‘Michael’s deep freeze.’
‘Hah!’ Cressida laughed. ‘Oh to be a Managing Partner. So – how’s it going out there?’
‘Enough kittens to open a pet shop.’ Richard shrugged. ‘Mainly because they’re sure their other plants are next.’
‘Seems reasonable. At least until someone’s in custody. Or, rather a lot of people, probably.’
Richard sipped his drink.
‘Yeah well. The client’s convinced it’s environmental.’
‘It fits,’ Cressida shrugged. ‘I mean, why would you bother otherwise? If it was just general bloodshed and disorder you wanted, wouldn’t you do something straightforward, like, I don’t know, a train station or something?’
‘Yeah maybe,’ he said. ‘Although apparently ISIL have claimed responsibility.’
‘ISIL,’ said Cressida. Her voice was flat.
‘I heard it on the radio this morning. Four people turned themselves in to Wyong copshop. They’re calling them the Climate Four. Didn’t say they were ISIL, but who knows?’
‘Yeah, great,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘I just figured with how nuts the greenies have been going on that big coal mine in Queensland, it made sense that it was environmental. Not that the greenies weren’t nuts already. Look at my brother.’
Richard laughed and rolled his eyes.
‘God.’ He shook his head with a laugh. ‘Is he still on that boat?’
‘It’s whale hunt season. He’s out there,’ she shrugged, feeling the same sense of annoyance she always felt when the topic of Jerome came up. There came an outburst in Mandarin from the terrace and they looked up; the man sitting next to the speaker echoed the other just as rapidly in English.
‘Hey I got your missed call, by the way,’ said Cressida, turning. ‘Was it urgent? I was going to call you back, but then there was this blackout thingie, and I didn’t get a chance.’
Richard laughed. ‘Well, God,’ he said, passing his hand over his face. ‘Now that you mention it, that might have hit the skids as well. How does the biggest transport project the state’s ever seen sound? I’m serious,’ he added, at Cressida’s come on look. ‘Bigger spend than the M one, two and four put together.’ He put his beer down. ‘InterConnex. They’re doing the extension into Victoria at last, and adding Queensland to it for good measure. Two fifteen billion dollars in value, big enough to make Coffs to Yamba look like a wallaby track. You as lead legal counsel on it, by the way. WestConnex loved you so much they told all their friends about you. Jesus girl, you look like I just said you’d won the lottery,’ he said, grinning. ‘Launch in eight weeks, PM’s invited, black tie, the usual. They want to officially issue the call for detailed proposals there – which means a draft T and C ready for review by the client in four.’
Cressida frowned. ‘And they’re not worried about, you know, this?’
Richard picked up his beer again. ‘They’re assuming the power will get sorted out in time.’ He shrugged. ‘And that it’s important to – or should I say, be seen to – get on with business as usual as much as possible, blah blah blah. Anyway – Brian’s set up an office in his basement, said you can work there. It’s either that or fly down to Melbourne with Tax, I’m afraid.’ He laughed, as they shared a look of mock horror. ‘At least until the power’s back on.’
‘But … I’m not a Partner yet,’ Cressida said, her mind yet devouring the possibilities. It wouldn’t matter that she was only an SA though, she knew. Pulling off a project like this would make her a serious acquisition – maybe even directly at Partner level – for any law firm in the country.
‘Oh yes, that,’ Richard said. ‘The vote.’ He paused, and looked at her with sympathy. ‘Look I did manage to have a quick chat to Michael, and he thinks we can get the Partners together again in—’
The sliding door opened and the Managing Partner stuck his head in. ‘Ah, Cressida,’ he said. ‘Can you two join us in here? Cressida – I was hoping you could run Mr Zhou through the planning issues for a potential rebuild. Best case scenario of course …’
‘Of course,’ said Cressida, finishing her drink. But she grabbed Richard’s elbow as he pushed himself away from the bench.
‘So,’ she whispered. ‘When?’
‘When what?’
‘The partnership vote.’
‘Oh,’ Richard said. ‘Cressida, you understand, it’s tricky right now … That’s really Brian’s decision. Okay, okay … I’ll ask him – we can try for, maybe, three weeks?’
She smiled.
‘Fabulous,’ she said, and stepped out into the patio. ‘Mr Zhou. Hi everyone,’ she acknowledged, shaking the CEO’s hand. A chair was brought and she sat down on it, giving the client her most winning smile.
‘Cressida,’ Michael began. ‘It was our Szechuan office in China you were in, is that right?’
She nodded. ‘Chengdu. Beautiful.’ The CEO laughed and said something to his translator. It sounded to Cressida like ‘that monkey prostitute’s asshole’. Oh yes. She had missed the richness of Chinese vernacular.
‘Cressida,’ Michael continued, ‘how can we fast track the red tape on your environment side of things for SinoGen? What’s the situation now that Part 6A has commenced? Would you mind running Terry through it?’
‘Certainly,’ she said, turning to the CEO. A fresh drink appeared at her shoulder and she took it, sipping delicately then placing it carefully on the glass. The man adjacent looked at her, ready to translate. ‘It’s okay,’ she said to him in Mandarin. ‘I speak Mandarin.’
At that, Mr Zhou’s eyes flew open and the two men shared a disbelieving glance, then the CEO fell back in his chair with a bark of laughter.
‘Oh thank God,’ said Mr Zhou in Mandarin. ‘Call me Terry.’ He sighed and shook his head, then slapped both thighs and laughed. ‘You would have heard me call Chengdu a whore’s asshole then. And you are not so stupid an egg as the rest of these chrysanthemum faces.’ The translator reddened and Cressida tried not to laugh. It meant having a face like an anus. ‘Anus vagina, someone said it takes two years to get approval?’ he said. ‘That’s fucking mad.’
‘Sorry,’ she said with a sympathetic smile. ‘There’s a lot of regulation in this country.’
‘But I don’t have that kind of time,’ he said, rolling his eyes in exasperation. ‘Fucking shareholders, you know, breathing down my neck.’ He glanced over at Michael and mimed a cut-throat motion with one finger.
‘Sorry,’ said Cressida to Michael. ‘Do you want me to translate?’
‘What? No, no,’ Michael said. ‘You just do your thing and let us know the upshot.’
She turned back to Mr Zhou. ‘Best guess for a switch-on date, assuming you get funding? Um … five years?’
His eyes flew open.
‘It takes at least two years before they’ll even pass the paperwork,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to wait for the Director General’s environmental criteria, do the environmental assessments, put the thing out for public comment, wait for submissions, respond to them, probably do more environmental assessments, wait for the approval panel to be convened, and then it could take