Dragons at the Party. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ He’s so bloody corrupt –’

      ‘Now don’t you start being mealy-mouthed … Phil, corruption is a way of life up there. Everybody’s underpaid, so you slip ’em a bit on the side to get things done.’

      ‘How much did you slip Abdul? The Herald this morning said he’s rumoured to have three billion – three billion –’ Like all TV chat hosts, and politicians and priests, he had been taught to repeat points: one never knew if the audience was dozing. Though he had never known Russell Hickbed to be anything but wide awake. ‘All that salted away in Switzerland or somewhere. That’s quite a bit to have made on the side. More than you or I ever made.’

      ‘Unless we get him back to Palucca we’re going to make a bloody sight less. Or I am.’

      ‘Just what have you got there in Palucca, Russ? You’ve never told me.’

      ‘You don’t need to know.’

      ‘Meaning it’s none of my business? I think it is, if you want me to shove my neck out on this. My popularity rating is dropping, Russ – it went down three points last week, just when it should be going up, with the Bicentennial going on. They don’t think I can walk on water any more. If this Timori business goes on too long I could be up to my arse in water in a leaky rowboat. And I don’t think you’d be rushing to bail me out.’

      Hickbed took off his glasses and polished them. They were in the library, a big room stacked on three walls to the ceiling with books and video cassettes; on close inspection one saw that virtually all the books were to do with some sort of show business and the cassettes were of Norval’s own TV shows. The few novels on the shelves were detective books and popular bestsellers. It was not a room where its owner got much mental exercise, but he had never sought it.

      There was the crunching of gravel on the path outside as two of the security men went by. This was a safe area, but one never knew. This was the North Shore suburb of Killara; North Shore being a social state of mind more than a geographical location, since its boundaries began some five miles from the northern shores of the harbour. Kirribilli, for instance, right on the north shore, was not North Shore. Killara itself had once been considered the domain of judges and lawyers, a leafy outpost of the courts and chambers of Phillip Street, the city’s legal centre. It was said that at Christmas the local council workers shouted, ‘Let justice be done!’ and the judges and barristers, mindful of 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, СКАЧАТЬ