The Covenant of Genesis

hummed a few bars from the Jaws theme, looking back towards the half-sunken Pianosa and wondering how long it would take to get back to Nina with a smashed boat stuck to his plane.

After all, swimming was definitely an unsafe option.

6

‘Attacked by pirates in the morning,’ said Nina, ‘and a twenty-eight-hour flight in the afternoon. I don’t know which is worse.’

The humour was forced; she was still horribly shaken. But in dealing first with the Coast Guard, then with officials from the Indonesian government after being airlifted to Jakarta, she had concealed her true feelings beneath a mask of officialdom. She was still the leader of the expedition, and she had a responsibility to give the authorities as clear and dispassionate an account of events as possible.

Now, the United Nations wanted to hear that account as well. In person. A flight had been hastily arranged to return her to New York. Gruelling though the long trip would be, Nina was certain it would pale compared to the interrogation she would endure at the UN.

‘Yeah,’ said Chase. ‘Private flight with no other passengers? Horrible. Still, at least you won’t have to worry about getting stuck next to a screaming baby.’

‘No, just you looting the minibar.’ Chase’s expression suddenly became evasive. ‘What?’

‘Well, the thing is,’ he began, not quite meeting her gaze, ‘I, er . . . won’t be going with you.’

‘You what?’

‘I’ll come back to New York as soon as I can, I promise! But there’s something I need to do here first.’ He lowered his voice. They were waiting in the United Nations’ offices in Jakarta, and as well as UN staff there were also officials from the Indonesian government and its law enforcement agencies buzzing around. ‘There was something I didn’t tell the cops. I know where the pirates were going: some place called Mankun Island. So I’m going to head over there and have words.’

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell them?’ Nina said. ‘If they know where the pirates are, they’ll be able to catch them!’

‘No, they won’t - it’ll take too long. Even if they decide to go after the pirates tomorrow, it’ll be too late. They’ll be gone - and we’ll never find out who hired them. But Bejo knows where this island is, and he knows people in the area. We’ll fly up there, get a boat and check the place out tonight. Before those bastards have a chance to fuck off with their money.’

‘Or maybe you’ll get yourself killed. And Bejo too.’

‘He wants to do it,’ said Chase. ‘The guys on the ship were his friends.’

She shook her head. ‘Eddie, this is a terrible idea. If anything goes wrong . . .’

‘It won’t,’ he assured her.

‘I don’t suppose it would make any difference if I told you that I really, really need you with me in New York, and as your boss ordered you to come?’ One look at his expression gave Nina her answer. ‘Yeah, thought not.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he promised. ‘And I’ll keep Bejo out of trouble. Enough people’ve died today. Enough good people,’ he added with chilling emphasis.

Resigned, Nina rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Just don’t do anything stupid, okay.’

‘Hey, you know me, love.’

‘That’s why I said it.’ She kissed his cheek, then stood. ‘I’d better get to the airport. Don’t want to keep the UN waiting, huh?’

‘Who knows, maybe by the time you get back to New York, I’ll have found out what all this is about.’

‘Maybe,’ she echoed glumly. They regarded each other for a long moment, then embraced and kissed.

‘See you soon,’ said Chase as they reluctantly moved apart.

‘I’d better.’

‘We’re close,’ Bejo warned.

It was now night, a clinging, muggy humidity sticking Chase’s dark shirt to his skin. But he ignored the discomfort as he turned off the little boat’s outboard. ‘You sure it’s the right place?’ he asked. In the distance, he saw a handful of lights.

‘Nobody lives on Mankun, not usually,’ Bejo told him. ‘Pirates use it sometimes. Not often, though - too far from shipping lanes.’

‘They came a fair old way to get to us, though.’ They were almost eighty miles from where the Pianosa had been attacked: a long run for the pirates to reach their base. But it meant less chance of anyone looking for them here.

He picked up a pair of battered binoculars for a closer look. The lights resolved themselves into bulbs hung on a cluster of tumbledown wooden shacks on the shore of a small inlet. Beyond them rose damp, dark rainforest. The biggest of the structures extended out into the water, apparently a covered dock. There was a large boat inside. The motor cruiser? It was an expensive vessel - maybe the pirates planned to sell it.

‘Mr Eddie,’ Bejo said, voice tense. ‘Look left.’

Chase panned the binoculars to find what had caught the young man’s eye. Almost invisible against the black water was a boat, a very faint light at its bow. The dim yellow glow picked out the outline of a seated man - and the glint of metal in his hand. A rifle.

‘They pretend to be fishing,’ said Bejo. ‘But they’re lookouts. They warn the other pirates if the police or the Coast Guard come - anyone else, they just kill.’

Scanning left and right, Chase saw two more ‘fishermen’ lurking in the distance. Nobody could get within half a mile of the inlet without being spotted.

Nobody in a boat, at least.

He gave the binoculars to Bejo. ‘Okay,’ he said, picking up a sheathed knife, ‘wait here. I’ll signal you when it’s clear to row in.’

‘Good luck, Mr Eddie,’ Bejo whispered as Chase climbed into the water, barely making a splash.

The pirate keeping watch from the small boat was not only bored, but frustrated. Every so often, he heard noises from the shore, whooping and cheering as his comrades celebrated the success of their mission. Sure, not everyone had come back from it, but it wasn’t as though the men were close friends. He barely knew the names of most of them, the entire operation having been put together literally overnight, its members hurriedly recruited from seemingly every desperate dive on the Sumatran islands. What he resented was being stuck out here on guard duty while the others drank and gorged and gambled. Latan had even rounded up some whores from somewhere. And here he was, bobbing half a kilometre away with nothing but a lamp and a Kalashnikov for company . . .

A small sound brought his thoughts back to his job. It sounded like bubbles breaking the surface. A fish?

Seeing no sign of any approaching boats, he leaned over to find the source. A couple of bubbles popped a handspan from the boat’s side. The pirate looked more closely, seeing a pale shape below the surface. A big fish. No need for a net; he could just reach in and grab it—

It reached out and grabbed him.

Chase’s hand locked round the man’s neck and dragged his face underwater to silence him as his other hand drove the knife deep into his neck with a chut. He kept hold as the pirate thrashed and wriggled . . . then went limp. The AK-47 splashed into the water, bumping against him as it sank. He waited a few seconds until he was sure the man was dead, then surfaced and climbed aboard.

‘Don’t rock the boat,’ he told the corpse. He looked out to sea, holding his hand in front of the lamp to signal Bejo.

Ten minutes later, they were ashore.

After rowing to meet Chase, Bejo had silently guided the little boat to make landfall a short distance from the rotting buildings, waiting in the water until they were certain there were no patrols on shore. There weren’t. That the pirates only had three men on watch in the boats showed they weren’t expecting trouble.

They were wrong.