1. Agenda Items

Jeremy sat at the head of the boardroom table in the Eye, beset by an assembly of hostile faces. He had a nasty headache, but that wasn’t anything new. He’d gotten plastered on New Year’s Eve and made an ass of himself in front of Hui and her mocking friends, and he was still feeling the effects almost a week later.

“Let’s get started, shall we?” he said, and the hubbub barely lessened as he began. In fact, after a few moments it actually grew louder, too loud for him to be heard. “Look,” he said, holding out his hands. “I know you’re pissed off about having to be here today. I’m pissed off too.” That got their attention. “I’m hungover and I need a good sleep. It’s the fifth of January and I’m at work on a Thursday morning when I should be in bed, but here I am. Want to know why? Because the Grand Director demands it.” Silence now.

“Sir, please begin,” a young sycophant at the front said, getting a number of dirty looks for his trouble.

Jeremy nodded. “Now I hope you all had a great break, even if it was curtailed, because right now we have some serious problems that have the Grand Director hopping mad. Item one.” He held up a finger. “We’ve got a murder case that we’re no closer to solving more than a month after the fact. This is very embarrassing for the company.

“Item two.” Second finger. “A bunch of peaceniks are coming here to Yellowcake Springs to protest against CIQ Sinocorp, nuclear energy and nasty foreigners in general. They’re coming in a little over a week and the weak as piss Australian Government won’t lift a finger to stop them.

“Item three: David Baron, formerly an employee of this organisation, formerly the man who masterminded the June First attack, formerly the man who designed this very building and whom we like to call the Great Criminal, has killed himself in his cell, thus giving immense added momentum to the aforementioned tree-huggers and their protest.

“Item four is the salient fact that the protesters have chosen as their talisman none other than Sylvia Baron, also formerly an employee of this organisation and the widow of the Great Criminal.

“Item five is the fact that Grand Director Li has tasked this Security bureau with resolving items one to four in a speedy fashion, hence the need for us to return a few days early from our well-earned rest. All unused leave credits will be reimbursed and you will be allowed to take the remainder of your allocation as soon as the crisis is resolved. I will have your comments and I will have them now.”

He closed his mouth and listened to what his staff had to say. None of it helped but that was freedom of speech for you. Lillian Chu, his notional deputy, stole the most oxygen. He nodded at the appropriate times and offered the occasional word of ersatz encouragement. Then he gave them a big rev up and sent them scurrying to their posts, while he retreated into his office and his plush leather chair. It was far too early for a drink and yet that was all he could think about. He had a midday drinking rule but in recent weeks he had come to think of his morning pick-me-up as an exception to that. The feel of the whisky bottle was a source of reassurance. He hefted it, listening to the slosh of the goodness within. The moment the amber fluid touched his lips, his thoughts turned to his many other problems, like a man lamenting his infidelity at the point of illicit orgasm.

Item six, he muttered under his breath: he was an alcoholic and it was getting worse. It had become a bottle a day habit and his liver couldn’t take it even if his bank balance probably could.

Item seven: he hadn’t had sex in three weeks and the last time with Hui he’d been impotent. Afraid of similar failures in the future, he hadn’t yet tried it on with his PA or one of the interns. And he knew better than to drop in on Clarissa. He’d heard through the grapevine that Tiffany had made it difficult enough for her already. So he was stumped.

Item eight: Hui wouldn’t speak to him and the situation was in danger of becoming a tawdry scandal. He knew that she blamed Given’s death on him. It was natural for her to think him jealous and yet the topic of Given was taboo between them. To raise Given in that context would be to concede that their marriage was finished, that their continued cohabitation was purely a matter of convenience. The fact that he had not had Given murdered, that in truth he remained clueless as to the killer and their motive, was immaterial.

What else? He racked his brain. Item nine was that the vagrant Rion had so far evaded AFP capture. Lyncoln Rose assured him that it was a matter of time, but he had his doubts about Lyncoln Rose and the AFP in general. He wouldn’t mind getting his hands on Rion, see what he could squeeze out of him, but that was hardly his biggest problem.

Item ten, and this was the key one: someone, possibly the Grand Director, had locked him out of crucial Security files, which was so embarrassing that he was now forced to cover up that fact. He felt sure that it all linked in with Yang Po and the Fearless Six, which was why he’d had Lui Ping, Jiang Wei’s fiancée, put on a salary. Time for her to earn her keep.

She took her time, maybe an hour, although at least this time she’d been persuaded to put her kid in the crèche. Natasha sent her through. Lui Ping wasn’t amazing to look at, he decided. Thin in the face, straight black hair, and not much up front. But the prolonged rest must have done her good, for today he was worth a pursed-lipped smile.

“And how is little Lijia?” he asked. “Enjoying her holiday?”

“She’s happy,” Ping agreed. “Happy to see her mother so much. It’s good.”

“A drink?” He knew she wouldn’t accept a whisky, but it gave him an excuse for a small one. She shook her head. He poured himself a glass and she waited while he sipped.

“Are you sending us back home?” she asked.

“Not yet, I still need you here for my investigation. That’s why I wanted to talk to you today.”

She nodded. “Yang Po has recovered?”

“He’s getting a little better, I’ve heard, but he’s still very weak. He won’t be coming back to Australia.” That, at least, was one less problem for him to think about.

Ping offered no further comment. She was a tough one, sinewy and stern. Not much love there for anyone except her daughter. For all he knew she had sworn off men since her fiancée’s death. He speculated that it had probably been so long that she’d shut up shop altogether.

“I want to ask you some more questions,” he said. “If you provide me with some useful information, then I’ll have a reason for you to stay longer. You understand?”

She did. “Ask. I tell you everything.”

He had her run through the events as she remembered them and her memory was good. He was particularly interested in the fact that Yang Po had personally visited them at Regal Perth Hospital in Jiang Wei’s final hours. “He asked your fiancée to withdraw his euthanasia application?” he asked, recapping.

“Yes, the company made him, but he didn’t care, really. He came to... how do you say? To gloat.” Her face hardened; there was real hatred there.

“And you say he admitted that he deliberately sent the men into the reactor without radiation suits? He didn’t try to deny it?”

“He said if I make trouble for him, he would send me to a work camp.”

He shook his head. “He has no authority anymore; I’m in charge here now.”

She shrugged as if to say, so what? “Mr Peters,” she said. “I mean this with respect. Since Jiang Wei died, I don’t trust one person. Nobody. Yang Po killed Lijia’s father. I don’t want her to be an orphan.”

“He can’t hurt you now; I promise.”

She crossed her arms. “He said the homeland needs martyrs. He said that the Controlled Waking State trial was a failure. He said he didn’t want to go to a work camp. That’s why he sent them. He knew they would die.” She spat out the words with venom.

He could see it now, the cold calculation, the collateral Yang Po had used to buy his way clear of trouble. Six men, six martyrs.

“Did anyone else from the company speak to you after Jiang Wei’s death?”

“No one. I only spoke to one Australian man working at the hospital. He said he was at Yellowcake Springs when it happened.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me the name of the bomber, David Baron.”

The name had been all over the media in the aftermath of course, but not then, not in the first few days after the attack. “What else did he say?”

“Just that he knew David Baron’s wife. Nothing else.”

“He knew Sylvia Baron? You said this guy was working at the hospital?”

“Just an orderly, yes.”

Now came the key question and he knew that she knew the answer before she said it, even before he asked. “Do you remember the Australian man’s name?”

Ping nodded. “He had a strange name, Orion.”

“Orion Saunders?”

“Yes. You know this man?”

“We haven’t met,” he said. “Not yet.”

Ping didn’t know anything else, but what she knew was enough. He sent her on her way with a promise that he’d try to get her visa extended and that as far as he was concerned she was working for Security from now on, even if she never set foot in the Eye except to report to him.

He put a call through to the AFP. “Get me Lyncoln Rose,” he said.