They were indeed very pretty, and looked hideously expensive with it. Not that the Sirocco was a greasy spoon, with its dark, bentwood chairs, fresh white linen and a minimalist fit-out that suggested an architect had been paid a lot of money to do nothing. However, the patrons and trophy wives sunning themselves and enjoying breakfast out on the terrace, while looking well fed and content, didn’t seem to be in the same league as the new money she’d seen flaunting itself down on Allen Avenue. Even so, many of them were probably the well-insulated, well-off types who never let the cares of the world affect them.

‘This whole headland used to be mostly open ground,’ said Pappas, his big, rugby player’s frame expanding as two arms stretched out to provide some idea of the size of the area being discussed. ‘It was the barracks, some pretty dreary housing, and a lot of brown grass keeping the dust down.’

That didn’t describe the neighbourhood she had just walked through. It looked to have been extruded, fully formed, within the last twenty-four hours, from the wet dreams of a property developer with an Ayn Rand fetish. Condo complexes, pucka low-rise residential villages, stand-alone mansions of steel and glass, implying astronomical power bills to keep them cool, satellite dishes, in-ground pools and long tidy avenues shaded by old-growth trees. The sort of trees you could transplant, but only at massive expense.

‘Seems a short time for such a complete makeover, though, right?’ asked Jules. ‘New money, I suppose?’

‘Like you would not believe. Hundreds of billions of dollars poured in here, looking for a safe haven. It was like a tsunami, a blast wave. It swept everything away. There’s an army base about thirty clicks outside the city, replaced the barracks here. There are two infantry divisions out there, one armoured regiment, and a Marine Expeditionary Unit that the Yanks kicked in to give the Combined Fleet an amphibious assault capability. And, of course, because they couldn’t afford to run an MEU themselves anymore, the Pacific Alliance now picks up the tab. Anyway, all of the infrastructure, all of the matériel, every bloody cubic metre of concrete, every nail, everything – it was all paid for by the development authority.’

‘Just like the Old Bill’s nick yesterday,’ Jules ventured, nodding slowly. ‘All on account with the FPDA.’

‘Too right. Except we call ‘em brown-shirts here,’ he added with a grin. ‘And all just so they could get the military out of the city and the developers onto the headland. That’s how much money they have, and that’s how much power it brings.’