Jason said nothing and kept his features rigid.
‘I have been rung up from HQ Malaya Command and asked where you are going on local leave.’ Here he hesitated, ‘it was inferred that you were overwrought after all that time in the jungle’ – ‘as was shown when you spoke to the RAF’ he did not say – ‘a few days local leave, possibly in Penang, would let you relax. What are you views on that?’
Jason remembered Flat Ears talking to him in Rompin. So that’s how they’re playing it! ‘Sir, I’ll go if you think I ought to. A couple of weeks away would do me no harm. I could go to KL where I was born and visit friends if they are still there. I don’t have to decide here and now, do I?’
‘No, and I don’t care where you go, so long as it’s not back to the AVM’s office.’
The look of disgust that Jason gave him, followed by an expectant gleam that, as the CO said to himself later, looked like a hunter who has found some spoor after a long search, made him think that were Jason to have given a lecture to the recruits he might have started talking about surrounding camps as opposed to bombing them. He saw that he had gone too far. ‘You can go on leave for two weeks, leaving here on Monday the 19th of December.’
‘Is that all, sir?’
‘No, as a matter of fact it isn’t. The Director of Intelligence, Colonel Mason, wants to talk to you about the Intelligence aspect of Smash-Hit.’
The CO rang him up. ‘James, it’s Eustace. I have Captain Rance with me and he has mentioned KL as a place to go on local leave. I have therefore got him here to talk to you. Ready?’
‘Yes.’ The CO gave Jason the phone. ‘Captain Rance, sir.’
‘Colonel Mason this end. Thank you for ringing. Hold the phone tightly to your ear. Bring a Gurkha orderly and two pistols and at least twelve rounds of ammunition for each. When will you be coming to KL?’
‘Monday the 19th of December, sir, by the day train.’
‘When you get to KL, a senior Police officer, Mr C C Too, will arrange your accommodation. Got something to write with?’ Yes, Jason had. ‘Then ring this number,’ which the Colonel gave him. ‘I may not see you myself, despite what you may have been told. Once you get to KL you’ll find out why,’ and he rang off. Jason asked the Adjutant if he could get the Chief Clerk to give him and his batman a warrant to KL for the 19th and back two weeks later.’
‘Yeah, go and fix it. And, Jason, remember, we junior officers are all on your side.’
15-20 December, 1955, Kuala Lumpur: On Monday afternoon Jason and Chakré, pistols and ammo in their hand luggage, got out of the train at KL station. ‘Chakré, come with me to find a telephone’. He dialled Colonel Mason’s number, introduced himself and said he was still at the station. ‘Take this number down.’
Jason repeated it then, turning to Chakré, said it in Nepali. Gurkhas have a marvellous power of memory. By that time the phone was dead. He doesn’t waste time!
‘Chakré, what was that number?’ and, given it again, he dialled it and was answered by a woman’s voice. ‘Excuse me, Madam, I am Captain Rance and am looking for Mr C C Too. Is that his house? Are you Mrs Too?’
A dulcet-toned voice answered. ‘No, it is not his house and he is not married. This is the house of his girlfriend, Miss Wong. I have been told to expect you. His house is at Federal Hill, not all that far from the Lake Gardens. Don’t go there but ask a taxi to bring you to this address,’ and she gave a house number in Ampang Road. He heard her speak, as though over her shoulder, in Chinese, and calling out what sounded like Wang Ming.
Not my old friend, Hung Lo, the Bear, surely? There are more pieces in this jigsaw puzzle than seemed likely at first count: Ah Fat on the phone, lecture, pistol, Director of Intelligence, C C Too and the Bear! ‘Chakré, Providence has something for us. Let’s go and find out what it is.’
Wang Ming opened the front door before there was time to ring any bell and he and Jason almost fell into each other’s arms, so long was it since their last meeting. A young lady came to the door and ushered them inside. Jason introduced himself and Chakré whose English wasn’t up to much and his Chinese was nil so Jason kept him abreast of the conversation as they sat in the front room with tea and a noodles snack. ‘Mr Too will be here shortly,’ she was saying as C C Too himself arrived.
He greeted Jason warmly. ‘We haven’t met since September 1952, if my brain doesn’t let me down.’
‘Correct, sir. That was at the tail end of Operation Janus. The time certainly flies.’ He introduced Chakrabahdur.
‘You have been asked for because your childhood friend Ah Fat has told me you are the only person who can ensure the success of his plans. More later. First of all, household arrangements: at the back are two spare rooms: I can put Chakrabahadur in with you or with the Bear, whichever you prefer.’
Jason said, ‘We’ll doss down together.’
Too looked at his watch. ‘Go and clean up. Be comfortable, wear what you like. We’ll have a meal in half an hour and then I’ll tell you what our plans are.’
Before they had a chance to settle down and talk, a taxi drove up and stopped outside the house. Doors slammed and in came Wang Ming’s wife and 15-year-old son, Wang Liang, the mirror image of his father. She breathlessly explained that her son had somehow heard that Shandung P’aau was with his father and had begged her to let him come and see him.
Wang Ming said that he had often spoken about how Jason had initially won them over and it would be a great kindness if Shandung P’aau could show his son his tricks. Jason, realising a happy companion on a dangerous mission was always better than an unhappy one, adroitly played up. He held Wang Liang spellbound as he made his hands ‘talk’ to each other, took the top off his thumb and put it back again, wobbled his eyebrows then his knees and by the time he’d put his finger up his nose the lad was in stitches of laughter. Jason had a friend for life. Wang Ming dismissed them with a smile and back home they went.
After their meal Jason was told why he had been inveigled into coming to KL. ‘With no lecture to the recruits makes it much easier for us. As I hinted earlier, your childhood friend Ah Fat is helping us from the “inside”, very bravely, and you, on the “outside”, are a vital link in his efforts to get us secret news from the MCP at the time of any peace talks. He wants to give you and no one else any documents he can secretly get for us here in KL. It has been quite a struggle one way and another to get you here as the change in political leadership has meant that the Director of Operations no longer has the final say in anything of this nature. In the heart of his heart he would dearly like to speak to you, as would Colonel Mason. Both have had you in mind for quite a time. I managed to get Ah Fat to meet him and that was when he phoned you.’ He looked at Jason conspiratorially.
‘Yes, it was a great shock to hear him call me and I was sorry we could not talk for longer.’
‘So delicate is your being involved, especially now the Malays not the British are “calling the shots” that the top military brass do not want to know you are involved. You are therefore unattributable. Ah Fat cannot get far from where he is, even going over the border into Malaya is a risk. Were it known that you suddenly left your battalion for no apparent reason, it would be “embarrassment squared”. A lecture to the recruits would have been cover from any unusual activity on your part so that followed by some local leave was planned to get you from Rompin to the north with no suspicion.’ He looked at Jason with a glint of devilment in his eyes. ‘In the event I don’t think there’ll be any damage done but, what do you British say? “Belt and braces”?’
‘Correct,’ said Jason, grinning, and told Chakré what had been said so far. ‘So that’s why we have pistols, saheb,’ he answered.
‘From now on you three will be together,’ continued C C Too. ‘For your journey north you will go in one of my unmarked vehicles, an old one that no one will remember, which the police use for odd purposes. The driver happens to be one of those you first met when the Bear and others decided you were a better bet than the MCP.
‘Ah Fat and the Bear have already arranged their RV, the Gunong Lang area from east of Kampong Lalang. You have to pass through a Malay population not a Chinese one to reach it. You’ll be remembered if only by your height, which we don’t want.’
Jason contemplated his best way to manage. ‘I could be a reputable European were I a herbicide officer or a bee keeper but I could sustain neither role were I to be asked any pertinent question, so I think a disguise is the best answer. At the start of the Emergency there was a mad scheme to make me look like an Indian before going to recce a village. It never happened but I was stripped down to my underpants and a make-up artist, a woman, wearing gloves, dabbed on a layer of paint from a bottle marked mid-coconut. Why she only didn’t pain my face I don’t know. ”That’s the bottom layer,” she said. While it was drying she did my face. I can remember her saying “Shut your eyes and raise your eyebrows. If your eyelids are left unvarnished, they’ll give you away” and very carefully she painted my skin with a small brush. That quickly dried. She then covered me for the second coating, waterproof, same colour. “It will last for several months,” she told me.’
Jason shook his head. ‘Then she said “Sorry about that but there’s nothing quicker and we dare not have you fall into a river or rained on so look like an out-of-season zebra. I will give you a bottle of remover to take with you. It may be indispensible. You will be able to clean up there and then if you have to. It stings a bit when applied.”’
C C Too said, ‘You have a wonderful memory for detail. I can arrange for something like that tomorrow.’ The local filming company’s ‘shooting’ team was in his debt. ‘Tell your Gurkha what you have told us.’
‘Saheb, let me try and paint you if the Chinese saheb can get the stuff,’ Chakré said after Jason had told him the outlines of how to put it on. ‘You could have got someone else to do it here but going to Sungei Patani like that you’d be taken as the Dashera joker,’ and he roared with laughter.
Jason repeated the joke and everybody laughed.
‘I expect my arms and face will be all that I need to paint,’ said Jason ‘but we must have the stuff that gets it off before we get back to the battalion.’
‘What clothes have you besides your uniform and what you’re wearing now?’ C C Too asked.
‘None,’ Jason replied.
