Douglas slapped him cheerfully on the knee. ‘Just messing with you, kid. A PNGDF crew is running the boat, and a squad of commandos will join us on the Sepik.’ His lopsided grin faded. ‘I’d rather do without the locals riding shotgun, but unfortunately their government wouldn’t agree to private contractors.’

It sounded entirely reasonable to Nash. Ever since getting shafted by a bunch of South African mercenaries on an expedition to Lake Otjikoto in Namibia, he’d had an acute distrust of them. The bastards had left his team stranded without protection, while they drove the vehicles up to Angola to sell them.

Douglas pulled up behind the truck. ‘You go meet Captain Ahab while I make sure this container doesn’t end up back in Moresby. Oh, and don’t mention the Hoosenbeck. All they know is we’re going up the Sepik to shoot a doco. OK? The Suyantos were insistent.’

Nash stared at him.

‘Mate, it’s PNG.’ Douglas tapped his mutilated nose. ‘Can’t be too careful.’

Nash got out, grumbling.

It’s a cave, for Christs sake.

Secrets were toxic on expeditions; add the pressure cooker environment of a boat, and things could become explosive very quickly.

Standing on the dock, he ran a critical eye over the ship. The helicopter deck was a shambles of rusty steel joists and perforated steel plating, shoddily welded together and several degrees out of true. Nash wondered how it would affect her balance, for patrol boats tended to roll like a bathtub in the lightest of swells, and to reach the Sepik they had to negotiate the shallow Torres Strait, notorious for its big, wind-driven seas, then traverse the stormy northern coastline of PNG. The state of the superstructure was also appalling. Beneath hastily applied grey paintwork, patches of bubbling rust were erupting like pus from an infected cut. The ship looked ready for the scrapyard, which is where he figured Sura’s production company had found her.

‘You must be Mr Nash.’ A powerfully built man in khaki was standing at the head of the gangway. ‘Lieutenant Michael Kaboro, PNGDF. Please, come aboard.’

Everything about Kaboro was smooth and polished. Nash thought him about forty-five, although with that bald head, it would not have surprised him if he were ten years out either way.

‘Has your ship got a name, Lieutenant?’ he asked as Kaboro’s huge hand swallowed his.

‘Her Indonesian designation is Nusa Kambangan.’ It seemed a bad omen, for the so-called ‘Execution Island’ had become infamous after some young Australian drug smugglers were stood before an Indonesian firing squad. Kaboro smiled to put him at ease. ‘Don’t worry, we’re using her original name of Albany. It’s less of a mouthful, too.’