puff 528 Fri 24th

Friday 24th

Te Whare Miere

Kaupapa koorero moo te raa nei
Ngaa Toorangapuu; Te Toorangapuu Maaori

Rangahau
Kai runga tonu Te Toorangapuu Maaori i te hinengaro o te hapori Maaori o Aotearoa? He rangatira tino pai tonu a Pita Sharples me Tariana Turia ki te nuinga o ngaa taangata Maaori?

Subject of the day
The political parties; The Maaori Party

Analysis
Is the Maaori Party still above in the mind of the Maori public? Are Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia still great leaders to the majority of people?

www.maoriparty.org/ -

Isis: the days of the voles- continued
8
Waiting and counting
In Bogata the man by the fountain drew up a list of people he expected alive at the end of the exercise.

Then it was feeding time and he walked among the cages scattering morsels for the inhabitants to pounce upon.

Simon did what he always did when left without answers. He repaired to the pub. He and Sam walked up the path by the Isis to the Joiner's Arms and as usual there was the Don. They outlined the case to him.

The Don loved to ask for the logic in things. Where, he asked was the logic in taking acrobats to America? To do things that Americans were not likely to do he surmised otherwise American acrobats would have been used instead. This made sense, Simon suppposed. But surely the Americans had people at home that they could use. It did not, on the face of it, make sense to import people.

Mess us around and we hurt your mother the minder told the twin called Iris. We are holding in her back in Whatsitstan.

Unless the twins were to be disposable thought Simon as he took what the Don was saying a little further. It was obvious that they were being kept off the radar, away, even, from other circus folk. This might mean that should they disappear then it would not be noticed.

In Bogota the man by the fountain adjusted his shades and called Whatitstan just to check on the prisoner.All seemed to be in order but he was struck by a strange kind of affection that the guard used for his charge. He pondered things and threw some seeds in the general direction of some peacocks that were hanging around.

In what was for him a very reflective turn the Don decided that logic could only yield so much and that it was now time to trust one's instincts, one's intuition. His gut feeling was that whatever was happening the twins would be lucky to get out alive.

Esme and Bella wondered if they could trap a vole...again it was a hot day by the Isis and the bigger question was whether they could be bothered...

Simon began to apppreciate all over again that he was up against a kind of group mind. Sometimes that worked for you as an outsider and sometimes, well, you just had to wait and see. To make matters work the group mind was so far invisible. Someone snatched the twins. Someone took them to America and someone was hiding them there.

The plot had never thickened. It was the plot of a silence the only development being a progressive eeriness that worked at Simon. He'd not struck anything like it before and he was on edge.

Paullie had told Simon that in all places in America Las Vegas was, as far as he could see, the most likely place for the twins to be. And that was where the Isis Investigations team was at his stage, riding on one of Paullie's hunches.

Funnily enough Sam had a relation on her Dalmation side who was a croupier in Las Vegas. She wondered whether she should ask Paullie to get in touch.

Simon thought it was better to hang fire at this stage until there was a bit more to go on. Running on one of Paullie's hunches was right next to running on empty. And that was not the way Isis Investigations was supposed to work.

In a Lear Jet Juan came into a regular airport using regular papers in Miami.

Miami to Reno where he waited in a motel, a helicopter on standby.

He walked around Reno at night counting things and figuring odds. Basically he was figuring how to remain regular, how to be seen and not noticed.In America as elsewhere you had to work at this and in America, especially money helped.You needed to buy the hat, and the jeans and walk the walk with the boots of the place.

Half of the task was the job itself. The other half and for many the most difficult was getting in and getting out.

Esme and Bella used a cousin's college membership to get a punt for the day. The glided through the heat of the late afternoon with one eye out for the Tramp for whom they had plans...

The organisers of the Xtreme convention in Las Vegas were leaving no stone unturned to make this the biggest thing this year. It was to be held at the new Xtreme Sports Centre to be built next to Nevada Memorial Hospital.

Jimmy the minder started to talk to the twins about a performance above a building on a ladder out of a chopper.

The twins thought about what they would wear.

How it would look on television.

It was the sort of thing that used to happen in Vegas- motorcyles on impossibly high and long ramps, tightrope walkers between high rises, the kinds of things that only happen in Vegas.he organisers were trying for all kinds of edges, a ontroversial politician opening the venue, acrobats falling out of the sky, the whole nine yards.

Juan in the hotel in Reno went over the same information, figuring heights, weights and distances.

The twins wanted to go to the venue and check it out but now, above all the Minder's job was to keep them on track and out of sight.

Paullie read about all this but because the acrobatic act was not so far mentioned he did not put two and two together. His reports back to Simon were as uneventful and dull as before. Simon was every day a little more sprung, a little more wired.

In the Urals it was very tense but very steady. The minders knew that time was getting close now and that there could be no surprises at their end. Vera the prisoner took her time with things now, realising that this was not a short stay.

Simon went drinking with the Don and got outrageously plastered.

Next morning he was regretful in some respects but in other ways he felt justified in tying one on. He really had needed to let off some steam.

Sam fiddled with her hair, paced about and kept on about the Royals. William, Charles.

Then it was time for lunch with Simon's mother. They decided to walk. Passed the Tramp who was loitering outside another college. Sam went on and on about his eczema.

Simon admitted to himself that he was secretly pleased to be seeing his mother again. Hoped she didn't wander. Or squabble with other Fellows.

The Porter treated Simon's mother as though she were the most reasonable peson in the world and this, Simon could see, infuriated Sam. Nothing he could do but wait for the sherry.

Lunch was, well, out of the ordinary. Simon's mother had been for a major hair appointment in the morning and the results were sufficient to put Sam off her stride and send Simon back to his worst nursery days.

To say that Samantha and Simon's mother did not get on was to miss the mark completely. Neither recognised the other. This meant, in fact, that there was no diplomacy to be had.

In the end Simon completely regressed and sat there giggling for the most part. His co-offenders at lunch talked past one another, over one another and, with great relish, to themselves. A friendly porter plied Simon with port.

Simon's mother tried not to think about her circle. Simon and Sam were all very well even though the strategy with Sam was not to notice that she was there. Paullie was an embarrassment from the past. Those wretched river people, the Tramp and the schoolgirls, the nauseous Don, where was decent company to be found?

The porter freshened her drink.

The twins thought about the act.

Safety was not something they ever discussed.

This time they wanted to talk about money.Where it went, how much up front and at the end, when deposits were to be made, withdrawal arangements.

It was all over the Minder's head. He was good with guns and things but he needed to work at his skills systematically.

Esme wondered whether the Tramp got his eczema from the voles.

Sam and Simon had to repair to the Joiners. The Don asked Simon whether his mother had asked him not to play with the Gypsies in the wood. Sam went quiet at that. Simon put on a wry expression which was not so far from what he actually felt.

They left without having had a good time. At least they were able to have a decent chat on the way home. Sam suggested that Simon meet with the Roma to tell the that the investigation was going nowhere. Simon said he'd think seriously about it.

Back in the Joiners Arms the Don was fairly advanced on his way into his cups. After repeateadly interrupting other peoples' conversations the Guvnor lost patience and asked him to stop. Threatened not to serve him. Unheard of behaviour from the help in an Oxford Pub. Noticed by one of the new customers. Hard not to. Had Simon been there he might have taken the Don home.

The Tramp heard the Don muttering about the Guvnor on his way home. It was a changing rant actually, now muttering and then rising to a shout, then fading away. The Tramp had not seen liquor do this to anyone before.

The Don kept asking the night whether he should change pubs?

In Reno the man in the motel waired for a call. Two calls in fact. One about ordnance, one from the boss.

He worked out the space of his unit, then the total space of the motel and then he started on the carpark.

He went over his wardrobe figuring that he did after all look like the average citizen of Nevada.

Bella thought that the Tramp had psychological issues. His eczema was no doubt psychosomatic.He was doing some kind of penance she reckoned, living rough to make up for some past sinning...

In the Urals they had started sharing vodka before meals, the prisoner business had given way, the tension had simply proved to be too heavy.

Paullie kept coming back to the upcoming event in Las Vegas. It slipped backwards and forwards in his mind.

Back in Oxford Simon was in a long, slow phase. Nothing was happening, good or bad. Sam figured this had to be bad but Simon did no figuring at all. This was the waiting.

The case of the murdered Pole was in a done box, The Trapeze Twins were in a box of their own. Nothing was that simple, Simon thought. Everything, as Sam always said, is connected.

The Senator's people were meeting people from other camps.

They knew that they had to take a risk to get their man noticed.Giselle was prompting things in the background.

They thought they had the downsides covered.The main thing was to get their man on nationwide television, coast to coast and onto the net.

The Don sat up in bed. He made a note to Simon to say that it was not the entry to fuss over it was the exit. How were the twins to get out of or, worst case, how were they to be disposed of. They were already there. How were they going to leave?

That done he rolled over, burped a pleasant burp to ease the last pint he'd had and went back to sleep.

The man with the private zoo in Bogota could not sleep. He went to the dark of the room of the flightless bird and watched it pecking at the floor. He sat for a long time trying to take on something of he bird's apparent indifference to the world outside.

The hunt for the Trapeze Twins continued acrosss America. At least that was how it was in Paullie's mind. He thought and he thought. Went for drives in the freeway to clear his head so he could think straight.

Then it was on television. Paullie saw it in his den. A story about the combination of Xtreme sports and trapeze artists. An ancient craft and a new science, a new alchemy more like thought Paullie. But why not? A bit like pop music in the sixties only silly stunts instead of silly little love songs.

Snap. How lucky. Paulllie prepared the Stutz Bearcat for the trip from L A to Vegas. Called Simon. Missed him, got Sam and listened to a convoluted story about Onassis being behind the Bobbby Kennnedy assassination. Sam put the phone down in the end, went over to the little table by the Job Sheet, wrote a note on a yellow slip saying that the Trapeze Twins had been found in America, would Simon call his father and pinned it on the sheet next to the slip about Heathrow.

The rocket launcher was sorted. It could be strapped in such a way that one man could fly a chopper and handle it as well.

In Reno Juan calculated the force with which it would hit the other chopper.

It was just about sussed now, all the figuring done. He was going backwards and forwards over the same ground, counting down the moments, doing the waiting.

Sam found Sam's note. Luckily. He'd have to tell her to up her tidy suit. Faint chance that.

As soon as Paullie got to Vegas he went straight to the site. As an entertainer he, like the senator's people, liked to think things through in an action sequence with due regard for camera shots and the like. He paced around
down below, took lifts up as high as he could go in the nearby buildings, tried to nut it out...

Later that night he and Simon spoke on the phone. The upshot was that Simon was to follow Paullie's gut instincts, start preparing to come to the USA but not to do so until it had all actually started to happen.

In a garage somewhere else in Vegas a man was polishing a set of motorcycles. two Harley Davidsons to lead a procession, a bike specially designed for ramp work and a couple of old Indians to bring up the rear.

Simon dithered and procrastinated. What to do next?

But Paullie, tidy, tidy Paullie had an idea where the twins were. And it made sense.

So what next. Nothing to do really but send Paullie to Vegas and wait. Paullie had, of course, already left.

The minder got the helicopter pilot, a local operator in Vegas, and the twins together and they planned the act.

Go for some dramatic pauses, the twins opined.

The pilot concurred and spent a good while with the twins building up rapport and trust and that kind of thing.

The idea ws to go much further than the programe implied. The senator was dropping a lot of money into the plate so the twins were told. The idea was to ramp up the media coverage so that it became much more than the opening of a building.

The twins were to really go over the top. The senator would come over later
for photo opportunities. Win,win...

Back in Oxford Sam started to tidy the Boatshed. There was a change in the air.With Paullie on the scent in Nevada the tempo throughout Isis Investigations stepped up.

The Don dropped his note off and Simon had a good think about it. He asked Paullie to think about exit strategies for all concerned.

The Trapeze Twins were, of course and by necessity almost, adrenalin junkies. They lived for thrills.

Without thrills they were lost sheep. Kept under wraps in Vegas they were going spare.

The stunt was planned. To the extent that they ever rehearsed anything the stunt was rehearsed. Mostly they related by instinct to one another once they had the basic idea down.

There was no profit in going over and over it again. They'd tried that before and it took their looseness away and ruined their timing on the day. So much of what they did was intuitive.

So there they were in a room on the ninetieth floor of a hotel with room service and Playstation.

And one another.

And a minder.

It was a long way down.

Paullie went up and down the floors of each building near the venue looking for a clue as to where the twins were. He took photos from every angle and sent them by phone to Simon.

But basically the case was swinging on a hunch of his and he wanted to start proving a few things.

In Bogota the man with the private zoo took on the feeding duties wherever he could just to keep himself focussed.

The senator's people started to arrive. It was in train...