‘But now you’re not so sure?’
Coburn wished he knew. ‘Depends what he has to say about the Pishan, and whether I’ll get a chance to ask him about O’Halloran.’
To avoid having to do any more explaining, Coburn went to rescue a swamp moth that had either found its way into the hut during the day, or come in with Heather while the bug screen had been open.
He caught it in his hand and took it outside, not releasing it until he’d carried it over to the edge of the marsh where there was less light and where the noise of insects was all around him.
The sound had become almost too familiar, he thought, a reminder of how many nights he’d been here and of the need to place his call to London so he could begin to finalize his plans to go somewhere else.
Not yet certain of what he was going to say he made his way across to the armoury, collected a satellite phone from one of the racks then wandered back outside to sit on the veranda steps and keyed in the number of Armstrong’s office.
Armstrong was slow to answer, and from his tone of voice it was impossible to judge whether or not he’d been anticipating the call.
‘Thought I’d better fill you in on the Pishan,’ Coburn said.
‘When are you sending the chip?’
‘You won’t be getting any chip. It was a screw-up. Someone got to hear about the raid ahead of time.’
‘How do you know that?’
Coburn was ready for the question. ‘There were people waiting for us who had enough firepower to knock over half the pirates in the Strait,’ he said. ‘It was an ambush. I’m calling to find out where the leak came from.’
‘How would I know? If there’s been a leak it didn’t come from this end. Try finding out which one of your pirate friends has done a deal behind your back.’
‘I will.’ Coburn kept his voice level. ‘Who else knew besides O’Halloran?’
‘Ask him. All the requests we received from the States came through his Counter-Proliferation Centre. But it won’t be them, will it? Give me one reason why the Americans would want to sabotage an operation that was their idea to begin with.’
‘I haven’t got a reason — not yet.’ Coburn was trying to decide on the wisdom of mentioning the link between the Rybinsk and the Pishan, but reluctant to describe the Fauzdarhat truck driver in case the IMB was more involved than Armstrong was admitting.
‘Do something for me, will you?’ Coburn said. ‘Check to see if the captain of the Pishan has put in a report about being boarded.’
‘He hasn’t. We’d know by now if he had. Does it matter?’
‘If he and his crew were being held hostage by the guys who were expecting us, it’ll explain why he’ll be better off keeping his mouth shut, won’t it?’
‘You’ve been away from home too long.’ Armstrong made no attempt to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. ‘Maybe you’re the problem. Who have you been talking to that you shouldn’t have been talking to?’
‘No one. Has anybody besides O’Halloran been asking about me?’
‘Not unless you count Sir Anthony Fraser. They were both sent copies of your personal file. You remember who Sir Anthony is, don’t you?’
‘I’m not likely to forget,’ Coburn said, ‘not while I’m looking after his goddaughter for him.’
‘What’s she like?’
He deflected the question by asking Armstrong to contact him in Singapore if any news on the Pishan came through, then ended the call prematurely, hoping he hadn’t prejudiced his position and knowing that he was no further ahead than he had been ten minutes ago.
He took the phone back to the armoury, but instead of returning to the hut, sat down again on the veranda steps to think.
He was still there when Heather came to find him. She was wearing the same white halter-top, but had put on a yellow skirt he hadn’t seen her in before — clothes that in the moonlight seemed to make her uncomfortably desirable.
She joined him on the step. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I’ve just phoned Armstrong.’
‘You said you weren’t sure whether you could trust him.’
‘I don’t think it makes any difference,’ Coburn said. ‘He wasn’t much help anyway. Whatever it is I’m missing, I’m going to have to figure out by myself.’
‘You miss a lot of things, don’t you?’
Had her statement been less ambiguous it would have been easier to figure out what she meant. As it was, before he could decide, a small green frog jumped on to her lap, and the chance to find out had gone — an opportunity that over the next four days was not to repeat itself because she started spending more and more time with the children, or in the company of her friend Indiri.
It was on the evening of the fifth day while she was sitting quietly on the jetty with him that she chose to make her announcement, informing him that she was signing off her patients at the village and that, if he was ready to return to Singapore, she was ready to go with him.
She could have chosen her moment better. No sooner had he started to remind her that neither the Selina nor the launches could make the trip until fresh fuel supplies arrived, than Hari came hurrying out on to the jetty.
The Frenchman was breathing hard and looked uncharacteristically concerned. ‘I fear we have trouble,’ he said. ‘Since early this afternoon two boats have been anchored off Bengkalis. They are not familiar to the fisherman who sends me this message on his radio, and he says that above the deck on one of them, steel plates are being fitted in which gun slits have been cut.’
For Coburn, the information was particularly worrying, made worse by it following so closely on the heels of the abortive raid the other night. ‘How long do you reckon we’ve got?’ he said.
‘I cannot be certain, but in less than one hour the tide will be at its highest, and it will be dark, so by then our preparations must be complete. If you would take responsibility for arming yourself, perhaps Miss Cameron could arrange for the children and the wounded men to be transferred to the containers where they will be safer.’
Even if Coburn had been visiting the village by himself, the news would have been disturbing. But he wasn’t here by himself, and although he hadn’t expected Heather to come to grips with how insecure life in the marshes could really be, if accounts of previous attacks were anything to go by, this was not the way for her to learn.
And it was his fault, he thought. By agreeing to let her stay on, he’d put her at risk and made another mistake — this one so serious that if things were to go badly wrong she could be faced with more casualties than she could handle, or worse still, in the event of the village being overrun, even be confronted with the unthinkable possibility of being shot or raped at gunpoint.
CHAPTER 7
Just as it had been Hari who’d decreed that the village should have no name, so had it been Hari who’d designed the village’s defences. Consequently, as Coburn had learned over the last half-hour, the little settlement was far from being without teeth.
Foremost amongst its defences were the minefields, a feature he’d least expected to hear about. Having always been told, and having always believed that the surrounding marshland was too waterlogged to walk on, he’d been surprised when Hari had told him that, under drought conditions in mid-summer, the tracks and trails could become sufficiently useable to pose a threat.
To counter it, the minefields had been laid — although not with conventional mines. Instead, they’d been seeded with Austrian-made mines of a kind that could be armed or disarmed remotely by shortwave radio signals — according to Hari a precaution to protect children who might venture off the plateau, and as a means of preventing accidents caused by porcupines, mouse-deer and the long-tailed macaques that sometimes descended from the trees to forage on the ground.