Passage of Arms

by Eric Ambler

  Mr. Nilsen smiled tolerantly. “No, Jimmy, I don’t. I’m an engineer and I have a small die-casting plant at a place called Wilmington. Nilsen’s a pretty common name in the United States.”

  “I beg your pardon. I did not know that. Some day, perhaps, I will be able to go to America.”

  He congratulated himself. The chances of his being caught out in the lie about a textile man named Nilsen from Dayton had been small. The information gained had been reassuring. Mr. Nilsen was neither a government official, who might consider it his duty to notify the authorities, nor a newspaperman who might become indiscreet in other ways. He was a respectable businessman of just the type that Mr. Tan had described; and travelling by just the specified route. The problem now was to find a way of putting Mr. Tan’s proposition in an attractive light without being either compromised or misunderstood.

  When he returned home, Ah Au said nothing to his wife about Mr. Nilsen. He had already decided to make this further attempt to oblige Mr. Tan; but only if the opportunity presented itself. He would take no more risks than he had to. The pressure of her expectations might distort his judgment.

  During the night he lay awake for an hour going over every moment of the afternoon and re-examining his image of Mr. Nilsen. When he was sure that nothing had escaped his attention, he went back to sleep.

  The Arlene woman was late, and they did not leave the dock until nearly ten-thirty. Mr. Nilsen controlled his impatience too obviously. It was an inauspicious beginning. Ah Au wanted Mr. Nilsen in as relaxed a mood as possible, and took an early opportunity of suggesting that, as they had plenty of time in hand, they might like to stop at the Castle Peak Hotel for coffee. It was about four miles out on the Tai Po Road, and they would be passing it anyway.

  Mrs. Nilsen thought this a good idea, and the tension seemed to slacken. By the time they left Castle Peak and were heading for the frontier, the atmosphere had improved still further. Soon, as they began to pass farms and paddy fields, Ah Au was hearing the familiar exclamations—“Look at that wooden plough!”

  “This is really old China!”

  “What about those hats with curtains!”

  “My God, the smell!”—which told him that his passengers were enjoying themselves.

  He drove absently, answering the questions put to him promptly and fully, but not elaborating on his answers. He was waiting for a British Army truck to come along. Presently they overtook one, and he slowed to stay behind it. It was, happily, full of troops.

  He glanced at Mr. Nilsen and smiled. “We are getting near Red China,” he said. “This is the beginning of the military zone.”

  Mr. Nilsen was leaning forward staring at the truck. “Are those British troops?”

  “Yes, sir, a Scottish regiment. There is a camp farther along this road.”

  “How many do they have to guard this frontier?”

  “One or two battalions, I think.”

  “One or two battalions!” He turned round. “Did you hear that, Dorothy? Only one or two battalions to guard this frontier. My God, the Reds could walk in here any time they wanted. Isn’t that right, Jimmy?”

  Ah Au smiled. “Oh yes, sir. But I think they could do that even if there were two divisions to guard the frontier.”

  Mr. Nilsen nodded grimly. “You could be right at that. How near to the frontier can we get?”

  “About a mile, sir. It is dangerous, you see.”

  “How dangerous?”

  “Sometimes they shoot from the other side at persons moving too close to the frontier line.”

  “Nice people.”

  The army truck turned off the road into the camp entrance, and Ah Au put on speed again. He could feel the mounting excitement of the man beside him and wanted to satisfy it.

  About a mile and a half from the frontier, the road turned sharply to the right and ran parallel to it. However, there was a narrow cart track heading straight on, and Ah Au drove down it until they reached a small farmhouse. The track continued; but a few yards past the house there was a large signboard prohibiting movement beyond that point. Ah Au stopped the car, took a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment, and they all got out.

  For about a mile ahead the landscape was flat. Then, there was a line of low hills, the sides of which were dotted with groups of burial urns, and a ridge. Along the ridge and near the top of it ran a thin black line.

  “That is the frontier, sir.” Ah Au handed Mr. Nilsen the binoculars.

  “That black line?”

  “Yes, it is a barbed-wire fence. There are machine-gun towers, too, but you cannot see them well from here.”

  Mr. Nilsen scanned the line of the fence from side to side, then handed the binoculars to his wife and got out his camera.

  “F 11 with the haze filter,” Ah Au murmured.

  Mr. Nilsen nodded and went to work. He did a panning shot first, beginning close on his wife as she looked through the binoculars, then going on to the signboard, then moving into an extreme long shot of the frontier. Then, he switched the turret on to the telephoto lens. He used two magazines of film before he was finished.

  The Arlene woman became bored and went back to the car. Small children from the farmhouse soon began to peer at her through the car windows, and hold out their hands for money. Ah Au had to chase them away.

  Mr. Nilsen returned to the car reluctantly, and insisted on taking some shots of the farmhouse and the giggling children before he could be persuaded to leave. Even as they bumped along the track back to the road, he kept looking over his shoulder towards the frontier. Ah Au was pleased with the impression it had made.

  When they passed the Kowloon-Canton Railway where it curved towards the frontier station, there were more questions.

  “Is there a lot of railroad traffic between Kowloon and Canton?”

  “Oh yes, sir. People go to see friends and family in Canton.”

  “I don’t get it. You mean they just go?”

  “They must get a permit from the Chinese government office in Hong Kong, but it is quite easy.”

  “Hear that, Dorothy? So that’s the bamboo curtain!”

  “You wish to go to Canton, sir?”

  “Me? No thanks!” He laughed. “I have United States government contracts to think about.”

  They stopped at Tai Po market so that the two women could look at the small shops there and buy coolie hats. Ah Au bargained for the hats, and, when they had been paid for, took them back to the car.

  He was about to return and render further assistance, when Mr. Nilsen joined him.

  “They’ve gone into a silk shop,” he said. “They’re not going to buy, but they’ll be there an age. You smoke?”

  “Not when driving, sir. But now, thank you.”

  They sat in the car and smoked. A ring of children collected to stare at them, but Mr. Nilsen took no notice.

  “Have you ever been to Canton?” he asked.

  “No, sir. I have been to Macao where my wife has some relatives, but my family is in Manila.”

  “Is that so? Don’t you like the Philippines?”

  “My family went there from here, sir. But I was born here and I am British. There are more opportunities here, I think.”

  “I don’t get it. I should have thought this was the last place where you could look forward to any sort of security for your family. This section for instance. You call it the New Territories. But it’s leased, isn’t it, from the Government of China.”

  “Yes, sir, in eighteen-ninety-eight. It was leased for ninety-nine years.”

  “So in nineteen-ninety-seven you’ll have to give it back to the Reds, if they’re still in business.”

  “That is so.”

  “Or if they don’t walk in and take it back before.”

  “There is always the possibility, sir, but I do not think the risk is great. Hong Kong is no danger to them, and it is a useful outlet to the west. That is why, too, the Portuguese are allowed to stay in Macao.”

&n
bsp; Ah Au spoke almost without thinking. He had planned to wait until after lunch at Shatin before attempting to broach the subject of Mr. Tan’s proposition. Now, he was being offered an opening of a kind he could not possibly have contrived. His heart began to beat faster. Then, he made up his mind.

  “All that could change overnight,” Mr. Nilsen was saying; “some shift in the Cold War or another Korea over the Formosa situation, and I wouldn’t give you a nickel for the Peninsular Hotel.”

  Ah Au smiled. “You are probably right, sir. But, meanwhile, there are advantages to both sides, and not only for the big bankers and trading companies here.”

  “That so?”

  “In fact I can tell you a story that may amuse you, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, sir, it is a little confidential, but you are not a policeman or a newspaperman, so I can tell you.” He paused.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “You see, sir, we Chinese are all pirates at heart.” He shrugged. “Chinese piracy is as old as history. When the Reds began sending arms and ammunition down by sea in junks to the terrorists in Malaya, there were naturally some men, both here and in Macao, who thought it a pity that such valuable cargoes should arrive at their destinations. It was a great temptation. So as often as they could, they …” He spread his hands deprecatingly.

  “They hijacked them?” Mr. Nilsen smiled.

  “Yes, though that was not the best part of the joke, sir. You know that arms and ammunition are very valuable in this part of the world.”

  “They are in most places.”

  “Particularly in the Far East, sir. But the trouble is that there are government regulations and embargoes that make it difficult to sell military equipment. It was not easy to seize these cargoes, and although the Reds could not make international complaints without admitting openly that they were supplying the terrorists, these pirates, these hijackers you would call them, they ran great risks. There had to be profit.” He paused again. He could see that he had Mr. Nilsen’s whole attention.

  “Well, how did they get rid of the stuff?”

  “It was very simple, sir. They took the Communist arms down to Indonesia, and sold them to the anti-Communist rebels.”

  Mr. Nilsen stared and then began to laugh.

  Ah Au sighed inwardly with relief. He saw the holes in his own story so clearly that he had been afraid Mr. Nilsen would see them, too.

  He did see one an instant later. When he had stopped laughing, he said: “What I don’t see is why the Reds sent the stuff down by sea at all. What about the British Navy? Couldn’t they intercept the shipments to Malaya?”

  “They intercepted many, sir, but, you know, there are a lot of junks in the China Seas. Last year there were over twenty-five thousand of them using Hong Kong alone. You cannot intercept and search every junk at sea between here and Singapore.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Though you are right, sir. The illegal arms traffic was stopped in the end. A friend of mine in Manila was very sad about that.”

  “Yes?”

  “Some time ago he took a shipment of arms and ammunition out of a Red junk off Hainan. It was modern equipment, rifles, machine-guns, bazookas, worth sixty thousand dollars. And it is still in Manila.”

  “Why? Aren’t there any more anti-Communists in Indonesia?”

  “Plenty, sir, but it is not as simple as it was before. This is no longer a small business. The buying agents for the rebels are in Singapore and they must be careful.

  They will not buy illegal arms any more. My friend has tried to sell. Now he says he must try to make the arms legal.”

  “How does he propose to do that?”

  But Ah Au had seen the two women approaching and was already getting out of the car to open tne door for them. Mr. Nilsen’s forecast that they would buy nothing had proved incorrect. His wife had a shantung dress-length and the Arlene woman had some jade ear-rings. They got into the car showing their purchases and chattering about the other things that the shop had for sale.

  Ah Au drove on towards Shatin.

  The interruption of his conversation with Mr. Nilsen had not dismayed him. On the contrary; he was glad of it. He was quite sure that Mr. Nilsen was sufficiently intrigued to want an answer to his last question; and it was much better that he should be the one to return to the subject.

  Ah Au did not have to wait long. When the three Americans had had lunch at the Shatin Hotel, the women went for a walk in the gardens overlooking the valley. Mr. Nilsen had gone to the toilet; but, when he came out, he did not join the women in the garden. Instead, he came out to Ah Au who was sitting in the car.

  Ah Au got out to open the door, but Mr. Nilsen waved him back.

  “I’ve seen enough sights for the moment,” he said with a smile; “I want to hear more about your friend in Manila.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What did you mean about making that shipment of arms legal?”

  “You understand, sir, this is very confidential.”

  “Sure, I understand.”

  “For arms to be legal, sir, they have to have a legal owner and a legal place of origin. What my friend needs is a nominee.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “What my friend would like to do is ship the arms to be held in bond at Singapore, and then sell them.”

  “Why can’t he do that?”

  “Sir, the authorities at Singapore would not accept the consignment in bond without a proper certified bill of lading from a reputable shipper at the port of origin. Unfortunately, residents of Manila cannot trade in arms without a government permit. That is difficult and expensive to obtain. So, he must have a foreign nominee.”

  “Why? I don’t get it.”

  “After the war in Manila, sir, a lot of surplus American war material was sold to dealers who exported it. The regulations about permits do not apply to non-resident foreigners exporting arms.”

  “I see.”

  “Also, sir, the nominee would have to go to Singapore to sign clearance papers. My friend has tried to find the right person, but although he is willing to pay as much as five per cent for the service, he has been unsuccessful. He will not deal with crooks.”

  “Hijackers aren’t usually so particular.”

  “A crook would cheat him, sir. Once the papers are signed what is to prevent the nominee from claiming the goods are his and keeping all the money? Sixty thousand Straits dollars is a lot. Twenty-one thousand dollars American.”

  “And five per cent ofthat is a thousand and fifty.” Mr. Nilsen grinned amiably. “Jimmy, you couldn’t be telling me all this for a reason, could you?”

  Ah Au’s heart missed a beat. Was Mr. Nilsen going to be like the man from Cleveland after all?

  “A reason, sir? But you asked me.”

  “I know it. But you sort of raised the question in the first place, didn’t you. Come on now, Jimmy. Didn’t you have some idea that I might be suckered into acting as your friend’s nominee?”

  Ah Au looked amazed. “You, sir? I had not thought of it.”

  “All right. Never mind.” He started to turn away.

  Ah Au spoke quickly. “But would you consider such a proposition, sir?”

  Mr. Nilsen looked at him coldly. “What’s the angle, Jimmy?”

  “Angle, sir?”

  “What’s your friend in Manila trying to smuggle? Opium?”

  “Sir, that is not a good thing to say. You asked me questions. I answered the truth.”

  “All right. Let me ask you some more questions. What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Sir, if you believe that he is smuggling opium you will go to the police. How can I tell you?”

  “All right, I promise not to go to the police. What’s his name?”

  Ah Au hesitated, then bowed slightly. “As you promise, I must accept your promise. Please note that, sir. His name is Mr. Tan Tack Chee.”

  “Right, then why does Mr. Tan Tack
Chee have you touting for him? Why doesn’t he find a nominee himself?”

  “Because he has no contacts, sir, with passengers off boats. He cannot go up to strangers and make his request. And it has to be someone who is going to Singapore. How would he know?”

  “Why doesn’t he get hold of an officer on one of the ships and ask him to do it?”

  “A ship’s officer dealing in arms would be an object of suspicion to the authorities in Singapore, sir.”

  “So would I.”

  “No, sir. Many of the dealers in war material are American businessmen. You are an engineer with a business in America. You would be perfectly acceptable.”

  “Don’t you mean innocent-looking? Don’t you mean I’d be a good cover? You say no opium. Okay, but there are other kinds of contraband. How do I know what’d be in that shipment?”

  Ah Au smiled. “Mr. Nilsen, sir, no person who wished to make an illegal shipment of any kind would describe it on a bill of lading and a ship’s manifest as arms and ammunition. That is asking for it to be examined by port authorities.”

  “Is that how it would be described?”

  “Of course, sir.” Ah Au spread out his hands. “That is my friend’s need, to be able to have the shipment legally bonded in Singapore. I explained this.”

  Mr. Nilsen thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, you did. This Mr. Tan, now. You say he’s a friend of yours. How did you get to know him?”

  Ah Au drew himself up a trifle stiffly. “He is my wife’s father, sir,” he said.

  Mr. Nilsen began to laugh, then checked himself. “Sorry, Jimmy. I was just amused at the idea of a man calling his father-in-law his friend.”

  “You are not friendly with Mrs. Nilsen’s father, sir?”

  “Oh sure, but … no, skip it. I’d better go and see where those women have got to.”

  He had started to go. Ah Au followed him.

  “Then you will consider the proposition, sir?”

  Mr. Nilsen grinned affably. “Oh sure, I’ll consider it.”

  “When will you decide, sir?”

  “I’ll let you know tonight. Now back the car up, Jimmy, will you. I have to stop off at the Peninsular Hotel for a fitting at the tailor’s.”