The traffic thickened up but flowed more swiftly as they headed out towards the airport, leaving behind the stop-start driving of the city proper. For a while there was very little sign of the great changes that had remade the face of Darwin in the few years it had been operating as a tax-free entrepot and more recently as a home port for the Combined Fleet. The suburbs were older, more settled, with less evidence of rapid redevelopment. Out near Darwin International Airport, a long stretch of the highway was bounded on the southern side by light manufacturing and wholesaling businesses. A huge pornography supermarket painted bright yellow and pink nestled in next to rival pool-pump vendors and a piping supplier. Out of her window, on the northern side, Jules could see an enormously fat military plane parked on the tarmac at the airport. Light armoured cars bounced down a rear ramp while, in the background, giant bulldozers scraped away at the red earth to build the new, third runway.

‘It’s a pity about those morons blowing themselves up at your place, Shah,’ she said. ‘Not that I’d have wanted them to succeed, of course, but it would’ve been useful to have had a chat. Three times these buggers have had a go at me and I’ve never yet been able to confirm they were Cesky’s hires. Except for one idiot in New York who gave it away before Barbie slotted him.’

‘How so?’ asked Shah as they pulled up at an intersection. Two more Land Rovers pulled in and flanked them. Shah nodded to the drivers, his drivers, and Jules tried to spot Birendra, but he didn’t appear to be in the small convoy.

‘How’d she slot him? . . . No, sorry. Silly question. You mean how did he give it away? The cartel guys opened up on us as we were heading to a prearranged address, where our entirely fictional client had promised there was fortune and glory awaiting us if we could retrieve some documents from a safe in his apartment. Well, not his apartment. He was a lawyer supposedly representing a man called Rubin. Said Rubin had papers giving him drilling rights over some part of the Sonoma field, off the US West Coast.’

‘Did you investigate the claim?’