Chapter Twenty-One: Warren

Warren Stokes came in around 2004 and he is still there, twenty-one years on, which makes him the most remarkable figure in this entire book.

The record establishes the shape of it. He first appeared in connection with 21st Century Real Estate in Australia, before the Federal Court closed those operations down. He resurfaced as sales agent for the Bali projects. And he is named among those promoting and associated with Harbourside City in Lombok in 2025, alongside Sean Strecker, Dave Oneegs, Tejal Dave — and Henry Kaye.

Twenty-one years.

Through a liquidation. Through an ABC investigation. Through a Senate committee. Through a Federal Court declaration that his principal was a menace to the investing public. Through a ten-year ban. Through a sunken superyacht. Through a stolen crown in Fiji. Through a stop-work order from Indonesian civil enforcement. Through a construction-halt and demolition order from the West Lombok Regency for building inside the coastal setback.

Twenty-one years and he never once got out.

The novel needs to understand Warren Stokes, and the novel's answer is this:

Warren Stokes is not a believer and he is not a dupe. He is something rarer and sadder. He is a professional closer who worked out at about thirty-five years of age that the only environment in which his particular gift is worth top dollar is an environment where the product cannot survive scrutiny — because in a market where the product is good, the product does most of the selling, and a man like Warren is worth a salary.

In a market where the product does not exist, a man like Warren is worth a percentage.

He knows exactly what he is. That is the difference between him and everybody else in this story. He does not need a cosmology. He does not need to believe that the banks are against him, or that the media is bought, or that a token is the new resistance currency, or that a patch of agricultural land in South Lombok is a five-hundred-million-dollar eco-city.

He gets in the car. He does the appointment. He handles the objection. He takes the deposit. He goes home. He has dinner with his wife.

There is one scene and it is 2009, on the veranda at Isle of Capri, at two in the morning, after a party. Warren is sober and Jamie is not.

"Do you ever think about Marion?" Jamie says, out of nowhere. He is at that hour. "Frankston. Rang the office for three years."

Warren swirls his glass. "No."

"No?"

"Mate. If I thought about Marion I'd be a schoolteacher."

And Jamie McIntyre laughs so hard he has to put his drink down, and he tells that line at three separate dinner parties over the following month.

Neither of them ever mentions her again in twenty-one years.