by Eric Ambler
The General wanted Mr. Hallett to have a big shock. Mr. Hallett’s post was not honorary. He was a career member of the Foreign Service of the United States, and acted not only as his country’s Vice-Consul, but as a local information officer as well, organising subversive things like American book centres and documentary film shows, and corrupting promising young Indonesians by arranging for them to take courses in American technical institutions. He was also closely associated with the World Health Organisation office in Labuanga, and had been known to accompany malaria control and B.C.G. field units into the interior. On occasions, he had even penetrated into insurgent-held areas with such units, returning not only unscathed but impertinently unwilling to talk about what he had seen. There were a number of American technicians working in the oil fields; and, when they came into Labuanga, they could be as riotous as Dutchmen. Mr. Hallett had a disagreeable way of making the arrest of one of these drunken gangsters appear as either a calculated affront to the President of the United States, or the result of some ridiculous mistake on the part of the security forces under the General’s command. The prospect of confronting Mr. Hallett with two American arms smugglers, disguised as tourists and caught red-handed in the company of notorious traitors, was infinitely alluring.
From the other end of the apartment he could hear his wife upbraiding one of the servants for not answering the door-bell promptly. A moment or two later he heard the voice of Major Gani. He decided to hear his aide’s report before making up his mind how he would handle the situation.
The General did not really like Major Gani, who had spent a year as a student at a Japanese university and did not always trouble to conceal his belief that he was cleverer and more cultivated than his commanding officer. He had, too, an annoying habit of quietly snapping his fingers while the General was speaking. The General, a religious man himself, had also realised by now that Gani was a Communist. However, it was impossible to get rid of him at this juncture. The man had made himself indispensable; and so had the Communist Party.
The idea of seizing the insurgent arms shipments in the Labuanga area had been a good one; he was at once arming his secret militia and denying arms to the enemy; but without the Communist intelligence network to discover the times and places of the shipments it would have been impossible. The insurgents had lost four substantial shipments before they had changed their delivery arrangements; and now, thanks to Gani and the Party, the new arrangements would soon be as unprofitable to the Committee as the old.
It had been Gani who had noted, in the immigration service’s reports, the frequency and brevity of the visits to Labuanga of the British woman, Elizabeth O’Toole. A more detailed study had then shown that O’Toole had always arrived from Singapore, and in the company of a male European of one sort or another. She had always left with him the following day. Out of five visits, one had been made with a Belgian, one with an Italian, one with a German, and one each with two different Australians. Since nobody in his senses, Asian or European, would regularly choose Labuanga as a place of assignation for any amorous purpose, Gani had made a further investigation and noted a relationship between the dates of three of O’Toole’ s visits and the dates of three interceptions of arms shipments. The party had alerted the comrades in Singapore and inquiries had been made about her there. Two days ago, a report of her true identity had been received, together with the information that she was about to make another visit to Labuanga. Arrangements had been made with the immigration service to delay the woman and her companion at the airport when they arrived, so that the necessary steps could be taken to place them under surveillance.
Major Gani came in briskly. As usual, his salute was more like an acknowledgement of applause than a mark of respect; but the General did not care today. He was hungry for information.
“Well, Major?”
Major Gani took off his cap and sat down before he answered. “The traitor Hamid Osman,” he said, “died of his wounds an hour ago, sir. It is a pity because I had hoped for much information from the man. The house they were meeting in belongs to a small importer. He is believed to be in Medan at the moment. We shall find out. Hamid Osman’s house was most interesting.”
“Ah.”
“He was unmarried and lived with his brother who is a radio technicain. We found a radio transmitter there. It was still warm from use.”
“You arrested the brother?”
“He had escaped. The two houses are only three hundred yards apart. He must have heard the firing.”
The General frowned. “The radio was still warm, you say. Would he have had time to report to the traitors in the hills?”
“Perhaps.”
“It would have been better if we could have had complete secrecy.”
Major Gani shrugged. “There cannot be complete secrecy, sir. The American and British Consuls here will have to be informed. And I believe there is a Polish Consul in Medan.”
There was a hint of malice in the way he said the last sentence. The General would have to be careful. If it became generally known that there were four non-Dutch whites under lock and key in Labuanga jail on charges other than disorderly conduct, the Area Commander in Medan would remove them from the General’s jurisdiction within hours. The Area Commander had a weakness for personal publicity and would certainly not permit a subordinate to take charge of a situation of such lively interest to the Press.
“I will deal with the American and British Consuls myself/’ the General replied casually. “They will want to be discreet. The Polish Consul does not matter.” He brushed the subject aside with a wave of his coffee spoon. “Now, about the prisoners. What information do we have from them?”
“It is a little soon, sir, to expect real information. I interrogated the taxi-driver who took them from the hotel. He heard only that the house had been used as a meeting place once before. Nothing of value. I released him.” He saw the General stiffen and added curtly: “He is a good Party member.”
“But the O’Toole woman—what does she say?”
“Nothing, sir.” Major Gani began snapping his fingers.
“And the Americans?”
“Also nothing. The man Voychinski advised them to say nothing until instructed by their Consuls. It is not important. They are not important.”
The General threw his coffee spoon down with a clatter. “Not important?” he demanded. “Four European gangsters engaged in smuggling arms to the traitors, not important?”
Major Gani sighed patiently. “Very important, sir, for propaganda purposes. But, for our purposes, we have someone much more useful—Major Sutan.”
The General controlled himself. In his daydreaming about the white prisoners he had almost forgotten that a member of the insurgent Committee had been taken, too.
“What does Sutan say?” he asked.
“He refuses to speak.”
“Where are the prisoners?”
“In the police jail, sir.”
“Sutanas well?”
“Yes, sir.” And then Major Gani made a mistake. “He is a strong man,” he went on blandly, “and will not talk easily. I have put two good men on to the preliminary interrogating work, but we do not want to injure him too much in view of the public court martial that must follow, and it may be twenty-four hours or more before he can be persuaded. I thought it safer not to interrogate him at your own headquarters. He has many friends in the Army.”
“Yes.” The General pushed his cold coffee away and got to his feet. “I was one of them.”
“Ah, then you understand, sir.”
Major Gani was an able and astute officer with a glib command of the Marxist dialectic and a keen eye for the weaknesses of other men; but he was also a deeply conceited man and in some respects grossly insensitive. To him, General Iskaq was merely a brutish and reactionary strong-arm guerrilla leader, whom circumstances had thrust into a temporary position of authority; a thick-skulled clod to be deferred to and pandered to now so that he coul
d be exploited later. The possibility of the General’s disliking the idea of torturing a former comrade had not occurred to him.
The General looked him in the eyes. “Yes, I do understand. I shall take charge of these interrogations personally.”
“In the case of the foreigners, sir?”
“In the cases of all these prisoners. Then, we will see who will talk, and who will not.”
II
At the time of the arrest, Greg had been too bewildered to be really frightened; it had been as if they were in some nightmare traffic accident involving a truckload of uniformed maniacs instead of another car. Later, when Dorothy and Mrs. Lukey were being yelled at, prodded with guns and searched in front of a roomful of policemen, he had been too angry. The butt of a carbine slammed into the pit of his stomach had ended that phase. Out of the consequent pain and nausea had come at last a cold realisation of their predicament; and, with it, fear. On the way to the jail, Mrs. Lukey had wept hysterically. It had been Dorothy, calm and collected, who had found the words of reassurance. Handcuffed to Voychinski and Major Sutan, he had sat there in numbed silence.
At the jail, a single storey brick building in a walled compound on the outskirts of the town, Dorothy and Mrs. Lukey had been hustled off to the women’s quarters. Major Sutan had been held in the administration block. Greg and Captain Voychinski had been put into a cell containing one iron-framed bed, an urn of water and a bucket. The whole place had a strong ammoniac smell thinly mingled with that of disinfectant.
Voychinski had taken their arrest philosophically, and, now that Greg’s good faith had been so strikingly proved, his attitude became almost friendly. Unfortunately, he was one of those men who, in the face of danger, affect a sardonic facetiousness as nerve-racking after a while as any display of fear.
“How did they get on to us?” Greg asked him as soon as they were alone.
“When I know I send you letter.”
“What do you think they’ll do?”
“To me? Pop-pop-pop.” He grinned, showing his steel teeth. “Or perhaps …” He made the motion of castrating himself. “With you? Big trial after six months. After two years, perhaps, they let you go. With the women? If they let you go they keep the women. If they let the women go they keep you. Don’t worry.”
“Well, they’ll have to inform our Consuls anyway.”
“Oh yes. Next week, perhaps.”
“What about Major Sutan?”
“He no have Consul here. Like me.”
As there was nothing to sit on except the bed, neither of them had any sleep. Voychinski seemed unconcerned. He began to talk about his experiences with the German Army in Russia and Italy. His facetiousness never flagged, but there was an unpleasant undercurrent of reality to all he said. Greg, who had served with the Fifth Army in Italy and understood what he was hearing about, listened with a mounting disgust that he found difficult to conceal. He had seen an Italian village after a unit of the sort Voychinski seemed to have enjoyed serving with had left it. He tried not to listen, and to pin his thoughts on to the moment when Dorothy and he would be regaling their friends with the hilarious account of how they were arrested in Labuanga and had to spend a night in the local hoosegow; but it was not a very convincing fantasy and was too easily overlaid by another in which Dorothy and he did not figure personally. In this, their friends were discussing with gloomy perplexity what the newspapers were referring to as “the Nilsen arms racket inquiry” and wondering how come Greg Nilsen had made such a horse’s ass of himself.
Soon after dawn, a guard brought them a pot of rice and fish which they had to eat with their fingers. Greg ate very little. His bowels were beginning to cause him uneasiness and he had been obliged more than once to make use of the bucket. Voychinski had some jokes to make about that, too. Greg’s dislike of him was now complete.
The barred window of the cell gave on to an inner court, and, as the sun rose, they were able to see through the zinc mosquito screen that it was an exercise yard. About twenty male prisoners, bare-footed and wearing sarongs tucked between their legs like loin cloths, wandered about aimlessly or squatted in groups under the supervision of guards with carbines. Inside the cell, the heat and smell were becoming unbearable. When, shortly before noon, a guard unlocked the door and beckoned to him, Greg’s fondest hope was that he was to be allowed out into the yard with the other prisoners.
Instead, he was taken by two guards to a room off a corridor leading to the main entrance. Except for a long table and six chairs, it was bare. The windows were barred. One guard entered with him, motioned him to a chair and stood by the door with his carbine at the ready. After a brief interval the door opened and an army officer entered. Greg recognised him as the officer who had attempted to interrogate him the previous night; a handsome man with angry eyes and an air of carefully controlled impatience. Behind him was a man of Greg’s own race, in a very clean white shirt and gabardine slacks. He was about thirty-five, stocky, and balding, with a round, chubby face and square shoulders. He stood in the doorway with a lopsided smile on his face, and looked curiously at the guard.
As Greg got to his feet, the officer inclined his head. “I am Major Gani,” he said.
Greg nodded. “Major.”
“And this, as you requested, is the American Vice-Consul in Labuanga.”
Greg gave an audible sigh of relief and smiled. “Am I glad to see you, Consul.”
The man in the doorway nodded but without looking at him. “I wish I could say the same, Mr. Nilsen. My name’s Ross Hallett.”
Greg started to move towards him, but the guard raised his carbine threateningly. Hallett took no notice. He looked from the guard to Major Gani.
“Good-bye, Major,” he said.
Major Gani’s lips tightened and he began to snap his fingers. “The formalities have now been complied with,” he said. “You have seen the prisoner. He is unharmed. It is now your duty to inform him that it is in order for him to be interrogated and to answer all questions.”
Hallett shook his head. “Oh no, Major. That isn’t my duty.”
“This is Labuanga, not Washington, Mr. Hallett. The prisoner is under our law, and so are you.”
“Sure we are,” Hallett replied easily; “and you have every right to ask Mr. Nilsen any questions you like. But that doesn’t mean he has to answer them. You see, I’ve had no opportunity yet of talking privately to him. I don’t think that I can advise him to co-operate with you at this stage.”
He turned away as if to go, then paused as the Major said something sharply in his own language. Hallett answered him in the same language.
“What did he say?” Greg asked.
Hallett ignored him. Greg stood there, uncomprehending and irritated, while they argued. Finally, the Major gave a reluctant nod and motioned the guard out of the
room.
“You may have ten minutes,” he said in English. “There will be a guard on the door.”
He followed the guard outside.
Hallett’s smile faded as the door closed.
“Sit down, please,” he said.
“Now look, Mr. Hallett,” Greg began, “all I’m worried about at the moment is my wife. You see …”
“I know, Mr. Nilsen. But we don’t have that much time, so supposing you let me run things. I’ve seen your wife and she seems to be okay. The British Vice-Consul is seeing Mrs. Lukey, and she’s okay, too.”
“You mean Miss O’Toole, don’t you?”
Hallett sighed. “Mr. Nilsen, I don’t have time for games. Whatever her passport says, these people know she’s Mrs. Lukey.”
“How did they find out?”
“I don’t know. Anyway that’s unimportant. If you’ll just answer my questions we may get somewhere.” He took a notebook from his pocket. “Now then. Mrs. Nilsen gave me some basic facts and, according to her, you have a joint American passport. Where is it now?”
“They took it away.”
“The police or the
military?”
“That officer who was just in here was in charge.”
“What else did they take from you?”
“Everything—money, wallet, watch, the lot.”
“They claim they have documentary evidence linking you with Major Sutan. What would that be?”
“I had a cheque for sixty-two thousand five hundred Malay dollars in my passport. It was drawn on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and signed by Sutan.”
Hallett’s lopsided smile returned for a moment; but it was anything but friendly. “Do you know what sort of a spot you’re in, Mr. Nilsen?”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“I wonder if you have. All right, give me the background. I want the whole history of this transaction.”
Greg gave it to him.
When he had finished, Halle« was staring at him in sour wonderment.
Greg shrugged.
Hallett drew a deep breath. “Mr. Nilsen,” he said, “I wish you could tell me something. Why is it that when an apparently normal, intelligent, law-abiding citizen like you gets hold of a passport and a steamship ticket, he suddenly turns into a juvenile …”
“Okay, Mr. Hallett,” Greg broke in irritably. “You can’t say anything I haven’t already said myself.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Our country spends millions of dollars trying to help these people become a nation of free men, trying to give them confidence in democratic processes, trying to persuade them that some version of our way of doing things offers them a better chance of happiness than the Communist Party, and then people like you …” He broke off. “I’ll give you the rest of the lecture another time. Right now we’ve got to try to get you and Mrs. Nilsen out of this mess.”
“Well, Mrs. Nilsen anyway.”
“As they see it, she’s guilty by association.” Hallett leaned forward. “Now, tell me again. Your arrangement with Lukey was just as you’ve stated it ? You had nothing to do with the delivery of this war material and know nothing about the arrangements that were to be made for that delivery? Is that right? Don’t fool with me, Mr. Nilsen. I have to know. Is that the true picture?”
