Dragons at the Party (15 page)

Hickbed stood at the huge picture window in his immense living-room and looked down across his flood-lit gardens to the eighty-foot cruiser moored at his jetty and cried poor mouth: “We’re going to lose everything, Abdul, if we don’t get you back to Bunda.”

“We have already lost everything,” said President Timori, to whom money was not
quite
everything. “My reputation.”

“Abdul, for crissake, you never had a reputation, except a bad one.” Hickbed would bow the
knee
to no one, except perhaps the Queen; he hankered after a knighthood, but so far his friend the Prime Minister hadn’t nominated him for one. Norval, the glad-hander, sometimes took egalitarianism too far. “Let’s talk money,” he said and looked at Madame Timori, who was fluent in it. “If we don’t get you back to Bunda, you owe me quite a lot.”

“What’s quite a lot?” Her tone was frigid, that of an Antarctic bank manager.

“Several million. That’s not counting what I’ve got invested in Palucca.”

“We can’t afford anything like that.” She had a reputation for extravagance, but not towards other people.

“Russell,” said Timori, who, having lost all his oil income, still had to pour oil on waters troubled by his wife, “we are grateful for everything you have done for us. But it is too early to talk of repayment. Friends don’t speak in those terms.”

Hickbed backed down. “I didn’t mean I wanted it
now
. But things aren’t going well—”

“No. Someone is trying to kill me.”

“Yeah, there’s that,” said Hickbed, who hadn’t been thinking of that priority. “I hope to Christ the security is tight enough here. But I mean otherwise. Money-wise. You heard the news tonight. The bloody generals are going to try and freeze your funds. The States, Switzerland, everybloodywhere.”

“Not Australia?” Madame Timori sounded apprehensive, a tone foreign to her.

“I dunno. I don’t think Phil will allow it, but you never know. He has some mean-minded bastards in his Cabinet, real bloody Lefties.” There were no left-wing ministers in the Norval Cabinet, but Hickbed had his own standards. “What are you going to do about your holdings in Switzerland and those other places?”

Timori looked at his wife. “You’re the treasurer, my dear. What have you done to protect our pension?”

“It will take months, even years, to trace it all.” Once she had had money to handle she had become magical at it: millions disappeared into thin air and foreign banks. She fondled the bag of emeralds as if they were loose worry-beads; she carried the bag with her since the unfortunate accident of
their
discovery in Mr. Masutir’s pocket. The bag looked like a pot-pourri sachet, so she had sprayed the emeralds with “Joy” to further the illusion; it would have been sacrilege to have used a lesser perfume on such gems. “We don’t have to worry, not at the moment. It’s the real estate that’s conspicuous.”

“What about the stuff in the crates up at Richmond?” said Hickbed. “That’s beginning to smell.”

“Money never smells, Russell.” Neither did gold nor gems. She felt certain they would lose none of their possessions to the Australian Customs. She had forgotten that though the local natives were no strangers to corruption, it was not endemic amongst them as it was in Palucca. “Philip will fix everything.”

“I wouldn’t be too bloody sure about that. He’s trying to sound independent. He’s on the phone to Fegan twice a day.”

“That doesn’t sound like independence.” Timori, an ex-President, no longer had any faith in Presidents still in power. He sighed, tired out already by exile. “I’m going to bed.”

He kissed his wife, said good night to Hickbed and left the room. He was the quietest, most relaxed of the three of them; yet when he left the room it seemed disproportionately emptier. Besides being a president he had been a sultan, and sultans, like kings, occupy a larger-than-normal space. His wife, never a sultana, a title she found ridiculous though fruitful, had her own space but it still had to expand. She had been working on that when they had been deposed.

Hickbed went back to the window, looked out and saw the Federal police, two of them, down on the jetty. He knew there were six of them on duty at any one time and there were two New South Wales police cars parked out in the street, each with two men in them. If ten men couldn’t protect Timori in this house, then Seville deserved to get his target. Then Hickbed became aware that, standing exposed in his own huge window against the lights behind him, he himself was a target.

He pressed a button and the white silk drapes slid across the window. The room, indeed the whole house, had been furnished by an interior decorator at great expense; nothing in it reflected Hickbed’s personality. He was rough and ready; the house was smooth and slick. He only felt at home in it because it told him, in every gold-plated nook and cranny, that he could afford it.

He
crossed the room, a small journey, and sat down next to Delvina on a couch that would have held ten people. “I’m not happy about you being here, love.”

She made a
moue
of surprise; she could occasionally appear girlish, but it was atavistic. “I think the arrangement’s ideal. I don’t know why we didn’t come here in the first place.”

“Del, how do you think I feel? You’re in the same house with me, my house, and I can’t get into bed with you.” He took her hand, the one not holding the bag of emeralds. “I could screw the arse off you, just looking at you.”

“You’re such a romantic lover, Russell. Who taught you? Your wife?”

She knew how to throw cold water. He dropped her hand, sat back. “Don’t mention her!”

“You mentioned my husband, if only by inference. I can’t be unfaithful to him, not now. Not while someone’s trying to kill him.”

“Who do you think it is?”

“Why the generals, of course. Who do you think it might be?”

“You.”

She hit him hard across the cheek; fortunately, with the hand free of the bag of emeralds. Then she said quietly but coldly, “I could kill
you
. Make a remark like that in front of anyone and I shall kill you myself.”

He felt his cheek, then straightened his glasses, which had been knocked askew. “Everyone’s a suspect. Including me.”

“You’re not married to Abdul. We’re a pair, people always speak of us in the same breath. Like—like Tristan and Isolde.”

“Who are they—a couple of Paluccans?” He had never been burdened by culture; the only legend he was interested in was the one he was trying to build. He tried another tack, but only slightly to windward: “If he is killed, we’re buggered.”

“Not necessarily. One or two of the generals can be bought.”

“You’ve tried?” He was surprised, but he should not have been.

She
nodded. “They’ve said no, but that’s only because they’re not certain about the future. They’ll listen if we go back again. One of them, General Paturi, is coming to talk to Philip about getting rid of us.”

“I didn’t know that!”

“Neither does Philip.”

“How do you know, then?”

“I have my sources.”

He didn’t doubt that. She had learned of the generals’ plot two days before it had happened; she had telephoned Washington, Canberra, anyone who would listen. Everyone had listened; it wasn’t that they disbelieved her, they just didn’t want to help. She had her sources, but not to the hearts, or what passed for their hearts, of her political friends.

“Phil won’t see him, not till after the celebrations are over. He’s not going to let anyone spoil his Big Party. You and Abdul have already done enough. Maybe we can invite General Paturi up here?”

“Abdul would shoot him on the spot.”

“What with? Christ, he hasn’t got a gun, has he?” He saw her sly smile and he shook his head; he was out of his depth with a woman like her. He was out of his depth with any woman, even his wife, but he would never admit it. “I never know with you two . . .”

“No,” she said, “the only gun you have to worry about is the one that man Seville has.”

“The police have that.”

“Do you really think he won’t get another?” She stood up, kissed him on the lips; her kiss was cold, even though she slid her tongue into his mouth. He felt he had been kissed by a snake and shuddered; all at once he lost all desire for her. “Good night, Russell. Don’t worry. Everything will turn out all right.”

VI

Six of the seven generals who had staged the coup in Palucca sat in the presidential reception
room
of Timoro Palace in Bunda, the nation’s capital. It was a highly decorated room, a marble menagerie of elephants, tigers and monkeys that seemed to hold up its four walls. Abdul Timori’s great-great-grandfather, who had built the palace, had been to Europe and been impressed by the use of marble in the palaces there; once all the marble statuary had been installed it had struck him as cold and dull and he accordingly had filled in the spaces between with gilt and gold-leaf. The effect was of elephants, tigers and monkeys ready to jump out of a rather dirty sunrise.

It had been another whim of Abdul the First’s that the Equator should run right through the middle of the presidential reception room; he had liked to stand with his legs apart on the imaginary line and boast that his influence spread in both directions as far as the Poles. The Dutch, who had the real influence, had humoured him.

The generals now sat on either side of the line and General Kerang, the oldest of them but with no influence at all, sat astride the Equator. It was an accident of place and he was seemingly unaware of it.

“We have to turn over the palace to the people,” said General Guruh. His name meant
thunder
, but he was the mildest of all seven of them in temper, an idealist out of place in the junta.

“Not yet.” General Simupang was the ring-leader, though the others involved in the plot had not thought of him as such; he would only become that if the coup failed and they were all brought to trial. “We can’t rush things.”

“We have to give them democracy in small doses,” said General Mustopo from the southern hemisphere. He adjusted his chair, put a leg over the Equator. “I think we should stay here in the palace till things settle down.”

They had occupied the palace as soon as the Timoris had departed. They had brought their families in with them and, with six wings to choose from, as if the architect of 150 years ago had anticipated them, had each taken a wing. It was another accident, or so it seemed, that it was General Kerang who had got the wing that had been the Timoris’ personal accommodation. There he and his elderly wife slept in the empire-sized bed beneath the green silk sheets and under the canopy decorated with birds-of-paradise plumes, looking like two corn husks in a giant jewel-box. Madame Kerang was still
amusing
herself going through Madame Timori’s many wardrobes, counting the seemingly countless dresses, coats and accessories therein. The wives of the other generals, deprived of that opportunity, sat in their wings and sulked and wondered why power, which had never occupied their thoughts before, had to be shared in the name of something called democracy. They began to have a secret admiration for Delvina Timori, who knew a good thing when she grabbed it.

General Suwondo, in the northern hemisphere, watched a small green lizard circle his boot and then head south. He could smell the cloves outside in the gardens and, the financial mind of the junta, he began to wonder what money the harvests would bring this year. “We’re bankrupt, you know. I don’t think we can start talking democracy till we have some money in the Treasury. That’s what democracy’s all about, money in the people’s pockets. That’s how they vote. I read that somewhere,” he added lamely as all but General Guruh looked at him accusingly.

“We’ve sent Paturi to Canberra for money,” said General Godigdo, who sat beside Suwondo. He had a talent for stating the obvious, no drawback in a general.

“What if he doesn’t come back?” General Kerang had not fired a shot in anger since 1942 when, as a junior lieutenant, he had killed a Japanese soldier who had been trying to rape his wife. He had since risen through the ranks to be a wise general. He might know little or nothing about strategy and tactics, but he was an expert on the venality of his fellow officers.

“Oh, he’ll come back. He’s the most trustworthy of us all,” said Simupang, who was the least trustworthy.

Now that doubt had been raised, Mustopo said, “Can we trust the Australians? They may be the ones who are trying to kill Abdul. They may kill Paturi. Or even us.”

Suwondo shivered; it was winter in his hemisphere. “Are they so devious as to plan something like that? Inviting the Timoris and then Paturi to get rid of them?”

“They didn’t invite either of them,” said Godigdo, stating the obvious again.

“The Australians aren’t devious,” said Guruh. “All the British deviousness they inherited has been bred out of them on their sports fields. In another generation or so it will be better, when the
Italians
and the Greeks and the Lebanese have bred it back into them.”

“Don’t forget us Asians,” said Simupang proudly.

“They still have the Irish, too,” said Mustopo, who read the Australian papers, especially the
National Times
, the national muck-raker.

“We still have to raise money,” said Suwondo doggedly. “Paturi has to get that twenty-two million back from the Australians. It’s not much against the overall debt, but it’ll pay the troops.” And themselves, the leaders of the troops.

They sat in silence contemplating the bankrupt country they had been foolish enough to take over. In the background, against the far walls of the huge hall, amongst the elephants and tigers and monkeys, the palace servants hovered like ghosts from the past; which they were. Outside, beyond the palace gates, the crowd clamoured for rice, democracy and a share in the national wealth, all in short supply at the moment.

“Do we send him on to New York and Zurich?”

“Garuda gave him an excursion round-the-world ticket.”

“Garuda don’t go round the world.”

“Let’s ring up Lee Quan Yew and see what Singapore Airlines can do for us. We all might get tickets. Just in case.”