Java Spider

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Thanks, Mr Sankey. Thanks for your help.’

  Charlotte bounced out of the studio, burning with purpose. She’d asked for printouts of press stories on the Kutu dispute and on British trade with Indonesia. She found them ready for her on her keyboard.

  The policeman passed close to her desk as he was being shown out by Sankey’s secretary and smiled at her like an old friend. She nodded at him politely, then shuffled through the pages of cuttings. Only a couple of stories about Kutu. The problems there seemed to have been too small, too far away for the British media to worry about – until it got shoved up their noses. She sat and began to read.

  FIVE DEAD IN GOLD MINE FIGHT – Daily Telegraph

  Monday 18th June.

  Hill tribesmen on the Indonesian island of Kutu fought an hour-long battle last week with crack troops from Indonesia’s armed forces (ABRI). Five ‘terrorists’ armed with rifles and machetes were killed attempting to ambush an army patrol guarding new mine workings, according to official sources.

  Charlie read on, jotting notes.

  Kutuan Guerrilla organisation called OKP. Leader – Soleman Kakadi.

  Mineral-rich island – copper and gold. 15,000 population – many shipped to other islands by Jakarta government to make way for the huge mine. Torture and abuse common according to Amnesty. Hundreds killed in recent months.

  Rights for mine granted to international consortium including British p.l.c. – Metroc Minerals.

  Bitter quotes from something called the Kutu Environmental Protection Organization, KEPO, based in Darwin, Australia. Could be useful, she thought, making a mental note to find a number for them.

  ‘God,’ she exclaimed, reading on.

  Thirteen thousand islands in Indonesia, spread across 3,000 miles of ocean.

  ‘Never knew it was so big.’

  The next piece was from the Guardian, dated two weeks ago.

  ARMS DEAL SET TO SPARK FRESH PROTEST

  The British government has learned nothing from recent rows over arms exports, said a spokesperson for Stop The Arms Trade (STArT) yesterday. A deal to sell Indonesia half a billion pounds’ worth of submarines, patrol boats and other weapons is expected to be signed in Jakarta when Foreign Office Minister of State Stephen Bowen visits the Indonesian capital next week. STArT supporters plan a twenty-four-hour protest vigil in Whitehall on the day of the signing.

  Fewer than fifty people there, Charlotte remembered. Not an impressive turnout. Even the police were ignoring them.

  She jotted more notes – STArT chairperson Cindy Holdsworth claiming British-made craft could be used against dissidents fleeing Indonesia by boat – Foreign Office insisting arms only sold when guarantees given they wouldn’t be used for internal oppression – past sales included Hawk jet fighters and Alvis armoured cars.

  Indonesia ranked top in the corruption league, but near the bottom on human rights – thousands dead in East Timor as a result of Indonesia’s invasion in 1975.

  Charlie remembered video of the massacre in the cemetery in East Timor a few years back. She stood up, clutching the printouts. Surely Sankey would have to see the story was out there, not in London.

  ‘Charlie!’

  A shout from the newsdesk. Mandy was jabbing a finger at her TV monitor.

  ‘Line three,’ she yelled. ‘File footage on Indonesia, Kutu and Timor. Coming in now from Reuters.’

  ‘Thanks!’

  Charlie punched the keypad of her own monitor and began to log the pictures. Library shots of Indonesia’s ageing president, of Hawk fighters and of the 1991 massacre in East Timor. Then shots of Kutu, volcanic mountains and rainforests. Villages with straw-roofed huts and children with pearly-white teeth.

  ‘Tom wants you to package this for nine o’clock,’ Mandy shouted. ‘Wants you to wrap it in with the rest.’

  ‘Bugger!’ Charlie exclaimed under her breath.

  It was going to be like this all bloody day, she realised. Bulletin after bulletin. Update after update. Re-edit after re-edit. Leaving her little time for research. Little time to build her case to be sent to Kutu.

  She looked across to Sankey’s office and began to scheme. One thing was on her side. The man was vain and he was a randy dog. If she could exploit those characteristics mercilessly enough, she might yet get her way.

  Five

  Scotland Yard

  09.50 hrs

  ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER DAVID Stanley was six feet two with heavy shoulders, a shiny bald head and an expression that colleagues described as deceptively avuncular. He stepped out of the lift into Scotland Yard’s underground car park where a pale blue Rover Sterling was waiting.

  Six months to go before his pension and the longed-for chance to improve his golf handicap, he’d hoped for a quiet end to his thirty-year career in the police, before slipping into a comfortable part-time directorship with a security company. As head of the Yard’s Security Group, however, he’d faced crisis after crisis recently. The IRA, the attacks by the Revenue Men, and now this – the unprecedented kidnap of a government minister.

  The car climbed the ramp and turned left for Victoria Street. The government’s crisis centre, the Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR), had gone online an hour ago. The PM had summoned everyone at ten.

  Assistant Commissioner Stanley balanced his briefcase on his knees and extracted the progress report from DCI Mostyn. What interested him most was personnel – who was on the case. He had the germ of a plan in mind, which – if it worked – might let him leave the Met on the crest of a wave.

  DS Randall.

  When he read the name his eyes lit up. He knew the man’s file almost by heart, as he did with most of those on his team.

  Detective Sergeant Nick Randall, pushing forty. Started late in the police, otherwise he’d be a DI by now. Ex-army. Served in the far east – Hong Kong with the Redcaps. Learned Malay so he could liaise with the locals when British soldiers deployed to Malaysia for jungle training.

  Something else. Something clever the man had done out there. He closed his eyes to concentrate. In the late eighties … It came back. Nick Randall had been on a team hunting local hoods peddling drugs to British soldiers. Rescued another detective who’d got into difficulties and took out a drug baron at the same time. Won a Military Medal for his trouble.

  Assistant Commissioner Stanley stared past the driver at the jam of cars by the Abbey. If the cards fell his way, Randall might be just the man. His lips pulled into a thin line, the closest he ever got to a smile.

  The car pulled away from the lights in Parliament Square, its windscreen smearing with drizzle. The sky behind Big Ben was slate grey. Wipers humming, the car turned up Whitehall past tourists peering through the Downing Street gates and stopped outside the Cabinet Office. Bedraggled photographers stood corralled behind police barriers. He checked his cap was straight as the door was opened by the driver. Ten paces across the pavement to the grey stone building.

  ‘Over here, sir!’

  Face left then right for the photographers, Stanley ignored shouts for a statement.

  Down in the basement, screened against eavesdropping, were the rooms and corridors of COBR, a self-contained living and working space for national emergencies. Usually a Home Office minister presided. Today the prime minister.

  Stanley went straight to the main briefing room, which was furnished with a boardroom table in light oak with chairs to match. A dozen officials already there including a couple of women. Home Office, Foreign Office, MI5, and the Secret Intelligence Service MI6. Stanley nodded to the tall, bean-pole thin head of the Asia Desk, Philip Vereker, arrogant eyes behind oval, black steel spectacles, betraying just a hint of embarrassment at his department’s failure to keep the minister safe.

  Stanley had been at odds with Vereker in recent months. The SIS had run agents tracking drug dealers from Thailand. Done it so successfully they’d proposed taking control of the British end of the investigation. SIS primacy over the police? The Yard had b
een scandalised. But today David Stanley saw a chance to get his own back.

  Throats were cleared, chairs were pushed back as the prime minister walked in with the foreign secretary. Keith Copeland had a swinging gait because of a leg injury sustained in a car crash years ago. Short of stature, straight-backed and with sandy-grey hair, he’d been the country’s leader for less than a year. Forty-eight when he started, he looked ten years older now, and had the shell-shocked eyes of a man promoted beyond his ability.

  He sat at the head of the table and flattened the palms of his hands together.

  ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen – I would like us to pray a moment. For Stephen’s safe return.’

  Some eyebrows fluttered, but all bowed their heads. Copeland’s reputation for moral rectitude had won him vital party votes in the sudden and unexpected contest for PM. They sat in silence for a full minute. Stanley noticed the MI5 woman doodling on a pad.

  ‘I hardly need say this,’ the PM declared eventually, ‘but this appalling situation should never have happened. We’ll need to look again at ministerial security, even if it means some loss of privacy.’

  Beside him the foreign secretary nodded his agreement. The Rt Hon Hugh White MP wore thick-lensed glasses and an expression of permanent anxiety. Whitehall insiders said he had little grasp of geography or history and was firmly under the thumb of his King Charles Street mandarins.

  ‘But inquests are for later. First, the facts. Commissioner Stanley?’

  ‘Early days, prime minister. It’s my security group that’s leading the investigation of course,’ he said pointedly, ‘but we’ll need substantial help from both the SIS and the Security Service. As yet we don’t know whether the crime’s been committed in this country or elsewhere. Special Branch at the airports say they’re pretty certain Stephen Bowen didn’t return to Britain. If he’s abroad, it could be the far east, or Europe which is where the TV pictures were beamed from.’

  ‘You’ve found the transmitter?’ Copeland asked.

  ‘No. It puts out a narrow beam, prime minister. Like a laser. Undetectable by normal electronic means.’

  ‘Well you’ve got to find it,’ Copeland snapped, ‘before these creatures pour more poison into the ears of the media. They’re giving Amnesty International a field day, blathering on about Indonesian human rights abuses. It’s outrageous the TV people knew about this crime before we did. There’s been a serious failure of intelligence.’ Copeland glared at the SIS representative. ‘Well, Mr Vereker, where the hell is Stephen Bowen?’

  The slender Asia-desk head uncoiled like a fern.

  ‘We don’t know for sure, prime minister,’ he answered crisply, ‘but our people in Jakarta have been told he left Indonesia on Wednesday morning. On a flight to Singapore. I got a message to that effect five minutes ago.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘The Indonesians have produced a video-print of his passport and exit stamp. Mr Bowen’s name was on the passenger list for a Premati Air flight to Changi at eight thirty. So now we’re talking to the authorities in Singapore.’

  ‘I see. So there is something we know that the media don’t,’ the PM said cuttingly. He pursed his lips. Then a new complication occurred to him. He knew Bowen of old. ‘Was he travelling alone?’

  ‘Don’t know. They’re asking around in Jakarta,’ Vereker continued. ‘Our people suspect the reason he was being so secretive could well have been a woman.’

  Copeland’s face was a mask. He knew of other reasons.

  ‘Mmm. Possibly. So, what’s being done?’ he demanded. ‘Commissioner Stanley?’

  ‘Warwickshire police are with Mrs Bowen, in case there should be any attempt to contact her. And in conjunction with the Security Service,’ he said, acknowledging the woman from MI5, ‘we’re checking on the anti-arms trade people in Britain. And any other groups that take an interest in Indonesian human rights. This kidnap does seem remarkably elaborate. Suggests big money behind it.’

  ‘Too well financed for it to be the Kutu resistance?’ asked Copeland. The mining project was not unfamiliar to him. ‘What do we know about them?’

  ‘Call themselves Organisasi Kutun Pertahanan,’ intoned Vereker in an accent he hoped sounded authentic. ‘OKP for short. Sworn enemy of KUTUMIN which is an acronym for Kutu Mining – that’s the consortium one-third owned by Metroc Minerals. The OKP has a political wing operating semi-openly in the island’s capital Piri. Dr Junus Bawi – he’s the kingpin. A professor at Kutu University. Placid, reasonable sort of chap. Then there’s a small military faction in the mountains run by a wild man called Soleman Kakadi. Used to be a pal of Bawi’s until they split over tactics. The mine means depopulating a huge area of the island. Kakadi’s guerrillas try to sabotage earth-movers and stuff, and ambush Indonesian soldiers to get their weapons.’

  ‘Yes, but are they up to kidnapping Stephen?’ Copeland asked, uncomfortable at being reminded what was being done there.

  ‘Our assessment is no, not on their own. However, with outside help, it’s possible. There’s a bunch of Australians who’ve made Kutu a big issue in the Pacific. They’ve got money and, I imagine, people who know how to use TV satellites.’

  ‘So what are you doing about them?’

  Commissioner Stanley cleared his throat. Time to get his elbow back in.

  ‘At the Yard we have good contacts with ASIO, the Australian security people. It’s the middle of the night there now, but we’ll be on to them in a few hours. I imagine the SIS will too. Different channels. Belt and braces, prime minister.’

  Vereker gave a watery smile.

  ‘And as for Europe,’ Stanley continued, ‘the French and German liaison officers at the Yard are already kicking arses, so we’re confident of a lead soon on tracing that satellite uplink.’

  Copeland became agitated. ‘Speed is of the essence gentlemen and ladies, if we’re going to be able to save Stephen’s life and the arms contract,’ he said. ‘I can already feel pressure building to cancel it. Half a billion pounds’ worth of jobs up the spout.’ He looked round at the assembled faces for support. ‘You know, most people in Britain simply don’t care who we sell arms to. But when the nastiness of one particular regime gets thrust in their faces by something like this, then they begin to think they have a conscience.’

  There was no disagreement. Copeland looked down at the notes he’d made, then frowned.

  ‘So on balance of probabilities, Stephen’s still in the far east. Right?’

  ‘Ye-es,’ answered Vereker, glancing at Stanley for backup.

  ‘So, what powers do we have for pursuing our investigations there?’ the PM asked pointedly.

  ‘It’s really down to the police in the countries concerned, prime minister,’ Vereker explained. ‘We can offer assistance and feed them any intelligence we get, but it’s up to them what they do with it.’

  ‘I don’t much like the sound of that.’

  ‘Probably be wise to put the SAS on standby,’ the assistant commissioner suggested, ‘for advice if nothing else. And I’ve a couple of blokes ready to go anywhere at a moment’s notice if we get into a hostage negotiation. They’ve been before, when those students were kidnapped on Irian Jaya a couple of years back. The problem this time of course is we don’t even know which country Bowen’s in.’

  ‘Isn’t there something else we can do?’

  ‘If you’re thinking, prime minister, that we should send an undercover team to Kutu to make contact with the OKP, that may not be possible,’ Vereker announced. A thin line of sweat glistened on his upper lip.

  Assistant Commissioner Stanley felt a buzz of anticipation. He sensed a door opening.

  ‘To be blunt, we’re short of resources in the far east,’ the SIS man explained, ‘what with budget cuts since the end of the Cold War. Our agents in the region are all committed to catching drug smugglers and can’t be extracted quickly.’

  ‘God almighty! Another victory to the media!’ the PM howled, ‘They’
ll be into Kutu like rats up a drainpipe.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be too sure, prime minister,’ Vereker mumbled. ‘The Indonesians have managed to keep journalists out of there for most of the past year. They can smell a reporter a mile away.’

  Assistant Commissioner Stanley cleared his throat. ‘We might be able to help,’ he offered quietly. He felt the burn of Vereker’s stare. ‘It’s just occurred to me that one of my officers in the Anti-Terrorist Branch who’s already involved in this case happens to speak Malay which I believe is very similar to Indonesian. And he’s had experience in hostage situations. I’d be happy to make him available.’

  Vereker looked as if he’d been shot. ‘Hardly think that’s wise,’ he protested. ‘It’d be extremely embarrassing diplomatically if he cocks up.’ He looked to the foreign secretary for support. Hugh White seemed on the point of backing him up, but Copeland cut him off.

  ‘Go on, commissioner.’

  ‘DS Randall could try to get into Kutu and see if he can stand up the OKP involvement in the kidnap, which would leave the SIS to dig up what they can in Jakarta and Singapore where they already have desk men in place.’

  ‘It’s a very difficult environment out there,’ Vereker whined. ‘Not the sort of place for a London bobby.’

  Stanley let the sarcasm wash off his back.

  ‘I totally agree. But the man I’m talking about is no London bobby. He’s ex-army, served in the far east. Won a medal after negotiating the release of a military hostage, and is one of the best undercover operators we have.’

  ‘Sounds worth exploring,’ the PM decided, raising his eyebrows at Vereker. ‘Why don’t you two come up with a plan in the next couple of hours, then we’ll take a decision.’ He got to his feet, wincing. For some reason stress always made his leg hurt more.

  ‘Give my office a call when you’ve worked something out, will you?’