Jaws of Death

by Paul Adam

  ‘What about the river?’

  ‘They have big pool next to river – like harbour – for loading barges. There gates across harbour entrance. No way in there either.’

  Max studied the plant. Had his father come here? He must have had a reason for returning to Borneo. It wasn’t going to be easy to get inside the complex, but Max knew he had to. Somewhere in there was evidence that he could use against Julius Clark.

  ‘Listen!’ Ari said suddenly, inclining his head.

  His sharp ears must have caught a noise, for he crawled away under the bush, pulling Max in after him. Max heard the faint throb of an engine. Was the jeep returning?

  The noise got louder. It was coming from behind them, from the river. A boat? But it didn’t sound like a boat. Then Max realized what it was – a helicopter.

  Twisting his head round, he saw it scudding low up the river like a huge black insect. It flew past and landed on a patch of open ground just inside the processing-plant fence. The rotor blades clattered to a stop and two men got out. Max didn’t have a clear view of one of them, but he recognized the other. Dark suit, pale face, rimless spectacles. It was Julius Clark.

  TWENTY

  Max watched the two men walk away from the helicopter and disappear behind one of the cabins. So Julius Clark himself was here. Was it a routine visit? Max wondered. Or had he flown in for some specific purpose? More than ever now, Max knew it was essential that he get inside the processing plant.

  The metal gates at the entrance to the river harbour swung open and a stubby tug came out towing three barges laden with containers. The convoy chugged slowly away downriver, but then a second tug emerged from the harbour and veered across towards the bank. Max and Ari slithered deeper into the bushes to avoid being seen. The tug manoeuvred round in a circle and reversed up to the line of barges moored at the side of the river. The first of a group of three barges, all linked together, was hitched up to the rear of the tug and towed away into the harbour so the empty containers could be filled with palm oil. Max watched the tug head across to the quayside, then looked at the barges that remained, and an idea began to take shape inside his head.

  Peering out carefully to check that he couldn’t be seen from the processing plant, Max stood up and scuttled across to the nearest barge, scrambling onto the deck and ducking down behind the containers. They were big rectangular metal vats, about a metre and a half high, two metres wide and three metres long. Max pulled himself up onto one of them and examined the raised hatch on the top. It was a little over thirty centimetres in diameter and capped with a hinged lid held shut by a clamp. Around the edge of the hatch was a line of rivets attaching it to the body of the container.

  Max slid back down and returned to Ari in the bushes.

  ‘What you do?’ Ari asked. ‘Why you look at containers?’

  ‘Can we go back to the longhouse now?’ Max said. ‘I need to borrow some tools.’

  On the trip back downriver, Max explained how he was planning to get inside the Rescomin plant.

  Ari stared at him, biting his lip anxiously. ‘You crazy,’ he said.

  ‘But will it work?’ Max asked.

  Ari shrugged. ‘Maybe it work. But maybe not and you get killed. They bad mens there. They kill many peoples.’

  ‘I’ll just have to take that chance,’ Max said.

  At the longhouse they went to the workshop where the elderly man was carving wooden animals, and Ari negotiated the loan of a hammer and chisel and a thick iron nail, Max paying a few rupiahs as a sort of hire charge for the tools. Then they headed back upstream to the barges.

  There were twenty-four of them moored along the riverbank, in eight groups of three. Max chose the last barge in the first group because on the bank next to it was a stand of trees and shrubs that screened it from the processing plant. He climbed on top of one of the containers that had part of the Rescomin name on the side missing – the first and last two letters so it read: SCOM. He unclamped the lid and swung it back on its hinge. Then he peered down into the opening. It was very dark and he could smell the sickly vegetable odour of the palm-oil residue that had been left behind when the container was emptied. He shuddered. The thought of going down into that stinking black hole filled him with dread, but he knew it was the only way he was going to get inside the Rescomin compound.

  Ari passed him the hammer and chisel and Max set to work slicing through the rivets that held the hatch in place. One sharp tap was enough to sever each of the soft metal pins, Max spacing out the blows and praying that the noise didn’t carry across to the processing plant. The rivets all cut, Max lowered the lid and clamped it shut. It still looked identical to all the other containers, but Max would now be able to remove the whole thing from inside without the clamp being unfastened. He took the thick iron nail and hammered two air holes into the top of the container, then lifted out the hatch and its lid as one unit and climbed down through the opening.

  Ari peered in after him. ‘You sure you want to do this?’ he asked. ‘It not too late to stop.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Max replied confidently, though his heart was pumping hard and his stomach was knotted with nerves.

  He took his passport and wallet from his pockets and passed them up to Ari. ‘Please could you look after these?’

  ‘I wait here for you,’ Ari said, handing Max one of the bottles of water they’d brought from the canoe.

  ‘I don’t know when I’ll be out.’

  ‘Don’t matter. I wait.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Ari slid the hatch unit back into the hole and the inside of the container went dark. Glimmers of light trickled in through the two air holes, but they were too feeble to make much difference to the overall blackness. Max felt as if he’d been shut away in a tomb, an image that did nothing to reassure him. He was taking a big risk. If anything went wrong, he knew he might well die inside the container.

  ‘Good luck,’ Ari said softly through the lid, then Max heard him climbing down from the container and off the barge.

  Max remained underneath the raised hatch, the only place where he could stand up straight. The floor and sides of the container were coated with a greasy film of palm oil and he didn’t want to sit in it. He tried to relax – he didn’t know how long he was going to be in here – but it wasn’t easy. The atmosphere was hot and claustrophobic. Breathing was difficult in the thick, tropical air, the metal walls absorbing the heat of the sun outside and transmitting it into the interior. Max revised his thoughts about this stifling little chamber. He wasn’t in a tomb. He was in an oven and he was being slowly roasted to death.

  He wished he’d waited until nightfall now, when it would have been cooler. But he didn’t know whether the plant operated at night and he was impatient to get inside as soon as possible. How long would it be, he wondered, before his container was taken away to be filled?

  His face and neck were streaming with sweat. His clothes were sticking to his skin. Every breath he took felt as if he were inhaling steam. He’d never been in a sauna, but this must be what it felt like. He longed to lift up the hatch and let in a gust of fresh air, but he controlled the urge. He had to wait it out, endure the conditions.

  He drank some of his water. He could have emptied the bottle in one go, but restrained himself. It might have to last him a very long time. Then he slowed his breathing, the way he did when he was practising his stage act. He was used to being enclosed in containers – trunks, boxes, cabinets – but none of them had ever been as suffocating as this one. It was unbearable. He reached out and touched one metal side with his fingers, then pulled back as if he’d been burned – which he had: the sides were almost red-hot. I’ll be cooked to a crisp before I get into the compound, he thought grimly.

  Trying to take his mind off his predicament, he thought again about his father. Why had he come to Pangkalan Bun? Who had he come to see? What had he come to do? And what of Chris and Consuela? Max was worried about them. Were they safe? What ha
d the police done to them? Perhaps he should have stayed with them, but what would that have achieved, all three of them in custody? At least he was still free. He would do what he had to do inside the Rescomin compound, and then find out what had become of them.

  He heard a faint noise somewhere in the distance. Was it a tug? He cocked his head to one side, listening intently. The sounds were muffled by the walls of the container, but he could definitely hear the rumble of an engine, then a clank of metal. The floor beneath him suddenly jolted forward a few centimetres. Max flung out his arms to steady himself. The barge was moving. He let out a sigh of relief. Thank God!

  Slowly the barge crept forwards. Twenty metres, thirty … Max pictured it heading up the river, turning in through the harbour gates. Then it stopped. There was a rattle of machinery and he guessed that the crane was starting to unload the containers. It was fifteen or twenty minutes later that he heard a scraping noise on the sides of his own container and felt it rising into the air and swinging round onto the quayside.

  He gave it another ten minutes – until he was sure that all the barges had been unloaded – before he risked opening the hatch. He pushed up on the underside of the lid and lifted the whole unit out of its slot, creating a tiny gap through which he could peer. He saw the bottom of the crane gantry and the other containers stacked neatly in rows; then, rotating his head and shoulders, he caught sight of the water in the harbour and the rest of the quayside. He didn’t see any people.

  It was now or never. Finishing the last of his water, he tossed the empty bottle away and very cautiously lifted the hatch unit clear of the opening and slid it to one side. Then he pulled himself up and poked an eye over the edge of the hole, taking another look around the area. The crane had moved further along the quayside and was busy loading full containers onto some waiting barges. There was a man in overalls supervising the operation, but he had his back turned, looking the other way.

  Max hauled himself out of the container, replaced the hatch unit and slipped quickly down to the ground. He paused for a second to get his bearings, shielded by the container. The harbour was to his right, the processing plant to his left. The office blocks, where he wanted to go, were behind him, on the other side of the compound. To reach them, he had to either cross the quay in full view of the crane driver and supervisor, or circle round the processing plant to approach from the opposite direction. It wasn’t a difficult choice.

  Keeping down low so the containers hid his movements, he ran over to the corner of the processing plant and looked out cautiously. There was a yard at the side of the building that was crowded with more metal containers and a line of parked trucks, presumably used for bringing the harvested palm nuts to the plant. But no people.

  Max darted out and sprinted across the yard, sticking close to the wall of the processing plant and using the containers and trucks as cover wherever he could. As he reached the far end, he slowed, then stopped and checked round the corner. There was a vehicle entrance at this end of the plant, and a loading bay inside where the palm nuts were scooped up into large hoppers to be fed into the oil presses. Four trucks with the Rescomin logo on their sides were waiting in line to unload. The drivers had got out of their cabs and were standing together in a group, talking and smoking. Max watched them with dismay. Getting past without being seen was not going to be easy.

  ‘Hands in the air!’ a voice barked behind him.

  Max froze.

  ‘Now!’

  Max lifted his arms and turned round slowly. A uniformed guard was standing a metre away, pointing his semi-automatic rifle straight at Max’s chest.

  It was a small, functional office containing a desk and chairs, a phone and a computer and very little else. But it had the one thing that in this part of the world was essential to any western businessman – air-conditioning.

  Max felt the cold draught as soon as he stepped through the door, the armed guard prodding him in the back with the barrel of his rifle, and was almost glad to have been caught. After the hellish heat of the container, the office was a refreshing oasis of coolness. His skin prickled, the hairs standing on end. It might have been the air-conditioning; then again, it might have been the man behind the desk, who radiated an aura of icy intimidation.

  ‘Hello, Max,’ Julius Clark said. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

  Expecting me? Max thought. How? Had someone betrayed him? If so, who?

  Clark seemed to read his mind, for he went on, ‘I have sources here in Borneo. People who keep me informed about anything that might affect my interests in the country. It’s a pity the police didn’t manage to detain you. But then, I can’t say I’m surprised they failed. You have an annoying habit of escaping.’

  ‘What’s happened to my friends?’ Max demanded.

  ‘They are currently being held in the police cells in Pangkalan Bun.’

  ‘Why?’

  Clark gave a harsh laugh. ‘Because I asked for them to be held. The local police are so obliging. A word in the right ear, a few dollars in the right bank account – it’s amazing how helpful law-enforcement officers can be.’ He waved a hand. ‘Don’t just stand there, Max. Take a seat.’

  The guard jabbed Max forward with his rifle. Max sat down on a metal chair facing the desk and gave Clark a hostile glare. The tycoon seemed calm and relaxed. His greying hair was combed back from his forehead, his face smooth and pale, his eyes behind the rimless spectacles like boreholes in the Arctic icecap. Max remembered the last time he’d seen him – when he’d left Clark trussed and gagged on the floor of his office on Shadow Island. In other circumstances the memory might have made him smile, but not now. Max knew he was in serious trouble.

  ‘I’d like to say it’s a pleasure to meet you again,’ Clark said. ‘Unfortunately, it isn’t. You’ve been a problem for me from the start, since you burned down my fortress on Shadow Island.’

  ‘Shame about that,’ Max said sarcastically. ‘You’ll have to do your brainwashing somewhere else now.’

  ‘So you’ve worked it out then, have you?’

  ‘I know you’ve been injecting people with Episuderon – a drug developed by the Nazis – killing many of them in the process.’

  ‘And the ones who survive – and plenty have survived – what happens to them?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘You don’t know, do you? You’ve only got half the picture.’

  ‘Then why don’t you give me the rest?’

  Clark leaned back in his padded swivel chair and linked his hands together across his stomach. ‘Do you know what a fifth columnist is, Max?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve heard of the Spanish Civil War?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  Clark shook his head and clicked his tongue disapprovingly. ‘The modern education system – how it fails our young people.’

  ‘What is this, a history lesson?’

  ‘You should be ashamed of your ignorance, Max. The Spanish Civil War was one of the key events of the twentieth century,’ Clark said pompously. ‘A brutal three-year conflict between Republicans and Nationalists, which the Nationalists eventually won.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘When the Nationalists were advancing on Madrid, they had four columns of soldiers outside the city. But they had another column – a fifth column – inside the city with the Republicans. People who were on their side and would work to undermine the Republican defences and aid a Nationalist victory. That’s what a fifth columnist is – a friend in the enemy camp.’

  ‘You’ve been creating fifth columnists – is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘That’s exactly what we’ve been doing, and will continue doing. We take people who are opposed to our interests – environmentalists, scientists, troublemakers. We re-educate them with the help of Episuderon, then send them back to their organizations, where they secretly work for us – supplying us with information, obstructing their colleagues, doing their best to make their organizations less
effective, less of a problem for me and my businesses. It’s so much safer, so much better than simply killing them.’

  ‘You mean you kidnap them, brainwash them with a dangerous drug that kills some and leaves others brain-damaged, then send the ones who are lucky enough to survive back to betray their friends so you can make a few more billion dollars? You’re one sick weirdo.’

  Clark’s cheeks flushed. He opened his mouth to speak, but Max hadn’t finished.

  ‘I’ve seen Redmond Ashworth-Ames,’ he continued. ‘I’ve seen what you did to him. You think that was right? To destroy his mind, destroy his life. You think what you’re doing here is right too? Stealing people’s land, burning their homes, killing them, chopping down the rainforest? You’re destroying the world, and you don’t care so long as you make money out of it.’

  Clark gave a thin smile. ‘A fine little speech,’ he sneered. ‘But don’t be so self-righteous. What I do is essential for the welfare of the world’s people.’

  ‘Your welfare, you mean,’ Max fired back.

  ‘Do you have a car back home in London, Max? What are you going to fuel it with when the oil runs out? Do you have electric lights, a television, a computer? How are you going to run them when the coal and gas are gone? We live in a highly advanced consumer society that needs an immense amount of resources – metals, wood, petroleum, minerals. I supply those resources. I supply the resources our world and its population require to survive, so don’t lecture me on what’s right and what’s wrong. Without me, most people in the world would die of starvation and the rest would have to go back to living in caves.’

  ‘That’s rubbish!’ Max said angrily. ‘Let you do what you please or we all starve – those aren’t the only choices we have. We can live differently, cut down on all the stuff we use, find alternative sources of energy. We can live well and look after the environment at the same time.’

  Clark let out a snort of contemptuous laughter. ‘What a naïve little idiot you are. Did they teach you that in school, or did you get it from your deluded father and his crazy friends in the Cedar Alliance?’