State of Siege

1

The weekly Dakota from Selampang had never been known to arrive at the valley airstrip before noon, or to leave on the return journey before one. After the farewell party they had given for me the previous night, I should have slept until eleven at least. But no; I was wide awake, packed and ready to go at dawn.

Not that I had had much packing to do. Most of my clothes-the dobi-battered slacks and bush shirts, the mosquito boots and the sweat-stained hats-I had given, with my camp bed, to Kusumo, who had been my servant for the past three years. The few things that were left-shoes, some white shirts, underwear and other personal oddments-had gone easily into one small metal suitcase. The only suit that I possessed, I wore. Like a fool, I had ordered it by mail from an outfitters in Singapore, and it hung on me like a shower curtain; but that morning I did not care how I looked; nor, indeed, how long I had to wait for the plane. What mattered most to me just then was the fact that I was leaving, and that in my breast pocket, along with my passport and a ticket for a B.O.A.C. Qantas flight from Djakarta to London, was a letter. It was from the Singapore branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, and advised me that, on the completion of my contract as resident consulting engineer to the North Sunda Power and Irrigation Project, there stood to my credit the sum of fifty-eight thousand eight hundred and ninety-six Straits dollars.

Soon after eleven, I borrowed one of the maintenance department jeeps and drove across to the Chief Engineer’s office to say goodbye.

Now that I was leaving the place I could look at it with friendlier eyes. As the jeep bounced along the corduroy road past the new attap houses and the row of quonset huts in which the European employees lived, I was even aware of a feeling of pride in what had been done.

It was a Colombo Plan project, and there had been no shortage of American and British Commonwealth capital to finance it; but it takes more than money and good intentions to build dams in places like the Tangga Valley. When I had first arrived at the site with the advance party, there had been nothing but swamps, jungle, leeches and a colony of twenty-foot pythons. It had taken the contractors nearly a month to get their first two bulldozers up from the coast; and there had been a period during the first year, just after the monsoon broke, when we had had to abandon all the equipment and move up to the high ground in order to stay alive. Yet now there was a camp as big as a small town on the site, and an airstrip, and, there, wedged in the throat of the valley, the huge mass of stone and steel and concrete that was the keystone of the whole project. Because of that dam, it had been possible to turn something like two hundred square miles of scrub country down by the Tangga delta into rich padi fields. That year, for the first time, Sunda would have surplus rice to sell to the neighbouring islands of Indonesia; and when the power station below the dam was completed and the transmission lines began to reach into the tin- and tungsten-bearing areas to the north, there was no telling how prosperous the young state might not become. The Tangga Valley scheme was something to be proud of. My own motives for going to Sunda had been in no sense noble or disinterested. I had been paid as much for working for three years in the Tangga Valley as I would have been paid for working for ten years, and tax free, in England. But there had been satisfaction in the job for its own sake, too. I might be sick to death of Sunda and delighted to be leaving it, but I had come to like the Sundanese and was glad that I had been of service to them.

There were two other men already in the Chief Engineer’s office when I put my head round the door, but Gedge beckoned me in.

“Sit down, Steve. Won’t keep you a moment.” He turned and went on with what he had been saying. “Now, Major Suparto, let’s get this straight …”

I sat down and listened.

Gedge, the man in charge of the job for the contractors, was a South African civil engineer of great ability and experience who had spent most of his working life in the East. Moreover, he had done so from choice. He had worked for many years in China and, since the Japanese war, in India and Pakistan. There, he had made no secret of the fact that he preferred Asians to men of his own race, not merely as working associates but also as friends. Among the Europeans, he had, not unnaturally, a reputation for eccentricity, and from time to time inaccurate rumours that he had Communist sympathies, or six Eurasian concubines, or that he had secretly become a Buddhist, would find their way across the bridge tables.

At the moment, however, his feelings towards his Asian collaborators were anything but friendly. He was having trouble with them. Indeed, since Major Suparto and his five brother officers had arrived from Selampang six months earlier, there had been practically nothing but trouble.

Sunda used to be part of the Netherlands East Indies. In 1942 it was occupied by the Japanese. When the Dutch returned three years later, they were confronted by a Sundanese “Army of Liberation” and a demand for independence which they were unable in the end to resist. In 1949 Sunda became a Republic.

The moment of greatest difficulty for all revolutionary leaders seems to be the moment of success; the moment when, from being rebels in conflict with authority, they themselves have suddenly become the authority, and the fighting men who procured the victory wait jealously, and inconveniently, for their reward. Armies of liberation are more easy to recruit than they are to disarm and disband.

At first, it looked as if the Provisional Government of the new Republic of Sunda were dealing shrewdly with this embarrassment. A policy of dispersal was applied to break down esprit de corps. No unit was disbanded as a unit. Men who came from the same district were collected together and then transported back to that district, before being disarmed and demobilised. Meanwhile, the Government rapidly built up the small regular army on which their authority was to rest in the future, and used it against any of their former supporters who showed fight. And, of course, some did; particularly the younger soldiers, who frequently banded themselves together and terrorised the people in the villages. But this sort of brigandage had little political importance. For some months after the proclamation of independence by President Nasjah all seemed to be going fairly well.

Unfortunately there was an aspect of the problem that the Government had neglected. In their anxiety to dispose of the rank and file, they had not troubled to do anything about disposing of the officers; and by the time they had realised the gravity of that mistake, it was too late to retrieve it.

There were several hundreds of these surplus officers; many more than could conceivably be absorbed by the regular army or by the new police force. Moreover, many were not officers in the ordinary sense of the term, men sensitive in matters of loyalty, but guerrilla leaders and ex-bandits who had both fought and collaborated with the Japanese occupation forces before doing those same things with the Dutch colonial troops, and who might reasonably be expected to start fighting the new Government in Selampang if the promised Utopia did not immediately materialise; or if they became dissatisfied with their share of the spoils. With such men, making revolutions may easily become a habit. Machiavelli thought that the wise usurper should, as soon as he comes to power, trump up charges against his more ambitious supporters and have them killed off before they can get into mischief. But not all politicians are so wary or so practical.

Even when the danger had become manifest, the Nasjah Government underestimated it. Struggling with vital day-to-day problems of administration and caught up in the political battle being waged over the new Constitution, they felt that they had no time to spare just then to deal with petty discontents. No doubt something would have to be done soon, but not now. With the peculiar innocence of politicians in office, they even assumed that as long as the surplus officers continued to draw their pay and allowances they would remain loyal to the leaders of the Republic. Had these men not fought to make it all possible? Were they not, after all, patriots?

The politicians soon had their answer. By the time they were ready to submit the Draft Constitution to the General Assembly, there was an insurgent force of nearly three thousand men operating in the central highlands. It was led by an ex-colonel named Sanusi, who promoted himself to General and rapidly gained administrative control of an area which straddled the only two roads connecting the capital with the northern provinces. Moreover, Sanusi was a devout Moslem and issued a series of manifestos calling upon all True Believers to join his Sundanese National Freedom Party and declare a Holy War on the infidels in Selampang who had betrayed the new state at the very moment of its birth.

The riots which ensued caused some casualties among the Eurasian population of the capital, but order was eventually restored without much bloodshed. Although most Sundanese are Moslems and a majority of the men wear the black cap of Islam, religion is not an important factor in their lives. It was General Sanusi’s hold on the interior of the country which constituted the real problem. A punitive expedition sent against him had to withdraw ignominiously when one of its regimental commanders deserted, together with all his men and most of the expedition’s ammunition supply. A subsequent series of air attacks on what was believed to be Sanusi’s headquarters resulted, because of the hazardous flying conditions in the mountains, in the loss of two out of the ten obsolete planes that constituted the Government air force.

Having swallowed these humiliations, the Government were forced to examine the problem more realistically. They believed that Sanusi possessed neither tanks nor artillery, and that without them he would be obliged to remain in the hills. They knew, too, that any further loss of face on their own part would shake the public’s confidence badly. Foreign sensibilities had also to be considered. Arrangements were almost completed for large United States dollar credits to be placed at their disposal. An appearance of calmness and stability must be preserved at all costs.

So they decided to bluff.

A communiqué issued by the Minister of Public Enlightenment announced that the “Sanusi gang” had been rounded up and liquidated, and a directive to newspaper editors ordered them to refrain from all further allusions to the “incident.” Political murders committed by Sanusi’s undercover agents in Selampang were to be blamed on “colonialist reactionaries.” For inquisitive foreigners who wanted to know why it was still impossible to travel by road from the capital to the north, there was a bland statement that, in view of the extensive damage to bridges and mining of roads carried out by the retreating Dutch forces during the war, land communications would take at least a year to restore. Meanwhile, both sea and air transport were readily available.

At the same time, the Minister of Defence was instructed to take special and secret precautions against any further treachery in the armed forces. The reliability of every army officer was to be carefully tested by the use of agents provocateurs. A list of the dissident was to be compiled and steps taken to render them harmless. Sanusi was to be left to cool his heels in the mountains until a full-scale offensive could be mounted against him.

The feeling of security which the Government derived from the making of these decisions did not last long. The inquiries made by the Minister of Defence soon provided the frightening information that there was open talk of a coup d’état among the officers, that a group was already in secret communication with Sanusi, and that it was doubtful if more than a third of the officers of the Selampang garrison could be relied upon in an emergency.

The Council of Ministers’ first reaction was to panic, and for an hour or so, apparently, there was wild talk of asking for a British warship from Singapore to stand by. Then, they pulled themselves together and gave General Ishak, the Minister of Defence, special powers to deal with the conspirators. Within twenty-four hours, sixteen senior officers had been shot and a further sixty were in prison awaiting court-martial.

The immediate crisis was over; but the Government had been badly frightened and they did not for get the experience. The news from Indonesia of the “Turko” Westerling incident intensified their anxiety. If a small force of Javanese counter-revolutionaries led by a few mad Dutchmen could capture a city like Bandung under the very noses of the lawful Indonesian Government, a large force of Sundanese insurgents under Sanusi could probably capture Selampang. Only the Selampang garrison, with its Japanese tanks and armoured cars and its six German eighty-eights, prevented their trying. If Sanusi could ever neutralise the garrison by allying himself with a Fifth Column conspiracy of the kind that had so nearly succeeded before, the game would be up. From now on there must be extreme vigilance. Reliable police spies must be found to report on the activities of all officers and former officers. The malcontents must be dealt with shrewdly. With a determined trouble-maker, a knife in the back would be the only safe solution. With a more self-interested man, however, a well-paid civil appointment might be the best answer. If, besides purchasing his loyalty, you could also expect to gain his services as an informer, an even more lucrative post could be awarded.

As self-interest seemed to be the dominating characteristic of most of the officers on the list of suspects, the new policy worked. From time to time there were plot scares and midnight executions, and for one period of a month martial law was declared; but although the roads to the north were now permanently in insurgent hands (Sanusi impudently collected taxes from the villages in his area), the Government did not lose any more ground. The losses they suffered from now on were in terms of morale rather than territory.

The black market, for example. There were simple economic reasons for its growth. The American credits had been spent not on capital goods, but dissipated on such things as cars, refrigerators, radios and air-conditioning equipment, the importation of which had produced huge personal commissions for members of the Government and their subordinates. Efforts to control the resulting inflation had been half-hearted. “Inducement taxes” had been imposed only to be evaded. In Selampang there was a black market in practically everything. In the tuberculosis clinics set up by the World Health Organisation, a mantri would even inject water into his patients so that he could steal the B.C.G. vaccine and sell it on the black market. All kinds of racketeering flourished. In Asia, admittedly, the giving and taking of bribes is a normal, accepted part of the daily business of getting things done; but in Sunda it assumed stultifying proportions.

Yet, the Government, although recognising the need for measures to deal with the problem, were quite unable to agree what those measures should be. It was not mere indecision, and it was not simply because there were some ministers with personal interests to consider. Their inability to deal effectively with this or any of the other social and economic problems which confronted them had a deeper cause. The Sanusi affair had in some subtle way served to demoralise them completely. Certainly, after the discovery of the conspiracy of 1950, the whole business of government in Sunda was conducted in a deadly atmosphere of guilt, greed and mutual suspicion that made any major decision seem horribly dangerous. The Nasjah Government, in fact, was suffering from a recurrent nightmare, and their fear of it incapacitated them. A watertight plan for eliminating Sanusi was the only thing that could have produced unanimity.

Up in the Tangga Valley we were to some extent isolated from all this madness; at least during the first year. We used to be told about what was going on by visitors, especially World Health Organisation and UNICEF people who came to work in our area, and be surprised that such intelligent men should expect us to believe the fantastic stories they told. Later on, when our own contact with the capital became closer, we knew better. But as long as Gedge had the labour force he needed and supplies continued to come up to us from our small port on the coast, we were able to feel that what went on in Selampang was no concern of ours.

And then the “government nominees” began to arrive.

It is one of the basic principles of Colombo Plan policy that, when aid is given for a project like the Tangga River dam, as many of the managerial posts as possible should be held by Asians. If qualified Asians are not immediately available and Europeans (i.e., whites) have to be employed under contract, then every effort has to be made to replace them with Asians when those contracts expire. Obviously, this is good sense, and, naturally, a man like Gedge was in eager sympathy with the principle. But the operative word is “qualified.” Asia is desperately short of technicians of all grades, and at the managerial level the shortage is acute. In Sunda, the position was as bad as could be.

However, that fact did not deter the authorities in Selampang. When a government depends for its physical safety on a policy of “jobs for the boys,” highly paid jobs become scarce. Furthermore, the salaries were paid by the Colombo Plan contractors, not by the Government. When the Europeans’ service contracts began to expire, the Tangga Valley project must have looked like a gold mine in Selampang. Innocently, Gedge assumed that his formal, routine requests for Asians to replace the departing Europeans (requests that he was legally obliged to make) would be acknowledged and then forgotten in the usual way. He knew perfectly well that they had nobody suitable to send him. And he was right.

The first surplus officer to report for duty was a brutish-looking man in the uniform of a captain of infantry, who announced that he was taking up the post of surveyor to the project and then demanded a year’s salary in advance. On being questioned as to his qualifications, he stated that he was a graduate of the new School of Economic Administration at Selampang, and produced a certificate to that effect. He also produced a pistol which he fingered suggestively during the remainder of the interview. I was there and it was a nerve-racking hour. In the end Gedge gave him a warm letter of recommendation for a post on the central purchasing commission (whose salaries were paid by the Government) and held the plane so that the captain could return at once to the capital and present the letter.

The captain soon proved to be a fairly typical example of what we had to expect. After three other would-be surveyors had been returned, together with a dozen or more candidates for other jobs, the Ministry of Public Works had changed its tactics. Instead of sending the applicant in person, it would send his name, together with an imposing account of his alleged qualifications, certified as correct by the Minister of Public Works. This left Gedge with the choice of accepting the applicant unseen at the Ministry’s valuation, or of questioning the valuation, and thus, by inference, the Minister’s honesty.

In the end, both sides had to compromise. The Ministry promised to stop sending half-witted gangsters who had been found unemployable even by Sundanese standards. Gedge agreed to take on six Sundanese officers with experience of administrative duties as “liaison managers.” The real jobs were filled, as Gedge had always intended they should be, partly by re-engagement, partly by promotion and partly by bringing in new men, Asian and European, from outside.

I think that we all thought that he had made a good bargain. Friendly relations with the Government had been preserved. His own authority had been unimpaired. His employers’ interests had been safeguarded. The work could now go forward smoothly to its completion (as per specification and on schedule) and to the moment when he would stand bare-headed in the breeze above the eastern spillway accepting the President’s congratulations. Permission had arrived from the contractors’ head office to debit the salaries of six useless Sundanese officers to the contingency account. All that remained now was to see if the Government kept faith with him.

In their own tortuous way they did keep faith. They did not send half-witted gangsters. They sent intelligent ones.

They arrived all together, four majors and two captains, by special plane from the capital, and began by complaining that the Chief Engineer was not there to welcome them officially. They then announced that they would wait until he arrived. I was with Gedge when he got the message.

He sighed. “I see. Prima donnas. They mustn’t get away with that. Would you mind going over, Steve?”

“Me?” Strictly speaking, it was no concern of mine. Labour relations were the contractors’ business. I was there to represent the firm of consulting engineers who had planned the project, and to see that the contractors did the work according to our specifications. But I had always got on well with Gedge and could see that he was genuinely concerned.

“If someone senior doesn’t go they’ll lose face,” he explained; “and you know I can’t afford to start off badly with these people.”

“All right. But it’ll cost you a couple of large Scotches.”

“Done. And if you go right away I’ll make it three.”

I was not to know that he was, in a way, saving my life.

I found the new arrivals standing in the shade by the radio shack, glowering into space. The jeep drivers who had been sent to collect them looked terrified. I got out of my jeep and walked over.

They were all very smartly turned out, their uniform shirts spotless and their pistol holsters gleaming. I was a bit impressed.

As I approached, they turned and stiffened up. One of the majors took a pace forward and nodded curtly. He was a slim, handsome little man with the flat features and high cheekbones of the southern Sundanese, and a tight, arrogant mouth. His English was almost perfect.

“Mr. Gedge?”

“No. My name’s Fraser. I’m the resident consulting engineer. You are …?”

“Major Suparto. I am glad to meet you, Mr. Fraser.” We shook hands and he turned to the group behind him. “I introduce Majors Idrus, Djaja and Tukang, Captains Kerani and Emas.” There were more curt nods as he turned to me again.

“We had expected Mr. Gedge to give us the honour of welcoming us on our arrival, Mr. Fraser.”

“You are certainly welcome, Major. Unfortunately, Mr. Gedge is rather busy just now, but he would like to see you gentlemen in his office.”

Major Suparto appeared to consider this. Then, suddenly, he smiled. It was such a charming, good-humoured smile that it deceived me for a moment; as it was meant to. I nearly smiled back.

“Very well, Mr. Fraser. We will accept you as Mr. Gedge’s deputy.” The smile went as suddenly as it had arrived. “You do not think that if we went to his office immediately he would be busy merely in order to keep us waiting?”

“We haven’t much time here for protocol, Major,” I said; “but you will have no reason to complain of discourtesy.”

“I hope not.” He smiled again. “Very well. Then we can go. Perhaps I may drive with you, Mr. Fraser.”

“Certainly.”

The rest followed in the other jeeps. As we went, I explained the geography of the camp, and stopped at a point on the track from which they could all get a view of the dam. There were exclamations of wonder from the jeeps behind us, but Major Suparto did not seem greatly interested. As I drove on, however, I saw him examining me out of the corners of his eyes. Then he spoke.

“What is a liaison manager, Mr. Fraser?”

“I think it’s a new appointment.”

“And unnecessary, no doubt. No, do not answer. I will not embarrass you.”

“You’re not embarrassing me, Major. I just don’t happen to know the answer to your question.”

“I admire your discretion, Mr. Fraser.”

I took no notice of that one.

“I am a reasonable man, Mr. Fraser,” he went on after a bit. “I shall be able to accept this situation philosophically. But my companions are a little different. They may look for other satisfactions. Things may grow difficult. I think that it would be as well for Mr. Gedge to remember that.”

“I’ll tell him what you say, but I think you’ll find that he’ll be very understanding.”

He did not speak again until we pulled up outside Gedge’s office; but as I went to get out, he put a hand on my arm.

“Understanding is a fine thing,” he said; “but sometimes it is better to carry a revolver.”

I looked at him carefully. “If I were you, Major, I wouldn’t make any jokes like that in front of Mr. Gedge. He might think that you were trying to intimidate him, and he wouldn’t care for that.”

He stared at me, and, although his hands did not move, I was for a moment acutely aware of the pistol at his belt. Then, he smiled. “I like you, Mr. Fraser,” he said; “I am sure that we shall be friends.”

The meeting with Gedge passed off fairly well. All the liaison managers claimed to have had administrative experience. A more surprising thing was that they all spoke some English. Although English is now a second official language in Sunda (Malay being the first) not many Sundanese can speak it yet. There was some tension when the discrepancies between what they had been told about their jobs in Selampang and what they were told by Gedge became apparent, but, in the end, they seemed to accept the situation good-humouredly enough. Major Suparto nodded and smiled like a father pleased with the behaviour of his children in adult company. Later that evening, there was a further meeting with heads of departments. They had all been warned in advance and were ready. Each one had to take a liaison manager. In effect he would be a kind of trainee. Let him potter around. If he could make himself useful, so much the better. If not, it would not matter.

None of them claimed any technical knowledge. Major Suparto asked to go to transport. The supply, plant, electrical, construction and power-lines departments took the rest.

The first hint of trouble came three days later from the construction department. Captain Emas had attacked and badly beaten up one of the men working in number-three bay of the power house. Questioned about the incident, Captain Emas stated that the man had been insufficiently respectful. The following week two more men were beaten up by Captain Emas for the same reason. The truth emerged gradually. It appeared that Captain Emas was organising a construction workers’ union, and that the men who had been beaten up had shown a disrespectful reluctance to pay dues. The secretary and treasurer of the union was Captain Emas.

Gedge was in a difficult position. All the project labour had been recruited locally and such minor disputes as had arisen had hitherto been settled by consultation with the village headmen. No formal union organisation had been found necessary. Unfortunately, under the Sundanese labour charter, membership of a union was obligatory for manual workers. Captain Emas obviously knew that. If he were fired and sent back to Selampang, he would simply complain to the Ministry of Public Works that he had found an illegal situation and been victimised for trying to remedy it. The Ministry would be delighted. In no time at all, Captain Emas would be back armed with special powers to organise all Tangga Valley labour.

Gedge chose the lesser evil. He called a meeting of headmen, reminded them of the law, and secured their agreement to his applying to the labourers’ union in the capital for an official organiser. He also instructed them that a record of all dues paid to Captain Emas must be kept in future so that Captain Emas could be held accountable for them later. He then called Captain Emas in and repeated the instruction in his presence.

That took care of Captain Emas for a few weeks, but it soon transpired that Majors Djaja and Tukang had been operating the same racket in the plant and electrical departments. Further meetings of headmen proved necessary.

All this was tiresome enough. The headmen felt that their authority was being undermined and were being obstructive; the workmen resented having to pay union dues just because somebody in Selampang said they had to, and were slacking on the job; small difficulties were beginning to cause big delays. But there was worse to come.

About fifteen miles east of the valley camp, on the road up from Port Kail which was used by the supply trucks, there were several big rubber estates. Two of these were still run by Dutchmen.

The position of the Dutch who remained in Sunda was both difficult and dangerous. The majority were employees of the few Dutch business houses which, under Government supervision, were still permitted to operate; banks, for example. The rest were mostly rubber planters in out-lying areas where anti-Dutch feeling had been less violent; men who, rather than face the bitter prospect of having to abandon everything they possessed and start afresh in another country, were prepared to accept the new dangers of life in Sunda.

For the Dutch, those dangers were very real. When there was trouble in the streets, the greatest risk that any European ran was in being taken for a Dutchman. After a ghastly series of incidents in Selampang, the Chief of Police had even made a regulation authorising any European in charge of a car involved in an accident to drive right on for a kilometre before stopping to report to the police. If he stopped at the scene of the accident, both he and his passengers were invariably beaten up, and often murdered by the crowd. Men or women, it made no difference. The explanation that the victims had seemed to be Dutch would always serve to excuse the crime. Dutch owners of rubber estates were in an almost hopeless position. They were not allowed to sell or mortgage their estates, except to the Government, who would pay them in blocked currency which could not be exported. If they continued to operate their estates they had to sell their entire output to the Government at a price fixed by the Government. On the other hand, they had to pay their estate workers at minimum wage rates which made it virtually impossible for the estate to remain solvent. If they wanted to survive, their only chance was to conceal a proportion of their output from the Government inspectors and sell it for Straits dollars to the Chinese junk masters who made a rich business out of buying “black” rubber in Sunda and running it to Singapore.

Mulder and Smit were both men of about fifty, who had spent most of their lives in Sunda. Mulder had been born there. Neither had any capital in Holland. Every guilder they had was in their estates. Moreover, both had Sundanese wives and large families of whom they were very fond. Inevitably, they had decided to stay.

In the early days at the camp we had seen a good deal of both men. During the first few months, indeed, before the road was properly completed, we had used their guest rooms almost as if we rented them. Smit was a huge, red-faced man with a fat chuckle and an incredible capacity for bottled beer. Mulder had a passion for German lieder, which he would sing, accompanied by a phonograph, on the smallest pretext. With each other they played chess; with us, poker. Later, we had been able to repay some of their hospitality, but they never really liked coming to the camp. No women were allowed in the European club, so we could not ask them to bring their wives; and there were many Sundanese in the camp for whom the mere presence of a Dutchman was an irritant. When the liaison managers arrived I had seen neither of them for weeks.

Early one morning about three months before I was due to leave, Mulder drove into the camp with the news that Smit and his wife had been murdered.

The first part of the story was easily told. At one o’clock that morning, Mulder and his wife had been wakened by the Smits’ eldest son, a boy of sixteen. He said that two men had driven up to the bungalow half an hour earlier and battered on the door until they were admitted. The noise had wakened him. He had heard his father speaking to them and there had been an argument. His father had become angry. Suddenly, there had been four shots. His mother had screamed and more shots had been fired. The men had then driven away. His mother and father were wounded. He had left the ayah to look after them and run for help.

By the time Mulder had arrived at the bungalow, Smit was dead. The wife had died shortly afterwards. Later, he had taken the children and their ayah back with him to his bungalow. Fearing for the safety of his own family, he had stayed with them until daylight before driving up to the camp to ask us to report the matter by radio to the police at Port Kail.

From the way he told it, it was fairly obvious that he knew more than he was saying. When I got him alone and had promised to keep my mouth shut, he told me the rest.

A week earlier two Sundanese had come to see him with a proposal. They said that they knew that he was smuggling rubber out of the country and being paid for it in Straits dollars. They wanted a half share in the proceeds of all future consignments. If they did not get it, unpleasant things would happen both to his family and to him. They would give him two days to think it over. Meanwhile, he was to tell nobody.

He went to Smit and found that the men had been to see him also. The two planters discussed the situation carefully. They knew that they were helpless. There was, of course, no question of their appealing for police protection. Apart from the fact that they would have to admit to the smuggling, which for Dutchmen would be suicidal, there was also the possibility that the men themselves might be connected with the police. They decided, in the end, to pay up, but to bargain first. They thought that an offer of ten per cent might satisfy the men.

It did not. The men became angry. They gave Mulder a further twenty-four hours to agree, and also demanded two thousand Straits dollars in cash as an earnest of his intentions.

That had been the previous night. The men must have gone straight to Smit, realised from what he said that the victims had been consulting together, and decided to show Mulder that they meant business. They had succeeded. Mulder was ready now to give them his whole estate if they asked for it.

But I was still a bit puzzled. Smit had not been the sort of man who is easily intimidated. It was difficult to think of his opening the door to a couple of thugs in the middle of the night without a loaded gun in his hand. As for Mulder; if he had asked me to help him to ambush the two men and leave their bodies for the kites, I should not have been greatly surprised.

It was not until I had persuaded him to talk about the two men that I understood. It would have been death to touch either of them. They were Sundanese army officers, a major and a captain. The descriptions that he gave left me in no doubt as to their identity. I persuaded Mulder to go with me to Gedge and repeat the story.

That night when Major Idrus and Captain Kerani arrived at Mulder’s bungalow, Gedge and I were waiting behind the screen doors into the bedroom. We heard them describe what they had done to Smit and his wife, and threaten Mulder with the same treatment if he did not pay. Then we came out armed with shotguns and a shorthand record of what we had heard. For a while the air was thick with protestations. In the end, however, a deal was made. If Major Idrus and Captain Kerani left Mulder alone, we would take no further action. Mulder would lodge our signed statements at his bank, so that if anything happened to him the statements would go to the police. It was a miserable arrangement, but, short of involving Mulder in police inquiries, it was the best that we could do. Idrus and Kerani were smiling when they left to drive back to the camp in a supply-department truck. They had reason to smile; they had got away with murder.

We stayed behind with Mulder for a while and drank too much gin. For Gedge it did not improve the occasion.

“How would you like to stay on here, Steve?” he asked suddenly as I drove the jeep back to the camp.

“What do you mean?”

“You can have my job if you like.”

“No, thanks.”

“Wise man. It’s not going to be pleasant having murderers about the place.”

“Understanding is a fine thing,” I said; “but sometimes it is better to carry a revolver.”

“What’s that?”

“Something that Major Suparto said.”

And now I was sitting in Gedge’s office for the last time, listening to what was being said, yet knowing that in less than three hours what I was hearing would seem as remote as a dream.

Unlike his five brother officers, Suparto had been an unqualified success. The ability to plan and organise is rare among the Sundanese; but, in this respect, Suparto was exceptional by any standards. Secure in a two-year contract, the Transport Manager had no qualms at all about delegating authority to so able and energetic an assistant, and had resisted the efforts of other departmental managers to lure him away.

Suparto had outlined the situation crisply.

There had been a strike of stevedores down at Port Kail the previous week and some important machinery had been unloaded on to the quayside by the ship’s crew. Now, the Customs people were making difficulties about identifying the individual items on the ship’s cargo manifest, and were refusing to clear it. In his opinion they were turning a small confusion into a big one in the hope of getting a substantial bribe. He believed that if he were to go down to Kail and see the head of the Customs himself, the problem would very soon disappear. The Transport Manager shared that belief.

“We’ve never had trouble with the Customs before,” Gedge was saying; “even in the early days when they could have made things good and tough for us.”

“Major Suparto thinks that the local men may be getting squeezed from above,” the Transport Manager said.

“I think it is possible,” said Suparto; “but that is not something which can be discovered by radio telephone. I must talk with these men privately.”

Gedge nodded. “Very well, Major. We’ll leave it to you. The main thing is to get that machinery on its way up here. How long will you be away?”

“Two days, perhaps three. I propose to leave at once.” He turned to me. “Mr. Fraser, I shall not have another opportunity. May I wish you a safe journey and a happy future?”

“Thanks, Major. It’s been a pleasure knowing you.”

We shook hands and he went out with the Transport Manager. Then began the rather more elaborate business of saying goodbye to Gedge.

The Dakota arrived at twelve thirty. When they had off-loaded the two mailbags, some cartons of dried milk and a couple of small air-compressor sets, they put my suitcase aboard and slung the outgoing mail in after it. My successor and one or two particular friends had come out to the airstrip to see me off, so there was more nonsense to be talked and handshaking to be done before I could get aboard myself.

Roy Jebb was the pilot. The first officer was a Sundanese named Abdul. They never carried a full crew on those trips, so, as I was the only passenger, I sat in the radio operator’s seat just behind them. The plane had been standing in the sun for an hour and was suffocatingly hot inside; but I was so glad to be going that I did not even think to take my jacket off. I could see the men who had been seeing me off walking back to where the jeeps were standing, and wondered vaguely if I would ever see any of them again. Then the sweat began to trickle into my eyes and Jebb called to me to fasten my seat belt.

Two minutes later we were airborne.