Dragons at the Party by Jon Cleary Page B

shoulders. Malone was not one of them.
    “How is the President this morning?”
    “Still alive,” said Timori, coming into the drawing-room where they sat; or rather, where his wife sat and Malone stood. He was dressed all in white this morning and looked a little healthier, as if he might have slept well last night. “Have they buried Mr. Masutir yet?”
    “I couldn’t say, sir.” Burials were not his province. They obviously were not Timori’s province, either, otherwise he would have known more about the disposal of his aide’s remains. He had brought thirty or forty here with him to Sydney, so maybe one wouldn’t be missed. It was hard to imagine that a man could be so callous, but then Malone had had no previous experience of dictators. “Mr. President, we’re still trying to find this man Seville. Do you think the generals back in Palucca would have employed him?”
    “Why would they have done that? They have already got rid of me.”
    “No, darling,” said Madame Timori. “I think Inspector Malone has a point. There is more to this than a simple coup d’état .”
    “I never thought coups d’état were simple,” said Malone, making a good imitation of her pronunciation; foreign phrases usually clung to his tongue.
    “Neither they are,” said Timori, who seemed amused that his wife and Malone did not get on well together. “I have more enemies than I thought. Inspector. Not all of them back in Palucca.”
    Malone took a risk: “What do you mean by that, sir?”
    Timori smiled at him. “You’d never be a diplomat, would you, Inspector?”
    “I’ve been told that several times. But as far as I know, diplomacy never solved a murder case.”
    There was a flash of anger in the dark eyes, but it was gone in a moment. It suddenly struck Malone that Timori was too defeated to worry about insolence, even if unintended, from some minor policeman. The man had been accustomed to power for so long that he was naked and afraid without it. Power corrupts . . . Malone had heard it somewhere (Hackton? Acton? Someone had said it once): but it also sustained. He had seen it amongst politicians and amongst criminals. Timori was both and now he had lost what had been his strength.
    Then his other strength spoke up; she said, “We can do without your insolence, Inspector. That will be all.”
    Malone looked at her, then back at Timori. “All I’m doing, Mr. President, is trying to catch Seville before he makes another attempt on your life.”
    “I think I have enough protection,” said Timori. “Your Federal police, your Special Branch . . . Let Mr. Masutir rest in peace.”
    “Oh, I’ll do that, sir. It’s his murderer I’m after.”
    He nodded to both of them, turned sharply and went out of the room and the house. As he came out the front door he almost bumped into Sun Lee.
    “Mr. Sun,” he said without any lead-up, “who, back in Palucca, would profit by having the President killed?”
    Sun gasped softly, as if the question had been a punch. “I don’t know, Inspector. Perhaps a hundred people-some might do it for—” he hesitated, as if to say the word was traitorous “—for revenge.”
    “If they’d do it for revenge, why employ an international terrorist? There must be plenty of professional killers in Palucca.”
    “Paluccans are gentle people, Inspector,” said Sun. “Or how else would I, a Chinese, have survived amongst them? You don’t know much about Asians, do you?”
    Malone realized he had blundered: this was not a good morning. “It could be someone who is not a Paluccan who hired Seville.”
    There was just the faintest flicker of Sun’s eyes. “You mean a Chinese, perhaps?”
    “Perhaps. Or Americans or Englishmen or Dutch or even Indonesians.”
    “Or Australians?” said Sun, smiling. “There were Australians in business in Palucca. Many of them.”
    “Really?” Malone had thought there was only one. “How’s your memory? I’d like a list of them.”
    “My