Java Spider (49 page)

A young officer hurried over from a nearby jeep bristling with aerials. Effendi followed him back, climbed inside and pressed a handset to his ear. Then he re-emerged and beckoned.

‘It is Mr Maxwell on the line, Mr Randall,’ he announced, his eyes smugly proud at the sophistication of his technology.

Astonished but relieved, Randall got to his feet.

‘Who’s Maxwell?’ Charlie demanded.

‘Oh … just the man at the embassy in Jakarta. I’ll tell him to let your people know you’re safe.’

Inside the jeep the handset he was given smelled of smoke.

‘Harry?’

‘
Nick. Thank God
.’ Maxwell’s voice, clear as a bell. ‘
What happened?
’

‘Well, first thing, Bowen’s dead. I was with him …’

‘
Yes, Effendi just told me. Sad. But what about you?
’

‘A graze. I’ll live, and Charlie Cavendish is fine, but she’s livid at having her camera and tape confiscated.’ He said this loudly, for Effendi’s benefit.

‘
Ah. Now that’s probably a good thing. But I’ll come to that in a minute. First though, thank God you’re safe. Look … he’s OK, the brigadier. His troops are BRIMOB – the police mobile brigade. Three hundred of them flew into Kutu an hour ago. They’ve a list of Sumoto’s men in KODAM Twelve. The place is going to be lively tonight. We want you out of there right away. In fact the Indonesians are demanding it
. And
demanding we never reveal we had a man there in the first place. This is an Indonesian op, OK? They cracked the case, right? And we’re going to be bubbling over with gratitude even though they didn’t manage to save our minister
.’

‘Bloody typical,’ Randall growled.

‘
Yes, isn’t it? Now look, when they recover Bowen’s body it’s going to be flown to Jakarta for an official hand-over to the ambassador, and Effendi will get you and Charlotte on the flight to Darwin this evening. But there’s something you’ve got to do for us, Nick. The Indonesians are acutely embarrassed that
we
had to tell them what was going on. And if Miss Cavendish blabs to the whole world about General Sumoto being behind the kidnap it could go really sour for us. Huge loss of trade – that sort of thing. Now, I don’t know how much she knows … but get her to fudge it, will you? Something to the effect that it may never be clear who the kidnappers were exactly. That sort of thing. See what you can do, eh? Use your charms to make her tone it down … Tell her to keep Sumoto’s
name
out of it. And for God’s sake don’t let her mention that
you
were there
.’

The minibus, borrowed from ABRI intel, had darkened windows.

Randall and Charlie sat alone in the back. His wound had been stitched and dressed at a military hospital. Now they were being driven to the airfield, rattling past the place where the night food stalls would begin business when darkness fell. Effendi had told them they were to be taken to a quiet corner of the field to await the Darwin flight. Their belongings were being collected from the Touristik Hotel and they’d be put on board ahead of the other passengers, with the small first class section to themselves. Keeping them isolated until they reached Australia was for their own protection, the police chief had explained. Mopping up Sumoto’s supporters might take a while.

The vehicle entered through a security gate, turned left on to a perimeter road, drove for a minute and then stopped. The driver switched off the engine and lit a cigarette.

Charlotte looked across at Randall. The van had bench seats down each side in the back and they had one each. They’d spoken little on the journey after he’d passed on Maxwell’s request for her to fudge her story – too much whirling around in their heads. The question of self-censorship for the sake of her country’s national interest was not an issue she’d ever faced. She’d tried to imagine what Kate Adie would do in the circs. Then, slowly she’d realised it wasn’t an issue she needed to address. The fact was she didn’t
know
what Sumoto’s role had been. And Nick had clammed up on her. So there was little to censor.

He looked pale, she thought. Shock and loss of blood.
It
was hot in the van despite the air-conditioning and his eyelids drooped. Must feel half dead after what he’d been through.

She’d thought about him endlessly in the past twenty-four hours. Fearing he was dead, telling herself he couldn’t be, expecting him to get her free, cursing him when he didn’t – a gamut of emotions. And now – when she wanted him to confide in her and he wouldn’t – annoyance. Yet she
shouldn’t
feel negative about him. If he hadn’t turned up when he had, she’d be a cinder in Mount Jiwa by now. She owed her life to him … She looked across and felt a longing to touch him, to seal the bond which events had forged between them.

She frowned. What sort of bond? She hardly knew him really. Most things that mattered he’d kept to himself. She’d still not discovered the key to opening him up. But she knew she wanted to.

She felt disorientated, as if the nightmare of the past two days had been just that – a nightmare. She looked away from Nick, gazing through the dark glass windows, trying to make out where they were.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed suddenly, sitting bolt upright. ‘What’s that?’

Randall shook off his drowsiness and turned to look through the glass behind him. They seemed to have stopped next to a park surrounded by a laurel hedge broken by an ornamental wrought-iron gateway. Beyond the entrance, raised on a dais, was a rectangular shrine covered with a tall, grass roof, its front and back open to the winds. In the middle of it stood a long wall of dark stone.

‘Could be some sort of memorial,’ Randall murmured.

‘Of course!’ Charlie exclaimed, leaning forward. ‘War graves. The Jap prison camp that was here …
Remember
?’ They’d been told about it by the man who’d driven them to the hotel when they arrived.

She reached for the door handle. Could it have been here …? No. But she had to see. She slid open the side door and jumped out before the BRIMOB driver could stop her.

‘Leave her,’ Randall told him in Malay.

He watched her step on to the dais and enter the shrine, curious about her trepidation. Then he remembered her father. She looked tiny under the towering roof, hugging herself as if scared of what she might find. He thought of getting out to be with her, but decided to leave her. Whatever she was going through, it was personal. And although a part of him wanted very much to get closer to her, he knew he must resist. The mission
here
was over. He was on his way home. Home to his mates at the Yard – home to Debbie.

Back also to a dilemma – what to do about Prime Minister Keith Copeland?

He looked down at the holdall lying on the floor of the van. The tape was still in it. Now was a good time to retrieve it, with Charlie outside and the driver not looking. He put the bag on his knee and felt for the concealed zip in the base. He pushed aside the tag and slipped his fingers into the hidden pocket, just large enough for two cassettes. He pulled them out. The one holding Bowen’s confession he’d marked with an X. He pocketed it.

For a moment he held on to the other, trying to remember all that was on it. The ambush – the interviews with Kakadi and Bawi – Charlie’s arrest. Maxwell would doubtless prefer none of it got seen, for the benefit of
diplomacy
. But
justice
mattered too. It was wrong for the Kutuan rebels to be blackened by Bowen’s kidnap and torture. He slipped the tape back into the bag.

Charlotte stood in front of the memorial wall, unable to rid herself of the weird feeling that some part of her had been here before. Not to this memorial, but to the
place
. The heat, the red-brown earth and the smell of sun-burned vegetation.

The black marble was engraved with names, over a hundred of them in neat gold lettering. Most seemed to be Indians, but amongst them were Dutch, Australians and a handful of English. As she stepped round the wall to see the other side, she looked out at an expanse of manicured grass laid out with rows of small plaques. A parade ground of the dead, of young lives wasted.

On the back of the wall were more names. She began to read.

Amin, Bandali, Bhatia, Cavendish, Chowdhary …

Cavendish
.

Like stubbing her foot on a stone, the shock rippled through her. She reached out and touched the grooves of the lettering.

Second Lieutenant George Carmichael Cavendish
.

Carmichael – her father’s middle name.

‘Can’t be …’ she mouthed.

Ambrose
had
had a brother – Uncle George who’d died in the war. Prayed for him each Armistice Day when she was a child. Killed on a bombing raid over Germany – or that’s what they’d led her to believe …

Coincidence? Was this another George Carmichael Cavendish? Or had her parents lied to her? To conceal what had happened here … Had
both
brothers been imprisoned by the Japanese? One dying the other living? She felt a door had opened. A chink of light.

Must be a book lying around somewhere, telling the story of the prison camp. She glanced quickly at the end walls of the thatched-roofed shrine and realised they were covered with etched bronze plates. Head spinning, she stepped over to look. Sketches of what the camp had
been
like. Squat guards, skeletal prisoners.

And text. Words telling the story of the men whose forced labour had built and maintained the Japanese bomber base here on Kutu. She skim-read, moving from plate to plate. Then she found it. Heart in her mouth, she began to read more slowly, every word impacting in her mind like a dart.

The last of the prisoners to be killed was 2nd Lieutenant G.C. Cavendish, one of a pair of twins. Shortly before war end, the camp commandant suspected 2nd Lieutenants G.C. & A.C. Cavendish of trying to organize a mass escape. Both men were tortured but they revealed nothing. Then in an effort to break A.C. Cavendish, G.C. Cavendish was staked out in the middle of the parade ground for three days in the hot sun, while his brother watched. A.C. Cavendish stayed silent, but was forced to see his brother die
.

‘Oh God oh God!’ Charlie choked, hands to her mouth. ‘Oh Papa …’

She felt his pain as if it had been her own. Felt the acid burn of the guilt he could never expunge. If only he’d talked about it … To her, to Verity. A burden shared …

There was still time. Perhaps. If she hurried.

She turned back to the van with its blacked-out windows.

Darwin

Friday 17.05 hrs (07.35 hrs GMT)

The Premati Air Boeing 737 touched tarmac in Australia in a torrential downpour. For most of the flight Charlie had wept silently, her face turned away
from
Randall so he wouldn’t see. She breathed in deeply. Time to pull herself together. In a little over an hour she had to be on air with her story.

She turned to Nick with a sigh and a forced smile.

‘Civilisation,’ she murmured.

‘Mmm.’

His mind was elsewhere, she realised. As hers had been.

‘Sorry I’ve not been very communicative,’ she said.

He put his hand on hers and smiled. ‘No matter.’

‘You know, I’m not even sure I’ve said thank you …’ she added, lowering her eyes, ‘… for saving my life.’

‘Oh
that
…’ he twinkled, squeezing her fingers. ‘Think nothing of it, chuck. All part of the service. You pay your taxes …’

There was a tenseness in his humour that she didn’t like. The sort of forced jollity people used before telling you something you wouldn’t want to hear.

‘I’m going to have to
run
when I get off this thing,’ Charlie murmured, extricating her hand as the plane taxied in. ‘Quick call to London from the terminal, then a cab and I
might
make the end of the Breakfast Show. You
will
come with me to the studios, won’t you?’ she asked, dreading his answer.

‘I can’t, Charlie.’

There was a leaden feeling in her stomach.

‘Have to get back to London.’

‘Oh,’ she said softly. ‘You’re going
tonight
? What about your poor shoulder?’

‘It’ll be fine. I’ll sleep all the way. There’s a flight in two hours. The Met’ll treat me to business class so I can stretch out.’

‘Oh. Oh I see. Won’t be so bad then.’ She tried to conceal her disappointment. ‘So … is this it? We say goodbye and that’s the end?’

Yes, thought Randall. It had to be. For all sorts of
reasons
. One was that the tape in his pocket simply couldn’t wait. A crime had been committed at the highest level. But just as important – if he stayed overnight in Darwin to keep her company, they’d end up in bed again. And this time it’d be different.

‘Yep. I have to hand in a report. In person. Soon as poss,’ he explained. ‘No peace for the wicked, eh?’

He saw the pain on her face and almost had second thoughts.

‘We were a good team, sweetheart,’ he said, touching her hand again. ‘You got me into Kutu, I got you out. But …’ he added, trying to make a joke of it, ‘sleeping with a journalist – that’s not something a copper’s meant to make a habit of.’

She blushed angrily. ‘What makes you think you’d have got another opportunity …?’

She turned away. He annoyed her. Annoyed her because she never knew what he was really thinking. But not to be given the chance to find out – that wasn’t fair.

‘We must meet, then,’ she said briskly, fumbling amongst her personal papers for a business card. ‘I’ll buy you a drink. It’s the least I can do for saving me from Mount Jiwa.’ She wrote her home phone number on the back of the card and gave it to him.

‘Well… thanks.’ He pocketed it quickly. Maybe in a week or two … When things were back to normal. Just for a chat.

They didn’t speak again until they reached the baggage hall. Charlie made a lightning-fast call to the News Channel newsdesk and emerged from the booth glowing.

‘I can just make it,’ she gasped.

They hugged then parted.

‘Good luck, chuck,’ he murmured.

‘You too.’