Java Spider

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Know what you mean, sir. But did the video give any clues as to where Bowen actually is,’ Randall pressed, cutting through Mostyn’s bombast.

  ‘No. Nothing new on that. Except he looked hot and sweaty. He’s down your way somewhere, old son. The Indonesians are still playing games – swearing he’s not in their country while putting the squeeze on the OKP to find out what they’ve done with him. What the Brit government needs is direct contact with the kidnappers instead of all this ultimatum by satellite stuff. It’s the arm’s-length business that scares the bollocks off the PM. Terrified the next transmission will show Bowen being cut up into steaks.’

  ‘Even the News Channel wouldn’t put that out.’

  ‘Don’t count on it. Anyway, old son, see what you can glean from the KEPO man, then get yourself over to Kutu quick as you can and find us someone to talk to. When’s the flight?’

  ‘Six this evening. That’s in …’ He checked his watch. ‘About fifteen hours from now.’

  He heard Mostyn curse. ‘Nothing sooner? Time’s bloody running out.’

  ‘I could try flapping my arms …’

  ‘Why not …? OK son. Give us another ring before you leave Darwin.’

  Thirty passengers had got off the Singapore flight, which was continuing on to Sydney. White-and grey-haired parents and grandparents visiting offspring who’d fled the nest for southern climes, they leaned on trolleys watching out for their baggage.

  Charlotte emerged from another phone booth, her face flushed, her eyes gleaming.

  ‘Fucking Sankey!’ she exploded. ‘Un-bloody-believable!’

  ‘What was it you said on the plane?’ Nick goaded. ‘We’re not all irresponsible in the media?’

  ‘Don’t! Just don’t …’ she warned.

  ‘Your boss allowed pictures of a man being electrocuted to be shown on live TV to an audience of mothers, toddlers and geriatrics!’

  ‘They’ve just fired him,’ she replied flatly.

  ‘Are you surprised?’

  Charlotte stomped about, clutching her head in her hands.

  ‘It’s a disaster,’ she muttered. ‘An absolute, unmitigated disaster.’ Her face crumpled.

  ‘Carousel’s moving,’ Randall mumbled.

  ‘Sorry,’ Charlie said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘They’ve told me to get my bag, then look up the time of the next plane home.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They want me back in London. Immediately. No passing “go”.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It was Ted Sankey who pushed to get me out here. Now he’s gone, they’re reversing all his decisions. They want the lid back on the box and everybody inside it. With a few months’ good behaviour they hope they can still keep the licence.’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘The News Channel is run by eunuchs, Nick. The only manager with balls was Sankey. Trouble was his testosterone level was just too bloody high …’

  She picked up her grey holdall by its thick shoulder strap.

  ‘Shall we share a trolley?’ she asked briskly, trying to put on a perky face.

  ‘Sure. I’ll get one.’

  She watched him walk to the line at the end of the baggage hall, noticing his broad shoulders, straight back and tight butt. He moved so well. Pity. She’d begun to believe they’d had something going.

  By the time he returned, the first pieces of luggage had emerged.

  ‘What about the woman who was going to do camera for you?’ he asked as they watched the carousel.

  ‘That’s the other problem. She phoned a few hours ago saying she’d gone sick. Cold feet more like. Three journalists got arrested in Kutu yesterday. Including the BBC man.’

  ‘Ouch.’ Getting in was going to be even more of a nightmare than he’d feared.

  His rucksack came through first. He swung it off the belt with one hand.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be the ultimate if they’d lost mine,’ Charlotte moaned. ‘Look, you go on. Don’t wait.’ She held out her hand to say goodbye.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘But I may not even get out of the airport. If there’s anything heading north right away, I’m supposed to take it.’

  ‘Are you mad? You’ll be dead with all that travelling. Give yourself a break. Tell ’em the first flight was full or something.’

  ‘You reckon?’ He was right. Wasn’t her fault the Channel had fucked up. And she was in no hurry to say goodbye to him.

  ‘Oh good,’ she said, pointing at the large, maroon backpack being borne down the belt towards them.

  Nick leaned forward and lifted it on to the trolley.

  The cab driver kept his window open. Eight years since Randall had sniffed the tropics. The light of the street lamps made the wet tarmac gleam. The heat was enough to bring on a sweat, even at night.

  ‘What does it get up to in the day?’ Charlotte asked. She’d booked on a flight home the following evening.

  ‘Thirty. Thirty-three. Not bad, but come December when humidity’s ninety per cent, you just want to die.’ The driver was middle-aged, male and with a dent in his Australian accent that might have been Polish. ‘Suicide season – that’s what they call the Wet. First time for you in Darwin?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘First time anywhere south of the south of France.’

  ‘Darwin’s OK. Growing fast of course. All new since the cyclone in 1974. On holiday?’

  ‘Not exactly, I’m …’ A prod in her thigh from Nick. ‘Well we’re sort of on holiday, yes.’

  ‘If you want someone to show you round, you can call me.’ He plucked a card from a clip on the dashboard and passed it back.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Nick glanced to the right. They were passing an army camp. The chain-link fence, barracks and parked trucks stirred warm feelings in him. Companionship, being part of a team. The good side of serving in the army. Wouldn’t mind having that sort of backup to hand right now instead of thousands of miles away.

  ‘That’s big,’ he remarked.

  ‘Certainly is. The defence forces are taking over the whole flamin’ Territory.’

  ‘New, is it?’

  ‘That’s right. A few years back the government realised all the military bases were down south but the threat was in the north. So they decided to shift ’em up here. Nobody in Darwin complained. It’s all good for business.’

  ‘Threat?’

  The driver gave a theatrical shrug.

  ‘We … ell,’ he drawled, ‘nobody ever says, do they? But look at Indonesia – two hundred million people running out of living space. China bursting. And Australia is one huge empty continent. This place could be overrun in no time at all. There’s not much to stop boat people getting ashore on this coast, apart from crocodiles.’

  ‘And now soldiers.’

  ‘’Sright. They’re turning the clock back fifty years. Place was crawling with military in the war. It was the Japs they worried about then, of course.’

  Japs and barbed wire. Charlotte thought of her father. Instant guilt that she’d pushed him to the back of her mind. There he was, sitting by the waterside in Devon waiting to die, still tortured by what had been done to him in the camps. Wherever it was he’d been imprisoned, she felt closer suddenly.

  They entered downtown Darwin, a grid of streets all but deserted at this hour, the buildings dull, square blocks of concrete.

  ‘Your flight to Kutu’s at six tonight, yes?’ Charlie checked, pulling her mind back to the present.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Nick. ‘Same time as you leave for London.’ He was relieved she’d no longer be around to betray his identity, but he would miss her.

  ‘You’ve got people to see here first?’ she checked.

  ‘Someone from KEPO, yes.’

  ‘Mind if I tag along? I’ve got a day to waste, and it’s either that or visiting a crocodile farm.’

  ‘Which would be like being back in the newsroom …’

  ‘Aren’t you funny …’ sh
e scowled.

  ‘Sure. Tag along.’ He’d be a more convincing journalist if he was accompanied by a real one.

  The Yard’s travel office had booked Nick a room at a cheap place next to a bus station. Bleary-eyed backpackers sat slumped against a wall waiting for coaches to transport them across the continent. This part of town looked like it never slept.

  Charlotte’s hotel was round the corner. She wrote its name down and gave Nick the page from her notebook.

  ‘What time?’ she checked.

  ‘Have to call the contact at nine. I’ll ring you after that.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She shook his hand. ‘And thanks for being supportive.’

  Her smile was confident again. Grown-up and in charge. Good actress, Nick thought.

  ‘’Night. What’s left of it,’ Nick grunted. He’d get four hours’ sleep if he was lucky.

  Her eyes gave him a smile that was like being swathed in brown velvet. He closed the car door and watched it drive off.

  London, Whitehall – COBR

  Tuesday 22.00 hrs

  Assistant Commissioner David Stanley ducked when entering the Cabinet Office Briefing Room. Unnecessary, but a habit because of his height. He’d come straight from Scotland Yard where Mostyn had brought him up to speed with developments.

  In Parliament Square his car had had to nose through demonstrators several hundred strong. Not the usual leftie do-gooders, but a sober, determined crowd including thirty-somethings in business clothes, sickened by the message hammered home by Stephen Bowen’s kidnappers that their government, their nation was supplying weapons to a regime that silenced its opponents by plugging them into the mains.

  The novice protesters had begun assembling early in the evening, after a heavily edited version of the torture video was shown on all TV networks. They’d sought leadership from a core of habitués who’d been there since the day before, pounding out their anti-arms-trade rant which for years had failed to reach a wide public. Suddenly raised to hero status, their well-used placards saying NO ARMS TO TORTURERS became the standards to which the newcomers rallied.

  The door to the briefing room opened. Prime Minister Copeland sloped in, his face as haggard and lifeless as in the TV pictures of PMQs. He lowered himself into the large chair at the head of the long table. He looked at Stanley first, then across at Philip Vereker. Just the two of them there.

  ‘What an appalling day,’ he announced gravely. His shoulders slumped. Stanley had the odd impression the man’s hair had receded since yesterday.

  ‘I feel ill every time I think of what they did to Stephen. What utter bastards …’ Copeland looked searchingly from face to face. ‘You think they will kill him if I don’t do what they want?’

  ‘Yes, prime minister, I think they will,’ said Vereker flatly.

  Copeland looked down at his hands. So much on his mind. So much he mustn’t show. ‘It’s hard to think about principles when it’s a friend’s life at stake. Who is it, Philip? Who’s got him?’

  ‘Everything points to an OKP splinter group. Some Kutuan faction that’s determined to get the islanders’ struggle on to every front page in the world. They’re certainly succeeding, but whether they’ll pick up sympathy is another matter.’

  ‘Oh, by the way, prime minister,’ chipped in Assistant Commissioner Stanley. ‘My man Randall’s arrived in Australia and is starting to dig. But he won’t get to Kutu for another twelve hours. We’ve told him to try to set up direct communications with the kidnappers.’

  Copeland looked confused and cornered, his face drained of all colour.

  ‘Why the penis?’ he asked suddenly. He saw the surprise on their faces and flushed slightly. ‘Why the nose? Why those two parts of the body connected to wires?’

  Assistant Commissioner Stanley shrugged, indicating this was one for Vereker to answer. Torture methods weren’t taught at Hendon.

  ‘I believe it’s because both organs contain moist conduits into the body …’ Vereker mumbled awkwardly, ‘but I’m no expert.’

  Copeland frowned, not understanding.

  ‘Moisture, prime minister. Makes for better conductivity,’ Vereker explained. ‘For the electric current.’

  Copeland swallowed. ‘It’s so damned clinical,’ he breathed.

  He opened the folder he’d brought with him and stared at the pages, more to occupy his eyes than because of what they contained. He faced a terrible decision – to back the arms industry and the important principle of never giving in to terrorists, or to go with the flow of the nation’s new-found moral conscience, capitalise on it politically – and maybe save Stephen’s life.

  ‘The kidnappers have certainly won sympathy here,’ Copeland sighed. ‘The whips tell me constituency offices are being bombarded with demands that we only sell arms to friendly democracies. I blame the media. They’ve opened their doors to Amnesty and the other lobby groups, swallowing their arguments without question. The fact that the government’s trying to run an economy with a flourishing defence industry doesn’t seem to get a look in.’

  Copeland looked worn down. Stanley had heard it said he’d not sought the top job, but had been unable to resist it when it came his way. For a moment the assistant commissioner felt sorry for him. He’d watched him being mauled by the media in the past two days. And he knew what that felt like.

  ‘The trouble is,’ Copeland confided, his voice close to breaking, ‘I’m far from sure we’ll be able to hold the line …’

  ‘You’d cancel the arms contract?’ Vereker asked, astonished. ‘Give in to terrorist blackmail? That’d set a terrible precedent, sir. Think what the Americans would say …’

  ‘It wouldn’t be put over like that, Philip,’ Copeland retorted sarcastically. ‘No, we would simply be recognising the change in the international climate towards arms sales. Taking the lead in acknowledging the new public morality …’

  There were some in the party who thought such a tactic might even rescue his government. He couldn’t remain in power for long with a majority of one. So there was growing pressure on him to drop the arms deal, to call themselves the party of principle, and to go to the country in the hope of picking up the extra votes they needed.

  ‘To cap it all,’ he went on bitterly, ‘the halfwits in the European Commission have just proposed a Europe-wide ban on arms sales to countries that don’t observe the UN Charter on Human Rights. It’s absurd! The French’ll laugh their heads off. The reality is that if Europe can’t sell arms to autocratic regimes our defence industries would collapse overnight. It’d be economic suicide!’

  Copeland clasped his hands and pulled himself together. ‘Anyway, that’s all political. Where’s the investigation got to?’

  Stanley sat bolt upright.

  ‘We think the minister’s still in the far east, prime minister. We think the videos of him are being airfreighted to Europe to be picked up by whoever stole the satellite transmitter in Strasbourg last week. European police forces are checking all airports that have suitable flights.

  ‘The other main line of enquiry is to do with the News Channel, prime minister. There has to be a reason why the kidnappers picked that station both times. We want to interview Mr Sankey, the sacked editor, but it’ll have to wait until the morning. We’ve found him. But he’s in a wine bar, unable to stand or speak.’

  ‘Bloody good thing they sacked him. Outrageous allowing those pictures to be broadcast.’

  ‘Well, he’s drowned his sorrows. We’re hoicking him out and getting him home. An officer will stay with him until he sobers up enough to make sense.’

  ‘Probably already drunk when he took the decision to show the tape …’ Copeland ventured.

  ‘That I can’t say, prime minister,’ said Stanley neutrally. ‘But let me tell you what our thinking is. Two possibilities …’

  Vereker shifted in his seat and sighed. There always were just two possibilities with David Stanley, he mused. The man’s brain simply couldn’t cope with any more.
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  ‘One …’ Stanley continued, ‘Mr Sankey may know more about the kidnap than he’s saying – i.e. he knows who the kidnappers are and had some deal going with them to get the pictures for his network. On balance, unlikely I’d say.’

  Utterly unlikely, Vereker decided. Conspiracy theories gone mad.

  ‘Two … one of the people operating the satellite dish may be an ex-employee of the News Channel who knows the times of their satellite bookings and how the company operates. Or maybe he’s an ex-employee from one of the channel’s rivals with a grudge against his exbosses. Giving a boost to the opposition could be his way of getting back at them. We’re running checks with ITN, Sky and the BBC, to see if they can come up with names.

  ‘Finally, prime minister, there’s the issue of Mr Bowen’s debts. Two hundred thousand pounds seems to be the figure owing to the two creditors we’ve identified so far. There may be more of course, we simply don’t know.’

  Copeland blinked. He felt a patch of heat spread up the back of his neck.

  ‘Are you suggesting there’s a connection between Stephen’s gambling debts and the kidnap?’ he queried, disguising his terror. ‘Surely not.’

  ‘It is possible his private activities in Indonesia were for the purpose of raising money illicitly so he could get the bailiffs off his back …’ Stanley’s words drained the remaining colour from Copeland’s face.

  ‘I hardly think …’ Copeland turned to the SIS man. ‘Philip? D’you go along with this?’

  Vereker removed his round-lensed spectacles and cleaned them with a handkerchief. Without them his eyes looked small and bewildered.

  ‘This wasn’t Bowen’s first visit to Indonesia by any means,’ he answered flatly. ‘He first went four years ago when he was a director of Metroc Minerals. Had some hand in negotiating Metroc’s stake in KUTUMIN.’

  ‘We know all about that,’ Copeland snapped. He’d spent much of PM’s Questions rejecting allegations of ministerial impropriety. ‘But the point is there’s no evidence Stephen has any on-going connection with Metroc – apart from owing them money. The company’s denied it very firmly.’

  ‘Agreed. But David’s suspicions are quite natural. Indonesia is the cradle of corruption. Huge sums of money change hands there for services rendered. The minister’s insistence on privacy could have been because of some dodgy deal.’