King Rat

by James Clavell

  The King smiled sardonically. Now that was one hell of a broad, he told himself as he turned his mind to more important things.

  The lights were out now in the theater. It was empty but for the two in the landlocked dressing room.

  Four

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The King and Peter Marlowe waited with growing anxiety. Shagata was long overdue.

  “What a stinking night,” the King said irritably. “I’m sweating like a pig.”

  They were sitting in the King’s corner and Peter Marlowe was watching the King play solitaire. There was a tension in the sultry air settling the camp from the moonless sky. Even the constant scratchings from beneath the hut were hushed.

  “I wish he’d get here if he’s coming,” Peter Marlowe said.

  “I wish we knew what the hell happened with Cheng San. Least the son of a bitch could’ve done was to send us word.” The King glanced out of his window towards the wire for the thousandth time. He was seeking a sign from the guerrillas that should be there—must be there! But there was no movement, no sign. The jungle, like the camp, drooped and was still.

  Peter Marlowe winced as he flexed the fingers of his left hand and moved his aching arm into a more comfortable position.

  The King looked back. “How’s it feel?”

  “Hurts like hell, old chum.”

  “You should get it looked at.”

  “I’m on sick call tomorrow.”

  “Lousy piece of luck.”

  “Accidents happen. Nothing you can do about it.”

  It had happened two days previously. On the wood detail. One moment Peter Marlowe had been straining in the swamp against the weight of the fanged tree stump, hauling it with twenty other sweating pairs of hands into the trailer, and the next moment the hands had slipped and his arm had been caught between the stump and the trailer. He had felt the iron-hard barbs of wood rip deep into his arm muscle, the weight of the tree stump almost crushing his bones, and he had screamed in agony.

  It had taken minutes for the others to lift the stump and pull his numbed arm free and lay him on the earth, his blood weeping into swamp-ooze—the flies and bugs and insects swarming, frantic with the bloodsweet-smell. The wound was six inches long and two wide and deep in parts. They had pulled out most of the root daggers from the wound and poured water over it and cleaned it as best they could. They had put on a tourniquet, then fought the tree stump onto the trailer and labored it home to Changi. He had walked beside the trailer, faint with nausea.

  Dr. Kennedy had looked at the wound and doused it with iodine while Steven held his good hand and he was starched with pain. Next the doctor had put a little zinc ointment on part of the wound, and grease on the rest to stop the clotting blood from melding with the dressing. Then the doctor had bandaged the arm.

  “You’re bloody lucky, Marlowe,” he had said. “No bones broken and the muscles are undamaged. More or less just a flesh wound. Come back in a couple of days and we’ll take another look at it.”

  The King looked up sharply from the cards as Max hurried into the hut.

  “Trouble,” Max said, his voice low and strained. “Grey’s just left the hospital, heading this way.”

  “Keep him tailed, Max. Better send Dino.”

  “Okay.” Max hurried out.

  “What do you think, Peter?”

  “If Grey’s out of the hospital, he must know something’s up.”

  “He knows, all right.”

  “What?”

  “Sure. He has a stoolie in the hut.”

  “My God. Are you sure?”

  “Yes. And I know who.”

  The King put a black four on a red five and the red five on a black six and cleared another ace.

  “Who is it?”

  “I’m not telling you, Peter.” The King smiled hard. “Better you don’t know. But Grey has a man here.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing. Yet. Maybe later I’ll feed him to the rats.” Then the King smiled and changed the subject. “Now the Farm was one helluva’n idea, wasn’t it?”

  Peter Marlowe wondered what he would do if he knew who it was. He knew that Yoshima had a plant too, somewhere in the camp, the one who gave old Daven away, the one who had not been caught yet, who was still unknown—the one who was looking for the bottled radio right now. He thought the King was wise to conceal the knowledge, then there would be no slip-up, and he did not resent that the King did not tell him who it was. But even so, he examined possibilities.

  “Do you really think,” he asked, “that the—meat’ll be all right?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” the King said. “Whole idea’s sickening when you think about it. But—and it’s a big but—business is business. With the twist we got, it’s a genius idea!”

  Peter Marlowe smiled and forgot the hurt of his arm. “Don’t forget. I get the first leg.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “No.”

  The King laughed. “You wouldn’t hold out on your buddy?”

  “I’ll tell you when delivery’s made.”

  “When it comes right down to it, meat’s meat and food’s food. Take the dog, for instance.”

  “I saw Hawkins a day or so ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I certainly didn’t want to say anything and he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “He’s on the ball, that guy. What’s over’s over.” Then the King said uneasily, tossing the cards on the table, “I wish Shagata’d get here.”

  Tex peered through the window. “Hey!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Timsen says the owner’s getting panicky. How long you going to wait?”

  “I’ll go see him.” The King slipped out of the window and whispered, “You watch the shop, Peter. I won’t be far away.”

  “All right,” Peter Marlowe said. He picked up the cards and began to shuffle them, shuddering as the ache rose and fell and rose again.

  The King kept to the shadows, feeling many eyes on him. Some were the eyes of his guards and the rest were alien and hostile. When he found Timsen, the Aussie was in a sweat.

  “Hey, cobber. I can’t keep him here forever.”

  “Where is he?”

  “When your contact arrives, I produce him. That’s the deal. He ain’t far away.”

  “You better keep your eye on him. You don’t want him knocked off, do you?”

  “You stick to your end, I’ll stick to mine. He’s well guarded.” Timsen sucked on his Kooa, then passed it over to the King, who took a drag.

  “Thanks.” The King nodded up towards the jail wall, east. “You know about them?”

  “’Course.” The Aussie laughed. “Tell you another thing. Grey’s on his way down here right now. Whole area’s lousy with cops and bushwhackers. I know of one Aussie gang, and I hear there’s another that’s got wind of the deal. But my cobbers’ve got the area taped. Soon as we get the money, you get the diamond.”

  “We’ll give the guard another ten minutes. If he doesn’t arrive then we’ll plan again. Same plan, different details.”

  “Right, mate. I’ll see you after grub tomorrow.”

  “Let’s hope it’s tonight.”

  But it was not that night. They waited, and still Shagata did not arrive, so the King called off the operation.

  The next day Peter Marlowe joined the swarm of men waiting outside the hospital. It was after lunch and the sun tormented the air and the earth and the creatures of the earth. Even the flies were somnambulant. He found a patch of shade and squatted heavily in the dust and began to wait. The throb of his arm had worsened.

  It was after dusk when his turn came.

  Dr. Kennedy nodded briefly to Peter Marlowe and indicated for him to sit. “How’re you today?” he said absently.

  “Not too bad, thank you.”

  Dr. Kennedy leaned forward and touched the bandage. Peter Marlowe screamed.

  “Wh
at the devil’s the matter?” Dr. Kennedy said angrily. “I hardly touched you, for God’s sake!”

  “I don’t know. The slightest touch hurts like bloody hell.”

  Dr. Kennedy stuck a thermometer in Peter Marlowe’s mouth and then set the metronome clicking and took his pulse. Abnormal, pulse rate ninety. Bad. Temperature normal, and that was also bad. He lifted the arm and sniffed the bandage. It had a distinct mousy odor. Bad.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m going to take the bandage off. Here.” He gave Peter Marlowe a small piece of tire rubber which he picked out of the sterilizing fluid with a pair of surgical tongs. “Bite on this. I can’t help hurting you.”

  He waited until Peter Marlowe had put the rubber between his teeth, then, as gently as he could, he began unwinding the bandage. But it was clotted to the wound and now part of the wound and the only thing to do was rip, and he was not as deft as he should be and once was.

  Peter Marlowe had known a lot of pain. And when you know a thing, intimately, you know its limitations and its color and its moods. With practice—and courage—you can let yourself slip into pain and then the pain is not bad, only a welling, controllable. Sometimes it is even good.

  But this pain was beyond agony.

  “Oh God,” Peter Marlowe whimpered through the rubber bite-piece, tears streaming, his breathing sporadic.

  “It’s over now,” Dr. Kennedy said, knowing that it was not. But there was nothing more he could do, nothing. Not here. Certainly the patient should have morphine, any fool knows that, but I can’t afford a shot. “Now let’s have a look.”

  He studied the open wound carefully. It was puffy and swollen and there were shades of yellow hue with purple patches. Mucused.

  “Hum,” he said speculatively and leaned back and played with his fingers, making a steeple and looking away from the wound to the steeple. “Well,” he said at length, “we have three alternatives.” He got up and began pacing, stoop-shouldered, and then said monotonously, as though delivering a lecture, “The wound has now taken on other attributes. Clostridial myositis. Or, to put it more simply, the wound is gangrenous. Gas gangrenous. I can lay open the wound and excise the infected tissue, but I don’t think that will do, for the infection is deep. So I would have to take out part of the forearm muscles and then the hand won’t be of use anyway. The best solution would be to amputate—”

  “What!”

  “Assuredly.” Dr. Kennedy was not talking to a patient, he was only giving a lecture in the sterile classroom of his mind. “I propose a high guillotine amputation. Immediately. Then perhaps we can save the elbow joint—”

  Peter Marlowe burst out desperately, “It’s just a flesh wound. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just a flesh wound!”

  The fear of his voice brought Dr. Kennedy back, and he looked at the white face a moment. “It is a flesh wound, but very deep. And you’ve got toxemia. Look, my boy, it’s quite simple. If I had serum I could give it to you, but I haven’t got any. If I had sulfonamides I could put them on the wound, but I haven’t got any. The only thing I can do is amputate—”

  “You must be out of your mind!” Peter Marlowe shouted at him. “You talk about amputating my arm when I’ve only got a flesh wound.”

  The doctor’s hand snaked out and Peter Marlowe shrieked as the fingers held his arm far above the wound.

  “There, you see! That’s not just a flesh wound. You’ve toxemia and it’ll spread up your arm and into your system. If you want to live we’ll have to cut it off. At least it’ll save your life!”

  “You’re not cutting off my arm!”

  “Please yourself. It’s that or—” The doctor stopped and sat down wearily. “I suppose it is your privilege if you want to die. Can’t say I blame you. But my God, boy, don’t you realize what I’m trying to tell you? You will die if we don’t amputate.”

  “You’re not going to touch me!” Peter Marlowe’s lips were drawn from his teeth and he knew he’d kill the doctor if he touched him again. “You’re out of your mind!” he shouted. “It’s a flesh wound.”

  “All right. Don’t believe me. We’ll ask another doctor.”

  Kennedy called another doctor and he confirmed the diagnosis and Peter Marlowe knew that the nightmare was not a dream. He did have gangrene. Oh my God! The fear washed his strength away. He listened, terrified. They explained that the gangrene was caused by bacilli multiplying deep down in his arm, breeding death, right now. His arm was a cancerous thing. It had to be cut off. Cut off to the elbow. It had to be cut off soon or the entire arm would have to be removed. But he wasn’t to worry. It wouldn’t hurt. They had plenty of ether now—not like in the old days.

  And then Peter Marlowe was outside the hospital, his arm still on him—bacilli breeding—tied with a clean bandage, and he was groping his way down the hill, for he had told them, the doctors, that he would have to think this over … Think what over? What was there to think? He found himself outside the American hut and he saw that the King was alone in the hut and all was prepared for Shagata’s coming—if he came that night.

  “Jesus, what’s with you, Peter?”

  The King listened, his dismay growing as the story spilled out.

  “Christ!” He stared at the arm, which rested on the table.

  “I swear to God I’d rather die than live a cripple. I swear to God!” Peter Marlowe looked up at the King, pathetic, unguarded, and out of his eyes came a scream: Help, help, for the love of God, help!

  And the King thought, Holy Cow, what would I do if I was Peter and that was my arm, and what about the diamond—got to have Peter to help there, got to …

  “Hey,” whispered Max urgently from the doorway. “Shagata’s on his way.”

  “All right, Max. What about Grey?”

  “He’s down by the wall under cover. Timsen knows about him. His Aussies’re covering.”

  “Good, beat it and get ready. Spread the word.”

  “Okay.” Max hurried away.

  “Come on, Peter, we got to get ready,” the King said.

  But Peter Marlowe was in shock. Useless.

  “Peter!” The King shook him roughly. “Get up and get with it!” he grated. “Come on. You’ve got to help. Get up!”

  He jerked Peter Marlowe to his feet.

  “Christ, what—”

  “Shagata’s coming. We’ve got to finish the deal.”

  “To hell with your deal!” Peter Marlowe screamed, brinked on insanity. “To hell with the diamond! They’re going to cut off my arm.”

  “No they’re not!”

  “You’re goddam right they’re not. I’m going to die first—”

  The King backhanded him hard, then slapped him viciously.

  The raving stopped abruptly and Peter Marlowe shook his head. “What the hell—”

  “Shagata’s coming. We got to get ready.”

  “He’s coming?” Peter Marlowe asked blankly, his face burning from the blows.

  “Yes.” The King saw that Peter Marlowe’s eyes were once more guarded and he knew that the Englishman was back in the world. “Jesus,” he said, weak with relief. “I had to do something, Peter, you were shouting your head off.”

  “Was I? Oh, sorry, what a fool.”

  “You all right now? You got to keep your wits about you.”

  “I’m all right now.”

  Peter Marlowe slipped through the window after the King. And he was glad of the shaft of pain that soared up his arm as his feet hit the ground. You panicked, you fool, he told himself. You, Marlowe, you panicked like a child. Fool. So you have to lose your arm. You’re lucky it’s not a leg, then you’d really be crippled. What’s an arm? Nothing. You can get an artificial one. Sure. With a hook. Nothing wrong with a false arm. Nothing. Could be quite a good idea. Certainly.

  “Tabe,” Shagata greeted them as he ducked under the flap of canvas which shielded the overhang.

  “Tabe,” said the King and Peter Marlowe.

  Shagata was
very nervous. The more he had thought about this deal the less he liked it. Too much money, too much risk. And he sniffed the air like a dog pointing. “I smell danger,” he said.

  “He says, ‘I can smell danger.’”

  “Tell him not to worry, Peter. I know about the danger and it’s taken care of. But what about Cheng San?”

  “I tell thee,” Shagata whispered hurriedly, “that the gods smile upon thee and me and our friend. He is a fox, that one, for the pestilential police let him out of their trap.” The sweat was running down his face and soaking him. “I have the money.”

  The King’s stomach turned over. “Tell him we’d better dispense with the yak and get with it. I’ll be right back with the goods.”

  The King found Timsen in the shadows.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.” Timsen whistled a bird call in the dark. Almost at once it was answered. “Do it fast, mate. I can’t guarantee to hold you safe for long.”

  “Okay.” The King waited and out of the darkness came a lean Aussie corporal.

  “Hi, cobber. Name’s Townsend. Bill Townsend.”

  “Come on.”

  The King hurried back to the overhang while Timsen kept guard and his Aussies fanned out, ready for the escape route.

  Down by the corner of the jail, Grey was waiting impatiently. Dino had just whispered in his ear that Shagata had arrived, but Grey knew that the preliminaries would take a while. A while, and then he could move.

  Smedly-Taylor’s phalanx was ready too, waiting for the transfer to take place. Once Grey was in motion, they too would move.

  The King was under the flap with Townsend nervously beside him.

  “Show him the diamond,” the King ordered.

  Townsend opened his ragged shirt and pulled out a cord and on the end of the cord was the diamond ring. Townsend was trembling as he showed it to Shagata, who focused his portable lamp on the stone. Shagata examined it carefully, a bead of ice-light on the end of a piece of string. Then he took it and scratched the glass surface of the lamp. It screeched and left its mark.

  Shagata nodded, sweating. “Very well.” He turned to Peter Marlowe. “Truly it is a diamond,” he said and took out calipers and carefully measured the extent of the stone. Again he nodded. “Truly it is four carats.”