Dragons at the Party. Jon Cleary

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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 new looks. It was curious that he had never become accustomed to the sight of himself, when he looked in mirrors, in the various disguises he had to adopt.

      ‘Okay, but you better be fair dinkum, mate. You’re not fooling around with a tribe of fucking amateurs.’

      Seville smiled to himself: Pinjarri hadn’t changed. ‘I’m sure I’m not.’

      That evening Seville caught a taxi into the city, but, having looked up the Entertainment Centre in a directory he had bought, had the taxi drop him some distance from the Centre and walked the rest of the way. He took off his jacket and carried it over his arm: even the Swiss were known to relax occasionally.

      He passed a gun shop on the way, but didn’t pause. He had gone looking for such a store when the city had closed for Saturday afternoon; he had found two, including this one, but his practised eye had told him they were too well secured to be broken into. It was then that he had at last decided he had to risk contacting Pinjarri.

      On the last part of his walk he was drawn towards the Entertainment Centre by the crowd heading there. He went down past Chinese restaurants and shops; a dragon with illuminated red eyes stared at him from a window and in the doorway beside it a Chinese girl smiled invitingly. Then the Centre loomed over him, an auditorium that looked like a dozen others he had seen in other parts of the world. An ideal place for a bomb scare, he remarked automatically. Just like all the others.

      The crowd was pouring into the big building. All of them young, some of them bizarre in their dress; he stood out amongst them as if he were in fancy dress. Tonight was the first night of the Australian Pop Festival: the stars of the show were Dire Straits, direct from their American tour. Affronted nationalism hadn’t kept the hordes away; they poured into the wide lobby as if the First Fleeters had come back to play the Top Ten of 1788. Seville took no notice of the irony: he was the true internationalist in the crowded lobby, the terrorist without patriotism.

      He had been standing below the steps leading to Door 3 less than five minutes when he felt the tap on his elbow. ‘Mr Gideon?’

      The Aboriginal boy could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen; he was light-skinned and he reminded Seville of the Arab boys he had seen in the guerrilla training camps in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon. He looked just as serious and apprehensive as those boys.

      ‘Yes, I’m Gideon. Am I supposed to follow you?’ The boy looked surprised and Seville smiled. ‘I’ve done this before. Many times.’

      They pushed their way through the crowd, going against the stream. I may be in dire straits myself before the night is out, thought Seville wrily; but danger was an old ambience and he never felt uncomfortable in it. He followed the boy out into the busy street and they turned left. Five minutes’ more walking brought them under what Seville took to be a traffic fly-over. There the boy, without a word, suddenly darted away.

      Seville moved into the shadow of a pylon, stood waiting. He flexed the calf of his right leg, felt the knife in its sheath strapped there. If Dallas Pinjarri brought trouble, he would be ready for it.

      Above his head he could hear the swish of tyres and the occasional rumble of a heavy truck. Through the pylons he could see the bright lights of the Darling Harbour complex, a new development since he had last been in Sydney. All cities, he decided, were beginning to look alike with their tourist projects; you travelled thousands of miles to look at buildings and display temples just like those you had left behind. In a thousand years, digging amongst the ruins, archaeologists would wonder in which country they were working.

      Pinjarri appeared as silently and swiftly as the Aboriginal boy had disappeared: maybe it is an Aboriginal thing, Seville thought. He came through the bands of light and shadow; Seville thought he saw other shadows within the shadows, but he could not be sure. He waited, wondering if he would have to use the knife.

      ‘Mr Gideon?’

      ‘Hello, Dallas. Have you brought some friends with you, back there behind those pylons?’

      Pinjarri peered at him in the shadows. ‘I don’t recognize –’

      ‘I had another name when I was here two years ago.’ He could not remember whether he had used his own name; his memory must be going. ‘I also wasn’t blond or Swiss –’

      Pinjarri peered even closer. Then: ‘Shit, is it really you? Miguel?’

СКАЧАТЬ