by Eric Ambler
“Thank you.”
He looked embarrassed. “I cannot promise that it will help you.”
“No, I understand.”
“Also, I had some advice to offer you. This building will probably be shelled. Our naval gunners are not highly skilled, but it is possible that they will score some hits. Unless you are forced to do so, however, do not move down from this floor. You will be safer here in the end. I need not tell you to keep out of Roda’s way if you can. Desperate men are always dangerous.”
“Yes.”
“Have you enough food and water in here?”
“Enough for how long?”
“Until tonight.”
“We could do with some more drinking-water, I think.”
“Come with me.”
I followed him out on to the terrace and through the empty living room to the kitchen.
There were three bottles of water left in the refrigerator.
“Will one bottle be sufficient?”
“I think so.”
“Good. One other thing. It will be better if you dress as a European.”
“I’ve kept some clean clothes specially for the occasion, Major. But it’s a hot day. Do you think I need to wear a tie?”
He gave me a wintry smile. “A sense of humour is an excellent thing at times like these. It helps a man to be philosophical.” There were voices along the corridor outside. “Go back now, Mr. Fraser,” he added, and then turned and walked out quickly. As I went back through the living room, I could hear his voice in the corridor. “Everything is prepared, Boeng. Shall I give orders for coffee to be sent to you?”
Rosalie had just returned. She had heard us talking in the kitchen and was eager to know what was going on.
I told her briefly most of what I had learned.
“And it will be ended by tonight?” she asked.
“Apparently.”
We looked at one another in silence for a moment; then she drew a deep breath and nodded.
“So.”
“Yes.” I picked up my towel. “I think that it’s about time I went and shaved.”
8
The shelling of the area around the Van Riebeeck Square began at one o’clock.
For three hours before that, insurgent troops had been straggling back from the forward positions and occupying the block of buildings which included the Air House and the Ministry of Public Health. On my way back from the bathhouse, I had looked over the balustrade and seen two more two-pounders being manhandled through the big doorway of the Air Terminal offices below, and a truck full of wounded being driven in the direction of the Telegraf Road. The only civilians to be seen were children. Some of them stood in awe-struck silence, watching the troops; others, bolder, were playing a war game round a bomb crater and jumping in and out of the fox-holes.
A little after eleven, there were several violent outbursts of firing. They seemed to come from about a mile away to the north. Immediately after the first one, the telephone in the next room began to ring. During the half-hour that followed, there was scarcely a moment when Sanusi or Roda was not on the telephone; but for most of the time there was such a lot of noise going on outside that, although I could distinguish odd words and sentences, I could not make sense of what was being said. Eventually, Sanusi and Roda went out on to the terrace, and there was a muttered conference over a map. If the bad news was beginning to filter through to them, they clearly did not want their staff inside the room to know too much about it. In the middle of the conference, Roda was called in to the telephone again; but Sanusi remained on the terrace, fidgeting uneasily with the map and staring down into the square. After a minute or two, Roda came back and there was another furtive discussion. Some decision seemed to come out of it, for in the end Sanusi nodded, and the two men turned and walked back inside. A few minutes later the radio was switched on, and I guessed that the staff had been left to their own devices.
The official communique was being broadcast at intervals of fifteen minutes, and part of it was similar enough to the one I had invented earlier that morning to make us both laugh. The rest was not so amusing, however. Six persons attempting to obstruct the movements of the National Freedom Army had been shot; twenty others had been arrested on suspicion of sabotage, and were being questioned. There was a warning that persons failing to obey orders promptly, or displaying reluctance to assist the National Freedom Army in its fight against the colonialist reactionaries who were attempting to defeat the will of the people, would be liable to summary trial and imprisonment with forfeiture of all property.
Rosalie began to worry about her sister and Mina. The fighting seemed to be moving towards the quarter in which they lived, and she was afraid that, in trying to get away from it, they would run into worse trouble when the Government forces began to close in from the east. We talked about it for some time, but I made no effort to reassure her; not merely because I knew that my reassurances would be worthless, but because I hoped that the more she worried about Mina and her sister, the less she would worry about herself.
A little after mid-day there were two extra-violent explosions that brought down some more fragments of plaster, and a few moments later we saw two columns of smoke mushrooming up over the warehouses in the direction of the old town. Rosalie said that one of the oil companies had their gasoline storage tanks in that area, but the smoke looked to me more like the result of demolition charges. I thought it probable that the defenders were now trying to delay the Government’s encircling movements by blowing up canal bridges, and wondered if they yet knew that there were enemies, not friends, waiting across the line of their retreat.
I did not have to wait long for the answer. During the morning I had found a pack of cards in a drawer of Jebb’s belongings, and at intervals since then I had been teaching Rosalie to play gin rummy. We had just sat down to resume our interrupted game when there was a sound of movement from the next room and the radio was switched off. Sanusi and Roda had returned.
For a few minutes, there was a steady murmur of voices punctuated by sharp monosyllables from Roda. Suddenly, chairs grated on the tiled floor and a door closed. Then, footsteps sounded on the terrace, the curtain was pushed aside, and the staff captain whom I had seen the previous day on the floor below peered in at us.
I looked up, and he beckoned.
“You, come.”
“Where to?”
“See Boeng.”
My heart was beating too insistently for comfort; but, for Rosalie’s benefit, I put my cards down with a sigh of irritation and a word of apology before I stood up.
“You, come.” He was belligerent now.
“I am coming.”
I walked out on to the terrace and, with his hand on his pistol, he stood aside to let me pass. I took no notice of him and walked along to the living-room windows. There was no glass in them and I could clearly see the four men inside. Apart from Sanusi and Roda, there were a major and a lieutenant-colonel, both of them grey with dust and wearing steel helmets.
As before, it was Roda who took the initiative. He beckoned me in. The captain followed and stood behind me. Sanusi was sitting on the side of one of the long chairs, staring at the floor. He took no notice of me.
Roda glanced at the other two. “It was this tuan who repaired the radio power generator when a bomb damaged it yesterday. He is an engineer from Tangga.”
The lieutenant-colonel nodded absently. The major stared. Sweat had caked the dust on their faces and their eyes were swollen with fatigue.
Roda stood up. “Mr. Fraser, you will answer some questions. Some of the answers we already have, so that we shall know whether you tell the truth or not. So, be careful.”
I said nothing and waited.
“Have you seen Major Suparto today?”
“Certainly I’ve seen him.”
“When?”
“I think it was shortly before the General and you came up here, nearly an hour after the planes came over that drop
ped leaflets.”
“Where did you see him?”
“Here, naturally.”
“What was said?”
“He told me that the General was returning to this apartment, and that I should respect his desire for privacy by keeping off the terrace outside.”
“What else?”
“He allowed me to fetch some drinking-water from the kitchen.”
“What else?”
“Nothing more, I think. Oh yes, he mentioned that he was going to make a reconnaissance in the city.”
Roda laughed shortly. Inside the room there was a silence. Not very far off, an eighty-eight was slamming away like a pair of double doors in a gale.
Sanusi raised his head. “Was nothing else said, Mr. Fraser?”
“No, General.”
“Why should he tell you where he was going?”
“I’ve no idea, General.”
“You knew Major Suparto when he was at Tangga. Were you friendly with him there?”
“Not particularly. He was employed by the contractors as a liaison manager. His duties were very different from mine.”
“What was the opinion of Major Suparto at Tangga?”
“Very high. In fact…” I broke off.
“Go on, Mr. Fraser. Say what there is to be said.”
“I was only going to say that Major Suparto was exceptional. The Government sent quite a lot of unemployed officers to work with us there. Major Suparto was the only one of them who had any real ability.”
There was another brief silence. Sanusi looked at Roda. Roda stared back at him bitterly for a moment and then swung round to face the other two.
“You hear?” he said in Malay. “You remember the meeting at Kail? I asked then. Why should they send him to Tangga where it was so easy for him to contact us? Luck, you all said. Luck, and more. It showed that they did not have the smallest suspicion that he was one of us.” He glared round the room. “Well, now you know better. Now you know…”
“That is enough,” Sanusi broke in impatiently. “Many mistakes have been made. I did not believe that we were ready. I was for waiting another year, for letting them destroy themselves before we moved. I yielded to the Committee’s judgment.”
“A judgment based on information supplied by a traitor, Boeng.”
“I am not reproaching you. We are men, not gods, Ahmad. We cannot read souls.” Sanusi stood up and walked over to the table.
Perhaps because they were now speaking Malay they thought I did not understand. Perhaps they had forgotten me. I just stood there. They watched him as if they were waiting for an oracle, while he smoothed out a map and bent over it.
“Here are the possibilities,” he said at last. “We can try to break out of the city and regain our base.”
Roda shrugged. “That is their greatest hope, that we will try,” he said.
Sanusi eyed him coldly. “We will consider all the possibilities, Ahmad. Your advice will be asked later. The second possibility is that we attempt to hold the centre of the city.” He paused and this time Roda was silent. “The third possibility is that we negotiate with them.” He looked at the lieutenant-colonel. “Well, Aroff? Your opinions?”
Aroff wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “As to the first possibility, Boeng, I agree with Ahmad.” He spoke huskily and kept clearing his throat. “As to the second, I have no objection to dying. As to the third, I do not understand how we can negotiate anything except surrender, and for us that only means dying in a different way. I say that it is better to die like men than to die shamefully in a prison yard.”
“Major Dahman?”
“I say the same, Boeng.”
“Ahmad?”
Roda stared round at them belligerently. “Are we whipped dogs? What is all this talk of dying?”
Aroff stiffened. “Can you give us guns, Ahmad?” he snapped. “Can you give us tanks? Can you, at this late hour, persuade the men who were to have fought with us to desert General Ishak? If so, we will talk of living.”
“We are not whipped dogs,” Sanusi interposed; “and neither are we children. What is your opinion, Ahmad?”
“We should negotiate, Boeng. Consider. We are in a strong position here. They have tanks, yes, and they have guns, but they cannot stand at a distance and kill us all with high explosive. At Cassino, a few Germans held an army corps. At Stalingrad, it was the Germans who broke, not the Russkis. Ah yes, I know it is different with us. We are cut off from our supplies. Our ammunition will not last for ever. But if they want to kill us they will have to assault us, and that will be an expensive operation for them. They will prefer to negotiate.”
“For our surrender, certainly they will negotiate,” retorted Aroff; “but what terms can we expect?”
“An amnesty within two years. The terms to be witnessed by a neutral observer, the Indonesian Ambassador perhaps.”
“They would be fools to agree.”
“Why? We have a following in the country. They will not make themselves secure by killing us. Besides, think of the good impression it would create abroad.”
Aroff turned protestingly to Sanusi. “ Boeng, this is madness.”
Sanusi started to say something and so did Roda. At the same instant, there was a quick rushing sound. Then, the floor jumped, a blast wave that felt like a sandbag clouted me in the chest and my head jarred to the whiplash violence of exploding T.N.T.
For a second I stood there, stupidly staring at the other men in the room who were staring stupidly at me. Then, I turned and blundered out on to the terrace. The shell had burst against a window embrasure on the floor below, and fumes and smoke were pouring up over the balustrade. As I began to cough, the staff captain pushed past me with an angry exclamation that I was too deafened to hear, and went to look down over the balustrade. Then, the fumes got him, too, and he turned away. I looked back into the room. Roda was holding the back of his hand against his forehead as if he were dazed. Sanusi was shouting something at him. I stumbled along the terrace to the bedroom.
Rosalie was sitting on my bed with her hands over her face, trembling violently. I was not feeling too good myself. If that was a sample of the shooting we could expect from the naval gunners, we were not going to last very long.
I put my arms round her and she looked up at me. The whistle of the second shell rose to a climax and we both ducked involuntarily. The burst that followed made a glass on the table tinkle against the water bottle standing beside it, but that was all. It was about three hundred yards over.
I produced the old platitude: “If you can hear it coming it’s going to miss you.”
It has never yet comforted anyone who was badly frightened, and it did not comfort her. The destroyer was firing its four guns singly, so that the bombardment was reasonably steady, but I soon realised that the first hit had been a fluke. When, after twenty minutes, the first burst of firing ceased, they had not succeeded in dropping another shell within fifty yards of the Air House. Perhaps they were not trying for it. For Rosalie, however, every round was aimed, not merely at the building we were in, but at our room in it. I moved one of the beds around so as to give us some protection from a burst on the terrace, and we lay down on the floor behind it, but I don’t think she felt any more protected.
When the lull came, however, I made her go out on to the terrace with me to see what damage had been done. There were some craters in the square, and a small building on the far side was on fire; but that was about all that was visible. In fact, the closely built-up area behind us had taken the brunt of the shelling; but there was no point in telling her that. The damage to our own building was also out of sight. As she had clearly expected to find the entire square in ruins, all this produced a very satisfactory sense of anti-climax. We kept to the bathouse end of the terrace, and saw nothing of the men in the living room. I guessed that the council of war had been resumed on the other side of the building. Rosalie had heard something of what had been said while I was there, a
nd now I told her the rest. The possibility of negotiation cheered her up considerably. I did not say what I thought of it. When we went back into the bedroom, I was able to persuade her to eat some fruit and begin another game of gin.
It was just after three when the staff captain came for me again.
Since two, the sounds of street-fighting had steadily been getting nearer, and we had had another twenty-minute bombardment from the destroyer. This had been both worse and better than the first; worse, because the gunners had dropped the range slightly and managed to put every shell into or around the square itself; better, because Rosalie, having decided that her earlier fears had been quite groundless, proposed that we should continue our game of gin on the floor. Admittedly, it was my hands that shook now, not hers, and she who was concerned on my account when a near miss made me fumble and scatter my cards; but on the whole it was an improvement on the earlier situation.
The staff captain was more polite this time. It was Colonel Roda who wished to see me, he explained; but why, he did not know. The radio in the next room was silent, and, with a sinking heart, I wondered if the generator had broken down again. The staff captain shrugged when I suggested this; he knew nothing. I told Rosalie that if I were going to be away for any length of time, I would try to get a message to her, and then went off with him.
He led me to an office on the third floor at the back of the building. The shell that had burst on the fifth floor had gutted three offices and brought down part of the wall along the corridor, but there had been no casualties, and no structural damage of any consequence. It had short-circuited the lights, however, and Alwi was along there trying to rectify the trouble. I asked him about the generator, but he said that it was running perfectly. By the time I reached Colonel Roda’s office, I was both puzzled and worried.
The office into which the staff captain ushered me had the look of a board room after a directors’ meeting. The air was full of tobacco smoke, and there was a litter of dirty coffee cups and crumpled scribbling paper. There had been seven men in there, but now there were only two: Roda and Aroff. The latter had cleaned himself up and wore a black cap in place of the steel helmet; but he looked even wearier than before. Roda’s face was the colour of putty. It did not seem to have been a very successful meeting.
