‘No, you must go.’
How could she go, when half of her would remain here with him? But she didn’t make it harder for him than it already was. She nodded and did as he asked. His eyes didn’t leave hers as Nurul rowed them out into the river, and as the distance between them stretched, yard after yard, Fitz did not move away. He stood on the bank watching her, a lone figure slumped against a mangrove tree, and when the billowing smoke drifted across and stole him from her, it was as if her heart were held in darkness.
It was a sudden change in the wind direction – like the breath of the gods drawing away from the accursed Japs – that made Maya scream a warning. Later she was sorry. Later, she wished she had kept her mouth shut, or pressed her hand over the sound. But in the tiny rowing boat with Jonee comforting her twin instead of her, she didn’t think. She saw the Japs and she screamed.
The wind was swirling upriver carrying the smoke with it, so that the riverbank was suddenly bathed in bright sunlight, and that was when she saw the grey uniforms, creeping along the shore like rats. Iron-eyes was right in their path, but instead of keeping alert and watching his back, he did nothing but stare out over the water at Mem Hadley, waiting for her to reach the safety of the Burung Camar and hoist sail.
‘They come,’ Maya wailed.
A small hand took hold of hers. It was Tuan Teddy. He squeezed it tight and whispered something to comfort her. The ferocity of his grip on her fingers startled her, and for a moment it squeezed out the terror. She heard mem cry out as she recognised the danger Iron-eyes was in, and saw her leap to her feet in the boat. On shore, Iron-eyes had started running as though a leopard was snapping at his heels, but before he could warn those left alive in the forest that the Japs were here a single shot ran out.
He went down, as if he had been scythed at the knees. Mem Hadley made no sound, but Maya felt all the air sucked out of the boat.
‘Go back,’ mem yelled at Nurul. ‘Go back for him. Now, go back now.’
But Nurul shook his head and rowed on. Mem wasted no more breath on him.
‘Johnnie, take care of Teddy,’ she said quickly. Then she kissed her son’s head, dived into the green water and struck out for the mangroves.
‘No!’ Maya cried. ‘It bad.’
Tuan Teddy shivered, his fingers clutching the side of the rowing boat as if they would take a bite out of it, while his mother’s small blond head bobbed away from him among the burning boats. She was a strong swimmer. But Maya wondered what kind of strong heart she must possess to do such a crazy thing, and it made her want to cry. Not for Iron-eyes; not for mem’s son. But because to be loved so much must make your heart burst with happiness. To die so happy would not hurt.
Madoc watched it all happen. He stood on board the Burung Camar and acknowledged with a curse that he was not going to get the pinisiq under way before Nurul reached it.
‘Patience,’ Kitty murmured in his ear. ‘Nurul is an easy target.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish, woman. He is as sharp as one of the knives he’s so fond of, and devoted to Fitzpayne.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
He turned his head to look at her as she pushed back her wet hair. Still this woman could astonish him. He checked the direction of the wind and loosened one of the sheets, eager to set sail before the yellow bastards on land overran the camp and decided to turn their attention to the boats, now that their aircraft had done such an efficient job on the forest camp. That bastard Fitzpayne was shot down – that was something good, at least.
‘Look,’ he pointed out, ‘Flight Lieutenant Blake is in the rowing boat, as well as the Jumat kids.’
He wished to hell that they had made a run for it earlier, but Nurul had stationed three men on the pinisiq, all with guns. He was no fool.
‘Razak will come over to our side if he thinks we are winning,’ Kitty said confidently. ‘And Nurul won’t need much … encouragement.’
‘What kind of encouragement?’
The rowing boat bumped against the hull.
‘That’s for me to know,’ she chuckled, ‘and for you to find out.’
As Nurul swung over the side, Madoc was tempted to stick a gun right in his shiny gold mouth.
36
Connie hid Fitz. Deep within a clump of tall, sharp-edged jungle grasses that closed over their heads.
‘Quick,’ she said. ‘We must be quick.’
Fitz leaned against her as she eased his shirt from his shoulders.
‘For bandages,’ she said succinctly.
He nodded, and extracted a knife from the sheath on his belt. ‘You shouldn’t have come back.’
It was the first time he’d spoken since she’d scooped him up off the riverbank. With one of his arms across her shoulders for support, she had half dragged him into the tangled world of the jungle, seeking sanctuary in its damp shadows. Every moment she had expected another rifle shot to ring out, or a bayonet through the ribs. But the sporadic gunfire from the few pirates left alive in the treetops forced the Japanese troops to keep their heads down for the vital few minutes she needed.
Connie worked fast, but her mouth was so dry her lips wouldn’t unstick from her teeth and something strange was going on at the back of her eyes. Green lights kept flickering like emerald fireflies, distorting her vision. She hadn’t known that fear could feel like this, like an illness. Fitz was bleeding where the bullet had sliced through his thigh. Her own body quivered when she inspected the wound.
‘The bullet has exited out the back,’ he told her. ‘I’m lucky.’
Lucky? She lifted her gaze from the wound and fixed it on his face. His skin was taut. Dark smudges of pain lay beneath his eyes, and his pupils were black and sharp. But his mouth seemed to have crept out from under the iron control of his will and was half smiling at her. She took the knife from his hand.
‘You know you shouldn’t have come, Connie.’
‘How could I not?’
‘I wanted you to escape with your son.’
‘Leaving you here to play with your guns without me?’
He laughed, and she loved him for it. Some of the sound seeped into her head and diluted the fear. She cut the sleeves from the shirt and folded them into two wads. She pressed one hard on top of the wound on the front of his leg, and rolled him over to look at the exit wound on the back of his thigh. She gasped. It was much worse.
‘Hurry,’ he urged.
She jammed the second wad onto the wound, stemming the flow of blood. ‘It’s not an artery,’ she reassured him.
‘Nothing more than a scratch, then.’
‘Something like that.’ She bound the rest of the shirt around his thigh.
‘Do you know what it is to die of loneliness?’ he asked.
She looked at him.
‘That’s how I felt,’ he murmured, ‘when Nurul rowed you away from me.’
She rested her fingers on his. ‘I came back. Doesn’t that answer you?’
More shots rang out somewhere close.
‘Hurry!’ he said. ‘Nurul will come for us. He and I have a place to meet in any emergency. It’s a promontory on the far side of the island.’
In her mind she saw again Nurul’s indifference when they’d been in the rowing boat. ‘Maybe we could swim out together instead to the Burung Camar. Teddy is on board.’
Suddenly shouts echoed no more than a hundred yards from them.
‘I’m sorry, Connie,’ Fitz whispered into her ear. ‘It’s too late for that.The boats will be gone. Nurul knows better than to approach a shoreline thick with Japs. He will return to the promontory when it’s dark. Help me up.’
She took his weight. ‘Can’t we stay here? Hidden in these tall grasses until tonight?’
‘No, it’s not safe. It won’t take them long to find the blood trail.’
She hadn’t thought of that. She looked around her at the telltale scarlet smears. ‘Let’s move.’
‘You are brave,’ he said simply.
&n
bsp; She saw in his face that he understood how much she had left behind for him, how desperate she was to return to Teddy. Together they started to move cautiously through the grass that waved above their heads in the humid breeze from the river, his arm heavy on her shoulders, her hand gripping his naked back. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t brave, that she had left a man dead on a riverbank once before and she wasn’t going to do it again. She wanted to tell him that this time it was different, that this time she had refused to let him die.
But she didn’t mention any of these things. She let them lie like stones in her stomach, and told him instead that if he didn’t hobble a damn sight faster they would be fishfood long before nightfall.
Fitz knew his jungle. It was his domain. He guided Connie down hidden gulleys and through solid green walls of vegetation to find the faintest animal trails that made the going easier. The flies and leeches thickened as they pushed further inland and the air grew more humid, until it had a body and weight that Connie felt she could cut into slices with Fitz’s knife.
‘You must rest now,’ she told him.
He glared at her from under his dark eyebrows each time she said those words, but she insisted.
‘I don’t want you to bleed to death on me,’ she said.
‘I don’t intend to die,’ he said. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
Though he spoke quietly, there was something savage in his eyes. She knelt at his side. ‘What is it?’
He looked utterly weary, his eyes half closed as though he would shut out the world. She was aware of how many friends he had seen die that day.
‘The Japanese did not invade this island by chance,’ he said. ‘They must have had a good reason to come here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Something … or someone … led them to us.’
‘Who?’
‘My guess is that it was that wastrel, Madoc.’
‘What? No, he would never do such a …’
‘Hush.’ He placed a finger over her lips and smiled faintly. ‘You have too much faith in people, Connie.’ He stroked her chin with his thumb. ‘Not everyone is like you.’
‘Why would Madoc do such a thing?’
‘You know I told you that your Japanese pilot was killed in the hold of the Burung Camar last night?’
She nodded.
‘I think Madoc slit his throat.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘No.’
I suspect he went out there under cover of darkness for the radio. And had to silence the Jap to keep him quiet.’
‘What radio?’
‘Behind a panel in the boat’s hold, I keep a short-wave radio. Madoc must have found out about it from one of the crew – I could tell this morning that it had been disturbed – and for some reason he decided to send out a message to someone.’
‘No, I can’t believe it was Madoc. He would never betray us to the Japs. You know how he hates them. Maybe it was Nurul himself, and maybe he killed the pilot.’
Fitz gave a short laugh. ‘No, not Nurul. Connie, it is the look in a man’s eye that tells you what is in his soul, not his slippery words. I don’t mean that Madoc would betray us to the Japs intentionally, but they monitor all radio traffic and their direction-finders trace transmissions. He could have radioed someone in Singapore and told them about this place.’
Connie put her hand over her mouth. ‘You really think it was him?’
He leaned forward and placed his lips on the back of her hand. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘Poor old Henry Court bought it when The White Pearl went up,’ Johnnie Blake said with a sombre tug of his earlobe. ‘God rest his soul.’ His eyes looked sick.
Bought it? Went up?
Madoc groaned. What the hell was the matter with people like Blake? Why the need to speak in code? What was wrong with saying it straight?
‘A Jap bomb blew Court to pieces,’ Madoc spelled it out clearly for them. He saw the lad, Teddy, wince and his eyes fill with dismay. ‘Don’t worry, kid, your mother will be OK. Fitzpayne will get her to safety, you can bet on that.’
Like hell he will. They are most likely both already lying dead in the jungle with bullets in their backs and ants in their eyes.
‘Please,’ Teddy begged, ‘we must sail back to the island.’
‘Too late for that,’ Madoc answered. ‘Look around you.’
The Burung Camar was carrying full sail and, with an empty hull, was flying away from the island like a cat with its tail on fire. Nurul was squeezing every scrap of speed out of his boat to find somewhere safe to tuck her under cover before more Jap planes came screaming out of the sun. An unpleasant swell was running across their bow, but the fresh north-westerly filling the pinisiq’s eight sails drove them beyond reach of any binoculars on the island’s shores, so that Madoc felt the hairs on the back of his neck settle down at last.
Nurul was a skipper of few words, which suited Madoc just fine. He told his passengers nothing. His crew of three consisted of Madoc’s two gambling companions from his days with Kitty on The White Pearl, while waiting for repairs, and also a new Javanese with a woman’s golden skin and a huge belly that shook when he laughed. And he laughed whenever one of the white people spoke to him. Razak was the only one Big Belly deigned to talk to, so it was Razak who came to them with the information that they would be returning to the island at nightfall.
‘No,’ Madoc stated flatly. ‘I’m not going back there. It’s crawling with Japs.’
A desperate ‘Yes!’ burst out of Teddy.
Johnnie Blake came over to Madoc and drew him out of earshot. Madoc knew exactly what was coming.
‘Look, Morgan, it’s not just for the boy. Mrs Hadley and Mr Fitzpayne are part of our …’ for one hideous moment Madoc thought he was going to say our squadron, ‘… part of our team, and we don’t ditch members of our team. It’s not honourable.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Blake, you and I know they are as good as dead by now.’
‘It’s possible, yes. But I hope that’s not true. They are both,’ he struggled for the right word, ‘resourceful people.’
Resourceful. Madoc could think of other words for Fitzpayne, and bloody-minded was one of them. The Japs were welcome to him.
‘I suggest,’ Blake continued, ‘that we discuss it with Nurul. You speak Malay, so you …’
‘Nurul is not the kind of man open to suggestions, Flight Lieutenant. If we want to change his mind, we have to kill him.’
‘Good God, Madoc. You are barbaric.’
‘I’m alive. That’s what counts. And I intend to stay that way.’
‘You and your wife could always leave us. I’m sure Nurul would be more than happy for you to disembark on whatever island he seeks shelter in.’
Madoc heard in the man’s voice the desire concealed scrupulously behind the veneer of politeness – the desire to be rid of him for good. Not the right class, old chap. A bit off-stump when it comes to values. Bitterness burrowed into Madoc’s flesh like the black head of a leech, and he looked around the deck for Kitty. She was further aft, talking quietly with Nurul, their heads close together. She was taller than the pirate and twice as wide, but the wrinkles of his face were screwed up in an expression of pure delight. He kept casting sideways glances at Kitty’s luscious breasts and darting his tongue across his lips, while Kitty rubbed her backside against the mizzen like a bitch on heat.
Madoc let his hand slide to the Russian gun hidden in his waistband – it felt good to his fingers, hard, brutal and unforgiving. Like himself. He smiled with satisfaction, and knew that today was the day he would use it. So why, when he looked across again at Kitty and saw her jut her breasts almost into Nurul’s gold teeth, did he feel sick in his gut?
‘Shall I tell you why Nurul helps the God Almighty Fitzpayne?’ Kitty asked. She was biting into a peach.
Madoc shook his head. He didn’t want to know. And he didn’t like the way Nurul was sharing not just his peaches with Kitty, but his secrets as w
ell. How many secrets was she sharing with him in return?
‘Don’t sulk, Madoc. You look like a five-year-old.’
She laughed easily, tipping back her throat, making Nurul lift his head at the far end of the boat as though his ears were fine-tuned to her voice. But Kitty’s eyes didn’t laugh. They were moody and withdrawn, and they frightened the hell out of Madoc.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘Well, I’m going to tell you anyway.’
The sky was vermilion behind her, setting fire to her hair. Nightfall was only minutes away, and Nurul was preparing to set sail from the river mouth into which he had squeezed the Burung Camar for what had remained of the day.
‘He carried Nurul’s wife,’ Kitty said.
‘Who?’
‘Fitzpayne. She was heavily pregnant and in terrible pain, and he carried her on his back for ten miles through the jungle to a hospital while Nurul was away at sea.’
Madoc definitely didn’t want to know.
‘She survived,’ Kitty continued relentlessly, ‘and bore a healthy son. But five years ago they both died of malaria.’
‘So Nurul has no wife? He’s probably on the lookout for another.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Madoc, don’t be so piss-brained.’
But he wasn’t being piss-brained. Something dark and chilling was going on behind his wife’s eyes.
‘What is it, Kitty?’
She looked at him, her eyes like beads of oil in the descending darkness. ‘He says you betrayed us to the Japs.’
‘Kitty, that’s insane. You know I’d never do that.’
‘I know.’ She didn’t look at him.
‘So why the fuck do you believe him and not me?’
For a moment her gaze shifted to the native girl who was standing beside Flight Lieutenant Blake, massaging his bad shoulder with small, eager hands.
‘I believe him,’ Kitty said quietly, but he wanted her to shout and cuff him the way she’d done a thousand times before in arguments. ‘I believe him,’ she continued, ‘because he saw you.’
‘What?’
‘He saw you swim out to this boat at night. The Jap pilot’s throat was cut and the radio used, he says.’ At last she looked him in the eye. ‘Was it you?’
The White Pearl Page 44