If Coburn had been able to forget the events he’d witnessed at another beach, he might have regarded the kick as brutal. But he hadn’t forgotten. His memories of wounded shipyard workers and of the broken bodies of the children hadn’t gone away — in his mind, still as fresh as the image he had of a fair-skinned European nurse on her knees and smothered in blood while she struggled to help the dying in the filth and muck of Fauzdarhat.
Instead of shooting Yegorov in the knee, Hari should have killed the bastard, he thought. It wouldn’t have changed the past, but now the launch of the Styx had provided Ritchie with irrefutable proof of the FAL’s intentions, maybe Yegorov had become unnecessary, and if he had, what better place than this for him to pay for what he’d done.
Hari had brought the satchel. He’d already opened it, and seemed anxious to show Coburn what he’d found inside. Using the top flap to protect the contents from the rain, he held it out into the light.
It was crammed with cellophane-wrapped packets of $100 bills, so many that Coburn couldn’t begin to guess how much money he was looking at. A windfall, he thought, cash that wouldn’t just cover the Selina’s fuel costs and compensate Hari for his time and trouble, but provide the whole village with a more than substantial profit.
‘Yegorov brings this to pay the men he recruits to help him,’ Hari said. ‘So now I have it to pay mine.’ He closed the flap. ‘You are ready to leave?’
‘Not yet.’ Coburn hesitated. ‘I need to have a word with Yegorov. Let me have your gun.’
‘No.’ Hari moved it discreetly from his waistband to his pocket. ‘It will be wiser for you not to speak with him. I have already done so for you.’
‘Saying what?’
‘That should he refuse to co-operate with the Commander of the Sandpiper, the Americans will turn him over to the North Koreans, who will be happy to persuade him to tell them what he knows. Is that not the message you wished to give him?’
It wasn’t, and Hari knew it wasn’t, but Coburn had stopped listening. For an instant he’d been elsewhere — standing not on a rain-swept beach, but in the dust and heat of Iraq, blind with rage while he pumped bullet after bullet into a chador-clad woman on the corner of a bombed-out street.
‘Come.’ Hari took his arm. ‘We shall leave Yegorov to bleed while we return to the Selina where, when we are once again dry, you can call your colleague O’Halloran to inform him where Yegorov can be collected and I can open the last bottle of scotch I bring with me from Singapore.’
‘Let go of me.’ Coburn pulled his arm away. ‘Get the Zodiac in the water. I’ll be with you in a minute.’
He’d expected to feel relieved — pleased even. Instead, as though nothing very much had been accomplished, he was conscious only of a hollowness. It was because the journey had been too damn long, he thought — from Iraq to the shipyards of Fauzdarhat, to Sumatra, Singapore, Maryland and Oregon, and finally to this godforsaken stretch of coast where no one had ever been before — a journey that had started with his execution of the woman and that now, except for his one hope for the future, would end right here by him allowing Yegorov to live.
Wishing he didn’t have to wait to see what the future was going to hold, he took a last look at the waterfall, then began to walk back slowly to the Zodiac, but had taken only a few steps when the Selina’s lights were suddenly extinguished and he found he couldn’t see anything at all.
CHAPTER 23
Hari was looking frayed around the edges. Having spent two days overindulging himself at the most expensive hotel he’d been able to find in Seoul, he’d slept for the entire duration of their overnight flight to Singapore, and although he’d claimed to be feeling better when they’d boarded a village launch that had been despatched to collect them from the wharf this morning, now they were further out in the Strait, Coburn could see that he was suffering something of a relapse.
The young man at the helm had noticed too. He was one of the villagers who’d carried out the raid on the Pishan, endeavouring to provide them with a reasonably smooth passage and trying not to grin whenever Hari growled at him or warned him about approaching freighters.
For Coburn, the trip across the Strait was not so much a homecoming as a test to find out where, if anywhere, he might feel at home. Unlike the crew of the Selina, who had each been paid a bonus of $5000 and promised the same again once they’d returned the boat safely to the village, his own reasons for returning were rather different, and the closer they drew to the mouth of the estuary, the more he was beginning to wonder if he was expecting too much.
In hindsight, it would have been better if he hadn’t been so anxious to speak to Heather on the phone, he thought. Before the Selina had called into Inchon to drop him and Hari off on the west coast of South Korea, he’d made two calls. In the first of them he’d spoken to both O’Halloran and to Ritchie.
O’Halloran, who’d evidently decided there was more to be gained by staying on board the Sandpiper for as long as he was allowed to, had wasted no time in asking Coburn if it would be OK if he were to take the credit for saving a US warship from an attack that could have resulted in disaster on an international scale.
Ritchie had been more grateful, confirming that he had Yegorov in custody on board along with the other survivors from the Osa, and assuring Coburn that Shriver had already been placed under arrest following an urgent overnight investigation of the FAL’s activities by the US National Security Agency and the FBI.
Coburn’s second call had been the only one he’d really wanted to make. He’d spoken to Heather for nearly half an hour, at the end of which, after he’d brought her up to date, she’d made the mistake of saying she’d been in touch with her godfather again, but had then refused to tell him why — the reason, he suspected, for his present feeling of unease.
Now the launch was rounding the tip of Bengkalis Island and about to enter the slow-moving water of the river, as was his custom, Hari took over duties at the helm. He appeared to have caught up on his smoking after their flight, and although a cigarette was dangling from his lips, he hadn’t yet bothered to light it.
‘It is good to be back, is it not?’ he said. ‘I prefer the estuary to the Yellow Sea.’
Coburn grinned at him. ‘You didn’t do so badly out of your trip.’
‘Thanks to my experience and great skill — not because of your cleverness. You are looking forward to seeing Miss Cameron again?’
‘Yep.’ Coburn was reluctant to elaborate. ‘There’s something you and I need to sort out before we get to the village.’
‘You wish to say that in the future you may be unable to provide me with the manifests of ships which will pass through the Strait?’
‘I don’t know whether the IMB still believe I’m dead. Ritchie said he spoke to Armstrong, but I’ve no idea how much detail they got into.’
‘It is not important.’ Hari spat out his cigarette and pointed ahead. ‘We are expected.’
Alerted to their arrival by someone who’d seen the launch coming, people had gathered on the jetty and were already waving greetings.
For a moment, Coburn wasn’t sure Heather was among them.
But she was.
She was standing by herself in the sunshine, holding her arms awkwardly by her side as though she didn’t quite know what to do with them.
Wondering what he was going to say to her, he helped the young man secure the launch then followed Hari up on to the landing stage, saying hello to Indiri, shaking hands with some of the men and returning the smiles of two little girls who were peeping out from behind their mother’s skirt.