Power Games

by Victoria Fox

  What a heap of horseshit. Melinda respected that man, but the tripe he got asked to churn out was beyond the pale. Naturally, the White House was doing all it could to extend the arm of comfort. Mitch had been ‘a supreme human being’, ‘a fine leader’ and ‘an exemplary father’. Anything they could do to ease her pain …

  They could start by bringing back the bodies.

  She needed to see. She needed to know.

  The search had thrown up nothing. After a passionate mission in those early days, they were now engaged in a lack-lustre limp to recover corpses.

  ‘Don’t ever let me hear you speak Mitch’s name again,’ Melinda said.

  ‘But there’s nothing to stop us being together now! I’ll tell Mandy—’

  ‘Are you insane?’

  ‘I’ve never been thinking so clearly.’

  ‘Then think on this. You and I are over, Gary. Finished.’

  ‘Can’t you see how it’s all worked out?’

  ‘You think I would have chosen this? Haven’t you a shred of decency?’

  Gary stood. His muscles bulged and Melinda caught him sneak a sidelong glance into the gym mirror to check out his guns. All of a sudden he was repulsive, a giant inflatable sex toy she had reached for in her hour of loneliness.

  ‘I didn’t hear you crying out for decency while I was nailing you to the wall,’ he said.

  Melinda couldn’t bear to hear any more. She rushed for the door but he seized her arm. Filled with rage and regret, she spun round and spat in his face.

  Gary staggered backwards. Numb, he wiped his cheek.

  ‘You psychotic bitch!’

  ‘Come near me again and you’ll see just how right you are.’

  She didn’t hang around for an answer.

  58

  Day 15

  Mitch Corrigan had been missing three days.

  ‘This is crazy,’ said Angela. ‘He can’t have vanished into thin air.’

  ‘He has,’ said Kevin, gutting one of Jacob’s fish. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘People don’t just disappear.’ Angela paced the camp. ‘What about the forest?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Eve.

  ‘The mountain?’

  ‘We’ve been all over. Kevin’s right.’

  Angela looked out to sea. She had thought it strange when Mitch had asked if anyone had been down on the bluff. As if he’d seen something he shouldn’t have.

  ‘I think he’s snuffed it,’ said Kevin.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘This place’ll kill you unless you know what you’re doing.’

  Of course, that was the logical thing. Mitch had gone for a swim, neglected to tell anyone, and had been taken by a shark. Mitch had gone exploring in the heat and tumbled down a rock. Mitch had toppled into a swamp and drowned.

  ‘He’s depressed,’ said Eve. ‘I don’t blame him for what he did.’

  Her suggestion didn’t need to be voiced.

  Mitch wouldn’t be the first of them to contemplate a quick way out.

  The shelters were crude, but gave the illusion of an organised society. They consisted of woven branches cracked and bent to a curve, rooted in the sand and forming a half-tunnel in which it was possible to feel, even for a short time, alone. The need for privacy, however thrown together, was acute.

  Eve was resting on the heap of moss she called a bed. It was draped in material scavenged from the cabin, raised from the sand, and used one of the jet’s life jackets as a bolster. Sunlight filtered through the cracks in shimmering ribbons.

  Kevin’s meat loot had sustained them for days. Eve remembered when the pop star had brought it back, the mouth-watering aromas as it started to cook, salty skin and the tempting pop and frazzle. Angela had advised they fill up slowly because their systems were out of practice, but it hadn’t been easy: the instinct to feed and be filled was primitive. Eve had eaten until she could stomach no more, with every mouthful imagining it travelling into her baby. Even Tawny, who had vowed to abstain, had eventually been enticed, her reluctant, supermodel-squeamish pickings giving way to a devoted campaign—juice on their fingers, shredding with their bare hands.

  Ever since the senator lost his wig, more than his hair had gone AWOL. Nights ago, while the others had been asleep and the sun edged over the lip of the world, Eve had caught him by the pool, naked in the violet light, his hands lifted to the sky. It had been a strangely religious pose. Another time she had startled him at the forest perimeter, just as it was getting dark. ‘I thought I was alone,’ Mitch had said, once he caught his breath. ‘I thought you were … You could have been …’

  Eve knew what he had meant. It was as if the mask had come down, as if the veneer had been wiped, leaving only … fear.

  Eve turned over. The ocean ran blue to the ends of the earth.

  She tried not to think of a worst-case scenario. Corrigan would be back soon. He was an intelligent man, a family man, despite his hare-brained beliefs.

  A niggling voice said: You drove him to this. You hounded him to it.

  Wasn’t that what she did? Wasn’t that her job? Hounded people, for a story, for a buck, for a byline—in a way, for her own warped version of fame.

  Eve Harley: persecutor.

  It didn’t quite have the ring of her early ambitions, working to change the world. Bringing people down and exposing their secrets—there had been a reason behind it, and that reason was her father. Her tormentor.

  In turn Eve had become the tormentor, and people had run from her.

  At first, Eve been distraught at her iPad smashing—it was too much to wish for a connection in as remote a place as this, but the idea of reviving her documents, of having something to focus on, became an obsession. As a result she had broken the habit of reaching for it whenever she had a twist of poison to drain.

  At home, whenever she thought of her father, she would pick up her piece and embark on a new theory. Whenever she remembered his cruelty, she would hit on a new target and pitch it to her editor. Whenever injustice flourished, she would polish a text from a new and obliterating angle. Every bad thing Eve had written had come from a bad place. And yet, the less she indulged that place, the less she fed it, the quieter it became. She never thought she would say it, but she did not miss her work.

  Eve sat up. She knocked her head on the roof of the shelter and swore.

  Celeste’s legs appeared in the square of daylight. The Italian ducked under, and Eve just had time to adjust her shirt, parted to reveal her gently rounded tummy.

  ‘We know that you’re pregnant,’ Celeste said, sitting down. The woman who appraised Eve was not the meek specimen she had met at Jakarta. She matched Eve’s eye plainly, and did not look away.

  ‘It’s that obvious, huh.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘You’d have had to eventually.’

  Eve wasn’t used to being the one questioned. ‘I guess you think I’m stupid for agreeing to this in the first place,’ she said.

  ‘None of us agreed to this.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Celeste shook her head. ‘I don’t think you’re stupid. Anyway, we’ll get rescued soon, and you’ll have your baby at home.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You sound like you don’t believe it.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  Celeste stared out of the shelter. Jacob was at the lagoon, splashing his face and shoulders. Eve saw her expression and surprised herself with a smile.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to stay, by any chance?’ she said. ‘Only that a deserted paradise with a guy you’ve got the hots for could be worse.’

  Celeste went red. ‘What?’

  ‘Have you got a boyfriend at home? A husband?’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘I’m guessing a lot, to him.’

  ‘To Jacob?’

  Eve sat back. ‘I meant your boyfriend.’
/>
  ‘Oh.’

  They sat in companionable quiet, listening to the waves.

  ‘What do you think happened to Mitch?’ Celeste asked. Her voice was cautious, reverent, as if they were speaking of the already dead.

  ‘Angela and I are going out later, once it cools.’

  ‘I don’t like not knowing. I feel like these people are watching us.’

  ‘People?’

  ‘Mitch. The flight attendant.’ Celeste’s dark eyes met hers. ‘I feel like I’m being watched. Do you know? Every shadow, every sound …’

  Eve did know, but she didn’t want to admit it.

  ‘There’s no way that woman could have lived,’ she said instead, ‘and if she had, she would have found us by now. Corrigan will come back. You’ll see.’

  ‘I keep thinking of his wife. He has children, hasn’t he?’ Eve nodded. Had she thought for a second about those children while she was writing up her piece on Veroli? Had she thought about any of the children, or the relatives, or anyone impacted, when she had been set on pulling apart those lives?

  She had been a child once. Ruined differently, but ruined all the same.

  ‘We’ve all got someone we need to live for, don’t we?’ said Celeste.

  Eve nodded. Her baby. Orlando …

  ‘We do,’ Eve said, and prayed it was true. ‘Someone is waiting for us.’

  59

  Noah used Maliki Island as a base. Every dawn he woke to a sky-splitting sunrise, a pink and red explosion as if the earth had been set on fire, and took a boat out to sea. The area was large as a continent, studded with landmasses but mostly swallowed by water. Wherever he was, on whatever rock that looked like another rock that looked like another, he would scan the horizon, hazy with distance and heat, and decipher a chain of islets, knuckle-sharp and primeval, and beyond those a further chain, and beyond that another. The task was daunting.

  The official search was disbanding. Noah saw in their expressions the acceptance of failure, that this last push was a formality, a case of ticking the boxes.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ he was told, days after he had arrived.

  Noah didn’t see it as a waste. Coming out here might be dumb, it might be the dumbest thing he ever did, but it sure beat sitting around waiting for a miracle to happen. And maybe he did have a better chance. Maybe for all the power of the White House, for all the muscle of the media, they were doing it for image, not heart. Noah had Angela to do it for and he wasn’t giving her up, not today, not ever.

  It helped to be near her. Regardless of whether he was searching for her kiss or her body, it was still her body, and he was not leaving it behind.

  Early evening. The sun was setting, a syrupy arc softening into marmalade. The ocean shone black and the line of cliffs were frayed across the dusky mauve sky.

  Noah smoothed the map in his hands, a chequered mess of probabilities and possibilities, where he had understood from the locals in fits and starts if they had seen a fire in the sky that night, or woken in the small hours with a sound in their ears. He didn’t know how much sense it made, if he was taking down information back to front, upside down, if there was any point to it at all. One boy had nodded when questioned about lights—yes, he had said, he knew what lights were; yes, he had seen them overhead; and yes, the lights would have been around that time—and then he had pointed to Noah’s shoes and used the same word for them.

  Logic told him it was a losing battle. And yet …

  Twisting between the rocks was an area Noah hadn’t explored: the furthest outreach of the archipelago, where the islands looped into a curve like a chain on a velvet cushion, tens of miles between them and leagues of bottomless sea.

  The search had ruled it out as too far from the flight path.

  Was it?

  He had to find out—because after that his ideas dried up.

  Tomorrow he would set sail, take enough food and fuel to sustain him, and he wouldn’t return until he had something. He would go it alone and it would push him to the limits of endurance, but, unless he did, he would never be able to sleep again.

  He sat on the sand. He was tired, and the days ahead of him long.

  He did not hear the footsteps approach.

  The man pinched the fabric of his T-shirt, peeling it away from his chest. It soldered to his skin before yielding. He scanned the jetty, and set off across the beach.

  Beyond the crags, he emerged into a cove. A fishing boat was bobbing on the water, and there, on the shore, was the person he had come for.

  Noah Lawson was studying a map, at intervals looking up and out to sea with an expression, as much as could be deciphered side-on, of simultaneous optimism and despair. He was taller and broader than the man had expected.

  The man advanced, emerging from the trees, a dark shape on the pale sand, the weapon glinting in his belt.

  He put a hand on Noah Lawson’s shoulder.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘We’ve been looking for you.’

  60

  Day 16

  Jacob learned the number of steps it took to reach the jungle wall. He drew himself up on the skin of a tree trunk, hands in front, feet hesitant, and walked into the forest. Shapes burgeoned and dissolved behind the bandages. The shade was fresh, layers of flavour hitting his senses. Every sound he picked up, the squawk in a tree, the buzz of insects, the shiver of a branch.

  Alone, he crouched. His bandage was knotted at the back, the ends frayed and set with sweat, and it was a struggle to loosen it. At last it came free.

  Days it had been on, and the outcome was a shock.

  Jacob blinked. It wasn’t perfect. A little fuzzy round the edges, like waking from an intense sleep, but the outlines were there—and, yes, the more he pushed through, his eyes growing accustomed to light after so long in the dark, he didn’t know how long, the more the scene in front of him sharpened into focus.

  Golden sunlight spilled on the crusted floor. A pea-green lizard shot across a rock, stopping to warm its armoured back. Flies twitched on a stagnant slop of water. Twisted roots thick as his arm knotted into the musty earth, and an emerald parrot with a pastel-blue head called from the canopy, flying low between the trees with its green wings spread. Colour, light, shape—how perfect the world looked!

  He wanted to see the beach. He wanted to see more.

  Jacob moved fast, his vision refining by the second to something hyper-real.

  Sky had never been so blue. Sand had never been so dazzling. Sea had never been so clear. His wits were amplified, inhaling the salt breeze and catching the chalk from the rocks in the distance. He rushed down to the lagoon, scooping up handfuls and dousing himself in silver.

  The beach was deserted. Fire smouldered by the rock platform. Jacob plunged back into the jungle, pushing through fronds until he reached the path the others had trodden. Vision was like water after the desert. His eyes wanted more—to see it all, to drink it in, an unquenchable thirst. As if he were meeting it for the first time.

  How hopeless he had felt. Unable to act for himself, a burden to the group, following where he was led and trusting in people he did not know. Sight was power—and fear had made a man of him. In the ordinary world he never felt that emotion. Why should he? Jacob Lyle always called the shots. Having that authority wrenched from him had thrown him on the mercy of others.

  Through a shield of creepers he came to the bathing pool. It was not how he had imagined: his mind had only been able to capture it as a still life. Here, life was moving. The waterfall rushed, spilling from a high platform and cascading onto the rocks, filling the air with a suspended, glittering spray. The pool was aquamarine, white sand visible from the surface. Sheer rock walls contained it, a paradise suntrap.

  He knelt at the lip of the lake and peered over the edge.

  His appearance was less important to him than he thought it would be.

  Even so, it was better than he’d feared. His face was badly sunburned, nothing better, nothing wor
se, and across his forehead and down the line of his nose was a colourless strip of skin. Jacob removed his shirt, his neck and chest delicate, but it was almost healed, patches of white blossoming through. His chest remained muscled where he had thought it would have faded away. Where he hadn’t been scorched, on forearms, shoulders and legs, he had turned a rich, honey brown.

  His hair was long, curling round his ears, and he had a beard.

  The woman who had made it possible: Celeste.

  Jacob knew how much worse it might have been. Celeste had looked after him. She had been his eyes when his own had failed.

  He caught a new sound beneath the drum of the waterfall, a faint, humming tune. He looked up and in an instant he remembered: Celeste at Jakarta, in the pencil skirt and the smart blouse, the dark hair and the soulful eyes …

  And there she was now.

  He dashed behind a rock.

  Celeste was naked, singing softly as she showered beneath the waterfall. She was a nymph; her cropped black hair slick and boyish. When she climbed out to dry herself, Jacob’s breath caught at the sight of her body. It was petite and pale, perfectly proportioned, her arms and legs slender and her breasts high and small. The bush between her thighs was soft and abundant. Jacob’s cock sprang to attention.

  Never had he noticed the shape of someone’s ankles. Never had he noticed the cuppable flesh where her ass met her thighs. Never had he noticed the swan-like line of her neck as she bent to the ground—and then come up abruptly, sensing his scrutiny, huge eyes scanning the pool. Jacob stayed hidden, holding his breath.

  His erection strained. Not being able to get it up for Tawny, he’d thought that was it. Not any more. For all the tapes he had watched, all the women with their legs apart and their come-to-bed faces, all the times he had got horny watching a harem of beauties writhe, never before had he felt as aroused as he did right now.

  He wanted Celeste Cavalieri more than he had ever wanted anyone.

  Had she seen him? He couldn’t be sure. Celeste was looking in his direction, her eyes stilled on the spot where he was, but she didn’t move. She didn’t cover up.