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  She checked her ticket - seat 20A - and was relieved to find herself sitting next to a young woman who smiled nervously at her approach, before putting her head back inside a fantasy novel the size of a house brick. Jules nodded brusquely, establishing the precedent of not talking to anyone. She stowed her bag in the luggage rack over the seat in front of her where she could keep an eye on it, and tried not to regret the six months rent she had paid in advance on her bed-sit in The Rocks. The rental market was so tight, with the city full of refugees, that if she hadn’t been able to stump up the cash she’d have had no chance of securing her digs. That deposit siphoned off a good deal of her liquid funds. And now she’d had to abandon the place, to get out of the city where she’d been tracked, and run north to the only people she could trust in this country, or possibly the whole bloody world.

  ‘Come on honey, it’ll be a great adventure.’

  ‘No it won’t. This sucks. This whole country sucks. I just want to go home.’

  American voices. There was no escaping them. Maybe a third of the passengers travelling north were displaced Americans. The unlucky ones, those who arrived without capital or connections. They were probably heading north for the fruit-picking season, although they would probably be a month too late to score the best jobs. That’s why they were on this bus, like Julianne. Because they were losers.

  The father and daughter, the angry princess who just wanted to go home, wrestled their heavy backpacks past her on their way to the rear of the bus. The bags looked way too heavy for carry-on luggage, leading Jules to suspect they probably contained most of the worldly goods of this woebegone pair. She’d seen it so often in the last couple of years, people moving around with everything they owned strapped to their backs. There was nothing unusual about that, of course. People had been living like that for thousands of years. But not white, middle-class Americans.

  And she was in no position to look down on them. Not fleeing the city with her little go bag and her fake ID.

  The big metal doors of the Greyhound’s luggage compartment slammed closed outside as the last of the passengers shuffled in and claimed their seats. She sent a silent prayer of thanks up to the God she didn’t believe in that the morbidly obese man with the apocalyptic body odour who got on last was not her seat buddy. Stealing a quick glance at the Tolkien fan next to her she smiled. The young woman had obviously had exactly the same thought at just that moment. They shared a conspiratorial smile.

  Jules wished she had thought to pack a novel in her getaway bag, but entertainment hadn’t seemed like a high priority when she put it together. She was just going to have to sleep through most of the trip. Luckily they were driving through the night.

  ‘Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Tim Blair and I’ll be your coach captain for the run up to Lismore.’

  Oh God. Shoot me now, thought Jules, a fucking coach captain. Where do they find these dropkicks?

  Blair started in on his pre-departure spiel, explaining the ‘features’ of their state-of-the-art vehicle. Julianne stared out of the window and tried to ignore him. A baby started crying somewhere a few seats behind her. The emo zombie across the aisle turned his MP3 player up to an eardrum-shredding volume.

  ‘… and we’ll be stopping for dinner just after midnight in the town of Hexham,’ said coach captain Blair, ‘which in the opinion of this professional long-haul transport systems operator does the finest chicken’n’chips in the southern hemisphere.’

  For the first time since she had slotted the Romanian, Lady Julianne Balwyn wondered whether she might be better off staying in Sydney and taking her chances with whatever contract killer Henry Cesky sent after her next.

  *

  Too keyed up to sleep properly - not that it was really an option on a bus anyway - she spent the first four-hour leg of the trip, a frustrating, drawn-out, stop-and-start crawl through the gridlock of the CBD and the semi-permanent traffic jam of the northern suburbs, throwing a little pity party for herself. Julianne knew she had much to be grateful for. Unlike Pete and Fifi, she was at least drawing breath. She hadn’t taken a bullet during a pirate raid, and she’d dodged any number of bullets since. In spite of Cesky’s best efforts to get at her. And in the larger scheme of things, of course, she knew she should be grateful that they hadn’t pushed their yacht a little harder back in ‘03, to make the rendezvous with the Pong Su, a North Korean freighter carrying four million dollars worth of perfectly counterfeited US currency that they would take in exchange for the one million worth of genuine greenbacks, somewhat soiled by their connection to a series of drug transactions, stashed away in the hold of the MV Diamantina.

  If Pete had been a more diligent smuggler they’d have been about ten nautical miles inside the Wave when it swept over the Pong Su. Thankfully, Pete was a doofus. A great mate, to be sure, and she missed him terribly, but a doofus.

  A thin blanket served to ward off the chill of the air conditioning as they pulled onto the freeway and accelerated away from Sydney. Unable to do more than nap fitfully, Julianne found herself replaying the last few years, wondering which particular ill-chosen life path had put her on this shitty bus in the middle of the night at the arse end of the civilised world. As always, she came back to her father. She had loved her old man, rogue that he was, and the old devil had done his best to provide for her in his own way, salting some of his ill-gotten gains through a series of bank accounts tucked away in remote jurisdictions with famously lax attitudes towards regulatory oversight. But it hadn’t been enough. Not nearly enough. Julianne wondered whether she might’ve been happier living an alternate life, with a normal father, who hadn’t raised her to live well outside the norms that most decent people accepted as the price you paid for civilisation.

  On the other hand, she was, arguably, better prepared to have survived the last couple of years. She flicked a glance up at her backpack, and shifted position in her seat to take her weight off the wallet in her back pocket, where Julia Black’s driver’s license, credit cards, and refugee papers sat. Would she have thought to lay in such preparations had a scoundrel not raised her? Would she even be alive today? Probably not, she thought, as the bus rolled through a striking series of canyons, cut deep into the thick layer of sandstone that lay under the Sydney Basin. Powerful up-lighting illuminated the soaring rock walls, throwing them into beautiful relief.

  ‘Do you have anyone waiting for you, up north?’

  ‘What?’

  The Tolkien fan had taken her by surprise, laying down her book and asking a question. Julianne had no desire to get into conversation with anyone, and kept herself closed off.

  ‘You look a little bit lost is all,’ said the girl. ‘Like you have nothing to look forward to. Are you going up to Queensland to work, or to meet someone?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Julianne, searching for an answer. As much as she wanted to just keep to herself, she had always been taught that good manners cost nothing, and could often serve as useful camouflage for one’s true nature. ‘I have a friend who’s sick,’ she said. ‘I’m going up to visit him. To help out a bit.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said the girl. ‘You seem like a nice person. I hope it works out for you.’ And with that she went back to Middle Earth.

  *

  The girl left the bus in Coffs Harbour, a pleasant enough seaside town where they stopped for breakfast the next morning. Julianne’s luck ran out at that point, when the seat next to her was taken by an unwashed young man whose body mass was fifty per cent composed of stainless steel piercings. He played loud, terrible music through his disgracefully cheap headphones and farted with joyous abandon all the way to Brisbane.

  She couldn’t really afford a good hotel room, but Julia Black could, so Jules booked a night at the Sheraton as soon as she arrived in the northern capital. She had no intention of staying for long. She felt the urgency of her need to get to Darwin as a physical discomfort. Soaking in her bath at the hotel, washing away the unpleasantness of
the road trip with a bottle of champagne from the minibar, Julianne called down to the concierge desk.

  ‘I need to get in contact with someone in Darwin,’ she said. ‘A Mr Narayan Shah. He runs a security consultancy up there, but I’m afraid I’m not quite sure of the name of his company. I wonder if you might be a dear and see if you could track it down for me. That’s Narayan Shah. He’s a former Gurkha, if that helps … okay. Thank you.’

  The phone next to her bed rang ten minutes later while she was tying up the thick, white bathrobe and contemplating a room service binge. If she was going to burn Julia Black’s ID and credit rating she might as well torch it in high style.

  ‘Ms Black, it is Arthur at the front desk, I have Mr Shah on the line for you.’

  She heard a click and a beep and then Shah’s voice was in her ear.

  ‘Ms Black? This is Narayan Shah. How can I help you?’

  ‘You can stop calling me Ms Black for a start. It’s Jules, Shah. From the Aussie Rules. How are you?’

  He was, it seemed, surprised and delighted to hear from her.

  ‘Miss Julianne, this is a pleasure. I had heard you were back in Australia and was hoping you would call.’

  She smiled at the rough, familiar tone of the old sergeant’s voice.

  ‘Hello, Shah,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely to talk to you. And yes, I’m sorry I haven’t been in contact, but, you know, trying to keep a low profile and all.’

  She sat down on the bed and snugged the dressing gown closer around her.

  ‘I understand,’ said Shah. ‘The authorities, they did not make it easy for you with Mr Norman’s boat, and some of your passengers.’

  He meant the Pieraro family. Her wealthy American refugees had walked down the gangplank and into the warm embrace of the locals. Not so much the penniless Mexican family.

  ‘Is there something I can do for you, Miss Julianne?’ Shah asked. ‘I still regard myself as being in your debt.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly. It’s me who owes you. We would not have made it without you and your men. And I’m afraid I have to call on your grace and favour again. I’m in a spot of bother, Shah, and it might be something that affects you, eventually. And maybe the Rhino too. Did he make it up to Darwin? I know he was headed there and wondered if you might have been in contact.’

  There was a slight pause before the former Gurkha answered.

  ‘The Rhino, yes, he is up here. I have seen him once or twice. But he is a proud man, Miss Julianne, and he keeps his problems to himself. I would very much like to help him, and you if you are in need. But I cannot say that Mr Ross will want our help.’

  Julianne gazed for a moment out of the hotel window. Julia Black had booked a room on the executive level, for the added security, rather than for the extra luxury. The elevation afforded her sweeping views across the city and out towards the coast.

  ‘Well, he’s going to need our help,’ she said. ‘And I’m going to need yours, Shah. Someone’s trying to kill me.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said the soldier turned businessman. ‘Somebody is trying to kill me as well.’

  There was silence between them for two heartbeats.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Shah. I fear I may have dragged you into something awful.’

  His laughter was unexpected but reassuring.

  ‘Miss Julianne, nobody drags me anywhere. Except my wife down to the shops during the sales. I apologise that I cannot stay long on the phone to discuss this with you now. I really do have some pressing matters to attend to here. But I wonder how quickly you might get to Darwin.’

  ‘Not quickly at all, unfortunately,’ she admitted. ‘My resources aren’t what they were.’

  She hated having to talk with Shah like this, as if he were a mark. It spoke well of the man that he recognised what she was doing but did not hold it against her.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘I shall organise a ticket for you on the next available flight. You are in Brisbane yes? And travelling incognito? As Ms Julianne Black?’

  ‘Julia. For now,’ she said. ‘I’ll probably need another ID in a couple of days. It’s Cesky, if you remember him, from Acapulco. The guy we didn’t let on the boat. The vengeful prick just won’t give it up. He’s had a couple of goes at both the Rhino and me back Stateside. And I think he’s found us over here now, too.’

  ‘I see,’ said Shah, sounding preoccupied. ‘It is settled, then,’ he said. ‘I shall organise you transport as soon as possible.’

  ‘I need to get to the Rhino as quickly as possible, too,’ she said. ‘He’s probably in danger. And you said you have had some trouble?’

  ‘Some, yes. I do not wish to be rude, Miss Julianne, but I would like to address these problems with dispatch. If you remain at your hotel I will send through details of your flights when they are booked.’

  ‘And the Rhino?’

  ‘He is working with one of the trawler companies up here. He may be out on the water, I do not know,’ said Shah. ‘But I shall have my men check for him, and when I send through your travel details I will also include some contacts for him. Places you might look when you get into town. I assume you’ll want to start straight away.’

  ‘I will,’ said Julianne. ‘I’ve had enough of this shit.’

  15

  DEARBORN HOUSE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  James Kipper was grumpy. Jed could see he was grumpy as soon as he and Marilyn were admitted to the President’s private quarters - simply because he was in the process of getting dressed. Just his dinner jacket and black bow tie, known by presidential decree as ‘the Asphyxiator’, to go. He’d have started complaining as soon as he pulled his pants on, and stepped it up while trying to get the cummerbund to sit properly around his nonexistent waist. The performance would soon be reaching a crescendo of mumbling and grumbling about ‘these stupid monkey clothes’ while Barb attempted to do up the Asphyxiator. The President of the United States was nothing if not consistent. As was his wife. She sported the same furiously furrowed brow that Culver recognised from any number of these occasions over the past couple of years.

  ‘He was trying to get away with wearing a clip-on. Can you imagine that, Jed?’

  ‘All too easily,’ he snorted. ‘I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d tried turning up in a Hawaiian shirt or with a motorised bow tie that could spin like a propeller.’

  ‘Hey, I am the President, you know, fella,’ Kip protested. ‘And that sounds mighty like sedition talk to me. Don’t make me call the Secret Service.’

  ‘Just shut up and let me finish this,’ his wife scolded as she fussed some more with the Asphyxiator. ‘I can’t do this while you’re flapping your gums around.’

  ‘I love what you’ve done with your hair, Babs,’ said Marilyn. It was an artful attempt to push the conversation away from Kipper’s deep-seated aversion to dressing like a grown-up and onto a topic with which Jed’s wife was familiar. One in which she was frighteningly overqualified, in fact.

  ‘Oh, this?’ The First Lady blew a freshly cut fringe of hair back out of her eyes. ‘It was getting too long. I had to do something.’

  She finished with her husband’s bow tie and banished him to the walk-in closet for his jacket. The two women fell into conversation as Culver joined his boss.

  ‘I know you hate these things, Kip,’ he said, as always, getting his attention immediately with the informal manner of address. ‘But it’s as much a part of your job as dealing with budgets, railroads and reconstruction, and more a part of your job than worrying about snow blowers and powerlines around the city like you were this afternoon.’

  ‘Jesus, Jed, did Barbara word you up before you got here? Because I’ve been getting slammed by her for the same thing all evening.’

  The Chief of Staff helped him get his arms into the dinner jacket and even tugged at the lapels a couple of times to make it sit properly on Kip’s shoulders.

  ‘That’s because she’s right,’ he said. ‘You’re not the city engineer an
ymore. You’re the President. City engineers worry about snowstorms. Presidents worry about re-election.’

  Kipper frowned. ‘I thought I was supposed to worry about a lot more than that.’

  ‘It’s all moot if you don’t get re-elected. And that’s not going to happen unless you campaign properly. And you cannot campaign properly without money. So that’s what tonight is about - raising money, to get you back into office, so you can do your job, clearing roads, rebuilding railways and pissing off the Greens by opening up a nasty new power plant somewhere. It’s all good. But none of it is going to happen if you don’t get the votes.’

  Kipper coughed out a short, humourless laugh. ‘I think all those things will happen whether I get re-elected or not, Jed. Some things aren’t political. They just have to happen.’

  ‘Really? Seriously? You actually live inside that gingerbread house?’ Culver asked in a gentle voice. ‘You think Sandra Harvey would let the French build that shiny new pebble bed reactor you’re so keen on? You think Blackstone would run your settlement program completely blind to race, colour or creed? You happy with the way he’s virtually outlawed labour unions down there in Texas?’

  He had him, of course, which didn’t improve Kip’s mood. He hated being pushed into a corner. But at least when you got him there, he had the good grace to stay put.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he sighed. ‘Well, are we going to get this done?’

  They exited the large closet and rejoined their wives, who had moved on from complementing each other’s outfits to discussing the children. Marilyn had never had any of her own, but she had been stepmother to Melanie and Roger for long enough to have earned her spurs. Jed pursed his lips at the incongruity of it all, the banality of everyday life within the insanely pressurised environment of supreme executive power. Even if that power was a dim shadow of its former greatness.

  A soft knock at the door, and the protocol chief, Allan Horbach, admitted himself after a greeting from Barbara.