She began to understand why Shah and his neighbours felt their positions were so tenuous. Nothing was settled here, in spite of the clean streets and the gleaming newness of everything. It was all still in furious motion. Convulsed. Deranged. And dangerous with it. As if to emphasise the point, she saw an armoured vehicle roll through an intersection further up the street.
Jules hurried into the store, out of the heat, and sighed with relief after pushing through another super-chilled air curtain. She’d noticed the same effect at the Sirocco Cafe. It felt something like walking through a gentle waterfall, but it was a piece of technology she’d not encountered before then. Perhaps the design had been stolen from some Wave-washed laboratory in the US, where researchers were still puddled wherever they happened to have been standing. The market for Disappeared intellectual property had run white-hot for a while in ‘04-05, until Seattle regained some semblance of control over its borders. She’d even considered getting into the game herself, except that the Rhino had been such a complete bloody Boy Scout over the issue.
He still thought of himself as one of the good guys at heart, even with all the people smuggling, the stealing, and the murder on the high seas. Thoughts of her friend and former business partner brought with them a confusion of emotions. Fond recall. Concern for his wellbeing. And a rekindled anxiety about whoever might be trying to fuck with her own wellbeing. Jules reached around and lightly touched the SIG Sauer holstered in the small of her back. She could always feel the pistol was there, digging into her spine, but the gesture gave her some comfort anyway.
The department store was doing its best, but it still looked shabby and somewhat down at heel compared to its newer, smaller rivals. There seemed to be more old-time locals shopping in here, though, she noticed. Sticking with the tried-and-true out of pure stubbornness, no doubt. It was the work of only a few minutes to find the womenswear department, where a question to a sales assistant - an Aboriginal girl - soon had her fingering through a carousel of off-the-rack business suits. She chose a conservative, lightweight navy-blue suit with matching pants, before wasting another hundred and fifty bucks on a pair of cheap medium heels.
God, it was like being back at college again - scrimping, saving, making do. How dreadfully fucking depressing this could get …
As she was paying for the purchases, and holding back a creeping sense of ennui at having to wear them, the Nokia buzzed in her pocket. A text message from Pappas: the Rhino had been transferred to the Coonawarra Base Hospital, where she could find him in intensive care. Downing had contacted the hospital and told them that one of his juniors would be in to look after Mr Ross’s arrangements.
At last, she could look in on him. Jules was comforted also by the knowledge that so many people were putting themselves out on her behalf. She doubted she’d have been as helpful as Nick and Piers if a complete stranger had bowled up to her in need of succour and protection. But, of course, she had Mr Shah to thank for that. She undoubtedly had Pappas to thank for the final piece of information, however.
A phone number in America - for Miguel!
She was so surprised and so grateful she almost forgot to collect her change from the salesgirl. Then she nearly left the two bags of shopping behind on the counter.
After thanking the young woman, Jules hurried out of the store and flagged down a pedicab. She’d have preferred an air-conditioned taxi, but a quick check up and down the street confirmed there were none to be had. The pedicab driver, a thin wiry foreigner of indeterminate race, asked her where she wanted to go before quoting a price of ten dollars. Unsure of whether one was supposed to haggle, she agreed, keen to return to the motel and make contact with her dear old friends.
Again, she checked for evidence of Shah’s men following her, of anybody following her, but saw nothing. The pedicab was shaded but open to the elements, allowing the speed of their passage to create a breeze that offered scant relief from the heat of the afternoon. She wondered how her driver endured it.
She played with the phone, a model she’d never seen before. It had no keypad, an obvious omission that had thrown her for a second while trying to open the text. Apparently, the screen itself was the keyboard. Gadgets and widgets had never much interested this daughter of English nobility, and mobile phones in particular set her teeth on edge. She assumed the government could probably track you via your SIM card or the phone’s chip, or whatever, which meant she rarely carried a mobile. On those rare occasions, she’d use a throw-down, a cheap prepaid or stolen handset, and always kept the thing switched off until the very moment it was needed, after which she’d toss it immediately.
There were three numbers saved in the phone Pappas had given her. One for the burly SAS veteran, one for Shah and the last for their lawyer friend. A little more fiddling around brought up an electronic map of the city, with the location of the Coonawarra Base Hospital highlighted by a ridiculous cartoon paperclip that jumped up and down while pointing at the relevant location.
‘Right, right, I fucking get it, okay?’ she muttered at the annoying screen icon. ‘Jesus, how do you turn the stupid thing off …’
Before she could work it out, the pedicab had pulled up in front of the Banyan View Lodge. Jules thanked the driver, who was slick with sweat, but breathing normally. She paid him with a plastic ten-dollar banknote, and checked to see whether they’d been followed, before hurrying inside.
As she had expected, the room was stifling. She flicked on the primitive air-con, which rumbled into life without much promise of relief. For a few seconds, it felt as though the temperature actually increased, before blessed cool air started to fall from the ceiling vents.
Jules unclipped the holster and began undressing. When she was down to her underwear, she stopped, bleeding off heat as the climate control system laboured heroically to dump a little arctic goodness into her room. She had no idea what time it was in the American Midwest, but found herself pondering on something else about Pappas’s text. He’d located Miguel in Kansas City … Now, that was odd. The way Julianne understood it, Miguel had taken Mariela, Sofia, little Maya, Grandma Ana and all the others over to the US after qualifying for the resettlement scheme, or homestead thingy, or whatever the hell the Yanks called it. So why would he be in Kansas City now and not out on a farm somewhere in Texas?
She remembered KC vaguely, having stopped there with Rhino early in the year to arrange transport to New York City. They never made it into the city itself, staying instead at some mouldy hostel a block away from the airport. A joyous time spent trying to sleep through the sound of planes, trains and Rhino’s titanic snoring before getting the hell out for points east.
Jules set her mind back to the task of working out what time it was over there. Early afternoon in Darwin now, so that would’ve made it … what, sometime late at night, yesterday evening, where he was? The phone had a web browser and she thought about doing a quick MSN search, but impatience forced her to just call the number anyway. Given her limited experience with mobile phones, and especially with the keypad-less variety like this Nokia, it took her a while to work out that she only had to touch the number Nick had entered in its long form.