By then they felt cramped so got out of the car and eased their limbs. Clouds full of rain loomed menacingly. Jason spoke to the driver: ‘You have done us well and thank you. What I want you to do now is to drive on to the village where there is bound to be a shop. Look for three plastic sheets and buy them. I can’t see us being able to cook for the next forty-eight hours so look out for anything tinned, fish will do, not forgetting to buy or borrow a tin opener, as well as some biscuits.’
‘I have a bottle with me. If I clean it out shall I bring some tea back with me?’
‘Yes, that’s a fine idea.’ He groped in his pocket and gave the driver some money. ‘Be as quick as you can.
Away went the driver and in half an hour returned with all that had been asked for. He was only just in time as it started to rain and the plastic sheets were immediately draped over their shoulders. They swigged the tea by turns, feeling the better for it. ‘You’ll be all right on your own, will you?’ Jason asked the driver.
‘Yes. When will you want me back here?’
‘Tomorrow, late afternoon.’
The driver drove off and the three men moved along a path towards the jungle, hoping to find a shack used for the night when people stay out in the fields to watch the paddy.
At dusk they espied a lean-to hut. ‘We’ll doss down here,’ said Jason. ‘I expect it will be full of fleas.’ And it was.
Ah Fat had hoped that, if lucky, he and his bodyguard could reach the RV above the old mining quarry on the west side of Gunong Lang before their absence, especially his, was noticed. At worst they had at least twelve hours’ start on any follow-up group, probably even longer if the rain had obliterated their foot prints. He had told his bodyguard to fill a haversack, unobtrusively, with enough ‘hard tack’ provisions to last the pair of them for forty-eight hours.
Jason, Chakré and Wang Ming had a restless night, bitten by fleas and a wind off Gunong Lang making it colder than usual. ‘Tell you what, let’s make a fire and heat up a tin of fish before we start off. Get us warm and give us a bit of strength.’
Chakré went to search for kindling and Jason asked the Bear what time they should reach the RV if they moved quickly and had no interference. ‘Along this track it shouldn’t take us more than four hours so easily before midday.’
‘Exactly where is the RV?’ Jason enquired, so many other thoughts having crowded into his mind he had forgotten to ask, not that he had needed to know till now.
‘It’s at the top of an old mining quarry. Ah Fat told me to bring you to an old hut that’s almost falling to bits as it has not been used since the start of the Emergency. “Give us something to aim for” he had said.’
The part of Security Section that had gone with the delegates split once it reached the border, some men guarding the route to Baling, others patrolling into Malaya, both to east and northwest of Baling, ‘just in case’, as the man in charge delicately put it. A couple due to patrol in Malaya said to their leader, ‘Comrade, we have not been outside for a long time. We are armed. Will you allow us to go to the Gunong Lang area and see if we can’t shoot a deer? Our rations have not had much meat in them for some time.’
‘You’re the one who can make the noise of a deer so like the real animal that the deer would more often than not come up to you, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ and he gave a most realistic demonstration and the others smiled gleefully, thinking of a full belly of deer meat.
‘Yes, you’ll do. I don’t see why not. There will be no Security Forces in the area as Protocol has forbidden any except in and near Baling. Yes, go ahead and come back either this evening or tomorrow morning early.’ A thought struck him. ‘How will you bring a dead deer back?’
The man grinned. ‘Depends what size it is. Small and we’ll hang it from a pole: large, we’ll come back for reinforcements.’
And with that off they went.
At twenty past 11, as Jason’s trio were climbing up the side of the quarry, they heard a shout from above them. Looking up they saw Ah Fat waving at them, grinning broadly. All three waved back and, climbing up the last few yards, joyfully met, embracing one another, Ah Fat complimenting Jason on his disguise. ‘Let’s have one hour together then we two must go back,’ he said, ‘and first of all I must hand over those papers.’ He called over his bodyguard but, as he opened the haversack to take them out, a deer belling not far away surprised them. Ah Fat’s bodyguard cocked an ear. ‘Strange, it’s not the right time of day for a deer to call. Nor have we seen any droppings.’
Ah Fat sensed danger. He did not give over the papers. Don’t tell me they’re searching for us and keeping distance by belling. Perhaps not, but I don’t like it. ‘Jason, can you bell like a deer?’
‘Yes, but I haven’t done so for quite a while.’
Another belling was heard. ‘Answer it.’
Jason put his head back and called loudly. An answer was returned from quite near. ‘That’s no deer,’ said the bodyguard. ‘That’s a man.’
‘Sure?’ Ah Fat and Jason asked simultaneously.
‘I tell you, it’s a man,’ the bodyguard insisted.
‘Hide, just up the slope behind that clump of bushes. Jason, keep on answering and let them come.’ Ah Fat was clearly in charge. ‘Are you armed?’
‘Yes, we are. We have pistols.’
‘Get them ready loaded and if I say shoot whoever comes, shoot. It’ll be the only way we’ll save our lives.’
More belling, this time from quite near. Jason answered. From about twenty yards away two men broke cover. Ah Fat recognised them as part of the Security Section. Hide or show my face? ‘If they try to kill me, shoot them,’ he called softly to Jason and Chakré as he stood up and shouted out, ‘What do you think you’re doing here? On whose orders are you so far from camp?’
Plainly startled, they snarled back. ‘Comrade Ah Fat. We have to ask you the same question. We have heard rumours about you. And we have caught you out here – and the other two.’ By then the Bear and the bodyguard had joined Ah Fat who answered haughtily. ‘Comrade, you will be severely punished for such intolerant indiscipline,’ but as he said it he knew he could not let them go back to the camp. ‘Jason, be ready to shoot to kill,’ he called out of the side of his mouth in English.
‘Proof, proof,’ almost screamed both of them, advancing with rifles already cocked. Jason saw it was time to move. The curse! ‘Bring them nearer, Flat Ears,’ he said just loudly enough for Ah Fat to hear.
‘Come here and let’s talk this over,’ Ah Fat called out in a conciliatory fashion, rubbing his hands together as was his wont. As the two men came up to him, as if from nowhere, ‘Ch’uan Jia Chan,’ – May your entire family be wiped out.
Startled, they stopped in their tracks and looked around. Jason and Chakré, looking like two Malay peasants, came out from behind the bushes. Jason spoke to them in Malay, asking them why they were being so aggressive.
‘Nothing to do with you,’ one answered roughly.
Jason turned his head slightly and once again muttered the curse, this time pitching his voice as though it came from the feet of the man who had last spoken. The man jumped back. ‘Ghost, ghost,’ he cried out, appalled. He turned his attention to Ah Fat and said, ‘you’re responsible. You deserve to be killed’ and both men brought their rifle to their shoulder, into the aiming position.
Just as they were about to squeeze their trigger, Jason and Chakré fired several .38 bullets into both men’s head, killing them. The two deer hunters had managed to loose off a round each as they fell, firing high, so missed hitting anyone.
‘Search them, one never knows what one might find.’ said Ah Fat, thoroughly shaken at the near miss.
There was nothing worth keeping except their identification papers.
‘Undress them and tip their corpses into the quarry. If no one comes this way for a day or two, their bones will be picked dry and so won’t smell.’
‘Yes, this is the only way to get out of that nasty, unexpected interference,’ observed Jason, ‘it would have put the kibosh on everything if they had stopped you giving me the papers.’
Ah Fat said, ‘Jason, all that has made me forget to give them to you.’ He told his bodyguard to get them out of his haversack and Jason told Chakré to get the case out of his. On seeing the case, Ah Fat precipitously asked, ‘why bring that?’
‘Because it has a false bottom.’
It was almost second sight, he explained to himself later, that made him ask whose it was and, on learning it belonged to C C Too, said, ‘Shandung P’aau, let me have it, will you? Something tells me I’ll need it. Too won’t mind, I’m sure.’
‘I know you, P’ing Yee, well enough not to argue. I’ll tell C C Too it was your price for bringing out the papers. Now we really must move but I just must mention the most unlikely coincidence of your newspaper having the same name, Red Tidings, as the operational codeword used after my CO was killed for the follow-up.’
‘Is that really so?’ exclaimed his friend. ‘That means Lady Luck intended both of us to be successful.’
Before they parted on their separate ways, after more embraces, Jason thanked the Bear for all his help. ‘It was good working with you once more. Will we meet again?’
‘Sinsaang, I am sure we will. See what I have kept as my lucky mascot,’ and he took out of his pocket the mast head of a copy of Red Tidings wrapped in a piece of plastic.
23-25 December 1955, Kuala Lumpur: As Jason and Chakré moved downhill with the papers safely in Chakré’s haversack, Jason said, ‘the car should be waiting for us at the side of the road where we left it. We’ll ask the driver to take us to somewhere people won’t bother about us, have a wash, a meal and before a good night’s sleep.’
‘Saheb, that’s a good idea. By the time we get back to the road it will be too late to start back anyway. The driver won’t mind either, I’m sure.’
