“And Flannery’s never forgiven him for it?”
“Scobie, woman hath no fury like that of a politician scorned.” Leeds smiled; he was almost fully himself again.
“But how does he get back at the P.M.?”
“Quentin has been the P.M.’s protégé. Some people think the P.M. has been grooming him to take over some day. Quentin had only been in Parliament two years when he was made a junior minister. If there were any overseas junkets, he was always on them. Then when the last High Commissioner in London died suddenly, Quentin was sent there. It’s a diplomatic post, but it’s always filled by a politician. Either as a reward for past services or as a build-up for bigger things. Quentin is obviously meant for bigger things.” Then he corrected himself: “Or was.”
Malone felt the light beginning to filter through; the atmosphere in Flannery’s office had fogged up his mind, but now he was out in the open again. “So with the Federal elections coming up in July, with the voting as close as they expect it to be – a nice juicy scandal could tip the scales, is that the idea?”
“Elections have been won and lost on less. All Labour has to do is query the P.M.’s judgment of the men he appoints. He’s made one or two poor choices as Ministers. Add this one and Labour will ask if he really should be in charge of the country.”
“Somehow it’s a bastard of a way to decide a country’s future.”
“You should read more history, Scobie. That look of pain you sometimes see on a politician’s face has been caused by a stab in the back. Some of the most honoured men in history were very good with the knife.”
“But Flannery, he’s not thinking of going into Federal politics, is he?”
“Of course not. He’s king here in New South Wales. Why would he want to go down to Canberra, just be one of the princes? No, this is just a personal feud between him and the P.M.”
“And Quentin – what’s he? The shuttlecock?”
“He’s a murderer, Scobie. That’s all you have to think of him.”
They had reached the entrance to the shabby old tenement that was Police Headquarters. Amid the blinding dazzle of the steel-and-glass cliffs that surrounded it, it looked like an ancient monument of dubious origin, perhaps the only building ever erected by the aborigines. The law in Australia had always been the poor cousin of government; what right had a copper to be comfortable? They went into the musty lobby and ascended in the antique lift that creaked like the machinery of law itself.
As they got out of the lift Leeds handed Malone the file. “Read that, then bring it back to me. Keep the carbon of it, you might need it in London, but don’t let anyone here see it. It’s top secret. At least it is for another week. Then I shouldn’t be surprised if Flannery has posters made of it and stuck up all over Sydney.”
Malone took the file and went looking for an empty office. Most of the staff were out at lunch, but he himself had no appetite for food just now. Disturbed by what he had witnessed and been told this morning, excited by the sudden prospect of his first trip abroad, he wanted only to get into this case at once. He found an empty room, sat down in one of the uncomfortable chairs, opened the file and began his acquaintance with John Quentin, born Corliss, ambassador and murderer.
III
In a comfortable chair in a luxury apartment on the other side of the world, Madame Cholon looked out at the soft London drizzle of rain and nodded her head emphatically.
“The man to kill,” she said, “is the Australian High Commissioner.”
The three men with her said nothing. Two of them had learned not to answer her till she looked directly at them for comment; the third, Pallain, was still feeling his way with her. She stood up and, the silk legs of her tailored slacks hissing together, she crossed to stand at the window. Down the road the Science Museum bulked like a dark cliff through the grey rain; Kensington was slowly being washed off the map. She had been in England a month now and she hated its greyness, its wetness and its cold. She shivered and pulled up the collar of her cashmere cardigan.
“This conference is not going the way we want it.” She spoke French, in a high soft voice, for the benefit of Pallain; she knew that he could speak Vietnamese, but she had never heard him speak anything but French or English. He was a snob, but she was sometimes that herself. “Something has to be done to disrupt it. This man Quentin is the one who is now dominating it, so he is the obvious one to be eliminated.” Below her in the street an ice-cream van went slowly by, its bell tinkling with ridiculous optimism in the cold grey day. What optimists the English were, always confident the sun was about to shine! She preferred the French, with their cynicism and their pessimism; one always knew where one stood with pessimists. She turned back to the three men, all of them with at least a strain of French blood in them. “Do you not agree?”
Pallain scratched the stubble of beard that always began to appear on his face at this time of day. He had more French in him than the other two men: his father had been a hairy sergeant from Carcassonne who had died in the mud at Then Bien Phu, leaving behind him a twenty-year-old son whose birth he regretted as much as his own death. “I don’t see the point of killing the Australian.”
Madame Cholon sighed, not attempting to hide her impatience with Pallain’s lack of imagination. Legs still hissing like singing snakes, she came back and sat down. “If he is killed, who is going to be accused of it? Not us, because no one knows of us. But everyone else with an interest in our country will be suspected. The Americans will accuse the Chinese and vice versa. The same with the South Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, the Catholics and the Buddhists. Why, even General de Gaulle might be suspected!” Her smooth schoolgirl’s face showed a schoolgirl’s spiteful humour. “And as soon as suspicion sets in, that is the end of the usefulness of the conference. It will be adjourned, just like so many other conferences. The war may stumble on, but there will be no real government in Saigon, just as there has not been for the past two years. Anarchy is the climate we want.”
“It may not be easy,” said Pallain. “I mean, killing the Australian.”
The other two men nodded. Truong Tho and Pham Chinh were both small men, and the French blood in them was two generations old and poor vintage at that. They were not strangers to murder, but they were strangers to London and the big city made them ill at ease and even a little frightened.
“I love to gamble,” said Madame Cholon. “But I do not think the odds in this case have to be against us.”
The three men knew whom the betting would be against: themselves, not Madame Cholon. Pallain said, “London has a very clean record when it comes to assassination.”
“Then it is time its record was spoiled. The English are too smug about their dull way of life. Reading their newspapers, one would think the rest of the world was made up of barbarians.”
Pallain hid his smile, recognising a barbarian when he saw one and being afraid of her. “How soon do you want Quentin–er–eliminated?” He wanted to smile again, embarrassed by the gangster phrase. He had spent all his adult life with gangsters of one sort or another, but he read Racine and dreamed of a life among such people as Proust had known. “We shall have to make plans.”
“Naturally,” said Madame Cholon, her voice tart with contempt for the dullards she had to employ. In the street below she heard the tinkling of the ice-cream van’s bell, and in her homesick ear it sounded like an echo of the temple bells along the Mekong River. She looked out of the window again, saw the thin explosion of sun behind the range of clouds far away to the west, and felt her own sudden flash of optimism. “One does not kill a man without making plans.”
John James Quentin (Corliss):
Born: Tumbarumba, New South Wales, July 15, 1915.
Parents: