Copeland supported his chin in his hands and pondered. Saving Stephen was almost certainly a lost cause, but he wanted no more deaths on his conscience.
‘If we leave it to the Indonesians to sort out,’ Copeland asked thoughtfully, ‘could Randall be recalled? For his own safety.’
Vereker pursed his lips. ‘Possibly. I’d have to check with Maxwell.’
‘I’m very concerned for him,’ said Copeland. ‘To risk Randall’s life trying to save a man who’s probably already dead – it can’t be justified. Miss Sakidin should be handed to the Indonesian police immediately.’
‘They won’t thank us,’ interjected the foreign secretary.
Copeland looked through him, irritated by his intervention.
‘Us telling them what’s going on in their own country,’ White went on. ‘It’ll be a huge embarrassment to them. And if you embarrass the Indonesians they won’t want to know you afterwards. We could lose trade.’
‘Lose even more if Randall gets caught and they put him on trial as a spy,’ Copeland retorted cuttingly. ‘But you’re right,’ he added, mellowing. ‘It may need some finessing.’
There was a sharp tap at the door. One of the officials manning the phones put his head round.
‘Beg pardon, prime minister, but Ambassador Bruton’s on the line.’
‘Put him on the conference phone,’ Copeland ordered, reaching forward to press the key on the box in the centre of the light oak table.
‘Hello?’ Bruton’s voice, echoing, from Jakarta.
‘Good afternoon ambassador. Keith Copeland here.’
‘Good evening, sir. I’ve just had a rather disturbing call from our friends in ABRI. Thought I’d better let you know right away. They’ve been on to their HQ in Kutu about Miss Cavendish. They say they’ve never heard of her, and certainly haven’t got her under arrest. They say no Europeans whatsoever were involved when their commandos struck at the Kutuan guerrillas this afternoon.’
The News Channel
15.25 hrs
Ted Sankey picked up the waste basket that held the last of the detritus left on his desk by the accountant Paxton and placed it outside his door. He’d got his office back. For a moment he stood in the doorway surveying his newsroom kingdom.
Since the lunchtime scoop about the aid cover-up, Sankey’s phone had rung constantly. Ironically, the first call had been from Gordon Wiggins demanding to know the News Channel’s source. Sankey had pictured the tape recorder spinning on Wiggins’ desk. Then the broadsheets had been on, frustrated by the stonewalling response they’d got from the Overseas Development Administration and the Foreign Office. They’d asked if he had more details, but he hadn’t. Now they were all waiting for PMQs. Copeland’s chance to explain himself.
Three minutes to go. Sankey switched his monitor to the parliament feed.
The triumph of his return to the helm of the News Channel had been dampened by the alarming call from the Foreign Office reporting Charlie’s arrest, then the even more disturbing call an hour later saying the Indonesians were denying all knowledge of her.
Word of Charlie’s disappearance had brought a chill to the newsroom, and to his heart. Through his mind flitted terrible visions of her bullet-riddled body lying in some godforsaken, mosquito-ridden jungle. But any guilt he felt for sending her out there had to be suppressed. It was she who’d demanded to go, he reminded himself. She who’d refused to come back when Paxton ordered her return.
Nonetheless, he was deeply worried. Uncertain what to do about it. Whether to announce on the news she was missing and get more front-page publicity for the Channel, or keep quiet about it for as long as possible in the hope she’d come up with an exclusive, all the more stunning because no one had known she was there.
Keith Copeland’s arrival in the chamber of the House of Commons provoked a sustained murmur, more welcome, Sankey guessed, than the loud yawns with which the Honourable Members on the opposition benches frequently greeted him.
Copeland bowed to the speaker and took his seat. Environment Questions were just finishing. The bear-garden of PMQs was about to begin. On the bench opposite, the weasel-eyed shadow spokesman for foreign affairs sat down and crossed his legs. The camera picked him out fixing Copeland with a glare that seemed to say I’ll see you in gaol.
‘Questions to the Prime Minister!’ the speaker bellowed.
Sankey’s secretary brought in a mug of coffee. He jabbed a finger at the point on the desk where he wanted it, then waved her quickly from the room.
Copeland rose to his feet to explain why he’d ordered the postponement of the aid statement. There was a note of apology in his voice.
‘Madam Speaker, I have to express a certain degree of astonishment, not only at the question raised by the honourable member opposite, but also at the irresponsibility of certain outlets in the news media. I would remind the House that the life of one of its members is currently in grave jeopardy. Anything said or done by this government or the British media which could increase the danger to Stephen Bowen should in my judgement be avoided. That, madam speaker, is the reason I decided to postpone publication of the overseas aid statement. It does, as has been reported, focus on one aid project for Indonesia; nothing unusual in that. We’ve been giving aid to that country for many, many years. This House is of course entitled to ask as it has done before whether there is any connection between our overseas aid and the sale of armaments. The answer to that is an emphatic “no”, but the proper time to discuss that issue is after Stephen Bowen has been safely returned to his family, not now.’
From behind him a murmur of support. From across the floor a jeer. The Opposition spokesman rose for his counter attack.
‘Madam speaker, the prime minister has, as usual, missed the point. The essence of the report on the lunchtime news was that he has twice on this issue overridden the unanimous advice of his officials. Firstly in approving money for a power station on the island of Kutu – a project rejected by the Foreign Office as unsuitable for aid – and secondly in insisting on a delay in publication of the aid statement. The question is this; why is the Kutu power station project so important to the prime minister, and why is he so eager that it shouldn’t be discussed at this time?’
Copeland’s jaw set with increased determination.
‘Madam speaker, I have already answered that question. I am not prepared to do or say anything which could impinge on the efforts being made to secure the release of Stephen Bowen. Madam speaker, there is a criminal investigation underway. To make comments on the matters being raised would be nothing short of irresponsible.’
He sat down and folded his arms.
‘The member for Nutley East,’ shouted the speaker.
‘Number two …’
‘I refer the honourable member to the reply I gave some moments ago …’
The MP for Nutley East was on Copeland’s own back benches. Copeland half-turned as the member rose for his supplementary.
‘Madam speaker, there have been a number of comments in the media and elsewhere recently, implying that Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Stephen Bowen has retained a financial connection with the British company Metroc Minerals of which he was once a director and which has a one third stake in the Kutu mining project. Can the prime minister assure the House that this is not true?’
A flicker of alarm spread across Copeland’s face. Sankey leaned in towards the set.
‘I can assure the House that my government has no knowledge whatsoever of any financial connection between Stephen Bowen and Metroc Minerals.’
He sat down again. The shadow spokesman leapt to his feet.
‘But what knowledge does he personally have?’
Copeland flinched, like a man cut by a rapier tip.
‘Fu-uck,’ growled Sankey, convinced more than ever that the story had wings. Gordon’s gut instinct had been right.
‘Madam speaker, I have no personal knowledge of such a connection.’
Copeland stuck his chin out.
Sankey looked hard at Copeland’s face. Defiant yet embattled. Arrogant yet guilt-ridden. Cocky, yet fearful. Yes, thought Sankey. He felt it now with utter conviction. The prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was lying to save his skin.
Twenty-one
Kutu
Friday 03.30 hrs
A DARK BLUE minibus with windows of blackened glass and no registration plates turned out of the Kadama interrogation centre and headed for Piri. The night was inky and moonless, the road empty. Nobody to see the vehicle leave, nobody to watch its arrival at the isolated villa just half a kilometre away. Colonel Widodo was at the wheel, alone in the vehicle apart from his hooded passenger.
Charlie breathed in and out deeply, trying to steady her jerky heartbeat. Her wrists were cuffed to the metal tubing of the seat. She’d guessed it was Widodo from the groping feel of his hands as he’d half lifted, half pushed her into the vehicle. Also, there was now an overpowering smell of garlic in the air.
From the sacking that covered her head, another smell. Cloves. Kretek smoke from the last victim, she guessed. Her heart fluttered at the thought that whoever had worn this hood might have died in it. She hunched forward, her stomach spasming with terror and with emptiness. Under the hood she shut her eyes tight and pounded out desperate prayers. For her mother, for her father, for the people of Kutu, for Nick and for herself.
Dear God, I believed in you when I was young. Please. Please don’t let me die.
A soldier had come to the cell fifteen minutes ago, not with the usual terrorising clamour, but silently while Teri and the other woman were asleep. Hustled her down to the courtyard. She’d made a token protest, asking again to speak to the British Embassy. The response was the bag over her head. Rough, black cloth with a hole for the nose.
She’d panicked, convinced they were about to shoot her. There in the yard. A firing squad. Pleaded shamelessly for her life, choking and sobbing. There’d been a chuckle, then the hands lifting her into the van, her shins scuffing against the step.
The vehicle swung abruptly to the left. Unable to support herself Charlie fell sideways and banged her head on the window. Then they stopped with a jerk, the engine off. In the silence of the night she heard the clinking of the radiator cooling. The door slid open. Fetid breath as the man freed her hands. Then she was outside, walking. Up a step. Into a building that smelled clean and fresh. Floor polish. Walking, walking, then a door closing behind her, a key in the lock. Footsteps going away. Rubber squeaking on polished parquet, then silence.
She listened. Just her own shaky breathing. Nobody else’s. The hum of an air-conditioner. Then she smelled food.
‘Hello?’ she ventured. ‘Anybody here?’
Silence. Why was she still hooded? With her freed hands she slid it off and straightened her greasy hair. Looked like a room in a private house. Two single beds with crisp white sheets, a sofa and a small, low table laid with mat, plate and cutlery. Beside it a bowl of the inevitable nasi goreng and a plate of fruit.
Disbelieving, she checked she was alone. There was a door open on the far side – a bathroom. Empty. She entered, ran the taps, then splashed water on her face. Soap. Clean towels. She gave a little snort. If this was a death cell, they meant her to die in comfort.
She flopped on to the sofa and spooned rice on to the plate. There was a Thermos jug of iced drinking water. She ate and drank carefully, feeling the food ease the knot in her stomach.
It helped her mind too. She began to think rationally again. They weren’t going to kill her. Deport her more like. Softening her up with food and a bed so she wouldn’t be too critical when she wrote about them …
When she’d eaten enough, she stood up and tried the door. Firmly locked. She knocked on it, then pressed her ear against the varnished wood. Nothing.
She knocked again, convinced she could hear voices.
‘Hello,’ she called, not very loudly. ‘Could somebody please tell me what’s going on?’
Major General Dino Sumoto didn’t hear her. He stood by the open door to a veranda on the other side of the villa. The air was fresher than before, the result of the evening’s rain that had beaten down like shot.
Sumoto’s tall frame seemed to stoop, his shoulders sloping with defeat. More than twelve hours had passed since his oblique but chilling meeting with the president and he was still smarting from it. The ruler’s hard, cold eyes had looked right through him.
The president was a lonely man, with dwindling authority and a family whose hunger for wealth was the reason he still clung to power. A power which was absolute and in Javan tradition could only be taken from him by force. Yet force would tear the country apart, which was why attempts at engineering change had failed. No one had had the guts to see it through before.
Sumoto had known this. Known his scheme had depended on building an irresistible head of pressure in the military. Weapons, money and promises should have been enough, if only the kidnap of Stephen Bowen had achieved what he’d planned for it.
The president had treated him with contempt that afternoon. Shown him no mercy. Most generals who’d dissented in the past had been bought off with ambassadorships. Sumoto had been offered nothing but his life – permission to go on living, just so long as what’d he’d done never became public.
How much the president knew, Sumoto had not been able to tell. The conversation had been oblique. A monologue about the undesirability of closer military links with China. No reference to Stephen Bowen, but from the ice crystals in the air Sumoto had known he was under suspicion.
The Australian Dugdale had been the first to be silenced. A loose tongue when drunk – and a foreigner. Throughout his interrogation the bar owner had sworn to Widodo he would never reveal Sumoto’s secret. Sworn it until the end. But they couldn’t take a chance with him. Now there were others to be dealt with.
Sumoto turned from the window. Still wearing the mud-green safari suit that was his second skin, he paced to the middle of the room. The villa had been furnished by his wife in the last months before their separation. Wide, soft armchairs and couches in ivory moquette, all bought at outrageous expense from a catalogue sent from America. Sumoto was a man of simple origins who’d never shaken off his peasant frugality. His wife’s extravagance with his hard-won wealth was what had broken their marriage in the end. He loathed this house now; loathed it because it reminded him of her.
Colonel Widodo watched Sumoto from the corner of the room. It pained him to have backed the wrong horse, but it was too late to switch. Like with the general himself, what mattered now was self-preservation.
‘You’re certain you have left no trace of this Cavendish woman at Kadama?’ Sumoto demanded.
‘Certain. Her name’s no longer on the register. I saw to it myself. And the guards are well drilled in not remembering faces.’
‘What about Dugdale’s woman? She saw her.’
‘When we have finished with Teri she will be quite ready to deny seeing Miss Cavendish in Kadama,’ Sumoto explained sullenly.
‘And the other journalist? The man – Randall …’
‘Still not found. Alive, we think. I’m almost certain the priest was bringing him to Santa Josef but got wind of my men waiting at the orphanage. Must have dropped him somewhere else.’
‘How much did Dugdale say to Randall? Did he tell him about me?’
‘No. Only what I’d ordered him to say – the rumour about Bowen being seen here. Nothing else. I’m sure of that.’ Dugdale had been a weak man. Easy to break. If he’d said more he would have admitted it.
Sumoto paced back to the window. Who to trust, that was the question that pressed him so painfully. Widodo would stay loyal. And Sugeng. But the men on the boat? And Selina …? She had as much power as anyone to destroy him.
He held out his hands and examined the palms. In the sixties they’d been stained with communist blood, but he’d taken no pleasure from those killings. If blood
was to be shed this time, he’d resolved that it could be done in his name, but not by him. A commander’s prerogative, after all. There were plenty of other men who would take pleasure from it.
Selina. Unbearable to have to decide that she too must die.
‘Where is Dugdale’s body?’ Sumoto checked, putting off the moment.
‘In the morning, when the mist covers the foothills, they will fly it to Jiwa.’
‘And Miss Cavendish too.’
‘I … I think it better to wait until we have the two of them together,’ Widodo suggested.
‘Find him. Find Randall quickly,’ Sumoto rambled, his mind on the decision that could be delayed no longer.
In the night would be best. While Selina slept. The guard in Menteng could do it.
‘I would like to be alone,’ he murmured. ‘Come back at dawn. Miss Cavendish will not run away.’
Widodo got up, relieved. It was easy to fight for another man’s success, harder to live with his failure.
Sumoto waited until he heard the minibus leave. Then he drifted from the living room to the hardwood-panelled, book-lined study that had also been chosen from a catalogue. He picked up the telephone and dialled his house in Jakarta. After an interminable ringing, the Sundanese houseboy answered, his voice dulled with despair at having to be the giver of bad news.
‘Bapak, Selina Sakidin, she gone,’ he whispered. ‘Everybody gone. Run away. Only me here now.’
Very slowly Sumoto took the receiver from his ear and replaced it on its rest.
Defeat stared him in the face. He had let his heart rule his head and now he’d been betrayed.
But he still had a chance, he told himself quickly. Still had friends who could save him. Friends who could silence her, if he could get to them in time.
The Kutu Sea
06.05 hrs
The powerboat’s wake lay on the water like a strip of lace. Dead astern the distant crater of Kutu’s Mount Jiwa secured its position on the dawn horizon with a grey-white smudge of smoke.
Java Spider Page 34
