The Vanishing Read online

  ‘No. None of it. I don’t know what’s going on.’

  ‘If it was a simple kidnap, or robbery, why would your birthday matter?’

  ‘Because he thinks there’ll be people coming here, like he said – to celebrate it.’

  ‘And are there? Are there people coming that we can wait for?’

  ‘There’s no one coming. I don’t give a shit about my birthday. And I don’t have friends like that. I hardly have any friends at all. Janine was my single friend. You don’t know what it’s like being me, having all this fucking money.’ She’d said something like that last night, over the wine, while they were getting pleasantly drunk, getting to know each other. It seemed a world away now.

  He swatted the flies off his bare arm, then shuffled closer to her. He put an arm around her shoulders, pushing it between the slimy rock and her shirt. ‘It’s OK, Sara,’ he said, his voice weak, as though he was far from convinced. ‘It’s OK. We’re OK here. They won’t come for us here.’ Was it true? It didn’t matter. He had to get her calm, then get moving again. He had a splitting headache – through the heat, the wine, the dead guy whacking him with the shotgun stock, the Russian guy stamping on him yesterday. He needed water, painkillers, an X-ray, maybe – but anyway, they couldn’t just lie here. They had to get to the phone. ‘They will go now, if we’re lucky,’ he added. ‘What they were trying hasn’t worked. I doubt they have a plan B. Besides, they’ll never find us in this jungle. They must know that. So we’re OK.’

  ‘I’m not worried about us,’ she said. She pushed her head into his shoulder. ‘They killed Janine.’ She started to take big gulps of air. ‘They had her stripped … kneeling there … Janine … poor Janine … she never hurt anybody … she was terrified. I could see it. She’s dead because she was here, because of me … they’re all dead because of me … my mother was right … it’s too dangerous here … I should never have come … I was too reckless, too selfish … I’ve killed them all …’

  He tightened his arm, pulling her closer. ‘Listen to me,’ he said, very gently. He stroked his hand across her shoulder. ‘Listen to me, Sara. This had nothing to do with you. This is crime. Those people up there made the choices, they decided to kidnap you. You were just living your life. You’re not to blame for any of this. Trust me. I know this.’

  ‘They came for me. Because I am here …’

  ‘But you didn’t do anything wrong. They did the killing. They made those decisions. Not you.’

  She wasn’t convinced. He held her while she shook and sobbed. After a few minutes she moved her head to the side and started to dry-retch. ‘I’m so frightened,’ she said, between gasps. ‘I’m so frightened. I think we’re going to die …’ She sounded like she was choking.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said, louder this time. ‘I’m frightened too. I’ve never been in anything like this. But we’ve got to fight it. We’ve got to keep ourselves working, thinking, moving. If we don’t then they win. This is a big enough island. Big enough to get lost in. They can’t find us. We can work our way round to the phone – you know how to get to it, right?’

  She didn’t respond. She was still retching.

  ‘Do you know how to get to the phone, Sara?’

  ‘I can’t do it. I can’t …’

  He used his hand to move her face so he could see her eyes. ‘You have to think of your family. There are people who need you, who love you … people you want to see again …’

  She shook her head, then made an effort to wipe her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I sound pathetic. But my family aren’t like an ordinary family. If I were kidnapped and a ransom were demanded they wouldn’t pay. It’s a family policy – like a state might have a policy of not dealing with terrorists. There’s so much fucking money they have to have policies for it – so they don’t lose it by making silly decisions, so feelings don’t get in the way.’

  ‘That’s what they say – that’s the information they put out. But it will be different now it’s happening. Believe me. Your mother will care.’

  ‘My mother isn’t even sane … you haven’t met her, you don’t know …’

  ‘Your father, then …?’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t even think about him. The only people who ever really cared about me were people we have paid to care. That’s the truth.’

  ‘Well, I care …’

  ‘I paid you.’

  ‘Not yet you didn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She wiped her eyes again, took deeper, more controlled breaths. ‘I’m really sorry. I must sound pathetic. You saved my life up there. If you hadn’t come in …’

  ‘Ditto. You shot the fucker. Just in time, because I’m no fighter, and guns scare me shitless. We’re doing well. We’re working together. So let’s keep it up. OK?’

  She was silent, but at least calming down a bit.

  ‘There’ll be time enough to think about all of this,’ he said carefully. ‘But not right now. Right now we have to think about getting to that phone and getting help. OK?’

  He thought he saw her nod. ‘OK,’ she murmured. ‘And thank you.’ He felt her hand get hold of his and hang on to it. ‘Thank you for not leaving me back there, when I said you should.’

  13

  For hours Maxim was strung out on adrenalin, too emotional to act sensibly. He could hardly believe things had gone so wrong. In the darkness he sat in a huddle, trying to control his breathing, trying to get the killing out of his head. As the sun started to rise his heart finally began to slow. Then he could think about it, work out what to do.

  He took one of the Land Rovers parked behind the generator shed and drove very slowly over a heavily rutted road, the only one on the island. He got to the hill at the other end by eight, two hours later. By then he was beginning to feel more solid. He would be ahead of her – he was certain of that, because she wouldn’t dare use the road, and he’d been told she knew the island well, so she would know not to risk moving too far through the jungle in darkness. He remembered all too well, from twenty-two years ago, just how difficult it was to move through the jungle, even by day. There were multiple hazards, including some type of poisonous frog a previous inhabitant had introduced from the Amazon. He had once seen one of the servants step on one and nearly choke to death.

  He drove the Land Rover into a dip by the end of the road and made some effort to cover it with broken branches. She would find it if she walked that way, or looked hard enough, but that didn’t matter. The keys were on a bulky ring, which would make noise, so he placed them on top of the nearside wheel. That would do. At the end of the day she was a spoilt little rich kid who was desperate and alone. He hoped – with a feeling of some bitterness now, because when things went as wrong as this it was hard not to take it personally – that the night had brought her a little dose of reality. That would make her careful, but she didn’t have any options that would make her unpredictable. She had to try to get to this phone – the one at the hill summit – because it was the only communication facility she had. So even if she found the Land Rover and suspected he was here ahead of her, she would still have to make her way up the hill eventually. And when that happened, he would be waiting. He had water, he had food, he had patience. He would get her.

  Nevertheless, he took the single, stony path up the slope slowly, the machine pistol ready, just in case he was wrong and she’d somehow beaten him to it.

  By 8.30 it was already getting hot. The hill wasn’t high, no more than a hundred and fifty feet, but stood out because most of the island was flat, and because the slopes were suddenly rocky, relatively clear of vegetation. It was possible to get to the summit, he remembered, without using the path, but difficult. You would need rock-climbing skills, and he doubted she had those.

  On the other hand, she had already surprised him enough to fuck things up this badly. His original plan had been to send in only the Somalis – keeping a low profile himself – get them to take the girl alive and then get off
the island without bloodshed. He had wanted the staff left alive to report the event – to report the descriptions of the Somalis, in particular. That was his cover plan – the pirate raid fiction.

  But everything had fucked up. First Forestier, the security guy, running off armed, trying to lure him away. He had got one of the Somalis while they were chasing him through the jungle, a clean head shot from twenty feet back, while moving. That had been a warning to Max – after that it had been a question of self-preservation. So Forestier was dead. And then Sara Eaton had a gun, it seemed – from the damage it inflicted he was guessing it was a hunting rifle – and knew how to use it. She had managed to kill the man he had sent in to take her, and later, more irritatingly, she had taken out his one connection to this place – Steiner. She had hit Steiner twice, though not before he had shot her friend, for no good reason at all. They had both died at Maxim’s feet, with Maxim trying desperately to stem the bleeding, while the three stupid Somalis that were left had gone into a senseless, fear-driven shooting frenzy, killing everything in sight, including the security staff that Maxim had already bought off, who might now have been useful, and including the poor girl at the boat.

  Maxim had sent them off in the second boat. They were a waste of space once the pirate story wasn’t going to run – there was no one still alive to spread it – and they’d used up all their ammo. Plus, they were a liability. So there was only himself left now.

  It was a risk coming here, he knew. It left no one covering the house and the dock, and while the seaplane was useless – the Somalis had killed the pilot – it was just possible that if the girl put her mind to it she might find the first boat, hidden off the beach at the top of the southern promontory. But then she would have to know how to navigate to the nearest island – Remogos – and he didn’t think she would have a clue where to start with that. She had people to do that for her. All her life she’d had people doing things for her.

  He thought about that on the way up and had a moment of doubt. Was he underestimating her? Steiner was dead because he’d underestimated her ability to shoot. Max should have guessed someone from that background would know how to use a hunting rifle. They spent half their time killing animals for pleasure – foxes, boars, bears, deer – they shot them all, so why not humans? He felt a begrudging, bitter admiration for her – she had surprised him, matched him, beaten him. He would need to be careful not to compound the errors.

  He got to the top of the hill and made his way to the small concrete blockhouse they’d erected there, housing the satellite phone – the dish prominent on the roof – plus the solar panels and battery that powered it. It was the same building that had been here twenty-two years ago, maybe even the same dated technology. At first he was just going to pull the dish down and break it, but then he thought she might see that from a distance, so instead he got his knife out and simply cut the cabling connecting it to the rest of the installation. That done, he quickly scouted the summit and the fields of fire across the boulder-strewn slopes that led down to the cliffs, then picked a spot under a growth of ferns, lay down and tried to get himself comfortable. He was on the edge of a low cliff that fell off towards the road, and if he turned his head he could see where he’d hidden the Land Rover. That was about three hundred and fifty yards distant – too far for anything but a lucky hit with the little machine pistol – but then he had no intention of trying to kill her. Sara Eaton was worth a fortune – he needed her alive.

  14

  It was nearing midday by the time they got to within sight of the hill, and by then Sara was beginning to worry about Tom Lomax. He said nothing to her, was continuously out of breath and drenched in sweat, and was beginning to stagger, rather than walk, tripping frequently. Once they had to stop for half an hour as he struggled to stop himself vomiting. He was dehydrated, obviously, but was he concussed as well? She didn’t know what they could do about it if he was. He had a very angry bruise over his left temple, to match the swelling over his right cheek – she had not seen it but the man he had tackled in her bedroom had struck him there with the stock of his weapon, he said.

  She led them slowly through dense vegetation – so thick she would normally have used a machete to get through – up a small rise, from the top of which she knew they would be able to observe the southern slopes of the hill. Tom had insisted they not walk straight up. ‘They know about your birthday,’ he had said, ‘so they will probably know about this phone.’

  The temperatures were high and they’d had no liquid for many hours, and even then only the juice from fruits that had been far from ripe. There had been two streams on the way, but she had stopped him from drinking; drinking any water on the island without sterilisation could result in a form of dysentery, the onset of which was rapid and exhausting. It wouldn’t do any good if he drank his fill only to be reduced within hours to an invalid, shivering feverishly between bouts of bloody diarrhoea. Eating the unripe fruit ran lesser risks – stomach cramps, perhaps, but usually not the fever.

  She knew the area around the hill very well, knew the entire island better than anyone else, but especially the area around the hill, because this was where the black mandrills had had their largest colony about a year ago. They’d moved on now, but she had spent a lot of the previous year in this area, with Janine.

  Thinking about that time brought on intense sensations of panic and disorientation. She had to pause, crouch, screw her eyes shut, concentrate. It was light now, and the events of the previous night were already absurdly obscure. They were night memories, clouded by the effects of adrenalin and desperation. Nothing she could recall seemed real. Yet she knew it had all happened, knew it was still going on, knew Janine and Jean-Marc and possibly all the others were dead. When she gave in to it, and just sat down and cried and trembled, then everything seemed real. But if she succeeded in doing what he repeatedly told her to do – refusing to think about Janine or dwell on anything that was happening – then she had a bewildering, terrifying sense of the ground being pulled from beneath her, like she was falling through some void, with no way out. ‘We just need to concentrate on one task,’ he had told her. ‘And that’s to get to that phone safely. Everything else will get us killed.’ So she crouched low and tried to blot out the thoughts and images. She was like that for about five minutes, just below the brow of the rise.

  Getting here safely had gone more slowly than expected. They had waited until light because the jungle was full of potentially fatal hazards. They hadn’t dared use the road either, so she had led them a very long route, right around her beloved, picturesque East Bay – now reduced in her eyes to nothing but a series of irritating obstacles and exposed areas – before cutting inland. This meant they had also had to pass very close to the area that was infested with the golden dart frogs. A major part of their programme to save the black mandrills involved an effort to wipe out this non-indigenous population. They had calculated that about forty per cent of the mandrill decline was due to contact with the frogs, and Sara knew exactly how unpleasant it could be to come into contact with their skin. The effect was far from fatal – they lacked the toxins their native Amazonian cousins could produce – but it was enough to incapacitate.

  When she could breathe normally, she went down on to her belly and inched forward to the crest. She was pushing through the last fronds and getting the gun into position before she realised Tom was no longer with her. Nevertheless, she spent a few minutes looking through the powerful scope. The satellite dish was clearly visible, a few hundred yards distant – along with the shed there, the relatively bare hilltop, the stony path up that they had only recently resurfaced with rubble. Her heart started to beat faster, her spirits picking up. For a fleeting second she was almost hopeful. There was no one in sight, no one there. So they could get up there quickly, call for help. They could do it. For the first time since all this had started she felt that she might actually be able to get out of it.

  She edged away and then pick
ed her way back down the treacherous incline. She found him at the bottom, gulping greedily from a tiny spring he had found. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking at her strangely. ‘But I can’t function unless I drink some water … no choice …’ He was shivering like he already had a fever.

  ‘It will make you ill,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Not right away,’ he said. ‘And maybe not at all. It’s a calculated risk.’ He straightened up with difficulty and tried to smile at her. ‘I was going to pass out. It’s the lesser of two evils.’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s not. I’ve had dysentery twice. It can kill you.’ She went over and looked at the source he was drinking from. It came straight out of the rocks in a tiny trickle. It looked pure, beautiful, tempting. But that didn’t guarantee much. ‘You should have listened to me,’ she said, feeling a little angry. What was she going to do when he collapsed? He shrugged, said sorry again, but seemed distracted.

  ‘I’ve seen the hill,’ she said, getting her mind off it. ‘It’s clear.’ She almost smiled at him. Her heart jumped inside her as she told him.

  But he just frowned. ‘Let me look,’ he said.

  That annoyed her as well – the lack of trust he’d shown all morning, despite this being her island, despite him not having a clue – but she led him back up the slope.

  They both lay flat in the grasses and ferns, side by side. He took the gun off her and spent ten minutes staring through the scope, moving it around. He was breathing in short little breaths and looked like he was struggling to keep his eyes open. Finally he laid it aside and asked her to look. ‘Down by the bend in the road. I think it’s a car.’

  She put the scope to her eyes, suddenly frightened again, and focused it where he directed. She saw it at once. She couldn’t understand how she had missed it first time. It was a Land Rover, one of hers. ‘It could be one of the security staff,’ she said. ‘It must be.’ They’d talked about the security staff a few hours ago. He had thought that they’d been bought off, probably by the man who she knew as a policeman from Mahe. The second one she’d shot. He couldn’t see how people could have come ashore otherwise. But she hadn’t liked that idea. ‘They knew I would come here,’ she suggested now. ‘They’re covering it for me.’