by Onbekend
‘Only two with motors that work: my father’s boat and that of Shamsuddin bin Ishak.’
‘Any chance you could borrow one and bring it here?’
Ghazali shook his head. ‘Not without being seen.’
‘Do you know if there’s fuel in the tanks?’
‘There is in my father’s boat, tuan. I refuelled it myself after we came in from fishing this morning. I don’t know about Shamsuddin’s.’
‘How many Japanese?’
‘I counted eighteen.’
‘Varma, you got any more whizz-bangs in your bag of tricks?’
‘A few. What do you have in mind?’
‘If we can draw off enough of the Japs from the village, maybe I could half-inch a boat in the kerfuffle and bring it back here.’
‘There’s no harm in taking a closer look at this village.’
Torrance turned back to Ghazali. ‘Can you take us somewhere where we can take a dekko at your village without being seen?’
‘Of course, tuan. Follow me!’
‘Varma, Lefty, you two come with me.’ Torrance divested himself of his pack. ‘Leave your packs. The rest of you, stay here. Solly, get the Bren set up to cover this whole area.’ He gestured through the trees in the direction Ghazali was headed, before following him with Rossi and Varma.
After a couple of hundred yards, Ghazali turned to them and raised a finger to his lips to indicate they should be silent – not that any of them had been particularly talkative up to that point – and dropped to his belly, crawling Apache-fashion through the sodden lalang grass. Torrance, Rossi and Varma all followed his lead. They squirmed through a patch of dripping sago bushes until they could see the village at the water’s edge: ramshackle stilt houses standing over the water, made out of a combination of plaited bamboo and driftwood, streams of water gushing off atap thatching or sheets of rusty corrugated iron. Fishing nets hung from wooden frames beneath the palm trees, and a series of rickety-looking wooden boardwalks – sometimes no more than a pair of stout poles lashed together – linked the houses. Several boats were tied up at the jetties, the largest of which was a brightly painted fishing boat, nearly forty feet long, with a high, curving prow and a wide beam to accommodate a wheelhouse amidships. The next largest was a sampan with an atap-thatched awning and an outboard motor fixed to her stern. At first Torrance could not see any Japanese. He raised his field glasses to his eyes: he could see the muzzle of a rifle sticking out of a window.
Lowering the field glasses, he pointed through the trees. ‘Can you try to draw some of them off in that direction?’ he asked Varma. ‘We don’t need Guy Fawkes’ Night, just enough to pique their interest: a couple of shots, a scream and an explosion. Then run hell for leather to where we left the others, only make sure there aren’t any Japs following you.’
‘I think I can manage that. Can you give me ten minutes?’
Torrance nodded, and Varma crawled away.
‘What about us?’ asked Rossi.
‘We stay here until we hear Varma’s diversion,’ said Torrance. ‘Then – when he’s got everyone looking towards those trees – we leg it for that upturned boat on the sand. From there we can crawl the last few feet to the house on the end.’ He felt in his pockets and found the hard cylinder of the second of the two smoke grenades Gibson had given him. That might come in handy, but he would have preferred something that packed more of a punch. ‘You got any grenades?’ he asked Rossi.
‘Just one Mills bomb.’
‘Give it here.’ Torrance took the grenade from him and stuffed it in another pocket.
‘What about me, tuan?’ asked Ghazali. ‘I want to fight the Japanese too!’
‘You stay here, kid. If the Japs even suspect we’ve had any help from anyone in the village, they might carry out reprisals. You know what reprisals are?’
Ghazali shook his head.
‘That’s where they don’t only kill you, they kill yer mum, yer dad, any sisters or brothers you got, anyone you care about. You don’t want that, do you?’
‘No, tuan.’
A few minutes later a couple of shots rang out. Varma even obliged with a womanish scream. At least, Torrance hoped it was Varma. He and Rossi got up and dashed across, splashing through puddles, keeping low and throwing themselves flat behind the upturned boat.
‘Are we up to this?’ asked Rossi, as they waited for Varma to provide a further distraction that would allow them to crawl across the sand to the nearest house.
‘Do you want the optimistic answer or the realistic answer?’ asked Torrance.
‘Optimistic.’
‘Easy as falling off a log.’
‘Oh. Realistic?’
‘Sorry. That was either/or. You can’t have both.’
‘That disnae seem very—’ began Rossi, but then the boom of an explosion sent a ball of dirty flame mushrooming up through the palm trees and the time for banter was over. The two of them crawled across the sand and dragged themselves into the water lapping between the stilts of the house at the end of the row. Hearing voices talking in Japanese above them, Torrance glanced up and saw a couple of Japanese soldiers standing on the strips of split bamboo that formed the floor. He had been in enough Malay houses to know that if either of them glanced down, all he would see below was darkness, but he felt exposed nevertheless.
On the landward side of the houses, several Japanese soldiers emerged with their rifles at the port. They started drifting towards where Varma had set off his explosion, until a commanding voice – Torrance suspected it might be Yashiro – called them back. A Japanese NCO was detailed to lead a squad of six men to investigate: Yashiro was a fast learner and had realised the explosion was probably a diversion intended to draw his men off.
Torrance and Rossi swam between the stilts of the house above them, using a breast stroke so as not to make any more noise than they had to, and ducked beneath a walkway, surfacing on the other side between two jetties, right under the brightly painted gunwales of Ghazali’s father’s fishing boat. The sampan was about thirty feet away.
‘Wait here,’ Torrance told Rossi. ‘When you see me climb aboard the sampan, board the fishing boat and cast off, but don’t start the engine until I’m on board.’
Rossi nodded. Torrance took a deep breath and ducked under the water again. When he surfaced he was beneath the jetty the sampan was tied alongside. Surfacing on the opposite side, he extracted the Number 27 grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin and lobbed it into an open boat downwind of both the sampan and the fishing boat.
He swam back under the jetty. When he surfaced again, the smoke grenade was already giving off white clouds. In a matter of seconds, the gentle breeze had carried the billows across to form a curtain between the houses and the boats. Torrance hauled himself up onto the jetty and stepped aboard the sampan. Finding a toolbox on board, he took out a screwdriver and used it to pry up the engine cowling over the outboard motor. The starter cord was looped around the flywheel. Torrance unlooped it, cut it loose, jammed the Mills bomb in amongst the workings of the engine, tied the starter cord to the pin, and replaced the cowling.
He heard someone yell in Japanese. Glancing across to the fishing boat, he saw Rossi grappling with a Japanese soldier in the stern. A second soldier emerged from the wheelhouse. Torrance unslung his Thompson and fired a burst from the sampan, cutting down the second Japanese, but he dared not try to shoot the other for fear of hitting his friend. Rossi would have to manage on his own for a few more seconds. Slinging the Thompson across his back, Torrance dived into the water and swam across to the fishing boat. By the time he surfaced under the gunwale, Rossi had finished off the other Japanese and was casting off the mooring rope. When Torrance called out to him, he crossed the deck to help him over the gunwale.
Two more Japanese appeared through the curtain of white smoke drifting along the backs of the houses. Torrance handed the Thompson to Rossi, who fired a burst at the Japanese on the walkway while Torrance entered t
he wheelhouse. He pressed what he supposed was the starter button. The engine sputtered into life, then sputtered out again. Uh-oh. Torrance pressed the button a second time. This time it turned over a few times before sputtering out again.
‘Come on, you piece of shit!’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Third time’s the charm…’
The engine sputtered, turned over, started to sputter out, then seemed to have second thoughts and began to growl with more conviction. Torrance opened up the throttle and the fishing boat surged through the water. More Japanese appeared on the jetty. Some aimed their rifles after the boat, sending bullets whining over Torrance’s head. Another five leaped into the sampan. One of them cast off, another tried to start the engine. He was still tugging on the starter cord a few seconds later when the engine exploded, engulfing the stern of the sampan in flaming petrol.
A few more bullets winged their way after the fishing boat, but nothing that came close enough to provoke Torrance or Rossi to break a sweat, and a few minutes later Torrance nosed the boat’s prow into the shore where they had left the others. Cochrane and Gibson climbed aboard, Kitty helped Irina and the sultan up after them, and Varma, Quinn and Shapiro handed Rossi the wireless followed by Torrance’s and Rossi’s packs. Then the two Australians shoved the boat away from the shore, clambering over the gunwale as Torrance started up the engine again. He spun the wheel to turn the prow away from the shore. Even as they moved off, more Japanese soldiers appeared through the trees. Shapiro fired a few bursts from the Bren, enough to keep their heads down until the curtains of rain had closed behind the fishing boat’s stern.
When at last they got close enough to make out the eastern shore of the creek, Torrance saw the mangrove roots were so thickly tangled it would have taken a decade to cut a way through with a chainsaw, never mind a parang.
‘We’re never getting through that lot!’ he remarked to Kitty, raising his voice to make himself heard over the hiss of the rain on the water. He spun the helm, turning the prow to the left, following the creek downstream. ‘We’ll just have to hope there’s an opening further downstream.’
Clouds and smoke hid the sun so they did not see it set, only became aware of the dusk thickening. At least the rain kept the mosquitoes at bay: on a dry evening, they would have been maddening on the river.
Kitty joined Torrance in the wheelhouse, wiping her rain-slick face. ‘I don’t suppose you have a towel, do you?’
‘There’s a hand towel in my pack. I can’t promise it’s all that clean, but it should be dryish. Take the wheel a mo’.’ While she steered, Torrance shrugged off his pack and unbuckled the flap. While he was rummaging for the towel, he came across the bloodstained shirt he had thrust in there on Monday morning.
The one with two tickets for the Hsiu T’ung in the breast pocket.
Taking them out, he stared at them. They were damp, dirty and a little crumpled, but not in such a sorry state there was any danger of their not being accepted. He did not feel nearly as elated at the discovery as he felt he should have done. ‘Shit… oh! Pardon my French, ma’am.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Those two boat tickets… they were in my other shirt all along!’
‘So how come you thought your friend had them?’ Kitty asked Torrance.
‘He wasn’t really my friend. It’s a long story. They weren’t the only reason I went back for Smiler, you know.’
‘But if he wasn’t your friend…’
‘That ain’t the point. He was a member of my section. A good corporal looks after his section. I’d forgotten that.’ He tucked the tickets in the breast pocket of the shirt he was wearing, then laughed loudly and bitterly.
‘What’s so funny?’ asked Kitty.
‘You know, I only volunteered for this mission because I thought Smiler had the tickets.’
‘The ones you had on you the whole time.’
Torrance nodded. Rummaging in his pack some more, he found the towel and handed it to Kitty. She took off her sodden hat and used the towel to dry her hair and face. She grinned at him. She was not bad looking at all.
‘So what’s the deal between you and the sultan?’ asked Torrance. ‘What happened at Phang Nga Bay last summer?’
‘Alex and I met at some official function back during the spring. I was walking out with an RAF pilot at the time. Then the RAF pilot and I broke up. I was feeling sorry for myself when Alex invited me to spend the weekend with him on his yacht. I should probably have said no, but… how often does one get the chance to spend a weekend as the guest of a sultan on board his luxury yacht cruising amongst the islands of Siam?’
‘In my case, never.’
‘I made some discreet enquiries, satisfied myself I wouldn’t be the only guest on board his yacht… there were a dozen of us in all, all very respectable people. Including Jack Hart.’
‘The Jack Hart?’ Torrance was wide-eyed: he had seen many of Hart’s movies at the cinema. ‘The big game hunter?’
‘The one and only. It was a delightful weekend, it really helped me get over my RAF pilot, and I never once regretted accepting Alex’s invitation.’
‘And he never tried it on?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ she retorted primly, handing him his towel back. ‘Suffice it to say, Alex was never anything less than a complete gentleman.’
‘And when you told him you never met Colonel Hamilton before Sunday?’
‘As God is my witness. I was about to evacuate, I actually had one foot on the gangplank of a ship bound for Ceylon, when the military police picked me up. I thought I was in trouble: I wasn’t aware of having done anything wrong, but in my line of work there are sometimes misunderstandings… fortunately they only took me to Raffles Hotel, where Sir Shenton Thomas introduced me to Colonel Hamilton.’
‘Sir Shenton Thomas as in the Governor of Singapore?’
‘Yes, we’re old friends. Colonel Hamilton explained he was anxious to spirit Alex away from Singapore, but he knew if he asked him, Alex would refuse to go. So he wanted me to persuade him. I didn’t much care for it, but I saw it was for the good of the empire, and probably for Alex’s good as well. Imagine my embarrassment when I turned up on his doorstep on Sunday evening and found Irina there.’
‘What’s her story?’
‘Don’t you read the gutter press? Her parents got out of Russia at the time of the revolution and she was born in Harbin—’
‘In Hertfordshire,’ said Torrance, nodding sagely.
‘In Manchuria,’ she corrected him. ‘She worked at a couple of nightclubs in Shanghai, got out two steps ahead of the Japanese, and came down to Singapore on the arm of some gambler who fell foul of the local triads. She ended up singing at the Coconut Grove, which is where I understand she caught Alex’s eye. Anyway, before I’d had a chance to speak to Alex in private and broach the subject of him and Irina getting out of Singapore, the Japanese had landed. The next thing we knew, the Japanese had captured Tengah Airfield and we were cut off.’
‘So you’re not a full-time secret agent?’
‘Like a character in a Hitchcock movie, you mean?’ She laughed. ‘Heavens, no. I told you, I’m a specialist in wireless telegraphy.’
Torrance had the feeling she was not telling him the whole truth. He was not sure if that was modesty or need-to-know spookery, but there was definitely more to Third Officer Killigrew than met the eye. ‘But don’t you come from a naval family or something like that?’
‘Me? No. I had a great grandfather who was in the Royal Navy, but that didn’t cut any ice when I joined the Wrens. When I enlisted my intake included a right honourable and a rat-catcher’s daughter. The right honourable didn’t make the grade and the rat-catcher’s daughter now outranks me. And the only reasons I got a commission are because I have an honours degree from the School of Oriental Studies, and I didn’t make too big a muck-up of it when they sent me on the officer training course at Greenwich.’
‘Wait a minute, if the
sultan has a yacht, what does he need a berth on the Queen of the Orient for?’ asked Torrance.
‘Because the yacht’s being used to evacuate the children from St Xavier’s Orphanage to Colombo.’ She took out a cigarette case and proffered it to Torrance. He took one and plugged it in the corner of his mouth. She took another and lit them both with a Dunhill lighter. ‘So what’s a child of the Great Wen doing in a Highland Regiment?’
‘The great what?’
‘“Wen”. It’s what Dickens called London.’
‘Oh.’ Torrance drew on his cigarette. ‘My guv’nor was in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. When I joined up, I thought I might as well join his old regiment.’
‘Did he move to London?’
‘No, he died on the Somme.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Torrance shrugged. ‘If you’ve never had a father, you don’t know what you’re missing, right?’
‘I don’t think it works that way. Children need a role model.’
‘I dunno… when I think of some of my foster fathers, I wonder if we aren’t better off without them. Anyway, I turned out all right, didn’t I?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know you well enough to pass judgement.’
‘I know what you’re thinking, sweetheart. “Only a corporal”, right? Don’t let the stripes fool you. I reckon I could be an officer by now if I wanted to be. But the army’s not really my thing. Too many rules and regulations, not enough opportunities for a bloke to use his initiative. When the war’s over, I’m getting out. It’ll be a different story then. I’m going places. Gonna make something of myself.’
‘I dare say. But until then…’ She took a final drag on her cigarette, then flicked the butt through the open door of the wheelhouse and out into the rain. ‘It’s “ma’am”, not “sweetheart”.’
Torrance flushed. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
She went out into the rain. Searching for an opening in the mangroves, Torrance stared through the rivulets running down the windscreen. The boat rounded a headland on the east bank of the creek and suddenly, through the curtain of rain, Torrance could see the glow of flames from the oil tanks blazing at Kranji, less than a mile and a half away now. If they did not find a way ashore soon, before they knew it they would be out of the creek, following the Kranji headland around into the Johore Strait, and the Causeway – no doubt covered in Japanese tanks by now – would be up ahead. A wave of exhaustion washed over him.