‘He was with a woman, Philip,’ Copeland snorted. ‘That’s why he wanted privacy.’
Vereker replaced his spectacles. ‘That was part of it, prime minister, certainly.’ He held a steady gaze, unmoved from his belief that there was more.
‘The woman’s a fact, gentlemen. And facts are what we should stick with,’ Copeland snapped, fearful of where this speculation might lead. ‘Now tell me, what are the Indonesians up to? Do they think he’s in their country or not?’
‘I don’t think they know, prime minister. But something odd’s happened. There are signs that Major General Sumoto, the Indonesian military’s procurement chief, believes you’ll have to cancel the arms deal.’
‘Oh?’ Copeland looked up startled.
‘General Sumoto has been talking to the Chinese. There’s a possibility he’s asking them to rebid for the contract. Which is surprising, considering the Indonesian military’s traditional hostility to anything communist, but nonetheless a possibility.’
‘Bugger,’ Copeland hissed. ‘So General Sumoto thinks I’m going to cancel …’ He hated people to prejudge him. Particularly Sumoto who was supposed to be a friend.
‘They can see you’re under great pressure, sir.’
‘Maybe, but the point is I haven’t made up my mind yet.’
Hadn’t, because he couldn’t get his brain straight. It wasn’t just the conflicting national issues that troubled him, personal considerations were affecting his judgement. Cancelling the arms deal would not only lose business for British industry, it would kill off a private arrangement he’d made – a deal Stephen had talked him into. At the time it had seemed as harmless a bit of profit-making as the share options given to executives in the privatised utilities, but he knew now that he’d been insane to agree to it. The bait however had been substantial. Losing it would hurt.
Something else was fuzzing his brain, something connected with that – the irrational fear that under torture Stephen might reveal the details of their private deal, tell the world about it on satellite television. The disgrace such an exposure would bring him would not be survivable, politically or personally.
Preventing Stephen from talking had become of overriding importance to him. He kept telling himself he couldn’t possibly allow such a consideration to affect his decision, but it was there, needling away like the devil himself.
Terminating the arms contract and getting Stephen safely back to London would be one way of ensuring his silence. But industry would lose big money and so would he.
Reconfirming the contract quickly and resolutely was another way, because Stephen would be killed … Big business would be satisfied. His own reputation would be safe and so would his windfall.
But what of his conscience? Could he live with the thought that he’d acted for himself rather than for the country?
Copeland looked up. Stanley and Vereker were staring at him expectantly.
‘It’s the hardest decision I’ve ever taken, gentlemen,’ he confided softly. ‘I don’t know what to do for the best.’
Eleven
Darwin
Wednesday 11.15 hrs
THE TAXI SPED down the highway that cut through the southern outskirts of town, overtaking a coach full of backpackers bound for Ayer’s Rock. Under an intense blue sky, commercial estates gave way to bush, an arid flatland of tall palms, stubby cycads and eucalyptus trees. They passed a sign to a crocodile farm.
Randall’s head felt fuzzed, his body clock still convinced it was the middle of the night. He’d dozed after checking into the hotel room, but not for long. ‘Get in there fast and find us someone to negotiate with,’ Mostyn had said. Fine if you’re on the sixteenth floor of Scotland Yard. Not so easy from where he was sitting.
Next to him, Charlotte was subdued, depressed, wrapped in her own problems. She’d put on jeans and a white T-shirt. Nick could see that she was bra-less, which was a distraction he could have done without.
‘I don’t know why I’m doing this,’ she announced suddenly. ‘Pointless. Embarrassing. What am I going to say to these KEPO people? That I’ve just popped down from London for the day?’
‘Say nothing,’ Nick counselled. ‘Let them assume you’re going to Kutu.’
‘So humiliating. There’s only one thing for me to do when I get back to London …’
‘Resign.’
The corners of her mouth turned down. ‘How did you know I was going to say that?’ A patina of perspiration had given her face a sheen.
‘Because it’s what you would do,’ he replied dismissively. ‘Women think emotionally, not logically.’
‘Listen to the little professor! Didn’t know you had a degree in behavioural psychology,’ she replied snidely.
Randall pursed his lips.
‘See that over there?’ the silver-haired driver drawled. He pointed into the trees to the right. ‘Old air base from World War Two. You can still see the huts.’
Charlotte saw some dilapidated prefabs through the trees.
‘The Japs bombed Darwin you know, trying to take out the oil tanks. From bases in the Dutch East Indies. What’s now Indonesia.’
Randall guessed all foreigners got treated to a history lesson.
Charlotte imagined her father’s prison camp to have been somewhere like this. Heat, dust and a long way from civilisation. She worried his health had deteriorated since she left England, even suspecting in irrational moments that fate was calling her straight home because of it …
‘What’s in the bag?’ Randall asked, jolting her from her angst. He rested a hand on the grey holdall wedged between them on the rear seat. ‘Camera gear?’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ she replied coolly, fingering the thick shoulder strap. ‘It’s a trick bag. The bag’s the gear. Hired from a specialist at huge cost. Another reason they want me home.’ She held up the webbing and pointed to a rivet. ‘See that tiny stud? It’s a lens. Next to it, buried in the nylon is a microphone. There’s a wafer of electronics in the strap, and a concealed cable running to a hidden compartment for a camcorder. Places to hide cassettes too.’
‘Nifty.’ Nick had used similar gear on surveillance in Irish pubs. ‘Is there a spare pocket I can put this in?’ He held up the small Pentax he’d brought with him.
‘Sure.’ She took it from him.
The driver slowed and swung the car on to a dirt track. A string of poles carried a power cable from the grid lining the highway.
‘There’s a handful of places up here,’ he announced. ‘Too darn isolated for my taste. But Jim Sawyer’s a botanist so I suppose it’s like home to him. Know him, do you?’
‘No. Sort of a friend of a friend,’ Randall replied quickly.
‘Didn’t know he had any friends. Except for the women. There’s always one here, but different each time I come.’
It was Sawyer who’d given Nick this taxi driver’s number. Said it was best to use someone who knew the way.
‘Here y’are.’ A house of dark green clapboard perched on a rise, almost engulfed by eucalyptus, its corrugated roof patchy with rust. An elderly, dust-caked Land Rover stood outside next to a cleaner, newer-looking Suzuki four-wheel-drive which had the logo of a rental company on the back window. ‘Want me to come by and pick you up later?’
‘That’d be great,’ said Randall. ‘In a couple of hours?’
‘No worries. If you change your mind, give me a ring on the car phone.’ He handed Nick a card. ‘That’s twenty-two dollars.’
As the car rattled back down the track and the humid heat closed around them the wire mesh door opened and a tanned, bony man aged about forty gave them a searching look. He was bare-chested with baggy shorts and a pair of thongs on his huge feet.
‘G’day. I’m Jim Sawyer. Welcome to the outback. Nick and Charlotte, right?’
‘That’s right.’ In the sticky heat Randall was glad he had also dressed in shorts.
Sawyer led them through a musty, parquet-floored living-room and o
ut on to a stone terrace. They smelled charcoal smoke.
‘Hope you don’t mind eating early. Have to at this time of year if you want a barbie.’ Sawyer pointed to the horizon where grey clouds were massing.
A dense, pink frangipani encroached on one side of the paving. Unripe mangoes hung like gonads from trees on a patch of grass beyond.
‘Dump your bag down there, Charlie,’ Sawyer said, pointing to the left.
A scrawny woman in flower-patterned shorts and bikini top stood by the barbecue, sweat glistening on her bare back.
‘Hi,’ she said, glancing over her shoulder. She had a sallow face and stringy hair.
‘That’s Jane,’ Sawyer explained. ‘And over here there’s someone who thinks he knows Kutu as well as just about anybody.’
Easing himself up from a rattan armchair was a ruddy-faced man in his mid-fifties, with hair down to the collar of his faded tartan shirt.
‘Brad Dugdale,’ he volunteered, holding out a podgy hand. He studied them with a mix of suspicion and curiosity. ‘I live on Kutu most of the time,’ he added in explanation.
‘Now, what we oughta know is who you two are,’ Sawyer asked, eyes hardening. ‘Newspix, your e-mail said? What sort of outfit’s that, Nick?’
‘It’s a picture agency. I’m freelance. And Charlie here works for TV news,’ he added, quickly deflecting their attention.
‘Oh really? BBC?’ asked Dugdale. ‘I get over to England from time to time. Might have seen you …’
‘No. The News Channel. We’re on cable. It was us who broke the Bowen kidnap story,’ she proclaimed. ‘And I’m their senior correspondent.’ Bullshit. She felt herself blush.
‘Right! Well, we’re honoured, then,’ Dugdale smiled ingratiatingly.
There was the sound of more thongs on the parquet. A man and two women emerged from the house, short in stature, brown-skinned and with flat Melanesian faces.
‘This is Thomas and Yuliana,’ said Sawyer putting an arm round the man. ‘They just escaped from Kutu in a twenty-foot boat. They’ve both been imprisoned several times by the Indonesian military.’
Thomas wore pale shorts and a patterned shirt, Yuliana a plain pink pinafore dress. The second, older woman went and stood with Dugdale, as if she belonged to him.
‘Glad to meet you,’ said Charlie extending a hand. The couple smiled blankly.
‘They don’t speak any English,’ Sawyer explained. ‘Just the Kutu dialect and a little Indonesian. Teri can translate.’ He gestured to the woman with Dugdale. ‘Thomas and Yuliana are staying a few days. I’ve set up interviews for them with the local press. It keeps up the pressure on our government.’
‘Pressure to do what exactly?’ Charlie asked.
The botanist breathed in as if for a peroration.
‘Give these poor folks a beer first, Jim,’ Dugdale intervened, slipping an arm round Charlie’s shoulders. ‘People can die of thirst round here.’ He guided her to a chair.
‘If you have a Diet Coke …’ Charlie ventured. ‘I … I’d prefer that.’
The woman called Jane turned from the barbecue. ‘There’s some in the fridge, Teri. Can you get them?’
Dugdale’s woman padded into the house and returned with a can for Charlotte.
Sawyer pulled a beer from a cool box and thrust it at Nick. His skin was like tanned leather, his cheeks concave as if he’d spent too long in the sun.
‘OK. Well as you know I’m the rep of KEPO in the Northern Territory. We’ve an office in Sydney which circulates all the campaign literature, but I provide most of the data. Darwin’s become the main refuge for a lot of Kutuans. Timorese too. Some get out legally on passports, others take to the water. When you’ve watched members of your family murdered and tortured, you’ll take almost any risk to escape. These two …’ – he indicated Thomas and Yuliana – ‘they spent fifteen days in an open boat. Food and water was all finished when our coastguard found them drifting. Another day and they’d have died.’
Nick murmured sympathetically, then asked, ‘What’s your campaign aimed at, Jim? What’re you trying to achieve exactly?’
‘To make people aware of what’s going on in Kutu. And through that to pressure our government to do something about it.’
‘Like what?’ asked Charlie.
‘Like putting pressure on the Indonesian regime to stop the torture and the killings,’ Sawyer said, earnestly. ‘And making it illegal for Australian companies to invest in parts of Indonesia where human rights are being blatantly abused.’
Dugdale’s eyes looked skywards. ‘That’s where Jim and I part company,’ he growled, shuffling to the cool box for another beer.
‘Brad has his own little investment in Kutu …’ Sawyer explained sarcastically.
‘Really?’ Randall queried.
‘Diving. I run a couple of boats for tourists. Take them to the reefs to look at fish. I employ a few local boys, but the customers are mostly from Oz, and when it comes to air bottles and valves they like it better if they see an Oz in charge of things.’
The woman called Jane turned from her labours at the barbecue. ‘How d’you like your steak, Charlotte?’ she asked in a voice like a strangled cat. ‘Well done or burned?’
‘As it comes.’
‘Good answer,’ Dugdale grinned. ‘That’s what you’ll be given anyway.’
Randall took a long draught of the beer, its iciness numbing his throat. He glanced from one man to the other. Sawyer was simple to categorise; a well-meaning do-gooder, probably somewhat naïve. Dugdale was less easy.
‘What’s your role in KEPO then, Brad?’ he asked casually.
‘Don’t have one, Nick. I’m just a hanger-on. I support all the human rights stuff of course, but er … I mean who wouldn’t when you know what the Indonesian army does to these people.’ He nodded towards the couple who’d fled by boat.
‘But you’re not in favour of stopping Australian investment in places like Kutu …?’
‘I’m a realist, chum. Our politicians won’t take a stand like that. They’re petrified of doing anything to upset the Indonesians. There’s two hundred million of the buggers just north of here. If they decide they need our empty spaces and start flooding across in boats, we wouldn’t stand a chance. All the smarmy boys in Canberra want is to be allowed to lick the Indonesians’ bums and hope they leave our continent alone. Now … I admire Jim here for his principles – trying to get our government to act tough – but it won’t achieve anything.’
‘But kidnapping a politician might?’
‘Eh?’ Dugdale spluttered into his beer. ‘Now you’re putting words in my mouth.’ He looked momentarily uncomfortable.
‘What’s the kidnap done for KEPO, Jim?’ chipped in Charlie, deciding as the only real journalist present that it was time to assert herself. ‘Good publicity for you or bad?’
‘We’re all keeping well out of it,’ Sawyer snarled. ‘Already had the police round asking whether I’ve got your bloody minister banged up in the house. Let’s get this straight. KEPO is about preserving Kutu. The land and the people. It’s about protecting human rights, OK? Now you don’t do that by depriving some other poor bugger of his human rights and sticking electrodes up his dick.’
Jane turned from the barbecue again. ‘Food’s ready folks.’
Dugdale grabbed a plate, draped it with salad and a hunk of bread, then added a charred piece of meat.
‘Come on,’ he urged, remembering guests were supposed to go first. ‘Get stuck in.’
‘Is that why you Poms are here?’ Sawyer whined disparagingly. ‘To pin this kidnap on the poor bloody Kutuans?’
‘Just trying to find out what it’s about, that’s all,’ Charlie soothed.
‘It’s the kidnappers themselves who keep linking it with Kutu,’ Nick reminded him.
‘Yeah, but that’s impossible,’ Sawyer insisted. ‘It can’t be the OKP.’
Dugdale caught Nick’s eye. Don’t be too sure, his expression said.
&
nbsp; ‘Look at those two.’ Sawyer gestured at Thomas and Yuliana. ‘The Kutuans are simple folks, not international terrorists.’
Charlotte crossed to the table and picked up a plate. A blackened steak wasn’t what her stomach wanted, but there was no choice.
‘Talk to them,’ Sawyer insisted. ‘After you’ve eaten something, do an interview with them. Why not?’
‘Fine,’ said Charlie. ‘I’d like to.’
Nick perched with his plate next to Sawyer.
‘Tell me about the Kutuan resistance, Jim. How does your outfit tie in with them?’
‘We don’t. Separate organisations. We communicate that’s all. There are people on the political side of the OKP at the university in Piri. They’re on the Internet. So we get info from them which we use in our campaigns in Australia, the States and at the UN. But we only give moral support. Nothing financial.’
‘You don’t supply weapons? Explosives to blow up earth movers,’ Nick prodded.
‘No. We do not,’ Sawyer glared. ‘I wonder if you folks realise what the OKP’s massive guerrilla force amounts to. There’s about eighty blokes up in the mountains, that’s all. Maybe a hundred. They live off berries in the forest, armed with machetes and the odd stolen rifle. Just get that image into your heads, rather than some fantasy of jet-setting revolutionaries equipped with cheque books and satellite dishes.’
‘But they’re not without powerful friends,’ Randall persisted. ‘Sympathisers who could have staged the kidnap on their behalf.’
‘Look, I know all their friends. And it’s not on.’
Randall glanced up to find Dugdale watching him with intense interest. ‘What’s your view, Brad?’
‘Don’t ask him – he knows fuck-all,’ snapped Sawyer, ripping the ring-pull off a fresh can of beer and putting it to his lips.
‘That’s right,’ Dugdale winked. ‘I only live there …’ He finished a mouthful of meat, then put his plate to one side. ‘Look folks, my position’s a little difficult to say the least. I have to make compromises all the time, and that’s what sticks in Jim’s throat. He doesn’t believe in them.
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