olympic swimmers – nobody can remember them when they’ve dried off. You always wanted to be remembered, Phil – you love being loved by your public. You’ll be remembered as the most popular PM ever. That is, unless you stuff up this Timori business.’
‘You still haven’t told me what you’ve got there in Palucca.’ Norval looked genuinely stubborn and determined, something he had always had to pose at on camera.
Hickbed put his glasses back on: he was getting a new view of his puppet. He liked Norval as a man, as did everyone who met him: the TV star and the politician had always been more than just professionally popular. He had, however, never had any illusions about the PM’s political intelligence and, indeed, held it in contempt. It struck him now that Norval might have learned a thing or two since he had been in office.
‘I’ve got a twenty per cent interest in the oil leases off the north-east coast.’
‘Who has the eighty per cent?’
‘Who do you think? The company’s registered in Panama, with stand-in names for me and the Timoris. I’ve talked to them about it and there’s five per cent for you.’
Norval wanted to be honest, to be pure and uncorrupted; but he had been asking questions all his professional life. ‘How much is that worth?’
‘Several million a year, if we put the Timoris back in Bunda. Bugger-all right now, since the generals have confiscated everything. I’ve got nearly sixty million tied up there one way or another, the oil leases, construction, various other things. I’ll be buggered if I’m going to lose all that without a fight.’
‘How did you get in so deep?’
‘Who do you think’s been staking the Timoris since the Yank firms were warned to pull out by Washington? Delvina came to me – what could I say? You know what she’s like.’
‘Don’t we all,’ said a woman’s voice.
Hickbed turned as Norval’s wife came in the door. ‘Hello, Anita. Just got in?’
‘I’ve been visiting Jill and the grandchildren.’
There was no love lost, indeed none had ever been found, between Anita Norval and Russell Hickbed. When she had met Norval she had had her own radio programme on the ABC, the government-financed network, and when she had married him there were those on the ABC who thought she had married beneath her. She had truly loved him in those days, as had millions of other women; the other women might still be in love with him, she didn’t know or care, but she knew the state of her own heart. There had been a time when she had thought she could rescue him from the trap of his own self-image; then Russell Hickbed had come along, taken the image and enlarged it till even she was trapped in it. She would never forgive Hickbed for making her the Prime Minister’s wife.
‘Nobody would ever take you for a grandmother. Neither of you.’
‘Thanks,’ said Norval drily.
He had stood up beside Anita; she knew they made a good-looking pair. He handsome and blond, she beautiful and dark, both of them slim, both of them expensively and elegantly dressed even on this warm holiday night: the image now, she thought, had become a round-the-clock thing. They had a daughter who had married early and a son who worked in a merchant bank in London: both of them had escaped the image and refused to be any part of it.
‘What’s happening with the Timoris?’ she said.
Norval chose a problem that had not yet been discussed this evening. ‘We have to find them somewhere else to stay. We’re supposed to move into Kirribilli House on Monday.’
‘You should never have put them there in the first place.’ She didn’t want to crawl into a bed where Delvina Timori had slept; she had, unwittingly at the time, done that years ago.
‘It was all that was available. Everything else is full – hotels, apartments, houses. They would land on us when Sydney’s never been more chock-a-block.’
‘Why can’t we move them in here?’ said Hickbed.
‘No!’ Anita almost shouted.
‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, Russ,’ said Norval, not wanting another problem, closer to home.
Anita recovered, said sweetly, ‘What about your place, Russell? You’d have room for them in that barn of yours.’
‘A good idea!’ Norval was almost too quick to support her.
Hickbed shook his head. ‘What about security? It’d be too risky.’
That could be fixed,’ said Norval. ‘I’ll get the Federals to double their detail. It’s the solution, Russ, I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before –’
‘It’s no solution. It’ll just be a bloody great headache.’
Then Dave Lucas, one of the PM’s political advisers, short and lugubrious-faced, a basset hound of a man, came to the door.
‘There’s just been a news-flash on TV. The Dutchman’s put out an announcement that it was that guy Seville who tried to murder Timori.’
‘Shit!’ said Hickbed, who didn’t speak French.
‘Not on my carpet,’ said Anita Norval and left the room, all at once glad that everything was going wrong.
4
It took Miguel Seville some time to reach Dallas Pinjarri. The Aborigine, it seemed, moved around as much as the Argentinian: militant radicals were the new nomads. But at last he had Pinjarri on the phone, though the latter sounded suspicious and unwelcoming. ‘Who’s this?’
Seville knew better than to identify himself: none knew better than he that yesterday’s ally was often today’s betrayer. ‘A friend in Libya gave me your name.’
‘What friend?’
Seville named a man in the Gaddafi camp, the contact who had sent him to Australia two years ago.
‘You still haven’t said who you are.’
‘My name is Gideon, I’m from Switzerland.’
‘Swiss? That’s a new one. I always thought you jokers just went in for watches and cheese and fucking law and order.’
‘Some of us have other ideas. Can we meet?’
There was silence at the other end of the line; Seville guessed a hand had been put over the mouthpiece. Then: ‘Okay. You know the Entertainment Centre? No? Well, get a taxi, the driver will take you there. Eight o’clock. Wait in the lobby in front of Door Three. What do you look like?’
Seville described himself, having to close his eyes in the stuffy phone-box while he tried to remember his