South by Java Head
Page 32
“Captain Yamata!” Kiseki’s eyes small enough normally in the folds of fat, had almost vanished. “What happened to Captain Yamata?”
“Captain Yamata has joined his ancestors,” Nicolson said briefly. “Van Effen shot him almost in half.”
“You’re lying! Van Effen was our friend, our very good friend.”
“‘Was’ is right,” Nicolson agreed. “Ask your men here—later.” He nodded to the group still cowering under the menace of Telak’s rifle. “Meantime, send one of these men to collect a stretcher, blankets and torches. I needn’t warn you what will happen if you try any foolish tricks.”
Kiseki looked at him impassively for a moment, then spoke rapidly to one of his men. Nicolson waited until he had gone then turned again to Kiseki.
“You must have a radio in this house. Where is it?”
For the first time Kiseki smiled, displaying a magnificent collection of gold inlays on his front teeth.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr.—ah—”
“Nicolson. Never mind the formalities. The radio, Colonel Kiseki.”
“That is the only one we have.” Grinning more broadly still, Kiseki nodded towards the sideboard. He had to nod. McKinnon had already lashed his wrists behind his back.
Nicolson barely glanced at the small receiver.
“Your transmitter, Colonel Kiseki, if you don’t mind,” Nicolson said softly. “You don’t depend on carrier pigeons for communication, do you?”
“English humour. Ha-ha. Very funny indeed.” Kiseki was still smiling. “Of course we have a transmitter, Mr.—ah—Nicolson. At the barracks, our soldiers’ quarters.”
“Where?”
“The other end of the town.” Kiseki had the appearance of a man actually enjoying himself. “A mile from here. At least a mile.”
“I see.” Nicolson looked thoughtful. “Too far—and I very much doubt my ability to march you into your own barracks at the point of a gun, destroy a transmitter and get out again—not without getting myself killed in the process.”
“You show signs of wisdom, Mr. Nicolson,” Kiseki purred.
“I’m just not suicidally minded.” Nicolson rubbed his stubble of beard with a forefinger, then looked up at Kiseki again. “And that’s the only transmitter in town, eh?”
“It is. You’ll have to take my word for that.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Nicolson lost interest in the matter, watched McKinnon finish tying up the other officer with an enthusiastic heave that brought a sharp exclamation of pain, then turned as the soldier sent off by the colonel returned with stretcher, blankets and two torches. Then he looked back at the head of the table, first at Kiseki, then at the civilian by his side. The mayor was trying to look indignant and outraged, but only succeeded in looking scared. There was unmistakable fear in his dark eyes, and there was a violent tic at the corner of his mouth. He was sweating freely, and even the beautifully cut grey suit seemed to have become suddenly limp … Nicolson switched his glance back to Kiseki.
“The mayor is a good friend of yours, I take it, Colonel?” He could see the look in McKinnon’s eyes as he busied himself with the mayor’s wrists, the look of a man anxious to be gone and impatient of this talk, but he ignored it.
Kiseki cleared his throat pompously. “In our—what is the word?—capacities as commander of the garrison and the representative of the people we naturally—”
“Spare me the rest,” Nicolson interrupted. “I suppose his duties bring him here quite often.” He was looking at the mayor now, a deliberately contemptuous speculation in his eyes, and Kiseki fell for it.
“Comes here?” Kiseki laughed. “My dear Nicolson, this is the mayor’s house. I am only his guest.”
“Indeed?” Nicolson looked at the mayor. “You speak a few words of English perhaps, Mr. Mayor.”
“I speak it perfectly.” Pride momentarily overcame fear.
“Excellent,” Nicolson said dryly. “How about speaking some now?” His voice dropped an octave to a calculated theatrically low growl: the mayor didn’t look as if he would take much terrifying. “Where does Colonel Kiseki keep his transmitter in this house?”
Kiseki swung round on the mayor, his face suffused with anger at being tricked, started to shout something unintelligible at him, stopped short in mid-torrent as McKinnon cuffed him heavily over the ear.
“Don’t be a fool, Colonel,” Nicolson said wearily. “And don’t insist on treating me like a fool. Who ever heard of a military commander, especially in a red-hot, troubled area such as this is bound to be, having his communications centre a mile from where he is himself? Obviously the transmitter’s here, and just as obviously it would take all night to make you talk. I doubt if the mayor’s willing to make such sacrifices for your precious co-prosperity sphere.” He turned to the frightened looking civilian again. “I’m in a hurry. Where is it?”
“I will say nothing.” The mayor’s mouth worked and twisted even when he wasn’t speaking. “You can’t make me talk.”
“You’re not even kidding yourself.” Nicolson looked at McKinnon. “Just kind of twist his arm, will you, Bo’sun?”
McKinnon twisted. The mayor screamed, more in anticipatory fear than in any real pain. McKinnon slackened his grip.
“Well?”
“I don’t know what you were talking about.”
This time McKinnon didn’t have to be told. He jerked the mayor’s right arm high up until the back of his wrist was flat against the shoulder-blade. The mayor shrieked like a pig at the approach of the poleaxe.
“Upstairs.” The mayor was sobbing with pain and fear—chiefly fear. “On the roof. My arm—you’ve broken my arm!”
“You can finish tying him up now, Bo’sun.” Nicolson turned away in disgust. “Right, Colonel, you can lead the way.”
“My gallant friend here can finish the job.” Kiseki spat the words out. His teeth were tightly clenched and the expression on his face boded ill for the mayor should they meet again in different circumstances. “He can show you where it is.”
“No doubt. But I would prefer you to come. Some of your men might be wandering about with machine-guns and I’m quite sure they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot the mayor and myself full of a lot of little holes. But you’re a foolproof life insurance.” Nicolson transferred his rifle to his left hand, pulled one of the revolvers from his belt and checked that the safety-catch was off. “I’m in a hurry, Colonel. Come on.”
They were back inside five minutes. The transmitter was now a havoc of twisted steel and shattered valves, and they had encountered no one, coming or going. The mayor’s screams appeared to have attracted no attention, possibly because of the closed doors, but more probably, Nicolson suspected, because the staff were well accustomed to such sounds emanating from Kiseki’s rooms.
McKinnon had not been idle in his absence. Captain Findhorn, covered with blankets and holding a rather fearful Peter Tallon in his arms, was lying comfortably on the stretcher on the floor. A Japanese soldier squatted at each of the four comers of the stretcher, and closer inspection showed that they hadn’t much option: the bo’sun had tied their wrists securely to the handles. The mayor and Kiseki’s second in command were tied together by a short length of rope linking their right and left elbows respectively. Telak’s victim still lay on the floor and Nicolson suspected that he would be there for a long time to come. There was no sign of the sixth man.
“Very nice indeed, Bo’sun.” Nicolson looked round approvingly. “Where’s our missing friend?”
“He’s not really missing, sir. He’s in the cloakroom there.” Ignoring Kiseki’s scowls and protests, McKinnon was busy securing him to the mayor’s left elbow. “It was a bit of a job getting the door shut, but I managed it.”
“Excellent.” Nicolson took a last look round the room. “No point in waiting any longer, then. Let’s be on our way.”
“Where are we going?” Kiseki had his feet planted wide, his huge head hunched far
down into his shoulders. “Where are you taking us?”
“Telak tells me that your personal launch is the finest and fastest for a hundred miles up and down the coast. We’ll be through the Sunda Straits and into the Indian Ocean long before the dawn comes.”
“What!” Kiseki’s face was contorted in fury. “You’re taking my launch! You’ll never get away with it, Englishman, you’ll never get away with it.” He paused, another and even more shocking thought occurred to him and he lunged forward across the parquet floor, dragging the other two behind him and kicking out at Nicolson in berserk anger. “You’re taking me with you, damn you, you’re taking me with you!”
“Of course. What else did you think?” Nicolson said coldly. He stepped back a couple of paces to avoid the flailing feet and jabbed the muzzle of his rifle, none too gently into Kiseki’s midriff, just below the breast-bone. Kiseki doubled up in agony. “You’re our one guarantee of a safe-conduct. We’d be madmen to leave you behind.”
“I won’t go,” Kiseki gasped. “I won’t go. You can kill me first, but I won’t go. Concentration camps! Prisoner-of-war of the English! Never, never, never! You can kill me first!”
“It won’t be necessary to kill you.” Nicolson pointed out. “We can tie you, gag you, even take you on a stretcher if we have to.” He nodded at the cloakroom door. “Plenty of cheap labour in there. But it would only complicate matters. You can come on your feet or you can come on a stretcher with a couple of bullet holes in your legs to quieten you down.”
Kiseki looked at the pitiless face and made his choice. He came on his feet.
On their way down to the jetty they met no Japanese soldiers, no one at all. A windless night, but the rain was falling heavily, persistently, and the streets of Bantuk were deserted. At long, long last, luck was turning their way.
Vannier and the others were already aboard the launch. There had been only one man on guard, and Telak and his men had been as silent as the night. Van Effen was already asleep in a bunk below, and Walters was just about to begin transmission. Forty-four feet long and with a fourteen-foot beam, the launch gleamed and shone even in the rain and the darkness and was ready for instant departure.
Willoughby took over the engine-room and almost drooled with sheer joy at the sight of the big, immaculately kept twin diesels. Gordon and Evans loaded another half-dozen drums of fuel oil on to the deck aft. And McKinnon and Vannier were already making a round of the larger vessels behind the breakwater, checking for radio sets, smashing the magneto of the only other launch in the harbour.
They left at exactly ten o’clock at night, purring gently out into a sea as smooth as a mill-pond. Nicolson had begged Telak to accompany them, but he had refused, saying that his place was with his people. He had gone up the long jetty without as much as a backward glance, and Nicolson knew they would never see him again.
As they moved out into the darkness, the four Japanese soldiers, still lashed to the stretchers, ran pell-mell up the vanishing jetty, shouting at the tops of their high-pitched voices. But their cries were abruptly lost, drowned in a sudden clamour of sound as the launch rounded the point of the breakwater, the twin throttles jammed wide open, and headed south-west under maximum power towards Java Head and the Indian Ocean beyond.
They rendezvoused with H.M.A.S. Kenmore, a Q-class destroyer, at half-past two in the morning.
MacLean Goes Everywhere You Do
If you enjoyed this book by Alistair MacLean,
you can purchase his other thrilling
blockbusters on your e-reader or
smartphone for only $4.99, including:
The Guns of Navarone, 978-1-4027-9039-3
Force 10 from Navarone, 978-1-4027-9249-6
H.M.S. Ulysses, 978-1-4027-9038-6
The Last Frontier, 978-1-4027-9354-7
The Dark Crusader, 978-1-4027-9346-2
The Satan Bug, 978-1-4027-9253-3
Ice Station Zebra, 978-1-4027-9037-9
When Eight Bells Toll, 978-1-4027-9043-0
Where Eagles Dare, 978-1-4027-9251-9
Puppet on a Chain, 978-1-4027-9348-6
Caravan to Vaccarès, 978-1-4027-9247-2
Bear Island, 978-1-4027-9255-7
The Way to Dusty Death, 978-1-4027-9257-1
Breakheart Pass, 978-1-4027-9350-9
Circus, 978-1-4027-9352-3
Partisans, 978-1-4027-9259-5
The Lonely Sea, 978-1-4027-9036-2