Java Spider

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Is it on? Quick …’

  ‘Yes. I’m recording,’ Randall replied, steadying his voice. ‘What is it you wanted to say, Stephen?’

  ‘Keith wants me dead,’ Bowen whispered, mouth set hard. ‘Because of the money …’

  His head dropped back, his eyelids flickering. His breath had the strength of a butterfly.

  ‘Keith who, Stephen?’ Randall pressed. He felt a door opening into another world.

  Bowen mustered all his fading strength. ‘Copeland!’ he hissed into the lens.

  ‘The prime minister wants you dead?’ Randall prompted gently.

  ‘Yes! We had a deal …’

  ‘What sort of deal?’

  ‘A million for him and a million for me, if we got the money for the power station.’

  Randall frowned. Mumbo-jumbo. Then he remembered the story on World Service.

  ‘Million pounds?’

  Bowen nodded, drawing breath.

  ‘A million for him … who did you mean by him?’ Checking, checking. With dynamite you had to be absolutely sure.

  ‘Keith. Copeland! Listen to me, you’ve got to listen.’

  ‘I’m listening, I’m listening. You’re saying you and the prime minister were each getting a million pounds in commission for the Kutu power station?’

  Bowen was weakening. His eyelids drooped. A white curd of saliva dried on his lips.

  ‘Yes. Sumoto arranged it … Four-six-five-three-two-nine …’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘What’s that?’ Randall reached forward with his spare hand to support Bowen’s head. The man was fading.

  ‘Züricher Bank … Next month. Next month we get the money …’

  ‘What? An account number? Yours? Copeland’s?’

  But Bowen was gone. Unconscious again, his breath a rattle in his throat.

  Shit! Evidence. Devastating evidence. But he needed Bowen to tell it in court. Camera off and into the bag. Bag on shoulder. Up on his feet. Where the hell was Dedi? Bowen needed medical help fast.

  Out in the corridor he yelled up the companion-way to the bridge.

  ‘Dedi!’

  Nothing. He went back into the fetid cell. Bowen was motionless. Not even the rise and fall of his chest anymore.

  ‘Don’t die on me for fuck’s sake,’ Randall hissed. He dropped to one knee. The minister’s face was in repose, devoid of pain.

  ‘I don’t believe it …’ Randall felt Bowen’s neck for the carotid artery. No pulse.

  For a moment he considered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but the thought of it made him gag. Anyway there’d be no point – the pustules all over him showed the man’s body was a poison sack.

  Suddenly feet clattered on the companion-way.

  Dedi stuck his head round the door and beckoned frantically. ‘We go now, mister. ABRI come!’

  ‘What?’ Randall ran behind him up the steps and out on to the deck.

  Dedi pointed to the west. A few hundred metres away, bearing down on them fast was the sharp, grey prow of the navy patrol boat.

  ‘Shit!’

  What to do? Stick with Bowen? No point now. And anyway, there was no way to know whose side these navy boys were on.

  They leapt the gunwales. Randall cast off while Dedi started up. Then they powered away, keeping the Berkat Amanat between them and the gunboat in the hope they’d not been identified. Dedi’s survival would depend on it.

  Randall looked back at the ketch wallowing in the swell like a drifting, wooden sarcophagus. His shoulders sagged. He felt numb. He’d just taken a man’s life, but unlike in Malaysia, this time there’d been no life saved by which to justify it.

  All he had to show was a statement on tape. An accusation of corruption at the highest level. Bowen’s last desperate card.

  Randall turned away from the Berkat Amanat and faced towards Kutu.

  Back on the island, two hours or more away, another life was in jeopardy.

  Twenty-two

  Kutu – east of Piri

  13.40 hrs

  THE COASTLINE WAS close, but no more than a blue shadow in the haze. The heat blur which obscured it had helped cover their tracks. They’d looped south before turning east again for Kutu and – so far as they could tell – had avoided detection.

  A mile from the coast Dedi throttled back, then cut the engines. Shoulders hunched, he moved from the bridge to the bows and stood listening. He was aiming for a bay east of Piri, familiar to him from diving expeditions and seldom frequented by army patrols.

  ‘Nothing?’ Randall checked.

  ‘Is quiet,’ the Kutuan muttered. He turned back to the bridge, restarted the engines and headed in. As they closed with the coast he tried the mobile phone, desperate for news of his sister, but got no connection. ‘Piri too far ’way,’ he explained, his face pained. A few minutes later Randall tried, needing an urgent word with Maxwell. Still no signal. Then the battery died.

  He cursed. Absurd to have to rely on the World Service for updates from London. On the journey back to Kutu he’d listened to the radio every hour, but there’d been no change to the story saying there were fears for Charlie’s safety. He checked his watch, something he did constantly now, fixated with the notion that every second that passed was one less for her.

  In the three hours since their escape from the patrol boat, he’d quizzed Dedi about where prisoners were taken on Kutu. Kadama would have been the first stop. But if Charlie was in Sumoto’s hands she could be almost anywhere. Then Dedi had snapped his fingers, remembering the small private villa on the coast road between Kadama and Piri, with flat ground behind for a helicopter to land. Sumoto had had it built when he was commander on the island. Dedi had heard a rumour once of a helicopter flying from there to the volcano. At a time when there’d been disappearances …

  Sumoto still used the place occasionally, Dedi had said. He’d given Randall directions how to find it.

  As they entered the bay, Nick scoured the shore line with the binoculars. Then, satisfied as he could be they weren’t being watched, he tucked the glasses away in the grey holdall, which already held the compact assault rifle taken from the Berkat Amanat together with two magazines bound together with tape. Thirty-five rounds.

  Randall knew he would be on his jack when they touched land – Dedi had his own life to save.

  Two fishing boats bobbed at anchor in the bay. On one of them a man in denim shorts and shirt lay under an awning, sleeping away the hottest part of the day.

  They dropped anchor well away from him, then lowered the inflatable, the sun beating down mercilessly as the outboard sped them to the shore. Dedi bowlined a long line round a tree root, then, once secure, crouched beside Randall in the shade of a fig tree.

  The air was still, the foliage electric with crickets, the coast here rocky and barren. A battered truck piled with watermelons rattled towards Piri. Once it had passed, Dedi stood up and turned awkwardly to Randall. The time had come. His hands clenched and unclenched.

  ‘Can’t help you no more, mister,’ he muttered, his flat face pinched and anxious. Survival for him meant going to ground. ‘Got to go now.’

  ‘I know. I understand.’ Randall held out his hand. ‘Thanks, friend. And if you ever come to London …’ Stupid remark.

  ‘Sure …’ Dedi allowed himself a brief grin. Then he pointed up the road. ‘Like I tell you, bemo come along here maybe every half hour.’ He backed away, the look on his face saying Randall had to be insane to be going where he was going.

  ‘Bye, Dedi.’

  ‘Bye, mister Nick.’

  The Kutuan marched off. Randall stared up the road praying it wouldn’t be half an hour. Ten kilometres from town, it would take two hours to hoof it, with every chance of being picked up. And no Kutuan would risk giving a lift to a foreigner. So the bus it had to be. He twitched with frustration, trying to block his mind to what could be happening to Charlie in the meantime.

  He had been responsible for her. No getting away from it. But
it was more than a sense of duty driving him now. Charlie had got to him. She had penetrated his defences.

  He checked the watch again. Just after two. Ringing Maxwell was his other priority. By rights he should make it number one – find a phone and tell them about Bowen. But the risk of being picked up that way was too great. Charlie had to come first.

  Maxwell. How much should he tell him? Not about what Bowen had said. Too sensitive. And it could wait.

  Another ten minutes passed before the bus came. On board three gnarled women sat with wicker baskets on their knees stuffed with squawking chickens.

  The Kadama interrogation centre loomed on the right, impossible to miss just as Dedi had said – high, grey walls pock-marked with grilles. Randall took deep breaths to steady his pulse. The other bemo passengers kept their eyes averted.

  Then he turned his head to look out for the brick depot Dedi had mentioned. Seeing it, he tacked twice on the overhead rail. The bemo stopped to let him out. As it drove off, he felt as alone as he had ever done. Alone and in the open. A white man on a black island clutching a holdall, strolling along a road where tourists had no business to be.

  To his left the shore looked dirty and weed-clogged. It smelled of decay. To his right the terrain was stony and arid. Where there were trees, he ducked under them for shade and to hide from the occasional vehicle.

  Then he saw the villa. Glazed green roof tiles glinting in the sun amidst a clump of vegetation, flat ground behind it. He crouched beneath a stumpy, thick-leaved tree. The house looked to be two hundred metres away. No sign of life when he scanned it with the glasses.

  The villa was a bungalow, the side wall facing him comfortingly blank. Windows at the front overlooked the sea, and at the back a garden, surrounded by chain-link fencing and a dense hedge. A clump of eucalyptus grew by the roadside twenty metres short of the house. Minimal cover but all there was.

  He unzipped the top of the bag so the gun was ready. His instinct was to run, to cross the open ground between him and the trees in the shortest possible time. But in this heat nobody ran. Mustn’t attract attention. Heart battering his ribs, he started walking. He heard a vehicle coming up behind. It began to slow.

  Please God not a patrol! With forced casualness he glanced round. A bemo, the fare collector leaning from the door with his arm like a scoop.

  ‘Hey, mister!’

  ‘No. Tidak!’ Randall waved them on.

  ‘Yes, mister! You want to go Piri! Yes, yes!’

  ‘No. Tidak! Tidak,’ Randall scowled. With a shrug and a grin the boy gave up and the bemo sped on, tootling its horn in a way guaranteed to attract a glance from a guard on watch.

  ‘Fuck! Fuck!’ Randall hissed, his eyes sweeping from one end of the villa’s compound to the other. Nothing. Doubt crept in. Maybe this wasn’t the place. Maybe Charlie was still at Kadama.

  He reached the trees and stopped, crouching as if to tie a shoe lace. A stone’s throw from the chain-link fence, he saw blue behind the hedge – a van parked in front of the house. There was someone here.

  Then he froze. The terror of a rotor-beat. Coming from the direction of Mount Jiwa, pulsing towards him like a blast of icy air. Out of the hazy blue he saw a small, dark speck grow into the shape of a UH-1 and drop towards the landing strip behind the house. Motionless, he watched it disappear behind the hedge.

  And he’d been seen. Bloody pilot had looked straight at him. Fifty metres between them, no more. Game up. The clock had stopped. Had to move before they did.

  He grabbed the rifle, sprinted to the fence and searched for a break in the hedge that would let him see through. He found it.

  Charlie. His heart stopped. Through the leaves of a hibiscus. Blindfolded and gagged, feet and hands bound, with two men in uniform, one on each side, dragging her to the helicopter. Next stop the volcano.

  Randall fired. Single shot. High, to avoid Charlie. The head of the soldier nearest to him flicked sideways and seemed to burst, as his body crumpled. The second man, wearing an aviator’s helmet, recoiled, let Charlie fall, then ducked and lurched forward, propelling himself back to his machine. Randall fired twice, dropping him before he reached a gate in the fence.

  The rotors clattered, the engine pitch rose in panic. Randall’s fevered brain said the chopper was a dragon that had to be slain. He darted to the end of the fence as it lifted, firing wildly, but the machine banked away unscathed.

  By the open gate into the villa’s grounds, he crouched, gun to his shoulder. The helicopter crewman lay just inside, a gaping wound in his flank. In the middle of the grass Charlie was on her knees, rigid with terror. One man dead to her left, his uniform clinging like a second skin.

  Randall looked up to the villa. Open patio doors, two men crouching inside, pistols in their hands. They fired, then ducked further back. Randall loosed off two rounds, then crouched by Charlie.

  ‘Charlie!’ he barked. ‘It’s me!’

  Tape across her mouth, a squeal from beneath it.

  ‘Sit on your bum. I’ll have to drag you backwards.’ Gun in his right hand, he grabbed the collar of her bush shirt. ‘Shove with your legs, understand?’

  She nodded frantically, flopped on to her backside, then kicked with her bound feet as he pulled her towards the gate.

  He felt it before he heard it. A thwack to his left shoulder, then the crack of a second shot that grazed his ear. His left hand lost all strength. He let go of Charlie’s shirt. Dropping on to one knee, he fired twice into the open doors of the house, searching for where the shots had come from.

  ‘Keep going!’ he yelled to Charlie, diving sideways. Pain knifed through his shoulder. ‘Straight back!’ he screamed, flinching.

  Another shot. He saw the flash this time. Not inside the house, but from a path at the side. He cracked back two rounds, then the gun died. A dead click on an empty chamber.

  ‘Damn!’

  Pinning the useless rifle under his weakened left arm, he grabbed Charlie’s collar with his right hand and dragged her the last few metres through the gate as a bullet clanged off the metal post.

  Hidden by the hedge now, they lay flat. Trying to stop his good hand shaking, he unclipped the rifle magazine, turned it over and slotted in the spare. Fifteen rounds left – each one had to count. How many was he up against? Two at least. Sumoto one of them, he guessed. Colonel Widodo the other? Both armed, both driven by the compelling need to eliminate anyone who knew their secrets.

  They’d be coming for them. He jammed the barrel through the hedge, fired two rounds as cover, dragged Charlie back another few metres, then thrust a hand into his trouser pocket for the knife he’d put there earlier. Just enough feeling in his left hand to open the blade.

  Had to free her legs before anything else. The cord was thin and parted easily. Then her hands. As the string frayed under the blade, Charlie wrenched them free, pushed off the blindfold and blinked at him in disbelief.

  ‘Now we run. Like fuck!’ he growled.

  At a crouch, they sprinted for the eucalyptus trees, Charlie ripping the tape from her mouth. She gulped in air. She’d faced death for the past hour. Now she was glimpsing life again.

  Two shots cracked over their heads.

  ‘Down!’ Randall screamed. ‘Where are you now, you bastards?’

  Grass and stones. Useless cover, but the trees were still too far. Rifle sight to his eye, raking round for a target, he saw a blur of green-brown – a uniformed arm reaching round the fence at the front of the house. He squeezed the trigger. One round. Had to ration them. The recoil shot through his frame to his injured shoulder. He winced. Then came the thud of a gun from behind.

  ‘Back there!’ Charlie croaked, pointing.

  Randall swung the barrel and blatted off another single shot.

  Without cover they’d soon be dead.

  ‘Got to make it to those trees, understand?’ he whispered. ‘You first. Weave side to side. I’ll cover …’

  ‘Nick …’

  �
��Now! Go!’

  He elbowed her away, then fired twice, once in front, once behind at the spots in the fence where the targets had been a moment ago.

  No response. No sign of uniforms now. Moving again. The buggers were moving, moving.

  He scrambled up and sprinted after Charlie. Bullets cracked and zinged. Automatic fire now. Shit! The bastards had an arsenal in there. He dived to the ground, then rolled over twice to put a thin eucalyptus trunk between him and the guns, nearly blacking out from the pain.

  ‘You all right?’ Charlie gulped.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he croaked.

  ‘They were going to kill me …’ she choked, disbelief in her voice.

  ‘Yep.’ Still might, the way things were going.

  Suddenly a motor roared to life. A patch of blue moving behind the hedge. The van backed out on to the verge.

  Randall looked round at the road. Traffic backing away wildly. Not a healthy place to be.

  The van swung towards them, creeping forward in low gear. The face behind the wheel was hard to see, as if the windscreen was opaque. But it was there.

  Randall fired. Couldn’t miss. But nothing happened. Crazing of the glass, nothing more. The face still there, teeth clenched with determination.

  ‘Shit!’ Armoured glass! ‘It’s a fucking tank …’ he hissed.

  They were staring at death. Motorised death. The passenger door opened as a shield. An automatic rifle poked round it. Bullets chipped bark from above their heads.

  ‘No …!’ Charlie screamed. To be rescued and then both of them die …

  Randall aimed for the tyres. One exploded with a whoop. He’d lost count of the rounds. Five left. Five at the most.

  Relentlessly the van crept towards them. Two options. Stay put, or run. Neither promising.

  ‘Charlie …’ Nick croaked, suddenly. ‘I think we’re stuffed.’

  Then the van stopped. Nick cringed, expecting grenades. A bad way to die. He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes and waited.

  Nothing. Instead of an explosion he heard the wap-wap of rotors. The flying hearse was back.

  ‘Look!’ Charlie moaned, pointing towards the beach.