‘My God!’ he gasped.
Evidence. Get it on tape. He reached into the bag for the video camera, touched the record switch and aimed the lens at the ridge.
Junus Bawi strung on a pole like a slaughtered pig. Two soldiers carrying it, with Charlie towed along behind, her hands bound with rope.
He breathed again. At least she was alive.
Eighteen
IN THE CLEARING the first machine was down, its rotor swishing perilously close to the trees. A swirl of dust and grass stung Charlie’s eyes. Numbed now by what had happened, she bowed her head, wishing her hands were free to shield her face. The plastic tie cut into her wrists.
The soldiers restrained her at the edge of the perimeter. The helicopter wasn’t ready for them. Laid out on the ground in front of her were the men KOPASSUS had killed. She looked at them dumbly. Six bodies, including one of the stringy-haired youths who’d led the way up from the mission hospital – the boy with the machete. But Soleman Kakadi was not there. At that she felt a quiet sense of relief. KOPASSUS had missed the big prize. Bawi’s corpse lay at the end of the row, his smeared white shirt out of place amongst the dirty green uniforms of the fighters.
Two soldiers ran from the helicopter with green plastic sacks. They spread them out, pulled back zips, then heaved the corpses into them one by one. Charlie gagged and turned away.
As the grinding whine of the jet tunnelled into her brain, she became conscious of twenty or thirty soldiers ringing the clearing, gawping at her. She felt raped by their eyes.
Above the rim of trees a second helicopter hovered, waiting its turn. To her right four men tramped out of the forest. One was bare-chested, a large, blood-stained field dressing taped to his brown shoulder, his face contorted with pain.
With the body bags aboard, the loadmaster beckoned to the injured soldier. He limped towards the open door, a second dressing on his leg. Once he was seated securely, it was Charlie’s turn. Shoved forward, she ducked under the rotor, its down-draft tugging at her clothes. She was lifted into the machine and strapped into a canvas seat.
The helicopter shook wildly. An alien box of grey alloy, bare pipes, stained webbing and scratched Perspex. Charlie looked through the window that overlooked the far side of the clearing. More bodies there. A second neat row in the grass. Her heart leapt to her mouth. Nick? No. All in ABRI uniform. She began to count, then a rough hand twisted her face from the window. OK for foreigners to know about ABRI’s gains, but not its losses.
The engine note rose, the machine lifted, shaking more wildly still. A stench of jet exhaust blew in through the door. Outside, grass and twigs whirled in a frenzy. As they rose above the trees, the nose dipped and the helicopter accelerated low over the forest canopy jinking left and right, before climbing and settling on to an even course.
Opposite her, his knees touching hers, the injured commando sat slumped in his straps, eyes closed as if he’d passed out. Crouched by the door, the loadmaster watched the dark carpet of foliage zipping beneath them, his face hard, exhausted but relieved. At the rear of the cabin were the body bags. Up ahead, the two pilots in green bone-domes slouched in their seats smoking cigarettes like Vietnam-jocks.
Heading for Piri, and the interrogation centre where they tortured people …
She bit her lip, swallowing the tears that were welling up. Delayed shock spread through her like a nicotine surge after a month of abstinence. She was losing it. Any second she’d be screaming, howling, thrashing about in total, blind panic. She ground her teeth and told herself to get a grip.
It was no good wishing. Wishing that she’d never come to Kutu, or that she’d stayed in Piri, or at the mission hospital, or that Nick was here to hold her hand. He was gone. The person she’d been depending on to keep her out of trouble could even be dead. She was on her own now, so she’d have to be grown-up. To be cool. To think.
Torture was what terrified her most. The visible scars on Thomas’s back, the unseen ones in his mind. No. They wouldn’t do that to her. Not to a foreigner who had the power to tell the world about it and get listened to.
She opened her eyes again, stuck forward her chin and began to plan. No looking back. No agonising over what might have been. A strategy for the here and now.
Questions. What would they ask her? What should she tell them?
By now they would know full well she was a journalist. Must have known all along. Which was why they’d planted the bugging device on them.
She tried to concentrate, to remember precisely what had happened, what Bawi had said. The name of General Sumoto came back to her like a spectre at the feast. The man was big and he was bad, but that was all she knew. The kidnapping, the helicopter raid – Sumoto was behind all of it? Was that what she’d understood Randall to be driving at with his questions? What about Dugdale? Where did he fit in, if at all? God knew. Wary. That’s what she’d need to be.
What would they do with her? Put her on the first plane out? Fine. Great. The sooner the better. But what if they didn’t? There’d be questions. They’d demand her tapes.
Tapes! She sat up with a jolt. They were with Nick. Christ! No chance of a story now. No material for the scoop that would carve out a new future. Then she felt ashamed – thinking about her career when he was down there in the forest in God knows what sort of shape.
Then she realised something else. If he was dead, there’d be no one to tell London that she’d been taken prisoner. ABRI could do what they liked with her, torture her, murder her and nobody would ever be the wiser. She shrunk back into her seat. He couldn’t be dead, she told herself. At this very moment he’d be hacking his way back to civilisation to set diplomatic wheels turning. Nick would ensure she was treated well … And he’d make sure her tapes were safe …
And pigs flew.
Ten minutes later the helicopter dipped towards Piri. She saw the town sprawled below, and beyond it the translucent blue of the sea. As it neared the ground the machine juddered, then sank on to its skids. Dust swirled in through the open door.
Paramedics scrambled aboard to help out the wounded soldier. She watched him being stretchered to an ambulance a few metres away. Then it was her turn. The loadmaster unclipped her belt and helped her roughly to the ground, her hands still bound behind her back. Beyond the perimeter of the whizzing rotor she was passed into the custody of an officer with a fat, square face and rubbery lips. His well-pressed uniform contained his flesh like a sausage skin. A name-flash on the breast pocket said Sugeng.
‘Come!’
Like with the soldiers in the forest clearing, she felt his eyes defiling her. He propelled her away towards a bleak barrack-like building which enclosed three sides of a wide yard. She looked up, gulping at the bars on the windows.
At a counter inside she was asked for her passport. She froze. Hadn’t got it. With Nick in his money belt. She felt cowed suddenly.
‘I … I’m afraid I don’t have it with me,’ she stammered.
‘Nama dia Charlotte Cavendish,’ the officer told the clerk, who wrote her name in a ledger. ‘Take off your watch, Miss Cavendish. What you have there?’ His hand reached towards the breast pockets of her shirt as if about to search them himself.
‘Cigarettes. And a notebook and pen,’ she said, pulling them out. The pen and cigarettes went into a plastic bag with her watch.
Holding her notebook as if it were the evidence that would hang her, he pushed her up two flights of stairs on to a long landing that smelled of fear. At intervals iron bars from floor to ceiling marked the entrances to cells. They stopped by the third. Sugeng took a knife from his pocket and cut the plastic that bound her hands. Then he opened the door, pushed her inside, and locked it again.
The cell was bare and it stank of vomit. Blotchy white walls, a tiled floor. Two other women there, staring at her.
One of them was Teri.
London – Fitzrovia
Thursday 06.50 hrs
Ted Sankey was woken by the phone, his
head a little clearer on the second morning of his involuntary unemployment.
‘Hell,’ he wheezed, noting from the digital clock that it was not yet seven. ‘Hello?’ he grunted, stretching the receiver coils across the pillow.
‘Ted?’
‘Ye-es. Who’s this?’
‘No names. But you know my voice, mate?’
Sankey rolled onto an elbow, wide awake suddenly.
‘Yes, mate.’ It was Gordon Wiggins, the PM’s press secretary. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘The footbridge over the lake in St James’s Park – you know it?’ Wiggins’s voice was clipped and strained.
‘Of course.’
‘Meet me in half an hour. OK?’
‘Er … yep. All right.’ Had to be important.
Click.
Adrenalin propelled him from the bed to the bathroom. Was it a scoop his old chum was offering him? A helping hand up off the floor? Five minutes, then he’d need to be outside looking for a taxi. Lightning fast shower and shave.
Gordon Wiggins. Good bloke. Ten years ago they’d been reporters on the Mail together. Gordon had become chief political correspondent. Then when Copeland became PM he’d turned spin doctor at Downing Street. But he’d never done a ‘deep throat’ before.
Ten past seven when he finally found a taxi in Charlotte Street. Still in good time.
‘The Mall,’ he told the driver. ‘Halfway down.’
*
A grey, chilly morning, the air soiled and grubby with the approach of winter. Leaves from the plane trees in the park had created a carpet of yellow-green, shiny wet from the drizzle.
Sankey turned up the collar of his white trench coat. No umbrella with him, the soft rain felt cold against his face. Along the path to the lake he saw a pair of joggers. Fit-looking men in tracksuits with short hair and serious faces. Officers doing staff jobs at the Defence Ministry he guessed, keeping up their training for the day they were allowed to be soldiers again.
Standing alone in the middle of the bridge, Gordon Wiggins looked like a caricature of a 1950’s spy. Maroon anorak with the hood up, dark glasses and leaning over the rail. He was throwing bread to the ducks.
‘Watcha mate,’ Sankey breathed, positioning himself beside him but with his back to the rail so he could watch for anyone coming. ‘What’s with this Len Deighton stuff?’
‘It’s big, Ted. Very big. Can I trust you?’
‘Course you bloody can, mate!’
‘They could gaol me for this …’
‘They’ll never know, Gord. Not from me. That’s a promise.’
Wiggins threw the last crust at a Canada goose honking down the lake. He glanced about him to check they were alone.
‘There’s a cover-up, Ted,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t know all the ins and outs, but there was a statement due on aid to Indonesia from the Overseas Development Administration. Should have been out this afternoon – only it won’t appear.’
Sankey leaned in closer. ‘Why not, Gord?’ he whispered.
‘Because the PM’s ordered the Foreign Office and the ODA to delay it for a month.’
‘Why’s he done that?’
‘Because eighty million pounds of that aid is a soft loan to build a power station on the island of Kutu …’
‘O-hh …’ Sankey realised it was significant but wasn’t sure why exactly.
‘It’s a project the foreign secretary himself didn’t want anything to do with,’ Wiggins continued sotto voce. ‘He thought it dodgy – because all his officials did and he always goes along with what they say. However, a few months ago a certain junior minister by the name of Stephen Bowen went to the PM behind his boss’s back and lobbied hard for the power station. And after a while by some miracle of Bowen’s persuasive powers, Copeland decided that the Kutu power plant was, upon further reflection, the best bloody thing since sliced bread. And he managed to bulldoze the proposal through Cabinet committee.’
‘I see.’ The plot was thickening, but Sankey was still unclear. ‘Why didn’t the F.O. want to fund it, Gord?’
‘Because, Ted, with overseas aid it’s nice to be able to show that it’s helping poor people in the country it’s given to. But the Kutu power station is designed purely for the new copper mine, not to make life better for the downtrodden Kutuans.’
‘I see … but does that make the aid illegal or something?’
‘Not exactly, but listen,’ he whispered, easing closer. ‘You haven’t heard the half of it. This mining consortium KUTUMIN – it’s owned one third by a British company, Metroc Minerals, one third by an Australian outfit and one third by a bunch of Indonesians.’
‘Yeah, I know that.’
‘OK. But KUTUMIN has a real problem. Until the power station’s up and running they can’t dig up the mountain and start raking in the profits. However, they’re insisting the Indonesian government funds the power plant, not the company. Because, they say, it’ll end up as part of the national infrastructure, so shouldn’t be a company asset.’
‘Sounds reasonable,’ Sankey muttered. He was worrying about Charlie suddenly. Wondered if there’d been any word from her.
‘Sure. But listen, Ted. This is complicated. It’s all to do with who’s got a finger in the pie … who stands to gain from the spending of British taxpayers’ money. Now, have you ever heard of a man called General Sumoto?’
‘Nope.’
‘You have now. Listen. General Sumoto has a big personal financial stake in KUTUMIN. He also happens to be high up in the Indonesian armed forces. So high that, without his support, Britain would never have got that nice, juicy arms contract. Get me?’
‘A-hh …’ Sankey smelled the story at last. ‘Let me get this straight. British taxpayers fund a soft loan to Indonesia so the power station for the mine can be built. That makes KUTUMIN happy, which makes General whatsisname happy, yes? So, in return he makes us happy by giving us the arms contract, right?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘Bit like the Pergau Dam in Malaysia?’
‘Sort of.’
Sankey frowned, trying to remember the arguments used back in 1994.
‘Tell me, would this power station be built by British companies?’ he checked.
‘Yes.’
‘And by helping get the Kutu mine started, it would be doing something for the local economy?’
‘You could argue that.’
Sankey scratched his head. This didn’t make sense. The government had all the excuses it needed. So why was Gordon taking a huge risk in leaking all this to him?
‘So why doesn’t the PM argue it, Gordon? Why not let the aid figures be published and then bluff it out like they did over Pergau?’
Wiggins did a slow, full-circle turn to check they were still alone. He watched a jogger go past, then faced Sankey again.
‘That’s the point, Ted, I don’t know …’
Sankey pursed his lips.
‘That is the whole point,’ Wiggins repeated, earnestly. ‘The only reason Copeland can have for delaying the aid figures is to cover something up. Something else. Some other scam which he knows about, but nobody else does, not even the Foreign Office. I’ve talked to them, Ted, and they’re as baffled as you and me.’
‘Scam? What sort of scam?’
Wiggins removed the dark glasses. With his young face beneath the anorak hood he looked like a truanting schoolboy.
‘Something involving Bowen and involving money,’ he warned softly. ‘Loads of it. Look, Stephen was on the board of Metroc until a year ago, right? No further connection with the company, so they say. Personally I have my doubts. Anyway, what we do know is this; Bowen was in bad need of cash. Hundreds of grand down on his gambling. Threatened with public exposure, facing the end of his political career. We also know he got deeply involved in the dealings with Indonesia, which, remember, is a country where making money from influence peddling is as easy as wiping your bum.
‘Now, when Bowen did his lobbying for
the power station loan – against the advice of his officials and behind the back of his boss – he was taking one hell of a big political risk. Must’ve had one hell of a good reason to do that. And for a man in his position what could that reason be other than money?
‘And, Ted, Copeland took a huge political risk when he backed the power station aid bid. Why? To help out his old chum Bowen? Hardly. Charity is not in our dear PM’s nature, despite his sanctimonious image.
‘No, Ted. I can smell it. Copeland’s in there too. Hands in the trough along with Bowen. Can’t prove it. But the man’s scared, Ted. Scared witless.’
‘With you, Gord. With you all the way,’ Sankey breathed, his mind racing ahead. ‘Only problem is how do we use it … But use it we will, mate. Use it we will.’
Then another question came to him.
‘Why are you telling me all this?’
Wiggins looked depressed suddenly.
‘Sinking ship,’ he mumbled. ‘And between you and me I’m fed up with the half-truths of politics. Prefer the lies at our end of the briefing room.’ His smile was like that of a dog used to being kicked. ‘And anyway, whoever pays me I’m a hack at heart. And when you get a sniff that the PM’s got his hand in the till, it’s not the sort of thing you can keep to yourself.’
Kutu
16.20 hrs (08.20 hrs GMT)
Randall stopped to listen, like he had a hundred times in the last three hours. Bird shrieks and the buzz of insects. Nothing human. He sat on a fallen tree and thought of Charlie. She was OK, he told himself. To be certain, he took out the Handycam and replayed the shots he’d taken of her being marched off. No sign of injury on her. No blood. They could’ve killed her if they’d wanted; the fact that they hadn’t must mean they intended her no harm. The soldiers had been pros and would treat a foreigner with care, he reassured himself. Anyway, there was nothing he could do to help her now. Had to concentrate on saving himself, then find Stephen Bowen.
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