by Eric Ambler
After he had promised to see that a seat was held for me on the Friday plane to Djakarta, he asked me how things were up in Tangga. I told him, and asked how things were in Selampang. It was a foolish question; but I had nothing to do until the offices opened again, and I thought, somewhat virtuously, that the least I could do was to listen to him.
I received the answer I deserved.
“You know damn well how things are in this city. I would be pleased if you would stop encouraging me to become a bore. Have another drink.”
Over luncheon, however, he did unburden himself a little.
“I wouldn’t like a Government spy to hear me saying this,” he said; “but people like me have only one chance of survival here.”
“What’s that?”
“A revolution.”
“You mean Sanusi?”
“Why not? Did you know that he’d appointed a representative in New York to lobby the United States, and that for the past six months he’s had agents in Malaya and Pakistan, meeting religious leaders and canvassing support for the movement?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“The censorship has been quite efficient, but in my business news gets around. I can tell you, they’re badly worried down here. Sanusi controls more than half the total area of the country as it is. The Nasjah Government has failed completely. The country’s bankrupt, the elections were a farce and the Communists are getting stronger every day. If Sanusi were to take over tomorrow, the Americans and British would probably sigh with relief.”
“I don’t see how you’d be better off, though.”
“We couldn’t be worse off. At least, we could come to terms with Sanusi.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Sanusi may be a fanatic in some ways, but in others he is open to reason.”
“You speak as if you knew him.”
“Oh yes, I know him. You forget, he commanded the garrison here.” He paused, then added: “There are lots of people in this place who know Sanusi.”
“I’m sure there are. Has he any weaknesses?”
“Wishful thinking. Same as me.”
A waiter was hovering near us. De Vries began to talk of other things. It was not until we were sitting on the terrace having our coffee that he reverted to the subject. A column of army trucks with troops aboard them went by. The troops were in full marching order, with steel helmets and machine pistols. They were clinging on for dear life as the trucks bounced over the pot holes outside the hotel. I remembered something I had read in the Government newspaper that morning about an important army exercise.
“Sanusi has another weakness,” De Vries remarked sombrely.
“Oh?”
“He does not like to take chances.”
When the Government offices reopened I made another tour, beginning with the Ministry of Public Works, who were required to certify that I was leaving the country with their knowledge and without any of their property in my possession, and ending with the police department, where I deposited the completed forms, together with my passport and a substantial sum to cover “fees.” A sour police lieutenant then agreed reluctantly that, if I returned the following day at about the same time, the exit permit might be stamped in my passport. When I arrived back at the tailor’s it was no surprise to find that the slacks and shirts I had ordered were ready for me; nevertheless, I was pleased. After a day with official Sunda, it was refreshing to deal with the businesslike Chinese.
Back in the apartment, I slept for an hour or so. When I awoke, I found that it had rained heavily and that the air smelt of, and felt like, hot mud. However, the water in the bathhouse was cool, and, after I had showered, I was able to dress without too much discomfort.
I had arranged to meet Rosalie at the New Harmony Club at eight thirty. Soon after eight, I locked up the apartment and set out. The lift was not working, and I had to walk down the stairs past the floors occupied by the radio station. The corridors had sponge-rubber carpets laid along them and there was a lot of external wiring on the walls; but otherwise they looked much like floors in an ordinary office building. On one landing workmen were manhandling a heavy piece of electrical equipment that looked like a meat safe out of the lift. When I reached the ground floor I could hear a big diesel generator set thudding away in the basement. The radio station, Jebb had told me, was independent of the city power supply. The two policemen on the door glanced at me casually, but did not trouble to look at the temporary pass their predecessors had given me earlier in the day.
Mahmud pedalled over grinning when he saw me come out, and soon we were splashing through the rain-filled pot holes along the Telegraf Road towards the racecourse.
I would like to be able to say that I sensed something strange about the city that evening-an inexplicable tension in the air, a brooding calm that foretold the storm-but I cannot. Most of the drains had overflowed with the rain and added their own special stench to the normal canal smell, but there seemed to be just as many people about as there had been the previous night, and they all seemed to be behaving in the normal way. On one patch of wasteland beside the road, there was even a small fair in progress. A carousel had been set up, and a small stage on which two Indian conjurors were performing. Mahmud slowed down as we went past. One of the conjurors was holding a tin chamber pot, while the other pretended to defecate coins into it. As the coins clattered into the pot, the crowd applauded happily.
When I got to the club, I went through into the bar. It was fairly crowded, but I was relieved to find that neither Lim Mor Sai nor his wife was there. The Dutch couple were at their place by the piano. I had a drink and watched them for a time. Once, the pianist nodded vaguely to them and began to play what was evidently their favourite tune. The man touched his wife’s hand, and she looked at him fondly. The man smiled and said something to the pianist; but he was bored with them again. For him, no doubt, they were merely two pathetic Europeans who drank too much and breathed across the piano at him every evening, distracting him with their tiresome adulation from his private world of soft lights, rich boy-friends and American recordings. It was all rather depressing.
Then, Rosalie arrived and things were suddenly different.
She was wearing a light cotton dress that should have made her look more European, but for some reason had the reverse effect. As soon as she saw me, she smiled and came over, nodding to someone she knew on the way. There was nothing self-conscious about her greeting, no arch pretence that she had not really expected to find me there. She was glad to see me and I was glad to see her, and, as I was drinking gin, she would drink that, too.
It was a good evening. I don’t remember all the things we talked about; Mina and Jebb for a while, I know, and the police department, food, clothes, Singapore, air travel, and the black markets; but after we had dined, and then danced a bit, we talked about ourselves. I learned that she had a sister who worked for a shipping company, that her father, who had been in the Dutch army, had died in a Jap P.O.W. camp, and that her mother preferred to live now with relatives who owned land near Kota Baru. She learned that, after a spell in the Western Desert, I had spent most of the war building airfields, that my wife had gone off with a Polish army officer while I had been away, and that my firm in London had written asking me if I would like to do a job in Brazil.
Lim Mor Sai showed up later in the evening and went round the tables making himself agreeable to the customers. When he stopped at our table I gave him Jebb’s message about the cigars. Just for a moment it seemed to disconcert him.
“Cigars? Ah yes. That is most kind.” He paused. “May I ask where you are staying, Mr. Fraser?”
“Jebb’s lent me his apartment. Why?”
He hesitated, then shrugged apologetically. “Here one always asks. The hotels are so full. You are fortunate.” He bowed slightly and moved on; but I had a feeling that he had left something unsaid. So had Rosalie. I saw her look after him in a puzzled sort of way; then our eyes met, she smiled as
if I had caught her out in an indiscretion, and we got up to dance again.
We left the place soon after eleven. Mahmud was waiting outside. There is just room for two reasonably slim persons in a betjak, and he waved away a colleague who tried to muscle in. Rosalie gave him an address, and he set off enthusiastically, the chain making cracking sounds as he threw his weight on to the pedals.
The street to which he took us was on the outskirts of the Chinese quarter. The pavements were arcaded, and between the shops there were broad, steep staircases leading to the upper floors. About halfway down the street, Rosalie told him to stop. Then she got out and hurried up one of the staircases. I lit a cigarette and waited. A little way along the street, an old man was sitting on the edge of the open drain with his legs dangling into it, solemnly combing a long grey beard. On the opposite pavement there was a Sikh watchman asleep on a charpoy placed across the doorway of a furniture shop. Only two or three windows in the street showed any light. It was so quiet that I could hear Mahmud breathing.
Rosalie was gone about ten minutes. When she returned, she had a small dressing case with her. I told Mahmud to drive us to the Air House.
There, the policemen on duty at the door glanced casually at my pass and nodded. They paid no attention to Rosalie. The generator in the basement was silent; presumably, the radio station had shut down for the night. The lift was working again and lights had been left on in the fifth-floor corridor. Beyond the swing doors at the end of it, however, there was pitch darkness and I had to strike matches to light the way to the apartment. I remembered how unprepossessing it had seemed to me the previous day.
“It’s not all as bad as this,” I said.
“I know, Mina told me. Besides, I helped her choose the furniture.”
When I had left the apartment, I had locked all the windows on to the terrace. She sat down while I opened up the living room, but when I came back from doing the bedroom, I found that she had gone into the kitchen and was looking at the refrigerator.
“Thirsty?” I asked.
“A little.” She patted the refrigerator. “Does it work?”
“Oh yes.”
I got a tray of ice out and showed her. She smiled and wandered off into the living room. When I went in there with the ice and glasses, however, she was out on the terrace.
I watched her. For a moment or two she stood quite still, looking round at everything as if she were making an inventory, then she walked away slowly past the attap screen to inspect the bathhouse. She was out of sight now, but I could hear her shoes clicking on the concrete. The sound receded and then got louder again. I heard her go into the bedroom. The sound of her footsteps ceased, and I knew that she was standing there taking in everything and getting used to it. The drinks were made, but I left them where they were and stretched out on one of the long chairs. I did not want to interrupt her.
A minute went by, and then I heard her move.
“Steven?” It was the first time she had used my name.
“In here.”
She came through from the bedroom and smiled when she saw me on the chair.
“I have been looking at everything,” she said.
“Yes, I know.”
I handed her a drink. She drank about half of it, but thoughtfully, as if she were up against a serious problem. I asked her what it was.
“It is very warm,” she explained carefully. “I was thinking that I would take a bath.”
“Is that all? Well, I’m going to take one, too. You go first.”
She came back from the bathhouse wearing a sarong. The towel was draped modestly over her breasts and her black hair hung loose on her shoulders. I left her standing by the terrace balustrade, looking down into the square below.
The water was deliciously cool. I dried myself slowly so as not to get warm again, tied a towel round my waist and walked back along the terrace.
She was no longer there, and there was only a single light on in the living room. It shone indirectly through the open door into the bedroom. It was there that I found her.
It was still dark when I awoke and the terrace outside was almost white in the moonlight. I knew that it was a sound that had wakened me, but I did not know what sound. I looked across at Rosalie asleep on the other bed; but she was quite still. There was a small table between the two beds and I could see the dial of my watch glowing there. It was three forty-five.
Just then I heard the sound again. It came from away along the terrace. A man said something sharply and there was a noise like a packing case being moved on concrete.
I swung my legs to the floor and stood up. My bath towel was lying between the beds and I wrapped it around my waist. If I were going to have to tackle an intruder, I preferred not to do so stark naked.
I bent over Rosalie and kissed her. She stirred in her sleep. I kissed her again and she opened her eyes. I kept my head close to hers.
“Wake up, but speak softly.”
“What is it?” She was still half asleep.
“Listen. There’s somebody trying to get along the terrace from one of the empty apartments. Thieves, I suppose. I’m going to scare them away.”
She sat up. “Have you a revolver?”
“Yes, but I hope I won’t have to use it. They’re making a lot of noise. They probably think there’s no one here.”
My suitcase was under the bed. I got the revolver out, rotated the cylinder until one of the three rounds in it would fire when I pressed the trigger, and went over to the window.
There was a wall separating this section of the terrace from that belonging to the unfinished apartment next door, and it had iron spikes on it. I heard one of the men cursing as he tried to negotiate them. Now was the moment to act, I thought. As I had told Rosalie, all I wanted to do was to scare them away. If either of them got down from the wall, he would be cornered with nowhere to run to.
I stepped out on to the terrace.
I could see very clearly. The moon was behind me, shining directly along the terrace. A man was standing on the top of the wall astride the spikes. He was wearing an army steel helmet and a belt of ammunition pouches. As I watched, he bent down and took something handed up to him from below. When he straightened up I saw that it was a Japanese-pattern machine pistol. He held it up for a moment, regaining his balance, then he brought his other leg over the spikes and jumped.
As he landed on the terrace, I moved back into the bedroom. I was confused and scared now, but I had some sense left. I went straight back to the suitcase and dropped the revolver inside it.
“What’s the matter?” Rosalie whispered.
I took her hand and held it tightly, motioning her not to speak. The soldier was walking along the terrace now, not cautiously, but as if he were uncertain of the way. Then, he came into view, the machine pistol held across his body as if he were on patrol. Rosalie started violently and I gripped her tighter. For a moment the man outside stood silhouetted in the moonlight. He looked round and stared at the bedroom window. Rosalie began to tremble. He took a step towards it.
Suddenly, a loud hammering noise came from the living room, and I realised that someone was beating on the outer door of the apartment.
The man on the terrace peered round and then went through the open window into the living room. The door into the bedroom was open and we saw him cross towards the hall. A moment later there was the sound of the bolts of the door being shot back and a murmur of voices. The lights in there went on.
I stood up. My dressing gown was lying on a chair and I tossed it to Rosalie. Then, putting my finger to my lips, to warn her to keep quiet, I walked through into the living room.
There were several voices murmuring in the corridor now. Suddenly, there was a sound of sharp footsteps approaching and the voices were hushed.
A Sundanese voice said: “At your service, Major tuan.”
A moment later, Major Suparto walked into the room.
4
He did not recognise me
at once. His pistol holster was unfastened and his hand went to it quickly. At the same moment he called sharply to the soldiers in the corridor. As he levelled the pistol, two of them ran in through the doorway. They had the long chopping-knives called parangs in their hands, and as soon as they saw me they started forward with a shout.
I had opened my mouth to tell him who I was, but it all happened so quickly that I was still gagging over the words when he yelled to the two men to halt. They were within a yard of me with their parangs raised to strike, and their teeth clenched in the mad killing grimace. Another second and he could not have stopped them hacking me to pieces. As it was, they stood there dazed, their faces gradually regaining a stupid sort of sanity as they lowered their arms.
Suparto came towards me, thrusting them aside.
“What is this?” he demanded. “Why are you here?”
I was so unnerved that it did not occur to me that those should have been my questions. Idiotically, I started to explain about hearing someone climbing on to the terrace. He cut me short.
“The owner of this apartment is in Makassar.”
“I know. He lent it to me.”
He swore, stared at me bitterly for a moment and then motioned to the two soldiers to stand back.
They retreated, awkwardly as if they had been reprimanded. I was coming to my senses again now and realised that there was something unfamiliar about their uniforms. The trousers were of khaki drill, but it was not the same khaki that I had seen on other troops in the city. And both men were wearing a sort of yellow brassard on the left arm. So was Suparto.