‘I remember.’ He leaned forward to look more closely.
Suddenly some extra-sensory twitch that he’d never been able to define told him he was on to something. Somewhere in this mess he knew he would find the key to the maze.
He widened the torch beam, picking out a thin pile of photocopied pages. On the uppermost sheet was a blurred photograph of a miniature submarine. From out of its tiny hatch poked a bony face under a misshapen cap. Below the photo, a name. The Witch. And a date – August 1945.
The pages looked to have been copied from Australian government archives chronicling a Special Forces mission to Kutu – still under the control of the Japanese then, but just days before the surrender.
Randall skim read. It talked of Japanese atrocities inflicted on Allied prisoners extending the airfield in Kutu and reported that documents recording the maltreatment had been moved to the villa of the Japanese commandant for destruction in the event of defeat.
Two officers from Aussie Special Forces were tasked to raid the island by miniature submarine and seize the papers for use as evidence in war crimes trials. The raid itself was a success apparently, but ultimately a failure when the sub sank making its escape. The two crew were never found.
Randall turned the pages. Technical spec on The Witch … Biogs of the men involved … Interesting tale. Dugdale was right. It’d make a great TV documentary.
But he’d still not found the clue which he was convinced was there.
He came to the last three sheets. Different. Handwritten. Barely legible. A photocopy of a diary, the writing a faded, looping scrawl. It took a moment to get the hang of the script, but as he read further his pulse began to quicken.
The diary had been written by one of the men on the raid the day before they’d set off – a confession to his family in case he didn’t return. It revealed another, sensational reason for the mission to Kutu. One that made Brad Dugdale’s obsession with the wreck only too clear.
The diary stated that the Jap commandant on the island had used the war years to feather his nest, looting homes wherever he’d served. Paintings from the houses of Dutch settlers – artifacts of gold and silver – and a collection of diamonds and other gems that weighed several kilos.
This was what had really drawn the two Special Forces adventurers to the Kutu mission. At the end of a war that had been long and harrowing, mentions in despatches were not enough for them. The jewels were the reward they wanted.
The diary was unsigned. He flipped back to the men’s biographies and read the names again.
Lieutenant Martin Dugdale.
‘Ahh … Bingo.’
A father? An uncle? The age would be right. So, it wasn’t just a piece of history Brad planned to salvage, but a fortune in stolen gems.
Nick put down the photostats. The trouble was none of this seemed to have any link with the kidnap. He glanced up, wondering if Dedi knew something that would cast more light. Then he gaped. The Kutuan was holding a mobile phone.
‘Christ! Where’d that come from?’
Dedi pointed to a bracket on the wall.
‘It belong Brad. He leave it here by mistake.’
‘Does it work?’
‘Can use in Piri and up to three kilometre offshore,’ he explained calmly.
‘Can you dial abroad on it?’
‘I think.’
Randall breathed out. The Gods were smiling on him.
‘First I call Captain’s Bar,’ Dedi said, switching on and dialling. He dropped into the swivel chair.
‘Don’t say anything to them about me,’ Randall warned.
The number answered almost immediately. Dedi spoke softly in Kutun, then he gave a little gasp. As he listened, his eyes widened with horror. A few more words, then he cut the call.
He stared straight at Randall.
‘Soldiers come to bar this afternoon. They take Teri. And Brad he gone too!’
‘Brad’s been arrested?’
‘I think. My father just say Brad never come back from boat. He tell me keep away from Captain’s Bar or they take me too.’ His face sagged with bewilderment.
Dugdale arrested? Why, why, why? Randall was desperate to phone Maxwell. But first he had to find the missing clue. He leaned across the chart table, supporting himself on his hands. The link with the kidnap was here. He could smell it.
The filing cabinet. He looked up and stepped over to it. The drawers were locked.
‘D’you have a key to this?’ he asked Dedi.
‘No. Only Brad.’
On top of the cabinet was a black box file. He looked at the label on the spine. One word written on it. Permit.
He opened the lid. Inside was a pile of letters Dugdale had written to the headquarters of KODAM Twelve. Requests for a permit from the Indonesian navy to dive on the wreck of the Witch and to salvage her. Letters addressed to the then commander – Major General Dino Sumoto.
Randall read fast. The last reply – sent just over a month ago – had talked of unresolved problems, of the need for fees to be paid. It gave a date and the name of a hotel in Bali, saying that Dugdale should meet Sumoto there privately to settle the outstanding difficulties.
‘Yes!’ hissed Randall. He had it. He’d closed the circle.
He could see it now. Dugdale desperate for the permit that would make him rich. Sumoto’s price – help with an international crime that only a Caucasian with contacts in the TV business could provide.
‘Now I need that phone,’ Randall whispered, holding out his hand. Dedi reached it across to him.
A standard Japanese-made analogue cellphone. Easy to be monitored, simple to locate when switched on. About the most insecure form of telecommunications there was. But beggars couldn’t choose. Had to gamble that ABRI’s phone-monitoring abilities were as under-resourced as the rest of their garrison.
A call to the Yard number he’d rung that morning would be suicide. He knew the intel watchers had noted it. Any automatic intercept system would pick it up immediately. So, it would have to be Jakarta. Have to take his chance on someone being there.
The number rang.
‘Hello?’
‘This is Cuculus,’ Randall announced.
‘Thank God!’ replied Maxwell.
Twenty
South Devon
Early afternoon
RAIN SWEPT UP the wide estuary in a slow-moving wave, uniting the sky, the sand and the gold-flecked woods in a skein of grey.
Colonel Ambrose Cavendish stared from the dormer window that overlooked the river, a silver-haired stick of a man in green tweed and cavalry twill. The climb to the little-used, bare-floored boxroom at the top of the house had taken it out of him. His hands clutched the sill as he panted for breath.
It had rained like this fifty-odd years ago, he remembered.
In Kutu.
Solid sheets of water that had surged in from the direction of the ocean to turn the foot-hardened earth of the Japanese prison camp into a lake. Water that had flooded latrines and spread the ordure of a thousand sickly men, so that when the sun dried the ground, it was laid out for all to see and to smell, like a past they couldn’t escape.
And now it was happening again. Of all the islands in all the oceans of the world, fate had taken his own daughter to Kutu, the source of the guilt that had gnawed at his soul for half a century and, he believed, created the cancer that was consuming his brain. It was inconceivable to him that she would not discover his secret. Instead of dying with a private shame, it would be exposed like that excrement in the prison yard.
He turned away from the window, but left it open so he could feel the cool dampness of the air – and to let out the smoke.
The attic had been a child’s bedroom in the distant past, the walls still covered with a faded paper of cavorting rabbits. When he and Verity had moved in twelve years ago, they’d stacked the bare boards with old suitcases and boxes of junk.
Verity would be away for two hours at least. She’d gon
e food shopping at Tesco’s in Ivybridge. Time enough.
He knew precisely where to find the small leather-bound suitcase with the brass locks that hadn’t been opened for fifty years. Since the day they’d moved in, it had remained hidden by a tea chest full of the books he’d accumulated during twenty years of army life, tucked into the corner furthest from the door. A small time-capsule, buried in the top of the house like a tumour, benign only for as long as people remained ignorant of the significance of its contents.
To reach the corner he pulled aside a pine blanket box that had belonged to Verity’s mother, then reached down behind the tea chest.
The tan bag was little larger than a briefcase. On the lid were his initials A.C.C. Ambrose Carmichael Cavendish. A relic from boarding school. He laid it on the floor beside the galvanised bucket he’d brought up from the scullery, knelt down, then felt in his jacket pocket for the key which he’d kept with his cufflinks in an old tobacco tin for fifty years.
The locks turned stiffly. He pushed aside the catches and the tongues sprang open. Before lifting the lid, he hesitated, bracing himself. His eyes had not seen the contents since his return to England in 1946. He brushed the dust off the lustreless hide, then opened it.
The photograph was on the top, as he knew it would be. A picture of himself and his brother standing proudly in their uniforms, side by side on the day of their commissioning. For a moment he couldn’t remember which was him and which George. Twins. Identical piercing eyes, almost white in the faded sepia of the print.
Then he saw the difference. The slight bow of the head, the turn of the mouth that was the outward sign of the inadequacy that had always dogged him. Ambrose had found himself.
The picture had been taken in 1941. Second lieutenants in the Service Corps. After six months in Britain, both had been posted to Wavell’s High Command in Java. Then in March 1942 with the Japs about to invade, they’d escaped the island by ship. The vessel had been torpedoed. Dutch, British, Sikhs and Hindus, all who survived the sinking became prisoners of the Japanese.
He laid down the picture on the open lid. Three years they’d spent in prison camps together, he and his brother. Never apart. Then finally at the labour camp in Kutu, death had separated them. Beneath the photo in the box was the letter his father had written him after his own liberation – the first word from home in over three years. He picked it up. It told of his father’s heartbreak at George’s execution in the camp. George – the favourite son. Told too of his mother’s demise a year earlier. More junk in the box. Uniform pips, medal ribbons. He let them run through his fingers like sand.
He’d remained in Java on military service after his release from detention. A year had passed before returning to England. The homecoming came back to him as vividly as yesterday. Mentally scarred by the hell of the camps – needing to talk about it but unable to – he’d met a wall of non-interest in England. ‘Don’t tell us what you’ve been through, chum – we’ve had it just as bad here.’ But they hadn’t. Nobody had it as bad as that.
He stared at the wall, monstrous memories spooling through his head. The oven-like punishment cages. Spread-eagled on benches being beaten with sticks. George’s death in the blazing sun.
He pulled out the rest of the papers. Army stuff certifying his release from POW status. Spidery notes he’d scribbled during captivity. And the official report on George’s demise …
That was the paper he burnt first. He held it over the metal bucket, touching its corner with the match flame, watching the fire blacken and curl the paper, the ink still legible. Then he tamped the ash to dust.
Next he burned the photograph, then everything else in the case, until it was empty – except for the .38 service revolver in its cracked, leather holster.
Ambrose slipped the gun from its cover and held it by its grip. It felt strange to touch after so many years. He turned the chamber, checking the bullets were in place. Always known that one day he would need it again.
Then, from below him in the house he heard the phone ring. Verity probably. Ringing from Tesco’s to see he was all right. It threw him into confusion. By rights he should ignore it. In a few minutes time whatever conversation he had with her would be irrelevant. Yet, like life itself, the insistent ringing was hard to turn his back on.
With the pistol dangling in his hand, he descended the narrow staircase and entered their bedroom.
‘Hello?’ he croaked into the mouthpiece.
‘Colonel Cavendish?’
‘Um … yes.’
‘This is the Foreign Office here. I’m ringing about your daughter Charlotte. I understand she’s a journalist. And she’s in Kutu.’
‘Yes. Oh, dear.’ Heart in mouth. Concern about her suddenly, instead of himself. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Now you’re not to worry, colonel. But we’ve had a report she was caught up in a bit of a skirmish. She’s not hurt, but we believe she’s been arrested by the Indonesian armed forces. Our embassy out there is trying to get some information, but it’s nine o’clock at night in Jakarta, so it could be another twelve hours before we hear anything.’
‘Twelve hours?’ he mumbled.
An eternity. Another one. The revolver was still dangling from his right hand. He held it out in front of him. Couldn’t do it. Not now. Not until he knew she was safe.
‘Well … well we’ll be waiting for your call then …’
London – COBR
14.15 hrs
Philip Vereker stepped from his car on to the Whitehall pavement to see David Stanley’s uniformed back disappearing through the varnished entrance to the Cabinet Office. He caught up with him in the lift down to the briefing room.
‘David. I want a quiet word before we go in,’ he whispered. There were others in the lift.
Once through the security barrier into the COBR area and alone, they stopped.
‘This journalist woman who’s been arrested, Charlotte Cavendish – what’s her relationship with your man Randall?’
‘Relationship? What d’you mean?’ Stanley protested.
‘Maxwell told me Randall wasn’t just filing a missing persons report when he talked about her. He sounded concerned. As if it was personal.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning was this pretty young journalist who’s now in the hands of ABRI intelligence an intimate of Randall’s?’ he growled. ‘Does she know he’s a British agent? Has he told her everything? And is she going to tell the whole bloody world when she gets out of there? He’s your boy, David. It’s you die shit’ll stick to if he’s screwed up.’
Stanley drew himself up straight. The men were of similar height, but he had the advantage of age.
‘DS Randall’s proved his worth a hundred per cent in the last hour, Philip. And he’s a professional. I have every confidence in him.’
‘He’s also a man with a long-standing reputation for making a play for any woman who comes within reach,’ Vereker scowled, moving on swiftly into the meeting room.
Stanley began to sweat. Vereker had found some dirt that was news to him.
Prime Minister Copeland looked tense but determined. The leak on the News Channel lunchtime bulletin about his withholding the aid statement had driven him into a corner. He wanted to curl up and hide, but knew he couldn’t. He would have to fight. Until the bitter end.
The source of the leak, he suspected, was sitting right beside him. Hugh White, the foreign secretary, wore an indignant, surprised expression, like a man whose rear had been penetrated by a poker. The large, thick lenses of his spectacles needed a clean. The men stared away from each other as if communication between them might never be possible again.
‘Ah, there you are,’ Copeland snapped, wearily. ‘Let’s get on. I’ve got PMQs in an hour.’ The latest developments from Indonesia had been phoned through to him a few minutes ago.
Vereker stood his briefcase on the floor beneath the light oak table and sat down.
‘Prime minister, as you k
now, we think we have a handle on where Stephen Bowen is,’ he began.
‘But … but is he still alive?’ Copeland stammered, unsure whether he wanted the answer to be yes or no.
‘We don’t know that,’ said Vereker. ‘General Sumoto’s ordered his men to kill him, but it may not have happened yet. Detective Sergeant Randall’s been despatched to try to intercept the boat that Bowen’s on and to save him if he can. I don’t hold out a lot of hope, however.’
‘Randall’s a resourceful man, prime minister,’ the assistant commissioner interjected.
Copeland nodded like a robot.
‘General Sumoto has embarked on what one might call a cull,’ Vereker continued bluntly. ‘Killing anybody who could reveal his involvement in the kidnap. If Randall falls into his hands I don’t give much for his chances.’
His words had a chilling timbre.
‘Well then General Sumoto’s got to be stopped,’ Copeland insisted, lamely.
‘We can’t stop him, prime minister,’ Vereker went on. ‘The Indonesians could of course. But will they? Depends on how much of their police and armed forces organisation is allied with Sumoto. The general’s played his cards extraordinarily close to his chest. The CIA don’t know any more than we do. Which puts us in a real dilemma over how to proceed.
‘We have one trump card. Selina Sakidin. Sumoto’s mistress. She’s told us the whole story and is currently hiding at the apartment of our man Harry Maxwell. She thinks some of the police are on Sumoto’s side and if we hand her over to them they’ll kill her to silence her and to protect the general. Maxwell thinks she’s wrong. Thinks his contact in POLRI is straight.
‘Now, here’s the question. Do we ensure the survival of this key witness by getting her out of the country to safety, and hope Randall works a miracle on his own? Or do we hand Miss Sakidin over to the Indonesian police with everything we know about Sumoto and demand that they deal with him?’
Copeland frowned in disbelief. ‘Are you telling me the Indonesian police genuinely still don’t know what Sumoto’s been up to?’
‘It really does look that way, prime minister. Astonishing as it sounds. For the kidnap he’s made use of a very small, very loyal group of supporters. And any whose loyalty he’s not sure of he’s had killed. Or is in the process of killing.’
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