Mostyn had his collar undone and his tie loosened. One of his big, grubby hands held a small cigar. His was one of the few offices where smoking was permitted.
‘Thanks for your report on the News Channel. I agree there has to be a good reason the kidnappers chose that mob. We’ll chase their personnel people for the staff list.’ He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. ‘How d’you feel about this jaunt?’
‘Not happy, sir. Feels like the booby prize,’ Nick scowled. ‘Working on my tod in a hostile environment with no backup to speak of – not my idea of fun.’ He was a team man. Liked mates around him. People he trusted and who trusted him.
‘Yeah. Know what you mean. Still, it’s better than a panda car and wellies,’ Mostyn quipped. ‘And you might get lucky. Might find the bugger and get another gong!’ He crushed his cheroot into an ashtray.
‘Pigs might fly …’
‘Look, old son, just do what you can. Make Assistant Commissioner Stanley happy, then get back here and sort out these effing Revenue Men.’
Mostyn’s phone rang and he grabbed the receiver. Nick ambled to the window, sipping the scalding coffee. Outside, the morning rain-clouds had moved on. Shafts of pale sunlight lit up Horse Guards Parade and Trafalgar Square beyond. He liked London.
He breathed in deeply. Time to stop moaning and get his act together. He would be on his way in a few hours, no matter what he thought. He’d need to pack in some briefings. Work out his kit.
Freelance news photographer would be his legend. He knew the role well. Played it before. And he knew cameras ever since he bought a Canon for baby photos when Sandra was born.
Sandra. Had to remember to ring her. He’d promised to try to see her one evening this week to compensate for Sunday, but now he’d have to cancel again.
‘Got your allowance?’ Mostyn asked, finishing with the phone and jerking Nick’s mind back to the job.
‘I have.’
‘Don’t ever say the Grief doesn’t look after you, son. Hey, if you’ve got any cash left bring me back one of those flowery shirts, OK? Now, here’s your bumph. Light reading for the flight.’
He handed over two files of background material, maps and a Lonely Planet guide book on Indonesia.
‘You really are going to be on your own out there, old son. We’re not declaring you to anybody, not even the Aussies. That’s the deal. The SIS resident will be the only friendly face, but he’s in Jakarta fifteen hundred miles away. Maxwell’s the name. Harry Maxwell. Vereker will fill you on the contact procedure when he gets here.’
Mostyn opened up one of the maps.
‘You’re familiar with this part of the world, I understand.’
‘So it says on my file.’
‘Well there’s a brief here from the Foreign Office to freshen your memory. And some stuff on Bowen.’ He held out a sheaf of photocopies.
One press cutting caught Randall’s eye as he flicked through them – Bowen in dinner-jacket surrounded by high-rollers at a roulette table. From the Sun in the late 1980s. Snapped at an ill-judged lunch with a casino manager who’d been done for gaming irregularities. THE MP AND HIS DODGY FRIENDS, said the headline.
‘One other little nugget for you,’ Mostyn growled. ‘Before our Stephen became a minister of the crown he was … wait for it … a non-exec director of Metroc Minerals, the very same British company that’s in the consortium digging up Kutu.’
‘Interesting!’
‘Indeed. But so far that’s all it is. No evidence of a link with the kidnap. But at this stage we know sod-all anyway …’
‘Anything new on the video business? Like where the pics were fed from?’
‘Not yet. Every force in Europe’s been contacted. Something’ll come up … We’ll be running you as a joint op with Vauxhall Cross by the way, but running it from here, right? I’m your man. There’ll be a couple of others manning a twenty-four-hour phone line. Don’t know who. Haven’t picked them yet. Oh, by the way, we’re calling him Bob. The minister, that is. Use that name for him on open phones.’
‘OK, sir. Just one question. Supposing by some bloody miracle I do find him in Kutu. How am I supposed to get him out?’
‘Up to you, old son. Use your head. You’ve done it before. Only this time, if you wouldn’t mind, try not to kill anyone.’
South London
It took the police Rover an hour to hack through the evening crush to Nick’s home in Wimbledon. Balanced on his lap for much of the journey was the briefcase of files he would have to memorise on the flight out.
Vereker of the SIS had been uptight and miserable in the briefing. Harry Maxwell in Jakarta was to be contacted only in emergency he’d said, because the phones would be bugged. What did the geek think he would do, ring up every time he felt lonely?
Vereker had given him just one name in Kutu, Dr Junus Bawi, the university professor who headed the political wing of the OKP. Told him the man phoned Reuters in Jakarta an hour ago to deny any knowledge of the kidnap, but would need checking out.
A deep sense of pointlessness engulfed Randall as the car pulled up outside his house. He was being blasted off into a black void, just because someone up there had a score to settle. He thanked the driver, dumped his briefcase and a professional-looking camera bag on the pavement, then watched the car disappear as he fumbled for his keys.
The house was a two-up, two-down. He’d taken a mortgage on it five years before, when the dust had settled on his divorce from Lindy. Debs had moved in with him three years after that. He’d phoned her at work a couple of hours ago to say he was going away for a few days.
‘Hi! That you?’ she shouted from the kitchen when he opened the front door. She poked her head into the hall, saw the camera bag and the tension on his face. ‘Oh dear …’
‘Give us a beer, chuck.’
He dropped the bags and followed her into the kitchen. Debbie had changed out of her work clothes into jeans and a pullover. She reached into the fridge and held out a can. He took it, then kissed her on the mouth. She had a pleasant, fleshy face with curly light-brown hair.
‘OK. Give me the worst …’
‘Away for a few days. A week maybe. Can’t tell you where, but it’s not round the corner.’
She looked anxious. She knew he was on the Bowen case and had seen the video on the evening news.
‘Indonesia,’ she said.
He pulled a face then ripped the can open and gulped down the lager. He knew she would never repeat anything he told her, but there were rules.
‘Got time to eat something?’
‘Car’s coming for me in a couple of hours.’
She reached into the food cupboard and pulled out a pack of pasta and a jar of sauce. Then she put a saucepan of water on to boil.
Debbie was by no means the most beautiful woman who’d entered his life, but she was certainly the best. She got through to him in a way no other woman ever had. Since she moved in he’d learned to curb his habit of thinking that any woman who smiled at him fancied him. Debbie had told him straight – any playing around and she’d be out of the door.
She had a half-drunk glass of wine beside the stove which she took little sips from as she fried some mince for a Bolognaise sauce. She cast him a glance. Never seen him so uptight before.
‘Just tell me one thing,’ she said, trying to break through his reserve. ‘Is the job do-able?’
He looked her in the eyes. In his guts he sensed that if it was do-able, there’d be killing involved.
Couldn’t tell her that.
‘Don’t know, Debs. I really don’t know.’
Seven
Jakarta
Monday 19.00 hrs
RAIN HAMMERED AGAINST the warm window glass, smearing the glow from the lights outside. In the huge square facing the British embassy, Jakarta’s traffic was dancing its evening quick-slow-slow. Ambassador Robert Bruton slammed down the phone. His collar was undone and his shirt cuffs were held clear of his wrists by sprung meta
l armbands.
‘I want every bloody second accounted for, Cheryl,’ he told his unmarried, business-like PA. ‘I want to know who Stephen Bowen was with every damned moment he was here.’
Word had just come from Singapore that there was no record of the minister arriving there from Jakarta last Wednesday. Nor of him being in transit. Someone was telling lies. Bruton needed to know who – and why?
‘Tell Harry Maxwell he’s coming with me to this do. Downstairs in five minutes.’
Ambassador Bruton was a short man with immaculate hair thinned by excessive brushing. He stepped into the small dressing room attached to his office, flicked up his collar and knotted a red and blue tie. His private feelings about Bowen’s kidnap were unprintable – served the bastard right for being a secretive, pompous ass.
A touch with the hairbrush, then jacket on and he was ready to go. He closed the security cabinets and spun the combination locks. With a slim, leather attaché case under his arm, he descended the stairs at an undignified speed.
‘Harry. Good man.’
The embassy’s corpulent resident spy stood by the exit, the jacket of his light-brown suit draped over his arm.
‘What d’you make of this denial from Singapore?’ Bruton growled.
‘Difficult to know. Airport records aren’t always reliable, but the Changi people were adamant.’
‘Buck passing, the lot of them. All terrified of discovering the crime’s been carried out on their patch.’
They stepped through the rear entrance of the drab building into the ambassador’s racing-green Jaguar.
‘You’ve not been invited to this do, but no matter. Need all the eyes and ears we can muster.’
They sank into the soft, cream leather of the car’s rear seat and closed the door, shutting out the clammy heat.
‘What’s the occasion?’ Maxwell checked. ‘And where is it?’
‘At the Crowne Plaza. It’s JAVAIR. The launch of their new turboprop mini-liner. Packed with pokerfaced grandees that Bowen would have met.’
JAVAIR was Indonesia’s home-grown aircraft manufacturer. Massively subsidised, the diplomatic community nicknamed it a ‘bonsai’ industry because it never grew however much money was poured into it.
Bruton leaned forward to close the glass panel then turned on the stereo to ensure they couldn’t be heard by the locally-employed driver.
‘Who’s this man Randall London’s sending to Kutu?’ he murmured.
‘Special Branch. Not one of ours,’ Maxwell answered. ‘Scotland Yard seems to think he’s James Bond.’
‘Make sense to you, sending him?’
‘Rather him than me. Kutu’s not a place where a white man blends in. My bet is he’ll get nowhere. Just hope they don’t arrest him as a spy.’
‘Soiled underwear for us if they do.’
Bruton pulled a sheet of paper from his briefcase, a list of the people Bowen saw when he was here.
‘Can’t remember the name of that hostess from the Indonesian protocol department,’ he frowned.
‘Selina Sakidin.’
‘That’s the girl. Bowen’s eyes were like saucers whenever she came into view.’ He scribbled her name then paused, marshalling his thoughts. ‘Has to have been a woman – the reason for his secrecy.’
‘And you think it could have been Miss Sakidin? Possible. I’ll try to speak to her. But we’d better check at the embassy too,’ Maxwell added. ‘See if anybody in a skirt took leave last week. Bowen was like a dog with two dicks whenever a woman hove into view. Took a shine to your Cheryl, I seem to remember.’
The ambassador’s secretary was in her late thirties, plain, but not unattractive. Maxwell himself had spent a surprisingly inventive night with her once, after a drunken embassy party.
A fresh cloudburst hammered on the roof. Ahead the road had turned into a small lake. Cars and buses sent up curtains of water as they dodged bajajs. Motors flooded, the tricycles were as helpless as drowned beetles.
The Jaguar swung off the main artery of Jalan Sudirman, and climbed the entrance ramp to the covered forecourt of Jakarta’s newest hotel. It was in these plush, five-star palaces, glittering with gold and glass, that wealthy Indonesians conducted their social lives.
Inside the suite stood a reception line, with the wizened Sumatran company chairman at its centre. When he saw Bruton, his fixed smile turned to an expression of deep concern.
‘Terrible about Mr Bowen,’ he declared. He knew the ambassador well – his company relied heavily on British technical advice. ‘At least he’s not in Indonesia. Very bad for us if such a thing could happen here.’
Maxwell noted his anxiety. There was nothing Indonesians dreaded more than loss of face.
Armed with glasses of fruit juice, they mingled, chatting in the superficial way that Indonesians felt comfortable with. The room held some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country, many of them ethnic Chinese. Though a minority in the country, they were the brains of most businesses. Behind the relaxed smiles in the room Maxwell saw fear when they caught sight of Bruton. The Bowen issue was explosively embarrassing for them.
Suddenly Bruton nudged him. Maxwell followed his look. Elbowing his way through the crush towards them was a tall, broad-chested man dressed in the sludge-brown safari suit worn as mufti by all senior Indonesian army officers. Three gold-capped pens glistened in his breast pocket.
‘General Sumoto! How nice to see you,’ Bruton declared, greeting him edgily. ‘You know my counsellor, Harry Maxwell …’
‘Of course.’ Sumoto gave a porcelain smile, his small, brown eyes well practised at concealing his thoughts.
The small circle of businessmen around them fell silent. Major General Dino Sumoto was a man of burning ambition and they feared him. A former military commander of the eastern islands that included Timor and Kutu, he was one of many top soldiers seeking to enhance their positions when the elderly president finally gave up his monopoly on power.
‘I’m surprised to see you still here, Mr Maxwell,’ Sumoto chided, with uncharacteristic directness. ‘I thought they’d have recalled you to London to explain how you lost your minister.’
Maxwell swallowed, formulating a retort about the right of an individual to personal privacy. It would not be well received. He smiled wordlessly.
‘It’s a shocking business,’ Sumoto went on, shaking his toad-like head. ‘Dreadful for Stephen and dangerous for us.’ He indicated all of them in the circle. ‘Ambassador … a quiet word if I may.’ Towering above Bruton, he took his arm and eased him away from the hearing of others. Maxwell followed closely.
‘What’s happening? I need to know,’ the general demanded, fretfully. ‘Your prime minister is saying unfriendly things. On the BBC just one hour ago. He talked about human rights in Indonesia.’ Sumoto made it sound like AIDS. ‘That’s our internal affairs, Mr Bruton. Why does he do this? Just because you have protests in London – ignorant people holding banners saying untrue things about us? Is he going to change his mind about the arms contract? We should be told.’
‘He was just restating the UN position on human rights …’ the ambassador soothed awkwardly. ‘Nothing new or different. And as far as I’m aware there’s no intention whatsoever to renege on the agreements we’ve signed.’
‘I’m relieved to hear you say that,’ Sumoto simmered, but he looked nonplussed.
His English had been honed by a year at London’s Royal College of Defence Studies. He raised a cigar to his rubbery lips, the finger that gripped it heavy with gold rings.
Sumoto was a major general, in charge of buying new equipment for ABRI, the Indonesian armed forces. Without his backing the deal with Britain would never have happened. Maxwell, however, knew that the backing would have come at a price – something over a million pounds probably, peeled from the commission on the DefenceCo contract and diverted into Sumoto’s pocket.
‘So what is the news of Stephen?’ Sumoto pressed. ‘He went to Singapore I und
erstand.’
‘Well, not according to the immigration officials at Changi, general,’ Bruton replied. ‘They have no record of him arriving.’
‘No? They tell you that?’ Sumoto looked momentarily discomfited. ‘Maybe they make a mistake.’
Again Maxwell saw fear in the eyes. Fear of the shame and disgrace that would follow if it proved that the kidnap had taken place in Indonesia.
‘When you talked to him last week, general,’ Bruton ventured, ‘did Stephen mention staying on for a few days’ sightseeing? With a woman friend, perhaps?’
Sumoto pulled himself up straight.
‘No. He said nothing of that. We talk business, not social things. But, ambassador, you must find him quickly. These people who have him are dangerous. They can easily kill him. Without a second thought. Kutuans – I know them. They’re bad people. I was commander there many years.’
‘But general, how could the OKP have captured Stephen Bowen?’ Maxwell pressed. ‘Unless he went to Kutu … Yet you’re insisting he wasn’t anywhere in Indonesia.’
‘You’re right. By themselves Organisasi Kutun Pertahanan cannot do such a thing. But they have friends in other countries. People who interfere in our affairs. People who tell lies about us. It is they who have Stephen I think. Maybe Bangkok was where Stephen went,’ he added, divertingly. ‘Many girls there. That’s an easy place for a man to disappear.’
With that thought, he touched hands with them both, then made to move away.
‘Stephen’s a good friend,’ he pleaded finally. ‘You must save him …’
And save the arms contract, thought Bruton as Sumoto drifted off. Unfortunately, for now at least, the two things looked to be mutually exclusive.
‘Hypocrite,’ he breathed when Sumoto was out of earshot. ‘His tears for Bowen are crocodile ones. What he’s really scared of is losing his commission.’
‘And will he? I mean will London cancel the contract?’
‘God knows. We have a weak government led by a weak prime minister. Anything’s possible. But if we’re not cancelling, it’s time London made noises that were a little more reassuring.’
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