It was tempting but no I’d better not so Goh thanked the sentry and said he had to move off to make the most of the daylight. ‘When Comrade Tang comes, give him our fraternal regards and tell him that in our part of his regimental area, we are holding our own and managing our gardens. We have enough to eat. We are all waiting for his, and your, return.’
‘So you can’t stay?’ Goh shook his head. ‘That’s a shame; we are bored stiff here but if you have to go, we understand.’
They bid each other farewell and Goh’s four drifted into the undergrowth. They came to a small river and, although the water came to above their knees, continued down it for about a hundred paces before joining Jason in their hide-out.
‘Follow me. We need to hurry. Comrade Tang is not in the cave but is expected from the north later on today or early tomorrow. He may order a search of us but,’ pointing to their wet trousers,’ we have walked along a river so they can’t easily follow us. After we have changed into other uniform, let’s be off.’
There was time, that evening, to send a message to Battalion HQ, telling of the safe delivery and their speedy exodus. ‘I hope to give you our golf romeo much farther south by midday tomorrow and once I have found a suitable lima papa I request a heli pick-up soonest. Must move now to avoid being chased. Out.’
When the news reached the CO, his Big Sunray and the Director of Operations, to say nothing of C C Too and Moby, all heaved a sigh of relief. The whole concept was against their better feelings and sending a British officer and his Gurkhas to help in a man’s death by such a subterfuge embarrassed them. Will the scheme work? they asked themselves.
On the morrow’s early opening schedule, Jason was told that an Auster was due to overfly where he had reported his last position. ‘Get to an open space, light a fire, put up smoke and 96 Foxtrot will get a message to you, telling you where the heli will land or hover,’ he was told.
Jason told Goh who, knowing the area like the back of his hand, led them to an old garden only an hour’s walk distant. There, with Lance Corporal Minbahadur Gurung with his set watching over their packs, the others collected as much kindling and damp foliage as they could find ready to fan into smoke when they heard the Auster. As soon as they heard it they put the damp foliage on the fire and the smoke rose thickly. The Auster flew overhead and around twice. Jason, netted in, spoke to the pilot.
‘1 for 96 Foxtrot. How do you read me, over?’
‘96 Foxtrot for 1, read you loud and clear. A heli is standing by at Seremban and I will guide it back here. The pilot is carrying a mile-to-the-inch map, do you roger that?’ the pilot radioed.
Jason answered with a happy, ‘1 for 96 Foxtrot. Roger, roger. There was a young lady of Lod, who thought all good things came from God, it was not the Almighty who lifted her nighty, but Roger, the Lodger the sod. Out.’
The Auster flew over once more, flapped the wings in response and flew off. That’s a happy-go-lucky bloke if ever there was one smiled the pilot to himself.
They heard the heli droning in the distance earlier than they had expected. ‘Make more smoke and get ready to emplane as soon as the chopper pilot gives us the signal,’ Jason called out, first in Nepali and then in Chinese. ‘Also don’t forget to bend down as you run below the blades or you’ll leave your head behind.’
The four Chinese had a good laugh at that weak joke. Although they had not shown it, they had been on tenterhooks until the package had been handed over and now their relief was obvious so all small jokes were larger than they deserved to be.
The heli landed, the pilot gave them the thumbs up and, heads bent, they clambered into the back, helped by the crewman. Once in and the door shut, the crewman reached up and slapped the pilot’s leg to let him know they were ready for lift-off. It was too noisy for any conversation so they closed their eyes and, as best they could, dozed till touchdown on the football pitch outside the camp. As soon they were on the ground the heli continued on its journey to Kuala Lumpur.
A police vehicle, ready to pick up the SEP when the heli was heard, drove up, with Moby sitting in the front. He expansively welcomed their return and slapped his men on the back in appreciation. ‘Jason, great to have you back. We’ll have a long chinwag later.’
7 October 1954, Ha La, south Thailand: A couple of couriers came into the village looking for Ah Fat. ‘Comrade, we met two, Ah Chong and his nameless friend, the one who never talks and has a face like a bird, I don’t know its name but I once saw a picture of it. How long ago did they leave here?’
‘Comrade, only a couple of days ago, now I come to think of it.’
‘Ah Chong said how much easier it was to collect the material from here than having to go all the way to the main camp. That is a most depressing place. I’ve only been there twice but no one ever smiles there. At least here, as far as I have so far seen, life is more or less normal. I think I‘ll exercise my male human rights in the village tonight!’
Ah Fat let him rattle on while he collected some more copies of Red Tidings. ‘Here you are. Look at them. Classy, what, compared with the other rather drab stuff the Central Committee normally sends out.’
The courier examined the cover closely. ‘Yes, I like it but I’d like it much better when we can get back and lead a normal life.’
Ah Fat was always careful how to answer such remarks. Never know of any unfortunate rebound. ‘So, you’ll stay in Ha La a day or so for a rest then be on your way?’
‘Comrade, that’s right.’ He raised his right arm. ‘Red salute!’ and off the pair of them went.
The Bear came back soon afterwards and gave Ah Fat a smile and a nod. ‘We’ll talk after our meal,’ was all he said then. Later he said, ‘I made a phone call but it had to go through the exchange at Bangkok. I had an answer after the fifth, or was it the sixth? ring. The man who answered gave a name I didn’t know but I recognised the voice. I gave him your message. He thanked me and merely said he was disappointed and put the phone down. That was not much of a conversation was it?’
‘No, it wasn’t but it was exactly right,’ was the enigmatic answer the Bear had to be content with.
Same day, Central Committee, south Thailand: Chin Peng was looking at his copy of the new newspaper. His chief confidant and propaganda expert, Chien Tiang, was also reading his copy. After a while, he said, ‘Comrade Secretary General, Comrade Ah Fat has made a good job of this, hasn’t he?’
‘Comrade, yes. I approve. I am a little mystified by ٪-)y٪-)y and +K)y, also $s*F،٦ seems out of place but our comrade in Ha La is new to the game and the four-character method is not easy. But there is something I can’t quite understand about it.’
Again, the inherently suspicious psyops duo wondered if there was any secret meaning there that they had yet to understand.
‘Comrade Secretary General, you are trying to read sense into something that sometimes reads as nonsense. It is all right. Now, let’s get back to thinking about the amnesty we want to be announced.’
October 1954 to April 1955, central Malaya: Operation Red Tidings, now virtually finished, there was a change of policy from searching for guerrilla ‘gardens’ to food denial. This meant that companies were engaged on boring and routine tasks of stopping vehicles and people on the highways and, as the battalion diarist put it, ‘pre-dawn to locked and barbed village gates where arc lamps throw a sickly white light on the straggly groups of men and women, buckets and bicycles gathering to go and collect latex, the arrival of the police in an armoured vehicle, the search, of people by the police, of bicycles, tins and bottles by the soldiers, and finally the opening of the gates and the release of the flood, tins clanking, bicycles bounding over ruts in the road, coloured scarves flying in the pearl-grey half-light … and then the weary searching throughout the day of all who pass.’
People tried to hide rice in secret compartments at the bottom of buckets of night soil, into the handles of bicycles, in places of women’s bodies that certainly no Gurkha soldier could ever imagine or would ever look for. It was impossible to tell how much stuff was smuggled through road blocks and how much was kept back through fear of being discovered.
Life was so comparatively quiet that Jason Rance felt he ought to start studying for the dreaded Staff College Entrance Exam but, when he was true to himself, he knew that he was not interested in that type of soldiering. His seniors had warned him against such a short-sighted outlook. Dame Fortune will come up with something interesting instead he mused. I’m sure she won’t desert me.
And, in the immediate future, desert him she did not: towards the end of December the Director of Operations felt that Tan Fook Leong should be eliminated. He had asked Mr C C Too to do some homework about the man and had found out he had been in the Victory Parade in London after being of great value to the British stay-behind groups during the war. I wonder if we can save his life by getting him to surrender. It would be a real propaganda coup and the psyops boys would love it. That idea tickled him. But how to? Why not get the same group that went and put the radio in the cave to try and physically contact him? The more he thought about it, the more he liked it.
He called his Int and Psywar staff in and told them about his ides. Heads were scratched, throats were cleared and eyebrows raised till eventually ‘it’s worth a try’ was the accepted answer. ‘He won’t come over unless there is a more than good reason,’ declared C C Too, ‘but, General, I can tell you this that the SEP who went with Captain Rance to deliver the radio will not go with him on such an operation.’
‘And why not?’ asked the General abruptly, not wanting his brain child put to one side so easily.
‘Because were it to rebound against them, they would be dead men after a most painful death, eyes and testicles missing.’
‘Is it worthwhile trying to contact his wife or son, do you think?’
‘To do what, sir?’
‘Broadcast to him to surrender over Radio Malay?’
‘Sir, I somehow think they would rather have him dead than to be seen by other comrades as government lackeys.’
