Java Spider

by Geoffrey Archer

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Geoffrey Archer

  Title Page

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Geoffrey Archer is the former Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent for ITN’s News at Ten. His work as a frontline broadcaster has provided him with the deep background for his thrillers – the bestselling Skydancer, Shadow Hunter, Eagle Trap, Scorpion Trail, Java Spider, Fire Hawk, The Lucifer Network and The Burma Legacy. A keen traveller, he now writes full time and lives with his wife and family in Surrey.

  ALSO BY GEOFFREY ARCHER

  Sky Dancer

  Shadow Hunter

  Eagle Trap

  Scorpion Trail

  Fire Hawk

  The Lucifer Network

  The Burma Legacy

  Dark Angel

  JAVA SPIDER

  Geoffrey Archer

  Author’s Note

  The island of Kutu doesn’t exist. However, the events that take place there in this story will be familiar to islanders in some parts of the Indonesian archipelago, particularly in East Timor and Irian Jaya.

  All of the characters and some of the companies in this work of fiction are invented. Any resemblance to actual persons or companies is purely coincidental.

  To Eva, Alison

  and James

  One

  Jakarta, Indonesia

  Wednesday 05.55 hrs

  STEPHEN BOWEN DREW back the curtains of his tenth-floor hotel room. The dawn sun sat on the city’s concrete horizon, the colour of a ripe guava, staining the city’s pollution haze a murky pink.

  The Indonesian day began early. Already across the street he saw brown-backed men bolting the steel frame for another new bank. By midday the blazing sun would make such work impossible. By mid afternoon it would be raining – tropical torrents, silver rods of water bringing street life to a halt.

  Bowen slid open the glass door and stepped on to the small, tiled balcony. From the road below came the putter of two-stroke bajaj tricycles, weaving their smelly way through the commuter traffic. Already the sun felt hot on his face.

  He had patrician good looks, with peppery hair combed in lines neat as plough furrows. A man in control. His appearance had served him well. Politics, business, women – his looks had helped.

  He leaned on the steel rail and gazed down at the crush of traffic. The country’s population was growing at two million a year, Jakarta almost choking with bodies. A tough place for foreigners, although many lived here, oiling the wheels to create business for their companies back home.

  This was his fourth visit to Indonesia. He loved the place in the way he loved casinos. Men living by their wits, playing their cards right and winning big. The place smelled of banknotes.

  His first two trips to the south Pacific had been as a backbencher, free to explore his own business interests. The third and this one had been official. Straitjacketed by being a minister of Her Majesty’s government. Publicly, at least.

  He heard the door chime and let in the room-service waiter. The dowdily-dressed, brown-faced Javan eyed Bowen’s maroon silk pyjamas, set down the tray and grinned. Fruit, coffee and fried rice. Bowen gave him a thousand rupiah note. Big money here, thirty pence back home.

  The waiter bowed, but his eyes mocked. Bowen closed the door and locked it. Always the eyes that gave away the Javans’ contempt for the pink-faced Europeans who’d once been their masters.

  Bowen drank the fresh-pressed juice. Half an hour to go before the car came. Half an hour in which to be washed, dressed and checked out of this middle-ranking, characterless hotel. His case lay on the second bed, almost packed. He’d done it last night, several hours and a change of hotels after the final handshakes that had concluded his official visit.

  The trip had been a success. The Memorandum of Understanding he’d signed meant the two governments were now firmly locked into the arms deal, with final terms to be settled between the British manufacturers and ABRI, the Indonesian military. The contract had been hard fought – they’d beaten the French by a whisker. Although the donkey work had been done by the UK consortium DefenceCo p.l.c., the clincher had come from him. A touch on the political rudder, a twisting of arms, and a high-stakes gamble that was set to pay out in style.

  Bowen sat at the low table and ate the slices of pineapple and mango but rejected the nasi goreng. Greasy chicken-fried-rice was not his idea of a breakfast. He downed some coffee then removed his pyjamas and packed them, before stepping into the shower.

  For a man of nearly fifty the Rt Hon Stephen Bowen MP, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, was fit, his muscles toned regularly in a Westminster gym. A mat of dark hair extended from chest to groin. As the water pricked his skin he felt a shiver of anticipation, like when entering a casino – the thrill of risk, the buzz that came with abandoning life’s safe zone. What he was about to do was, he knew, distinctly unwise – but it would taste like nectar.

  Twenty-four hours ago he’d received a guarded invitation from an Indonesian friend, a lavish offer of hospitality. A child could have seen that accepting it would rate as ministerial impropriety if it became public knowledge back home – the personal bank account of his host was to benefit handsomely from the arms deal he’d just signed. If the London papers found out they’d chew him to pulp.

  Stephen Bowen, however, was a man facing his second half-century, a man whose marriage survived in name only. What he’d been offered, few in his situation could resist – the promise of a few days on a luxury yacht and the intimate company of an exceptionally pretty woman half his age.

  He’d convinced himself no one back home would ever know. Total privacy had been guaranteed by his host. He’d cut free from his Foreign Office minders in Jakarta, moving from the plush suite in a five-star tower where he’d spent the past few days into this more anonymous hotel. And he’d ignored the Ambassador’s demands to know where he was going for his ‘few days’ leave’.

  He turned in the shower, letting the spray play on his chest and stomach.

  Selina was her name. Working for the Indonesian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, she’d acted as social secretary for his visit. Only ever seen her in a smart business suit.

  As he towelled himself down, he felt a moment’s guilt about Sally. Always did in the hours before an indiscretion. A twitch of regret at not having made a better fist of his marriage. His fault entirely, but too late to change.

  He dressed quickly in clean, blue sports-shirt and buff, cotton trousers. Three days of bacchanalian pleasure on the big man’s motor yacht, a little light gambling – and Selina … Didn’t even know her second name. Knew her smile though, and her submissive eyes. Every man did in his dreams. And now the dream was being made flesh. A little thank you, a little quid pro quo for the way he’d fixed the arms deal.

  And what a deal. Good for Britain, but above all good for him. As Bowen closed his Samsonite bag, he felt the thrill of the tightrope. One slip and he’d be finished. Nev
er before had he staked so much. Never before had he had to. The arms deal he’d signed would not only benefit the nation he served, it would save him from bankruptcy. Unless he got found out …

  He checked his watch. Time to go. Seven hours ahead of London. Still Tuesday there. He grabbed his briefcase, did a final check round the room, then wheeled his bag into the corridor and let the door click behind him.

  Indonesia was another world from the one he’d cut his teeth in. Normal politics, normal business practice didn’t exist in a nation controlled by a single man, his family and his cronies. The key to business here was simple yet complex – knowing who to bribe. Dozens of Indonesians in the military and in government would benefit personally from the deal he’d just signed.

  Bowen knew little of the details. DefenceCo handled it. In the company accounts the money would be listed as commission, a lump sum to a single agent, which would cascade down to the other beneficiaries. The choice of agent was crucial. DefenceCo’s man could not have been better placed.

  Bowen emerged from the rattly lift and strode across the lobby to the cashier. Even at this early hour there was a check-out queue. He waited in the air-conditioned chill for a couple of minutes, glancing towards the swing doors for the limousine. Then he passed his Visa card to the smiling clerk and checked his bill. One night only, supper in the room, no phone calls.

  ‘You use minibar?’

  He shook his head and signed the slip. Pocketing the receipt and his card, he turned – and almost collided with her.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Bowen!’

  Selina. White T-shirt today, blue denim skirt, eyes as black as her hair, a face the shape of a heart and a smile as shy as a virgin’s.

  ‘Oh, hello! Hi …’ he floundered, his throat dry suddenly. ‘I … I didn’t realise you were picking me up. I was expecting some ugly driver.’

  Heart pounding, he fell in love.

  ‘I the ugly driver,’ she grinned. ‘You ready?’

  ‘Ready, willing and able,’ he purred, stupidly.

  The City of London – a few hours earlier

  Tuesday 19.35 hrs

  An autumn nip in the air. A London night black with gloom.

  Nick Randall hated murder cases. They gave him a knot in the stomach and a feeling of guilt. Not to mention revulsion – particularly when the weapon was Semtex. No limit to the number of ways it knew to smash up bodies.

  He stared broodily through the car window as the siren wailed them out of the Blackfriars underpass and into the clog of traffic the explosion had caused.

  ‘Damn!’

  Every lane solid. Nothing moving. He leaned forward.

  ‘Turn that frigging siren off,’ he told the driver. ‘No way we can get through this, short of flying.’ He settled back in the seat, waiting for the jam to clear.

  The attacks had begun in the summer. Crimes of envy the government called them. The targets until now had been the super-rich – company executives pilloried in the press for corporate greed. The terrorists had escaped detection so far, unknowns, cleanskins. They’d begun low key with a break-in at a rich man’s home – then graduated to arson and letter-bombs. And now an explosion in a City bar.

  Randall was a detective-sergeant, known by his peers in Special Branch as an easy-going bloke, except when the ‘media’ got on their high heels, howling about the police’s failure to catch the terrorists. Tomorrow’s papers would be another uncomfortable read.

  ‘What gets me is the way they always demand resignations,’ the driver complained, as if reading his mind. ‘If we can’t find the buggers with the men we’ve got, how’re we goin’ to do it with fewer?’

  Randall grunted. Not enough hours in the day. Earlier he’d rung home to tell his girlfriend Debbie he was going for a quick drink with the lads but would be back by eight. Ten minutes later he’d had to phone again.

  The traffic crawled. Near the Bank of England, the Mondeo cut free and the driver banged on the siren again. Blue lights everywhere. Fire pumps, ambulances. Havoc, just when the City had been winding down for the evening.

  Wag’s Bar. What a name. Conjured up a picture of smug young traders drinking the cream off their money-market profits. That’s how the wannabe revolutionaries with the Semtex must have seen them. Not fat cats yet, but heading that way.

  The rich getting richer and the poor poorer – a symptom of the times. Randall was as envious as the next man of six-figure salaries, but drew the line at killing people over them. The terrorists, however, had uncovered a vein of public sympathy for their crimes, which had curbed the information flow. No mean feat. Usually took a war for people to sanction murder.

  A hundred metres ahead, a uniformed City constable pushed back gawpers and cameramen to let the Mondeo into the narrow street of banks and brokerages. The car stopped. Fluttering tape sealed an alley. Randall waited a moment, reluctant to leave the vehicle’s warm, friendly smell. Outside on the alley’s cobbles he could see the litter of terror. Splintered timber, shards of glass and thick, dark smears of blood.

  Hooligans. Mad buggers. That’s what they were. Yet when the attacks began, people had called them Robin Hoods. On the first raid, a domestic break-in, nothing had been stolen. Just a fine emulsion of human excreta sprayed over the soft furnishings. Tabloids had loved it.

  Two more raids like that, then they’d got nasty. A north London mansion burned to the ground. The millionaire owner and his wife unharmed, but not their twelve-year-old daughter, asleep upstairs. Arson, and murder. That’s when the case had become one for the Yard.

  The car’s fan sucked in smoke.

  ‘All right, constable,’ Randall growled. ‘Tell me to move my arse.’

  ‘Move your arse … sir.’

  Randall had lived with terrorism for six years, mostly IRA. This lot had seemed different – anarchists, social revolutionaries or whatever – but now they were into Semtex he’d begun to wonder. Not the sort of stuff you could pick up at a chemist’s. And he knew the Provisionals still had tons of it.

  He closed the car door and sniffed the air. Damp from the doused fire, and acrid with burned plastic. His soles crunched glass as he stepped over the fat snakes of hoses. 5’ 10”, with thick, brown hair and a body useful in a scrum, he picked his way forward.

  He ducked under the incident tape and approached the gaping, smoke-blackened cavern, all that was left of the bar. Bomb Squad were inside. So were paramedics checking none of the remaining bits of human tissue could be sewn back to life.

  A uniformed City sergeant checked who he was then told him there were eight dead.

  ‘That’s from a count of the heads,’ he added ghoulishly. ‘And there’s about thirty injured.’

  ‘Witnesses?’ Nick shivered and tugged up the zip of his dark green Berghaus.

  ‘Anyone who was inside and lived is down at the hospital.’

  Nick sniffed the bitter, black smoke. A foam fire. Furnishings had burned but not much else. Ceilings down, fittings smashed. Just a few ounces of plastic would have been enough. He imagined the place. Young people, mostly men, crowding in after work, their gym-hardened bodies pulped by the blast.

  One of them must have seen something.

  ‘Which hospital?’

  ‘Southwark.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He stared into the wreckage. Eight lives gone here tonight. Eight families pole-axed. Not right, no matter how unjust the world.

  ‘World’s gone mad,’ he muttered.

  Out there somewhere, were the handful of people who’d done this, but Randall’s team had no clue who they were. Heavy surveillance of PIRA regulars and of known subversives had produced nothing. The group called itself the Revenue Men, acting to stamp out graft and corruption according to a statement posted to the media two weeks ago. Levying a tax of suffering on their victims was the way they’d put it. Somebody with a sick sense of humour.

  From the charred shell of Wag’s Bar a woman from Forensic emerged, carrying a heavy plastic
sack. Nick knew her a little, having chatted her up once in the canteen. Married, he remembered. They exchanged grimaces but said nothing. Then he returned to the car, avoiding the larger shards of glass. The back seat was still warm. Comforting.

  ‘Bastards,’ he mumbled. ‘How do they sleep at night after doing something like that?’

  Randall picked up the folder containing photos combed from the files at the Yard and the Security Service, MI5. Any suspect with a remote chance of being involved. What he needed was a break. For a witness to recognise someone.

  ‘Southwark,’ he told the driver. ‘The hospital.’

  Away from the incident scene the traffic soon thinned. London was strangely nervy these days, more so than when the IRA did their worst. In the canteen at the Yard the reasons for this were the subject of speculation. The chaps with university educations said because the Irish were foreign, the Brits had stood up to them. But the Revenue Men were Brits, part of us – a sort of enemy within. It made people anxious. Made them wonder where they’d stand if the barricades went up.

  All fanciful crap as far as Randall was concerned. More evidence of the futility of having letters after your name.

  The driver stopped at a road block. A random check. Traffic Branch threw them up all over the place. Groping in the dark, the press called it. The driver flipped his warrant card and they were through.

  Groping in the dark? Or leaving no stone unturned … Earlier that afternoon, Randall had slung the Nikons round his neck, stuffed the press pass in his pocket and slipped in amongst the hacks to take a look at a group of women picketing parliament. Anti-arms-trade. Not a shred of evidence linking them with the Revenue Men. But it was faces. Faces to add to the collection that one day might ring a bell.

  The Southwark hospital had been new, twenty years ago, but looked ready for demolition now. At casualty reception normal patients were being turned away. The City bombing had swamped facilities here.

  Nick showed his ID and was taken inside. Twenty minutes since the last bomb victim was admitted, he guessed. The most serious were already in theatre. Treatment bays lined the walls of the department, all full. Some victims lay motionless, wounds covered with bloodstained dressings. In others staff worked on their patients.