The Name of Valour

by The Name of Valour (retail) (epub)

  A bullet starred the window. Sheridan cried out in fright.

  ‘Better get your head down, doc!’ said Torrance.

  Rossi banged a palm against the window at the back of the cab, signalling that they were all aboard. Torrance stepped on the clutch, then eased down the accelerator. The Isuzu began to move along the rails with a harsh squeal of metal against metal. Torrance put his foot down and the engine responded. In their wake, Japanese soldiers knelt between the tracks, levelling their rifles. Torrance heard the yammering of a Bren behind him – Grant firing the machine gun over the tailgate – and two of the Japanese went down. The rest scattered in search of cover.

  The track ahead looked pretty straight. Torrance realised all he had to do was keep the wheel from turning and slow down when they approached the curves. On the straights, he could really let rip. Gaining confidence, he floored the accelerator, and within half a minute the Japanese on the tracks were so far away, they were scarcely discernible.

  ‘Is it okay for me to sit up yet?’ asked Sheridan.

  ‘Don’t let me stop you. Everyone all right back there?’ Torrance called over his shoulder through the window at the back of the cab. MacLeod’s face appeared and he gave Torrance the thumbs-up.

  Grinning with relief, Torrance took off the Japanese field cap, throwing it out of the window on his side, and replaced his balmoral. ‘Nice bit of work, even if I do say so myself. Now all we have to do is follow the railway line south until we get back to our lines.’

  ‘And hope our boys dinna see the Jap flags on the doors and riddle us with bullets,’ said Kerr.

  Torrance grinned. ‘I always wanted to be a train driver.’

  ‘This is a lorry, no’ a train,’ said Kerr.

  ‘Close enough.’ Torrance began to hum ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo’, then burst out laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ asked Sheridan.

  Torrance began to croon: ‘Pardon me, boy… is that a Japanese Isuzu…?’

  She laughed. Torrance liked that.

  ‘Aye, well, before we all start slappin’ one another on the back, let’s remember we’re no’ out of the woods yet,’ said Kerr. ‘No’ by a long chalk.’

  Torrance glanced at him, and the corporal pointed through the window to his left. Craning his head, Torrance saw they were running parallel to a road, and a squadron of Japanese tanks motored along it, the commanders sitting with their legs dangling through the hatches on their turrets. A few of them cast casual glances at the Isuzu lorry running along the railway track parallel with them.

  ‘You might want to get your head down again,’ Kerr suggested to Sheridan, trying to look casual as he raised a hand to his temple, masking his face. Torrance glanced in the back to see what the others were doing, and was relieved to see they too had noticed the tanks and were lying flat below the level of the sides. He put his foot down, and the lorry soon outpaced the tanks.

  In another minute, railway and road parted ways. By then, Torrance had become aware of another problem. He tapped the fuel gauge. ‘We might want to keep our eyes open for a petrol station.’

  ‘How many petrol stations d’you think there are likely to be on the main line from Kuala Lumpur to Seremban?’ asked Kerr.

  ‘Then we’ll get off the main line from Kuala Lumpur to Seremban,’ said Torrance. ‘Keep your eyes peeled for a level crossing.’

  The Isuzu rattled over some points as it passed a signalman’s box where a shadowy figure moved around inside the control room. ‘Was yon a Jap soldier?’ asked Kerr.

  ‘So what if it was? As long as he ain’t shooting at us…’

  ‘No, but I think he might have switched the points over.’

  ‘You think he might have switched us on to a siding?’ Torrance peered into the darkness ahead: gleaming faintly in the light of the moon, the rails curved to the right now. ‘Looks to me as though we’re still on the main line. He must have thought we were his mates.’

  ‘Unless he got a telephone call from the Japs in Kuala Lumpur.’

  ‘Oh, will you stop being such an old woman? We’ll be in Seremban in another hour—’

  Up ahead, the rails no longer gleamed. The most likely explanation for this was that there were no rails ahead at all. He realised they were approaching a bridge or, more precisely, a place where there had been a bridge a few hours ago.

  ‘Bloody sappers!’ Torrance slammed his foot on the brake. The Isuzu slowed with a squeal that set his teeth on edge. It finally came to a halt a few yards shy of the charred and twisted ends of the rails.

  Torrance puffed his cheeks out and reversed the Isuzu to where the embankment was not so steep and they had a chance of getting it down to a road, if only they could get it off the rails. If he had hoped that would be as easy as pressing a button, however, he was disappointed. There was a wheel brace, and odd holes in the bodywork above the wheels that were just the right size to insert one of the socket heads of the wheel brace so you could winch up the railway wheels, or winch down the road ones, but no amount of fiddling would get any of the sockets to fit snugly over the bolts of the mechanism. They were still fiddling with it ten minutes later when they saw two more pairs of headlights coming down the tracks towards them.

  ‘Mebbe someone in one o’ them lorries can tell us how to convert it into a road vehicle,’ said Rossi.

  Swearing, Torrance threw away the wheel brace, snatched up his pack and Thompson, and made for a footpath leading down to the riverbank below.

  They followed the river in the moonlight for a couple of miles, until they came to where a rope-bridge spanned the grey torrent, anchored to trees growing on the banks. It was made out of tree creeper and bits of rusty wire, the footboards well spaced, if they could be called boards: they looked more like mismatched pieces of driftwood. No attempt had been made to carve them into planks, and there was a gap of at least two feet between them. The bridge sagged so low in the middle, it was only a couple of feet above the surface of the sluggish river.

  ‘Here’s a bridge our sappers missed,’ said Torrance.

  ‘Missed, or couldna be bothered with?’ asked Rossi.

  ‘Or left as a death trap for the Japs,’ said Kerr. ‘I’m no’ setting foot on it.’

  ‘Fine.’ Torrance gestured upstream, to where the beams of flashlights could be seen a few hundred yards behind them. ‘Wait here for the Japs. I’ll take my chances on the bridge.’

  They picked their way across. ‘Give us the parang, Primsie,’ Torrance said when the last of them was on the south side of the river. Kerr drew the blade from its sheath and handed it to Torrance, who began to hack at the ropes of the bridge. Seeing what was happening, the Japanese wisely held back from trying to cross, instead taking potshots at them from the far bank. Grant gave them a couple of bursts with the Bren, keeping their heads down long enough for Torrance to hack through the last rope of the bridge. It collapsed into the water, and the current swept the near end of it downstream. Torrance and Grant turned and hurried on down the jungle trail after the others.

  * * *

  ‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ Sheridan told Kerr.

  The lance corporal had been reaching for an unfamiliar but no less juicy-looking piece of fruit hanging from a tree.

  ‘The birds are eating it.’ Kerr pointed to where a toucan feasted on the fruit hanging from branches near the top of a tree.

  ‘Are you a bird?’ asked Sheridan. ‘Just because a bird can eat something without getting poisoned, doesn’t mean you can. Watch what the monkeys eat. What’s good enough for a monkey is good enough for you.’

  ‘I dinna see any monkeys,’ grumbled Kerr.

  ‘That’s because monkeys have sense enough to stay away from the strychnine tree,’ said Sheridan.

  The six of them had been marching in a more or less southerly direction – where the rivers and swamps did not require them to take wide detours – for the best part of a week now. When they ran out of bully beef, they plucked breadfruit and cooked it
in the embers of their campfire, or dug up sweet potatoes, taro and tapioca roots with their entrenching tools. When they could find none of those, they begged for a little rice at the villages they occasionally passed, or made do with young bamboo shoots and the stalks of ferns. And when they could find none of those, they went hungry.

  Torrance kicked at a fallen tree trunk, breaking off a piece of bark to reveal white grubs squirming in the rotten wood below. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Beetle grubs. Split ’em in half and cook ’em over a fire. The Malays reckon those are a delicacy.’

  ‘You’ve never eaten beetle grubs!’ protested Kerr.

  ‘No, but I ain’t the one so hungry, he’s reaching for poisonous fruit.’

  As they continued along the trail, Torrance glanced surreptitiously at Sheridan. She was in pretty good shape for a civilian, and a judy at that, but the fact was she was not used to route marches the way Torrance and his comrades were. Even so, she had done well over the past few days, never lagging behind, never uttering one word of complaint, stubbornly refusing to admit to any weariness. When he saw she was struggling, he pretended he was the one who needed a rest, never even glancing in her direction, knowing she would not thank him if she thought he was making allowances for her.

  They emerged from the jungle to find themselves standing at the edge of a broad plain of padi fields. Sheridan pointed towards a kampong of stilt houses standing beneath a cluster of palm trees on the bank of a muddy river meandering across the plain a couple of miles away. ‘Maybe the folks who live there will be kind enough to give us a little rice.’

  They set out walking along a bund, the strip of raised ground between two padi fields. They were halfway to the village when Torrance heard the drone of aero-engines and looked up to see a twin-engined monoplane circling above them.

  ‘Hey, that’s one of ours! That’s a Lockheed Hudson!’ Kerr started to jump up and down, waving his arms above his head. ‘Over here! Over here!’

  ‘Why are you shouting?’ asked Torrance.

  ‘I’m trying to get the pilot’s attention!’

  ‘What, you think he’s gonna hear your voice above the roar of his engines at an altitude of a thousand feet, do you?’

  ‘Even if the pilot could hear you, I don’t see what you expect him to do,’ said Rossi. ‘It’s no’ as if he could land to pick us up.’

  ‘He can let people know we’re here.’

  ‘And that helps us how, exactly?’

  ‘It’s turning,’ said Kerr. ‘He’s coming back this way! See? He must have heard me!’

  ‘Trust me, Primsie,’ said Torrance, ‘he did not hear you.’

  Shading his eyes against the sun, MacLeod watched the aeroplane diving towards them. ‘That’s never a Hudson.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ insisted Kerr.

  ‘It canna be. For one thing, it’s too small, and for another, Hudsons have those twin tailplanes.’

  The aircraft swooped low enough for the wind from its engines to ruffle the water of the padi fields, before banking steeply up again. As it did so, a machine gun chattered, stitching a line of spurts of water across the padi field. Torrance grabbed Sheridan and dragged her down with him as he threw himself off the bund. Rossi and MacLeod likewise dived for cover into the padi water, while Kerr stood gaping and Grant blazed up at it with the Bren.

  ‘What are they shooting at us for?’ asked Kerr. ‘Do they no’ know we’re on their side?’

  Covered from head to toe in mud, Torrance, Sheridan, Rossi and MacLeod rose from the padi field.

  ‘Bloody hell, Primsie!’ said Torrance. ‘Your aircraft identification skills are on a par with your knowledge of edible fruit. Here’s a hint for you – red circles under the wings means it’s a Jap, okay?’

  The aeroplane banked again, heading north without making a second pass. ‘I think you scared him off,’ Kerr told Grant.

  ‘My arse! That’s a spotter plane.’

  ‘Then why did he fly away after you fired at him?’

  ‘Mebbe he spotted what he was looking for?’

  The six of them exchanged glances. ‘Shall we pick up the pace a bit?’ suggested Torrance.

  No one disagreed.

  Fifteen

  ‘The man we are looking for is named Charles Torrance,’ said Ziegler. ‘But everyone in the battalion calls him “Slugger”.’

  ‘Why do they call him “Slugger”?’ asked Mitsumoto. ‘More importantly, where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know, mein Herr.’

  ‘You don’t know why they call him “Slugger”? Or where he is now?’

  ‘Both, mein Herr.’ There was blood on Ziegler’s sleeve. ‘None of the prisoners I’ve interrogated this morning will admit to having seen him since the seventh of January.’

  ‘Keep trying.’

  ‘Zu befehl, mein Herr.’ Ziegler clicked his heels and flung an arm up in the Nazi salute, then turned on his heel and marched out of Mitsumoto’s office.

  ‘An unpleasant business,’ remarked Lieutenant Ishikawa.

  ‘Unpleasant, but necessary, if Japan is not to be defeated by its enemies.’

  ‘I understand that, Mitsumoto-sama. But if I may speak freely, Herr Ziegler seems to enjoy that aspect of his work a little too much.’

  ‘It is to be expected. You must remember, Westerners are brutes who do not place the same value on life as we Asians.’

  Ishikawa nodded. ‘Ziegler more than most, I think. He’s a real jackbooted Nazi thug, isn’t he?’

  Mitsumoto smiled. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I think that’s what he wants us to think. But according to his records, Ziegler first joined the French Foreign Legion nineteen years ago, before the Nazis came to power in Germany. In those days, the size of the Wehrmacht was strictly limited by the Treaty of Versailles. Many Germans who wanted to be soldiers but could not serve in the Wehrmacht had to enlist in the Foreign Legion instead. Before he decided to ignore the Treaty of Versailles by expanding the Wehrmacht, Herr Hitler often spoke out against how the Foreign Legion was draining Germany of some of its strongest young men.’

  Mitsumoto rose from the seat behind his desk and crossed to the window. On the driveway below, Sergeant Ogata was talking to Corporal Takada at the back of the Humber wireless truck. Mitsumoto had set up his headquarters in a building just outside Kuala Lumpur, the former home of a Scottish rubber planter, a small palace built in a bizarre architectural style that could only be described as redbrick mock-Moorish with Scottish baronial influences. As always, Mitsumoto could not help but notice the difference between the opulence in which the white colonists lived and the ramshackle hovels of the Tamil rubber tappers who actually did the work that paid for such opulence.

  He screwed a cigarette into his amber holder and lit it, taking a couple of puffs before continuing.

  ‘It seems to me that Ziegler could scarcely claim to be ignorant of Hitler’s attitude to the Legion. He could have left when his third term of enlistment came to an end in 1938. Instead he chose to re-enlist with the French. Hardly the action of a diehard adherent of der Führer. I suspect if Sergeant Ziegler had been garrisoned at Long San when we established our protectorate over Indo-China, he would have been a willing part of that brigade of legionnaires that fought so enthusiastically against our soldiers, instead of surrendering meekly with the Hanoi garrison.’

  ‘Do you think we can trust him?’ asked Ishikawa.

  ‘Undoubtedly. He has no love for the English. When Brunner Mond opened up a chemical works in Warrington, Ziegler’s father was offered a promotion and a significant pay rise if he would move there to oversee production. That’s how it is he speaks such good English. Imagine what it must have been like for a German boy growing up in England during the last European war.’

  ‘I wonder the family was not interned!’

  ‘Professor Ziegler’s contribution to the British war effort was too valuable for him to be taken away from his work.’ As M
itsumoto was speaking, the telephone on his desk began to ring. ‘I expect MI5 saw to it his colleagues kept a close eye on him,’ he concluded, before picking up the handset. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mitsumoto?’

  At the sound of Baron Uchida’s voice, an icy spasm of fear knotted Mitsumoto’s insides. He leaped to his feet and bowed to the telephone set. ‘Yes, your excellency!’

  ‘Have you found that survey yet?’

  ‘Almost, excellency.’

  ‘“Almost” isn’t good enough. That survey is vital to our war effort. Fail to retrieve it, and you will bring great dishonour on Uchida Kikan. You understand there is only one way to expunge such dishonour?’

  Mitsumoto swallowed. ‘Yes, your excellency.’

  ‘Bring me that survey, Mitsumoto! Until it is in our hands, all other considerations must be secondary.’

  ‘Yes, excellency.’ But Uchida had already signed off. Mitsumoto returned the handset to its cradle.

  ‘Captain-sama?’ said Ishikawa. ‘I think Corporal Takada is trying to get our attention.’

  Mitsumoto joined Ishikawa by the window. The radio operator was waving up at them from the back of the Humber. Mitsumoto opened the window.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A sighting from one of our spotter planes, captain-sama. It could be the men we’re looking for.’

  ‘Wait there, I’ll come down!’

  Mitsumoto and Ishikawa made their way downstairs and out of the front of the building to join Ogata and Takada at the back of the Humber.

  ‘Five soldiers and a woman seen walking south across some padi fields.’ Takada handed Mitsumoto the scrap of paper on which he had noted the map coordinates the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service had passed on to him.

  ‘Five soldiers and a woman? That must be the same group that stole an Isuzu switcher truck from Kuala Lumpur railway station last week.’

  ‘You think they could be the ones who have the survey?’ asked Ishikawa.

  ‘If not, there’s only one way to rule them out.’ Mitsumoto spread a map on the Humber’s bonnet and checked the coordinates.