State of Siege

by Eric Ambler

  “Nonsense.”

  “It is always the same when there is trouble. There must be someone to blame, someone to hate. The Chinese are too powerful and would combine together. But nobody cares about the Indos because we are weak. Besides, I am here with you. That will make them want to kill. They will say that I have made this place unclean, and there will be a pleasure for them in the killing.”

  I managed to smile. “Oh now, wait a minute. I don’t think it’s as bad as that. What you say might be true of some of them, but Sanusi’s not a savage.”

  “A good Moslem does not speak as he does.”

  “I wouldn’t know. He sounds reasonable.”

  “And Colonel Roda?”

  “I expect he does what he’s told. And you heard Suparto. He doesn’t want us harmed. In any case, they’re all going to have far too much to do to trouble about us. They may not even stay here. This is only a tactical headquarters. If things go on as they’re going now, Sanusi’ll soon be moving into the Presidential Palace. We’ll be able to laugh at all this.”

  “You are very kind to me.”

  “Kind?”

  “You know very well that if I were not here there would be no great danger for you.”

  It was she who was smiling now, faintly, as she watched my face. I got up impatiently and lit one of my dwindling supply of cigarettes, but I knew that she was not deceived. Neither was I. I had heard the change in their voices when Suparto had told them about her. For these men, with their desperate pride of race and hatred of Europeans, she already stood for treachery; and the fact that she was there with me made the iniquity of her existence doubly obscene. To kill us both might seem like an act of purification. Everything depended, really, on how necessary such an act might become to them. And that in turn depended on events. I had been right, I felt, about one thing. If things went well, Sanusi would be quick to install himself in more becoming surroundings. We would be forgotten. What we had to fear was a set-back to their plans.

  I went as near as I dared to the open window. Sanusi was still on the telephone. Occasionally he would ask a question. “How many?” “Who is in command?” Evidently, he was receiving a report. Probably, it concerned the dispositions of the “enemy’s” forces about which he had expressed so much uneasiness. I thought again of De Vries and his assertion that Sanusi was reluctant to take chances. There might have been something in that after all. Was it Colonel Roda who had tipped the scales in favour of the move? Or Suparto?

  The telephone in the next room tinkled as Sanusi hung up. At the same moment, I became aware of a faint throbbing sound. For a moment, I thought that it was something to do with the radio station below. Suddenly, the sentry outside shouted: “ Kapal terbang! ”

  The men in the next room hurried out on to the terrace. I could hear the planes clearly now, and it sounded as if there were several of them. There were shouts from the square below. Colonel Roda began pointing up into the sky.

  I looked round. Rosalie was sitting passively on the edge of her bed. I blundered over to her, grabbed one of her arms and dragged her down with me on to the floor.

  From where I was lying, I could see through the open window on to the terrace. There was nobody standing there now. Then, I saw the planes. They were coming in over the north-west corner of the square; three old twin-engined American fighter-bombers, flying in a ragged line-abreast formation at about twenty-five hundred feet. As they roared overhead I could see extra bombs in the racks below the wings. The whole Republican Air Force, or, at least, all of it that could get off the ground, was out.

  The bow-legged officer ran on to the terrace and gazed up after the planes. Rosalie started to get to her feet. I pressed her back on to the floor. It was possible that the Air Force was throwing in its lot with Sanusi, in which case the planes would be going in to land at the civil airport out by the racecourse; but it was also possible that they were not. The behaviour of the men on the terrace had not suggested that they were expecting such a welcome reinforcement. The low altitude and steady course of the planes might simply mean that their pilots knew that there were no ground defences for them to worry about, and that they had time to make their bombing runs carefully. If there were going to be any bombing, of course; if this were not just a threatening gesture.

  A moment or two later, I knew that it was not. The sound of the engines which had almost died away was beginning to get louder again, and the bow-legged officer hastily retreated into the living room.

  After Sanusi’s broadcast, I suppose it was inevitable that the Government would make some attempt to put the radio station out of action; but when it came, the attempt was still a very unpleasant shock. In war it is relatively easy to be philosophical about being bombed or shelled indiscriminately; but when you become, or the building you are in becomes, a selected target for enemy fire, things are different. It is not just that the degree of danger has changed; quite often it hasn’t; but that the affair is no longer impersonal. From being a man like yourself, dutifully scattering high explosive where it seems likely to inflict the most casualties, the enemy has suddenly become a vindictive maniac intent on your personal destruction. You become resentful, and begin, most sensibly, to think of ways of killing him first. There is nothing more enraging than to have to stay where you are, a passive, stationary, impotent target, and let him take pot shots at you. That is what it was like at the top of the radio building.

  They came in one after the other in line-ahead, and just high enough to avoid bomb blast from the ground. As I heard the first one beginning his run, I realised that there were big glass window panes two feet from our faces, and dragged a rug from the floor over our heads. At the same moment, someone down in the square opened up with a machine gun.

  The sound of the plane became suddenly louder and there was a series of slithering noises as the bombs started to fall. Then, the explosions came. He must have let go everything he had, for the floor bucked and trembled for close on ten seconds. There was a pandemonium of falling plaster and breaking glass and then, as a sort of finale, a torrent of earth and stones poured down on to the terrace.

  One of the bombs had fallen into the garden of the Ministry of Public Health next door, and the earth and stones were merely the falling debris of that explosion; but, of course, it sounded as if the building were collapsing. Rosalie cried out and there was a yell from the terrace. I flung back the rug and saw that the sentry was still at his post outside the window, crouching against the balustrade under the bamboo sun roof, which had collapsed. He had been hit by the roof when it fell, and was gingerly rubbing his shoulder. The curtains had been sucked out by the blast and were now caught up on the open window frame, but the glass was still intact and so was the ceiling. The blast damage was probably on the lower floors. Then I heard the second plane on its way, and dived under the rug again.

  The first stick of bombs had straddled the Air House, and it was just as well that the pilot in question had no more bombs. He was too accurate. Next time, he might have scored a direct hit. The second stick was wide and ploughed along a street running parallel to our side of the square. It made a lot of noise and a few more windows went in the rear of the building; but, as far as we were concerned, that was all. It was the third plane that did the most damage to the sixth floor. Most of its bombs fell in the square, but one of them hit the portico of the Ministry of Public Health. We did not know that until later, however; at the time, it seemed like a direct hit on our own building. It was not a big bomb, but it exploded on a level with the second floor and most of the blast came our way. The floor heaved. Something hit me hard in the back. Then, there was a long, low rumbling and silence. I became aware of a thin, high singing in my ears.

  My right arm was across Rosalie’s shoulders and I could feel her trying to get up. I went to fling back the rug and found that there was a weight pressing on the top of it. That made me panic. I struggled to my knees and fought my way out of the rug. Suddenly, I choked, and then began
coughing as I breathed in a cloud of plaster dust. I still could not hear properly, but I knew now what had hit me in the back. It was a large piece of the ceiling.

  I dragged the rug off Rosalie and helped her to her feet. She was white with dust and coughing helplessly. I led her over to the bed, dragged a sheet of plaster off it and made her sit down. My ears were still painful, but the drums in them were beginning to function again. I could hear coughs and hoarse shouts coming from the next room. Through the cloud of dust, I saw that the windows had shattered and that the curtains were hanging in ribbons. I started to cough again, and, at the same moment, I heard the planes returning. Then, one of them opened up with his cannons and roared overhead.

  I don’t think Rosalie even heard it; in any case, she was too dazed to respond to the sound. I did nothing. I guessed that, finding their target still standing, they were trying to shoot up the radio masts. However, they had no ammunition that would penetrate the reinforced concrete roof over our heads; and, with most of the ceiling down and the windows gone, there was nothing more they could do to us.

  They made six runs in all and, from what I heard, only managed to hit the roof twice. They were not very good at their jobs. Then, at last, having circled a couple of times to inspect the results of their work, they flew off.

  The plaster had begun to settle now. I gave Rosalie a towel to wipe her face with, and then I went to the window.

  The first thing I saw, lying on the terrace amid the broken glass, was the sentry’s machine pistol. I peered through the tattered curtains looking for its owner.

  He was sitting on the concrete with his head lolling between his knees, and blood pouring from a deep gash in his neck. I called to him sharply. He raised his head slightly and then sagged over on to his side.

  I dragged a sheet off my bed, rummaged in my suitcase until I found a razor blade, and went out to him.

  Something had hit him on the head, almost knocking him out; there was blood coming from just above his right ear. Probably, he had been flung against the balustrade by the blast. The cut in his neck, however, had been done when the windows flew to pieces. A piece of the glass was still sticking in the wound. Something had to be done about that. I cut through the hem of the sheet with the razor blade and then tore the material into strips. With one strip I made a pad. Then, as gently as I could, I eased the glass out of the wound. It bled a little more profusely, but not much more so. I clapped the pad over it, and then began to bandage it into place. He did not utter a sound. He scarcely moved. Once, when I pulled the glass out, he opened his eyes and looked at me, but he was no longer really interested in what was happening to him.

  Feet crunched on the broken glass behind me, and I looked round.

  The bow-legged officer was picking his way across the terrace towards me. He was covered from head to foot in plaster dust and there was blood trickling down his forehead.

  “It is ordered you stay in,” he said.

  I went on with the bandaging. He went to the living room and called for two men. They came running out, and he told them to look after the sentry. They stood over me while I finished tying the bandage, but made no attempt to stop me.

  When I stood up, they hauled him to his feet and helped him away. The officer picked up the gun.

  “He has a head wound,” I said. “He should have medical attention.”

  “You go in.” He levelled the gun at me, but without very much conviction. He was a stupid man, and the fact that I had helped the sentry had evidently confused him. I decided to take advantage of the fact.

  “It is still permitted to go to the bathhouse?” I asked.

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  I went into the bedroom and told Rosalie that she could go and wash the dust off. She was still shaken, but the prospect of a bath made her feel better. As she went along the terrace, I saw that the bow-legged officer was posting a new sentry. The dust had made me intolerably thirsty. While the officer was still there, I asked again for a bottle of drinking-water and some fruit. He seemed to take no notice; but a few minutes later, while I was trying to clear up the mess in the room, the sentry appeared at the window and put a bottle of water on the floor and a bowl of fruit beside it.

  I thanked him. He grinned, shrugged, made a gesture of cutting someone’s throat, and, with another grin, pointed to me. I grinned back and he went through the pantomime again. Then, he explained it in words. “Man’s throat cut, man cannot eat, food fall out.” A comedian, this one. I smiled until my jaw ached.

  Rosalie, when she returned, was impressed. The fact that they had remembered my request meant, she said, that they were ashamed of their earlier behaviour, which meant in turn that they did not hate us too much. I did not tell her that I had asked again in order to get the fruit and water; nor did I tell her about the new sentry’s little joke.

  We ate half the fruit and drank a third of the water. I was still filthy from the plaster dust. When the rest of the fruit and water had been put away to keep cool, I got permission from the sentry to go along to the bathhouse and clean up. There, I found that the water supply was no longer working. It did not matter at that moment. The Dutch ewer was full and there was a further supply in the storage cistern on the roof, but I could hear that there was no more water coming in.

  As I walked back along the terrace, I was surprised to see Rosalie at the window talking to the sentry. When he heard me coming, he smiled and moved away.

  Rosalie’s eyes were gleaming with excitement.

  “Why did you not tell me that you helped the man who was wounded?” she began, as I went back into the room.

  “It didn’t seem important.”

  “It has made a very good impression. That man is his friend. He told me he would bring us more fruit later.”

  “You mean they’ve decided not to kill us after all?”

  “Oh no, but now they do not hate us so much.”

  “That’s something, I suppose.”

  “He told me that there are machine guns being mounted on both sides of the roof in case there is another air attack, also that the Nasjah army is advancing from the direction of Meja.”

  “How does he know that-I mean about the army?”

  “He heard one of the officers on the telephone. It is curious,” she went on thoughtfully; “before, that man would not have looked at us except to think how it would feel to kill us. Now, because you bandage his friend, it is different. He speaks to us and brings us fruit.”

  “That’s because of the bombing, and because we were all covered in dust just as he was. He’s not used to air attack. He was frightened, and now because he isn’t dead he feels generous and friendly and wants to talk. It’s nothing to do with my bandaging his friend. It always happens. Besides,” I added, “you’re a woman. That would make a difference, too.”

  She thought for a moment or two and then nodded. “Yes, I understand. It was the way I felt when the men with the parangs did not kill us last night. I wanted you to take me to bed at once. If it had not been for the guns beginning to fire and making me frightened in another way…”

  I kissed her, and she smiled. “Was it like that in the war?” she said. “When you had been very frightened of being killed or wounded and were not, did you always want a woman afterwards?”

  “Well, there wasn’t much to be frightened of building airfields, and when we were in the desert there weren’t any women to have.”

  “But you would want one?” she persisted.

  “Oh yes. There was nothing to stop you wanting.”

  “Now you are making a joke of it. I think it is very good that people should feel that way.”

  “There’s a simple biological explanation.”

  “Is it biology that I am here with you?”

  “Well, not exactly.”

  “No. It is because it is good for a man and a woman to have pleasure together. If they are sympathetic, that is…”

  “And if they aren’t being threatened by m
en with parangs, and bombed, and peered at by sentries.”

  She looked startled, but did not turn her head. “He is watching us now?”

  “With great interest.”

  Without once letting her eyes stray in his direction, she walked over to the window and looked up at the torn curtains. “If you will take these down,” she said, “I will pin the pieces together. Then we can put them back again as we wish. If we do it now, he will think it is because of the sun. If we wait until the sun has moved, he will know that we do not wish to be seen and will be offended.”

  “All right.”

  It was a good idea in any case. The sentry had managed to hoist the bamboo roof back into position, but the blast and debris had split it in several places, and the sun was pouring through the gaps into the room. Every slight movement raised the dust again, and even the sight of it swirling about in the shafts of sunlight made me thirsty.

  I made a great show of shielding my eyes from the glare as I unhooked the curtains. The sentry, squatting in one of the patches of shade, watched idly while Rosalie, with the few pins and a needle and thread that she had in her case, tacked the pieces of curtain together. When I put them up again, I was able to cover almost the whole of the window space.

  Since the air attack, the telephone in the next room had been in constant use, but the voices had been those of the junior officers. I had concluded that Sanusi, Roda and Suparto had temporarily abandoned the sixth floor for some less exposed command post. When, as I finished rehanging the curtains, I heard footsteps crunching towards us over the broken glass on the terrace, I assumed that it was the bow-legged officer on his way to the bathhouse. Then, the footsteps ceased, the curtains were brushed aside and Major Suparto stepped into the room.

  I saw Rosalie freeze into the passive immobility with which she had faced him before, but he did not even glance at her. He looked at the ceiling, at the debris piled in one corner of the room, finally at the curtains.

  “Aren’t these repairs a waste of time, Mr. Fraser?”