DRAGON'S BREATH

By Barry Smith

DRAGON'S BREATH

Blackmail, sabotage and murder shatter the calm of a Victorian bush town; unrelated acts of evil or evidence of a wider and deeper, Chinese Communist Party plot, to undermine and take over Australia?

A routine job for ken Eliot threatens his life and growing evidence of Chinese State infiltration dri

• Language: English
• Publisher: BARRY SMITH
• Release date: Oct 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9780987177957

Barry Smith

Barry Smith is, it goes without saying, an islomane. He has spent much of his 60-odd years at work, rest and play on islands all around the world – from Scotland’s Western Isles to Sicily, from Alaska to Cape Horn. To cap it all, he has completed a doctoral dissertation... about islands. He lives in northern Scotland and France.

Book preview

1

BACK IN HARNESS

Along the Murray River

Swimming strongly against the current and feeling his way along the riverbed was the diver’s only way of detecting his quarry in the swirling, murky water. It was icy, cold and exhausting work. But diving for antique bottles, chucked over the stern of Murray river paddle steamers by well-oiled, pioneer, passengers, was sufficiently addictive to keep him at it, regardless of the cold and dark.

But it was getting late and despite the paucity of his catch, he was too tired and cold to stay down much longer until, he bumped against what felt like a floating bundle of rags. He decided to surface and see what he had caught. It was too heavy to swim up with and he sent it to the surface, tied to his bottle bag line.

His companions pulled the bundle into the support boat. The smell was awful, and they reeled back in horror, when closer inspection revealed a bloated, human body, dressed in a suit and raincoat. When the police came, they were equally shocked by this unexpected discovery.

It’s not often we get one like this, chief. He’s too well dressed for a careless holiday maker, so it’s unlikely to be an accidental drowning.

Too right sergeant and before we get ahead of ourselves, we will have to wait for an autopsy, to establish whether we have a case of suicide or foul play, on our hands.

Melbourne, Lygon Street

Ken Eliot dusted down his office chair, tipped the dead flies from his in-tray and filed a wadge of bills in the ‘forget about it’, bottom draw of his desk. He kept the blinds closed to back up the air conditioner’s losing battle with the heatwave scorching the street outside.

Ken’s collar chafed his raw tan and his shoes pinched after weeks of going barefoot and living in shorts and singlets on Gippsland’s ninety-mile beach. He was not the only bread winner suffering the post-Christmas, back-to-work, syndrome, in the dog days of January, when Melbourne emulated Athens in August, sweltering through days of thirty degrees or more. Lightly clad tourists packed Lygon Street’s pavement cafés and though Alfonso’s kept a reserved table for him, he favoured the comparative cool of his office on a day likely to hit forty.

His answering machine messages urged him to call his bank manager, accountant and sundry creditors, but there was no sign of client enquiries offering the prospect of paid employment. Such was the consultant’s financial drought during the over-long break, resulting from the calamitous, coincidence of Christmas and summer holidays. At least his colleagues had not used all of the coffee capsules, kept in the lunchroom cupboard and a shot of the pure, Jamaica Blue grind worked its uplifting magic on his depressed spirit.

If he were Chandler’s Philip Marlow or Corris’s Cliff Hardy, facing the same bleak prospects, the entry of a blonde in shapely widow’s weeds, offering him a richly paying assignment he couldn’t and absolutely wasn’t going to refuse, would change the colour of this gloomy day.

A sharp rap on his door raised hopes, soon dashed by the uninvited entrance of a tall, dark, athletic, man, whose Henry Buck’s suit, stylishly barbered hair and neatly trimmed beard, attested to his sophisticated tastes and the wherewithal to buy and enjoy them. He mangled Ken’s outstretched hand and greeted him with a native sarcasm that spoke of familiarity and a reluctant degree of respectful, regard.

G’day Ken. Good to see at least one bastard back in harness, working to support my leisured life. What’s up, fishing for custom more enticing than pursuing beach bunnies?

Hi Jack. Can’t expect someone still suckling on his golden christening spoon to appreciate the genteel poverty of a consultant at this time of year. How about you — barred from the Melbourne Club, not selected to a polo team?

OK. Ok. Let’s call it a draw and if you make me one of those enticing coffees and allow me to light a cigar, I will tell you why it is in your interest to hear what I have to say.

Though raised in the country, Jack had the appropriate pedigree to qualify as a member of the Melbourne establishment. Educated at Melbourne Grammar and University, he was called to the bar and made the required pilgrimage to London working in the law and learning the journalistic and editorial trades on a Murdoch tabloid.

As the scion of a fifth-generation rural newspaper dynasty, he was appointed editor of their leading journal and became well versed in the Machiavellian ways of bush political parties and country politics. At the same time, he continued to be somewhat of a creative dreamer and loved to go bush, fishing for barramundi and dodging crocodiles on remote Kimberley beaches, leaving his more pragmatic brother to get the papers printed and distributed. Ken had worked with the family business and this had led to an occasional catch-up lunch, when Jack was in town, but that he had come to Ken’s office, without notice and on such a stinking hot day, suggested he had more serious and hopefully, rewarding business to