‘If they are at the Wildons’ bungalow, I know it well and they have many arms there, machine guns. This I do know.’
Heng Hou grunted, speculated. He needed guns; then he might kill this man.
Josef’s heart gave a thump of hope. ‘The girl and guns … ’ He repeated the prizes slowly.
‘Your sister?’ the terrorist queried. It amused him to see what this man would sacrifice for his skin.
Josef nodded energetically. ‘I know the layout of the plantation and the bungalow almost as well as I know Rinsey.’
Heng Hou grunted again and nodded his agreement to this last offer.
Josef turned to lead the way, lifting his head for a moment to allow the rain to flood over his face. Reprieved! Time brought opportunity.
*
The moment Aubrey set off for his morning rounds at Kose was always a moment of anxiety, and each morning Joan held him in her arms with a gentle, sad passion, so unlike their embraces at any other time, so unlike a husband going off to routine daily work.
In that final quiet embrace was the fear each had for the other: fear that Aubrey might be attacked on his inspection of the plantation and his tappers; fear that the bungalow might be attacked while he was away. They had made a rule never to agonise about risks; they parted with a smile and the mutually spoken slogan, ‘Chin up!’
Joan as always watched him go off in the car they called ‘the warrior’ since armour-plating it with sheets cut from the Japanese tank still stuck in their riverbed.
Before setting about the morning’s chores she decided to ring Blanche to see how the Hammonds were, Liz in particular. That they should both have lost their chaps seemed particularly galling. Liz, of course, would find someone else. She might come round to that major yet? Joan had serious doubts whether either Blanche or her daughter would stay at Rinsey in the long term. She listened as the telephone rang out, then her friend answered.
She knew immediately something had happened by Blanche’s voice. ‘Don’t think I should talk on the telephone. Can you and Aubrey come over later? I’ve done something ... ’ She paused, seeking the right description. ‘Something pretty indiscreet.’
‘Didn’t know you knew the meaning of the word, darling.’ She waited for Blanche to laugh, but the empty quality of the silence on the other end of the line made her add quickly, ‘The second he’s back from his rounds, darling.’
Blanche hesitated. ‘I suppose there’s no particular hurry ... now. I’ll make us all lunch.’
Joan left the phone thoughtful. No hurry now, about what? To be there for lunch would be a rush, Aubrey wouldn’t get his lunchtime gin sling. And she remembered she had not, after all, enquired about Liz.
She wandered to the front door again as if she had some chance of catching Aubrey before he left, though she knew that by now he would be heading for the far reaches of the plantation, then gradually working his way back to the bungalow.
The area around the Kose bungalow fell away and was planted with small new rubber trees. Aubrey said the troubles should be well over before the trees grew much taller. The recently cleared ground certainly made the bungalow easier to defend.
Silly to worry or speculate, no useful purpose in it, she told herself. Chin up and get busy. She decided to make one of those Dundee cakes Blanche and Liz were so fond of. If she started straight away it should be cool enough to pack by the time Aubrey came back, but she still stood thinking what a curious note Blanche’s voice had held, depression underlaid with a kind of excitement. ‘Most intriguing, darling.’
‘Intriguing,’ she repeated, gazing out over the verdant, burgeoning land around her home. ‘It is beautiful,’ she said as if she must confirm aloud a fact she had always known. She had spent half her lifetime in this country, and loved it as her own. Now she knew many planters felt abandoned. News from England said their plight was hardly reported in the newspapers; the Berlin airlift and the fear that America and Russia might be sliding towards war dominated the news.
She grimaced ruefully at the triple barbed-wire fences, the spotlights, each with their own unsightly batteries so that all could not be put out at once, the machine guns. Aubrey had left nothing to chance.
‘Baking, that’s the thing,’ she told herself, ‘then strip down and clean old Bertha.’ She glanced at her gun. It began to feel like the one reliable friend she had when Aubrey was away. Her houseboy was loyal enough but not bright and often when she wanted to indulge in a little cooking and thinking she employed him in the garden. She had set him to construct long lines of low attap thatched ‘cloches’ to protect her sun-shy English lettuces.
A most satisfactory cake had been turned out, almonds baked beautifully even on the top, but it was still hot when she heard Aubrey’s car coming back. She always heard the car well before the prearranged signal on the horn — long, short, long, short — which announced his safe return and was the prerequisite to the gates being opened.
She frowned as she thought the car had come on through the gates without the hooter having sounded, or had she really been so engrossed in the beautiful evenness of her almonds that she had failed to register the daily signal? The car came right up to the front of the bungalow, so she must have done.
She slipped off her apron, pulled her dress in order, fluffed up her hair, put on a smile and went to meet her darling Aubrey.
Her pace slowed as she reached the front door. The car stood just beyond the shadow of the verandah, the rainstorm so lately stopped that the sun was striking brilliant prisms of colour, blue, red, orange, yellow, on the car’s armour. She could see no one inside and glanced round, looking back to where the guards were closing the gates. Two of them seemed to be having words, arguing. Had Aubrey gone back to see what was wrong?
Then one of the men seemed to make a decision and lifted an arm to her. Even from a distance she thought he looked alarmed. Something was wrong. Where the hell was Aubrey? And there was something about their car ... something hanging from under the door.
Her heart bounded to her throat as she recognised the strip of material hanging from the passenger-side door. She had bought that blue and beige striped shirt in Airey & Wheeler’s, Piccadilly.
She turned away and was heading for Bertha as, with a sudden explosion of action and firing, all the doors of the car were thrown open. The impact of the bullets lifted and span her round. As she fell she saw Aubrey’s head and shoulders sagging from the passenger seat.
Five or six men spilled out of the car, two treading over Aubrey’s body. One made for Bertha and cut down the Kose guards as they scattered in curious slow motion with legs turned to lead as they realised their mistake.
‘Damn!’ The word formed on Joan’s lips but was never spoken.
*
As Heng Hou and his men raided the bungalow, Josef shot his way back out of the gates. He was well aware that if he was going to escape with his life he needed to do it before Heng Hou realised he had been duped. He privately thought that his mother and sister had wandered into the jungle and got lost and would probably have perished by this time. If they had found a road, though, they would undoubtedly be taken back to Rinsey; it was all his mother ever seemed to crave.
Heng Hou saw his men wrench the machine gun from its stand. Bursting into the house, he grabbed a pile of hand grenades which were arranged like fruit on a glass stand near the door. He swept the bowl to the floor, then kicked it furiously when it did not break. The cut glass rang with a clear, true note as it rebounded from the wall and rolled back toward Heng. He stepped back and shot it to smithereens.
He went through the house like an angry demon, as if furious with everything that dwelt inside, every piece of furniture, every ornament carefully chosen and placed. If he did not want it he broke it.
‘The girl! The girl!’ he screamed when they had turned over every room. ‘Bring Josef to me!’ He turned on his henchmen who stepped back a pace, pockets bulging with trinkets. Heng Hou repeated the demand and stamped his foot. ‘Search outside.’