‘Yes, from reading the Intelligence reports it seems that a British battalion was while 1/10 GR was on its re-training. It had a fatality when a corporal was killed patrolling the railway after another train ambush. It has now done its three years and is getting ready to return to England. 1/10 GR has taken its area back again and its area of operations has been increased. They don’t have enough troops to cover it and that it why I have been told to send A Company back to cover where they were before, on the eastern end of 1/10 GR’s area.’
This time A Company moved by road convoy as far as Kuala Lipis, escorted by armoured cars. It was a long and hot journey that took more than a day. They stopped over at Tactical HQ of 1/10 GR.
The CO of 1/10 GR called Major McGurk, gave him the background and briefed him on his task. ‘We have been operating in this area for a couple of years so it will help if I give you a guide,’ he said, having been warned that the Major was on reserve duty so out of touch as well as it being useful for local knowledge and liaison with battalion HQ if needed. ‘As ordered to, I am sending you to the area that your company, then under Captain Rance, was ambushed when moving by rail. I also want you to patrol the railway line. I feel sure that the company will react well to you if you listen to anything that is advised by senior ranks.’ The new OC looked a bit askance, feeling he was being adjudged as not up to the job.
‘Don’t look like that, please,’ said the CO, sharply. ‘You are not yet in practice and it is only common sense to listen to those up-to-date with Malayan jungle tactics. This is Counter Revolutionary Warfare against guerrillas, not a full-scale war as it was in Burma.’
Major McGurk expressed his thanks and after a few more details were tied up, met the guide, a Rifleman Pahalman Rai, and took him to his Company HQ. Although he had been passed over for promotion, he was a strong, steady man in his early thirties and was especially chosen because he had worked as an officer’s batman so ‘knew’ the gora sahebs, understood their foibles and was used to hearing ‘mangled’ Nepali so was more likely to understand what Major McGurk was trying to say than a soldier who had not worked closely with a British officer.
On his return to his battalion Rifleman Pahalman Rai gave this report: ‘we were walking along the railway track. I was not far behind the Major saheb and at a mile stone at the side of the track, I saw him turn round and talk to somebody in English. I saw nobody there. The Major saheb spoke severely, turned round to look at me then turned back again. He seemed visibly upset. I did not know why but learnt that he had seen a British corporal, without a weapon, leaning on the mile stone by the side of the track. He had wanted to know who the soldier was and why he was there. After he had turned to look behind him, he looked back again but the man had vanished. That is why the look on his face was strange.’
It so happened that the British company patrolling that had been attacked in that area and had a corporal shot and killed by the guerrillas but the OC had no means of knowing that.[1]
The company thrashed around as ordered by the CO of 1/10 GR and eventually returned to base in Seremban without any guerrilla contacts – or finding any more cached weapons. Only the OC and his guide knew about that strange incident.
***
Sunday 30 November 1952, Calcutta: With the arrival of the returning leave party on the docks and Major May handing over the required documents, Captain Rance’s life returned to what passed as normal, something he was glad of. On the face of it everything appeared as it should: their recent visit to Tangra now seemed infinitely remote and the abnormal happenings in the Soviet consulate were more like a bad dream than reality having actually stared him in the face. Now the job he had been sent on seemed almost an anti-climax: but how welcome, with, he hoped, nothing unexpected to upset the customary routine on the return journey+.
Muggy Day broke into his thoughts. ‘So, Jason, it’s back to the battalion once more. I’ll be glad to get back although this job has its good points. I can get up to Darjeeling now and then and enjoy the cooler weather and having a blanket on my bed at night. I am sorry you couldn’t have stayed longer with us but I expect you wanted to wallow in the bright lights here, relaxing and enjoying yourself. I wonder if you got up to any mischief you shouldn’t have?’ and he gave a smile … of, what? Jason thought, forgiveness?
‘Mischief? If I did it was not the kind you might have been thinking of?’
‘Jason, stop talking in riddles, one of your more arcane habits.’ He looked at his watch. ‘No time to be gossiping,’ and he went into last-minute details about the draft.
‘Time to be off, Jason. Happy journey’ and he turned to go, then turned back. ‘Oh yes, the mob of coolies shouting outside the lines. You’ll be interested to hear that last night, for the first time in I don’t know how long, the police reported that no coolies had gathered anywhere. The only excitement was a banging in the cookhouse that went on all night and some of our more fanciful men thought it was a particularly noisy ghost!’ He laughed. ‘Guess what?’
‘No idea.’
‘A jackal had got into the cookhouse, sniffed out a smelly tin that attracted it, put its head inside and got stuck. Trying to escape all it did was to bump into table legs and I don’t know what else. When the early morning cooks went in they saw the wretched animal, got hold of it and pulled the tin off. The poor thing was so bemused by then it didn’t run away but just sat down and looked lost.’
Jason laughed. ‘And what did the cooks do? Kill it?’
‘No. They thought it had suffered enough so they let it slink out.’
They shook hands and Jason saluted his senior officer, a grin on his face at such an unlikely story.
***
But there were no grins either on any Soviet faces, embarrassed as they were, or on the battered face of Mr Vikas Bugga. The doctor had put his face under local anaesthetic, cleaned it before stitching him up and straightened his nose, his patient having stated he didn’t want to keep it bent as a badge of humiliation. ‘Take it really easy for a couple of days,’ the doctor advised him. ‘Certainly stay here the night,’ and he told Dmitry Tsarkov to fix a bed up. Before the doctor left he told Vikas Bugga where his clinic was. ‘Come round in a couple of days for a new dressing and, when the time comes, I’ll take your stitches out.’
Bugga, whose now-straightened nose and bruised, stitched cheek, were hurting him, merely nodded. It was less painful than trying to speak. He wasn’t hungry or thirsty for some hours and then eating was almost impossible, despite the pain killers he had been given. The Soviets gave him thin soup to suck through a straw: being ashamed of their Rezident’s behaviour they tried to make up for it as best they could, certainly by paying all the medical bills.
As the Indian lay in bed that night he went over and over in his mind’s eye how strange it was that he had heard himself speak when he knew he had not even opened his mouth. The Communist in disguise, now what was his name? had told him about Padamsing, how well he was doing. How had he known? That was a mystery. And the coolies being paid twice the amount. Party funds didn’t allow so much. If Padam was such a success maybe they didn’t deserve a rise: maybe they could be dispensed with altogether. Yes, that was the answer. Early next morning he would tell Dmitry Tsarkov, or write it down on a piece of paper if talking was still difficult, to contact his paymaster and tell him to stop payment that very day. That decided, the only unsolved matter was his speaking when he knew he hadn’t. What sort of party trick was that? Whatever else, he was happy that his choice of upsetting the British Gurkhas, Padamsing Rai, was doing sterling work over in Malaya. That at least was one, even if the only one, positive outcome of being told there was some sort of emergency. His face started aching and he managed to swallow some more pain killers, helped down with the water in a glass by his bed. He drifted off into a befogged sleep.
***
Ah Fat had been shocked by the behaviour of the Russians. Having had no experience of them he had not realised how differently they behaved from the British he had seen and grown up with in Malaya. Sure, he had seen some of the tuans drunk but never being so incapable that they lost all sense of dignity and of face: ‘face’, that display of public potency which makes for personal prestige. And the more he thought about that extraordinary letter that had been so furtively pressed into his hand … What witheringly bad tradecraft. Could it have been that the inborn superiority of the white man believing that a coloured native would automatically obey him? Such a thought made Ah Fat shudder. I know everyone can’t be as good with Asians as Jason but even so …
He thought of Jason’s idea of his giving the letter to the Captain and hoping that any executive action would result in the communist purser being sacked. Of course, without knowing what was in the letter he could deny all knowledge – that was completely natural – but even the thought of being capable of such an action was, surely, damning in itself? What he’d do was to make a copy of it, give that to Jason to do with it what he thought best as well as giving the original to the Captain. He spoke to Jason about it once matters had calmed down enough for the OC Troops to relax.
Jason frowned as he thought it over. ‘I don’t like the idea of you personally giving the letter to the Captain, altogether too risky if there were any follow-up. I think you must make a copy of the letter to give to any of your contacts you think ought to see it. Why not make two and give your Party one? Show them just how hard it is to talk to the Russians. You can blame Vikas Bugga for interrupting but, please, no mention of me. Yes, put the letter in its envelope into an outer envelope, no covering letter, with the Captain’s name on the outside. We’ll have to get a third and non-involved person to deliver it or, better still, say, leave it on the bar in the lounge when the barman is not looking. If you think that is difficult, I’ll give it to one of my Gurkha officers to put it on the bar of the second-class lounge. No one could ever suspect any of them being involved.’
Ah Fat thought it over and nodded agreement. ‘Doing it on the last morning just before disembarkation will be the best time,’ Jason added.
***
Tuesday 2 December 1952, somewhere in the Cameron Highlands, north Malaya: Members of the Politburo were discussing matters at a routine Plenum. News, generally, of Security Forces activity was casting a pall of gloom. ‘It is some time since Comrade Ah Fat left us,’ said one of them. ‘I do hope his journey will be
successful.’
‘Of course, we all do,’ added the Secretary General. ‘He is one of our most trusted operators. I have known him all these years. His wartime work was in every way a success. He is the most trustworthy’ and, confused by what he had not quite meant to say, ‘he is no more trustworthy than any of you are. He is only a cadet member of the Politburo, quite why not a full member I don’t know, but there it is.’
An uneasy silence ensued. Everyone knew, in the heart of his heart, that life in the Politburo was always on a tight rope, however hard one tried for it not to be.
Chien Tiang, chief confidant of Chin Peng and propaganda expert, looked up from reading a piece of paper in his hands. ‘I think what we originally decided was that his work took him to various places, and, in this instance, distant and unexpected ones, for such long periods he was apt to miss Plenum sessions so be unable to cast his vote. As a non-voting member his advice could well be sought but we could never count on his being present when we were voting’
Heads nodded and it was agreed that if anyone could find the spider in the web and get it to work for the Party, Comrade Ah Fat was the man. Their attention was switched with the arrival of a courier and his escort with various documents. The meeting broke off till these were read and put into their various files in the office. After that normal boredom set in as there being nothing positive to do, unless one calls ‘waiting for something’ positive.
***
Sunday 7 December 1952, Rangoon: The voyage was a soothing antidote to the events before the returning leave party’s embarkation. Both Jason and Ah Fat gave the purser a wide berth, feeling that if they were seen too much together it might get back to the MCP Politburo to Ah Fat’s disadvantage. They only visited each other’s cabin when none of the staff were about. Tradecraft! Also, who knew if the Hakka Chen Fan Tek in Tangra might, just, have met up with the purser and told him that Captain Rance spoke Chinese? So, although on the surface all was quiet, the two men were on their guard. Thus they came to Rangoon in slightly cooler weather but with same movement restrictions.
***
Sunday 7 December 1952, somewhere in east Nepal: The Chief Clerk, Gurkha Captain Hemlal Rai who had told Colonel Heron about the man-eating leopard, and Sergeant Jaslal Rai, a smaller edition of his elder brother but with thicker hair, were by now back home enjoying their leave. Both were keen shikaris and, as the villagers had seen recent leopard pug marks, they arranged for a goat to be tied up to a tree beside a little-used track where the villagers had said and had built a machan up a large tree, from where they could get a good shot at the marauding animal.
Both brothers, with loaded guns, climbed up to their hiding place well before dusk and sat, silent. There was a full moon. Around half past ten they heard footsteps coming from both ends of the track they were sitting above.
