by Eric Ambler
Aroff did not move. “The document, General, was intended as a basis for negotiations. It can be modified.”
Ishak shook his head. “It cannot be modified. You are not here to negotiate or to discuss terms. If you are not here to offer surrender, then we are wasting time.” He stood up. “You have five minutes to get back to your lines.”
Aroff hesitated, then he gave in. “On what terms would you accept a surrender, General?”
“I will tell you. Your masters say that they wish to avoid useless suffering and damage to property. So do I. On that point we agree. Very well. I will accept the surrender of all members of your rebel force who disarm themselves, form themselves into separate parties of not more than twenty-five, and march under flags of surrender to the square in front of the railroad station. Each party should appoint a leader who will carry the white flag, and every man must bring any food he has with him. All arms and ammunition must be left behind under guard in the Van Riebeeck square until our troops arrive there.”
“What treatment would those who surrender receive?”
“For the present they will be treated as if they were foreign prisoners of war under the terms of the Geneva Convention. Later, no doubt, after a year, perhaps, an amnesty will be granted. That is all, I think. Do those terms seem harsh to you, Aroff?”
Aroff shook his head.
Ishak smiled unpleasantly. “After what has happened, they seem to me absurdly lenient. Politicians’ terms, Aroff! You should be laughing.”
Aroff sighed. “You were good enough to say that I was an intelligent man, General. You would have more dignity if you treated me as one.”
“What more do you want, Aroff? A free pardon?”
“The list of exceptions, General. The list of those whose surrender will not be accepted.”
“Ah yes, the outlaws.” He held out his hand and Suparto gave him a paper. “Let us see. Sanusi, Roda, Aroff, Dahman… I am sorry to tell you that you are on the list. Shall I read any more?”
“If Major Suparto drew it up, I am sure it is complete.” Aroff looked straight at Suparto, and I was glad I could not see his eyes.
Suparto stared back impassively.
Ishak handed Aroff the paper. “Your masters will want to see that. They have half an hour in which to let us know that they accept our terms.”
“Terms, General?” Aroff said bitterly. “You mean a death sentence, surely!”
“No, Aroff.” Ishak’s eyes narrowed. “That sentence has been passed already. It is no longer a question of whether you all die or not, but only of how you die and of how many of your men die with you. We shall see now what value your leader puts on his men’s lives.” He turned to Suparto. “Send them back.”
Ishak began to walk towards the barrack entrance. Suparto moved after him quickly and said something. Ishak paused. I saw him glance back at me and then nod to Suparto before walking on.
Suparto came over to Aroff.
“Mr. Fraser is a foreigner and a non-combatant. Is it necessary for him to return with you?”
Aroff shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose not.”
“It is very necessary,” I said.
They both stared at me.
Suparto frowned. “Why?”
“Roda left me in no doubt that he regards Miss Linden as a hostage.”
“That is absurd.”
“It wasn’t absurd yesterday, Major. You should know that.”
“The situation is now different.”
“Not for Miss Linden. She’s still up there in that apartment. I’m very grateful to you for the suggestion, but I think I must go back.”
He sighed irritably. “This is foolishness, Mr. Fraser. The woman is not your wife.”
“Perhaps Mr. Fraser has scruples about betraying those who trust him,” said Aroff.
Suparto stood absolutely still, his face a mask. For a moment he stared at Aroff, then he nodded to the lieutenant who was waiting to escort us back to the jeep.
Aroff was smiling as he turned away.
The jeep had been standing out in the sun and the metal on it was painful to touch. I made a clumsy job of turning it between the deep drains. My movements were hampered, too, by the staff captain, who was leaning forward across the back of my seat, pleading with Aroff.
“The list, Colonel. May I see the list?”
“Not now.”
“A man has a right to know if he is to die.”
“All men have to die, Captain.”
“If I could see the list.”
“Not while they are watching us. Have you no dignity?”
“For the love of Allah, tell me.”
“Are you a renegade? Did you formerly hold a commission from the Republic?”
“You know that I did, Colonel.”
“Then you will be on the list.”
I managed to get the jeep round at last and drove back towards the barricade. Behind me, the staff captain began to weep.
From this side of the canal crossing I could see the front of the cinema. Above the portico there was a big advertising cut-out. Next week, it said, they would be showing Samson and Delilah.
When we arrived back at the square, the shelling had stopped. The Ministry of Public Health had had a direct hit on the roof, and smoke was drifting up from the smouldering debris below. Outside the Air House there was a pile of rubble that seemed to have fallen from one of the upper floors. All over the square there were men still digging in. There was an insistent racket of machine-gun fire. It seemed to be coming from somewhere only two or three streets away.
Rosalie had been alone for nearly an hour and I was worried about her. The only time Aroff had spoken since we had re-crossed the canal had been to tell m to stop so that the wretched staff captain could remove the flag of truce. When we left the jeep, I drew him aside.
“I don’t think I can be much help to you with Roda, do you, Colonel?”
He thought for a moment and then he said: “No. This captain will escort you back. I will tell Roda that I ordered it.”
“Is there any reason why Miss Linden and I should remain here?”
“None, except that you would need Roda’s permission to leave. At this moment, it would not be wise to ask for it.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Besides, where would you go? The streets would be more dangerous for you than this place, and who would take you into his house at such a time?”
“Perhaps there will be a surrender?”
He shook his head. “They will never agree. They will dream of miraculous escapes. Ishak knows that. He is only humiliating us. He means to destroy us all.”
“If it rested with you, Colonel, would you accept?”
He shrugged wearily. “If it had rested with me, I would never have attempted to negotiate. I am not so afraid of death. Now, we have lost face and will die ashamed.” He hesitated and then gave me a little bow of dismissal. “Your company has been a pleasure, Mr. Fraser.”
The staff captain left me at the door of the apartment and hurried back downstairs, presumably to make his own panic-stricken contribution to the discussion of Ishak’s surrender terms.
The door from the hall into the living room was shut. If there were any officers inside I did not want to walk in on them unexpectedly. I knocked. There was no reply; but as I opened the door I had a shock.
When I had left, the sun roof over the terrace had been propped up fairly securely, and the screens were in place. Now there was no sun roof and the screens were flattened. One of the long chairs was lying across the balustrade. I ran through on to the terrace.
The shell had landed on the terrace of one of the unfinished apartments about thirty feet beyond the barrier wall with the spikes on it, and had dislodged a whole section of the balustrade there. The barrier wall was sagging like an unhinged door, and the blast had lifted the roof off the bathhouse.
As I saw this and started towards the bedroom shouting for Rosalie, I stumbled ov
er one of the screens. Then, I saw her running towards me along the terrace and went to meet her.
For a minute or so she clung to me, sobbing. It was only relief, she explained after a while; relief that I was back. She had really not been very frightened when the shell burst; it had been so sudden. It was right what I had told her about shells and the noise they made. She had not heard this one coming.
All this time she had been holding the water scoop from the bathhouse in her hand. Now, she explained that the cistern had collapsed into the bathhouse when the roof had lifted, and that she had been trying to transfer what was left of the water into the ewer before it all leaked away.
I went along there with her and had a look at the damage. If the cistern had been full it would have crashed through to the floor. As it was, the pipes had held it up, though one of them had fractured and was gradually draining it. I got a jug from the kitchen and between us we managed to get most of the water into the ewer. While we were doing this, I told her about the surrender offer and what Colonel Aroff had said.
She took the news calmly.
“General Ishak is a swine,” was her comment.
“You know him?”
“Everyone knows about him. Mina has a very funny scandal. He sleeps with young men, you know. They say that even so he can do nothing. When you spoke to Major Suparto, did he say anything about us?”
“I only had a word or two with him.”
“Do you think he will try to help us?”
“If he can, he will.”
She fell silent. The cistern just above our heads was vibrating to the concussion of an eighty-eight which was slamming away somewhere along the Telegraf Road. I knew that she was listening to the noise carefully and beginning to wonder about the violence it represented. She had a standard of comparison now.
“I think it’s time we had a drink,” I said.
9
The first tank reached the Van Riebeeck Square just before sundown.
No great flights of military imagination had been needed to devise General Ishak’s plan of attack. The modern dock area south of the river had been quietly occupied by Government troops after the bombing of the road and rail bridges the previous afternoon. It was only the semi-circle of city north of the river, and centred on the Van Riebeeck Square, that he had to take by force. The rebel outer defence ring had been held together by three strong points: the canal network of the old port, the garrison barracks and a rubber factory in the suburbs. He had decided to make his break-through a little to the south of the barracks under a covering bombardment from the destroyer, then fan out right and left, rolling up the outer defences as he went. Finally, he would turn east again and send three armoured columns to converge on rebel headquarters. In view of the superior forces at his disposal, there was no likelihood of the plan failing. All that remained to be learned was how soon it would succeed.
The reduction of the outer defences had been all but completed by mid-day, though it had not been quite as easy as Ishak had expected. At several points, the defenders had been agile enough to slip through his cumbersome enveloping movements and re-establish themselves in new positions; but in the end, they were squeezed back, and all they succeeded in gaining for themselves by their efforts was a little time that they could not use. By three o’clock the turn to the east had been made, and the armoured columns were carving their way through towards the centre, the speed of their advance controlled only by that of the infantry mopping up behind them.
Not long after five, there was a tremendous burst of firing along the Telegraf Road; machine guns, mortars, a two-pounder; the noise was deafening. The sun was low now, and I could see smoke drifting up over the roofs less than a quarter of a mile away. Where the Telegraf Road entered the square there was a sudden flurry of activity. There were men running back out of the road and other men running forward into it. Then, one of the two-pounders out in the square began to fire. I heard Rosalie give a startled gasp and turned round. She was crouching behind the balustrade with her fingers in her ears. When I looked back across the square, there were no running men. One of them was lying face downwards in the centre of the road. The rest had taken cover against the walls of the building that jutted out on the corner. The two-pounder was firing rapidly, bouncing about in its shallow pit, sending up a cloud of yellow dust and adding to the racket of the machine guns; then, for an instant, there was a gap in the sound, and through it I heard the shrill squeaking of a tank’s tracks.
It nosed out of the end of the road, and seemed to hesitate there for a moment like a dull-witted bull blinking in the sunlight of the arena. There was a black stain down the side of it that looked as if it had been made by an oil bomb. The two-pounder fired twice and I saw a streak of silver appear on the turret. Every automatic weapon in the square seemed to be firing at that moment, and the sound of the tank’s own machine gun was lost in the din. But it was the tank’s gun that was effective. Dust spurted up all around the two-pounder, and suddenly it was no longer firing. I saw one of the gunners start to crawl out of the pit, and then a second burst finished him. Two more bursts wiped out the crews of two of the machine guns.
The tank lurched forward and then made a left turn. It controlled the square now, and was ready to demonstrate the fact to anyone foolish enough to dispute it. Apparently, nobody was. The crew of the other two-pounder out in the square were scrambling for cover among the trees, and the remaining machine-gunners who, a moment ago, had been blazing away so fiercely at the tank’s armour plating, were now crouching discreetly in their fox-holes. The tank began to move along the north side of the square searching for targets. From away across the square some optimist began dropping mortar bombs near it. And then, suddenly the situation changed. There was a noise like an enormous paper bag being exploded. Immediately on top of it there was a spine-jarring crack. At the same moment the tank swung round broadside on and stopped in a cloud of dust.
The commander of it knew his job. Within a few seconds, he was putting down smoke; though not before another bazooka bomb had sent fragments of the broken track screaming up through the trees overhead. As the smoke drifted back across the tank, I could see the turret traversing rapidly and knew that the commander had spotted the bazookas’ position. If the men handling them did not move quickly, they would become sitting targets as soon as the smoke thinned; but, like innocents, they were settling down expectantly to wait for another chance to knock the tank out.
Rosalie touched my arm. I looked round and saw that Roda had come into the living room. We went back quickly into the bedroom.
After a moment, Sanusi walked out on to the terrace and looked down on to the square. Roda was talking to someone in the next room, but it was impossible to hear the conversation. When the other person went, Roda joined Sanusi at the balustrade.
There was some sort of disagreement between the two men. Roda was trying to persuade Sanusi of something and Sanusi would appear to be listening; then he would turn away abruptly and Roda would have to go after him and begin all over again. Once Sanusi turned sharply and asked a question. Roda had his document case with him, and in reply he held it up and patted it.
Down in the square, the tank’s turret gun began firing suddenly and the building shook as something crashed into it. Rosalie looked at me inquiringly. I said I thought that the tank was firing at the place where the bazooka crews were dug in, and that the shot had probably ricocheted into the building down below. She nodded understandingly, as if I had been apologising for the noise made by an inconsiderate neighbour.
Another tank had entered the square now. I could hear it squeaking along the road in the opposite direction to the first one and firing bursts from its machine gun.
Then, the sun went down, and for nearly a minute there was no sound from the square except the squeaking of the tank tracks. Along the Telegraf Road, however, the firing intensified and I could hear the thumping of grenades. The infantry were moving up now, clearing the defended house
s that the tanks had left behind them. Now and again, the drifting smoke would be illuminated momentarily by the flash of an explosion below.
A shoe grated outside on the terrace.
“Mr. Fraser.” It was Roda’s voice.
I went to the window. There were no lights on in the apartment, nor was there a moon yet. He was about ten feet away and for a moment I did not see him.
“Yes, Colonel?”
“Come here, please.”
I went over. Beyond him, along the terrace, Sanusi stirred and rested his elbows on the balustrade.
Roda lowered his voice. “I must speak in confidence to you, Mr. Fraser.”
“Yes?”
“It has become necessary for the General and myself to leave this headquarters.”
“Yes?”
“We have done all we can here. It is better to live for a cause than to die for it uselessly. That is our choice now. I have persuaded our Boeng that it is his duty to live.”
“I see.”
“It has been a difficult decision, you will understand.” He paused.
“I can see that.”
“More difficult than you might think.”
“No doubt.” I was trying unavailingly to understand the reason for these confidences.
“For two men, withdrawal from this headquarters is still possible. If more should attempt it, all will fail. There must be secrecy.”
“Of course.” That, at least, I could understand.
“As there was when Napoleon withdrew from Egypt.”
For a moment, I thought that he was making a tasteless joke. But no; his lips were pursed solemnly. He saw himself as the Marmont of this occasion.
I mumbled agreement.
“I tell you this, Mr. Fraser, because there is a matter in which you can help us.”
“Yes?”
“If we are to withdraw successfully we cannot go in our uniforms.”
“I see that.”
“It is the shirts. Our pants will attract no attention. We merely need civilian shirts. I think you have some.”