Death is Forever

away.
    His night vision was ruined by the sudden outpouring of light. Too close to do anything except attack, he stepped forward soundlessly. As the door closed he snaked his arm around the person’s throat.
    “Don’t talk,” he said very softly. “Don’t move.”
    Even as the words left his mouth, an exotic perfume bathed his senses. The scent was as familiar as the delicate perfection of the bones and flesh lying helplessly within his grasp.
    “Hello, Lai,” he said softly. “Long time no see. But not long enough.”

25
Kununurra
    After hours spent dodging stock along the Great Northern Highway, Jason Street reached his satellite office in Kununurra. When he parked and walked to the office door, no one questioned what he was doing out and about in bush clothes that looked as though he’d crawled on his belly like a snake over the land. No one questioned the oozing reddish burn that showed just beneath the short, ragged right sleeve of his shirt.
    No one questioned him at all for the simple reason that Kununurra rolled up its few narrow streets and went to bed shortly after the sun did. The only exception to the general lifelessness was in the beer halls and on the tribal land at the edge of town, where Aborigines gathered around a huge bonfire and drank themselves into a modern version of their ancient Dreamtime.
    Street’s office was stale and roasting. He paused only long enough to turn on the air conditioner before he headed for the computer. He keyed in a code, lit a cigarette, and looked at the messages that had piled up while he’d chased all over the outback. The crop was about what he had expected—one of his security guards had showed up drunk for work at a mine, another client was complaining that his latest fee was too high, and a mining consortium wanted his opinion as to whether their latest decline in profits was due to a fall-off in the quality of the ore itself or to high-grading by the workers.
    And Hugo van Luik had called.
    Street cursed a stream of smoke, coughed, and looked at his wristwatch. Van Luik was probably still in his Antwerp office. Street picked up a phone that had a scrambler connected, entered the number, and waited.
    Van Luik answered on the second ring.
    “G’day, mate,” Street said, his Australian intonations making the words sound a good deal more cheery than he felt.
    “Is it done?”
    “Next time you send me on a hunt, you might tell me I’m after a real tiger.”
    “Have I ever sent you after small game?”
    “Jungle bunny rebels and chokie smugglers are one thing. This Blackburn-Markham bloke is another. He’s too good to be just a diamond hunter. You’re certain he isn’t CIA?”
    “Regrettably, yes. A deal might have been struck with the CIA.”
    Street swallowed a yawn and rubbed his scalp, where sweat had dried into a dirty crust. “Well, he’s at Abe’s station by now.”
    “Mr. Blackburn is a very lucky man.”
    “Lucky?” Street snarled, angry at the suggestion that he was doing less than his best work. “From where I sit, it looks more like he’s one smart, tough bastard. Passport in another name, driver’s license, the lot.”
    “What went wrong?”
    “Bloody everything, that’s what. He vetted the Rover like he was looking for fleas. He found everything that could go wrong and fixed it. Took him hours. Nora wanted to hire him as a mechanic. So much for an ‘accidental’ breakdown.”
    “Go on.”
    “Oh, I did that, too. Chased them all over the bloody back of beyond. Blackburn spotted me once I turned onto the dirt road. He ran for Windjana. My vehicle had more legs than Nora’s old Rover. I figured to catch them at the park. Rented car breaks down and two Yank tourists wander off and die in the outback, just like Crazy Abe. Bloody sad and all that, but the outback has killed better men before and will kill them again. No worries, mate. Not a one.”
    Van Luik’s breath came in hard at the thought of the inquisition that would have followed Erin Shane Windsor’s death, no matter how innocent the circumstances might have seemed. Yet even as sweat pooled along his spine, he admired the tempting, brutal simplicity of Street’s plan. All problems solved in one stroke.
    “What happened?” van Luik asked after a moment.
    “Blackburn hid somewhere in Windjana until I went by. Then he doubled back again to the Gibb and retraced his trail until he found a spur road that connected with the Great Northern Highway. As soon as