Java Spider (39 page)

‘Financially too,’ she continued, looking him straight in the eye. She fancied she saw the blood drain from his face.

‘I’m not quite sure what you …’

‘The bank account in Switzerland. The one Stephen set up for you …’

Copeland gaped. His jaw moved wordlessly. Panic choked him. It was as if the sea were closing over him. Stephen must have told her. Betrayed him.

He swallowed, pulling himself together. He looked at Sally. County clothes. Farmyard brain. A silly woman, that’s how Stephen had always described her. She
couldn’t
know. Had to be guessing.

‘I don’t know what you mean by that, Sally,’ he mouthed, playing for time. ‘In fact I have no
clue
what you’re talking about.’

Sally sensed she’d got him. She opened her large black handbag and pulled out the boarding pass.

‘
Keith’s account: N
465329,’ she read. When she looked up, she knew it was true. Copeland’s face had imploded.

Then suddenly it managed to re-inflate.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said softly. ‘What is it you have there?’

‘An airline boarding pass,’ she said defiantly. ‘From when Stephen went to Zurich a couple of months ago. To set up the bank accounts for you and him. For some reason he wrote the number of yours on it.’

She let her accusation hang in the air.

It
was
a guess, Copeland realised. A number on a card could mean anything. He breathed again.

‘No, my dear. You’ve added two and two and made five, I’m afraid – or rather I’m
glad
to say. I don’t have a
Swiss
bank account. If I
had
, there’d be nothing to put in it,’ he assured her. ‘May I see?’

He held out his hand.

Sally felt her resolve crumble. Politicians always managed to make her feel out of her depth. Stephen had done it too.

‘May I?’ he repeated.

She gave him the boarding pass.

‘Well, well …’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I have simply no idea what this is, Sally. I suppose there must be hundreds of thousands of Keiths in England. But I can assure you
this
one isn’t me.’

He was about to hand it back to her, then had second thoughts. He levered himself to his feet.

‘Tell you what,’ he said, walking over to the fireplace. ‘I think we’d better dispose of this, don’t you?’

He threw the ticket into the flames. Sally gasped, reaching out a pointless hand to stop him.

‘There,’ he murmured, watching it burn. ‘Wouldn’t want anyone else jumping to the wrong conclusion.’

He limped back towards her.

‘It’s been very hard for you, Sally. I’m so sorry.’

Kutu

On the nightmare drive to Santa Josef, every rock, every pothole jolted a moan of pain from the youth laid out on the rear seat of the battered green minibus. A nurse dabbed at his forehead with a wet cloth and tightened his bloodstained dressings. Randall tried to shut out his cries and to think. To put what he knew into some sort of order.

Fact number one. The Kutuan resistance movement, the OKP, was
not
involved in the kidnap of Stephen Bowen. Of that he was now certain.

Fact two. General Dino Sumoto probably
was
involved. Backed by supporters in KODAM Twelve. Why? Hadn’t a clue. Maxwell might know by now, if only he could contact him. All he’d come up with by himself was that Sumoto wanted to destroy the OKP. But to do so by kidnapping an official of a foreign government and blame the OKP was to play with stakes that were extraordinarily high.

Fact three. Sumoto had made big money from KUTUMIN and probably stood to make much more. So, it was rumoured, did Stephen Bowen. Could they have cooked up the kidnap between them? To provide an excuse to smash the Kutuan resistance, so the mine and their money flow could proceed unhindered? Could the kidnap be a
hoax
even – Bowen faking his terror, faking his injuries and the torture, and now sipping gin with Sumoto waiting for the pay-off?

Not credible. Fantasy. But where
was
Bowen? The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Somewhere on this benighted island – of that Randall now felt almost certain.

And where in this equation did Brad Dugdale fit – if at all? He
was
linked with Sumoto, if only through the payment of bribes to him.

It was Dugdale who’d fed them the rumour of Bowen being seen at Piri airport. Dugdale who’d hinted heavily that Kakadi was the kidnapper … So, had he been used by Sumoto to set Charlie and him up as the bait to trap Kakadi? Had he fed them the driving licence? What else could he have done? Used his TV connections to set up the European end of the kidnap?
Maybe even have provided the boat on which Bowen was now hidden …?

Suddenly Naplo stamped on the brakes. They’d
reached
the village on the hill overlooking Santa Josef, the bamboo houses turned pink by the glow of dusk. In the middle of the track stood a woman in nun’s habit, flagging them down. It was the sister from the orphan-age.

She came to the window and yammered breathlessly. Naplo buried his head in his hands. Eventually he looked up again and turned to Randall.

‘Sister Angelica say ABRI cut telephone from Santa Josef,’ he declared. ‘Soldiers waiting now at the orphanage. Waiting for
you
.’

Randall gulped. Waiting to trap him. To shut him away with Charlie so there’d be no witnesses to what KOPASSUS had done. Nobody to blow the gaff on Sumoto … His stomach somersaulted. Charlie. She could be in greater danger than he’d imagined. If even half his suppositions were right, she might not be in the hands of professional soldiers anymore, but in the clutches of General Sumoto’s men.

God, he needed that phone. Needed to get the whole British government machine working on getting the girl free again.

‘Damn, damn, damn!’ he hissed.

‘For a telephone you must now go to Piri,’ Naplo said forlornly. ‘There is no other place. But I cannot take you there. Not even to Santa Josef now. They will arrest me as well as you. But Sister Angelica – she has a plan. She will take you to the man who brought you from Piri this morning. She has spoken with him.’

Dedi. But was he part of the conspiracy? He and his sister? Or had Dugdale used them too? Whatever – he had no alternative. Randall thanked the priest and got out. The minibus rattled onwards immediately in a cloud of dust and exhaust. Solemn-faced, Sister Angelica pointed towards a small motorbike with a
pillion
, which she pushed off its stand and kickstarted into life.

The track she took was no more than a path, weaving through patches of maize, banana and cabbage down to the coast. They bounced along without lights, the ride increasingly hazardous as the sunset glimmered its last. Finally the machine purred on to the flat of a beach, weaving through coconut palms. The moon shone through thin clouds, turning the heads of the trees into black paper cutouts.

The nun stopped and killed the engine. Randall slid off the pillion and looked around. Close by, the burly Kutuan rose up from the sand where he’d been squatting.

As soon as she saw him, Sister Angelica restarted the bike and rode off without a word.

‘You alone, mister?’ Dedi asked.

‘Yes,’ Nick confirmed. ‘The soldiers have taken Charlie prisoner.’

Dedi made a clicking noise with his tongue.

Randall stepped round until his back was to the moon and he could see Dedi’s expression in the light.

‘And they killed Junus Bawi,’ he added.

‘Ahh …’ The Kutuan’s shoulders slumped as if he’d been punched. ‘Ohhh … Bad, bad, bad thing … Oh … people very angry now. Big, big trouble now. You see.’

He began rolling his head, muttering in Kutun. Then his eyes looked up and locked. He stared fixedly at a point beyond Randall’s shoulder, terror on his face.

‘Aieeaieeaiee,’ he wailed softly. Distraught, his hands hovered as a shield as he gazed towards the moon. Then he fell to his knees.

‘What is it, for Christ’s sake?’ Randall hissed, turning to look.

The crown of a palm tree stood out stark against the
moonlight
. Its fronds were shaking, yet he could feel no wind.

Randall crouched on the sand beside the Kutuan. ‘Dedi,’ he whispered. ‘What is it?’

The man looked to be in a trance.

‘
Gundrowo!
’ he whispered, pointing.

Randall gripped him by the shoulders and shook him. Dedi was all he had in this god-forsaken place. Couldn’t have him collapsing into a bundle of gibbering superstition.

The Kutuan’s face began to relax once more. Randall looked behind and saw that the fronds of the tree were still again.

‘Dedi, you have to help me,’ Randall insisted. ‘I have to find a telephone.’

Like asking for a drink in a desert.

‘OK, mister. OK, mister. I take you Piri in the boat,’ Dedi answered, recovering quickly. Randall could see he wanted to be rid of him. ‘I put you on town beach. No one see. Plenty telephone in Piri. Then I come back here. Tomorrow morning I drive back Piri in minibus and tell soldiers you not come back from mountain. OK, mister? Then they think you also dead up there.’

Late at night in Piri, on his own, he’d be picked up within minutes. And if he found a phone to use, one call to the Scotland Yard number he’d rung earlier and intel would nail him. But what else could he do?

‘OK, mister?’ the Kutuan repeated.

‘OK. But you’ve got to help me more than that,’ he replied gently. ‘I need to know about Brad. Where was he this morning?’

‘He gone to the boat, mister.’

‘The
Morning Glory
?’

‘Yes, mister.’

Another piece of the jigsaw clicking into place. Could
Dugdale
have been taking food there? For the hostage and his guards?

‘Dedi … who else is on that boat?’ Randall pressed.

‘Nobody, mister.’ There was surprise in his voice. ‘Boat empty. Waiting for salvage equipment from Australia.’

‘You sure? When did you last go on board?’

‘I don’t know. Not for many weeks.’

‘Well,
I
want to go there,’ Randall declared. ‘Right now.’

London – the News Channel

10.55 hrs

Mandy was finding it hard to concentrate this morning. A numbing lack of direction had pervaded the newsroom since Sankey’s sacking. She’d just put the phone down and had already forgotten what the caller said.

There was a lull in the newsroom. There’d been an early morning recap on the killing of the electricity boss yesterday, but little movement on the story. And on Bowen there were rumours of a man in custody about to be charged with some minor involvement, but no confirmation from the Yard. And nothing yet from Charlotte Cavendish. Now that the PM had refused to back off on the arms deal, the next break on the story was expected to be Bowen’s corpse turning up.

She had a need for more coffee. She pushed her chair back, stood up and stretched. She wore a loose-fitting black skirt that concealed her bulges, a black silk blouse and a cardigan. Halfway across the newsroom she stopped in her tracks.

Sankey walking in through the door. White coat over his arm, grey suit immaculately pressed, hair freshly trimmed.

‘Ted,’ she mouthed.

‘Find Angus for me, girl,’ he snapped, as if he’d never been away.

‘Angus Addy? Sure, but why? What’s going on?’

‘I’m back, Mand,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve just told the proprietors about an exclusive I’ve got. Back on the payroll. Calling me a consultant for now, but just you watch; I’ll have my office back by the end of the day.’ He winked hugely. ‘Now, I need somewhere with a phone to park my bum. Steve Paxton’s room’s empty, isn’t it?’

Mandy’s face widened into a grin. ‘It certainly is,’ she said.

They turned to look at the glass-walled editor’s office. The even pattern of the Venetian blind was broken by a hand parting the slats. Through the gap the bristle-headed accountant watched aghast.

Kutu – Kadama interrogation centre

19.05 hrs (11.05 hrs GMT)

A single bulb hung from the ceiling, dazzlingly bright.

Charlie kept her eyes on the floor in a yoga-like attempt to control pulse and terror. She’d been over five hours in the cell, petrified of the questioning that was certain to come, yet desperate to get it over with. She’d left the cell just once, to be taken to the toilet – a stinking pit overflowing with excreta. Afterwards, she’d
resolved
not to eat or drink again until they released her.

When Charlie had arrived there Teri had pulled faces to indicate that the third woman in the cell might be an informer, a thin sobbing Kutuan who made out she spoke no English. Then in stilted whispers, taking care not to be overheard, Teri had explained how two intel men had come for her at Captain’s that afternoon. Men she’d recognised. Men who’d been in the bar from time to time, drinking with Brad …

Three hours after Charlie’s arrival, Teri had been taken for questioning, her face bleached by fear and by the uneasy realisation that in some incomprehensible way she’d been betrayed by the man she lived with.

After Teri had gone, Charlie had sought to control her own panic by constructing in her head the story she would write once she was free. A massive, angry story about the rape of an island, the crushing of a community by an industrial monolith, the cold-blooded murder of a peace-loving man, and – in the midst of it somewhere – the kidnapping of Stephen Bowen, but almost dwarfed by the wider abuse of human rights that she was witnessing.

That was the story she would
like
to write, but it wasn’t the one the Channel would take. They’d want Bowen, Bowen and Bowen. The Channel’s audience were assumed to care infinitely more about the fate of a single famous Brit than about atrocities on a faraway Pacific island.

The problem with the kidnap story was that she no longer knew what it was, now her assumption that Bowen had been taken by the OKP had been blown out of the water. And the Sumoto link was one she simply didn’t understand. Connected
somehow
– that was the implication of what Randall had said. But the kidnap and the helicopter raid on the OKP – all done by the
same
people?
Couldn’t
be. That meant the
people
were the Indonesian army, or a part of it. Surely not.