‘Usual crap from the FAL,’ Coburn said. ‘They know they’re not going to get out of this. Has The Press Observer printed the same statement?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s not about the Sandpiper or the FAL. It has to do with North Korea.’ She brought over one of the sheets to show him.
Japan, China and the United States are registering strong protests over another test firing of North Korea’s Taepo Dong-2 long range missile.
The missile, which military analysts believe is capable of reaching Alaska and parts of Hawaii, was tracked across the Honshu region of Japan before landing without incident in the Pacific Ocean on August 11th.
Although the Pyongyang Government has agreed to suspend its nuclear weapons development program, North Korea is thought to possess operational nuclear warheads that can be fitted at short notice to all missiles of the Taepo Dong type.
Coburn could guess why O’Halloran had wanted him to see the Observer clipping. It was ironical, he thought. After all the trouble the FAL had gone to with the Sandpiper and the Rybinsk, North Korea had ended up doing a better job of portraying themselves as a global threat than Shriver and Yegorov could have ever done.
Heather sat down on the arm of his chair. ‘Have I missed something?’ she asked. ‘What is it? Tell me.’
‘Only that O’Halloran turned out to be right. He always thought we might have gone up into the Yellow Sea for nothing. Now the public have been told that North Korea can target Hawaii and Alaska with nuclear missiles anytime they want, that’s going to scare a hell of a lot of Americans far more than an attack on a US minehunter would’ve done.’
She frowned. ‘You had to go to the Yellow Sea though,’ she said. ‘If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been able to stop the attack, would you?’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Coburn crumpled up the fax. ‘Your turn now. You have to tell me something.’
She smiled. ‘I didn’t realize we were taking turns.’
‘You said you’d called your godfather. What did you do that for?’
‘It was Indiri’s idea. Whenever her husband goes out on a raid, she believes that if she makes definite plans for when he comes home, nothing bad will happen. I know it’s silly, but she kept on about me doing the same.’
‘So you did — by taking out some insurance of your own with your godfather?’
‘Mm. I asked him if I could take a friend to stay for a week at a condominium he owns in Bali. It’s not right on the beach, but I’ve seen photos of it, and it looks really nice. Bali’s not that far, and my UNICEF pay cheque came on the fuel boat last week, so I’ve got the money for our airfares.’ She made herself more comfortable by leaning against him and crossing her legs. ‘If we’re having dinner at Hari’s we’ll be late home, so if you really are tired, do you want me to help you get over your jetlag this afternoon?’
Since she knew as well as he did that no one got jetlagged flying from Seoul to Singapore, and because she’d purposely neglected to pull down her skirt now she’d uncrossed her legs, the invitation was impossible to misinterpret.
She knew that too. Without waiting for him to reply she bent over and pressed her lips against his forehead. ‘I’ll be in the bedroom,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll call you when I’m ready.’
He watched her walk away, then stood up and went to look out the window.
Around the mangroves at the edge of the estuary, the incoming tide was beginning to stem the flow of the river, while in mid-stream, where birds were using a clump of weed as a floating raft, every so often fish feeding at the surface were creating tiny rings of ripples.
Closer to him at the site where the school was being built on the east side of the plateau, children who’d come back from the jetty were balancing a plank on a bucket to make an improvised seesaw. They were taking turns on it, bouncing up and down harder and harder until a woman shouted at them and they ran off giggling and laughing.
While he waited for Heather to call him, he continued staring out the window, taking care to remind himself of the reason for the village’s existence. On a lazy sun-filled day it was too easy to believe the place was perfect, he thought, a safe haven that was nothing of the kind. But so what? There might be somewhere better to start a new future, but now the young woman he’d found on the beach at Fauzdarhat had asked him to stay here with her, just as he knew this was where he wanted to be, so did he know how lucky he was to have her to share a future with.