The Name of Valour

by The Name of Valour (retail) (epub)

‘Don’t mind if I do.’ Torrance helped himself to one. The officer took another, screwing it into the end of an amber cigarette holder, then lit both with a gold-plated lighter. ‘Permit me to introduce myself – I am Captain Mitsumoto.’ His English carried only a slight trace of an accent.

  Torrance sniggered. ‘Did you say “Mr Moto”?’

  Mitsumoto coloured. ‘Mit-su-moto,’ he corrected Torrance icily, with the air of a man who had heard that joke too many times in the past to find it remotely amusing now. ‘I believe you’ve already met Sergeants Ogata and Ziegler?’ he asked, gesturing to the giant and Ziegler in turn. ‘This was the man?’ he asked Ziegler.

  ‘Yes, Herr Hauptmann.’

  ‘What is your name?’ Mitsumoto asked Torrance.

  ‘Four-double-seven Torrance, Private Charles Michael.’

  ‘Name, rank and number, eh? And I suppose that is all you’re willing to tell me?’

  ‘That depends. What do you want to know?’

  Mitsumoto regarded him in surprise.

  ‘Come off it, Mr Moto. I know the score. If I clam up, you’ll just get Boris Karloff there to drive bamboo splinters under my fingernails. That’s an experience I’d rather forgo, if it’s all the same with you. So you go ahead and ask your questions, and I’ll answer them as best I can.’

  ‘Very well. Where is the report from Burroughs and Salter?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Please do not insult my intelligence by thinking you can play games with me. The geological survey you found aboard the wrecked aeroplane you stumbled across in the jungle on Wednesday the seventh of January. Ziegler saw you take it, so there is no sense in denying it.’

  ‘Oh, that. I wiped my arse on it.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Well, what other use would I have for a geological survey, except for bum fodder? You’ll find each page of it buried in different holes from the Slim River to Kuala Lumpur, with my shit smeared all over it, next to one of my turds. If that’s what you want, I’ll happily show you where each page is buried, if I can remember.’

  Smiling ruefully, Mitsumoto nodded. ‘A plausible story. There is only one problem – I don’t believe a word of it.’ He made a signal towards Sergeant Ogata. Torrance started to turn, and felt the shinei slam into his back. He fell on to his hands and knees, and Ogata kicked him in the ribs.

  ‘It’s the truth, sod it!’ said Torrance. ‘What other use would I have for a geological survey?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ sneered Mitsumoto. ‘Perhaps you leafed through its pages and the word “gold” caught your eye?’ He gave Ogata another signal, and the beating began in earnest.

  The brawny sergeant knew his business. It was not the first time Torrance had taken a beating, but he had never experienced one delivered as expertly as this. Or as enthusiastically, for that matter. The rain of blows and kicks seemed unending. By the time Mitsumoto gave the order to make Ogata stop, it felt as though there was not an inch of Torrance’s body that did not ache.

  Mitsumoto crouched by Torrance’s head. ‘Where is the survey?’ he asked for the umpteenth time.

  ‘I told you, I used it for arse paper.’

  ‘What was it you called me? “Mr Moto”. That is how you Westerners see us Japanese, is it not? The funny little yellow men with thick glasses and buck teeth. You think you are better than us. Then please explain, how is it we funny little yellow men have beaten you at every battle we have fought? How is it that your Indian sepoys desert to our cause in droves? How is it in less than two months, we have conquered all of Malaya but the town of Johore? If your British Empire confers nothing but benefits on the downtrodden Malays and Tamils who slave on your plantations to enrich British capitalists, how is it they line the streets at our approach to greet our arrival with cheers?’

  ‘More bloody fool them, if that’s anything but Jap propaganda,’ said Torrance. ‘They’ll be singing a different tune once they’ve had a taste of Japanese Imperialism.’

  ‘They saw how you abandoned the island of Penang at the first approach of our armies, evacuating the white people and leaving the Asiatics to their fate. Shall I tell you why your British Empire crumbles before the advance of our armies? Because it is corrupt and decadent. The capitalists who run your empire are blinded by the pound signs in their eyes, and when a cold wind blows it is every man for himself. But Japan is strong. In Japan, no one thinks of himself, but works with his neighbours and brothers to serve something greater. Think of it! A hundred million souls with but a single thought – to serve their Emperor. Can your pathetic, blinkered, Western mind even conceive how wonderful that is?’

  ‘Bleedin’ marvellous, if you’re the Emperor. A bit shit for the rest of you, though. Unless you enjoy being a race of mindless slaves.’

  Mitsumoto laughed. ‘You think your rebellious attitude is a sign of your strength? It is your weakness. Like your masters, you have loyalty to no one. And that means no one has loyalty to you. But I shall teach you obedience.’

  He gave another order to Ogata, who dragged Torrance across to the ladder. Torrance was too weakened by the beating to resist as the sergeant strapped him to the rungs. Then Ogata hoisted the other end of the rope until the ladder was at an angle – with Torrance’s feet higher than his head – and tied it off. He crossed to the standpipe, and water began to pour from the hose, spreading in a puddle across the deck. Ogata’s hand descended over Torrance’s face, his huge fingers pinching his nostrils closed. Unable to breathe, Torrance opened his mouth, and Ogata jammed the end of the hose in it. The water filling Torrance’s mouth pushed down his windpipe and it became impossible to breathe without drawing water into his lungs.

  He gagged and choked, but there was no resisting the agonising sensation of pint after pint of water flowing into his lungs. A feeling of horror and panic overwhelmed him as he realised he was drowning. He tried to scream, producing a ghastly burbling sound from his water-filled throat. Common sense told him Mitsumoto did not want him to die before he was satisfied the Englishman had told him the truth; but every nerve ending in his body was telling him different, telling him the torture had gone wrong and Ogata was killing him. He could not breathe, and he knew without a shadow of doubt that he was going to die. He felt his body go into spasm, jerking furiously, futilely against the straps holding him in place. A warmth spread around his crotch, and his fear became mingled with a sense of shame as he realised he had pissed himself.

  He heard Mitsumoto say something in Japanese, and the water stopped running. Ogata pounded a fist against his belly, and he spewed up the water he had taken into his lungs. He could breathe again! A feeling of relief swamped him, so overwhelming he found himself weeping. He was going to live! Coughing and retching, he sobbed air into his lungs.

  ‘Where is the survey?’ asked Mitsumoto.

  Nothing could have filled Torrance with greater horror than the thought of undergoing that ordeal a second time. But that survey was Torrance’s nest-egg. After the war, it was going to provide him with enough working capital to set up the television-manufacturing company he dreamed of. And he would burn in hell before he gave up that dream.

  ‘I wiped my arse on it. Ask Rossi, if you don’t believe me.’ If the words did not come out in a rush, it was only because he was still struggling for breath.

  Mitsumoto said something to Ogata in Japanese. The sergeant reached for the hose again.

  ‘No!’ screamed Torrance. ‘Not again! I’m telling you the truth!’

  The water invaded his mouth and nostrils, and once more he experienced the hideous sensation of water gushing up his windpipe to fill his lungs. He gagged, and a nauseating feeling of terror swamped him. This time they were really going to kill him, and he was powerless to prevent it.

  A strange feeling of calm and fatalism crept upon him. He was dying. Suddenly, none of it seemed to matter any more. He had not expected his life to end like this, but he knew he no longer had any say in the matter.

  S
tygian blackness closed in on him. After this horror, even death seemed welcome. He surrendered himself to oblivion.

  Twenty-Two

  Pain. Pain everywhere. Pain in his head, his lungs, his face, his hands, his belly, his back, his feet, his arms and his legs. The pain meant he was still alive. He had preferred oblivion. He wanted to pass out, but the pain would not let him.

  They had been torturing him. Just recalling the agony and the terror of drowning brought him out in a cold sweat. His shirt was still damp from the water that had splashed over him from the hose. His trousers were still damp, too: he could smell the reek of his own urine, and a prickling sense of shame flooded through him when he remembered how he had blubbered and begged for mercy.

  The bastards. The bloody bastards! God, he wanted to catch up with the sods who had done that to him. He’d give them a taste of their own medicine.

  Hate… good. Better than shame. Use the hate. Hate to survive. Hate to live. Live to get your own back on the bastards. A man needed a purpose in life.

  The torture was over, for now at least. Torrance lay on his side and the rough floor of the storeroom they were using as a cell aboard the dredge hurt his tenderised skin, but there seemed little point in turning over, when every other part of him was just as bruised. Besides, his hands were still cuffed behind his back, the bracelets cutting into his wrists. Even if they had not been, he doubted he would have had the strength left to turn over.

  Rossi lay facing him. Judging from the bruises on his face and the dampness of his tattered and filthy khaki drills, he had received much the same treatment. He opened bruised and swollen eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Slugger,’ he groaned. ‘Just tell them where you hid the geological survey.’

  ‘Like hell. That gold’s my start-up capital.’

  ‘And how are you going to sell television sets after they’ve beaten us both to death?’

  After a while the door opened again, revealing Ogata standing there. The big sergeant stooped to grasp Torrance’s collar, hauling him out of the cell, and dragged him back along the lower deck to where he had been tortured before. Mitsumoto and Ziegler had Sheridan with them now.

  ‘Wotcher, doc!’ Torrance managed a smile. ‘How are they treating you?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, and indeed while she looked as though a bath, a hair-wash and a change of clothes would not go amiss, she bore no signs of ill-usage. ‘They’re holding me in an internment camp with a dozen snooty British ladies but— My God, Charlie! What have they done to you?’

  ‘Not much.’ Torrance suppressed a wince of pain. ‘I’ve had worse goings-over from geisha girls!’

  Ogata clenched his fists and reached for his shinei, propped against a nearby girder, but Mitsumoto gestured for him to be still.

  ‘You’d be wasting your time anyway.’ Ziegler put on a set of brass knuckledusters. ‘How many times must I tell you? You don’t make an Englander talk by beating him. You make him talk by beating his woman.’ He punched Sheridan in the stomach.

  She gasped in shock and agony and sank to her knees with both arms wrapped around her midriff.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ demanded Torrance. ‘She’s not my woman!’

  ‘No?’ Ziegler grabbed a fistful of Sheridan’s hair and dragged her to her feet. ‘I hope you have some feelings for the doctor. Otherwise she’s about to have a very bad day.’ He punched her in the stomach again.

  She collapsed to the deck, coughing and retching.

  ‘For Chrissakes!’ protested Torrance.

  ‘You want me to stop? Tell me where the survey is!’ Ziegler kicked Sheridan savagely in the ribs.

  She spat out a mouthful of blood and spittle. ‘Don’t tell this son-of-a-bitch anything, Charlie!’

  Ziegler grabbed a fistful of her hair again, hauling her head up and drawing back his fist to smash his knuckledusters into her cheek.

  ‘All right, all right!’ sobbed Torrance. ‘I hid it at the tin mine just before I was captured.’

  ‘My congratulations to you,’ Mitsumoto told Ziegler, before turning to Torrance. ‘What tin mine?’

  ‘The one where we were captured. Somewhere between Parit Sulong and Yong Peng.’

  ‘Where in the tin mine?’

  ‘In a thing.’

  ‘What do you mean, a “thing”?’

  ‘A piece of machinery. Do I work in an ore-processing plant? It was a thing… you put tin ore in one end and get tin out the other.’

  ‘Let me take him,’ said Ziegler. ‘He can direct me to the mine and show me where he hid the survey.’

  ‘Very well. Take the Riley. Lieutenant Ishikawa will accompany you.’ Mitsumoto checked his watch. ‘It’s now coming up to two o’clock.’ He wagged his cigarette holder in Torrance’s face. ‘Make no mistake – if you’re not back by dawn, with the survey, I’ll give Dr Sheridan to Ogata here to amuse himself with.’

  Ziegler pushed Torrance back across the gangplank to the shore, collecting Ishikawa en route. It was dark out: when Mitsumoto had said it was two o’clock, Torrance had been so disoriented he had not been sure if he meant the afternoon or the morning. Now he realised it was the small hours of the morning.

  As Ishikawa slid behind the Riley’s steering wheel, Ziegler pushed Torrance into the back, following him in. Struggling with his hands cuffed behind him, Torrance squirmed into a seated position. Ishikawa drove the Riley along the gravel road leading through the marshes. Where it joined the main road, there was a roadside hoarding advertising a remake of Noël Coward’s Bitter Sweet.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ groaned Torrance.

  ‘What is wrong?’ asked Ziegler.

  ‘As if I didn’t have enough to contend with – a new Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald picture!’

  Ziegler and Ishikawa both laughed. ‘If you’re lying about hiding the survey in a tin mine, maybe we strap you down and show you Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald pictures back to back,’ said Ishikawa, turning right on to the main road.

  ‘Ach, nein!’ chuckled Ziegler. ‘That’s going too far!’

  They were still laughing about it a minute later when they came to a T-junction with a sign saying Labis was three miles back the way they had come. Ishikawa followed the signs for Yong Peng.

  They got there half an hour later. Ziegler consulted his map. There were three tin mines marked in the vicinity of Yong Peng.

  ‘This isn’t it,’ Torrance said as soon as they reached the first.

  ‘You’re sure?’ asked Ziegler. ‘Don’t all tin mines look alike?’

  ‘I’m sure. The one I was at was like a big bowl in the earth, surrounded by jungle, with all this bamboo scaffolding, and there was a sort of railway line leading up to the ore-processing plant.’

  Ishikawa put the Riley back in gear and drove to the second. That was not it either.

  As they followed the directions to the third, Ziegler glanced at his watch. ‘It’s after five now. This next one had better be it, for Dr Sheridan’s sake.’

  ‘This is it,’ Torrance said as they emerged from the gravel road leading through the surrounding jungle. ‘Pull up by that big building.’

  Ishikawa parked the Riley outside the ore-processing plant and got out, slinging a Thompson from his right shoulder. Ziegler gestured with his own tommy gun for Torrance to get out of the car. MacLeod’s decapitated corpse still lay where it had fallen, though it looked as though wild animals had been at it. Ziegler, Ishikawa and Torrance walked across to the plant. There was no sign of Lieutenant Jennings’ body, or any of the Japanese they had killed, though rusty bloodstains still marked the floor and corrugated walls. Torrance wondered what else might have been tidied away during the past week.

  ‘So, where did you hide the survey?’ demanded Ziegler.

  ‘In the thing.’ Torrance indicated the chute feeder.

  ‘Where in the thing?’

  ‘In the hopper. Take off these cuffs and I’ll climb in and get it for you.’

  ‘Do you take me for a fo
ol? You stay where you are.’

  Torrance shrugged and sat down with his back to one of the ore-beater tubs.

  Ishikawa unslung his Thompson, propping it against the side of the chute feeder, and climbed up some pipes until he could look down into the hopper. ‘I see something in a Manila folder.’ He stretched out an arm into the hopper. ‘Can’t… quite… reach it.’

  Fumbling on the floor behind his buttocks until his fingertips brushed something metallic and cold, Torrance was thinking the exact same thing.

  Ishikawa swung across and clambered into the hopper. Behind Ziegler, Torrance worked his handcuffs under his buttocks. Bringing his knees up to his chest, he got them past his feet so that now his hands were cuffed in front of him rather than behind. Rolling on to his stomach, he reached both hands under the ore-beater tub and grasped the Nambu magazine pistol a Japanese officer had dropped there a week ago.

  ‘Got it!’ Ishikawa’s head and shoulders appeared above the hopper. He held the geological survey aloft with a triumphant expression, like Neville Chamberlain fresh off the plane at Heston aerodrome. His face fell when he saw the pistol in Torrance’s hand. ‘Abunai!’

  The Nambu’s safety catch was already forward. Torrance worked the slide, ejecting a perfectly good round. Ziegler was turning, levelling his Thompson. Torrance shot him twice through the chest. Dropping the sub-machine gun, Ziegler staggered back to collapse against the corrugated wall.

  Ishikawa vaulted over the rim of the hopper, rolling as he hit the floor below to where he had left his Thompson. Torrance adjusted his aim and shot him through the chest. Ishikawa screwed up his face in agony, but nevertheless made another lunge for the Thompson. Torrance fired twice more, putting both rounds through Ishikawa’s skull. Blood splashed across the chute feeder, the boom of the pistol reverberated off the corrugated walls.

  Seeing both Ziegler and Ishikawa lying motionless, staring glassy-eyed in death, Torrance dropped the pistol and began trembling. He found himself replaying the last minute over and over again in his mind’s eye, only this time it was Ziegler or Ishikawa who got Torrance first. The thought of how easily he might have been killed made his stomach lurch. He stared at his hands: they were shaking uncontrollably. He clenched them into fists, making the nails dig painfully into his palms. It seemed to help.