The White Pearl (56 page)

‘Stop it, Kitty! You’ll bloody kill us both.’

She shut her eyes, shivering, and he couldn’t tell whether the moisture on her face was river water or tears. ‘A death ship,’
she repeated, and he felt her words chill his blood so fast that he could barely keep afloat.

‘Shit, you’re spooking me.’

He glanced back at the shore and saw the panic there. He caught a glimpse of Fitzpayne charging out of the forest with a horde
of native kids behind him. All carried rifles. Above the trees, another plane was beginning its run. With a curse he wrenched
Kitty’s arm from his neck and, keeping a firm grip on her, he veered away from
The White Pearl
. Instead, he swam a course straight for the
Burung Camar
.

*

Connie was knocked off her feet. She didn’t know why or how. Her ears hurt as she staggered upright again. Another explosion.
She coughed as a rush of smoke swept into her lungs and her head jerked round to see
The White Pearl
disintegrate into ten thousand silvery pieces that hung in the air, suspended briefly in a limbo between life and death,
before descending into the water. It was a direct hit.

The White Pearl
no longer existed, nor the people on her. Connie stopped breathing, appalled at the capacity of human beings to hurt one
another. She thought of Henry on deck, and was unaware of the tears on her face as she raced towards Maya. The girl was still
screaming, still out in the open while above her, the roar of an engine sent waves of sound rolling through the trees. Connie
clamped her hand on the girl’s tiny wrist and dragged Maya off the sunlit bank of sand into the safer gloom of the forest.

Maya’s scream went on and on and on, battering Connie’s ears, but when she finally halted and they looked behind them, the
girl’s mouth had shut and instead a faint moan escaped. Across the sand where her footprints had churned it up, a neat line
of bullet holes traced a path. Abruptly Maya dropped to her knees on the dank earth and wrapped her arms around Connie’s ankles.
She kissed Connie’s muddy feet, wiping her shins with her hair.

‘
Terimah kasih
,
terimah kasih
,
terimah kasih
, thank you, thank you, thank you,’ she sobbed.

‘Maya, don’t.’

‘I be dead.’

‘No, you’re alive, thank goodness.’

‘You save me.’

‘Please, don’t, Maya. I must …’

‘You an angel.’

‘No.’ Connie jerked the girl to her feet. ‘I am definitely no angel. Now let’s move. We’ll find Razak if he’s still here,’
she promised.

Fear robs you of self. Connie could feel her fear untying the knots that held her together. She stared out at the devastation
in the river valley, and mourned the wanton loss of life. Fear and sorrow: they were two sides of the same coin. Fear for
Fitz; sorrow for Henry. Together they untied the fastening that shaped her into a civilised being and the rage that lurked
inside, deep and primal, came roaring to the surface. She craved one of Fitz’s rifles to defend her son.

Her son had remained exactly where she’d left him, tucked inside a fold of mangrove – for the simple reason that beside him,
one hand firmly on his shoulder, stood Fitz.

‘Connie!’ Fitz’s face was dark and set hard. ‘You almost got yourself killed.’

She heard the raw anger in his voice. As he placed his free hand on her shoulder, she saw the look in his eyes and knew his
self-control cost him dear. She wanted to wrap herself around him and tell him she was still here, still alive – still his.

‘I need to find Razak,’ she said.

‘Razak?’

‘Yes. I promised Maya.’

He released his grip on her and her son. ‘You’re too ready to make promises.’ He scowled at her and took a deep breath, clearing
his mind. ‘But I have him safe.’ He was about to stride off without another word, expecting her to follow, but at the last
moment he hesitated and stared at her. He looked a mess, his thick hair dishevelled and wet, his shirt torn and bloodied.

‘Come with me. Please, Connie.’

As if she could say no.

Nurul sat in the middle of the rowing boat, pulling strongly on the oars and bringing them closer to the
Burung Camar
. His hand was bandaged and he did not look at Connie. The aircraft attacks had briefly subsided, and in the lull Nurul had
launched a flimsy boat that Fitz had hidden among the roots of a mangrove tree. Johnnie Blake was waiting there already with
Razak, and as soon as he saw Connie arrive, he hoisted Razak onto his back and stepped down into the rowing boat. It swayed
precariously, and Maya uttered a soft wail. Razak had a gash on his back but he made no sound, just rolled his head to look
at his sister as he took his seat in the bow.

‘He’s all right,’ Johnnie called out to her.

‘He not right.’ Maya jumped into the boat, making it rock with a violence that meant Johnnie had to cling onto her to stop
her toppling overboard.

‘In you go, Teddy,’ Fitz urged the boy. ‘Take care of your mother.’

‘Aren’t you coming out to the
Burung Camar
?’ Teddy asked at once.

‘No.’ Fitz looked at Connie. ‘Not yet.’ His eyes registered her shock.

Connie didn’t move. He took her hand and she interlaced her fingers with his, fastening them together.

‘Fitz,’ she said quietly, her chest tight and empty, ‘you must leave with us. It’s too dangerous here. The troops are coming,
I saw them, they will …’

Kill you. They will kill you.

She wanted to say things to him, but not that. ‘They will be here soon.’ She wanted to beat her fists on his stubborn chest
and rip apart his iron will with her bare hands.

‘Connie, I have to remain for the moment,’ he said. His voice was calm but his unblinking eyes made great holes in her thoughts.
‘Don’t worry, I will join you shortly. There are people here who need me.’

None of his words filled the dark spaces in her chest. But when he stopped speaking, she didn’t say
I need you
, and was careful to banish all jealousy from her voice as she asked, ‘How long? I will wait here.’

‘No, you must go.’

How could she go, when half of her would remain here with him? But she didn’t make it harder for him than it already was.
She nodded and did as he asked. His eyes didn’t leave hers as Nurul rowed them out into the river, and as the distance between
them stretched, yard after yard, Fitz did not move away. He stood on the bank watching her, a lone figure slumped against
a mangrove tree, and when the billowing smoke drifted across and stole him from her, it was as if her heart were held in darkness.

It was a sudden change in the wind direction – like the breath of the gods drawing away from the accursed Japs – that made
Maya scream a warning. Later she was sorry. Later, she wished she had kept her mouth shut, or pressed her hand over the sound.
But in the tiny rowing boat with Jonee comforting her twin instead of her, she didn’t think. She saw the Japs and she screamed.

The wind was swirling upriver carrying the smoke with it, so that the riverbank was suddenly bathed in bright sunlight, and
that was when she saw the grey uniforms, creeping along the shore like rats. Iron-eyes was right in their path, but instead
of keeping alert and watching his back, he did nothing but stare out over the water at
Mem
Hadley, waiting for her to reach the safety of the
Burung Camar
and hoist sail.

‘They come,’ Maya wailed.

A small hand took hold of hers. It was
Tuan
Teddy. He squeezed it tight and whispered something to comfort her. The ferocity of his grip on her fingers startled her,
and for a moment it squeezed out the terror. She heard
mem
cry out as she recognised the danger Iron-eyes was in, and saw her leap to her feet in the boat. On shore, Iron-eyes had
started running as though a leopard was snapping at his heels, but before he could warn those left alive in the forest that
the Japs were here a single shot ran out.

He went down, as if he had been scythed at the knees.
Mem
Hadley made no sound, but Maya felt all the air sucked out of the boat.

‘Go back,’
mem
yelled at Nurul. ‘Go back for him. Now, go back now.’

But Nurul shook his head and rowed on.
Mem
wasted no more breath on him.

‘Johnnie, take care of Teddy,’ she said quickly. Then she kissed her son’s head, dived into the green water and struck out
for the mangroves.

‘No!’ Maya cried. ‘It bad.’

Tuan
Teddy shivered, his fingers clutching the side of the rowing boat as if they would take a bite out of it, while his mother’s
small blond head bobbed away from him among the burning boats. She was a strong swimmer. But Maya wondered what kind of strong
heart she must possess to do such a crazy thing, and it made her want to cry. Not for Iron-eyes; not for
mem
’s son. But because to be loved so much must make your heart burst with happiness. To die so happy would not hurt.

Madoc watched it all happen. He stood on board the
Burung Camar
and acknowledged with a curse that he was not going to get the
pinisiq
under way before Nurul reached it.

‘Patience,’ Kitty murmured in his ear. ‘Nurul is an easy target.’

‘Don’t talk rubbish, woman. He is as sharp as one of the knives he’s so fond of, and devoted to Fitzpayne.’

‘I’m not so sure.’

He turned his head to look at her as she pushed back her wet hair. Still this woman could astonish him. He checked the direction
of the wind and loosened one of the sheets, eager to set sail before the yellow bastards on land overran the camp and decided
to turn their attention to the boats, now that their aircraft had done such an efficient job on the forest camp. That bastard
Fitzpayne was shot down – that was something good, at least.

‘Look,’ he pointed out, ‘Flight Lieutenant Blake is in the rowing boat, as well as the Jumat kids.’

He wished to hell that they had made a run for it earlier, but Nurul had stationed three men on the
pinisiq
, all with guns. He was no fool.

‘Razak will come over to our side if he thinks we are winning,’ Kitty said confidently. ‘And Nurul won’t need much … encouragement.’

‘What kind of encouragement?’

The rowing boat bumped against the hull.

‘That’s for me to know,’ she chuckled, ‘and for you to find out.’

As Nurul swung over the side, Madoc was tempted to stick a gun right in his shiny gold mouth.

Connie hid Fitz. Deep within a clump of tall, sharp-edged jungle grasses that closed over their heads.

‘Quick,’ she said. ‘We must be quick.’

Fitz leaned against her as she eased his shirt from his shoulders.

‘For bandages,’ she said succinctly.

He nodded, and extracted a knife from the sheath on his belt. ‘You shouldn’t have come back.’

It was the first time he’d spoken since she’d scooped him up off the riverbank. With one of his arms across her shoulders
for support, she had half dragged him into the tangled world of the jungle, seeking sanctuary in its damp shadows. Every moment
she had expected another rifle shot to ring out, or a bayonet through the ribs. But the sporadic gunfire from the few pirates
left alive in the treetops forced the Japanese troops to keep their heads down for the vital few minutes she needed.

Connie worked fast, but her mouth was so dry her lips wouldn’t unstick from her teeth and something strange was going on at
the back of her eyes. Green lights kept flickering like emerald fireflies, distorting her vision. She hadn’t known that fear
could feel like this, like an illness. Fitz was bleeding where the bullet had sliced through his thigh. Her own body quivered
when she inspected the wound.

‘The bullet has exited out the back,’ he told her. ‘I’m lucky.’

Lucky?
She lifted her gaze from the wound and fixed it on his face. His skin was taut. Dark smudges of pain lay beneath his eyes,
and his pupils were black and sharp. But his mouth seemed to have crept out from under the iron control of his will and was
half smiling at her. She took the knife from his hand.

‘You know you shouldn’t have come, Connie.’

‘How could I not?’

‘I wanted you to escape with your son.’

‘Leaving you here to play with your guns without me?’

He laughed, and she loved him for it. Some of the sound seeped into her head and diluted the fear. She cut the sleeves from
the shirt and folded them into two wads. She pressed one hard on top of the wound on the front of his leg, and rolled him
over to look at the exit wound on the back of his thigh. She gasped. It was much worse.

‘Hurry,’ he urged.

She jammed the second wad onto the wound, stemming the flow of blood. ‘It’s not an artery,’ she reassured him.

‘Nothing more than a scratch, then.’

‘Something like that.’ She bound the rest of the shirt around his thigh.

‘Do you know what it is to die of loneliness?’ he asked.

She looked at him.

‘That’s how I felt,’ he murmured, ‘when Nurul rowed you away from me.’

She rested her fingers on his. ‘I came back. Doesn’t that answer you?’

More shots rang out somewhere close.

‘Hurry!’ he said. ‘Nurul will come for us. He and I have a place to meet in any emergency. It’s a promontory on the far side
of the island.’

In her mind she saw again Nurul’s indifference when they’d been in the rowing boat. ‘Maybe we could swim out together instead
to the
Burung Camar
. Teddy is on board.’

Suddenly shouts echoed no more than a hundred yards from them.

‘I’m sorry, Connie,’ Fitz whispered into her ear. ‘It’s too late for that.The boats will be gone. Nurul knows better than
to approach a shoreline thick with Japs. He will return to the promontory when it’s dark. Help me up.’

She took his weight. ‘Can’t we stay here? Hidden in these tall grasses until tonight?’

‘No, it’s not safe. It won’t take them long to find the blood trail.’