Helena was alarmed at the prospect after what she’d seen happen to the Suzuki two nights earlier. ‘What are you planning to do, exactly?’ she asked. ‘They’ve brought in extra guards for all the celebrities. This place is sealed up tighter than a bank vault.’
Aizat laughed. ‘Have you ever watched Star Wars? You know, the plucky team of raiders going in to knock out the Death Star. That’s me, Noor and the gang in about three hours’ time.’
‘You’re not going to be violent, are you?’ Helena asked.
‘No violence,’ Aizat said. ‘But it’ll be hard getting out of the hotel with all this security. So we were thinking that some of us could hide out in your room for a bit and leave the hotel when things die down.’
Helena was torn. She’d come out here to help Aizat, but wasn’t sure how far he was prepared to go.
‘I don’t know,’ she said warily.
‘Words unmatched by deeds have no importance,’ Aizat said fiercely.
‘You’re quoting Che Guevara at me?’ Helena said. ‘At least you read the books I sent you.’
‘I think you’re getting soft, sitting up there with your free mini bar and your double quilted bathrobe.’
Helena sat on the corner of her bed and bit her bottom lip. Aizat was intense, compelling and more or less right. She’d been charmed by her surroundings and the comfortable lifestyles of older journalists, with their kids at public school and holiday cottages in Sicily. But did she really want to spend her life taking golf lessons and writing about restaurants?
‘Are you still there?’ Aizat asked.
‘Just thinking,’ Helena said eventually, before sighing. ‘OK, OK, of course I’ll help you.’
*
Helena came out of the lift and stepped into the Regency Plaza’s huge lobby. It was just after eight o’clock. The space was crowded and men in tuxedos walked their eyes up and down Helena’s long legs and shoulderless ivory dress.
‘You look stunning,’ Michael Stephens said. ‘Have you been enjoying your stay?’
‘Very much, thank you,’ Helena agreed. ‘Though I feel outgunned, surrounded by all these big diamonds and designer outfits.’
A black Bentley pulled up in front of the lobby. Flashguns popped as a vaguely familiar face and his girlfriend stepped out on to red carpet.
‘So who is he?’ Helena asked.
‘Not a golf fan, I take it,’ Michael laughed. ‘That’s Joe Wright-Newman. Currently ranked third in the world, winner of two major titles. How have your lessons been going, by the way?’
‘My shoulders are aching, but I’ve hit a few good drives. My teacher said I’m above average.’
Michael spotted someone across the lobby and broke into a big smile. ‘If you’ll excuse me Helena, duty calls.’
As Michael shook a fat man’s hand, Helena turned left out of the lobby. She walked along twenty metres of marble flooring, with lush palms and trickling water on either side, then swept her room key through an electronic reader. A large door slid open and she stepped outside into the hotel’s deserted pool complex.
She glanced at her watch, then strolled innocently along the poolside until she reached a women’s rest room. Noor stood inside a cubicle, dressed in a set of the blue and orange overalls worn by hotel maintenance staff.
‘That’s my spare,’ Helena explained, as she handed over a credit-card style key. ‘Is there anything else you need?’
‘Just this,’ Noor said. ‘Thank you.’
*
The opening ceremony required everyone to leave the hotel - which many of the guests had been staying in for the past three days - and line up behind a thick gold ribbon outside the hotel entrance. This ribbon was then cut simultaneously with five pairs of giant scissors held by Joe Wright-Newman, a famous opera singer, two Malaysian pop stars and governor Tan Abdullah.
After cheers and applause, four hundred guests filed into the hotel’s main dining-hall. Tan Abdullah was a small man who limped about on a crumbling hip joint, and he sat at the head table, which ran horizontal to all the others.
The rest of the guests were arranged in order of importance. This left Helena in the last row, by a set of swinging doors leading to the kitchen.
The food was average, and cold by the time four hundred guests had been served. After three courses, there was dessert and coffee, and Tan Abdullah stood up and began making a speech in Malay. The island TV station loyally recorded their governor’s triumph, while a small group of photographers knelt in front of the head table and snapped pictures of the celebrities.
As Tan Abdullah bowed graciously and sat down to take his applause, six masked figures dressed in hotel overalls burst from the kitchen doors at the back of the room. Four young men ran towards the head table while two women stayed at the back and began unfurling a banner with pictures of beachfront villages on it.
Diners gasped as the first two men sprayed fire extinguishers filled with sticky white liquid towards the head table. Tan Abdullah was the target, but golfer Joe Wright-Newman and the pop stars were also badly spattered.
Gasps and screams rippled across the hall as another masked activist ripped open a bin liner stuffed with bird feathers and threw them over the head table. His companion had a smaller bag filled with leaflets and he ran between the tables throwing them at the diners.
‘We demand Tan Abdullah be prosecuted for illegal destruction of villages,’ Aizat shouted.
One of his comrades jumped on to a dining-table and shouted a similar message in Malay, as teams of police and black-uniformed hotel security officers swarmed into the room. The masked men began running along and between the tables back towards the kitchen, pursued by hotel security and Tan Abdullah’s police protection squad.
Aizat was the first to be caught, his short frame brought down by a burly dinner guest. Within seconds he was surrounded by guards and fitted with handcuffs. The two woman activists were near the doors into the kitchens and stood the best chance of escaping.
Helena thrust her leg out as a police officer sprinted past her table, tripping him head first into the next table. Another officer was a few paces behind, but the women got through to the kitchens and friendly staff blocked the pursuing officers by wheeling a heavy serving trolley in front of the double doors.
Tan Abdullah raged as the feathers flying all around him stuck to his wet clothes and skin. Photographers snapped as he lunged towards the television cameraman and tried putting his hand over the lens.
Some diners’ shock had turned to laughter, but Aizat and his colleagues had nothing to laugh about as police officers and hotel security guards frogmarched them out of the dining-room and on through the lobby.
Helena had her own problem as the officer she’d tripped up stumbled towards her in a daze.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘You’re under arrest.’
But a journalist called Jennie who’d been chatting to Helena throughout the meal shot to her feet and spoke fiercely.
‘It was clearly an accident, don’t be so preposterous.’
A couple of Malaysian guests sitting directly opposite also began berating the officer in Malay. A more senior officer strode across and told his colleague to calm down.
‘Accidents happen,’ the senior officer told Helena. ‘I apologise on behalf of my colleague. He’s overreacting, but he’s just had a nasty bump on the head.’
‘That’s OK,’ Helena said, as she dabbed sweat off her brow.
Jennie smiled as the officers walked away. ‘I thought he was going to clap you in irons there, girl.’
‘So did I,’ Helena said shakily. She clutched her chest with one hand and downed her glass of red with the other.
The leaflets had all been thrown at the opposite end of the room, but they’d been passed along the tables and one was slid in front of Helena.
We congratulate Governor Tan Abdullah on destroying our homes, our environment and leaving us to rot in the jungle. Below this headline were three short par
agraphs detailing what had happened to local villagers after the tsunami and a link to a website where you could find out more.
‘Looks interesting,’ Jennie noted. ‘Everyone says Abdullah’s a bloody crook. But in this business, who isn’t?’
‘You really think he’s corrupt?’ Helena asked, as the blood returned to her face.
A waiter had spotted her empty wine glass and moved to refill it, but Helena covered the glass with her hand. ‘No I’ve had quite enough, thank you.’
A chill shot down her spine as she turned back towards the table. Michael Stephens stood three tables across. He was speaking to a hotel security guard while looking straight at her.
22. CELL
‘Strip, you piece of shit!’ the police officer shouted, unlocking Aizat’s handcuffs.
The police cell was open to the elements, with a rusted mesh roof, a floor sprouting mildew and a drain hole in the corner crusted with spatters of shit. Aizat had known his chances of capture were high, but that didn’t make the reality of the police compound any less frightening.
‘And your shorts,’ the officer ordered, as he swung his baton hard against Aizat’s back. ‘Your scrawny ass is really in the shit. Messing with Tan Abdullah on this island isn’t good for your health.’
The officer belted Aizat again, knocking him against the back wall. He then grabbed him by the shoulders and kneed him in the stomach. Rage flashed across Aizat’s face.
‘Wanna hit back?’ the officer laughed. ‘Come on, I dare you. See what you get.’
He then kicked Aizat’s clothes through the barred cell gate before slamming it shut behind him.
Aizat slumped with his back against the wall. The open-air cells were built around four sides of a rectangular exercise yard. He listened as men shouted, and cell doors opened and closed. He recognised the voices of Abdul and his other two male comrades.
‘Did they catch the girls?’ he shouted.
A man across the dark courtyard shouted back that he didn’t know, but within seconds a huge guard loomed in front of Aizat and rattled his barred cell door.
‘One more word and we’ll gag your mouths,’ he threatened. ‘Prisoners may not communicate.’
‘Up yours!’ a prisoner yelled.
‘Oh, you think you’re clever?’ the guard shouted back.
Two more police guards came across. ‘Cell six,’ one said.
A cell door clanked open, but the sound came from Aizat’s side of the block. He tried to see through the bars as the three guards dragged a man into the middle of the courtyard.
‘What?’ the man complained. ‘I was sleeping.’
‘If someone speaks, someone gets hurt,’ an officer shouted.
The naked prisoner was thrown to the ground and belted several times with clubs, then booted brutally in the stomach.
‘On haunches,’ another officer screamed.
The prisoner had previous experience and knew what this meant. He spread his feet wide apart, squatted down with his bare bum hovering a few centimetres above the ground and placed his hands on his head. This stress position required constant alertness to stay upright and could cause agonising cramps in less than twenty minutes.
‘He stays like that until morning,’ an officer announced. ‘Any more noise and the rest of you join him.’
Aizat shuddered as his hands gripped the bars of his cell. He’d read a lot of philosophy and books about guerrillas and freedom fighters who’d spent time in prison. It seemed heroic on the page, but right now he was bruised, naked and completely terrified.
*
It would look suspicious if Helena left the banquet in a rush, so she stuck around in the dining-room, trying to hide her nerves. There was a light-hearted consensus among the journalists that the goo and feathers had enlivened a dull meal and possibly saved them from sitting through further speeches.
The campaign leaflet didn’t have much impact and Helena asked Jennie about it.
‘The locals bang the same drum wherever tourist facilities are developed,’ Jennie said. ‘You feel for these people, but development has to happen. Some fat cat like Abdullah will make a packet, a few locals will get screwed over.’
‘There must be a way of developing tourism without ripping off the locals,’ Helena said, as she turned the leaflet over in her hand.
‘I’m sure there is, sweetheart,’ Jennie said, giving Helena a patronising tap on her bare shoulder. ‘But I spent three years reporting on war in the Balkans. I ate shit food, had dirt in my underwear and my heart in the right place. But all my words didn’t change a goddamned thing and when you land a cushy number like this my advice is to write the copy your editor wants, steal the towels and don’t rock the boat.’
Helena didn’t like Jennie’s cynical attitude, but understood it after her frustrations over the past two days.
An elderly male journalist who’d chatted to Helena a couple of times bid her goodnight. His departure made it seem reasonable for her to leave too. She entered her room anxiously, half expecting to find a cop ready to arrest her or a pair of female activists cowering in the bathroom.
Everything seemed fine when she flipped the light switch. As she moved deeper into the room, she saw that her spare room key had been placed in front of the television and a short message scrawled on a piece of notepaper next to it:
Borrowed a few bits. Thx!
Helena saw that her suitcase had been rummaged. Two pairs of jeans, a lightweight coat and her black pumps were gone. It made her feel slightly violated. She was pleased that the activists had got away, but she didn’t have much money and one pair of jeans were expensive Diesels she’d had to save up for.
At least they’d taken their overalls and hadn’t left masks or any other evidence for her to dispose of. The balcony doors were open and Helena realised it would have been easy for Noor and her companion to dangle off her first-floor balcony and drop down to the beach. The only thing was, a modern hotel like the Regency Plaza must have some CCTV cameras. She suspected that a replay of the footage would show them entering her room.
After the way Michael Stephens had stared at her downstairs, she wondered if it might be best to pack up and leave. But this remote corner of Langkawi wasn’t the kind of place where you could call a taxi and she’d just seen the only person she knew with a boat get dragged off by the police.
And what would happen if she was arrested? What was the procedure? Would the other journalists help her when they found out? How would she get a lawyer? Was she even entitled to a lawyer in Malaysia? Would the British embassy come and rescue her?
Helena had a law degree, but it hadn’t taught her anything useful. She wished she had a laptop and an internet connection so that she could do some searches, but a laptop was beyond her means and she’d planned to tap out her article on the ancient PC in her flat when she got home.
She thought about calling her parents and telling them that she was in trouble - or at least might be in trouble. But she was far from home, there wasn’t much they could do and she could imagine her mum crying helplessly.
Helena crashed on to her bed and heard her heart drumming in her chest. She could hardly believe that she’d been naive enough to get herself tangled up in this sort of thing. She imagined everyone laughing at the stupid English girl who’d got herself involved with a group of crazy locals who burned cars and tarred and feathered politicians and celebrity golfers.
‘I’m so dumb,’ Helena told herself angrily, before rolling up against the pillows at the top of her bed and bursting into tears.
*
It was 3 a.m. but Aizat was wide awake when an officer rattled his door. His feet squelched in the mildew on the cell floor as he pushed his hands through the serving slot in the bars to have his handcuffs fitted. The prisoner squatting in the centre of the courtyard moaned in pain as Aizat was frogmarched past.
The interrogation room was inside the police building, two floors up. Two cops handled him roughly, shoving him hard ag
ainst walls and using his head to open a set of doors. They wanted him to fight back, giving them an excuse to use the clubs and pepper sprays swinging off their belts.
The interrogation room was brightly lit with a table, two chairs and a stocky female officer leaning against the wall. Aizat’s books were stacked high on the table. Karl Marx, Che Guevara and all the other communists had been placed at the top of piles, along with books on urban warfare and terrorist tactics.
‘Sit down Aizat,’ the woman said firmly, as she dismissed his two escorts. ‘There’s no need to act shy, you’re not the first suspect I’ve seen naked.’
‘Just another way to humiliate me,’ Aizat spat.
The interrogator shrugged. ‘I’ve worked with the governor’s security detail for the past ten years. My job is to deal ruthlessly with anyone who crosses him.’
Aizat looked at the arrangement of books. ‘So let me guess, I’m a communist and a terrorist. A major threat to state security. You want to lock me up and throw away the key.’
The woman laughed. ‘You’ve got to be a dumb shit to mess with Governor Abdullah on his own island. The only thing you can do to make things easier is sign a full confession. Admit that you’re a terrorist. Implicate everyone else involved in your organisation and throw yourself on the mercy of a judge. You’re only seventeen. You might only get five years and remission if you behave.’
Aizat shook his head. ‘I threw paint and feathers at the governor and handed out leaflets. I’ll confess to that, but not this crock of lies.’
‘Think it through,’ the interrogator smiled. ‘If you want to be a tough guy, we’ll get other witnesses to cut deals and write statements saying that you’re a terrorist who planned to buy explosives and make bombs. You’ll get thirty years. They’ll walk free.’
Aizat pointed at his books. ‘None of this is proof of anything except intellectual curiosity. There are as many books written by right-wing politicians on that table as there are books about communism. There’s three books about Gandhi - he was a pacifist for god’s sake.’