‘And?’
‘First you’ve got to help me.’
Dubre’s reply was a noncommittal grunt.
‘What I know has got half of Indonesia looking for me. I need you to get me out of here. That’s just the start — there’s more. But I’ll tell you what I need when I’m safe. Can you help?’
The silence was a long one this time. Hamnet glanced nervously around him. Nothing moved under the hot sun. Then Dubre’s distant voice was in his ear again. ‘It’s a big step in the dark.’
‘You’ll have to take me on trust, Dubre. Believe me, what I know will make you a lot of money.’
‘It’s what I have to do to get it that worries me.’
‘I’ve got no one else to turn to, Dubre. You going to leave me out in the cold?’
‘Tell me what the devil’s going on.’
‘I can’t. Not yet. I’m sorry.’
Hamnet heard a sigh.
‘Alrighty, I’ll do what I can.’
Hamnet felt the tension in his body relax, just a fraction. ‘I’m on Bangka, just outside Muntok, with no papers and no money. Any ideas?’
‘Let me think. Can you give us another tinkle in five?’
‘No problem.’ Hamnet hung up.
Five minutes — Hamnet glanced at where his watch had been. He counted to three hundred, fidgeting. Then waited a little longer, which was as much as he could manage, and dialled again. Dubre answered instantly.
‘Here’s the deal. I can get hold of a seaplane for tonight. I use it a lot to get to investigation sites, so it won’t attract any attention. I’ll fly in and pick you up. Should be simple enough. Name the spot.’
‘There’s a village called Belolaut, to the east of Muntok. Make it the first bay west of Belolaut. I’ll be at the western end. Say ten o’clock tonight?’
‘Alrighty.’ Phil could hear Dubre scribbling. There was a pause, then, ‘I'll be there, Phillip. I’ll try and figure out where to take you in the meantime. See you then, chap. Love to Anna.’ And he was gone. Hamnet replaced the heavy receiver. Love to Anna.
He thanked the barman and bought a bottle of water and some sad-looking fruit. Then he followed the shoreline from the village out to the west. He found the first bay, a small sandy beach with rocky headlands at either end. It was just under fifteen minutes’ walk. He returned to the stream. The bag he had stashed was crawling with ants. He left it where it was. He drank some of the bottled water and ate the fruit slowly, trying to eke it out. But the stream water he had drunk earlier cramped his stomach, and he threw everything back up.
The day dragged wearily. The sky was clear and the land steamed under the unrestrained sun. The bottled water was gone by midafternoon, and with the heat, thirst and hunger came clouded judgement.
At nightfall he returned to the empty village bar, ordered a dinner of fish and rice, and drank water and Coke till his stomach was bloated. The food came and his body absorbed the nutrition like a sponge. The barman sat at a nearby table and smoked. Hamnet had only to look up to get another drink. The soporific hiss of the gas lamp and the sleepy atmosphere seemed to ease the strain out of him.
There was no clock in the bar, and he was thinking about paying and leaving when he saw a small group of people approach. But it wasn’t until they stepped into the pale-yellow circle of light that he saw a uniform. And a young couple — the pair he’d last seen laughing outside the roadside stall that morning.
The young man pointed — he had recognised his clothes. Hamnet’s chair crashed to the ground as panic jolted him out of it. He had gone several paces before the first yell, heading straight for the water. On foot he had no hope on the road, but the beach and the rocky headland would even the odds. He swept right along the sand, footsteps behind him pounding in pursuit. It was dark, but not impossibly so under the weak moon. The food in his stomach threatened to come back up. Blood and adrenaline swirled through him in a heady mixture of fear. The soft, calf-stretching sand gave way to heel-jarring rock. A torch beam flickered on the headland in front of him. Then, behind, the crack of a gun shot. He neither heard nor saw where the bullet went, but he didn’t have to. He was being shot at, and that was more than he needed to know.
He sprinted up a slab of rock and jumped recklessly into the darkness beyond as another round whirred over his head and slammed into a cliff face. Somehow he landed flat and level, stumbling only slightly, and pitched himself forward into the unknown. He leapt from rock to rock, relying on faith, driven by fear, skirting the base of the cliff, heading for the next bay and his rendezvous. With no idea when Dubre was going to arrive. Heavy footsteps grated on the rock behind him. The torch beam flashed wildly across the cliff face, then disappeared. More shouts. A cry of pain as someone went down. The pace of pursuit was slowing. They were going to a lot of trouble for a backpack — unless these people knew who he was. Could the pirates’ search have got this far?
He rounded a corner of the cliff and saw moonlight reflecting off the water ahead. Then he heard the faint drone of an engine. It was coming in low from over the sea, without lights. In the nick of bloody time, he breathed, stepping off the rock and stumbling again across the sand. The strength-sapping softness underfoot took a heavy toll as he struggled round to the western end of the bay. The seaplane landed, with plumes of white spray from the floats, only a hundred metres to his left. He shouted and waved, attracting more gunfire. None of it went anywhere near him, but he could see lights off to his right — three torch beams moving restlessly through the scrub at the back of the beach. More shouts. He cut closer to the water, onto slightly harder sand, his breath rasping as his dinner burned the back of his throat. Behind him, he could hear footsteps kicking up spray, another shot, almost continuous shouting. This was clearly not about a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
The seaplane had ended its landing run some forty metres out. As he glanced across, Hamnet saw the door open.
‘The rocks!’ he yelled, waving frantically at the next headland along. A forty-metre swim would be much too long in the water. But if Dubre could get the plane close to the headland, he would have only a few metres to cross. More gunfire cracked behind him, and this time he saw where the bullet hit the sand with a soft thwack.
Dubre had got the idea. The plane was turning, motoring towards the rocks only fifty metres ahead. Hamnet glanced over his shoulder for the first time. His suicidal speed round the previous headland had given him a hundred metres on the first group of pursuers. The second group, on the right, had just reached the beach and were slightly further away. Their flanking operation had failed. Dubre had the plane turned and headed offshore, motoring parallel to the headland. Hamnet was twenty metres away when he saw a shot hit the water just to the left of the plane. Dubre’s bulk filled the starboard door — he hadn’t heard the shot over the noise of the engine. But as Hamnet drew level they both saw the next round slam into the starboard wing. Hamnet heard Dubre’s shout of alarm even as he dived, plunging into the cool water. His momentum carried him almost the whole way. Two strokes and he had hold of a strut. With a massive effort he heaved himself out of the water and onto the starboard float.
‘Where’s Anna?’ yelled Dubre.
‘Go, go, just go!’ screamed back Hamnet.
Dubre pulled his head back from the door and hit the gas hard. The seaplane skated over the water. There was more shouting and shooting from the beach but Hamnet didn’t notice. He tried to struggle to his feet and into the cabin. The plane wobbled under the movement. Dubre turned and waved a clenched fist — the signal to hold on. He was moving out of range of the guns. Hamnet looked behind. There were three or four lights, all pointing at the plane, but none was strong enough to reach it. He felt the power slacken and the seaplane slow down. More steadily this time, he climbed to his feet and into the tiny cockpit beside Dubre’s heavy form. The plane slid across the water and lifted into the air before Dubre turned to Hamnet with a look of thunder.
‘What the devil’s going
on?’ he demanded.
But Hamnet had slumped against the window. He shook his head, wheezing back air. Dubre would have to wait.
Chapter 9
Hamnet stared out of the cockpit window in silence. Dubre had shaken him awake a few minutes earlier, wordlessly pointing out the sprinkling of lights off their starboard side. The black carpet below them was airbrushed with an ellipse of orange on the eastern horizon and splashed with a paint stroke of moonlight to the west. Hamnet was still incapable of anything more than a grunt of acknowledgement, and Dubre seemed to understand. The hours of sleep had left his mind freewheeling. He struggled to re-engage it, gazing unfocused into the future. A quick stock check of his body brought up a long list of deficits, but the sleep and the security of the tiny cockpit had relieved the worst of them. Bizarrely, he realised the thing he was most anxious to fix was the disgusting taste and texture inside his mouth. If only that were his biggest problem.
Dubre broke into his reverie. ‘I filed a flight plan for this place. If anyone wonders why I’m late, I’ll tell them I had to put down a couple of times to let an overheating engine cool down. But I can’t be seen to arrive with you aboard, so I’m going to land her just this side of the headland, before the village. You slip out and swim ashore. There’s a plastic bag by your feet with a change of clothes. I have another bag of stuff that I’ll give you later. Get cleaned up as best you can and meet me in a bar called the Smiling Buddha in a couple of hours. It’s by the beach. The place is tiny so you can’t miss it.’
Hamnet nodded and started to strip off. ‘Where are we?’ he grunted as he fumbled for the plastic bag.
‘An island called Phi Phi off the west coast of Thailand, just north of the Malay border. No one asks any questions. Here we go. You ready, chap?’
The engine blipped a couple of times as Dubre levelled out over the water and adjusted the angle of the glide path. The hush of anticipation was broken as the floats kissed the smooth surface, trailing an even curtain of spray. Dubre leaned over and unlatched the door. ‘Go!’ he hissed. Bag in hand, Hamnet hesitated, watching the bubble and froth. Then he plunged into the warm water. By the time he surfaced Dubre had gunned the engine and the plane was moving quickly away. Hamnet bobbed in the wash trying to orientate himself. The nearest land was a black mass of rock less than a hundred metres away. It sloped gently out of the water at an inviting angle. He kicked out, lying on his back, the bag clasped to his chest.
Dubre had prepared well. The bag contained saltwater soap, a toothbrush and paste, a towel, a pair of sandals, a pair of baggy chinos and a faded T-shirt which declared itself to be a lousy present from Singapore. The rock was the perfect bathroom. Hamnet scrubbed and wallowed while the sun launched itself over the hills behind him. It revealed spectacular rock formations, climbing in a series of steps from the sea onto two headlands that enclosed a tiny bay. A towering, chirping wall of palm trees backed a beach of pure white sand. Hamnet dressed and stuffed the toiletries and stolen garments in the plastic bag — an early-morning bather returning for a hearty breakfast.
He walked along the beach until a pathway opened in the foliage. Progress was easy through a tunnel of dappled greens and yellows. Too perfect, too stunning, thought Hamnet. It fitted badly with his mood. The path rose gently over the back of the furthest headland and descended to a beach on the other side. Dubre’s plane was anchored at the far end. Wooden houses with roofs of leaf thatch were scattered among the palm trees. Fishing boats reclined indolently along the foreshore, and nets were staked out in front of the buildings. Smoke drifted gently down to the water through the lazy air of early morning. Little else moved.
Hamnet kept to the beach and found the Smiling Buddha after a further couple of minutes’ walk. It was more a canopy than a building, with an open kitchen at the back. The smell of cooking food awakened a ravenous hunger. A young Japanese couple sitting near the water didn’t bother to acknowledge his arrival. The woman giggled loudly as he sat down in a creaking wooden chair at a back table. The menu offered little but fish and rice. He ordered it fried, with a pot of black coffee, from a slip of a boy with eyes like pools of oil. Even allowing for his more than healthy appetite, he judged the meal about as good as fried rice and fish could be. He was halfway through a second pot of coffee when Dubre appeared in the doorway.
Hamnet watched him approach, smoothing the nonexistent hair on his pate. It was a familiar gesture, and not for the first time Hamnet wondered what colour Dubre’s remaining grey hair had once been to match his startling green eyes. He kicked the chair opposite him out from the table and said, ‘Thanks. I guess I haven’t said that yet.’
‘Anything for you, old chap. Though I have to admit to being a trifle disconcerted by the fact that someone was shooting at us.’ He hesitated, staring at Hamnet appraisingly. ‘You look like shit.’ He dropped the canvas knapsack he was carrying by the table. ‘You should find everything you need in there. I packed a first aid kit, and there are more clothes and some money.’ He lowered his pot-bellied bulk into the chair. ‘So I think it’s your turn, old chap. What the devil is going on? Where’s Anna? And who the hell was shooting at us?’ Then he added, ‘In any order you like.’
Hamnet twitched his nose, rubbed his cheek. ‘The local police on Bangka were the ones taking pot shots. I stole some kid’s clothes and he spotted me in a restaurant.’
‘And they shot at you for a pair of jeans? Indonesia has a human rights problem, but I think that’s pushing it a bit even for them.’
‘Maybe they connected me to the Shawould. What I know is going to cost someone a great deal of money. Well worth killing me for.’
Dubre picked up the battered menu as he said, ‘Talking of killing, some white chap topped a fisherman the night before last. Stole his boat from a stilt house at the mouth of the Upang. You know anything about that, Phillip?’ he finished, eyebrows raised enquiringly as though he had asked how Hamnet had found the fried fish.
It stopped Hamnet dead. He could feel Dubre’s eyes on him. He could feel his throat dry. And he could almost feel the kick in his forearms again as the paddle came down on the man’s head. He knew he’d hit him hard. He’d just blocked it out. Struggling for an innocent reaction, he sat up, pushed his empty plate away and leant forward on the table. ‘Christ, no,’ he said hoarsely. ‘What happened?’
Dubre’s eyes stayed on him. ‘The chap knocked him out and he drowned. I checked out the latest on the Shawould yesterday after you called. The police I spoke to down there mentioned it in passing — having a busy week, they said. But they don’t think it’s connected.’
‘Hard to see why it should be,’ said Hamnet.
‘I can’t help you if you were involved in that, Phillip. Whatever’s going on, this is different from last time. You’re not out there on your own, man against the sea and all that. This time you’re in someone’s country. There are rules.’
Hamnet could feel his face flush. ‘I didn’t hit anyone,’ he said, hating himself for the lie.
‘Then how did you get to Bangka?’
Something deep in his memory rescued him. The pirate leader had ordered the ditching of the life rafts and gear. ‘I was in a life jacket. Got swept around in the squall. When it flattened out in the morning, I was close to the Bangka shore.’
‘You were lucky,’ said Dubre. The green eyes hesitated on Hamnet’s face for a second longer before flickering away to the menu.
‘Very.’ Hamnet nodded, his pulse easing. ‘What did they tell you about the Shawould?’ He took the chance to change the subject.
‘Went aground in bad weather, boarded by unknown parties. Somebody got off a Mayday, but by the time the helicopter from an oil rig got there it was too late. Eleven crew dead, the master and his wife posted as missing. They won't close the file until the bodies turn up. But I don’t think it will hold up the insurance payment.’ Dubre was watching him carefully again. ‘So where’s Anna?’
‘They took her. To keep me silen
t. If we can find her and get her back, I can tell you what I know. I can save the insurers every single penny of the payout on the ship and cargo.’ Dubre’s smooth brow wrinkled as his eyebrows rose.
The boy waiter appeared at Dubre’s shoulder. Dubre spoke quickly to him in Thai and he slid away. ‘And what makes you think I can get her back?’ he asked Hamnet.
‘You know people — the right people. You’ve got contacts throughout South-east Asia at all levels of law enforcement. You’re well thought of, and you know as much about piracy as anyone. If you don’t know these people, no one will. And besides, there’s no one else I can trust.’ Uncomfortable words, spoken so shortly after his lie. ‘If it becomes public that I’m alive, it’ll be a circus just like last time. And if I’m out in the open, I’ll be a target. Simplest way for the bastards to solve their problem is to kill Anna and me. No, we have to find her ourselves — the two of us.’
Dubre tapped heavily on the table with a big gold ring on the little finger of his left hand. ‘Let’s assume I decide to help you. What can you tell me? Where do we start?’
‘She’s with a group of pirates led by two Americans. I got a look at both of them and one name — Bureya. He was the number two. There can’t be many whites involved in piracy; it’s normally locals. But these guys were organised — rigid inflatable boats, a goddam lighter and crane to take the cargo off. It was a serious piece of work — organised, with money behind it. Someone must know something about these people. They didn’t come out of nowhere.’
‘Americans though. No Chinese?’
Hamnet hesitated as Dubre’s breakfast, a fresh pot of coffee, arrived. ‘You’re thinking of the Triads?’
‘Triads if you want a simple label. The Chinese are the only real criminal power in this part of the world. If you want organised crime, that’s the place to look.’
‘I didn’t see any Chinese. Just the Yanks and some locals.’
The Wrecking Crew (Janac's Games) Page 7