by Onbekend
Varma took a cigarette from a cigarette case of polished tin and plugged it in the corner of his mouth. He proffered the case to Torrance. The corporal started to reach for one, then hesitated.
‘It’s all right,’ said Varma. ‘You won’t break your caste if you smoke one. You realise the sergeant is about to crack?’
Torrance had suspected as much for a while now, and he resented Varma pointing it out. ‘What d’you want me to do about it?’
‘Take command.’
‘Why me?’
‘You’re next in the chain of command.’
‘Hey, don’t let these stripes fool you, Gunga Din. I never asked for them.’
‘None of us asked to be here, Corporal. But this is where we are, so we’ve got to make the best of it. And don’t call me Gunga Din. I’m a jemadar, not a bloody bhisti.’
‘You, a jemadar? I don’t see any pips on you.’
Varma winced. ‘I used to be a jemadar. If I was still a jemadar there wouldn’t be any problem, because then I would take command of this bloody shower. But I was demoted, and that means you – may Shiva have mercy upon us all – are next in command.’
The stream shown on the map was more like a drainage ditch overgrown with sago bushes and lalang grass, but at least they were able to follow it to where it was spanned by a bridge formed of wooden planks resting on two timber baulks. The road on either side was little more than a gravel bridle path. Marching through a plantation, parallel to the road but a hundred yards from it, they soon came to a stone wall about eight feet high.
‘Give us a bunk-up, Solly,’ said Torrance.
Shapiro shrugged off the wireless, lowering it to the ground, and stood with his back to the wall, clasping his hands together before him. Torrance clambered up onto his shoulders. Beyond the trees growing behind the shrubbery on the other side, he saw traveller’s palms rising from flower beds aglow with zinnias, and peacocks roaming about the lawns. As to the house itself, there was no question it was the same as the one in the slide Hamilton had shown them at the barracks the previous day.
Torrance took his field glasses from their case and levelled them, first taking care no sunlight would reflect off the lenses.
‘See anything?’ Cochrane called up from below.
‘This is the place,’ said Torrance. ‘Looks peaceful enough.’
Two dozen Japanese soldiers in olive drab uniforms and steel helmets emerged from beneath the portico over the front door, carrying their rifles at the port. They marched at the double around the circular gravel drive surrounding the fountain at the front of the house.
Torrance sighed. ‘Looks like I spoke too soon.’ He adjusted the focus of the field glasses to get a better look. ‘Three sections of Japs heading for the main gate.’
‘How many men?’ Varma called up softly.
‘Two dozen.’
‘Probably only two sections, then. Japanese sections are larger than British ones.’
At the front of the file Torrance could see an NCO wearing a forage cap with a havelock flapping at the back. A familiar figure – stripped of his Sam Browne belt and his revolver now – marched beside him. ‘Your mate Nagarkar is with them,’ he called softly down to Varma. As soon as the soldiers reached the open gates, they marched out and turned left, disappearing from view. ‘Looks like he’s leading them straight to where he left us.’
‘Japs must be using the place for an HQ,’ said Cochrane.
‘Nah, I reckon those men were saw are just part of a unit they sent to capture the sultan.’
‘Can ye see the sultan?’
‘How could I see the sultan?’ demanded Torrance. ‘I’m not bloody Superman. I haven’t got X-ray bleedin’ vision.’
‘He must be inside,’ said Rossi.
‘What makes you so sure?’ asked Cochrane.
‘Stands to reason, dis it no’? I mean, if we’re sure the only reason for these Japs to be at Istana Mimpi at all is to capture the sultan; if they’re still at Istana Mimpi, then so’s he.’
‘That makes sense,’ said Varma. ‘All right, let’s say the Japanese sent a platoon to capture the sultan—’
‘How d’ye work that out?’ asked Cochrane.
‘We know it’s more than a section because whoever’s in command has already detached two sections. I doubt they’d send more to capture one civilian. I’m surprised they sent an entire platoon: they can’t have expected to meet any resistance, except maybe from the odd pocket of Australians cut off by the Japanese advance.’
‘How many fellers in a Jap platoon?’ wondered Cochrane.
‘Fifty-four when it’s at full strength.’
‘Which leaves mebbe as many as thirty men still inside,’ said Cochrane. ‘Against eight of us.’
Torrance glanced at each of the others in turn. He could tell by their faces they were wondering why they did not jack it in and head back to their own lines, instead of committing suicide by attacking the house, but no one wanted to be the first to suggest it, himself included. Sod it, he thought, in for a penny, in for a pound.
‘Can you see any sentries?’ Varma asked Torrance.
‘Nah. Doesn’t mean they ain’t there, though. Plenty of places where they might hide: behind the jalousies over the windows, in the shrubberies; all commanding good fields of fire over the lawns.’
‘Any chance of reaching the house unobserved?’
‘Maybe… from the other side. There are some outbuildings at the far end of the main house: stables, maybe a garage. And there’ll be a servants’ entrance at the back.’
‘The officer in command will have sentries there too,’ said Rossi, ‘unless he’s a bampot.’
‘What if we create a diversion at the front of the house to draw the sentries away from their posts?’ asked Varma. ‘Could we sneak a few men in the back then?’
‘It’d have to be a hell of a diversion,’ said Quinn. ‘When a Jap is told to stand guard somewhere, he tends to stay there come hell or high water.’
Torrance glanced down and saw Varma shrug off his pack and unbuckle the straps. ‘What you got in there?’
‘Seven slabs of gun cotton, six tins of ammonal, five packets of eight-oh-eight plastic explosive, four coils of Primacord and three coils of FID. And two boxes of detonators in my utility pouches.’
‘And a partridge in a pear tree.’ Torrance jumped down from Shapiro’s shoulders. ‘Blimey, you’re a regular Guy Fawkes! Do you mean to tell me all this time you’ve been lugging enough explosive around with you to sink Singapore?’
‘It will take Nagarkar and those Japanese maybe half an hour to reach the spot where he left us, which means we’ve got an hour to get in that house, get the sultan out and be well on our way before they return. If I can make it sound like the house is suddenly coming under fire from a battery of artillery, do you think that will give you the cover you need?’
Torrance realised Varma was addressing him directly, rather than the squad in general. ‘You’re asking me?’ he spluttered incredulously.
‘We can’t risk Sergeant Cochrane going in there.’ Varma managed to make it sound as if the sergeant was too important to have his life risked, when he and Torrance both knew that if Cochrane led the group attacking the house, it would be the rest of the assault party whose lives would be endangered. ‘The sergeant had better stay outside with Quinn and Shapiro while they provide covering fire with the Bren. If that’s all right with you, Sergeant?’
‘I’m no’ sure about any o’ this,’ said Cochrane. ‘I say we get Colonel Hamilton on the wireless and ask him for further orders.’
‘Oh, brilliant,’ said Torrance. ‘And if the Japs have a wireless of their own in there, scanning the frequencies, they’ll know there’s someone right outside asking for permission to attack the house. Why don’t we ring the bleedin’ doorbell while we’re about it?’
Cochrane bridled. ‘Ye watch your tongue while you’re talking to me, or I’ll have ye on a charge for insubordination.�
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‘Do you want to lead this attack?’ Torrance asked him. Cochrane blanched. ‘No, I didn’t think so. So shut the hell up and stay out of my way.’ He checked his new Rolex. ‘It’s now ten-oh-four. How long d’you reckon you’ll need to set up your diversion?’ he asked Varma.
‘Twenty-five minutes. That should give the rest of you plenty of time to get into position.’ The sapper checked his own watch. It was a gold Cartier, Torrance noticed enviously. ‘I’ll start the ball rolling at precisely ten-thirty hours.’
‘Okay,’ said Torrance. ‘Listen, if all goes well we won’t hang about, we’ll be in and out like a fart in a colander. We’ll meet you back at the bridge. If you’re not there by ten to eleven, we head back to Singapore Town without you.’
‘I’ll be there,’ said Varma. ‘Just make sure you get the sultan.’
Leaving the sapper fiddling with his arsenal of explosives, Torrance led the others around the outside of the wall. Rossi fell into step beside him. ‘Slugger… can we do this?’
‘Do what?’
‘Charge into yon house and get the sultan out.’
‘You want to ask for permission?’
‘No, I mean… are we up to this? There are civilians in there. If we get this wrong, it may cost innocent lives.’
‘It’s worse than that, Lefty. If we get this wrong, it may cost my life. We’re trained soldiers, regular army; this is what we do, or it’s supposed to be. What do you want to do, call the fire brigade?’
‘I’m serious, Slugger—’
‘So am I. Do you want me to say it would be better if Major Rose and CSM Bing were here to do this instead of us? Of course it would. But they ain’t, so it’s down to us.’
The grounds were extensive and it took them longer to get there than Torrance anticipated, but at last he looked up at the high stone wall to his right and recognised the gable end of a building he guessed was part of the stables. ‘Give us a bunk-up, Smiler.’
MacRae stood with his back to the wall. Torrance climbed up onto his shoulders. From there, it was relatively easy to pull himself up onto the reverse slope of the roof of one of the outbuildings. Crawling on his belly, he squirmed up the pantiles to the roof ridge. Peering over, he saw the stable yard below. Unlike the other walls of the house, the east side did not have a balcony, or many windows – no one wanted a bedroom overlooking the stable yard – but Torrance’s vantage point gave him a good view across the terrace at the back of the house, the rockery below, a large and inviting-looking swimming pool, and a tennis court beyond. Crawling back down the reverse slope, he edged along the roof to the gable end and peered over: the corner of the stable yard immediately below him was concealed from any watchers in the house itself by the corner of the building he was atop.
He jumped down to rejoin the others at the foot of the wall. ‘Corky, Solly and Hoot, you three on the roof of the garage with the Bren,’ he ordered, taking three magazines and proffering them to Gibson. ‘Gimme your smoke grenades.’ The lance corporal took two Number 27s from his pockets and gave them to Torrance in exchange for the magazines. ‘No firing till the rest of us come out of the house, though,’ added Torrance.
‘Not even after Varma’s fireworks display?’ protested Shapiro.
‘It’s not the noise, Solly. If you start shooting at the house, your bullets will go straight through those wooden panels… and straight through whoever’s inside. That might include the sultan… or us, if we’re in there.’
The seven of them clambered up onto the roof of the outbuilding. ‘Remember, if anything goes wrong, we meet up back at the bridge at ten-fifty hours,’ Torrance whispered to Cochrane as Shapiro and Gibson set up the Bren.
‘What bridge?’
‘The wooden bridge a few hundred yards down the road from here,’ said Torrance. ‘Which bridge did you think I meant? The Carlton Place Bridge?’ Without waiting for an answer, he dropped down into the stable yard and pressed himself against the side of the building, next to Rossi, Quinn and MacRae. He glanced at his Rolex: twenty-eight minutes past.
‘What time is it?’ whispered Rossi.
Torrance showed him the watch.
‘Is yon Mr Piggott’s watch?’
‘I’m just borrowing it. Once we get back to Singapore Town, I’ll turn it in so it can be sent home to his next of kin.’
Rossi grinned. ‘Bet ye forget.’
There was a door in the wall behind them, with a pane of glass set in it. Rubbing a fist against the grime, Torrance was able to peer through into what he now saw was a capacious garage containing a sporty bright-red Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Super Sport Spider Corsa, and a metallic-blue Duesenberg Model SJ LaGrande dual-cowl phaeton with white-wall tyres and four exposed exhaust pipes emerging on one side of the long bonnet to drop through the curvilinear fender. Torrance had always dreamed of owning a car like the Corsa, and – not for the first time in his life – cursed the day he had not been born a sultan.
He pushed his Thompson’s safety catch forward and watched the second hand on the Rolex as it crept around to the top of the separate, smaller dial it occupied in the lower quadrant of the watch face. When it reached fifty-seven seconds, he held up three fingers where Rossi, Quinn and MacRae could see, and counted silently down to two, one, zero…
Nothing happened.
Torrance saw the other three all staring at him as if that was his fault. It occurred to him he should have synchronised watches with Varma.
He had been expecting a few pops and crackles from the plantation across the road from Istana Mimpi. When the first thunderous crash split the air like the clap of the wings of the Angel of Death, Torrance was so stunned that for a moment he forgot they had to run to the servants’ entrance. And he thought the idea had been for Varma to create a lot of small explosions, not waste all his explosives in one big—
The second explosion was louder than the first, the third louder still. If it had not been for the timing, Torrance would have wondered if the naval guns at Changi had not started lobbing fifteen-inch shells at the house. Such deafening crashes must have been matched by an impressive display and Torrance would have liked to watch it. Any Japanese sentries posted around the house would have needed superhuman restraint not to want see what was going on. Torrance dashed across the stable yard and around the corner of the house, with Rossi, Quinn and MacRae close on his heels. He tried the door to the servants’ entrance. It was locked. He fired a burst at it from his Thompson and tried it again. It was still locked. Conscious that precious seconds were fleeting past, he fired a second burst, tried it again, found it remained locked. Swearing, he fired a longer burst, stitching a semicircle of bullet holes around the lock, then gave the door a kick. It swung inwards, the semi-circular section around the lock remaining in place until it could fall out entirely and drop to the threshold.
Torrance and his companions stepped into a large kitchen which, if it did not have all the latest conveniences of modern living, was at least well kept. There was no one inside. Torrance stepped through an archway into a narrow sort of courtyard and crossed an arcaded walkway on the other side, stepping into a hallway with two doors in the opposite wall.
Even as he saw the doorway immediately to his left, he saw one – no, two – figures coming down the unlit passage beyond, with only the light in the room at the far end to silhouette them. That was enough to make out the domed steel helmets, however.
Eleven
Thursday 1030 – 1040
Torrance fired a short burst from his Thompson, no more than six rounds. He heard the men coming through the passageway scream, saw the first start to fall back, but by then he was ducking to take cover against the wall between the two doors on his left. As Rossi, Quinn and MacRae followed him through the archway, he motioned them to cover the other door. Removing the empty magazine from his Thompson, he tucked it into a pocket and took a fresh one from a utility pouch, clipping it in place. When a couple more seconds passed without anyone emerging from the pa
ssageway to his right, he fired a prolonged burst from his Thompson around the corner, exposing no part of his body but the hands gripping the sub-machine gun. He gave every part of the passageway a good spray, just to be on the safe side. He knew that by doing so he might be endangering the life of the sultan or some other civilian, but in that moment he valued the sultan’s life a lot less than he valued his own.
He peered cautiously into the narrow passageway and saw at once no one was standing in it. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw two dead Japanese soldiers sprawled on the floor. He realised he had probably got them both with the first burst. Still, there was no sense in taking unnecessary risks.
The noise of the explosions from outside had ended: Varma’s diversion was over. In the silence that ensued, from the other end of the passageway he heard several feet pounding up a staircase. Someone moving about upstairs, someone else barking orders in Japanese. Thompson at the ready, he edged down the passageway, picking his way over the corpses sprawled at his feet.
Reaching the far end of the passageway, he peered out into a large, dimly lit room with rays of sunlight lancing through the bullet holes riddling the jalousie panels on the far side. Rattan chairs stood around a long mahogany table with bowls of fruit arranged upon it. To his left, two flights of stairs rose in parallel before turning to meet one another where a single flying staircase descended from a landing overhead.
Even as Torrance’s gaze followed the art deco wrought-iron banisters up, his eyes locked with another Japanese soldier standing above him, aiming his rifle. Torrance threw himself back into the passageway behind him as the rifle cracked and something struck the polished parquet floor behind where he had been standing. Hearing the click-clack of the bolt action, Torrance darted forward again, Thompson aimed upwards now. As the soldier above swung the rifle’s muzzle towards him, Torrance fired first. The burst came to a premature end – another magazine emptied – but Torrance was already ducking back out of sight without waiting to see whether or not his bullets had found their target. He heard a sob and a thud. Pocketing the spent magazine, he replaced it with a fresh one, then inched his way cautiously across the threshold at the end of the passageway, the Thompson already angled upwards. He could make out a silhouette above, a man seated with his back to the banisters. He could not tell if the man was wounded or dead, so he fired another burst anyway and saw the man above topple sideways.