The following day the group was to move back to the first house. Before dusk, the lad went outside to relieve nature in the undergrowth, just out of sight of the house. As he finished, the head man’s teen-age son walked up for the same purpose. As he squatted…an ideal opportunity! Chop now and chop he did. Carrying the bleeding head he ran off. He washed it at another stream, tied it up in some cloth he had ready, put it in a knapsack and started on his way back.
It took him two days to reach Nanga Sumpa and what a party was held on his successful return, especially when the lad told people whose head he had chopped.
A feast was held in his honour and after the meal was over, all moved out to the veranda. Liberal supplies of rice beer flowed and the men started to dance the ‘hornbill dance’, using much arm movement, with wing feathers of that bird draped over their shoulders, jabbing, stabbing, lunging and jerking: it lasted all night. So much was thought of the lad’s work that at midnight he had the choice of which virgin would be his bride. He chose his first heartthrob and later there was more jabbing, stabbing, lunging and jerking – but without wings this time.
***
Meanwhile in Singapore Ah Fat went on to explain why they were there so Reggie asked, ‘And your plans are …?’
‘We are going to Calcutta …’ and another gem was exposed by the revelation of the secret HQ, probably there. If so it was to be found. ‘That is my target. I hope to get to it through Chinatown Hakkas in Calcutta. My link to them is the purser on the Eastern Queen’ … and so it went on till almost midnight.
Next morning after breakfast Reggie asked Ah Fat what his next step was.
‘I must contact Chen Geng. I can’t go straight from here as he might try and check my good faith by finding out where we spent last night. I’d be ruined if he did that. I think it is better to reach him from a cheap hotel.’
‘Wise, wise indeed.’
‘As you once taught me, “some are wise; some are otherwise”,’ and both of them giggled foolishly.
Reggie took them in his car to a central place from where they would take a taxi to a cheap hotel away from the centre of the island. Before saying farewell, Reggie said, ‘Wonderful to meet up again. Pop in on your way back. I’d be most grateful for anything you can tell me.’ He felt that authorities in India might well be interested in anything Ah Fat found out: it would also be far easier for him to contact people there than it would be for Ah Fat to, even if such a thing were ever to enter his mind – which it never did.
They shook hands and parted for their own destinations.
***
Tuesday 11 November 1952, Singapore: Captain Rance went down to Singapore to the Gurkha Transit Camp where he found out that the leave details, from all eight battalions and the three corps units, would report in good time for final documentation and transport to take them to the docks. There the Movement Warrant Officer would embark them and then give Jason the paperwork. There seemed no difficulty, all plain sailing, in both senses of the word he hoped, grinning to himself. He looked forward to enjoying himself. A free holiday and the Queen is paying for me!
His accommodation was in the transit camp at Nee Soon, a camp built round a hollow. There was a pathway across from one side to the other but the steps were irregular, some too long for the normal stride, others too short, some too high from the last one, some too low so could be tripped over. It was British prisoners-of-war’s long-lasting practical joke that kept them amused as they saw the Japanese stumble. Jason had also been told that the Japanese used British troops to build a wooden war memorial in the centre of the dip. This they did and, unknown to the Japanese, had managed to put many termites in the base so that the memorial would crumble as the insects started eating the wood.
***
Ah Fat had not worried that he had not been able to contact either the turncoat Gurkha or Xi Zhan Yang a.k.a. Ah Ho as he had been briefed to contact Chen Geng, whose particulars he knew already. Next morning, leaving his Bear alone, he walked towards the city. At the first book shop he reached he bought a street map of Singapore and entered a café to study it. Over a coffee he found the road he was looking for and, instinctively remembering his tradecraft – just in case – planned a circuitous route to get to his destination.
He did not fancy going by taxi but, as it was hot, he did take a bus, three buses in fact, the first two going in the wrong way. It was one o’clock when he arrived and he did not expect Chen Geng to be in his office at lunch time but, on the off chance he might be there and have no other visitors, looked for, found Pedder Street and made his way into number 47. On the second floor there was a door marked with Chen Geng’s name and Ah Fat knocked on it.
No answer. He knocked again and, from behind him, a voice said, ‘stay still. Don’t move’ and a pistol was poked into his ribs.
Ah Fat stiffened, did not turn round but merely said, ‘I am looking for Comrade Cheng Geng. I am Comrade Ah Fat and I come from the Malayan Communist Party. I have been told that Comrade Xi Zhan Yang will have contacted him, or should I say you, by this time.’
The pistol was removed and its owner told him to turn round. Ah Fat did and saw a middle-aged, rotund man with laughter lines around his eyes and a scar over his left eyebrow. Looking at him diagonally he saw, despite all the bravado, a frightened man with a weak mouth. ‘Yes, I believe that. You have the name that I had been briefed about. I had to make sure about you. These days we can’t be too careful since we found out about that evil man Lai Tek who caused us so much damage. Come inside and have a seat.’
Ah Fat had met Lai Tek but only later learnt that he was a triple agent who had almost destroyed the Malayan Communist Party’s higher echelon during the war. Saying ‘No offence taken, Comrade. I would have done the same,’ he followed Cheng Geng inside and sat down on the seat offered.
‘Had anything to eat?’
`No. A bite would go down well.’
Chen Geng lifted his phone, dialled the nearest eating house and ordered two plates of rice and char sui, crispy roast pork belly. As they waited he extracted a bottle of brandy and two glasses from a drawer, and poured out a couple of fingers’ worth for both of them. ‘Water?’
‘Yes. It’s a bit early for me.’
Both glasses were topped up with water from a bottle that was also tucked away in the same drawer, a toast was drunk and they exchanged small talk until their meal arrived. It was only after they had finished and the plates put outside the door for collection that business began.
Out of another drawer Chen Geng pulled out an envelope and handed it to Ah Fat. ‘Inside is a ticket for a first–class cabin on the Eastern Queen, Singapore-Calcutta and return. There are also enough American “green backs” to cover all normal expense.’
Ah Fat breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Good. I was expecting enough Party funds from my journey but only one ticket, not two?’ Ah Fat queried, dubiously. Nothing for Wang Ming?
‘Yes, a single ticket. I was never asked to book two. It’s too late now to book another. The boat is full up, so I have learnt.’
‘So, I’m in a first-class cabin?’ queried Ah Fat, in surprise.
‘Yes. I know the purser, Comrade Law Chu Hoi, who, unbeknown to the captain, is one of us. The chain from Malaya to India is made up of a few trustworthy individuals. I sent him a signal, using a form of language telling him that you needed special treatment. Your name will be your passport for comradely instructions until you reach wherever the chain comes to an end – or should I say “begins”?’ he added with a smile.
A first-class cabin was unexpected but most welcome. Ah Fat did not show any surprise. All he said was ‘Well, that is thoughtful of you. Thank you. I have never been on a boat before and this time of year the sea might be rough so a comfortable bunk will be welcome.’
‘Good. I am glad you are pleased. Now, be on jetty number 10 at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and show this ticket as and when you are asked for it. Have you been to the Indian High Commission for your visa? No? Let me know your passport number. I’ll ring the man in charge and you’ll get it in no time at all. Where are you spending tonight?’
Ah Fat told him. ‘Go back in my car, collect your things. On the way back drop into the Indian High Commission for your visa then come and spend the night with me.’
At the hotel he had to tell the Bear to go back to KL and stay with his family. ‘I’ll contact you on my way back, maybe in a month’s time.’ This pleased Wang Ming who, at heart, was a family man and was now unexpectedly free to enjoy an unexpected spell of home leave.
***
Ah Fat was momentarily surprised to see lines of Gurkha soldiers standing on the quayside waiting to embark, with a British Warrant Officer holding a clipboard standing in front of them. Surely that’s unusual? he asked himself. It would be too much of a coincidence if Shandung P’aau were on board also. In fact Jason was at the back of the soldiers as Ah Fat looked around and they did not see one another. Carrying his suitcase he went on board, glad not to be in the sun waiting till the last Gurkha had gone up the gangway. Once on board he looked for and found the Purser’s Office. The purser was sitting at a table, covered with lists of names. He was a thin rake of a man, balding with a pock-marked face, with deep-set eyes and thick eyebrows. The face had an air of subtlety about it, making him look dangerous. A latticed iron framework prevented anyone leaning over – there was also money in his safe so it was a necessary precaution – and Ah Fat, quietly said, ‘Comrade Law Chu Hoi?’
The purser almost jumped out of his skin and instinctively looked right and left, even though he knew no one could be in the office or, since the voice was so quiet, could any passer-by have heard it.
‘You must be Comrade Ah Fat.’
‘Yes, I am,’
The purser looked down a list. ‘You are in cabin number 1 on the port side. I’ll call the cabin boy’ and he pressed a button on his desk.
‘Port?’
‘Yes, “port” means ‘left”.’
‘Am I sharing it or have it to myself?’
The purser smiled. ‘You would only share it if you had booked to share it. You are on your own.’
‘May I ask who is in cabin number 2?’
The purser looked down at his list. ‘Someone who will mean nothing to you, a Captain Jason Rance, the OC Troops, going both ways, like you.’
Ah Fat pretended to look blank … Tradecraft! But what a wonderful opportunity! We won’t have been together for so long since we were schoolboys.
***
