'When I was a kid I used to dream about Vlad the Impaler.'
He looked at me sideways, half smiling so I wasn't sure he was serious. I waited for the rattle of the closing garage door to stop before I said anything but he got in first.
'Yeah, I dreamt about all those people squirming around on stakes in Transylvania. Up the rectum, through the spine. Oh. That'd hurt. I still …' He trailed off. 'Haunted by it.'
He took his glasses off, polished them with a dirty handkerchief. I leaned against his '76 Monaro with the GT stripe and flames. Waited for him to finish. Yawned, looked at my watch.
'The trouble is, André, the fellow doing the staking, Vlad? Right? Was me. The stake man. That was …'
He trailed off.
'Huh,' I said.
'What sort of effect do you think that would have on a child? Having those dreams night after night after night?'
'I'm not sure,' I said, sitting on the bonnet of the car.
'Watch the duco.'
I got off.
'Depends on the child,' I said. 'Might turn him into a genius. Might turn him into a serial killer. Might turn him, I don't know, into a connoisseur of Bela Lugosi movies. How should I know? Depends on whether you believe in fate or whether you think you're a free agent.'
'Oh, a "connoisseur of Bela Lugosi movies". Do you write for the arts pages these days, chief?'
'No. General news.'
'General reporting.'
'I'm a journalist.'
'Reporter?'
'Journalist.'
'What's the difference?'
'Quality.'
He looked at me again, shrugged, turned to the trapdoor that led under the house, keys jingling at his wrist. He put a key in the lock, hands shaking, turned it, then removed the padlock carefully.
'I've got something I want to show you, Mr Journalist with a Q,' he said, not looking up. 'I want you to promise you won't tell a soul, until I'm ready. Under pain of death.'
'What, are you going to kill me?'
'This is serious. Knowledge like this has driven people mad. Driven them to despair.'
I scoffed but he was making me uneasy. I'd never seen him like this. And it was steamy in the garage. The wet was on the way.
'I don't know what you're getting at, but yeah,' I said.
'No no no,' he said. 'No my friend. It's not "but yeah". This is serious. A great deal hangs on this.'
'OK, I promise.'
He stopped and thought about it a moment.
'Then again, I don't have to show you. We can go on being friends and you'll just read about this in the papers. Somebody else's papers. What I'm doing, see, is, see, I'm cutting you in. I'm giving you the story.'
He licked his lips, looked at me over the top of his glasses.
'Deepening the friendship,' I said.
'I'm serious.'
'My lips are sealed, Ed. I won't tell a soul until you say so. You have my word.'
'Giving you the story.'
'I get it,' I said.
He called me a good man and turned to the door again and crawled inside. I watched him go then looked at my watch again. I was meeting Shelley tonight, after her show. I thought about her while Ed shuffled around under the house.
He grunted and cursed, and after a few minutes backed out slowly, his shirt decorated with dust and cobwebs. He was out of breath.
The disease had turned his legs and backside into matchsticks over the past three months. You hit the bottle like he did and you don't eat much.
He was hauling something out. A box. Big and black. My gut did a loop.
'A coffin, Ed? Hell.'
He told me not to jump to conclusions and sat down heavily on the concrete floor.
'Pass me that screwdriver.'
I did.
He rested for a moment then unscrewed the lid and hauled it off. He was panting with the effort and let it clatter to the floor. At the same time I heard noises under the house where he'd just been. Footsteps, a knocking. The faint whinny of a horse.
'Hey. Is someone under there?'
He ignored me and stared into the box. I couldn't see it at first in the dim light but I craned my neck. It was a sleek, metallic object, glowing softly in one corner. I took a step back.
'Shit,' I said. 'It's a cruise missile.'
'Bleeep. Wrong,' he said. 'Nuclear warhead.'
It sat there like a malevolent silver turd, presaging death on a grand scale.
Vlad the Impaler. That amateur sadist had nothing on the boys who cooked up these things. I didn't know for sure but I reckoned it could take out all of Cairns and Kuranda as well. And if the wind was blowing the wrong way the air base in Townsville would have a run for its money too.
'A nuke,' I said, shaking my head. 'Is it real?'
'You bet your bottom dollar, André my friend, it's real. One hundred and forty-five kilotons real.'
'Where'd you get it? What are you gonna do with it? I mean, how —'
'Too many questions.'
'All right. Number one. How did you get it?'
'You know those Russian guys I drink with?'
'The, yeah. Ilya … Anatoly … and what's his name?'
'Boris.'
'You got it from them? Those Russian guys got a nuke into the country and you stole it from them? I joked they were KGB, but — '
'Hold it right there cowboy,' he said, lighting a cigarette.
'Should you be smoking in here?'
He laughed. 'It's not gunpowder.' He flicked his live match at the warhead and it bounced off. I flinched. He scratched his legs where red midgee bites oozed.
'You got it off the Russkies?'
'No. "The Russkies".' He sniggered. 'We went to this place in Brizzy. Down a back street, behind one of those chichi, nouvelle cuisine, you know, Asian, you know, fusion cuisine restaurants. Fish restaurant. Went fishin'.' He laughed.
'I thought someone was gonna cut me throat, but ... We went into a back room. There were these Japanese boys there with tatts and missing fingers, a couple of Sicilians, I don't know. Triads too. It was a full house. I was pissed as a newt, been drinking vodka all night, you know, but once I sat at the card table I focused.'
'On what?'
'Poker.'
'Are you telling me —'
'That's exactly what I'm telling you. The night got, you know, strange. There was this American dude there. CIA. Kept rabbiting on about, Donald Trump, the military undoubtable complex …'
'Military industrial complex.'
'That's the one. The stakes got higher, I seem to remember. Ilya bet some real estate around Chernobyl. Boris bet a crown he said belonged to Peter the Great. He had a picture of it on his phone. The American guy swallowed it. Heh heh heh. It was a picture of a crown in the Tower of London. The Yank believed us. One of the Japanese guys bet his prize koi.'
'His what?'
'Goldfish.'
I looked at him.
'Yeah, you know, a prize one. They love their koi over there. Impressive. Another bet his tailor. They dress sharp, the old Yakuza. I bet my house, me dear old dad's farm. Three thousand acres at Longreach, lizard country, but I didn't tell 'em that. I still say that word and it makes me wanna puke. "Longreach." Like a big long technicolour yawn. "Daaad." The same. I told them Yakuza it was a dairy property, you know, grass-fed organic wagyu beef. The CIA dude said he was sick of living "inside the Beltway", whatever the fuck that is. And he says, "I'll lay down some high-level tech. It's secret but it's big. And you're just yanking my chain anyway. You wouldn't bet the family farm on the crap hand you've got …" He went on like that. I could've punched him out. He lays his hand down. He has a straight flush. Pretty good. Hahahaha. I had a royal flush. Best hand in the game. Game of chicken, hahaha. He was shitfaced all right. I thought I'd heard the last of him. But three weeks later I get this special delivery.'
'Special delivery?'
'This, me old legend, me old horsebreaker, me old … ink merchant.' He pointed to the warhead. 'Yeah. You should see my wardrobe now. And I got the carp out the back in me fishpond.'
'This thing came in the post?'
'Naaaaaah. Special delivery. I had to sign for it and everything.' He mimicked signing in the air.
'All right,' I said. 'So what are you gonna do with it?' I turned and peered at the door to under the house, where it sounded as if someone was hammering a stake into the ground. 'What's going on under there?'
'What I'm gonna do with it my friend, my old ink merchant, is. Look. I just know I am meant for something grander that spending my last days here in Yorkeys fucking Knob, with mangoes dropping about me ears and drinking myself into oblivion. I know it.' His voice dropped to a whisper. 'As sure as I dream about being — and I know I am — the son of the Dragon.'
'Sometimes Ed I don't know what the hell you're talking about. And what's that noise under the house?'
'Son of Dracul. Son of the Devil.'
'What?'
'That's me. I'm destined for greatness, André. I am not gonna live in this shitbox of a house by a heaving, dying sea, swatting midgees for the rest of my born days. I am going, I am going … shit I need a drink. Hang on a moment.'
He stumbled to the spare fridge on the other side of the garage and rummaged through it. I carefully stepped over to the trapdoor, already half open, and pushed it further. I stooped and looked inside. It was dark under there and my eyes took a little to accustom to the lack of light. The dimness was not because there was no electric light. It was dusk. The sun was setting over a vast plain. In the foreground, only ten metres away, were something, poles, standing in the ground. A man. A man on horseback directing others. He wore armour and a distinctive red cloak over the top. I couldn't see his face. He spoke to them in a language I didn't understand, pointed at something with his sword. They, the soldiers, hammered stakes through their prisoners' bellies, backsides, lifted them up and planted the poles in the soil, where the prisoners wriggled like flies on a pin. I heard their screams. The man directing them turned his face to me. He had a big, wide thick moustache, long black hair past his shoulders, rows of pearls around his head with a sort of square ruby embedded in a golden star at the front. His eyebrows were thin and his red-rimmed eyes were of a black that sucked in the light around them. I backed out so quickly I nearly knocked the nuke over.
Ed had found half a bottle of red and was swigging it. He closed the fridge door and turned to me.
'Anyway,' he said. 'Anyway, I am going to ... shit what's the matter with you?'
'I feel sick,' I said.
'You'll be right. Have a drink.' He offered me the bottle but I said no.
'I am going to make my mark, André. What can I do for this worn out, old planet, this poor piece of rock wracked by wars and global warming, the rich bombing the poor, backsliding politicians — ' he hitched his shorts — 'and the fact I can never get a comfy pair of trousers at Cairns Central. What can I do? Here it is. Wait for it. It's good.'
He drained the rest of the wine and dropped the bottle. It clattered away without breaking. 'I am going to … to create an inland sea. In Aussie. Australia's own inland sea.' He stood to attention and saluted. 'It will solve droughts and the climate crisis, it will give the Aboriginal kiddies lots of fun in the desert, and white kiddies as well no doubt, and also fishing and boating, and it will change completely the climate of central Australia. "I love a sunburnt country, that sapphire sea aforesaid, that land of sweeping plains, that ocean made by Ed." The kiddies will be reciting that a hundred years from now.'
I didn't say anything.
'Of course, it could use a little work, but you're the writer. You can come up with something better … anyway that's for later, a detail. Instead of a desert, let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a Mediterranean paradise flourish beyond Longreach. The explorers, Leichardt, Burke and Wills, they were looking for the inland sea. And I'm at last going to give it to them.'
'Heal the planet.'
'That's it, André. Make my mark. Leave my legacy. Heal the planet. People will thank me forever. Why they haven't thought of this for the Sahara is beyond me.'
'Did you ever consider the radiation?'
'Radiation? Oh, that, you know, the water, it, ah … negates, it becomes … you know, negative ions … because …' He trailed off. He produced a beer can from his pocket and drank.
'Are you going to warn people,' I said. 'I mean, a nuclear explosion is not something you really want too close to your house, is it.'
'Oh yeah, I've thought through this. Everything. Once it's in place, you, André, draft the press release and everyone evacuates. We'll get the State Emergency Services to help. Get all the old people and the kiddies out. And then I pull the pin! Simple. Foolproof. Then you write the kiddies' oath.'
'The what?'
'You know, for schools. I love a sunburnt …'
I drove away feeling sick in the pit of my gut.
Three things.
1. Alcohol. He'd been an old friend and I'd watched him descend into the dark hole. There was a time when we'd hung out, played music, gone drinking together. But his bouts of drinking got heavier and longer till he was out most nights, and not just nights but drinking into the morning, seven, eight, nine in the morning. I couldn't keep up. And I told him he'd lose his wife and kids. He listened but he kept drinking and his wife left him and she took the kids. He didn't seem to worry. He had an inheritance and didn't have to work. And the company he kept. Alcoholics with teeth smashed in and dried blood on their faces, bleary eyed and greasy haired and dressed in rags.
2. The bomb. Not many people have nuclear weapons under their houses, I was reasonably confident of that. I thought two things about it. One, that it wasn't real and he was just on a bender. A fantasy. The logistics of even getting a nuke into the country were beyond me. Or two, that it was a bona fide nuke — and I had seen it — and he was going to use it. He told me it came with instructions and a trigger set.
'Flat packed. Sort of like an Ikea bookcase,' he said.
An inland sea? Seemed unlikely, but then, I didn't know much about nuclear weapons. Who knows, if he blew it in the right place he might create a huge pit that would fill with water, and a hundred flowers would bloom.
3. And this got me — if there could be anything more worrying than my unstable alcoholic friend with a nuclear warhead down his trousers — what the hell had I seen under his house? A scene from hell. Ivan the … Vlad the Impaler. Count Dracula. The original. Ed was haunted that's for sure. Not just mentally. Something was there. A presence.
And then I dismissed the whole thing. This was suburban Cairns. Frangipani, flying foxes hanging upside down from trees, streets crowded with tourists eating ice cream, meth dealers on every corner. There was no fifteenth century psychopath, could be no prince of Wallachia impaling his enemies on wooden poles up their arses under a house in the suburbs. That was the stuff of, of, it wasn't even fantasy. It was beyond belief. I dismissed it. It wasn't worth thinking about.
But I'd seen it. With my own eyes. I'd seen Vlad the Impaler. Dressed in armour, torturing prisoners.
Under a house in Yorkeys Knob.
I didn't see Shelley that night. I called her and told her something had come up. I paced the floor for a couple of hours, not calling the cops or the hospital for the men in white coats, or the military for that matter, just listening to the night birds. And screaming bats. At dusk I decided to go back and stop him.
The sky turning dark red and spectacled flying foxes screaming and taking to the air. Their forms silhouetted against a rising moon that reflected against heavy clouds and my growing sense of dread.
By the time I turned off the Captain Cook onto the Yorkeys road it was dark. The road was empty but for the occasional cane truck, and my headlights lit up cane fields by the roadside. Huge numbers of screaming bats hovered above them. I passed something by the side of the road and slowed. Shook my head. I looked in the rearview and all was dark. I turned the car slowly and drove back. Just above the tops of the cane on the left hand side, four stakes planted in the dirt, sharpened at the top.
Smeared with blood.
I parked outside Ed's place. It was dark but for a light burning in a back room. I snooped around, peered through the gap in the garage door. The car was gone, no sign of the bomb. The trapdoor under the house swung open, tapped back and forth in a breeze coming from somewhere, but it was dark under there. I listened. No soldiers hammering stakes into the ground. I went to the front door just to be sure, rang the bell. Silence. I banged on it.
Footsteps came from inside somewhere and I breathed out. I'd caught him. But as the footsteps approached they didn't sound like Ed's and I nearly turned and ran, thinking of that grotesque scene under the house.
Before I could escape, the porch light came on and the door opened. A short man stood looking at me. He wore a tan, well fitted vest over a neatly pressed dark blue shirt, spotless cream chinos with suspenders, a boldly patterned tie in reds, greens and mauves, and brown Gucci boots. I knew they were Gucci because I'd looked at a pair in Myers and nearly bought them until I saw the price. He held a tape measure in one hand. A needle was pinned to his breast pocket and crimson thread dangled from it.
I looked at him and he looked at me through Teashade glasses, the ones with round frames. His black hair was parted neatly in the centre.
'Hello,' I said.
'Ah, konbanwa. Watashi no namaeha Suzuki Haruto desu.' He smiled, bowed and blinked at me. 'Sorry I don't speak Japanese.'
He shook his head suddenly as if in apology and smiled a big smile. 'You friend Mr Fortune?'
'Yes I am. Do you know where he is?'
'Ah Mr Fortune, he drink too much.'
'Yes, true. Who are you?'
'Watashi no namaeha Suzuki Haruto desu,' he repeated, and bowed. 'Suzuki. You know, vroom vroom?' he laughed. 'Suzuki? Yes, motorbike?'
'Yes, ok,' I said.
'Haruto, Haruto san. You call me Haruto, Harry. But don't call me late for breakfast.' He didn't smile. It was one of Ed's signature expressions.
'All right Harry,' I said. 'Who are you?'
'Yes of course I am tailor for Yakuza gangster! Yamaguchi-gumi. Shinoda Kenichi san. Takayama Kiyoshi san. Tokyo. Kobe. Where they need clothes I make. Now I work on, ah, Mr Fortune. His clothes. He need new wardrobe.'
'Where's he gone?'
'He say, dating Destiny. I no know who is Destiny. And, now you here, I need ah, witness to my permanent residings. I want stay Australia. I no like a gangsters. Any more.' He shook his head and mimed wiping his hands.
'Nice, look I can't — '
'Good you wait, I get permanent residings papers. You say I hard worker? I make good fortune? Hahaha, that joke. I no make trouble in Australia. Also Fortune san letter for you.'
He smiled, bowed and backed into the house. The first heavy spots of rain fell while I cooled my heels.
Haruto returned with a folder in one hand and a letter in the other. He handed me the letter.
'Thanks.'
'Now sign my permanent residings? Come inside, rain.'
'Sorry,' I said, but, believe it or not, I have to save the world.'
I felt bad but I turned away from him and jogged back to the car.
André, I couldn't trust you. I don't even know why I thought I could. A friggin' journalist, a pervert of newspaper lies. Purveyor, but pervert'll do. You probably are a pervert. That girlfriend of yours is she even eighteen?
A tapping on the window. I looked up and Haruto stood there holding the folder and his passport to the glass. He pointed to them and smiled.
'Sorry, can't help you,' I said. 'I have to …' His hair was wet and water ran down his face. I turned back to the letter.
Call the fucking cops, whatever you have to do, nobody can stop me anyway. I'm making my stand — my last stand. I don't need you as my publicist. I'm bigger than that I'm bigger than you. people will wonder for EVER about me. Go off and write your friggin' story for the pissy Murdoch Press. I will go down in history but you, You are a pipsqueak. A hack. You are nothing. No one will remember you. You can't even write. You are a poor sad motherfucker. I am Edward Fortune, destroyer of worlds.
I stared at the letter for a time. The last line was scribbled out more than I can show here, but I shone my phone on it and made out the words. The bit about me not being able to write hurt. I thought we were friends, but maybe that was the alcohol talking.
I started the car, shifted to reverse and looked in the rearview. Haruto was lying on the road. He held his folder up and pointed at it. The rain was coming down in buckets. He smiled.
'For God's sake.' I opened the passenger door. 'Get in,' I shouted.
If I was going to save the world I could use some company. He climbed in soaking wet.
'Put your seat belt on,' I said. 'We're going for a drive.'
'I like to drive,' he said. 'Then you sign my permanent residings.'
'All right.'
He looked back at the house. 'But I no lock fucking door.'
'Never mind,' I said.
'Never mind,' he repeated, and sat quietly mouthing the words, as if trying to figure them out.
We drove along the Yorkeys road. I didn't notice the poles in the cane field that time. When we came to the highway turn-off, the palm trees on the roundabout were heavy with bats. A man stood on the grassy verge. He stood deathly still as spectacled flying foxes and black cockatoos screamed, flapped their wings above him. The rain sheeted down. My headlights briefly lit him up. He was clad in armour and a red cloak, a sword in his hand pointing south, a thick moustache and lustrous, long black hair. As we passed he turned his head to follow us with black eyes that sucked in the night.
'Aaaah! Who he,' Haruto said.
'Not sure. But I think before the night is out we'll know.'
'Before night out?'
'Yes.'
I turned the car for Longreach. Haruto twisted in his seat and looked back. When I scanned the rearview lightning flashed and the sky lit up a brilliant purple. Bats and birds screeched. Vlad was gone.
*
We hit the Tablelands. The rain fizzled out to a light drizzle and lightning shattered the sky. Early I had no idea if we were following Ed, or Vlad. The road was deserted other than for cane trucks. Clouds of bats above hinted we were going the right way. Rainforest gave way to eucalypts and dry scrub studded with red termite mounds.
Haruto sat quietly after he dried himself with a towel from the back seat.
'Where we go?' he asked suddenly after we passed another cane truck.
I told him. He was a good listener. He asked occasionally for me to explain a word he didn't understand. After I finished he didn't say anything for five minutes.
'Why we follow Ed Fortune?'
'I want to stop him.'
'Who man in armour?'
'Vlad the Impaler,' I said.
'Who?'
'Dracula.'
'Ooooh … vampire.'
'The original.'
'Not good.'
'Never a truer word.'
He waited another minute then launched into a song in Japanese.
It was sad and beautiful and brought a lump to my throat. The sky was full of stars and bats, rain had cooled the night, the air was perfumed with honeysuckle and I nearly had to stop the car because I couldn't see. One of the verses went:
Haru koro no hana no en
Meguru sakazuki kagesashite
Chiyo no matsu ga e wakeideshi
Mukashi no hikari Ima izuko
I had no idea what it meant but his rendition was exquisite. He finished and we drove into the silence and the dark.
'You have a beautiful voice,' I sniffed.
'Arigato. I plactise karaoke.'
'What was it about?'
'Moon on ruin castle,' he said. 'We eat, then, back in olden day, under cherry flower, but now castle in ruin. Where light now? Once upon a time light fly through pine tlees. Moon now shine over ruin castle, who it shine for now? … Song about loss. Everything go. Break. Lose. Die.'
'All right, I get it,' I said.
'We chase atomic bomb. We be like ruin castle. Hibakusha.'
'What?'
'Survivors, Nagasaki, Hiroshima. Or maybe not.'
'Oh.'
'Say prayers.'
We drove on in silence for a while.
'Fortune san fucking clazy,' he said at last.
The dirt road was flat and long and lights from a cane truck, I guessed, appeared in the rearview, kilometres back. We turned a bend and ahead the blue flashing lights of a police roadblock appeared, a hundred metres up. I slowed.
'We tell them?' he said. 'Maybe they help.'
'No,' I said. 'I don't think — '
They were doing breath tests. A female cop stood on the road with a torch and waved us over. A male officer stood with their vehicle parked on the verge. He squinted into my headlights.
I stopped the car and wound the window down. 'Good evening sir,' the policewoman said, 'just a breathalyser. Have you been having a good night, sir? I'd like you to blow into the bag please, sir.'
I couldn't help but shake my head at her condescending tone, but when she held the bag out with the tube thing I took a breath and blew into it.
'We go for nucurar bomb,' Haruto said.
'Pardon,' the cop said, looking at her little device.
'Hai, my old boss, Ed Fortune san, he has fucking warhead in car. Want to blow up nucurar bomb in fucking desert. He ahead of us.'
She leaned down and shone her torch into Haruto's face and around the back seat, into my face.
'What's your friend talking about?' she said.
'Well, it's a strange story officer,' I started.
'No strange! Simple! Nucurar bomb!' Haruto shouted. 'You radio and tell other fucking cops stop him. 1976 Monaro, GT stripe. With frames.'
'What?'
'Fires! Frames painted on car. Nucurar bomb. Bang bang. You fucking … And Count Dracula here too. Vampire bat man! Understand? Call me what you like but don't call me late for breakfast, fucking cop. Gidday copper, I'm a knopper.'
She stared at him.
She cleared her throat. 'I'm gonna ask you both to step out of the car,' she said. She reached in through the window and took my keys, motioned to her partner who walked towards us, hand on hip.
'I don't think you understand — ' I started.
'Out of the car!' the second cop said. He was a head taller, red faced, big bellied, sweaty, angry. He thumped the bonnet with his fist. We both got out.
'Fucking cops!' Haruto stamped his foot. 'Call other fucking cops and stop Monaro with frames. I no want hibakusha.'
'Show your hands,' the angry cop shouted at us.
The light behind us separated and grew into a slowing vehicle. A black Toyota Century pulled up and we all turned to look as the engine cut. Doors opened and two men got out.
'Ah,' Haruto said, shielding his eyes from their headlights. He grimaced. 'Yamaguchi-gumi. Shinoda Kenichi san. Takayama Kiyoshi san.'
'Who?' the red-faced cop said.
'Fucking Yakuza boss man.'
The two Yakuza men stood, hands in pockets, fixed as their parked car, and the cops turned to them.
'Identify yourselves,' the big cop said. 'We are the Queensland police. Who the fuck are youse?' The cops pulled their guns. No sound but the screeching of bats overhead. The rear doors of the Century opened and two more men got out. I could only see them in silhouette, but they were big, with trench coats and shaved heads.
The man on the front passenger side said something slowly in Japanese and the driver translated.
'We are tourists.'
The big cop licked his lips. 'Yez don't look like yez got off the Anthem of the Seas to me,' he said.
'Shinoda Kenichi san no want trouble,' the translator said. 'He want tailor. That all. And I want koi. Belong my mother.' His voice cracked.
The cops stared at them, then looked at each other. No one spoke.
'Listen to me,' I said, breaking the silence in as authoritative a voice as possible under the circumstances. 'The goldfish and the tailor were won fair and square in a poker game in Brisbane. Ed Fortune beat you guys with a royal flush.' Takayama translated for his boss.
The bats screamed louder and everyone looked up.
Shinoda spoke again and Takayama translated.
'He say, deck was,' he pulled out a dictionary and leafed through it. 'Rigged? Hai, rigged. Those Russian motherfuckers, excuse language your excellencies,' — he bowed to the cops — 'rigged poker game. So we not angry at you, Suzuki san, or Ed Fortune san, but we fucking fudious at-uh Russians.'
'Haruto Suzuki is an Australian citizen,' I said. 'He doesn't have to go with you.'
After the translation Shinoda narrowed his eyes and looked at me as he spoke.
'We don't know who the fuck you are, but you are illerevant,' Takayama translated. 'You are nothing. Nobody. You are fart sriding down-uh trouser leg of uh, dead sailor ... Dead sailor?'
He broke off and spoke to Shinoda in Japanese, repeating the phrase 'dead sailor'. Shinoda repeated something in Japanese several times, growing short tempered. Takayama consulted his dictionary again, held it to the car headlights, shrugged.
'Okay, dead sailor. Okay. Takayama san want you close mouth. Suzuki san get in car.'
The bats fell silent and at that moment the police car's engine revved. We all turned to look. My headlights lit up Vlad Țepeș behind the steering wheel. He grimaced at us.
The Turks knew him as Kazıklı Bey, 'the Impaler Prince'. He'd spent time in their prisons, where from his cell he'd watched them impale their prisoners. He perfected his technique on rodents he caught under his bunk. Vlad Dracul. Son of the Dragon. He looked at us with obsidian eyes, adjusted the cloak around his neck. The ruby in the golden star at his forehead glowed. He gave, maybe, a smile, and ran a hand absently through his hair, which looked like nothing so much as sticking us the middle finger.
He negotiated the gears and with a squall of rubber on dirt and a pall of dust and blue smoke from a handbrake start, took off towards Longreach in the cop car, lights blazing, siren whooping.
*
The sweaty cop — Senior Sergeant Knightly — drove my car, me in the passenger seat and Haruto and the other cop in back. Knightly scowled into the distance where the police lights had disappeared. The Yakuza boys followed in their car.
Haruto and the other cop, Constable Jill Fitzgerald, made small talk in the back seat.
'Where are you from?' she asked him.
'Kobe.'
'Oh really? I spent two years at school there.'
'That's interesting.'
'Do you know Arima Onsen?'
'Of course! The hot springs. Aren't they gorgeous? I love that place! Did you get to the Maritime Museum?'
'Yeah, I did,' she said. 'I lived just near Sannomiya Station.'
'No way,' he laughed. 'I lived near there too!'
Surprising how his English improved when it needed to. They launched into a long conversation in Japanese. After a few more hours driving I had the distinct impression they were sitting close together.
We drove on through the night. By five in the morning Knightly was jumpy. Twice he slowed and had to steer around wild horses. His eyes were red-rimmed and fixed on the road ahead. I explained the A-bomb situation to him as I saw it.
'Look,' he said with a sigh, 'there's no point in us catching this Ed Fortune if he's going to set off a nucular bomb. What good would it do us? I mean I've got a husband at home and I don't wanna — '
'A husband?' Haruto interrupted.
'Yeah.'
'Oh so you're … Sorry I didn't mean to pigeon-hole you.'
'I could call him,' I said. 'I could call Ed. Ask him to stop. I don't know what good it'll do, but … he's about four hours ahead, so he's probably already there.'
'Two,' Haruto said.
'Where?'
'Longreach. His Dad's farm.'
'Why?'
'Alcoholic. Got daddy issues.'
Knightly nodded. 'Will he listen to you?'
'Who knows?'
'Okay, yeah, call him.' He glanced into the rearview. 'And I wanna lose these pricks behind us.'
Dawn wasn't far away and he accelerated suddenly. The car surged and left the Century behind.
'Know this road like the back of my hand,' Knightly boasted. 'Seat belts!' He cut the headlights, flew over the crest of a hill, then swerved off the dirt and into a copse of trees. He slammed the brakes and we all jolted forward. He killed the engine. Mist swirled around us.
'Everyone shut up. Put your phone away.' We held our breaths and presently the Century swooped over the hill with a metre of oxygen between dirt and rubber, didn't skip a beat, and continued down the road.
We waited fifteen minutes as dawn approached. I called Ed. He picked up.
'Gidday cobber I'm a Knobber,' he said.
I didn't smile. I asked him where he was, what he was doing with the bomb. He stalled, acted like he didn't know what I was talking about.
'Come on, Ed, this is serious.'
'Yeah just hang on. I'll flick you through a photo.'
There was a pause and the pic arrived, and then another. It was a selfie of him and the warhead at the Welcome to Longreach, Gateway to the Outback and the Stockman's Hall of Fame sign. The second pic was of his face close to the device's timer. It read 14:56. He was grinning like a kid on his first podium.
'He's gonna detonate the bomb,' I said. 'Fifteen minutes. He's at Longreach.'
'Give me the fuckin' phone,' Knightly said and snatched it from me.
'Now listen to me, you little piss ant,' he said. I supposed he hadn't done the course in hostage negotiation. The sun poked over the eastern horizon. 'This is Senior Sergeant Knightly of the Queensland police. Now you take that fuckin' thing and you disarm it. You turn it off. Hear me, you little wanker?' The mist was lifting. 'You're not gonna blow up Longreach or anywhere else for that matter.' He looked out the window. 'Now you do as you're told and — '
He lowered the phone. I followed his gaze. We all did. The grove of trees we'd pulled into was no grove of trees. It was a forest of stakes, blood running down them. It pooled on the ground. Men in Turkish army uniforms — old ones, with turbans on their heads — were impaled in various states of agony, wriggling or lying limp, their faces frozen in grotesque contortions of horror. We were surrounded. Moans and screams floated in. Only a few metres away, as the mist cleared, we saw people seated at a very long dining table. At the head sat Vlad Dracul and to his right, Ed Fortune, dressed in similar armour, a purple cloak at his shoulders. Ed and Vlad chatted happily together and appeared to encourage the other diners, who were clearly terrified as they stole glances at the grim scene surrounding them. One of the diners turned away and vomited, and Ed motioned to somebody we couldn't see. Three soldiers emerged from the mist and dragged the whimpering man away. The sound of a stake being hammered followed, accompanied by the poor man's screams.
'I think we … ah … should get out of here,' I said.
'Too right,' Knightly said and he jerked the car into reverse and put us back on the road, direction Cairns. More impaled boyars lined the road for a couple of hundred metres, then the stakes petered out and we were back among termite mounds and grass trees. It was a gorgeous morning, like the first day on earth. I turned to look back, and yes, the constable and Haruto were holding hands, and beyond them, the road was clear, the stakes gone.
Knightly drove hard for another ten minutes or so. I kept my eye on my watch. An intense, white light suddenly lit up the road.
'Nobody look back,' Haruto said. He leaned forward and put his hand over the rearview mirror. 'It's blowing. Floor it, Sarge.'
The car surged again as the light grew in intensity. I swore I saw the bones in my hands and my condoms in the glove box, then the light faded. In another minute a massive rumble hit us and the ground beneath shook. The constable threw up in the back seat and Haruto rubbed her back gently. We had a clear blue sky, bats in the air, honeysuckle on the breeze, and radioactive fallout.
Horses galloped up from behind. Despite the odometer hitting 130kph, they levelled with us on either side. They were huge. Ed and Vlad on horseback.
Ahead, a sapphire sea shimmered in the desert. Had he done it? Boats, yachts, dinghies bobbed on the water, a jetty with fishermen and children eating ice cream. The bomb was behind us, the sea ahead … I looked back and a massive black and orange mushroom cloud boiled on the distant horizon. When I turned back the horses were gone. So was the water.
*
In the end the only thing Ed succeeded in creating was a sea of fire. I needn't go in to the damage and the toll. You can read about it in Rupert's newspapers.
But, after it all, when the fallout settled, I couldn't help but secretly admire him. He was magnificent at the end. The Prince of Wallachia and Ed Fortune in full armour, jewells wrapped around their foreheads, capes billowing behind them, the early morning sun glinting on their drawn swords, sweat streaming down their horses' flanks. Ed was younger, with a blonde moustache to match Vlad's, and flowing fair hair. How he'd risen from a beat-up nobody in Yorkey's Knob. He didn't even glance down at me as he and Vlad went flying past. I wasn't sure the horses' hooves were touching the ground.
They passed us in a cloud of dust on the Hughenden-Muttaburra Road, and then they were gone, as if they had never been there at all.