‘I’m happy to help out, Julianne. A place like Darwin, you have to look out for your mates. I still have a lot of contacts inside the Australian Government, not just the army. It helps that I do a lot of work for them still. But because I do that work, like Shah, I have to tread lightly. If you’re right, and this Cesky prick has your names on a list, that’s bad fucking news. I made a few quick calls today, after Piers brought me in on this. I couldn’t get much because of the time difference. Everyone was asleep in the US. But from what little I could gather, Cesky has burrowed himself right in under the skin of the Kipper administration. I don’t know how close he is to the President himself. But he’s a big donor, a public defender of the government, who’ll take on all comers. And, of course, he put his own blokes on the street back in ’03, when the Yanks had their little uprising and threw out that mad fucking general who tried to take over. Cesky’s a thug, basically. But a very well connected thug.’

The champagne and beer were going to Jules’s head. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, save for the couple of fishcakes she inhaled just now. It’d been a bitch of a day, after a shitty week back in Sydney. And she was worried about the Rhino.

‘But you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know about this bastard,’ she said, speaking to all three. ‘I knew he was a thug as soon as I met him back in Acapulco. That’s why we didn’t let them on the boat. Jesus Christ, you remember that scene in the bar when we were looking for passengers, Shah, before Miguel beat him down . . . The guy wasn’t even on board and he was already trying to take over! And hey, I know he’s got connections. They’ve been trying to bloody kill me for months. And now they’re after you.’ She tipped the neck of her beer bottle Shah’s way before going on.

‘What I still don’t know is what we can do about it. Killing his hired help doesn’t seem to discourage him. And I don’t think we have the option of wandering into Seattle to deal with him directly. We are not at sea anymore, nor is this New York. So yeah, you’re right, I can’t just stick a shotgun up his jacksy and let him have a couple of barrels of change-your-fucking-mind-Princess. I mean, Jesus, if he’s hanging around with government types, you’d probably get popped by the Secret Service for even looking sideways at him. They’re a lot more trigger-happy than they used to be.’