‘The man we are looking for is named Charles Torrance,’ said Ziegler. ‘But everyone in the battalion calls him “Slugger”.’
‘Why do they call him “Slugger”?’ asked Mitsumoto. ‘More importantly, where is he now?’
‘I don’t know, mein Herr.’
‘You don’t know why they call him “Slugger”? Or where he is now?’
‘Both, mein Herr.’ There was blood on Ziegler’s sleeve. ‘None of the prisoners I’ve interrogated this morning will admit to having seen him since the seventh of January.’
‘Keep trying.’
‘Zu befehl, mein Herr.’ Ziegler clicked his heels and flung an arm up in the Nazi salute, then turned on his heel and marched out of Mitsumoto’s office.
‘An unpleasant business,’ remarked Lieutenant Ishikawa.
‘Unpleasant, but necessary, if Japan is not to be defeated by its enemies.’
‘I understand that, Mitsumoto-sama. But if I may speak freely, Herr Ziegler seems to enjoy that aspect of his work a little too much.’
‘It is to be expected. You must remember, Westerners are brutes who do not place the same value on life as we Asians.’
Ishikawa nodded. ‘Ziegler more than most, I think. He’s a real jackbooted Nazi thug, isn’t he?’
Mitsumoto smiled. ‘Do you think so?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I think that’s what he wants us to think. But according to his records, Ziegler first joined the French Foreign Legion nineteen years ago, before the Nazis came to power in Germany. In those days, the size of the Wehrmacht was strictly limited by the Treaty of Versailles. Many Germans who wanted to be soldiers but could not serve in the Wehrmacht had to enlist in the Foreign Legion instead. Before he decided to ignore the Treaty of Versailles by expanding the Wehrmacht, Herr Hitler often spoke out against how the Foreign Legion was draining Germany of some of its strongest young men.’
Mitsumoto rose from the seat behind his desk and crossed to the window. On the driveway below, Sergeant Ogata was talking to Corporal Takada at the back of the Humber wireless truck. Mitsumoto had set up his headquarters in a building just outside Kuala Lumpur, the former home of a Scottish rubber planter, a small palace built in a bizarre architectural style that could only be described as redbrick mock-Moorish with Scottish baronial influences. As always, Mitsumoto could not help but notice the difference between the opulence in which the white colonists lived and the ramshackle hovels of the Tamil rubber tappers who actually did the work that paid for such opulence.
He screwed a cigarette into his amber holder and lit it, taking a couple of puffs before continuing.
‘It seems to me that Ziegler could scarcely claim to be ignorant of Hitler’s attitude to the Legion. He could have left when his third term of enlistment came to an end in 1938. Instead he chose to re-enlist with the French. Hardly the action of a diehard adherent of der Führer. I suspect if Sergeant Ziegler had been garrisoned at Long San when we established our protectorate over Indo-China, he would have been a willing part of that brigade of legionnaires that fought so enthusiastically against our soldiers, instead of surrendering meekly with the Hanoi garrison.’
‘Do you think we can trust him?’ asked Ishikawa.
‘Undoubtedly. He has no love for the English. When Brunner Mond opened up a chemical works in Warrington, Ziegler’s father was offered a promotion and a significant pay rise if he would move there to oversee production. That’s how it is he speaks such good English. Imagine what it must have been like for a German boy growing up in England during the last European war.’
‘I wonder the family was not interned!’
‘Professor Ziegler’s contribution to the British war effort was too valuable for him to be taken away from his work.’ As Mitsumoto was speaking, the telephone on his desk began to ring. ‘I expect MI5 saw to it his colleagues kept a close eye on him,’ he concluded, before picking up the handset. ‘Hello?’
‘Mitsumoto?’
At the sound of Baron Uchida’s voice, an icy spasm of fear knotted Mitsumoto’s insides. He leaped to his feet and bowed to the telephone set. ‘Yes, your excellency!’
‘Have you found that survey yet?’
‘Almost, excellency.’
‘“Almost” isn’t good enough. That survey is vital to our war effort. Fail to retrieve it, and you will bring great dishonour on Uchida Kikan. You understand there is only one way to expunge such dishonour?’
Mitsumoto swallowed. ‘Yes, your excellency.’
‘Bring me that survey, Mitsumoto! Until it is in our hands, all other considerations must be secondary.’
‘Yes, excellency.’ But Uchida had already signed off. Mitsumoto returned the handset to its cradle.
‘Captain-sama?’ said Ishikawa. ‘I think Corporal Takada is trying to get our attention.’
Mitsumoto joined Ishikawa by the window. The radio operator was waving up at them from the back of the Humber. Mitsumoto opened the window.
‘What is it?’
‘A sighting from one of our spotter planes, captain-sama. It could be the men we’re looking for.’
‘Wait there, I’ll come down!’
Mitsumoto and Ishikawa made their way downstairs and out of the front of the building to join Ogata and Takada at the back of the Humber.
‘Five soldiers and a woman seen walking south across some padi fields.’ Takada handed Mitsumoto the scrap of paper on which he had noted the map coordinates the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service had passed on to him.
‘Five soldiers and a woman? That must be the same group that stole an Isuzu switcher truck from Kuala Lumpur railway station last week.’
‘You think they could be the ones who have the survey?’ asked Ishikawa.
‘If not, there’s only one way to rule them out.’ Mitsumoto spread a map on the Humber’s bonnet and checked the coordinates.
‘Chikusho!’ exclaimed Ishikawa. ‘There isn’t a road with five miles of that place!’
‘But there’s a river,’ Mitsumoto pointed out. ‘Isn’t that close to where Lieutenant Shimada is patrolling?’
Takada got back on the radio. ‘Azure Dragon calling Black Turtle, Azure Dragon calling Black Turtle. Come in, Black Turtle… please advise of your present coordinates.’
There was a pause while Shimada checked his map and read them. Takada then relayed them to Mitsumoto, who checked them against his own map. ‘He’s half an hour away from where those men were spotted in the padi fields. Give him the coordinates.’
‘Azure Dragon to Black Turtle, please proceed to the following map reference…’ Takada relayed them to Shimada. ‘Five British soldiers and a woman spotted by a reconnaissance plane in that locality in the past quarter of an hour. Take one alive if possible…’
The forty-foot motor launch came nosing down the river, a Japanese army flag fluttering from the little mast above the open wheelhouse, a soldier with a Nambu machine gun lying prone on the roof of the trunk cabin. Clearly a civilian vessel pressed into military service, the launch had a faintly dilapidated, careworn look about it. A Japanese officer stood at the helm, and six soldiers in steel helmets sat in the stern with their backs to the gunwales.
Watching from the doorway of one of the stilt houses at the water’s edge, Torrance swore when it became obvious the launch would not bypass the kampong after all, and hastily withdrew his head. He glanced at the Malay woman behind him, her face taut with fear, her arms hugging two young children – a boy and a girl – close. Torrance raised a finger to his lips, enjoining silence.
Pressing an eye to a gap between two slats of bamboo, he saw the launch pull alongside the little wooden jetty. The officer cut the engine, and two soldiers jumped ashore, quickly looping the bow-fast and stern-fast around two posts.
The officer disembarked with the other four soldiers, leaving only the machine-gunner on the launch, keeping the stilt houses covered from the cabin roof.
The officer shouted orders. Crêpe-soled boots hammered on the boardwalk floating below the houses. Torrance could hear someone climbing to the veranda of the house he was hiding in. He backed across the room to the far wall, next to where the Malay woman cowered with her children. Which was very much putting them all in harm’s way, but there was no other exit. Torrance could not think what to do but delay the shooting as long as possible, hoping for a miracle. The bamboo strips would offer no protection against bullets. He kept the barrel of his Thompson levelled at the doorway, expecting to see a Japanese face framed in it at any moment.
When the shooting started, it came from the next house: Torrance recognised the hammer of Grant’s Bren. The Japanese who had been climbing up to the veranda of the house Torrance was hiding in at once dropped back to the boardwalk and started to cross to the next house to investigate. Torrance crawled across to the doorway. On the roof of the launch’s cabin, the machine-gunner was swivelling his Nambu towards Grant’s house. Bracing the Thompson to his shoulder, Torrance fired a couple of bursts. Red blotches appeared on the machine-gunner’s olive-green uniform, then he rolled sideways off the roof of the cabin to land in the river with a splash.
Torrance could hear the crack of Rossi and MacLeod’s Lee-Enfields, firing from behind one of the fishing boats drawn up on the shore at the far end of the village. The Japanese had all gone to ground, however. Ducking out through the low doorway, Torrance emerged on to the veranda and leaned over the railing, looking left and right. Two dead Japanese sprawled on the boardwalk in front of Grant’s house, a third had taken cover behind one of the pilings supporting the house Torrance was in. Torrance fired a burst straight down through the top of his helmet. The Japanese fell away from the piling and measured his length on the boardwalk, his face streaked with blood. An officer was climbing to the veranda in front of Grant’s house. As he peered in through the opening, the Bren chattered again. The officer slumped, his pistol falling from his fist and bouncing off the boardwalk to splash in the river.
Grant glanced across at Torrance with a quizzical expression.
‘I think that’s it,’ said Torrance. ‘I only saw eight of them.’ He crossed on to the jetty and was about to board the launch when he saw a ninth Japanese emerge from the trunk cabin. Torrance brought up his Thompson and squeezed the trigger. He fired two rounds before his magazine was empty: one tugged at the Japanese’s sleeve, the other missed altogether, and then he was fumbling in one of his utility pouches for a fresh magazine while the Japanese braced the butt of his Arisaka rifle to his shoulder and took careful aim.
MacLeod lobbed a grenade. It hit the Japanese full in the face, making him stagger, his shot going wide. He worked the bolt of his rifle, drawing a fresh bead on Torrance, and then Rossi was there, his Lee-Enfield punching a hole through the Japanese’s helmet, the Arisaka falling from his hands as blood ran from under his helmet and he slumped back against the gunwale.
Torrance threw himself flat on the jetty, waiting for MacLeod’s grenade to explode. After ten seconds that seemed like ten aeons, it became clear that whatever else was going to happen, MacLeod’s grenade was not going to explode any time soon. Torrance raised his head cautiously to peer over the gunwale and saw the grenade lying on the deck. He understood at once why it had not exploded. Climbing into the launch, he picked it up and tossed it back to MacLeod.
‘You forgot to pull the pin.’
‘Sorry,’ said MacLeod. ‘I guess I got overexcited.’
‘Never mind. It had the desired effect. If the desired effect was to save my life. And we get to capture the launch intact.’
Kerr joined Rossi and MacLeod on the jetty. ‘Where’s the doc?’ Torrance asked him.
‘A couple of the Japs were only wounded,’ explained Rossi. ‘She’s patching them up.’
‘Is she!’ Torrance drew his bayonet and threw it to Grant, who caught it deftly by the haft. ‘Tell the doc to come here, and see to those wounded Japs.’
Grant nodded and headed back to the boardwalk.
‘He’s no’ gaunae…?’ asked MacLeod.
‘Sooner or later, more Japs are gonna come looking for this launch,’ explained Torrance. ‘If they come to this village and find Japanese corpses, Japanese blood, cartridge cases, anything that might give them the least reason for suspecting the villagers helped us…’
Rossi nodded. ‘I’ll tell the village headman. What about the corpses?’
‘Bring them on board. We’ll chuck ’em in the river once we get into midstream. With any luck the current will carry them far from here before anyone finds them.’
There was a wireless in the wheelhouse. Torrance switched it on and tuned it in until he heard music: Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra playing ‘’Tain’t What You Do’. In a couple of minutes, Kerr, Rossi, Grant and MacLeod were stacking corpses in the launch’s stern to a jive rhythm.
The song came to an end. ‘Hello, Singapore,’ a Japanese man’s voice said in excellent English. ‘Penang calling. How do you like our bombing? Don’t worry, it will soon be over. You won’t hear it on the BBC, but we’ve conquered all of Malaya now except for Johore, and that will soon follow. We’ll be knocking at your door before you know it—’
Torrance could not believe the British Army was doing so badly against the Japanese. The bloody Japs, of all people! He flicked the ‘off’ switch.
‘Oi! I was listening to that!’ said Kerr. ‘They might have told us something useful.’
‘You’re not gonna believe that load of old cobblers, are you? It’s all propaganda, innit? That probably means we’ve got ’em on the run.’
Rossi finished telling the village headman to tidy up, tossed a fistful of spent cartridges into the river, cast off the mooring lines and scrambled over the gunwale.
At the helm, Torrance flicked a couple of switches and the engine purred into life. He put the helm hard over to turn the launch before heading downstream.
‘D’you know what you’re doin’?’ asked Kerr.
‘For crying out loud, Primsie, how hard can it be? Turn the wheel left to go left and right to go right. This lever’s the accelerator, and that’s about it. It’s easier than driving a car ’cause you don’t have to worry about the clutch.’
‘Aye. No brakes either, mind.’
Rossi searched through the drawers in the binnacle and pulled out a chart. ‘Anyone know where we are?’
‘No, but I reckon this river must lead us out into the Strait of Malacca somewhere south of Port Swettenham,’ said Torrance. ‘We’ll head downstream until we reach the sea, then follow the coast down to Singapore.’
‘Anything I can do?’ asked Sheridan.
‘See if there’s a stove in the cabin,’ suggested Torrance. ‘I could murder a cuppa.’
As soon as she had gone below, Grant and MacLeod started lifting corpses between them and heaving them over the transom. Some crocodiles which had been sunning themselves on a mudflat stirred, running down to the river and arrowing through the water to where the bodies floated.
‘That’s one way to get rid of the bodies,’ chuckled Torrance.
As a crocodile sank its jaws into one of the corpses, the Japanese suddenly came back to life, thrashing about in the water and screaming, until the crocodile submerged, dragging its victim down with it. ‘Bloody hell, Titch!’ protested Torrance. ‘I thought you were going to make sure they were all dead?’
Grant looked green about the gills. ‘I thought I had!’
The sun was setting over the Malacca Strait by the time the launch crossed the bar at the mouth of the river. As the deck began to pitch on the chop of the open sea, Torrance opened up the throttle wide.
‘You might want to throttle back a little,’ suggested Rossi.
‘What for? The faster we go, the sooner we get to Singapore.’
‘Assuming we’ve got enough fuel in the tank to get us that far. I reckon we’ve got at least a couple of hundred miles to go, and I don’t know how many miles to the gallon this boat does, but I’m sure it’s just like a motor car – the faster we go, the more fuel we’ll burn up.’
‘Good point.’ Torrance throttled back to eight knots, which seemed like a reasonable cruising speed.
There were two sets of bunk beds in the cabin, so for the next six hours, they took it in turns to sleep or spell one another at the wheel; all except Kerr, who spent the voyage kneeling at the gunwale, spewing up his guts. ‘Och, ye widnae think he haled from the same country as Captain Kidd and John Paul Jones, would you?’ sighed Rossi.
It was a chill night, and a gusting wind blowing up the strait chased ragged bands of cloud across a moonless, star-studded sky. Some time after one o’clock, they spotted the lights of a settlement off the port bow.
‘Malacca,’ said Rossi, studying a chart by the light of the binnacle. ‘It must be.’
Torrance tapped the fuel gauge. ‘I don’t suppose you happened to notice if there’s any spare fuel cans on board, did you?’
‘There aren’t. Why?’
‘Judging from the rate this needle’s moving, if that’s Malacca, I don’t think we’re going to make it as far as Singapore.’
‘Bloody hell! How far can we get?’
Torrance glanced at the chart. ‘Pontian Kecil, if we’re lucky.’
‘Pontian Kecil?’ Rossi searched for it on the chart. Torrance helped him by pointing it out. ‘That’s all right. If Johore State hasn’t fallen to the Japs yet, Pontian Kecil should still be safely behind our lines.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘What’s yon light?’
Following his gaze, Torrance saw a light winking at them in the darkness astern. ‘Must be a ship signalling us.’
Rossi found a pair of binoculars and levelled them astern.
‘What’s he saying?’ asked Torrance.
‘How should I know? I’m no’ a bloody signaller.’
‘He’s telling us to heave to and prepare to be boarded,’ said Kerr.
‘You know Morse?’ Torrance asked in surprise.
‘Aye. Don’t you?’
‘No. I’m impressed. I didn’t think you were good for anything. Should we do it?’
‘Do what?’ asked Rossi.
‘Heave to.’
‘What if it’s a Jap ship?’
‘What if it’s one of ours? That could be our last chance of safety!’
‘Do you really think a Royal Navy ship is a place of safety in these waters, after what happened to the Prince of Wales and the Repulse?’
‘You make an excellent point.’ Torrance opened the throttle wide and the launch surged forward. ‘Are we leaving them behind?’
‘Difficult to say,’ said Rossi, glancing aft again.
After another ten minutes, there was no doubt in any of their minds. ‘They’re gaunae catch us, aren’t they?’ said Rossi.
‘The only thing that remains to be seen is whether or not our fuel will hold out until they’ve brought us within range of their guns,’ agreed Torrance.
‘I’m surprised we’re no’ in range of their guns already.’
‘They’re not going to waste naval shells on a little tub like this, are they? They’ll wait until we’re in range of their pom-poms and then let us have it.’
‘Do the Japanese have pom-poms?’
‘How the hell should I know? They’ve got a pistol that looks a hell of a lot like a Luger and an MG that looks a hell of a lot like a Bren. I’d be surprised if they didn’t have something that looks a hell of a lot like a pom-pom.’ Torrance consulted the chart. ‘What’s our present position?’
Rossi indicated one of the marks he had made on it.
‘What’s this town here?’ asked Torrance.
‘Batu Pahat.’
‘That’s about twelve miles away, innit? If our top speed is twelve knots, and we’ve got an hour’s worth of fuel left, that should be enough to get us to Batu Whatsit.’
‘Mebbe, mebbe not. It depends on a lot of things.’
‘Such as?’
‘Whether or not the tide’s on the ebb. If it is, the current will be against us.’
‘What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.’
‘Aye, but it makes it more likely we’ll run out of fuel before we reach Batu Pahat. Then there’s the question of how cleanly the engine’s running, and how foul our bottom is. It all depends on how long ago the previous owner last had it scraped.’
‘I can’t speak for your bottom, Lefty, but mine’s as clean as a whistle.’
‘Aye, well, I’ll take your word for it.’ Rossi glanced at the chart again. ‘If we can reach Batu Pahat, there’s a river there. Whoever’s chasing us, I’ll bet they’ll no’ follow us across the bar.’
The next hour passed with agonising slowness. The ship chasing them continued to signal them periodically, without ever seeming to get any closer.
Torrance tapped the fuel gauge. ‘Oh, bollocks!’
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Rossi
‘I don’t think we’re gonna make it to Batu Pahat. We’re running on fumes as it is.’
‘We canna be far off,’ said Rossi. ‘Maybe we’re already south of the British lines. Head for the shore and find a place where we can land.’
Torrance thought he could make out the shore perhaps half a mile to port, a band of shadow darker than the rest of the surrounding night.
Then a light as bright as day engulfed the launch, pinning it in the night like the glare of an angry god. Torrance was aware of bullets flying through the air around him, glass shattering in the wheelhouse, wood splintering.