Suddenly he was famished for the coconut. He was so hungry that he did not hear the guards approaching. He did not feel their presence until they were already standing ominously in the doorway of the hut and all the men were on their feet.
Yoshima, the Japanese officer, shattered the silence. "There is a radio in this hut."
Chapter 8
Yoshima waited five minutes for someone to speak. He lit a cigarette and the sound of the match was a thunderclap. Dave Daven's first reaction was, Oh my God, who's the bastard who gave us away or made the slip?
Peter Marlowe? Cox? Spence? The colonels? His second reaction was terror — terror incongruously mixed with relief — that the day had come.
Peter Marlowe's fear was just as choking. Who leaked? Cox? The colonels? Why, even Mac and Larkin don't know that I know! Christ! Utram Road!
Cox was petrified. He leaned against the bunk looking from slant eyes to slant eyes, and only the strength of the posts kept him from falling.
Lieutenant Colonel Sellars was in nominal charge of the hut, and his pants were slimed with fear as he entered the hut with his adjutant, Captain Forest.
He saluted, his dewlapped face flushed and sweating.
"Good morning, Captain Yoshima…"
"It is not a good morning. There is a radio here. A radio is against orders of the Imperial Nipponese Army." Yoshima was small, slight and very neat.
A samurai sword hung from his thick belt. His knee boots shone like mirrors.
"I don't know anything about it. No. Nothing," Sellars blustered. "You!" A palsied finger pointed at Daven. "Do you know anything about it?"
"No, sir."
Sellars turned around and faced the hut. "Where's the wireless?"
Silence.
"Where is the wireless?" He was almost hysterical. "Where is the wireless?
I order you to hand it over instantly. You know we're all responsible for the orders of the Imperial Army."
Silence.
"I'll have the lot of you court-martialed," he screamed, his jowls shaking.
"You'll all get what you deserve. You! What's your name?"
"Flight Lieutenant Marlowe, sir."
"Where's the wireless?"
"I don't know, sir."
Then Sellars saw Grey. "Grey! You're supposed to be Provost Marshal. If there's a wireless here it's your responsibility and no one else's. You should have reported it to the authorities. I'll have you court-martialed and it'll show on your record…"
"I know nothing about a wireless, sir."
"Then by God you should," Sellars screamed at him, his face contorted and purple. He stormed up the hut to where the five American officers bunked. "Brough! What do you know about this?"
"Nothing. And it's Captain Brough, Colonel!"
"I don't believe you. It's just the sort of trouble you bloody Americans'd cause. You're nothing but an ill-disciplined rabble…"
"I'm not taking that goddam crap from you!"
"Don't you talk to me like that. Say 'Sir' and stand to attention."
"I'm the senior American officer and I'm not taking insults from you or anyone else. There's no radio in the American contingent that I know of.
There's no radio in this hut that I know of. And if there was, I sure as hell wouldn't tell you. Colonel!"
Sellars turned and panted to the center of the hut. "Then we'll search the hut. Everyone stand by their beds! Attention! God help the man who has it.
I'll personally see he's punished to the limit of the law, you mutinous swine…"
"Shut up, Sellars."
Everyone stiffened as Colonel Smedly-Taylor entered the hut.
"There's a wireless here and I was trying —"
"Shut up."
Smedly-Taylor's well-used face was taut as he walked over to Yoshima, who had been watching Sellars with astonishment and contempt. "What's the trouble, Captain?" he asked, knowing what it was.
"There's a radio in the hut." Then Yoshima added with a sneer,
"According to the Geneva Convention governing prisoners of war…"
"I know the code of ethics quite well," Smedly-Taylor said, keeping his eyes off the eight-by-eight beam. "If you believe there is a wireless here, please make a search for it. Or if you know where it is, please take it and be done with the affair. I've a lot to do today."
"Your job is to enforce the law…"
"My job is to enforce civilized law. If you want to cite law, then obey it yourselves. Give us the food and medical supplies to which we are entitled!"
"One day you will go too far, Colonel."
"One day I'll be dead. Perhaps I'll die of apoplexy trying to enforce ridiculous rules imposed by incompetent administrators."
"I'll report your impertinence to General Shima."
"Please do so. Then ask him who gave the order that each man in camp should catch twenty flies a day, that they are to be collected and counted and delivered daily to your office personally by me."
"You senior officers are always whining about the dysenteric death rate.
Flies spread dysentery —"
"You don't have to remind me about flies or death rate," Smedly-Taylor said harshly. "Give us chemicals, and permission to enforce hygiene in the surrounding areas, and we'll have the whole of Singapore Island under control."
"Prisoners are not entitled…"
"Your dysenteric rate is uneconomic. Your malaria rate is high. Before you came here Singapore was malaria-free."
"Perhaps. But we conquered you in your thousands and we captured you in your thousands. No man of honor would allow himself to be captured.
You are all animals and should be treated as such."
"I understand that quite a few Japanese prisoners are being taken in the Pacific."
"Where did you get that information?"
"Rumors, Captain Yoshima. You know how it is. Obviously incorrect. And incorrect that the Japanese fleets are no longer on the seas, or that Japan is being bombed, or that the Americans have captured Guadalcanal, Guam and Rabaul and Okinawa, and are presently poised for an attack on the Japanese mainland —"
"Lies!" Yoshima's hand was on the samurai sword at his waist and he jerked in an inch out of the scabbard. "Lies! The Imperial Japanese Army is winning the war and will soon have dominated Australia and America.
New Guinea is in our hands and a Japanese armada is at this very moment off Sydney."
"Of course." Smedly-Taylor turned his back on Yoshima and looked down the length of the hut. White faces stared back at him. "Everyone outside, please," he said quietly.
His order was silently obeyed.
When the hut was empty, he turned back to Yoshima. "Please make your search."
"And if I find the radio?"