War of Words

by McDonald, Hamish

  In January 1938, there at last came a note from Drage asking Charles to come to his office at a specified time the next day. In his office was a tall, lean man of about 60, with a beaky nose and piercing deep blue eyes, wearing a suit of a rather old-fashioned cut. He had the slightly sallow complexion of a life spent in unhealthy places in the East.

  ‘Hayley Bell,’ he said, holding out a hand in greeting.

  ‘Colonel Hayley Bell is the defence security officer in Malaya,’ added Drage.

  ‘We’d like to put a proposition before you,’ Hayley Bell began. ‘Can I first have your assurance this is in deepest confidence?’

  Charles nodded, and Drage broke in: ‘Bavier knows how to keep mum. We’ve kept an eye on him.’

  Hayley Bell then outlined the rising concern on the part of the British authorities about subversive activities and espionage among the several thousand Japanese residents in Singapore and the associated states in Malaya and North Borneo. The building of the fortifications and naval facilities at Singapore had resumed after postponements of expenditure during the Depression. But all this was happening under the eyes of Japanese residents running their small businesses, who were constantly in and out of the Japanese consulate-general and the Japanese ‘commerce museum’. In addition, Japanese peddlers and dentists were roaming about on the peninsula, paying particular attention to the ‘less cooperative’ Malay leaders and cultivating officers and soldiers in the Indian army units stationed there.

  ‘Know what you mean, old boy,’ Drage intervened. ‘Got a Japanese barber here who cuts the governor’s hair, plus the admiral’s and several other senior officers’.’

  Charles knew the man and had used his services himself. He was unfailingly friendly, with a ready stream of off-colour anecdotes mixed with innocently posed questions, and a drawer full of rubber prophylactics, aphrodisiac pills and pornographic pictures.

  The proposition then put by Hayley Bell was that Charles come down to Singapore at his organisation’s expense, and start work on six months’ probation, with a two-year contract following on satisfactory performance. His duties were to be translation, interpretation and teaching but he could be employed ‘in any other manner from time to time’.

  On his agreement, they shook hands and Charles was told to wait while the secretary typed up a letter of agreement. This set out the terms put by Hayley Bell, plus a solemn requirement not to divulge ‘any information whatsoever’ acquired during his duties, on pain of instant dismissal. They both signed. A steamer ticket was sent around the next day, and Charles departed two days later, leaving Naka and the boys to follow when the probation ended.

  From the chill greyness of Hong Kong and its bare granite hills, the liner advanced into a warm flat sea of intensifying blues, swept by sudden rain storms and bursts of bright sunshine. They rounded the southern tip of Indochina and its island lighthouse, passing ships flying the French tricolour.

  Charles’ fellow passengers were mostly residents of the Malay states returning from leave. As well as a few clerkish officials from Singapore there was a ruddy-faced collection from up-country: English planters, Scottish engineers, Irish and other policemen, and their lively wives who tossed their gins down with the same relish as their husbands. When some of them opened polite conversation at tables in the dining saloon, Hayley Bell’s caution much in his mind, Charles described himself as a teacher of Japanese language and culture, coming to Singapore at government invitation.

  They didn’t probe too much, but the mention of Japan opened up an undercurrent of concern. They talked about the worsening situation in Europe, the growing Japanese closeness to Hitler and Mussolini, and the rampages of the Japanese army in China.

  ‘In the last big show in Europe, we had the Japs on our side, thank God,’ one of the planters said. ‘If it comes to another war over there, who’s going to stop them walking in and taking what they want?’

  ‘The Yanks?’ suggested another, to a chorus of groans.

  ‘Then they’ll want us to hand over to the natives, just like they’re promising in the Philippines,’ said a darkly wattle-complexioned man. ‘Serve ’em right if it happens. Malays will be at the Chinamen’s throats in no time. Place will go back to jungle.’

  Coming on deck on the third morning, Charles found they were passing through the outposts of the great British fortress. On small islands, fuel tanks and godowns stood in clearings of yellow earth slashed in the green jungle. Warships lay at jetties and moorings. Sailors were out in shorts and solar topees on one long, low destroyer, scrubbing down the decks.

  As they entered the roadstead, more ships than he had ever seen surrounded them, freighters and oil tankers of all sizes and vintages, attended by a swarm of launches and barges. The steamer nosed alongside a long wharf jutting out from the shore, its godown and galleries level with the ship’s main deck. A rich, slightly fetid smell came from the land.

  In some parts of Singapore, there were to be familiar odours from Shanghai, Hong Kong and northern China – the sweet, meaty waft of pink-coated roast pork and duck, the sickly richness of joss-sticks – but that heady rottenness mixed from open drains, durian fruit, charred spices and coconut, remained with Charles. Just a hint in some far removed place would evoke the pulsating life and all the dangers of the colony he entered then.

  The passengers sat in the main saloon, having the first gins of the day, as an immigration officer and his Chinese assistant carefully worked through the pile of passports, making entries in a ledger and stamping the chop. A short and solid brown-skinned man in a white drill suit, who Charles took to be a Malay, came towards him, holding out a letter addressed to ‘Professor C.S. Bavier’. A sheet of paper, unsigned, instructed him to accompany the bearer to his accommodation.

  The immigration officer handed Charles back his Japanese passport with a hard look, then Charles followed the Malay guide across the gangway and out of the port building, a bare-chested coolie following with his suitcase on his deeply tanned shoulder. A motor taxi took them through a city of sun-beaten streets in which most of the commerce and movement seemed to be in the shaded walkways along the front of buildings and the alleyways between. They drove into a quiet suburb of flowering trees and hidden bungalows, pulling up at a long two-storey house of white painted timber, picked out in black, with tiled canopies over the pathways to its outbuildings.

  Charles got out and unloaded his suitcase. The Malay gestured for him to go inside and drove off with the taxi. The light in the garden was intense. Glossy blue-black crows cawed and jostled in a frangipani tree covered in white flowers. From a bamboo cage hanging on the verandah, a large black bird with a bright yellow beak and wattle let out a piercing shriek. An old Chinese man, in tattered half-trousers and singlet, shuffled out and silently conducted Charles to a room. He returned a few minutes later with a teapot and a small cup. Charles went out and found the washroom, then returned to the shade of his room and sat under the slowly-revolving fan.

  Towards noon, a telephone rang in another room. The old man appeared and beckoned him. ‘Bavier, you’re here. Good show!’ said a voice he recognised as that of Hayley Bell. ‘A car will come for you in 20 minutes. We’ll have a spot of tiffin at my house and talk about plans.’

  A car duly came into the driveway and drove him to a bungalow obscured from the road by a dense grove of bamboo. Charles got out. The driver stayed in the car and departed. A Chinese woman in black satin tunic and trousers took Charles into a sitting room and pointed to a cane chair.

  A tall young Englishwoman in a loose floral dress, still with a school-girl’s awkwardness, looked around the door. ‘Oh, Professor Bavier! Hello, I’m Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘Daddy won’t be long. We’ll get you a cool drink.’

  A few minutes later, there were the sounds of another car driving up and stopping, a door slamming, and hard steps coming down the tiled floors. Hayley Bell strode in, dressed in
a khaki army uniform with the badges of a lieutenant-colonel. He asked Charles about his trip out, and whether anyone had taken a particular interest in him. Charles said not.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, lighting a cigarette. ‘You see, as you might have gathered, we try to keep a low profile. Very hush-hush, in fact. Place is swarming with Japanese. We want to keep an eye on them, not the other way round. You’re here to try to draw them out. So keep your connection to me and my office to yourself. Play the earnest teacher, apostle of better understanding. If they try to recruit you for anything, keep us posted, we might go along with it. They’ll find out eventually as it’s such a small place. We’ll step in then to save your skin, hopefully, before it gets too nasty.’

  Who, exactly, he meant by ‘we’ was something Hayley Bell didn’t clarify then. A few months later, when the probationary period was completed to his satisfaction, Charles was fully inducted and told that Hayley Bell’s title ‘defence security officer’ was cover for the role of head of station for MI5, one of the arms of the British secret service.

  Charles’ routine work was to be translation of Japanese newspaper reports and radio broadcasts relating to Malaya, and his summaries would be forwarded to Hayley Bell by special courier. More openly, he would enact the role of evangelist for Japanese culture, fervently preaching that better mutual understanding would lessen the tensions between Japan and the Western powers. Familiarity and nostalgia would take him frequently around the locales of the several thousand Japanese residents.

  The cover provided by Hayley Bell was a consultancy to the Raffles College, then the leading educational institute in Singapore, concerning the development of a curriculum in Japanese studies, and a position as part-time commentator on Far Eastern affairs with the Malaya Broadcasting Corporation. It was not implausible, and would explain the salary Charles was to get via the Education Department and the provision of a modest government flat.

  The daily routine was entertaining, if undemanding. Several small Japanese newspapers were being published in Singapore and the bigger up-country towns of Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Ipoh. These would arrive by post. Charles was given a radio set and listened most evenings to the broadcasts from Tokyo, Shanghai and Taihoku in Taiwan, occasionally picking up stations in Mukden and Hsinking. Gradually, Charles built up a picture of the comings and goings in the Japanese community, and its prominent personalities.

  His handwritten summaries were picked up by a messenger from the government offices. Once a month he would go to the Raffles College on Bukit Timah Road and talk about the history of Japan to boys verging on manhood, most of them Chinese but also a smattering of Malays from the aristocracies of the sultanates and some Eurasians. They listened attentively and asked few questions, except when he discussed Japanese swordsmanship and the practice of harakiri, which they found engrossing.

  Every fortnight, Charles would cautiously visit Hayley Bell at his office, entering through a passageway from an adjoining building. He came to like him, finding him a man more at home in the Orient than a distant Europe. Hayley Bell had been born in Shanghai, and except for his schooling at Rugby, some exploring in Africa, and distinguished service in the Great War, had lived in China, where he’d been in the customs service, first of the Imperial government, then of the Republic. He met and married a missionary’s daughter in Fukien while learning that province’s dialect, adding it to several others. He’d been in Shanghai during the 1932 fighting and rescued civilians from the Japanese lines, seeing firsthand the atrocities inflicted on captured Chinese soldiers.

  By the time Charles reached Singapore, Hayley Bell had added Malay and Tamil to his languages, and was convinced of Japan’s intention to take Malaya. ‘I’m getting on to their espionage network here,’ he assured him. ‘It’s big.’

  From time to time, Hayley Bell would invite his circle of Japan-watchers up to his bungalow, all of them arriving separately by devious paths. There was Ivan Lyon, a lieutenant in the Gordon Highlanders fond of sailing his little yacht along the coasts of Malaya, and Major Jo Vinden, another restless officer who was the army man in the Malaya Command’s intelligence committee. Sometimes they’d be joined by John Becker, a manager with Fraser & Neave, the manufacturer of the heavily sweetened soft drinks loved by the locals. His job allowed him to travel around Malaya and Thailand, and he was fond of ‘going native’ in dress, diet and accommodation. The gatherings would be quite raucous, as they let off tensions from their secretive lives. Out of them, Hayley Bell built up a great loyalty and drew a lot of ideas – his wife and two daughters, Elizabeth and Winifred, would act as enthusiastic secretaries and take notes.

  Most evenings, though, Charles would seek out the Japanese world. After taking notes from the radio broadcasts, he took to frequenting the Japanese eating house in Middle Road and the nearby Sakura Hotel. He would browse the Hanaya Shokai bookshop, buying the newest episodes of the Dai-bosatsu Tōge saga and keeping an eye on a stream of quite inflammatory anti-British tracts appearing from the Black Dragon Society, and its like. When needing any medicaments, he went to the Dojin or ‘One Culture’ clinic that was also in Middle Road, and would shop with Naka at the Japanese provision shop on the same street, Baba & Co. Gradually the faces and names of the Japanese small businessmen, the journalists, the trading firm clerks and managers, the shipping agents and the consular offices became familiar. They invited him to join them for dinner, to drinking sessions at the Japanese Club on Selegie Road, and occasionally to the geisha house at Katong, the Tokiwa Garden.

  There was a small dojo too, where martial arts were practised, and a new kendo partner was always welcome. His old skill came back, and the reputation of his distinctive wrist cut drew out one or two more-reclusive figures from the consulate and commercial officers, hard-spirited men of obvious military background. He pushed them hard, but was careful to lose more often than he won.

  From the fearful respect in which these men were held by other Japanese, and their frequent absences on what their colleagues vaguely called ‘inspection tours’ up and down the peninsula or ‘liaison visits’ to Bangkok, the suggestion of a master plan behind all this feverish Japanese activity in Malaya began to emerge, explaining why so many men evidently of considerable education and talent were content to engage in such menial occupations as running barbershops and portrait studios.

  Hayley Bell was receptive to Charles’ attempts to paint this picture for him. The MI5 representative was more and more irked by the complacent faith among the authorities in Singapore that the great naval base now again under construction, after a long halt due to a shortage of funding, would be sufficient deterrent and defence if Japan invaded. Why were the Japanese so busy in Thailand and the north of Malaya? At the end of Charles’ probation, Hayley Bell asked him to travel to Bangkok and the Malay states on the border to find out.

  Chapter 13

  SWORDS DRAWN

  He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.

  — The Art of War by Sun Tzu

  Singapore 1938–42

  That Charles made a highly productive spying mission into Thailand is recorded, but again the details are not, so let us imagine them.

  Charles took a rickshaw to the new terminus of the Malayan railway system. In the warm evening, its façade with triple entrances in a paganistic style stood out brilliantly illuminated. The roof arching over the platforms could be seen beyond. A porter led Charles through a throng of vendors and down the richly varnished teak sides of the railway carriages. A powerful rumble came from the German diesel locomotive up ahead.

  Charles showed his ticket to an Indian conductor, who checked his name off a list. He followed the porter up the stairs onto the open end-balcony of a carriage, down its corridor, and into a compartment where the porter put Charles’ suitcase in a rack and stood waiting for his tip.

  The train quickly filled up, with pl
anters and other Europeans, a few Indian lawyers, a fat Chinese towkay and a pair of well-dressed Malays of no doubt princely background. To his alarm, there also appeared a man called Watanabe, one of the nosiest and most ingratiating of the circle at the Japanese Club.

  In line with his cover, Charles had made no secret of his trip to Bangkok. At the club, he’d made much of Miyazaki’s early attempt to found a Japanese commune there, one that had foundered in disease and lack of capital. He had vociferously expounded on the theme that Asians must reach out to other Asians, and Europeans must understand and become equal partners, or be swept aside in the Asian resurgence.

  Watanabe walked the corridors until he found Charles and entered clutching a small gift. He felt he had to wish the professor the best fortune in his important educational venture. He then took his leave, smiling and bowing from the platform as the train pulled out. It was more than a nuance above the usual Japanese formalism and politeness. Charles was not being taken at face value. His movements were being noted. He was under scrutiny.

  The train pushed silently into the night, crossing the causeway and entering a land almost entirely dark except for the occasional flare of pressure lamps at small stations and level crossings. Charles went to the dining car and had supper, amid the Englishmen talking over their gin pahits and whiskies. There seemed to be no other Japanese on board. The bed was turned down when he returned to the compartment and another passenger was asleep in the other berth. His luggage was where he’d left it. He’d been careful not to put anything incriminating in it anyway: just a guidebook to Bangkok, a small camera and a letter of recommendation from the principal of the Raffles College.