South by Java Head

by Alistair MacLean

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Nicolson demanded.

  “Just that Colonel Kiseki has had orders only to recover the diamonds and deliver them intact to Japan. Nothing was said about prisoners. You killed his son. You will see what I mean.”

  “I can guess.” Nicolson looked at him with contempt. “A shovel, a six by two hole and a shot in the back when I’ve finished digging. Oriental culture. We’ve heard all about it.”

  Yamata smiled emptily. “Nothing so quick and clean and easy, I assure you. We have, as you say, culture. Such crudities are not for us.”

  “Captain Yamata.” Van Efifen was looking at the Japanese officer, fractionally narrowed eyes the only sign of emotion in an expressionless face.

  “Yes, Colonel?”

  “You—you can’t do that. This man is not a spy, to be shot without trial. He’s not even a member of the armed forces, Technically, he’s a noncombatant.”

  “Of course, of course.” Yamata was heavily ironic. “To date he has only been responsible for the deaths of fourteen of our sailors and an airman. I shudder to think of the carnage if he ever became a combatant. And he killed Kiseki’s son.”

  “He didn’t. Siran will bear that out.”

  “Let him explain that to the colonel,” Yamata said indifferently. He sheathed his sword. “We quibble, and uselessly. Come, let us go. Our truck should be here shortly.”

  “Truck?” Van Eflfen queried.

  “We left it almost a mile away.” Yamata grinned. “We did not wish to disturb your sleep. What’s the matter, Mr. Nicolson?” he finished sharply.

  “Nothing,” Nicolson answered shortly. He had been staring out through the open doorway and in spite of himself a flicker of excitement had crossed his face, but he knew that his eyes had been safely away before Yamata had caught his expression. “The truck isn’t here yet. I would like to ask Van Effen one or two questions.” He hoped his voice sounded casual.

  “We have a minute or two,” Yamata nodded. “It might amuse me. But be quick.”

  “Thank you.” He looked at Van Effen. “As a matter of interest, who gave Miss Plenderleith the diamonds—and the plans?”

  “What does it matter now?” Van Effen’s voice was heavy, remote. “It’s all past and done with now.”

  “Please,” Nicolson persisted. It had suddenly become essential to stall for time. “I really would like to know.”

  “Very well.” Van Effen looked at him curiously. “I’ll tell you. Farnholme had them both—and he had them nearly all the time. That should have been obvious to you from the fact that Miss Plenderleith had them. Where the plans came from I’ve told you I don’t know: the diamonds were given him by the Dutch authorities in Borneo.”

  “They must have had a great deal of faith in him,” Nicolson said dryly.

  “They had. They had every reason to. Farnholme was utterly reliable. He was an infinitely resourceful and clever man, and knew the East—especially the islands—as well as any man alive. We know for a fact that he spoke at least fourteen Asiatic languages.”

  “You seem to have known a great deal about him.”

  “We did. It was our business—and very much to our interest—to find out all we could. Farnholme was one of our arch-enemies. To the best of our knowledge he had been a member of your Secret Service for just over thirty years.”

  There were one or two stifled gasps of surprise and the sudden low murmur of voices. Even Yamata had sat down again and was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his keen dark face alight with interest.

  “Secret Service!” Nicolson let his breath go in a long, soundless whistle of surprise, rubbed a hand across his forehead in a gesture of disbelief and wonderment. He had guessed as much five minutes ago. Under the protective cover of his hand his eyes flickered sideways for a split second, glanced through the open door of the council house, then looked at Van Effen. “But—but Miss Plenderleith said he commanded a regiment in Malaya, some years ago.”

  “That’s right, he did.” Van Effen smiled. “At least, he appeared to.”

  “Go on, go on.” It was Captain Findhorn who urged him.

  “Not much to go on with. The Japanese and myself knew of the missing plans, within hours of their being stolen. I was after them with official Japanese backing. We hadn’t reckoned on Farnholme having made arrangements to take the diamonds with him also—a stroke of genius on Farnholme’s part. It served a double purpose. If anyone penetrated his disguise as an alcoholic beachcomber on the run, he could buy his way out of trouble. Or if anyone were still suspicious of him and discovered the diamonds they would be sure to think that that accounted for his disguise and odd behaviour and let it go at that. And, in the last resort, if the Japanese discovered on what ship he was, he hoped that cupidity or their natural desire to recover such a valuable wartime merchandise would make them think twice about sinking the ship, in the hope that they might get the plans and so recover the diamonds another way, killing two birds with one stone. I tell you, Farnholme was brilliant. He had the most diabolically ill luck.”

  “It didn’t work out that way,” Findhorn objected. “Why did they sink the Kerry Dancer?”

  “The Japanese didn’t know he was aboard at the time,” Van Effen explained. “But Siran did—he always did. He was after the diamonds, I suspect, because some renegade Dutch official doublecrossed his own people and gave Siran the information in return for a promised share of the profits when Siran laid hands on the stones. He would never have seen a single guilder or stone. Neither would the Japanese.”

  “A clever attempt to discredit me.” It was Siran speaking for the first time, his voice smooth and controlled. “The stones would have gone to our good friends and allies, the Japanese. That was our intention. My two men here will bear me out.”

  “It will be difficult to prove otherwise,” Van Effen said indifferently. “Your betrayal this night is worth something. No doubt your masters will throw the jackal a bone.” He paused, then went on: “Farnholme never suspected who I was—not, at least, until after we had been several days in the lifeboat. But I had known him all along, cultivated him, drunk with him. Siran here saw us together several times and must have thought that Farnholme and I were more than friends, a mistake anyone might make. That, I think, is why he rescued me—or rather didn’t chuck me overboard when the Kerry Dancer went down. He thought I either knew where the diamonds were or would find out from Farnholme.”

  “Another mistake,” Siran admitted coldly. “I should have let you drown.”

  “You should. Then you might have got the whole two million to yourself.” Van Effen paused for a moment’s recollection, then looked at the Japanese officer. “Tell me, Captain Yamata, has there been any unusual British naval activity in the neighbourhood recently?”

  Captain Yamata looked at him in quick surprise. “How do you know?”

  “Destroyers, possibly?” Van Effen had ignored the question. “Moving in close at night?”

  “Exactly.” Yamata was astonished. “They come close in to Java Head each night, not eighty miles from here, then retire before dawn, before our planes can come near. But how—”

  “It is easily explained. On the dawn of the day the Kerry Dancer was sunk, Farnholme spent over an hour in the radio room. Almost certainly he told them of his escape hopes—south from the Java Sea. No allied ship dare move north of Indonesia—it would be a quick form of suicide. So they’re patrolling the south, moving close in at nights. My guess is that they’ll have another vessel patrolling near Bali. You have made no effort to deal with this intruder, Captain Yamata?”

  “Hardly.” Yamata’s tone was dry. “The only vessel we have here is our commander’s, Colonel Kiseki’s. It is fast enough, but too small—just a launch, really only a mobile radio station. Communications are very difficult in these parts.”

  “I see.” Van Effen looked at Nicolson. “The rest is obvious. Farnholme came to the conclusion that it was no longer safe for him to carry
the diamonds round with him any longer—nor the plans. The plans, I think, he gave to Miss Plenderleith aboard the Viroma, the diamonds on the island—he emptied his own bag and filled it with grenades … I have never known a braver man.”

  Van Effen was silent for a few moments, then continued. “The poor renegade Muslim priest was just that and no more: Farnholme’s story, told on the spur of the moment, was completely untrue, but typical of the audacity of the man—to accuse someone else of what he was doing himself … And just one final thing—my apologies to Mr. Walters here.” Van Effen smiled faintly. “Farnholme wasn’t the only one who was wandering into strange cabins that night. I spent over an hour in Mr. Walters’ radio room. Mr. Walters slept well. I carry things with me that ensure that people will sleep well.”

  Walters stared at him, then glanced at Nicolson, remembering how he had felt that next morning, and Nicolson remembered how the radio operator had looked, white, strained and sick. Van Effen caught Walters’ slow nod of understanding.

  “I apologise, Mr. Walters. But I had to do it, I had to send out a message. I am a skilled operator, but it took me a long time. Each time I heard footsteps in the passage outside, I died a thousand deaths. But I got my message through.”

  “Course, speed and position, eh?” Nicolson said grimly. “Plus a request not to bomb the oil cargo tanks. You just wanted the ship stopped, isn’t that it?”

  “More or less,” Van Effen admitted. “I didn’t expect them to make quite so thorough a job of stopping the ship, though. On the other hand, don’t forget that if I hadn’t sent the message, telling them the diamonds were on board, they would probably have blown the ship sky-high.”

  “So we all owe our lives to you,” Nicolson said bitterly. “Thank you very much.” He looked at him bleakly for a long, tense moment, then swung his gaze away, his eyes so obviously unseeing that no one thought to follow his gaze. But his eyes were very far indeed from unseeing, and there could be no doubt about it now. McKinnon had moved, and moved six inches, perhaps nearer nine, in the past few minutes, not in the uncontrolled, jerky twitchings of an unconscious man in deep-reaching pain, but in the stealthy, smoothly coordinated movements of a fully conscious person concentrating on inching silently across the ground, so silently, so soundlessly, with such imperceptible speed that only a man with his nerves strung up to a pitch of hyper-sensitivity could have seen it at all. But Nicolson saw it, knew there could be no mistake at all. Where originally there had been head, shoulders and arms lying in the bar of light that streamed out through the door, now there was only the back of the black head and one tanned forearm. Slowly, unconcernedly, his face an empty, expressionless mask, Nicolson let his gaze wander back to the company. Van Effen was speaking again, watching him with speculative curiosity.

  “As you will have guessed by now, Mr. Nicolson, Farnholme remained safely in the pantry during the fight because he was sitting with two million pounds in his lap and wasn’t going to risk any of it for any old-fashioned virtue of courage and honour and decency. I remained in the dining-saloon because I wasn’t going to fire on my allies—and you will recall that the only time I did—at the sailor in the conning-tower of the submarine—I missed. A very convincing miss, I’ve always thought. After the initial attack no Japanese ‘plane attacked us on the Viroma, when we were clearing the boat—or afterwards: I had signalled with a torch from the top of the wheelhouse.

  “Similarly the submarine did not sink us—the captain wouldn’t have been very popular had he returned to base and reported that he had sent two million pounds worth of diamonds to the bottom of the South China Sea.” He smiled, again without mirth. “You may remember that I wished to surrender to that submarine—you adopted a rather hostile view-point about that.”

  “Then why did that ‘plane attack us?”

  “Who knows?” Van Effen shrugged his shoulders. “Getting desperate, I suppose. And don’t forget that it had a seaplane in attendance—it could have picked up one or two selected survivors.”

  “Such as yourself?”

  “Such as myself,” Van Effen admitted. “Shortly after this Siran found out that I hadn’t the diamonds—he searched my bag during one of the nights we were becalmed: I saw him do it and I let him do it, and there was nothing in it anyway. And it always lessened my chances of being stabbed in the back—which happened to his next suspect, the unfortunate Ahmed. Again he chose wrongly.” He looked at Siran with unconcealed distaste. “I suppose Ahmed woke up while you were rifling his bag?”

  “An unfortunate accident.” Siran waved an airy hand. “My knife slipped.”

  “You have very little time to live, Siran.” There was something curiously prophetic about the tone of Van Effen’s voice, and the contemptuous smile drained slowly from Siran’s face. “You are too evil to live.”

  “Superstitious nonsense!” The smile was back, the upper lip curled over the even white teeth.

  “We shall see, we shall see.” Van Effen transferred his gaze to Nicolson. “That’s all, Mr. Nicolson. You’ll have guessed why Farnholme hit me over the head when the torpedo boat came alongside. He had to, if he was to save your lives. A very, very gallant man—and a fast thinker.” He turned and looked at Miss Plenderleith. “And you gave me quite a fright, too, when you said Farnholme had left all his stuff on the island. Then I realised right away that he couldn’t have done that, because he’d never have a chance of going back there again. So I knew you must have it.” He looked at her compassionately. “You are a very courageous lady, Miss Plenderleith. You deserved better than this.”

  He finished speaking, and again the deep, heavy silence fell over the council house. Now and again the little boy whimpered in his uneasy sleep, a small frightened sound, but Gudrun rocked and soothed him in her arms and by and by he lay still. Yamata was staring down at the stones, the thin aquiline face dark and brooding, seemingly in no hurry to move off. The prisoners were almost all looking at Van Effen, their expressions ranging from astonishment to blank incredulity. Behind them stood the guards, ten or twelve in all, alert and watchful and their guns ready in their hands. Nicolson risked a last quick look out through the lighted doorway, felt the breath checking in his throat and the almost unconscious tightening of his fists. The doorway and the lighted oblong beyond it were completely empty. McKinnon had gone. Slowly, carelessly, easing out his pent-up breath in a long soundless sigh, Nicolson looked away—and found Van Effen’s speculative eyes full upon him. Speculative—and understanding. Even as Nicolson watched, Van Effen looked sideways through the door for a long, meaningful moment, looked back at Nicolson again. Nicolson felt the chill wave of defeat wash through his mind, wondered if he could get to Van Effen’s throat before he spoke. But that would do no good, it would only postpone the inevitable. Even if he killed him—but Nicolson knew he was fooling himself, he hadn’t a chance, and even if he had, even to save themselves, he could do Van Effen no harm. He owed Van Effen a life—Peter’s. Van Effen could have freed himself very easily that morning—the clam hadn’t been all that large. He could have let Peter go and released himself by the use of both his hands: but he had elected, instead, to stand there in agony with the child in his arms and have his leg badly mauled and cut … Van Effen was smiling at him, and Nicolson knew it was too late to stop him from speaking.

  “Beautifully done, wasn’t it, Mr. Nicolson?”

  Nicolson said nothing. Captain Yamata lifted his head and looked puzzled. “What was beautifully done, Colonel?”

  “Oh, just the whole operation.” Van Effen waved his hand. “From beginning to end.” He smiled deprecatingly, and Nicolson could feel the blood pounding in his pulse.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Yamata growled. He rose to his feet. “Time we were going. I can hear the truck coming.”

  “Very well.” Van Effen flexed his wounded leg stiffly: with the clam bite and the shrapnel wound in his thigh it was almost useless to him. “To see your colonel? Tonight?”

>   “Inside the hour,” Yamata said briefly. “Tonight Colonel Kiseki entertains important headmen and chiefs in his villa. His son lies dead, but duty crushes grief. Crushes it, I say, not kills it. But the sight of all these prisoners will lighten his saddened heart.”

  Nicolson shivered. Someone, he thought wryly, walking over his grave. Even without the almost sadistic anticipation in Yamata’s voice, he had no illusions as to what lay in store for himself. For a moment he thought of all the stories he had heard of Japanese atrocities in China, then resolutely pushed the thought away. An empty mind on a razor edge was his only hope, he knew, and that no hope at all. Not even with McKinnon out there, for what could McKinnon do except get himself killed. The thought that the bo’sun might try to make good his own escape never crossed Nicolson’s mind. McKinnon just wasn’t made that way … Van Effen was speaking again.

  “And afterwards? When the colonel has seen the prisoners? You have quarters for them?”

  “They won’t need quarters,” Yamata said brutally. “A burial party will be all that’s required.”

  “I’m not joking, Captain Yamata,” Van Effen said stiffly.

  “Neither am I, Colonel.” Yamata smiled, said no more. In the sudden silence they could hear the squeal of brakes and the blipping of an accelerator as the truck drew up in the middle of the kampong. Then Captain Findhorn cleared his throat.

  “I am in charge of our party, Captain Yamata. Let me remind you of international wartime conventions.” His voice was low and husky, but steady for all that. “As a captain in the British Mercantile Marine, I demand—”

  “Be quiet!” Yamata’s voice was almost a shout, and his face was twisted in ugliness. He lowered his voice until it was almost a whisper, a caressing murmur more terrifying by far than a roar of anger. “You demand nothing, Captain. You are in no position to demand anything. International conventions! Bah! I spit at international conventions. These are for the weak, for simpletons and for children. The strong have no need for them. Colonel Kiseki has never heard of them. All Colonel Kiseki knows is that you have killed his son.” Yamata shivered elaborately. “I fear no man on earth, but I fear Colonel Kiseki. Everyone fears Colonel Kiseki. At any time he is a terrible man. Ask your friend there. He has heard of him.” He pointed at Telak, standing in the background between two armed guards.