by Eric Ambler
“It is.”
Hallett sighed. “That’s too bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Military Governor’s terms for your release are that you inform them when and how the stuff is being delivered, so that they can intercept and confiscate it.”
“But that’s crazy. How can I tell them ? Lukey doesn’t even own the stuff until that cheque is cashed in Singapore.”
“They won’t believe that.”
“But they’ll have to.”
“There’s no have to about it.”
“Major Sutan’ll tell them I don’t know anything. Voychinski, too.”
“A traitor and a hoodlum? Why should they believe what they say?”
Greg was silent for a moment. Then, he nodded. “I see. It looks as if my wife and I are going to be here quite a while.”
Hallett made no comment. “How much money did you have with you?” he asked.
Greg told him.
“All right, I’ll try to get that released. While you’re held without trial you can pay for a more comfortable cell and have food sent in from outside if you want.”
“Will I be able to see my wife?”
“I’ll ask, but I doubt it.”
“I don’t know how Mrs. Lukey’s fixed for money. If we can get these privileges for her, too, I’d be glad to pay.”
“I’ll speak to the British Consul about that. Now, then. You’re going to be interrogated by the Governor personally. His name is General Iskaq and what he’d really like to do is beat the daylights out of you. He won’t, because he knows I’d raise hell in Medan and Djakarta if he did, but bear it in mind and don’t push him. Do you know what xenophobia is?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the General has it badly. So watch yourself. Tell him the truth. He won’t believe you, but go on telling it anyway. That cheque is your best talking point.”
“How do you mean?”
“It substantiates your story that the transaction was incomplete, and that there were, therefore, no delivery arrangements. Tell him about the second signature needed. Say that, if he doesn’t believe you, he should send the cheque to the Indonesian Consulate in Singapore and ask them to try and cash it as it is. Ask him if he thinks you fool enough to trust Lukey with the goods before you had been paid.”
“He knows Lukey?”
“Of course. Lukey’s a crook.” The oil company filed embezzlement charges against him two years ago, but couldn’t make them stick. The Government deported him.”
“I see.”
“Another thing. Don’t get into any sort of political discussion. You had the stuff to sell. You were approached in Singapore. You thought you were dealing with an agent of the Central Government.”
“You said I was to tell the truth.”
“The Communist Party here will make all the propaganda use they can out of this. They’ll try to say you’re an American agent and that we’re secretly backing the insurgents while pretending friendship with the Central Government. The less help they have from you the better.”
“How do I account for the meeting with Major Sutan?”
They could hear footsteps approaching along the corridor outside. Hallett began to speak quickly.
“You thought he was a Government official trying to get a secret commission on the deal. Play the innocent. You shouldn’t find that too difficult.” He waved Greg into silence with a gesture. “Do you smoke, Mr. Nilsen?” he went on loudly.
“A cigar occasionally. Why?”
“I’ll send you in some cigarettes anyway. They are currency here. There’s a pack to go on with. Liquor is not allowed, I’m afraid.”
“Do you have something for an upset stomach?”
“I’ll get you some pills from my doctor.”
The door opened as he was speaking and Hallett got to his feet. Greg rose with him.
The man who came into the room had a stunted, barrel-chested body the ugliness of which was only partially concealed by an immaculately laundered uniform. He had a heavy, pock-marked face with thick, rubbery lips and ears. His eyes were watchful and his movements deliberate like those of some powerful yet cumbersome animal. He wore a scrubbed webbing pistol belt, and carried a short leather-covered cane of the type Greg had seen carried by British officers during the war.
Just inside the door he stopped and looked distastefully from Hallett to Greg.
“This is Mr. Nilsen,” Hallett said, and added to Greg: “The Military Governor of Labuanga, General Iskaq.”
The General went over to the table and sat at the head of it. He was followed by Major Gani who motioned to Greg to stand facing the General.
Hallett said: “Governor, I have advised Mr. Nilsen to make a frank and full statement.”
The General seemed to take no notice.
“You will find that he acted in good faith and that no possible charge against him can be substantiated,” Hallett continued.
Major Gani smiled ironically and began to translate what had been said into Malay. Only then did Greg realise that the General could not understand English.
When the translation was finished, the General looked at Hallett and said something in a harsh, guttural voice.
Hallett inclined his head politely and turned to Greg. “I am requested to leave now, Mr. Nilsen,” he said. “You will, of course, answer the Governor’s questions as best you can. I have no doubt that you and Mrs. Nilsen will be released very soon. In any case, I shall be watching your interests and will see you as often as I can. If it becomes necessary, I will get counsel for you.”
“Thanks.”
With a slight bow to the General, Hallett went. As the guard shut the door behind him, Major Gani sat down by the General.
Greg turned to face him.
Major Gani nodded. “We will begin,” he said briskly. “First, let us hear what you and Mr. Hallett have arranged that you shall say. After that we will hear the truth.”
III
The General listened absently to the white man’s voice speaking the language that always sounded to him like the chattering of apes, and watched the sweat pouring off him as he talked. In his mind’s eye, however, all he could see was the room he had left ten minutes earlier, and his old friend Mohamad Sutan lying on the stone floor in a pool of bloody water, moaning and choking, with blood running from his mouth and nostrils and his stomach heaving. He had told the proudly smiling men who had done it to stop for the present and let the prisoner rest; but he could not leave matters there. Soon, he would have to tell them to go on again. Unless, of course, one of the whites should talk first.
As Major Gani started to tell him what the white man was saying, the General picked up the cane he had placed beside him on the table and began to tap the palm of his other hand.
IV
“It’s really my fault,” Dorothy was telling Mrs. Lukey. “We’d been planning this trip and looking forward to it for so long that the reality was bound to be an anticlimax. I was prepared for that, but Greg wasn’t and I let him get angry and bored. I should have had more sense. When a man’s worked so hard and successfully for so many years, and been such a wonderful husband and father, you tend to forget some things about him. Or maybe tell yourself that they’re no longer there.”
“What sort of things?”
Dorothy sighed inwardly with relief. After the American and British Consuls had been there, Mrs. Lukey had been calmer for a while; but gradually the effect of their visits had worn off and she had begun to weep again. She was going to be tortured, she was going to be raped, she was going to be shot. She had done nothing. She did not want to die.
As almost everything she said expressed Dorothy’s own presentiments and fears, it had not been easy to reassure her with any sort of conviction. Despair can be infectious, and Dorothy had begun to cast about feverishly for some means of diverting her companion’s thoughts from their immediate situation. She had found it, unexpectedly, in the subject of her relation
ship with Greg. Mrs. Lukey was almost avidly curious about it. Dorothy guessed that she was trying indirectly to find the key to a more secure relationship with her own husband. It was the difficulties of marriage that interested her most. Her eyes were dry now, and, although she still held the damp white ball which had been Dorothy’s last piece of Kleenex, her nose had at last stopped running.
“What sort of things?” she repeated.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dorothy said. “Nothing very bad, really. You know those dolls with round weights at their feet? The ones that always stand up straight again however much you push them over? As long as he has work that’s important to him, a man like Greg hardly ever does anything really silly. It’s only when the weight is suddenly taken away that things go wrong. It was like that when he came home from the army. He’d been away four years working with mine detection equipment and explosives. It was dangerous work, but it had fascinated him. All that time he’d hardly thought of anything else. When he came home safely to me and the boys, I was so happy. I thought that all our troubles were over.” She paused. “The first thing that happened was that he fell in love with another woman—or rather, a nineteen-year-old girl.”
Mrs. Lukey looked at her quickly; but Dorothy’s expression remained placid.
“I suppose that if it hadn’t been for the children,” she said, “we’d have broken up. But we didn’t. Greg got his business going and gradually everything was all right again.”
“What about the other woman?”
Dorothy shrugged. “The last time we talked about it was five years ago. Greg became very upset.”
“Because he was still in love with her?”
“No. Because he couldn’t remember her second name.”
Mrs. Lukey stared at her uncertainly for a moment. Dorothy was looking preternaturally solemn. Then, Mrs. Lukey began to laugh. After a moment, Dorothy began to laugh with her. They did not hear the footsteps of the guard approaching, and were still laughing when the cell door opened. Mrs. Lukey’s laughter became a strangled cry as they turned.
Standing in the doorway was the old woman who acted as wardress, and one of the armed guards from the control section.
The wardress said something in Malay, and Mrs. Lukey began to back away.
As Dorothy started to go to her, the guard came into the cell and, reaching out, grabbed Mrs. Lukey by the arm. She screamed and tried to pull away. With a shout he flung her across the cell to the wardress, and then, using his carbine with both hands, thrust them out into the corridor. The cell door slammed behind him.
As the sound of Mrs. Lukey’s screams receded, Dorothy sat down on the bed and searched her bag frantically to see if by any chance there was one more piece of Kleenex that she had overlooked. There was none. She sobbed once and tried holding her breath. Then, she ceased trying. Kleenex or no Kleenex, it was better perhaps to cry.
When Greg was taken back to his cell, Voychinski was stretched out asleep on the bed.
He awoke at the sound of the cell door closing, but made no attempt to move. Greg took no notice of him. Heat, lack of sleep, stomach cramps and the insistent questioning had exhausted him to the point of indifference to discomfort. When he had used the bucket, he sat down on the floor and rested his back against the wall.
Voychinski sat up lazily and yawned. Greg took Hallett’s cigarettes and matches from his shirt pocket and tossed them on to the bed.
“Compliments of the American Consul,” he said.
Voychinski picked up the cigarettes and smirked. “You leave soon, hah?”
“Just as soon as I tell them when and how that stuff you were going to buy is being delivered.”
“They think you know?”
“That’s right. They think I know.”
Voychinski swung his feet off the bed and looked down at him. “Who question you?”
“General Iskaq and that Major.”
“So!” The pale eyes searched for hidden clues. “What you say?”
“What could I say? I told them all I know. I told them fifty times.”
“About the delivery?”
“I don’t know anything about the delivery. You know that as well as I do.”
“But you tell them something, a good story perhaps?”
“I told them what I know and that’s all.”
“Nothing about delivery?”
“That’s right.”
“You lie.”
Greg shut his eyes wearily. “Anything you say.”
Voychinski got up off the bed and stared down belligerently. “Gani would not permit you to say nothing.”
“Gani wasn’t conducting the interrogation.”
“You are lucky.”
“It’s not Gani I’m worried about.”
“That peasant Iskaq?” Voychinski spat derisively. “Listen, my friend. Iskaq is a soldier, a good soldier, but stupid politically. Oh yes, he would wish to break your face, but he is not serious. Gani is the dangerous one. He want those guns to arm more of his party men.”
“What party men?”
“You do not know he is a Red?”
“How would I?”
“Mrs. Lukey know it.”
“What difference does it make?”
“My friend, if Iskaq had political sense he would have come over to the Committee. Now, he secretly helps to arm the Reds and think he is fighting us when he only make firing squad for himself. It is stupid.” He sat down again and stared at Greg suspiciously. “You did not tell Gani anything?”
“About the delivery? Don’t be silly. I don’t know anything. Is there anyone who does? Does Major Sutan? Do you?”
Voychinski’s eyes narrowed unpleasantly. “Did Gani tell you to ask that?”
“Oh, for God’s sake!”
Voychinski shrugged. “When a man is afraid and has nothing to lose he will do many things. And Gani means to find out from one of us.”
Greg glowered at him. “What do you mean, ‘nothing to lose’?”
“Your arms are still in Singapore.”
“Exactly! So there’s nothing for Major Gani to find out. That’s what I keep trying to tell you.”
Voychinski sighed impatiently. “My friend, do you think that you are the only man in the world who sell us arms?”
It took Greg several seconds to get the point. Then, he remembered something Captain Lukey had said. “You only have to go the first time. After that it’s plain sailing.” With only one deal to consummate himself, he had not taken much notice of it then. He looked up at Voychinski.
“You mean there’s another shipment from someone else already on the way?”
Voychinski showed his teeth but did not reply. From along the corridor there was the sound of a door opening and a rattle of keys. A moment later the cell door was opened and a guard outside motioned to Voychinski.
He got up slowly, stretched himself and walked out. He did not even glance at Greg. The door shut behind him.
V
Ross and Fran Hallett were playing bridge with Dr. Subramaniam, the Indian director of the tuberculosis clinic, and his wife that evening when the lights went out. It was a little before eight o’clock.
They were not unduly concerned. Power failures were common enough. Dr. Subramaniam lit some oil lamps and they went on with the rubber. Twenty minutes later the lights were still out, and Dr. Subramaniam, wondering if the failure could after all be due to a fuse in his own house, went out to the road to see if there were lights elsewhere. He saw immediately that the failure was general; but as he walked back he heard the sound of distant machine-gun fire. It seemed to come from the other side of the town, by the port.
He called Ross Hallett. The sounds of firing were becoming more insistent and, intermingled with them now, there were faint thudding noises.
“What is it, do you think?” asked the Doctor; “another raid on the storage tanks?”
“Possibly. Difficult to tell from here.”
“What else could it be?
”
“I wouldn’t like to say. Anyway, I think I have to get back.”
“Why? There’s nothing you can do. We’ve got a spare bed you and Fran can have for the night.”
Hallett shook his head. “I’ll be grateful if you’d let Fran stay, but I have to get back.”
“They’ll have shut the Inner Zone.”
“I’ll get through on my pass.”
Fran Hallett recognised what she called the ‘State Department’ look on her husband’s face when he returned to the house, and made no attempt either to dissuade him from going or to insist on going along herself. She did not even tell him to take care. She merely reminded him that there were fresh eggs in the water cooler and kissed him good night.
He drove very slowly. Once, when a column of army troop carriers began to pass him, he pulled off the road and stopped. During these emergencies the Labuanga garrison became trigger-happy, and moving vehicles, including their own, were frequently shot at. As he approached the Inner Zone check point, he became even more cautious. A hundred yards short of it, he stopped the car, and, leaving the headlights on, got out and walked towards the guard-house. With the lights behind him the sentries could see clearly that he was unarmed and alone.
The N.C.O. in charge of the check point had never seen a diplomatic pass before, and could not read. An officer had to be summoned to approve the pass before he was allowed through. The sounds of firing were louder there and it was possible to determine the direction from which they were coming. The officer was excited and on edge, but Hallett decided to take a small risk.
“What do they want?” he asked. “To burn one more oil tank?”
There was a local joke implicit in the form of the question. From time to time Government spokesmen had accused the oil company of secretly subsidising the Party of the Faithful. Insurgent propaganda leaflets had indignantly denied the charge and listed the attacks made on oil company property. The list had been unconvincing and a Government newspaper had run a sarcastic article about it. Why was it, the writer had asked, that the insurgents were never able to blow up more than one oil storage tank at a time ? Why didn’t they use a little more explosive while they were about it, and blow up two or three ? And why did they bother with oil storage tanks at all, when they could, at much less risk to themselves, cut the pipe lines? The writer had gone on to offer helpful suggestions of how this might be done, and to suggest that the insurgents apply to America for technical assistance. Even the strongly pro-Faithful had smiled a little at this.
