Java Spider (26 page)

‘Not seen it before?’ Mostyn asked.

‘No. Never. Who placed it?’

‘Somebody who went in personally to the magazine office, paid cash and left a false address. Came in a week later to pick up the replies, three of them. The girl in classifieds said he was middle-aged with long hair in need of a wash. Thinks he had an accent. South African, Australian, she wasn’t sure.’

Mostyn watched for some sign of recognition from Sankey, but there was none.

‘Tell me, Mr Sankey … what are your plans? Out of a job, I gather. My condolences.’

‘Yeah. So I am. Dunno. Start thinking about it when I get rid of this hangover.’

Had to see a lawyer and try to squeeze some compensation from the bastards at the News Channel.

‘Would you do me a favour?’ Mostyn asked, handing Sankey his card. ‘Don’t go far without talking to me first. Just in case we want another word. And by the
way
. Everything we’ve talked about in this room is confidential. You’ll understand that, even as a journalist. Don’t want to see any of this appear in print, right? There’s someone’s life at stake, remember.’

‘I’ll remember.’

‘Right then. Thanks for your time. Sorry to jump on you so early.’

Mostyn stood up and held out his hand. ‘Think of anything else, give me a call, right?’

‘Right.’

The DC nipped into the living room to collect his jacket. Then followed Mostyn outside.

‘Thanks for the use of your sofa,’ he said, closing the front door behind them.

Sankey loped back into his bedroom and wrestled the tie from his neck. His clothes stank. He stank. He’d take a shower.

He felt lower than he could ever remember. Much lower than when the wife left him. There’d been an inevitability about that; they’d both played around. But this time it felt like he’d lost everything. His job, his reputation and above all his pride. Some jerk of a technician had taken a quick look at him and decided he was the one man in the TV news business he could con into doing a live transmission of the untransmittable.

He kicked off his trousers, then picked them up carefully from the floor. He inspected the silver-grey fabric for stains from drink or bodily fluids, then folded them along the remains of their creases and slipped them into an electric clothes press.

He removed his pants and socks and stood naked, staring down at the bulge of his stomach. His liver hurt when he pressed it. He decided never to drink alcohol again.

He felt acutely insecure suddenly. He had little recollection of what had happened in the bar and wanted reassurance. The clock said nearly seven thirty. He bumbled into the living room, cluttered with yesterday’s half-read newspapers, and picked up the TV remote. The News Channel was into its commercial break. A good time to ring.

He returned to the bedroom, perched on the mattress and dialled the direct line to the newsdesk, finger poised over the rest, ready to ring off if it wasn’t Mandy on duty.

‘Newsdesk.’

It was.

‘Mandy, it’s Ted.’

‘Hey! What happened? Last I heard you got carted off by the police!’

‘Don’t bloody tell everyone, girl …’

‘Don’t have to. Most of the newsroom was
there
!’

‘Shit! Did I make a complete cunt of myself?’

‘No. You were just brain-dead and legless. How’s your head?’

‘Still attached to my shoulders. Just. Look … what’s going on? What are people saying?’

‘Well … not a lot yet. It’s heads down and get on with it. Tom Marples running the meetings and guess who’s taken over your office for now?’

‘Oh, no,’ Sankey moaned. ‘Not …’

‘Steve Paxton. Yes. Taken complete charge of the housekeeping. Budget cuts all round.’

‘Hell! So what’s happened to Charlie? Is she there yet?’

‘Funny you should ask. Just been speaking to her. Paxton ordered her home again to save money …’

‘
What?
The berk! What a waste …’

‘But, Ted,
but
… Would you believe it, she’s refusing
to
do it. She rang up from Darwin airport a few minutes ago to say she’s found someone who’ll do camera for free and she’s going to Kutu tonight. And if the company fires her, so be it, she said.’

‘Plucky little girlie. I knew she had
balls
when I picked her …’

‘
Eh-h?
’ giggled Mandy. ‘Muddling up the sexes this morning, are we, Ted?’

Whitehall

10.45 hrs

The line of motor coaches wound its way through Trafalgar Square into Whitehall. One from every DefenceCo factory in the country, they’d formed into a convoy at a service station on the M25. Banners naming the plants hung from the side windows.

TV cameramen filmed their progress past the Cenotaph. Two coaches from the Clyde had travelled overnight to get here. Others from Lancashire had set off in the small hours. The men in those from the Home Counties however had breakfasted at home. Most of Britain’s 100,000 workers dependent for their livelihoods on arms exports had sent delegates.

The demonstration had been organised at astonishing speed, triggered by the galling sight yesterday of the prime minister caving in at Commons Question Time. Managements and unions galvanised by a common belief that unless they rammed a steel rod up the government’s backbone, the anti-arms-trade lobby would have a sudden and unwarranted triumph.

The convoy turned left at Parliament Square, then left again on to the Embankment, to park in a line outside the Ministry of Defence. Doors hissed and drivers stepped down to unlock baggage spaces. Then the passengers disgorged, stretching stiff limbs and turning up noses at the unfamiliar noise and smell of the capital. Some wore raincoats and suits, others overalls and anoraks, all with the common aim of ensuring the arms contract with Indonesia went ahead, whatever some fuzzy-haired lunatics did to a not very popular cabinet minister.

From the lockers they pulled out their placards, then formed up in the roadway for the march into Whitehall.

10 Downing Street

11.30 hrs

Prime Minister Keith Copeland replaced the receiver with a twinge of relief. The most difficult aspect of his decision was now behind him – telling Sally Bowen that he simply couldn’t yield to the terrorist demands that would save her husband’s life.

In the end the decision had been easier to take than he’d feared. It was the Cabinet that had forced his hand. In the minds of his ministers, the principle of never being seen to give in to terrorists became paramount. Tragic though it was, better that one roguish minister should lose his life than that the whole government should lose its credibility. The colleagues had concluded too that the tide of public opinion was turning. After initial gains by the human rights lobby,
money
was winning over morality again – as in the end it always did.

The decision was the right one, taken for the right reasons, of that he was satisfied. The fact that it was also the best way of protecting his own back and the nest-egg he’d been banking on for his retirement was incidental.

Copeland got up from his desk and stepped into the entrance hall, just seconds before the big black door opened to let in the Indonesian ambassador. Tall, wearing a dark suit and with slicked hair, the diplomat’s mouth was clamped into a smile that was shaped by protocol. Copeland reached out his hand.

‘Good morning, Your Excellency. Thank you for coming.’

‘Good morning, prime minister.’

The Indonesian looked overawed; he’d not been in Number 10 before. Unsettled too by the battery of cameras that had recorded his arrival, and by the pair of microphone stands waiting in the road outside.

The PM led his guest into a reception room. They sat and said nothing while coffee was poured. Then they were left alone.

Copeland spoke first. He talked of the moral debate that had raged in the Commons and in the country, and of the deep concern about human rights that the kidnap had brought to the surface.

The ambassador’s square, bespectacled face looked grim, ready to reply that such matters were his country’s internal affairs, not the concern of foreigners.

‘You’ll understand, Your Excellency,’ Copeland continued solemnly, ‘that as the elected leader of the British people it is my duty to give voice to their very real concerns and to pass them on to you. However … it is also my duty to ensure that the decisions I take as head of the government are in Britain’s national interest. In
the
past couple of days I have listened to wise counsel from all sides. After much careful consideration I have decided to
resist
the pressure in Britain and elsewhere to cancel the arms contract with your country. I propose to announce this to the media shortly and would be very pleased if you would do me the honour of standing beside me when I do so.’

‘You want to reconfirm the contract?’ the ambassador checked, muddled by the verbiage. He looked absurdly relieved. ‘Shake hands for the cameras?’

‘Umm, yes.’

‘Sure. Why not.’

They talked for a little longer, Copeland asking whether the Indonesian police had any new leads on the kidnap. The ambassador’s response was pre-scripted. An echo of what had been said before. No evidence whatsoever that Stephen Bowen was still in his country. No evidence that any Indonesian was involved in his kidnap.

Did he
know
about Sumoto, the PM wondered? Ambassador Bruton had rung two hours ago hinting at the general’s chicanery.

Copeland led the way on to the pavement, his confidence returning. Half an hour ago he’d received a boost to his spirits, a call from Assistant Commissioner Stanley at Scotland Yard. A photo of a rogue TV technician called Ricky Smith, wired to the Paris police, had been recognised by a cargo clerk at Charles de Gaulle airport. The man had collected two packages airfreighted from the Indonesian island of Bali, one on Sunday evening, the other on Tuesday morning. The timing was right for these to have been the tapes of Stephen Bowen.

The net was closing. Soon the kidnappers would lose their power to manipulate the minds of millions.

Wesley Street, Westminster

11.45 hrs

Sally Bowen hunched on the sofa hugging her knees, never more miserable and alone. She’d wanted the children with her, but their house-tutors had urged her to leave them at school where they could be kept busy. Best for them, if not for her.

The television was on. Good of Keith to give her notice of his decision. Now, there he was in Downing Street, saying it to the world. Announcing in effect that his forty-nine-year-old minister of state at the Foreign Office would never see fifty.

It seemed so callous. War widows must have felt the same, she reasoned, although dying for some great principle must be more honourable than dying for money.

It numbed her to see Keith Copeland shake hands with the Indonesian ambassador. Their smiles, the togetherness …

In the back of her mind she’d always harboured the naïve concept that life was sacred and beyond price. Wrong. Every man had a value – and Stephen’s was not high enough. Friendship meant nothing either. Stephen and Keith, buddies since Cambridge – irrelevant when the chips were down.

There was another numbness inside her that came from not being sure of her own feelings. She herself had wished Stephen dead in recent years – and meant it. What the kidnappers had done to him however was worse than death and she feared there’d be more to come before the end.

She rested her chin on her knees. Then she strained forward, peering at the screen. How
could
he smile at a time like this? Suddenly she was angry.

Why? Why so satisfied? Why not more regret at what he was having to do?

She reached a hand to the sofa table and picked up the small piece of oblong card she’d found tucked at the back of Stephen’s desk drawer that morning. Was
this
why? This airline boarding pass? She’d been clutching it for hours, staring at the words written on it, debating whether to hand it to the police.

Impossible! A man who’d risen so high could never be so low … But she couldn’t but wonder what he would have said if she’d mentioned it when he rang …
Might
it have changed his mind?

‘Oh God!’ she gasped. Perhaps the evidence she held in her hand could have saved Stephen’s life …

The flight had been to Zurich, two months ago.

The words written on the boarding pass were perfectly legible and in Stephen’s hand.

Keith’s account: N
465329.

Fourteen

Over the Kutu Sea

18.45 hrs (10.45 hrs GMT)

A PATTERN WAS
emerging at last. For the first time Randall felt on the track of something more concrete than a mirage. The breakthrough that mattered was the discovery by the French 6ième Division that the Bowen video-tapes had been airfreighted to Paris from
Bali
. Just five hundred miles from Kutu, Bali was the nearest point with flights to Europe. If the tapes were sent from there, the kidnapped minister could not be far away.

In his phone call from Darwin airport to the unlisted number at Scotland Yard they’d also told him about Ricky Smith and the possibility that he might have been recruited by a middle-aged Australian. Randall had shipped the cassette of photos he’d taken at Sawyer’s house on the evening flight to London, so the Dugdale and Sawyer shots could be shown to witnesses.

The setting sun streaked fire across the horizon and bathed the wings of the Premati Air 737 in pink light. To their right, looking east, the distant rim of Kutu’s solitary volcano thrust up through the low cloud, its crater smudged with smoke. Then the view was gone as the airliner dipped through the grey into the dusk below.

Although encouraged that his mission had some purpose, Randall felt deeply uneasy. Charlie sat beside him with her head resting against the window, her face grey with terror. Mad to have involved her in this
mission.
Working with a woman
always
made him jumpy. And a woman
journalist
… But there’d been no alternative. Not if he wanted to avoid being kicked out of Kutu as soon as he arrived. Kept telling himself that Charlotte Cavendish was a grown-up – big enough to know what she was doing. Here at her own risk. If things went wrong she could take care of herself.