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Authors: James Douglas
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Magda accepted the card and they shook hands again. ‘I’m genuinely sorry I wasn’t able to help you.’
As Jamie made his way to the lift, the scent of Magda Ross’s perfume in his nostrils, he released a long breath. Very occasionally in life your path crossed with someone who could have a fundamental effect on your future. Unfortunately, it was usually the wrong time and the wrong person. He tried to focus on Fiona’s face and be thankful he’d just dodged a bullet.
Magda Ross watched from the office window as her visitor walked towards a black Mercedes limousine that stood idling by the museum’s main gate. When it drove off she lifted the phone and dialled the international number that had been in her head since Jamie Saintclair announced the real target of his search.
An hour later, Jamie attempted to shrug off the melancholy the museum visit had inspired by spending the rest of the afternoon browsing art galleries and dealerships along Auguststrasse. Partly, it was disappointment that he’d reached a dead end in the search for the Bougainville head so quickly, but it went deeper than that. For some indefinable reason that had its roots with Adam and Eve, Magda Ross exerted a kind of magnetic influence on him. The thought of calling Fiona temporarily raised his spirits, but he worked out that if it was early evening in Berlin it must be the middle of the night in Sydney.
As dusk approached he wandered back to the hotel by a circuitous route. When he entered the lobby it was filled with after-work drinkers and people gawping at the giant fish bowl. He decided against eating in the restaurant and went straight to his suite. Inside, he shut the curtains in the lounge and went to do the same in the bedroom – and froze. It wasn’t anything he could see, not yet, but an indefinable something had changed. The maids had cleaned the room while he was having breakfast, so it should have been exactly as he’d left it, but …
Since embarking on his alternative career in art recovery he’d developed certain habits designed to give him peace of mind in a new world littered with moral contradictions and shadowy, sometimes dangerous characters. Not security, as such. Nothing could stop someone putting a bullet in your head, or even a knife in your back if they were determined enough. Not security, but something to give him an edge. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d mention even to his best friend, because it made him look paranoid, but it had worked in the past and it worked now. For instance: the shoes he’d left that looked as if they’d been carelessly abandoned had been at an exact angle to each other, and placed just so to triangulate with the power point. Now they didn’t. The book on the bedside table with the business card marking the page and the pen perfectly touching the edge of the cover. The pen was still in place, but whoever had moved the book had been so absorbed in getting the pen right, that he’d been careless with the business card.
Someone had searched his room.
VIII
Bougainville 1943
Kristian Anugu sat in the depths of the bikbus listening to the sound of his pursuers crashing through the undergrowth like water buffalo. A tall, spare man with arm muscles like tree roots and handsome, almost Aryan, features, his hair flared in a wiry, untamed bush and his skin appeared so black it could almost be called purple. He carried a long spear in his right hand and the yelopela treasure under his left arm. He knew it must be treasure because the white soldiers who unwittingly supplied him with his belt and loincloth carried similar kes and they protected them with unusual vigilance for men usually so careless. His theory had been confirmed one day when he’d watched them worshipping the contents of the kes as they talked to God on the dit-da machine that travelled everywhere with them.
Curiosity had drawn him to the crashed flying machine and the yelopela king who looked as if he was asleep.
As Jamie made his way to the lift, the scent of Magda Ross’s perfume in his nostrils, he released a long breath. Very occasionally in life your path crossed with someone who could have a fundamental effect on your future. Unfortunately, it was usually the wrong time and the wrong person. He tried to focus on Fiona’s face and be thankful he’d just dodged a bullet.
Magda Ross watched from the office window as her visitor walked towards a black Mercedes limousine that stood idling by the museum’s main gate. When it drove off she lifted the phone and dialled the international number that had been in her head since Jamie Saintclair announced the real target of his search.
An hour later, Jamie attempted to shrug off the melancholy the museum visit had inspired by spending the rest of the afternoon browsing art galleries and dealerships along Auguststrasse. Partly, it was disappointment that he’d reached a dead end in the search for the Bougainville head so quickly, but it went deeper than that. For some indefinable reason that had its roots with Adam and Eve, Magda Ross exerted a kind of magnetic influence on him. The thought of calling Fiona temporarily raised his spirits, but he worked out that if it was early evening in Berlin it must be the middle of the night in Sydney.
As dusk approached he wandered back to the hotel by a circuitous route. When he entered the lobby it was filled with after-work drinkers and people gawping at the giant fish bowl. He decided against eating in the restaurant and went straight to his suite. Inside, he shut the curtains in the lounge and went to do the same in the bedroom – and froze. It wasn’t anything he could see, not yet, but an indefinable something had changed. The maids had cleaned the room while he was having breakfast, so it should have been exactly as he’d left it, but …
Since embarking on his alternative career in art recovery he’d developed certain habits designed to give him peace of mind in a new world littered with moral contradictions and shadowy, sometimes dangerous characters. Not security, as such. Nothing could stop someone putting a bullet in your head, or even a knife in your back if they were determined enough. Not security, but something to give him an edge. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d mention even to his best friend, because it made him look paranoid, but it had worked in the past and it worked now. For instance: the shoes he’d left that looked as if they’d been carelessly abandoned had been at an exact angle to each other, and placed just so to triangulate with the power point. Now they didn’t. The book on the bedside table with the business card marking the page and the pen perfectly touching the edge of the cover. The pen was still in place, but whoever had moved the book had been so absorbed in getting the pen right, that he’d been careless with the business card.
Someone had searched his room.
VIII
Bougainville 1943
Kristian Anugu sat in the depths of the bikbus listening to the sound of his pursuers crashing through the undergrowth like water buffalo. A tall, spare man with arm muscles like tree roots and handsome, almost Aryan, features, his hair flared in a wiry, untamed bush and his skin appeared so black it could almost be called purple. He carried a long spear in his right hand and the yelopela treasure under his left arm. He knew it must be treasure because the white soldiers who unwittingly supplied him with his belt and loincloth carried similar kes and they protected them with unusual vigilance for men usually so careless. His theory had been confirmed one day when he’d watched them worshipping the contents of the kes as they talked to God on the dit-da machine that travelled everywhere with them.
Curiosity had drawn him to the crashed flying machine and the yelopela king who looked as if he was asleep.
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