Java Spider (25 page)

‘You think maybe there are
two
ABRIs? The one
you
know, and the one General Sumoto want to make?’

Maxwell nodded.

‘And you think people you deal with now won’t be in charge in the future? You worry some other country get the business?’

Maxwell nodded again. Let him think that.

Abdul grunted. He looked relieved. If the motive for the questions was money, it was one he understood.

‘So, Abdul, it would also be helpful to me if you could find out which country your friends in KODAM Twelve imagine their new weapons would come from,’ Maxwell added.

Abdul sucked his teeth. ‘Not easy to find this out …’ he prevaricated. ‘So busy just now.’

Maxwell knew what he meant. The material Abdul wrote didn’t earn him much. ‘I’d pay double.’

‘Well … maybe tonight I can talk with someone.’

‘Ring my home. You have the number. Just give a time, I’ll understand. Then we’ll meet at the Hot Rock Café, Jalan Thamrin. It stays open late. You know it?’

‘Of course.’ It was where gold-digging Jakarta girls went to pick up wealthy foreigners.

They heard voices and feet on the stairs. More visitors.

They shook hands. Abdul would leave first.

‘Tell me,’ Maxwell asked on impulse, as the journalist gripped the top of the stair rail. ‘I’ve often wondered … are you married?’

Abdul smiled. ‘Not yet,
tuan
. Not yet.’

Maxwell returned to the viewing platform. He stayed looking out towards the elegant lines of the cargo-carrying sailing craft until he heard the rip of a motorcycle engine starting up.

British Embassy, Jakarta

15.25 hrs (08.25 hrs GMT)

Maxwell asked the ambassador to meet him in the ‘box’. Off the second floor corridor and shielded from eavesdropping, this steel-lined, windowless cell was the embassy’s safe room for confidential conversations.

Ambassador Bruton listened with stony concentration, his hair as immaculate as a sculpture, his face growing steadily grimmer. As Maxwell wound up, he pushed the metal shirt bands up his arms.

‘It’s an extraordinary theory, Harry, but you’ve no
actual
proof that Sumoto’s the villain,’ he commented eventually.

‘Not yet. All I’m certain of is that the Chinese
are
after our naval contract.’

‘Then we must make absolutely sure they don’t get it,’ Bruton snapped, eyes burning. ‘The PM has bloody well got to stick to his guns.’

‘How’s it looking in London?’

‘Better. The arms industry is launching a counter-offensive in Whitehall against the human rights people. With luck, the memo I’m about to send should clinch it.’

Then Bruton began to look uncomfortable.

‘Bowen …’ Maxwell murmured, reading his thoughts.

‘Yes … The buggers’ll kill him, I’m afraid.’ Bruton stared at the ceiling and put a hand to his mouth. ‘But he’ll get a good write-up. Better than he deserves.
Gave his life for his country …
. Tell me I’m not being callous, Harry.’

Maxwell looked at his hands. In war there were always casualties.

‘Realistic, ambassador,’ he assured him. ‘You’re being realistic.’

‘Feel sorry for his family. Two teenage children,’ Bruton sighed, thinking of his own son and daughter. ‘When does the Scotland Yard man get to Kutu?’

‘Tonight. Odd thing is
he
thinks he’s getting signs that Bowen
is
being held by the OKP.’

The ambassador frowned. ‘Well one of you has to be wrong. Tell you what,’ he decided suddenly, ‘I think it’s time our friends in DefenceCo dropped a little hint to their
agent
here about what the Chinese may be up to …’

Nice one, thought Maxwell. DefenceCo’s agent was a member of the president’s family. A rumour fed to him
would
spread through the anti-communist old guard like a brush fire.

‘I’ll dig out my tin hat.’

His secretary leapt up as Maxwell walked through her office into his own.

‘Just missed him. Brigadier General Effendi.’

‘Damn.’

‘But he left a message. Sounded worried.’

‘Oh?’

‘He said he’d be more than happy for you to talk to Selina Sakidin. Just one problem … She’s disappeared.’

Thirteen

Central London

06.30 hrs

THE INSIDE OF
Ted Sankey’s head rumbled like a cement mixer. From the familiar pattern of light leaking round the thick curtains, he knew it was his own flat he was lying in. What he couldn’t understand was why he was wearing a tie.

His bladder threatened to explode. He rolled off the bed and using a chest of drawers as a hand hold, groped his way to the en-suite bathroom to relieve himself. Tie, shirt, trousers, socks, all still in place from the night before. Then he remembered.

‘Jesus,’ he croaked, aiming in the rough direction of the toilet bowl.

When he’d finished, he wrestled with the child-proof cap of the paracetamol bottle, cursing its designers, then downed some tablets with a tooth mug of water.

He pulled back one curtain in the bedroom, shielded his eyes from the daylight and decided to leave the other as it was. Then he perched on the end of the bed trying to decide whether to throw up.

The memory of yesterday when he blew it in the control room came back like the wallop of a sandbag. The biggest mistake in his life, and there had been a few. The most disastrous misjudgement of his career.

He remembered the half-angry, half-apologetic phone call from the chief executive saying the proprietors had granted him fifteen minutes to clear his desk
and
leave the building. He remembered the shock on the faces of the newsroom journalists, and the smirk from that bean-counter Paxton. He remembered taking refuge in the wine bar down the road and the stream of supporters who’d come to commiserate. What he didn’t remember was leaving the place.

His flat in Fitzrovia was a ten minute walk from the News Channel building in Wendover Street. He’d bought it when he took the job, because it was close. Handy, he’d thought, for sex in the lunch-break if opportunity knocked. It had from time to time.

‘I can fuck any woman I want,’ he muttered to himself. The words had become his mantra since his wife left him. Believing them was what kept his pride intact. Beryl had run off with a double-glazing salesman in a Ford Mondeo estate. It was the cliché that had hurt, almost as much as the loss of her. There’d been no children and the divorce had been clean and mechanical.

How had he got home last night? The question nagged. Couldn’t have walked. There was a vague memory of being carried and people he didn’t know trying to talk to him.

He turned to check the time on the red display of the bedside clock. A quarter to seven. A drink was what he needed. Tea. Maybe with a shot of whisky. Hair of the dog.

He opened the bedroom door and made for the kitchen.

‘Morning Mr Sankey.’ A voice. From the living room. Through the open door he saw a young, shirt-sleeved male rise up from his sofa, pushing the aerial into a mobile phone. ‘Thought I heard you moving about.’

‘Who the fuck …?’

‘Last night. We had a little chat. Helped you home. Remember?’

Vaguely. Strangers asking him questions. Bundling him into a car.

‘Detective Constable Harding.’

‘Oh, shit. Who did I hit?’

‘No one, sir,’ the constable grinned. A strapping lad with dark hair that needed a comb running through it.

Sankey clutched his forehead and massaged his temples. He needed some tea urgently. He continued his drift towards the tiny kitchen. He shook the kettle, found it full and switched it on.

‘Want some tea, sergeant?’

‘Detective constable, sir. Joe, if it’s easier. And yes, I’d love a cup.’

Sankey perched on a stool and rested his elbows on the worktop.

‘D’you mind telling me what this is about?’

‘You had a chat with us last night, sir. Me and my boss, Detective Chief Inspector Mostyn. Only, you weren’t too coherent. Thought we’d try again this morning. So we brought you home and I slept on your sofa. DCI Mostyn’s just on his way back over. I rang him a few minutes ago.’

Mostyn. The boss man at the Yard.

‘I talked to one of your blokes on Monday,’ Sankey frowned. ‘Detective Sergeant Randall. Awkward bugger.’

The young policeman smiled.

‘That was after the first satellite transmission. Now there’s been another we thought you might have remembered something else.’

‘Must be joking. Can’t even remember who I am this morning …’

‘You were certainly well pissed last night,’ the DC confirmed, grinning. ‘Pissed as anyone I’ve ever seen.’

The kettle clicked. Sankey groped in a cupboard for two mugs, then in another for the PG Tips.

‘Milk and sugar?’ he enquired, without turning round.

‘Two sugars please.’

As he was pouring, he heard the letter box go and the morning papers thump on to the doormat.

‘I’ll get them,’ said Harding.

‘Thanks.’

Sankey sat back on the stool and sipped the scalding liquid.

‘You’ve made the front page in the
Sun
!’ The policeman sounded impressed. He dumped the papers down on the kitchen table.

‘Christ!’

For several minutes Sankey flicked through the pages, cringing at what they’d written about him and about the irresponsibility of the News Channel in putting the pictures out live.

‘Oh, God!’ he moaned repeatedly.

The doorbell rang.

‘That’ll be DCI Mostyn, sir. All right if I let him in?’

Sankey waved his approval. He peered anxiously at the man who entered – late forties and looking strangely grubby.

‘Morning Mr Sankey. How’s your head?’

Sankey shook it and winced. ‘Don’t ask. Have a cup of tea and tell me what you want.’

When Sankey reached for another mug, Mostyn enquired with his eyes if the DC had got any more out of him. Harding shook his head.

They sat around the small Formica table.

‘We need your help, Mr Sankey,’ Mostyn insisted, coming straight to the point. ‘The kidnappers chose you twice for their transmissions. Has to be a reason. Perhaps they know you. Know people in the company
maybe
. Conceivably you may know
them
if you think hard enough about it.’

Sankey blew out through pursed lips, his breath carrying enough proof spirit to make Mostyn quail.

‘I’m sure I don’t …’

‘Think about it. Why pick you?’

‘Haven’t a clue …’

‘And why the second time? Chose their moment, didn’t they? Just before your lunchtime news went off the air. If you wanted a scoop they’d left you no time to record the feed and check it first. Must be someone with inside knowledge, Mr Sankey.’

Sankey frowned, his brain like a car engine on a damp morning. Suddenly he realised they probably suspected
him
.

‘Now wait a minute …’ He looked at one face then the other. Both expressionless. ‘Are you accusing me of something?’

‘No, sir,’ Mostyn answered smartly. ‘Just very curious.’

The
why
question had plagued him too. There had to be a reason for choosing the low-audience, lowly-rated News Channel in preference to one of the main outlets.

‘Maybe they realised the only chance of getting their horror movie on the air was by giving it to a daft chancer like me …’ Sankey said forlornly.

‘Maybe.’

‘I meant that as a joke,’ he added, hurt. ‘It’s called self-deprecatory humour.’ He felt pleased he’d been able to pronounce the word.

‘But perhaps it isn’t a joke,’ Mostyn pressed. ‘Perhaps the kidnappers
do
know you. Knew you’d take a chance if it meant boosting your ratings. Think, Mr Sankey, think.’

Sankey gulped at the tea, desperate for the fluid and the stimulant even if it meant burning his throat.

‘Wait a minute, gents. What are we talking about here? The people who kidnapped Stephen Bowen, or the people who beamed pictures of him up to a satellite?’

Mostyn smiled fleetingly. He could see Sankey’s mind was beginning to work.

‘I think we’re talking about the latter. About somebody who knows how to operate a stolen flyaway. Maybe even someone who knows how to steal one.’

Suddenly Sankey breathed in sharply. He’d remembered someone.

‘Tell me, sir,’ urged Mostyn.

‘Hang on.’

Think it through, Sankey told himself. Don’t say anything stupid. He remembered the day, about two weeks ago. A talented technician looking for work. Just resigned from the BBC, so he’d said. Learned later he’d been sacked on suspicion of stealing camera equipment.

‘Ricky Smith.’

‘Go on, sir,’ Mostyn said, turning to the constable. The name was familiar.

‘Came to see me a fortnight ago, looking for work. Just gone freelance, so he said. Good professional reputation. Handsome bloke. Impressive to meet. Said I’d give him a try. After we’d talked he hung around the newsroom chatting up the girls and playing with the computer system.’

Dead smooth, the bugger was. Acted like he owned the place.

‘Shit!’ he exploded. Another blast of alcohol vapour. ‘Ricky Smith. Beeb sacked him for theft. Could well be your man. He’d know how to operate a flyaway. And have the bollocks to pinch one.’

‘And with a grudge against the BBC?’ Mostyn checked.

‘Could be.’ The tea had got his mind going. ‘He
could’ve
found out about our satellite feeds off the computer.’ Then he had second thoughts. Thin evidence on which to accuse someone. ‘I don’t know. Jumping to conclusions. Can’t see how he would have got involved.’

Mostyn turned to the DC and nodded. Harding extracted a photocopy from a briefcase.

‘Could have been set up like this,’ the DC asserted. ‘Advert in the classifieds of a trade magazine a month ago.’ He pushed it across the table for Sankey to read. A struggle to focus but he managed.

Adventurous, multi-skilled TV News technician wanted. Experience of flyaways essential. Needs to be used to taking risks. Box XW
273.

‘Oh yes,’ Sankey murmured. ‘Ricky would have gone for something like that.’