‘Yes, but also in other KODAMs. All officers loyal to people before president are angry. Because they think Sumoto was for them.’
Abdul checked again that no one was in earshot. His face came so close to Maxwell’s they almost touched.
‘You ask me ’bout weapons, Harry.’ Another quick glance behind. ‘Well, Sumoto promise them rockets,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Sumoto tell them he get ballistic missiles from China. Range two thousand kilometres. Such weapons make ABRI very strong. But, before China sell missiles to Indonesia, Indonesia have to change …’
‘Let me guess …’
‘Must have new president, China say. President who want to make good friends with Beijing …’
‘And how would such a man be chosen?’
‘By ABRI generals who want the same as Sumoto. There are some.’
‘He was planning a coup?’
‘No. But a change in the army leaders. Using KODAM Twelve to force out any generals who not want to go …’
A coup by another name. Maxwell sensed that Abdul was relieved that Sumoto had been stopped.
‘You’re glad he’s been sacked?’
‘Ya … maybe,’ he wavered. ‘You see most people want change in Indonesia, but not change that way. No more blood. Enough people killed already. And Sumoto he want to move too fast. Too dangerous, you understand?’
‘I understand. He took a big risk, didn’t he?’
‘Ya … He want power very much. So much it make him blind. He want to be commander-in-chief of ABRI. That first, then who knows …’
An ABRI complete with an arsenal of ballistic missiles that could hit Australia. Flesh on the bones of the Aussie nightmare.
But he’d blown it. Sumoto, the Java spider, had built a web too weak to hold what he’d hoped to catch with it. With a wave of his feather duster, the president had simply swept it all away.
‘I think maybe they charge him with treason,’ Abdul went on. ‘Because he have secret contact with China. And because he plot against the president.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Nobody know that. But he not under arrest.’
Quickly Maxwell correlated his thoughts. There was a vital piece missing from the puzzle – proof that it was Sumoto who’d kidnapped Stephen Bowen to abort the arms deal with Britain and prime the pumps for his push for power. All the evidence pointed, but was circumstantial. What he needed was proof that would stand up in court.
‘Tell me something else, Abdul,’ Maxwell asked, trying to make it sound like a disconnected issue, ‘what are people saying about the kidnap?’
‘Oh … nobody know anything ’bout that,’ the journalist replied dismissively. ‘But I think the Englishman’s in Kutu. The resistance – OKP – maybe they have him. They are like children. Stamp their foot because they don’t want the mine.’
For all his liberalism Abdul was still a Javan, Maxwell reminded himself. Little sympathy for far-off Melanesians resisting Javan rule. The young man began to tap the table in frenetic accompaniment to the music beat.
‘I go now,’ he shouted. His eyes looked at his fingers, reminding Maxwell there was unfinished business.
Maxwell nodded, put a hand in his trouser pocket and pulled out the brown envelope, twice as fat as usual.
‘Thank you, my friend.’ He touched him on the forearm.
Abdul was on his feet in an instant. A peremptory nod and he was away through the crowd.
Damn, Maxwell thought, losing sight of him. He’d forgotten to fix a location for their next meeting.
Harry Maxwell got the taxi-driver to drop him short of the embassy. An automatic precaution in a city where nobody was quite what they seemed.
It might well have been the action of the British ambassador that had prompted General Sumoto’s dismissal by the president, Maxwell realised. Bruton had had a quiet word with DefenceCo about Sumoto’s contacts with China. Then DefenceCo had spoken about it to their Indonesian agent. Then he must have raised it with his supremely important relative …
The meeting with Abdul had left him deflated. The kidnappers had given a deadline of noon GMT Friday. Bowen would die then unless there’d been a favourable response from Britain. Twenty-four hours left – assuming they bothered to wait now that Keith Copeland had reconfirmed the arms contract.
If only he had proof of Sumoto’s guilt he could slap it on the desk of Brigadier General Effendi and demand that POLRI take action. But he hadn’t – unless the elusive Cuculus had unearthed something in Kutu.
The evening rain had stopped but there were puddles to be avoided as he walked the last thirty metres to the embassy compound. As he neared the security gates he became conscious of a car coming slowly up behind him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the bumper draw level with his legs. It was a Toyota, new and shiny in the pink light of the street lamps. When the car slowed further, he felt an irrational stab of fear.
‘Mr Maxwell!’ A little girl voice. Strained. From inside the car.
He turned to look. Heart-shaped face, very pretty. At first he thought she was a prostitute kerb-crawling, but it was stretching things that she should know his name.
Then with a jolt he realised he was looking at Selina Sakidin.
She drove him without speaking to a part of the city he was not familiar with, just a short distance away. Then she swung the car down a narrow, dimly-lit street of modest houses and stopped. She killed the engine, but kept her eyes on the road in front, with frequent glances in the mirror. She was flustered and panicky, not knowing where to begin.
‘The police told me yesterday you’d disappeared,’ Maxwell murmured, accusingly.
‘I was at the house of General Dino Sumoto,’ she admitted softly.
Maxwell stared at her open-mouthed, her whispered words the tumblers of a combination lock clicking into place. The proof he’d been looking for was sitting in front of him.
‘Ahh …’ he sighed. ‘Were you indeed!’
Dressed in salmon pink skirt and jacket – her work clothes – she looked like someone’s mistress, now he thought about it. The face of a woman satisfied with what she’d got from life, but not with the way she’d got it.
‘I so very sorry, Mr Maxwell,’ she blurted out, her voice cracking. Her shoulders began to shake. ‘I done a terrible thing. Now he going to kill me. You got to help me, otherwise I going to die …’ Her voice spiralled upwards. She spread her hands over her face and wiped the tears downwards.
‘I done such a terrible thing. Help me,’ she begged. ‘You must help me!’
‘Now, calm down, my dear …’ He offered the neatly folded handkerchief he’d put in his pocket that evening. ‘Of course I’ll try to help. But you’ve got to help me first. Understand?’
‘Yes,’ she whimpered.
‘Right.’ He took in a deep breath and crossed his fingers. ‘Do you know where Stephen Bowen is now?’
‘Yes.’
Maxwell’s heart galloped.
‘He on a boat. He been there since Wednesday last week when I go with him to Bali. General Sumoto – he do this. He make prisoner of Stephen – I don’t know why. He not tell me. But now he very angry your prime minister not cancel contract. He send a message to the boat last night. He tell them to take Stephen to Kutu. He tell them to kill him and put him on the beach to make it look like Kutu people do it.’ She began to sob again.
‘My God!’ Maxwell gulped. No time to lose. ‘Pull yourself together, Selina. Where’s the boat now?’
‘I don’t know. On its way to Kutu, I suppose.’
Maxwell visualised the map of the archipelago. Kutu was about an hour’s flying time from Bali. Which made it around four hundred and fifty miles.
‘What sort of boat?’
‘Like a pinisi …’
The high-prowed ketches that brought timber from Kalimantan to the old harbour at Batavia. How fast would they go? Twelve knots at the most, he guessed. Three hundred miles a day top wack. Thirty-six hours for the voyage.
‘I don’t know if boat was still at Bali last night. But General Sumoto call it at ten.’
Arriving Kutu around ten tomorrow morning at the earliest. That’s if his figures were right and the pinisi was coming from Bali waters. He needed to return to his office and check the maps.
‘You have a name for the boat?’
‘Berkat Amanat. It mean Blessed Messenger.’
‘And how many men on board?’
‘I think two. And Stephen.’
Maxwell jotted notes on the small pad he carried in his shirt pocket. By rights, he should turn her in. Hand her straight to Brigadier General Effendi and let POLRI sort things out, but in this country life wasn’t that simple.
‘Why haven’t you told this to the police?’
She looked aghast.
‘You not understand, Mr Maxwell? General Sumoto he have a lot of friends. He very powerful man. If I go to the police, I never seen again. I finished. I dead.’
‘But the president’s just sacked Sumoto,’ Maxwell protested.
‘Make no difference. You don’t understand. Dino he still very powerful. If you big man in Indonesia – maybe in ABRI, or businessman or minister – then only one question matter: who take power when the president goes … And Dino got many friends. He still very important to whoever become new president.’
What role did Effendi have in the power play, Maxwell wondered? Surely he couldn’t be a Sumoto man? Not after coming out with all that spider stuff.
Selina fiddled with the bangles on her left wrist which glittered dimly in the light of a distant street lamp. Maxwell let his eyes linger on her face. Fetching, terribly fetching, with the sort of facial perfection that made European men go weak at the knees. Poor Bowen. Must have felt he’d won the jackpot when she gave herself to him.’
Questions.
‘Tell me the full story, Selina,’ he murmured. ‘Tell me everything that happened. Why you?’
‘Because I girlfriend of Dino Sumoto,’ she whispered, head down in embarrassment. ‘Dino, he live away from his wife one year, now. He good to me. Give me money. Car. Nice clothes. Then, last week he tell me I must do something very special for him. He know it my job to look after Mr Bowen when he here on official visit. He say Mr Bowen like me very much … Then he tell me let Stephen make love with me. I say no, no, but he tell me it very important to him. For his business.’
Her mouth turned down again.
‘I had no idea ’bout what they going to do to Stephen. Believe me,’ she pleaded. ‘Dino just say to make sure I pick up Stephen from hotel and take him to Bali. He tell me to let Stephen do whatever he want with me …’
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, ashamed.
‘How did you get to Bali? Via Singapore?’
‘No. He fix it so it look that way. But we fly by executive jet. It belong Dino’s business partner.’
Her expression clouded as she remembered Bowen’s greedy selfishness when he’d made love to her on the plane’s soft, cream, leather upholstery.
‘Dino,’ she went on, ‘he meet us in Bali where his partner have a boat. We go on board, and leave the marina. Then we have lunch and plenty drink. But in Stephen’s glass they put some drug. He fall asleep. Then we meet with the pinisi and some intel men carry Stephen across …’
‘Intel?’ Maxwell exclaimed. ‘How d’you know they were intel?’
‘I know because of their way.’
And in her line of business she would know, he realised.
‘I see.’
It raised a huge question. How much of ABRI military intelligence was caught up in the conspiracy? How many involved in the plot to manipulate the succession?
‘What happened next?’
‘Dino tell me stay in Bali, while he return to Jakarta. Then on Friday a man I never seen before bring me a cassette and tell me take it to airport and send to Paris airfreight, for collection by … oh, I don’t remember the name.’
‘Ricky Smith,’ Maxwell offered.
‘Ya, I think. I have to call a phone in France and tell him the number of the freight papers. Please, Mr Maxwell, I didn’t know what’s on that tape. Believe me, they tell me nothing …’
‘Yes, yes. I believe you. Go on.’
‘On Sunday they bring me another tape. I send that off too. Same place. Same phone call to France. Then Dino he tell me to come back to Jakarta. Next day, Monday, I hear on the news what they done to Stephen. Dino say he kill me if I tell anyone what I know.’
‘But you did speak to the police on Monday?’ Effendi had told him that same night.
‘Ya. I tell them a lie. Tell them that I take Stephen to Soekarno-Hatta for Primati flight to Singapore. Dino tell me to say that …’
Maxwell began to smell a rat. Everything she did was on Sumoto’s orders. This too?
‘And why are you telling me this now? Did Sumoto send you?’
‘No, no!’ Selina began to cry again. ‘I … I escape from his house …’ she gasped between sobs. ‘He … he tell his guard to keep me there, but … but I give the guard money and he leave the door open.’
‘And where was Sumoto when this happened?’ Maxwell asked, his voice tinged with cynicism.
‘General Sumoto gone away. This afternoon, after he meet with president he come back to his house. He very afraid. I never seen him like that. Then I hear him call someone on the telephone. Someone in Kutu. He give him order, like the man at other end was a soldier. Tell him the boat will come tomorrow. Say to him, “You know what to do.” Then he say – everybody who know ’bout Stephen, you make them disappear – that what he say to him.’
‘Who? Who knows about it? Did he give any names?’
‘Give one name. Dugdell, I think.’
Dugdale. So … Randall was on the right track. And by now could be in extreme danger. Somehow he had to get a warning to him.
‘Selina, you said Dino Sumoto had gone away … Where to?’
‘Kutu, Mr Maxwell. He gone to Kutu. To make sure nobody left alive who know what he done.’
Kutu
21.20 hrs (13.20 hrs GMT)
The inflatable nudged round the headland. At the far end of the bay the lights of Piri sparkled on the water. In the midst of its spatter of brightness the skeletal schooner rig of the Morning Glory stood out. The fishing boats they’d seen moored around her earlier were now at sea, their catch lights strung out across the horizon.
The Morning Glory was in darkness. It had the appearance of a dead ship. As they approached slowly, Randall waited for some twitch of his guts to tell him this was indeed the place where Stephen Bowen was being kept prisoner. But his guts were silent.
With the outboard at low revs to limit noise, it had taken two hours from Santa Josef, with just the weak light of the moon and the Kutuan’s knowledge of the coastline to keep them off the rocks. They’d given a wide detour to the construction site for the new harbour. Arc lights burned through the night there to deter attacks, the ABRI guards alert for an OKP assault from any direction, including the sea.
Dedi cut the engine and dipped a paddle into the water. His breathing was laboured. Any moment he feared they’d be picked out by the searchlight on the old harbour watchtower. Every few seconds he rested his paddle to listen. The silence was total. Beyond the shore lights Piri had bolted its doors for the night.
Fifty metres from the schooner now. No glimmer of light, no sound. They lay on the boards, letting the inflatable drift closer. Twenty metres. A soft lapping of water against the schooner’s hull. Too dark to see if there was a lookout. The neoprene bow nudged the planking. They listened again. Nothing. Not a breath. No feet scuffing across the deck to ward them off. Dedi pressed his ear against the side, listening for movement within the hull. Hearing none, he eased the rubber boat towards the boarding ladder near the stern, then gripped the steel side rails, looping the painter round one of them. He placed his foot on a rung and eased his
weight onto it gently so as not to make the boat rock.
Bare-footed and silent, Dedi stepped on to the deck of the Morning Glory. Heart thumping, Randall followed. From the distant shore came the sudden growl of tyres on the coast road. A riot-squad heading for Poteng. A relentless military that showed no mercy.
And Charlie was their prisoner.
He heard a lock click as Dedi opened a hatch and went below. Torchlight glowed softly from the square aperture of the companionway.
Seconds later a head reappeared.
‘Come. No one here.’
Below deck, Dedi swung his torch round a lounge the width of the hull, created from part of the cargo hold. Off it was a galley. The Kutuan retrieved two plastic bottles from a store cupboard and a packet of biscuits. Gratefully Randall gulped the water and took a handful of the digestives.
‘Nobody here, see?’ Dedi repeated. He sounded relieved, but in the low torch light looked as if he knew something was seriously wrong.
Randall’s suspicions remained. He could trust nobody.
‘What about the rest of the boat?’ he growled. ‘Show me round.’
Dedi took him down a wood-panelled gangway, pushing doors open to show two, four-berth cabins. A companion-way at the end led below. To the engine space, he said. Then on the right, directly beneath the large wheelhouse, was the captain’s cabin. With a bunk and lockers on one side, Brad clearly used the rest as an office. The torch picked out a table spread with charts, an old roll-top desk with a swivel chair secured to the deck by a hook, and a filing cabinet.
Randall pulled a small Maglite flashlight from his pocket and twisted it on. As he shone the beam on to the chart table he had the impression of looking at a display case in a museum. Everything laid out to be seen.
‘Always like this, Dedi? Everything spread out all over the place?’
‘No.’ The Kutuan frowned. ‘Maybe Brad leave in a hurry.’
In the centre of the table, in a cover of clear plastic was a chart of the waters around Kutu, a large, red cross chinagraphed at a point off the northwest coast.
‘What’s this show, Dedi?’
‘That mark where Brad find World War submarine. I tell you this morning …’
Java Spider Page 32
