“So they set about digging a tunnel. It had to be deep enough to remain undetected for a long period of time, large enough for a person to crawl through on hands and knees, and long enough to take them outside the barbed-wire fence and far enough away from the camp to avoid the perimeter sentries. They estimated that it would take them two years to complete it. Work was begun in March, nineteen forty-two.
“By June, nineteen forty-three, the women had progressed beyond the wire and were well on their way through — or shall I say under — the jungle. At that point, however, their Japanese captors closed the camp and moved the entire group to another facility in nearby Sumatra.
“Louis van Leuck learned of the tunnel while visiting London and watching a television show on the BBC called This Is Your Life. It was honoring Brigadier Dame Margot Turner, the former Matron-in-Chief of the Royal Army Nursing Corps. While Dame Margot herself was never in the Boon Lay camp, one of the women who was subsequently with her in the Muntok camp in Sumatra, and who had appeared on the show, had been at Boon Lay earlier, and commented on the tunnel they had dug there.
“Louis van Leuck, whose thinking coincides with my own unfortunate proclivity for felonious endeavors, checked upon his return to Singapore all the land and building records for the area where the Boon Lay camp had been, and where the mint now is, and found no indication that the existence of the tunnel was known. He then took it upon himself to personally explore the acreage in question, in the guise of a botanist studying the island’s flora. After several weeks of diligent effort, his initiative was rewarded. He found that the tunnel does, in fact, still exist. Louis has not divulged the location as yet, but I am told that it leads from a point approximately three hundred meters outside the mint compound and terminates directly under what is now the bundling room, where new currency is packaged for shipment.”
Dao had gone on to explain to Alan exactly how the robbery would be carried out. There would be no guns, no violence, no contact with any of the mint’s nighttime security force. Alan and Dao’s grand-nephew would negotiate the tunnel and, with tools, battery-operated drills, and duffel bags, wait just below the bundling room. At a predetermined time, Dao and the grandnephew’s wife would set off across the road a sequence of spectacular Chinese fireworks, which would have been previously arranged in a wooded area there.
While the mint security guards were distracted by the fireworks display, timed to last at least twenty minutes, Alan and the grand-nephew would break through the bundling room floor (ten minutes), fill the duffel bags — six of them, connected by lengths of rope — with all the packaged Malaysian money and any other foreign banknotes they could find (five minutes), then drop back into the tunnel, pull the bags in behind them, and crawl back through the tunnel (five minutes). At the tunnel mouth, they would drag the connected bags through, remove them, and cave in that end of the tunnel with a light explosive device they would leave behind, the display fireworks covering the sound.
It was, Alan thought, a plan brilliant in its simplicity — comparatively uninvolved, limited in operation to a very few, able to be carried out in an incredibly short period of time. It had the potential of netting, Dao estimated, ten to fifteen million Malaysian dollars.
Alan had already figured out what his share would be. Say they got twelve million Malay. Louis van Leuck would take ten percent (one million, two) off the top, his fee for conceiving the operation. That would leave ten-point-eight million. Louis would further profit by seeing to the transport and conversion of the currency, buying it from Dao at sixty percent of its face value, about six-and-one-half million. Alan’s share of that would be around one-point-six million Malay. At the current exchange rate of $2.20 Malay to U.S. $1.00, he would have somewhere in the neighborhood of seven hundred and forty thousand U.S. dollars.
And that, Alan promised himself, was going to do him for life. There would be no opening of any business with this money, no risky speculation trying to make a big killing, no living it up in the fast lane. Much wiser after his term in the Thai prison, Alan had modified his wants and desires to a sensible minimum. Where once he needed — or at least wanted — tailormade clothes, an expensive car, someplace opulent in which to live, he now yearned for nothing more than a cozy room, peace and quiet, comfortable slippers, some books, a television, medication for his ulcer, and anonymity. The cane beatings had done that to him. The scars on his buttocks and calves would forever remind him that the simplest things in life were by far the most valuable.
This venture, Alan was certain, was his very last chance for a decent existence. Probably his last chance for anything in life. There was no question in his mind that he had to take the chance even though the prospect of doing it terrified him.
Walking away from the area of the mint compound, Alan encountered a directional sign that read JURONG BIRD PARK. He remembered Wendy Travers saying she worked at a reptile farm near there. Without debating it, he decided to go see her. She was more or less constantly on his mind, and he didn’t know why or what to do about it. Perhaps seeing her again would give him a clue.
The farm was a walled area much smaller than he had imagined. Inside the walls were two exhibition structures in which some species of reptiles were on display behind glass. In two exterior areas, others were kept behind fine grille-wire in ground cages with corrugated roofs. Upon inquiry, Alan was directed to one of the cages, where he found Wendy, in safari clothes, holding and stroking a fire-hose-sized snake which hung down to the ground and appeared to be at least seven or eight meters long. Alan stared incredulously until Wendy noticed him.
“Alan! I’m so glad to see you!” Her overbite smile lighted up a freshly scrubbed face.
“I’m not sure I can say the same,” Alan told her. “I expected to find you behind a typewriter, not a snake.”
She smiled. “No boring typewriters for me, Alan. I’m assistant to Professor Angus Ferguson, one of the world’s foremost authorities on reptiles. He’s written several field guides on reptilia and amphibia. You can come a little closer, Alan — they can’t get out.”
Hesitantly, Alan moved up to the cage grille. “Aren’t you afraid that thing might strike?” he asked, regarding the long blue-and-brown-patterned snake with unconcealed revulsion.
Wendy shook her head. “This is a non-venomous species,” she explained. “It’s called a python reticulatus, or reticulated python. It has teeth instead of fangs. Killing of its prey is effected by constriction. This one is quite docile. Would you like to hold him?”
“No,” Alan said.
“He’s really a dear, Alan. Absolutely loves human warmth and stroking. We call him Apollo because he’s so beautiful. He is a bit spoiled, however.”
Wendy put the python on the ground and came out of the cage. Alan had to steel himself not to flinch when she casually took his arm with hands that had just cuddled Apollo.