They were sitting in Ah Fat’s cabin. ‘Shandung P’aau, one never knows how things spread. An innocuous meeting can raise serious doubts among the suspicious people I have to live with, questions, questions, questions; why? why? why? That lot won’t believe anyone who says it’s raining unless they go outside and get wet themselves. No, I’ll stay out of sight. What did you teach me? “Out of sight, out of mind!” so, even if I were to pass by, we don’t know each other.’
‘Fine with me. We’ve got ourselves to ourselves until we reach Singapore. But tell me, how much has our purser friend seen us together, do you think? Bound to have done with our cabins being next to each other. Is he suspicious? He has never, to my recollection, heard us speaking Chinese to each other or even talking in English together except possibly for perfunctory small talk.’
‘He thinks I am a dedicated comrade. What he thinks of you, Jason, other than being one of the hated British running dogs, bad-meat-smelling, red-haired, long-nosed imperialist colonials so never to be spoken to unless he has to I can’t say.’
Jason laughed uproariously at that. ‘Let him continue to think that way. Only if he approaches me, or hints otherwise will I let him revise his options …’
‘Attention please, attention please, will the OC Troops report to the Purser’s Office,’ came over the Tannoy.
‘Talk of the devil, me to him or him to me’ said Jason as he went to his own cabin to put on his uniform. Properly dressed he went downstairs, if that, he wondered, was the correct nautical terminology. He saw it was Lieutenant Colonel James Heron who had come to meet him. Jason threw him up a salute although his one-time CO was in mufti, was introduced to his wife, a small, prim-looking woman who had a nun’s eyes, steadfast, innocent, devout, and shook hands with her. ‘Welcome aboard. I hope you don’t have to rush off as we have a lot of cud to chew, at least that is why I expect you have come to see me.’
‘You’ll remember my wife from Seremban,’ Colonel Heron said. ‘She said she’d like to meet you again so I have brought her along.’
Jason did remember her. She gave him a modest smile.
He smiled back and mischievously asked her, ‘We didn’t by any chance meet last week did we?’
‘No, Captain Rance. I think you have me muddled up with someone else. Indeed no and why would you think so?’ she answered demurely as though almost expecting such a ridiculous question.
‘Because you don’t look a week older than the last time we met,’ said gallantly and inaccurately.
Mrs Heron, face bland, smiled enigmatically and answered innocently, “I expect those wrinkles round your eyes were there long before the sea breeze on this voyage made them deeper.’
Jason realised he’d been outclassed.
Seeing his embarrassment, ‘but I’m delighted to meet you again.’ was her tactful rejoinder.
Her husband joined in, ‘Jason, on, on, on. There is a lot to fill each other in with so let’s go somewhere quiet where we can talk.’
‘How about my cabin? I’ll ask the steward to send up some coffee. Snacks?’
‘No, coffee is enough for both of us, thanks.’
Jason, as politely as he could, asked the purser for that to be done, ‘as a one-off, special favour and I’ll reward the steward.’ The answer was a grudging nod.
Up in the cabin with cups of hot coffee, Mrs Heron sat on one of the two chairs and the Colonel on the other. Jason sat on his bunk and the Colonel started off by saying he had done all that he had promised, alerted HQ FARELF, copy to the War Office, in a top secret, coded telegram, told Barrackpore – ‘you call him Muggy Day I hear’ – that the leave party was normal …
‘Yes, he queried it. Asked me why such a message was sent. “Any trouble on the way over?” None of them quite understood the message you sent. I thought it wrong to go into details of what had happened in Rangoon so merely told him it was that he might have heard of some difficulties about burying the little girl at sea and the message was sent in case echoes of it somehow reached him.’
James Heron nodded approval. ‘That was quick thinking. Now, can you let me know what happened in Calcutta?’ and for the next twenty minutes the elder man sat riveted, forgetting even to drink his coffee, as Jason told him, in detail, what had happened. At the end both man and wife gasped in amazement. ‘What I won’t pass on is your link with your boyhood friend. That must mean continuously closed lips. He helped you, or rather you him during Janus, didn’t you? Saved him from death when he was tied to a tree and tortured.’
Jason nodded. ‘Even we don’t talk about that between ourselves. I know he is eternally grateful.’
‘So the Rezident was as angry as all that! Must be a hard case. According to the briefing I had before coming to this job I expect he’ll be for the chop, and as my chief clerk once said, “a good riddance of a bad rubbish”. And do you think that your talk in Hindi – I wish I was as fluent as you! – really managed to put paid to the coolies’ shouting?’
‘Yes, sir, it does seem so. As we wished each other farewell Muggy Day said the police had reported that the coolies had given up going shouting outside the camp.’
‘And that dreadful renegade? How can they enlist such people?’ He answered his own question, ‘of course it’s not something that’s looked into when recruiting, is it?’ The question, being rhetorical, was left unanswered. ‘Let me get the chain, not of command but of passing information correct: the Malayan Communist Party Politburo link tells a man in Singapore who meets the purser, either of the SS Eastern Queen or of the SS Princess of the Orient who goes to Tangra where an already detailed man goes to the Soviet consulate and tells the Rezident?’
‘Yes, tenuous, sir, but you’ve got it correct.’
‘Is it always as tenuous, do you think?’
‘Can’t say, sir, but it seems that in the consulate there are no Chinese speakers, nor Hindi either, but the wretchedly named Mr Bugga speaks good English and seems to understand some Russian. Maybe an English-to-English coded overseas phone call is made but knowing the Soviet insistence on security, if one is, it will be kept to a coded and innocent minimum.’
‘I agree that’d be the way they’d play it.’
They stared at each other, and the Attaché said, ‘that ventriloquist ability has the status, almost, of a secret weapon, doesn’t it?’
‘I hadn’t thought of it in such terms but, yes, I agree.’
‘Now I must write a report on it, or do you want to write one when you get back to Malaya?’
‘No, sir, no, no. My report will merely mention the dead child and the prisoner in the brig whose hand-over certificate to the Calcutta police was given to the Red Caps. I don’t want to write about anything else, sir. I am but a humble OC Troops. Such a report will come so much better from you.’
‘Right. In that case give me some paper and I’ll sit at your table and rough out a report here and now. I have plenty of time. I’ll be able to check with you that the details are correct.’
In first-class cabins some company note paper is in one of the drawers of the table and the Attaché set to work. Jason leant forward and said to Mrs Heron, ‘so much shop and so boring for you. Now tell me how you like Rangoon’. She started off but was interrupted when the Tannoy blared asking the OC Troops to go to the Purser’s Office ‘now please’. He excused himself, saying he’d be back as soon as he could and went to the Purser’s Office. There was the Nepalese Vice-Consul, Mansing Basnet, this time with no wives.
They greeted each other with the namasté and smiles. ‘Can you come and see us at the consulate once more, Rance saheb?’
‘So sorry, Vice Consul saheb, but the British Defence Attaché is in my cabin and I’ve told him I’ll go back and finish our talk when I can.’
‘Now, that’s a pity but never mind. Can we talk in the saloon?’
‘Saheb, a good idea, with a little refreshment to repay the hospitality I received from you on my way to India.’
Once seated the Vice Consul asked if there was anything else about the rumour of mutinying soldiers.
