Angel in the Shadows Read online

  When she reached the first vertical ascent, she ran into trouble. The angle was so sharp, she could barely worm her way through. The laptop in her rucksack made it particularly tricky. It was a bulky model, not designed for crawling through narrow ventilation systems.

  She tried to get as good a grip as possible as she clambered the first three metres up before manoeuvring around a wide bend and proceeding horizontally again along the tower’s façade. She became increasingly aware that if she lost her grip and slid, it would not only produce a terrible racket, but also leave her with fractures and severe bruising. Unlike those big slides you see in swimming pools, there was no water here to break her fall – only metal. Aside from what a possible slip-up might do to her body, she also worried about the impact on her laptop – and especially the software she had to download on to the router.

  The first climb left her panting for quite a while. She was pleased to have made it out of the underground level, but also acutely aware that each new climb would prove more and more exhausting.

  Five more levels to go.

  Her movements grew slower, and took on something mechanical in their doggedness. Like a robot made of rusty components, she mindlessly inched her way forward. Despite her headlamp, the fatigue and the darkness seemed to blur her vision, robbing her of any sense of orientation. Her clothes were soaked with sweat.

  The secret was in the countdown, in the elimination, she thought to herself, as she slithered up the second vertical shaft. Each metre climbed could be crossed off. Each metre ascended took a metre off the height she had to conquer. Going forward meant leaving more and more distance behind.

  She began to keep track. Panting, she counted each metre she’d crawled. But soon the temporary euphoria began to feel forced. Fear had already taken control of her body, had burrowed its way into her blood vessels and her head, proliferated and spread. She could hear it in her breathing; it had clawed itself into every movement, and despair swept through her mind. She knew she was able to carry on, but with each metre covered she’d be less well equipped to deal with any kind of setback. By the time she reached the panel on the fifth level she was at the end of her tether.

  All she had to do was push, Haryanto had said.

  The panel was shut tight.

  The scream, which she could feel rising up from her toes, was soundless. She froze. All that remained was an emptiness, a sense of futility bordering on insanity. She didn’t want to feel anything. She wanted to disappear, be flushed out of this suffocating ventilation system, far, far into a darkness from which she’d never have to wake again.

  But she kept breathing, kept thinking. And the thought came to her that perhaps she’d miscalculated. She’d started in the underground garage. She was only on the fourth level. If she wanted to get to the fifth, she’d have to climb another shaft.

  She didn’t know where she found the energy, the motivation and the strength to start moving again. Not that it mattered. However much further she had to go had become irrelevant. Keep going was all she could think now. Keep going.

  Climbing those final three metres seemed to take as long as all the other vertical shafts put together. And throughout she had to fight the growing urge to let go, simply to let herself fall.

  As she crawled through the horizontal section, she could feel salty tears streaming down her sweaty face. She’d lost all faith in a positive outcome. She no longer cared what they’d do to her when she was discovered. If she failed to make it out of the shaft again, she’d yell her lungs out.

  At her wits’ end, she pushed against the panel.

  It gave way and swung open.

  The round space in which she was crouched down had walls made of thick glass. The lift shaft was also made of glass, providing a 360-degree view across nocturnal Jakarta, across a coast line full of polluting industries and a sea in which nuclear reactors would be floating in the near future.

  She looked up and saw small, flickering LED lights in three locations: the security cameras had been activated. They covered the entire space, Haryanto had told her. But, instead of sweeping the room at cross-angles, they swerved synchronously across the floor, each time giving her ninety seconds to move on a specific path, unseen by the cameras.

  Enough to reach the router undetected, patch in the LAN cable and wait underneath a steel desk until all the software had been installed on the router.

  The download time was an estimated seven minutes.

  Five of those had passed when she heard a loud whirring in the distance. Two razor-sharp light beams cut through the night: the searchlights of a helicopter heading straight towards the tower’s landing platform.

  The room was bathed in white light. She withdrew deeper underneath the desk and checked her timer.

  One minute and thirty seconds remaining.

  The whirring became louder. The helicopter slowed down and flew around the tower. She could hear the walls vibrate when the aircraft landed on the platform.

  One minute.

  The helicopter’s rotors were stopped and the engines switched off.

  Fifty seconds.

  She could hear the lift being activated.

  Her mind was racing. There were two options: stop the transfer and get the hell out of there, or – against her better judgement – carry on.

  She opted for the latter.

  Thirty seconds.

  The lift whizzed up, passing her floor.

  She looked at the cameras. They began to swerve in her direction.

  Twenty seconds.

  Gauging the distance between the floor and the opening of the shaft, she figured it was too far to jump. It would take too much momentum to pull herself up and squeeze inside. A chair, that’s what she needed. She looked around and spotted one on castors. That’ll do, she thought.

  Ten seconds.

  The cameras swept over the desk she was lying under.

  Three seconds.

  The lift stopped two floors above her.

  Done!

  She reset the router, configured the Wi-Fi password to the one at the back of the router, pulled the LAN cable out, rolled it up and put it back in her rucksack with the laptop. Then she crawled to the edge of the room until she was right underneath the open panel, grabbed the chair, stepped on to it, nearly losing her balance because she’d forgotten to lock the wheels.

  After she pushed off, the desk chair rolled away against the glass wall and toppled over. She grabbed the edge of the shaft with both hands and hoisted herself up.

  The lift whizzed down.

  With her head facing the direction she’d come from, she wriggled into the ventilation system. Then she repositioned her body in the opening, reached for the panel, stuck her fingers through the grille and pulled it towards her.

  At that moment the lift doors slid open and the light came on.

  Someone entered the room. She lay motionless inside the shaft, trying to ignore the searing pain in her cramped fingers that were holding the panel in place; trying not to think of the chair, which got flung against the glass wall when she jumped.

  She saw a man standing beneath her, looking at the chair. She held her breath and her heart skipped a beat when she recognized him.

  Gundono.

  He picked up the chair and straightened it. Then he moved away from the panel. If he’d waited a second longer a bead of sweat from her neck would have dropped on to his head instead of the floor.

  Not long after, she heard the ring of an incoming Skype call. Gundono greeted the caller in English.

  The very first reaction of the caller made it clear who he was talking to.

  Valentin Lavrov.

  His voice sounded tinny and distorted through the computer’s small speakers, but no less menacing.

  ‘Everything going according to plan?’

  ‘I don’t think there’ll be any problems during the vote,’ Gundono replied. But she detected a note of doubt in his voice. So did Lavrov.

  ‘Is that
what you think, or are you sure?’

  ‘There are a few sceptics in my party, but they can be persuaded.’

  ‘Listen, Gundono, there’s no room for doubt. Or risks. I want you to pull out all the stops to make this work. All the stops, do you get my drift?’

  ‘That sounds like a threat.’

  ‘I don’t care what it sounds like. I’ve got an interesting dossier on you, a long list of shady dealings you’ve had a hand in. You won’t be able to undo the damage as easily as you did with the Independen. If I take my information to the Jakarta Post, you won’t be sitting in that ivory tower of yours for much longer. So you tell me how you’re going to fix this.’

  Gundono’s response sounded measured. And this time around he seemed certain of himself.

  ‘Don’t worry. You’re talking to a former general, let’s not forget that. We’re not just talking about your project, but the future of this country. The Army has always determined the course of events here. This will prove no exception to the rule.’

  ‘Arrange it, one way or another.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it. Come to Jakarta. We’ll celebrate Sharada’s triumph, and that of the whole of Indonesia.’

  Indonesia’s triumph. What did he mean by that? He wanted Lavrov to come to Jakarta. What was he up to?

  When she heard Lavrov say that he would arrive in two days’ time, she felt the adrenalin surge through her body. She kept very still. Her head was throbbing by the time Gundono broke the connection, got up and headed to the lift.

  The lights went out. The lift descended.

  She realized that she had to get going, but her body simply refused to comply. The fingers on her right hand were numb. She was holding the panel without any feeling in them. She had to use her other hand to prise her fingers out of the grille, which then swung down with a bang.

  She rummaged for the mobile in the breast pocket of her nylon jacket and sent a one-word message to Haryanto: DONE.

  The security cameras would have recorded the open panel. The message told Haryanto she’d accomplished her mission and would be on her way back to the garage. He’d carry out a routine check of the building before reporting a loose ventilation panel on the fifth floor.

  This time she inched backwards, so she wouldn’t be descending the vertical shafts head first.

  While navigating the initial shaft she reflected on her good luck so far. Probably the luck of the ignorant. Still luck, whichever way you looked at it. Or karma, as Aninda would say.

  By now she’d moved down a floor and crept across the panel she’d mistakenly earmarked earlier as her endpoint. Five more levels to go. Her whole body hurt, but she’d completed the key component of her task. She was determined to see this through to the end, at all costs.

  Between the third and second floors the inevitable happened. She slipped and fell. She managed to break her fall by making herself as large as she could, meaning the landing in the bend of the shaft was less painful than she’d anticipated. The only thing she worried about was the noise.

  Even though the shafts were on the outside of the tower, the walls were practically soundproof, and the building’s air-conditioning was on, she kept as quiet as possible for a while. She’d do the subsequent descents less rigidly by sliding down instead of constantly resting her hands and feet on the ridges.

  It got easier with each new vertical descent.

  The panel inside the underground garage was open. Haryanto was waiting for her. He was tense. He said it’d been forty minutes since she’d crawled inside the ventilation system, and that he hadn’t expected Gundono to come back to the office. But she’d done it, she’d completed the mission.

  She lowered herself back into the boot. Compared to being stuck in a shaft, it felt luxurious. Haryanto closed the lid, started the engine and drove off. He stopped briefly to wait for the car-park door to open.

  When he halted in front of the security fence, her heart was racing. She could hardly believe they’d done it.

  The humming of the engine as the car drove across the speed bump, the squeaking of the fence mechanism, the traffic noises outside the compound – it all sounded like a feast to her ears.

  The Java Sea spewed white foam across the promenade as she clambered out of the boot on the same spot where she originally got in. Afterwards, Haryanto crisscrossed Jakarta, until they ended up in the heart of the Golden Triangle, where glass banking towers and other business giants competed in silence to be the tallest structure in the rust-coloured evening sky.

  Haryanto stopped only when he was absolutely certain they weren’t being followed. In front of the immense Plaza Indonesia shopping centre, he looked at her properly for the first time, revealing the intense emotion behind his stoic-looking Chinese–Indonesian mask.

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you earlier,’ he began, ‘but Saputra didn’t survive the torture.’

  For a moment, the clamour outside appeared to subside. Haryanto took a deep breath. ‘But you’ve ensured that he didn’t die for nothing. Terimah kasih. Thank you.’

  Before she had a chance to react, he got out, walked around to her side and – like a true gentleman – held the door open for her.

  ‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ Farah said, after she got out of the car.

  ‘All the best,’ he said, and before she knew it he’d disappeared in a nocturnal haze of exhaust fumes.

  She looked around. Young men and women in trendy casual wear sauntered up and down the gleaming pavement, on their way to nightclubs, bars and restaurants, which were all brightly illuminated like funfair attractions. The sounds of pumping bass, shrill dance music and plaintive Indonesian ballads poured out through open doors.

  She flagged down a motorized taxi, which came to a halt in the middle of the road. When she ran for it, she had to dodge several cars, whose drivers honked their horns and called down hell and damnation on her.

  You made it, said the voice inside her head.

  You made it.

  She still couldn’t believe it.

  10

  When Radjen arrived at the station, Esther was already waiting for him. She had a file in her hand and motioned for him to step out from behind the wheel. As he did so, she whistled like a construction worker at a female passer-by.

  ‘That suit looks good on you.’

  ‘Is that why I had to get out of the car?’

  ‘No, for this.’ She shoved the file at him and got in behind the wheel. ‘You read. I’ll drive.’

  She raced out of the car park and took the roundabout too fast, hurling Radjen, who hadn’t buckled his seatbelt yet, against the window.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Angela Faber. She’s agreed to be hypnotized, how about that? But before the first session she wants to get her hair done. Because she’s left her husband, the quiz show host. You know, the guy with the orange glow? She wants a new look that goes with her new life. Good God.’

  She reached for the file on Radjen’s lap with her right hand and turned the front page.

  ‘Now read!’

  Radjen saw that it was the case file of Sasha Kovalev, the Russian suspect who’d tried to hijack the MICU transporting Sekandar to another hospital. It was a transcript of the first seven minutes of his interrogation. After that, Detective Joshua Calvino had stopped the recorder and gone to Radjen to tell him the Russian had so much incriminating information he wanted to be placed in witness protection in exchange for his testimony. And, while Calvino was discussing this possibility with Radjen, Marouan Diba smashed Kovalev’s head against a table so hard that he’d never be able to give anyone info again.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ he grumbled. ‘Because of that guy’s death, I’m going to be out on my arse soon.’

  ‘That may well be, but Kovalev is also someone on the lower level of the game we’re involved in. He can help us tie some of the loose ends together.’

  She turned on to the A10 and glanced at him with an almost triumphant look.<
br />
  ‘You once told me about anthills that are all connected to one another, or some such comparison you were going on about? Well, Kovalev is the connecting factor.’

  ‘And how did you reach that conclusion? Female intuition?’

  ‘Go to hell with your female intuition,’ she said. ‘It’s simply called ace detective work. Kovalev was supposed to arrange the meeting between Sekandar and Lombard the night the boy was run down. But he broke all the rules and agreements and did the opposite. I think I understand why, but I need your help with this.’

  ‘What kind of help?’

  ‘I want to see that top-secret skill of yours in action.’

  ‘What do you mean – where are we going, then?’ asked Radjen, who saw she was headed in the direction of the Amsterdamse Bos instead of the cemetery on Amsteldijk where the funeral would take place.

  ‘I’ll tell you more when we get there – just keep reading.’

  Radjen was already familiar with Kovalev’s testimony, but, to prepare for what was to come, he gave it another good look. He had to crawl into Kovalev’s head – retrieve the images of that fateful night when Kovalev saw the boy for the first time.

  Once he’d gone through the file twice, he looked up. They were approaching the driveway of the abandoned villa in the woods.

  ‘I’ve never done this before,’ he admitted as they were getting out of the car, ‘with someone else present.’

  ‘Ninjas share everything,’ she said with a grin. ‘So you’d best get used to it.’

  He felt pressured and walked back and forth a few times. Esther hung back and gave him the space he’d asked for.

  After a time, he heard the crunching of gravel under car tyres and the sound of the villa’s large old door opening. When he looked up, it was dark. There were hardly any lights on in the building. Kovalev was about ten metres away from him wearing a white shirt, black trousers and boots. His long hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He stood motionless in the headlight beams of a fast-approaching vehicle, which came to an abrupt stop a few centimetres from him.