‘Sir, the day after the ambush was sprung Ten Foot Long gave his useless portable radio to one of them to get it repaired or to buy a new one. My idea is to get a new radio and put a bug in it so that when it is switched on its location on the ground can be picked up from the air. If we can get a bomber overhead once he has been pin-pointed he, and the men with him, could be eliminated any day suitable to the RAF.’
‘Hm,’ grunted the Brigadier, ‘neat but unsporting. How did you think this one up? Wouldn’t they be suspicious about such a move?’
‘I doubt it. How did I think this up? Two years ago it was used by an Auster to locate a renegade British officer of 1/12 GR who was being escorted by the guerrillas up north to the MCP HQ. Captain Rance and his small team of Gurkhas were involved in the chase to re-capture him. Subsequently bombs were not used but a voice aircraft was. I very much doubt if any CT knows anything of such a ruse, as those of the CT escort not killed by Rance’s follow-up are working for us now.’
‘Yes, I can understand that and a fine piece of work it must have been. But my question is how and why the SEP think they can give their one-time leader this new radio with a British officer standing around. I’ve never heard anything like it before. Doesn’t make sense to me.’
Moby gave a large inward sigh. ‘Sir, not to get our wires crossed, please ask the SEP yourself.’
Jason was the first to arrive. The Brigadier had not had a close look at him before and now saw a tall man with a taut, lean body and the indefinable air of a natural commander. On first sight I like what I see: here is a man who keeps himself fit and looks as if he knows his own mind, maverick though he be.
‘Rance, tell me why the four men who surrendered to you won’t go back into the jungle without you.’
‘Sir, this is news to me. I can’t tell you as I have no idea. Sorry.’
Moby came back to say that the four SEP were outside. ‘Shall I bring them in now?’
‘Wait till Captain Rance goes into the ops room,’ and to Jason, ‘Only come out when I call you.’
Dear God, send me some soldiers, wooden ones would do, the frustrated sergeant major’s tag came into Jason’s mind.
The four surrendered guerrillas were brought in. ‘Mr Mubarak, please ask the senior man why he won’t go without this British officer?’
Moby did and was appalled when told that Rance had saved him from being shot. Moby, thinking that Goh Ah Wah was referring to the mock execution in the Police Station, translated it, almost against his will.
‘What does he mean?’ queried the Brigadier, lamenting that he couldn’t understand a word of ‘that damned lingo’.
‘Sir, please call Captain Rance,’ Moby replied, managing to keep his voice even. ‘He can tell you.’
The Brigadier gave vent to his frustration by bellowing ‘Rance’.
When the SEP saw him, they all started talking to him at once, smiles on their faces. Jason answered them with a Chinese proverb, ‘Feigning to be a pig he vanquishes tigers’ and told them to keep quiet. The Brigadier looked on with amazed curiosity.
‘What is this about nearly being shot?’
‘Sir, I heard them coming towards me and hid behind a tree, threatening them with the oldest known Chinese curse, always effectively used by emperors in times past once uttered. They did not try to shoot us and so probably be shot by us but surrendered to me.’ He stared straight into the Brigadier’s eyes, the elder man thinking young pup, that’s almost a case of pre-World War 2 of ‘dumb insolence’.
Moby, breathing his biggest inward sigh of relief ever, took over before the Brigadier could answer, ‘Sir, he says that he knows he will come back safely only if they go together.’
‘And your answer to that, Rance?’ the Brigadier snapped, thinking bloody heathen nonsense.
‘Sir, it is up to you. I am perfectly ready to take a small party of my Gurkhas and go with these four men if so ordered.’
‘Mr Mubarak, tell me how they can know how to meet up with their one-time boss in such a large area of jungle? It doesn’t make sense to me.’ How does a man like this become a brigadier? Moby wondered
Moby put the question to Goh Ah Wah. The answer was a long one and the Brigadier was not good at hiding his impatience.
‘Sir, there is a secret cave he knows that Ten Foot Long uses as a resting area. He told this SEP when he gave him his useless radio to take it and, repaired or a new one with plenty of batteries, go there and dump the package in the cave. The sentries there will give it to him when next he goes there. These four do not want Captain Rance to go into the cave with them or meet any sentries, merely to be with them until they reach it and come back with them because were they to bump into any Security Force unit, being with a British officer would save their lives.’
‘Yes, that last does make good sense, I can see that. And where is this cave?’
There followed a long rambling discourse with many hand gestures and, at last, ‘about three days’ walk north of Bahau, at the top of some high ground. Once he’s in the general area he will recognise it.’
‘Does he approve of what we are doing?’ asked the CO.
‘Colonel, with respect, you have yet to understand these people. Approval doesn’t come into it. They have surrendered to us so are now on our side, not the guerrillas’, and that is that.’
‘I’ll think it over and let you know,’ the Brigadier directed. ‘Take them away and you, Rance, can go back to the battalion.’
Jason saluted and left.
1 October 1954, Ha La, south Thailand: The difference in the tempo in Ha La and Kuala Lumpur always struck Ah Fat as needing mentally to change gear from ‘mod cons’ to basic. The courier system was uncontrollably slow and unreliable but, amazingly, seemed to work more often than not. How much the recipients understood when they got their propaganda sheets was an unknown but they were probably the only reading material they managed to get sight of so should merit at least a cursory glance if nothing else. By now so many comrades were disillusioned they probably didn’t believe what they read even though ‘lip service’ would be paid to any senior comrade who asked about the contents. Ah Fat was no academic but had a lively brain. How best can I write something in the 4-letter code that will play into our hands, not theirs? haunted him.
In Ha La there were no frontier posts and no police in the small village and supplies were limited. The villagers were used to seeing such people as him and his group and were not worried. In fact, they were mostly Muslims, speaking Malay as well as Thai, who had little time for the government in Bangkok and, thinking that those strange visitors were also anti-government – though quite how they were not sure and they never asked – were not worried by their presence. The nearest towns were Betong to the northwest and Songkhla farther away to the north. The road to Songkhla was the better.
Ah Fat settled down to work. Operation Red Tidings, you are about to be launched. He found that the best method of arranging the four-letter code was to write out the main message in the simplest way possible and then filling in the gaps afterwards. At times that meant his original made little or no sense so that it had to be re-written. After several days’ hectic work he had his first draft, ‘from a “deep throat” in the MCP itself telling the truth’ for comrades in Malaya ready for printing on MCP-watermarked paper. Will it really work? he constantly asked himself, ‘yessing and noing’ like a weathercock in a stiff breeze. His message then, and later, was ‘so many people are now fed up with the incompetence of the leadership and the hard and hungry life in the jungle that they want to go home and are willing to receive a reward for surrendering, so trust no one but yourself.’
That done he laboriously re-wrote the sensitive sections in a way to please the Politburo, this time to be printed with government-watermarked paper, telling them that the other, all similar, copies were being despatched by courier to take south. ‘So far no courier has come but I am sure one or two will arrive shortly,’ he wrote. He made arrangements always to have someone ready to tell him if anyone from the MCP camp came to visit him. If they do, they can take their copies back with them and I will have hidden mine.
Two couriers arrived the following week, both from the Bekok area of north Johor; one said his name was Ah Chong; the other refused to give his name and glowered like an eagle when spoken to. A man impossible to break, Ah Fat summed him up.
‘Here are twenty copies for each of you of the new newspaper, Red Tidings,’ Ah Fat told them. ‘I don’t want to give you any more as, what with all the other stuff you will be asked to carry, your loads will make you too slow.’
Ah Chong thanked him but ‘Nameless’ said nothing as he put the copies in his pack. Off they went and it was only long afterwards that Ah Fat learnt that his childhood friend, Jason Rance, had met them.
After Ah Fat had started to compose his second edition, he sent the Bear with one man to Songkhla to look around and to buy a few goodies. He already knew that there was a telephone exchange there. He gave the Bear a piece of paper with C C Too’s unlisted number on it and a message, ‘My son has had his school report. It is not a good one. He doesn’t want his friends who live to our south to see it. I’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Tell my school friend there’s no need to go to the Bekok area as there won’t be any mail.’
‘Don’t tell the called party who you are as the number you are ringing is only ever used by expected people. Once you have given the message, burn it and the phone number,’ Ah Fat cautioned.