King Rat (10 page)

“He’s a witch doctor!” Involuntarily, Peter Marlowe said it aloud.

Most of the officers in Hut Sixteen were still asleep, or lying on their bunks waiting for breakfast, when he entered. He pulled the coconut from under his pillow and picked up the scraper and parang machete. Then he went outside and sat on a bench. A deft tap with the parang split the coconut in two perfect halves and spilled the milk into a billycan. Then he carefully began scraping one half of the coconut. Shreds of white meat fell into the milk.

The other half coconut he scraped into a separate container. He put this coconut meat into a piece of mosquito curtain and carefully squeezed the thick-sweet sap into a cup. Today it was Mac’s turn to add the sap to his breakfast rice pap.

Peter Marlowe thought again what a marvelous food the residue of coconut was. Rich in protein and perfectly tasteless. Yet a sliver of garlic in it, and it was all garlic. A quarter of a sardine, and the whole became sardine, and the body of it would flavor many bowls of rice.

Suddenly he was famished for the coconut. He was so hungry that he did not hear the guards approaching. He did not feel their presence until they were already standing ominously in the doorway of the hut and all the men were on their feet.

Yoshima, the Japanese officer, shattered the silence. “There is a radio in this hut.”

Yoshima waited five minutes for someone to speak. He lit a cigarette and the sound of the match was a thunderclap. Dave Daven’s first reaction was, Oh my God, who’s the bastard who gave us away or made the slip? Peter Marlowe? Cox? Spence? The colonels? His second reaction was terror — terror incongruously mixed with relief — that the day had come.

Peter Marlowe’s fear was just as choking. Who leaked? Cox? The colonels? Why, even Mac and Larkin don’t know that I know! Christ! Utram Road!

Cox was petrified. He leaned against the bunk looking from slant eyes to slant eyes, and only the strength of the posts kept him from falling.

Lieutenant Colonel Sellars was in nominal charge of the hut, and his pants were slimed with fear as he entered the hut with his adjutant, Captain Forest.

He saluted, his dewlapped face flushed and sweating.

“Good morning, Captain Yoshima…”

“It is not a good morning. There is a radio here. A radio is against orders of the Imperial Nipponese Army.” Yoshima was small, slight and very neat. A samurai sword hung from his thick belt. His knee boots shone like mirrors.

“I don’t know anything about it. No. Nothing,” Sellars blustered. “You!” A palsied finger pointed at Daven. “Do you know anything about it?”

“No, sir.”

Sellars turned around and faced the hut. “Where’s the wireless?”

Silence.

“Where is the wireless?” He was almost hysterical. “Where is the wireless? I order you to hand it over instantly. You know we’re all responsible for the orders of the Imperial Army.”

Silence.

“I’ll have the lot of you court-martialed,” he screamed, his jowls shaking. “You’ll all get what you deserve. You! What’s your name?”

“Flight Lieutenant Marlowe, sir.”

“Where’s the wireless?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Then Sellars saw Grey. “Grey! You’re supposed to be Provost Marshal. If there’s a wireless here it’s your responsibility and no one else’s. You should have reported it to the authorities. I’ll have you court-martialed and it’ll show on your record…”

“I know nothing about a wireless, sir.”

“Then by God you should,” Sellars screamed at him, his face contorted and purple. He stormed up the hut to where the five American officers bunked. “Brough! What do you know about this?”

“Nothing. And it’s Captain Brough, Colonel!”

“I don’t believe you. It’s just the sort of trouble you bloody Americans’d cause. You’re nothing but an ill-disciplined rabble…”

“I’m not taking that goddam crap from you!”

“Don’t you talk to me like that. Say ‘Sir’ and stand to attention.”

“I’m the senior American officer and I’m not taking insults from you or anyone else. There’s no radio in the American contingent that I know of. There’s no radio in this hut that I know of. And if there was, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you. Colonel!”

Sellars turned and panted to the center of the hut. “Then we’ll search the hut. Everyone stand by their beds! Attention! God help the man who has it. I’ll personally see he’s punished to the limit of the law, you mutinous swine…”

“Shut up, Sellars.”

Everyone stiffened as Colonel Smedly-Taylor entered the hut.

“There’s a wireless here and I was trying —“

“Shut up.”

Smedly-Taylor’s well-used face was taut as he walked over to Yoshima, who had been watching Sellars with astonishment and contempt. “What’s the trouble, Captain?” he asked, knowing what it was.

“There’s a radio in the hut.” Then Yoshima added with a sneer, “According to the Geneva Convention governing prisoners of war…”

“I know the code of ethics quite well,” Smedly-Taylor said, keeping his eyes off the eight-by-eight beam. “If you believe there is a wireless here, please make a search for it. Or if you know where it is, please take it and be done with the affair. I’ve a lot to do today.”

“Your job is to enforce the law…”

“My job is to enforce civilized law. If you want to cite law, then obey it yourselves. Give us the food and medical supplies to which we are entitled!”

“One day you will go too far, Colonel.”

“One day I’ll be dead. Perhaps I’ll die of apoplexy trying to enforce ridiculous rules imposed by incompetent administrators.”

“I’ll report your impertinence to General Shima.”

“Please do so. Then ask him who gave the order that each man in camp should catch twenty flies a day, that they are to be collected and counted and delivered daily to your office personally by me.”

“You senior officers are always whining about the dysenteric death rate. Flies spread dysentery —“

“You don’t have to remind me about flies or death rate,” Smedly-Taylor said harshly. “Give us chemicals, and permission to enforce hygiene in the surrounding areas, and we’ll have the whole of Singapore Island under control.”

“Prisoners are not entitled…”

“Your dysenteric rate is uneconomic. Your malaria rate is high. Before you came here Singapore was malaria-free.”

“Perhaps. But we conquered you in your thousands and we captured you in your thousands. No man of honor would allow himself to be captured. You are all animals and should be treated as such.”

“I understand that quite a few Japanese prisoners are being taken in the Pacific.”

“Where did you get that information?”

“Rumors, Captain Yoshima. You know how it is. Obviously incorrect. And incorrect that the Japanese fleets are no longer on the seas, or that Japan is being bombed, or that the Americans have captured Guadalcanal, Guam and Rabaul and Okinawa, and are presently poised for an attack on the Japanese mainland —“

“Lies!” Yoshima’s hand was on the samurai sword at his waist and he jerked in an inch out of the scabbard. “Lies! The Imperial Japanese Army is winning the war and will soon have dominated Australia and America. New Guinea is in our hands and a Japanese armada is at this very moment off Sydney.”

“Of course.” Smedly-Taylor turned his back on Yoshima and looked down the length of the hut. White faces stared back at him. “Everyone outside, please,” he said quietly.

His order was silently obeyed.

When the hut was empty, he turned back to Yoshima. “Please make your search.”

“And if I find the radio?”

“That is in the hands of God.”

Suddenly Smedly-Taylor felt the weight of his fifty-four years. He shuddered under the responsibility of his burden, for though he was glad to serve, and glad to be here in a time of need, and glad to do his duty, now he had to find the traitor. When he found the traitor he would have to punish him. Such a man deserved to die, as Daven would die if the wireless was found. Pray God it is not found, he thought despairingly, it’s our only link with sanity. If there is a God in heaven, let it not be found! Please.

But Smedly-Taylor knew that Yoshima was right about one thing. He should have had the courage to die like a soldier — on the battlefield or in escape. Alive, the cancer of memory ate him — the memory that greed, power lust, and bungling had caused the rape of the East, and countless hundred thousand useless deaths.

But then, he thought, if I had died, what of my darling Maisie, and John — my Lancer son and Percy — my Air Force son — and Trudy, married so young and pregnant so young and widowed so young, what of them? Never to see or touch them, or feel the warmth of home again.

“That is in the hands of God,” he said again, but, like him, the words were old and very sad.

Yoshima snapped orders at the four guards. They pulled the bunks from the corners of the hut and made a clearing. Then they pulled Daven’s bunk into the clearing. Yoshima went into the corner and began to peer at the rafters, at the atap thatch, and at the rough boards beneath. His search was careful, but Smedly-Taylor suddenly realized that this was only for his benefit — that the hiding place was known.

He remembered the night months upon months ago when they had come to him. “It’s on your own heads,” he had said. “If you get caught, you get caught, and that’s the end of it. I can do nothing to help you - nothing.” He had singled out Daven and Cox and said quietly: “If the wireless is discovered - try not to implicate the others. You must try for a little while. Then you are to say that I authorized this wireless. I ordered you to do it.” Then he had dismissed them and blessed them in his own way and wished them luck.

Now they were all steeped in unluck.

He waited impatiently for Yoshima to get to work on the beam, hating the cat-and-mouse agony. He could hear the undercurrent of despair from the men outside. There was nothing he could do but wait.

Finally Yoshima tired of the game too. The stench of the hut bothered him. He walked to the bunk and made a perfunctory search. Then he studied the eight by eight. But his eyes could not find the cuts. Scowling, he examined it closer, his long sensitive fingers plying the wood. Still he could not find it.

His first reaction was that he had been misinformed. But this he could not believe, for the informer had not yet been paid.

He grunted a command and a Korean guard unsnapped his bayonet and gave it to him, haft first.

Yoshima tapped the beam, listening for the hollow sound. Ah, now he had it! Again he tapped. Again the hollow sound. But he could not find the cracks. Angrily he jabbed the bayonet into the wood.

The lid came free.

“So.”

Yoshima was proud that he had found the radio. The General would be pleased. Pleased enough, perhaps, to assign him a combat unit, for his Bushido revolted at paying informers and dealing with these animals.

Smedly-Taylor moved forward, awed by the ingenuity of the hiding place and the patience of the man who made it. I must recommend Daven, he thought. This is duty above and beyond the call of duty. But recommend him for what?

“Who belongs to this bunk?” Yoshima asked.

Smedly-Taylor shrugged and went through the same pretense of finding out.

Yoshima was sorry, truly sorry that Daven had only one leg.

“Would you like a cigarette?” he said, offering the pack of Kooas.

“Thank you.” Daven took the cigarette and accepted a light but did not taste the smoke.

“What is your name?” Yoshima asked courteously.

“Captain Daven, Infantry.”

“How did you lose your leg, Captain Daven?”

“I - I was blown up by a mine. In Johore - just north of the causeway.”

“Did you make the radio?”

“Yes.”

Smedly-Taylor thrust away his own fear-sweat. “I ordered Captain Daven to make it. It’s my responsibility. He was following my orders.”

Yoshima glanced at Daven. “Is this true?”

“No.”

“Who else knows about the radio?”

“No one. It was my idea and I made it. Alone.”

“Please sit down, Captain Daven.” Then Yoshima nodded contemptuously towards Cox, who sat sobbing with terror. “What’s his name?”

“Captain Cox,” Daven said.

“Look at him. Disgusting.”

Daven drew on the cigarette. “I’m just as afraid as he is.”

“You are in control. You have courage.”

“I’m more afraid than he is.” Daven hobbled awkwardly over to Cox, laboriously sat beside him. “It’s all right, Cox, old boy,” he said compassionately, putting his hand on Cox’s shoulder. “It’s all right.” Then he looked up at Yoshima. “Cox earned the Military Cross at Dunkirk before he was twenty. He’s another man now. Constructed by you bastards over three years.”

Yoshima quelled an urge to strike Daven. Before a man, even an enemy, there was a code. He turned to Smedly-Taylor and ordered him to get the six men from the bunks nearest to Daven’s, and told him to keep the rest on parade, under guard, until further orders.

The six men stood in front of Yoshima. Only Spence knew of the radio, but he, like all of them, denied the knowledge.

“Pick up the bunk and follow me,” Yoshima ordered.

When Daven groped for his crutch, Yoshima helped him to his feet.

“Thank you,” Daven said.

“Would you like another cigarette?”

“No, thank you.”

Yoshima hesitated. “I would be honored if you would accept the packet.”

Daven shrugged and took it, then hobbled to his corner and reached down for his iron leg.

Yoshima snapped out a command and one of the Korean guards picked up the leg and helped Daven sit down.

His fingers were steady as he attached the leg, then he stood, picked up his crutches, and stared at them a moment. Then he threw them into the corner of the hut.

He clomped to the bunk and looked at the radio. “I’m very proud of that,” he said. He saluted Smedly-Taylor, then moved out of the hut.

The tiny procession wove through the silence of Changi. Yoshima led and timed the speed of the march to Daven’s progress. Beside him was Smedly-Taylor. Then came Cox, tear-streamed and oblivious of the tears. The other two guards waited with the men of Hut Sixteen.

They waited eleven hours.

Smedly-Taylor returned, and the six men returned. Daven and Cox did not return. They remained in the guardhouse and tomorrow they were going to Utram Road Jail.

The men were dismissed.

Peter Marlowe had a blinding headache from the sun. He stumbled back to the bungalow, and after a shower, Larkin and Mac massaged his head and fed him. When he had finished Larkin went out and sat beside the asphalt road. Peter Marlowe squatted in the doorless door, his back to the room.

Night was gathering beyond the horizon. There was an immense solitude in Changi and the men who walked up and down seemed more than ever lost.

Mac yawned. “Think I’ll turn in now, laddie. Get an early night.”

“All right, Mac.”

Mac settled the mosquito net around his bed and tucked it under the mattress. He wrapped a sweat-rag around his forehead, then slipped Peter Marlowe’s water bottle from its felt case and undipped the false base plate. He took the covers and bases off his own water bottle and Larkin’s, then carefully put them on top of one another. Within each of the bottles was a maze of wire, condenser and tube.

From the top bottle he carefully pulled out a six-pronged male-joint with its complex of wires and fitted it deftly into the female in the middle water bottle. Then he took a four-pronged male-joint from the middle one and fitted it into its appointed socket in the last.