State of Siege

6

Suparto led the way back to the stairway and we began to walk down.

“Was this your idea?” I demanded.

“No. It was the General’s.”

“Do you agree with it?”

“I am not in a position to agree or disagree. But I think he has had worse ideas.”

I glanced at him, but he did not seem to be aware of having said anything odd.

“What’s the extent of the damage?”

“That you will have to discover for yourself. There are two of the station engineers below. Perhaps they will be able to help you.”

“Station engineers? Why can’t they do the job themselves?”

“That is a polite way of describing them. They know how to operate the transmitter, which switches to press, which dials to turn, but they are not technicians. They know nothing about the generator except how to start it.”

“But somebody on the staff must know.”

“Possibly, but we have only certain members of the staff with us. The sympathisers.”

“You’re in control of the city. Can’t you round up the others?”

“The three senior technicians are all Chinese. We have sent patrols into the Chinese quarter with instructions to find the men, and they may eventually succeed. But not today, and perhaps not tomorrow either. The General cannot wait.”

“Why not? What’s so important about the radio? I shouldn’t have thought that there were very many people in the country with short-wave receivers.”

“It is not the people inside the country who matter to the General. It is the impression outside that he is concerned about. Later today, he proposes to broadcast again in English. His speech will be addressed to the cities whose good opinion matters most to him at the moment: Djakarta, Singapore, Canberra and Washington. The speech, part of which you have already heard, will be issued to the world press correspondents here at a special conference afterwards.”

“What do you mean, ‘part of which I have already heard’?”

“Surely you did not believe that so much eloquence could be unrehearsed? ‘To you, to any European, that much is certainly obvious.’ Come now, Mr. Fraser, admit it. You must at least have wondered.”

He was smiling slyly at me. It was an invitation to share a joke and I distrusted it deeply.

I said non-committally: “I had other things to wonder about.”

“Ah yes. But you see why it is so important that the station should be working properly. If the General does not speak to the world, the world may think that he cannot speak, that he is not yet really in control and that they had better withhold their gestures of friendship until they see more clearly who has won. The General attaches great importance to the power of radio propaganda. He believes that it can be of decisive political importance.” There was a distinctly critical note in his voice.

I said: “And you do not?”

“I think that the realities of power are important, too.”

“You make the General sound a bit naïve.”

“Not naïve, Mr. Fraser. Simple, like all great men.”

We had been picking our way down the rubble-strewn stairs. Now we were at the ground floor. In the hall there were troops stacking rice sacks half-filled with earth to make a blast screen. The elevator gates were open and a man’s body in a police uniform lay across the threshold in a mess of congealed blood. I caught a glimpse of his face as we came down the stairs. It had been one of the guards who had passed Rosalie and me into the building the previous night.

Suparto stopped and shouted for the N.C.O. in charge of the sandbagging. The man came running and Suparto told him to have the body taken outside. As the man went off to carry out the order, Suparto looked after him unpleasantly.

“They are animals,” he said.

We started down the stairs to the basement. From below there came a sound of voices and a smell of fuel oil and drains. On the landing halfway down, I stopped.

“May I ask you a question, Major?” I said.

His face became impassive. “About what, Mr. Fraser?”

“Last night you were good enough to say that you liked me. I have been wondering why.”

His face cleared. “Ah, I see. You wish to assess the value of my friendship, the extent to which it might be relied upon and used. Well, I will explain. You remember the day I arrived in Tangga with my colleagues?”

“Very well.”

“We were stiff-necked, presumptuous, and arrogant. I most of all, because I did the talking. There were reasons, but”-he shrugged-“we will not discuss them now. You had reason to be annoyed, and you were annoyed with me, were you not?”

“A bit.”

“You made it plain. But it was the way in which you made it plain that impressed me. You did not say to yourself: ‘Here is another of these tiresome little brown men, these pathetic little upstarts in uniform, whom I must pretend to treat respectfully in order to show that I do not think of him as an inferior human being.’ You did not patronise, as Mr. Gedge does, and you were not more tactful than was necessary. You dealt with me frankly as you would have dealt with a European in the same circumstances, and there was no calculation in your attitude. You treated me neither as a dog, nor as a pet monkey who may bite. And so I liked you.”

“Oh. Well, that’s very civil of you. But it wasn’t to assess the value of your friendship, as you put it, that I brought the matter up. What I wanted to know was if you would trust me.”

“With what, Mr. Fraser?”

“A confidence. Which side are you really on, Major? The National Freedom Party’s or the Government’s?”

“Naturally, Mr. Fraser, I am on the side of the General. How could you doubt it?” He smiled easily.

“I don’t, Major. But which General do you mean?”

For once, I saw him disconcerted; but it was a shortlived pleasure. His lips narrowed and his hand went to his gun.

“You will explain that remark,” he said softly.

“Certainly. I was in the garden of the Harmony Club two nights ago. I saw your jeep. I knew it came from Tangga. I knew it could only have come by road, so …”

“How much did you hear?” he demanded abruptly.

“Not much, but enough to know that there are two Generals in this. Who is the other one?”

He ignored the question. “Whom have you told?”

“Nobody. It wasn’t my affair.”

“You said nothing of this last night.”

“Why should I? Until I heard Sanusi’s voice I thought that he was the other man whom you called ‘General.’ ”

“Was Miss Linden with you?”

“She only saw the jeep. She heard nothing.”

“I can believe you?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “But why do you risk your life by telling me?”

“Because I want to save my life if I can, and Miss Linden’s. If what I suspect about this business is true, I don’t think either of us has very much of a chance. Do you?”

He looked me in the eyes. “Nobody here has very much chance.”

“By showing you that I can be trusted not to betray you, I increase what chance we have.”

“How?”

“If you can help us, you will.”

“Why should I help you? A moment ago, I was on the point of shooting you like a dog.”

“You will help me because, if the occasion arises, you can trust me to help you. Also, because you are a humane man.”

He stared at me grimly. “I would not depend too much on my humanity, Mr. Fraser. It may still become necessary for me to shoot you.”

“If it becomes necessary, of course, you will. I said that you were humane, Major. I didn’t accuse you of sentimentality. Now, you’d better show me this generator.”

We went on down the stairs.

“One thing I should like to know, Mr. Fraser,” he said. “Is your ignorance on the subject of generators as complete as you claim?”

“I have a certain amount of theoretical knowledge, naturally, but I don’t think that’s going to be much use. If the windings are damaged, and they probably are, there’s nothing I can do.”

“I ask, because if the generator is not running again by sundown, I am afraid that harsh disciplinary measures may be taken against you. I would regret that, but I could do nothing to stop it. And now, here we are.”

We had come to a short flight of steel stairs leading down to the sub-basement. There were lights on below and at the foot of the stairs there was a gleam of black, oily water. There were sounds of splashing. The bottom two stairs were under the water. Suparto went down as far as he could without getting his feet wet and called sharply.

There was more splashing and then two bedraggled young men waded to the foot of the stairs.

“What progress?” Suparto asked curtly.

One of them shrugged. “The water is no longer coming in, but we cannot make the drain work.”

“The tuan here is an engineer from Tangga. He understands these matters. You will take orders from him now. Mr. Fraser, these men are Engineer Osman and Engineer Alwi.”

I nodded to them and made my way down to the water level. From there I could see the whole area of the room. It was about thirty feet by twenty. The generating set and two five-hundred-gallon fuel tanks occupied most of the space. The diesel part of the set stood clear of the water but the generator itself was half-submerged. To one side was a slate switchboard.

I looked at Osman. “You say that there is a drain that won’t work.”

“Yes, tuan. We have put rods down it, but it will not work.”

I looked at Suparto. “How close did the bomb fall?”

“In the roadway at the side. You wish to see the crater?”

“No. But what happened?”

“The crater filled up with water from the broken pipe before a man who knew how to turn the water off could be found. Then it was found that the water was coming in here.”

“Where did it come in? A crack in the floor? Down the walls? Where?”

“Up through the drain, tuan.” This was Engineer Alwi, wide-eyed with wonder. “It bubbled up through the drain. I saw it.”

“Then what the Hell’s the good of poking about trying to get it to run back down the drain?” I demanded. “Don’t you see what happened? The bomb collapsed the drain conduit as well and the water from the crater took that way out. We must be below the crater here. Naturally the water won’t run back uphill. We’ll have to pump it out.”

“What do you need, Mr. Fraser?” This was Suparto.

“A powerful rotary pump. A fire-truck would do the job, or maybe there’s a sewage-disposal unit. Any pump that will lift water twenty feet at a reasonable speed. There’s nothing to be done until we get it.”

But Suparto was already hurrying up the stairs. Osman and Alwi stood there in the water looking at me sheepishly.

“Where does the exhaust from the diesel go?” I asked.

“There is a pipe, tuan,” said Osman. “It comes out at the back of the building.”

“There must be a ventilator shaft. Where is it?”

“There in the corner, tuan.”

“Where does that come out?”

“I don’t know, tuan.” He wrung his hands. “How should I know?”

“All right, Osman. Don’t worry. Just go upstairs and see if you can follow it. It looks as if it may come out where we can reach it from the outside. You understand? Then, when the fire-truck comes, we can run the hose down through the ventilating shaft and reach the water that way. It will be quicker.”

“Yes, tuan.” He was smiling eagerly as he clambered out of the water and squelched away up the stairs.

I was left with Alwi. He was waiting attentively for his orders. It occurred to me suddenly that all I had to do was to invent some task for him that would take him out of sight for a few minutes, to be free to walk out of the building. It was unlikely that anyone would try to stop me. If anyone did, I could say that I had gone to inspect the ventilator. If all went well, I could be at the British Consulate in ten minutes. True, my passport was at the police department awaiting an exit permit; but providing that I was not stopped by a patrol, that would not matter. I would be safe.

When the day-dream was over, I sat down on the stairs and wondered idly if Suparto were counting on my reluctance to abandon Rosalie to keep me from escaping, or whether he had preferred to rely upon more direct methods.

“Alwi,” I said, “a guard should have been posted at the top of the stairs to prevent unauthorised persons interfering with our work. Go and see if he is there.”

He looked a bit mystified, but he went readily enough. I lit my last cigarette. He was back before I had taken two puffs.

“The guard is there in position, tuan.”

Suparto was, after all, a realist.

“Very well,” I said. “Now tell me. Was the generator set running when the water came in?”

“Yes, tuan. There was a loss of power. My colleague, Osman, came down and found the water. The motor stopped running as he came in.”

“Did any fuses blow?”

“We have not looked, tuan.”

I lowered myself into the water and waded over to the switchboard. The generator set itself had been made by the Krupp engine works at Kiel, but the board was Japanese. There was a “no-volts” circuit-breaker on it and that had tripped. After a bit, I discovered that the motor control box was linked to the circuit-breaker. It seemed likely that the motor was undamaged and that it had cut out automatically as a result of the electrical failure. No fuses had blown. It was possible, I decided, that the generator windings had not burnt out and that the loss of power had been due simply to the damp insulation; but it would be a long time before I knew for certain one way or the other. There was one other hope, a faint one.

“Can’t you adapt the equipment to use the mains power?”

Alwi looked at me reproachfully. “But that is direct current, tuan. One hundred and thirty volts.”

So that was that.

It was eleven thirty then. Soon, Osman came to report that he had found the ventilator shaft opening and that it was near enough to the ground to serve as a duct for the hose pipe. There was an extractor fan fitted to the basement end of the shaft. So that there should be no delay when the pump arrived, I told them to get some tools and remove the fan. When that was done, we sat on the stairs and waited.

Just before noon there was another air raid. This time the target seemed to be on the outskirts of the city. Presumably, the fact that the radio station was no longer on the air had satisfied them. Down in the subbasement we could feel the concussion of the bombs. The lights flickered once, and Alwi said that it must be the power station that was being attacked; but, to my relief, the lights stayed on. About ten minutes later, Suparto arrived, accompanied by a terrified fireman wearing a steel helmet, and reported that a motor pump was outside.

I sent Osman up to show them the ventilator shaft. At twelve thirty they started to pump. There was a delay when Suparto noticed that the water was being allowed to run back into the bomb crater; but after another hose had been fitted to carry the water from the pump to a drain farther along the road, the work was uninterrupted. By one fifteen, the water in the basement had sunk to the level of the intake hose nozzle, and further pumping was impossible. There was still an inch or so of water on the floor, but it was well clear of the generator housing and could be dealt with later.

Suparto was looking pleased. “You must admit, Mr. Fraser,” he said sportively, “that the General’s methods sometimes produce results.”

“What results?”

“You have made progress.”

“We haven’t even started yet.”

I called for a hand lamp and made a careful inspection of the generator. This told me nothing that I did not know already. The thing was designed to deliver alternating current at five hundred volts, and the windings were soaking wet. I also knew there was only one course open to me; that was to dismantle the thing, dry the windings out as best I could, reassemble it and hope to God it worked.

Suparto was standing over me, watching expectantly. To get rid of him I explained that I should want heating appliances of some sort, preferably blow lamps, a couple of electric fans, some thin sheet iron and a block and tackle. When he had gone to give the necessary orders, I began, with Osman and Alwi, the dismantling process.

In one of the ceiling joists there was a ring bolt that had obviously been put there to lower the generator into place when it had been originally installed. I managed, eventually, to get a rope sling round the armature; then, by using the block and tackle rigged to the ring bolt above, I was able to sway the armature clear of the housing. But the job took well over an hour. The coupling to the generator had proved all but inaccessible, and we had had much more dismantling to do than I had anticipated. We had, moreover, removed the fan from the ventilator shaft to get the hose through, and the heat down there became overpowering. By the time we were ready to start drying out, we were too exhausted to go on without a rest.

Suparto had food brought to us-nassi goreng and fruit-and we squatted on the stairs while we ate. I got some cigarettes, too. Suparto watched us keenly, like a trainer; with us but not of us.

“What about Miss Linden?” I asked him. “Has she had any food?”

“I will see that she gets some.”

“And drinking-water, and cigarettes?”

“Very well.” He looked at his watch. “It is three hours to sundown, Mr. Fraser. It will be necessary soon for me to report to the General.”

“I can’t tell you a thing. I shan’t know whether it’s going to work until we’re able to try it.”

“He has called a press conference at the Presidential Palace for six. There, he will distribute copies of the proclamation; also the radio address he expects to deliver tonight. If the radio is not working he will be exposed to serious humiliation.”

There were a number of replies I should have liked to have made to that; but Osman and Alwi were listening. They were looking worried, too.

“Well, we’d better get on with it,” I said.

My plan for drying the windings was simple; it had to be. What I did was to bend the sheet metal into two big tubes, wrapping wire round each one to hold it together. Then I kept the sides of the tubes heated by the blow lamps and blew air through them with the fans. They were, in effect, like two large hair-driers. One I set up to blow into the field windings inside the housing. The other I directed at the armature suspended in its sling from the ceiling. Neither of them was very efficient, as a lot of the heat was wasted; but I could think of no better way of doing the job.

There were two blow lamps to each tube, and, once their most effective positions had been determined, all we had to do was to keep them going. The atmosphere rapidly became stifling, but we had time to replace the ventilator fan now, and when that was set going, things improved. After a while, I momentarily switched off the fan blowing on to the armature to feel if the ropes round it were getting too hot, and was rewarded by the sight of a whiff of steam rising from the windings.

At about four o’clock there was another air raid, and Suparto went up to find out what was happening. To us, it sounded as if the planes had returned to the same target as before, and I was terrified lest they should succeed in cutting off the power supply to the fans; but this time the lights did not even flicker. Osman and Alwi said, gleefully, that it was because the enemy were such timid pilots, but I was not so sure. Isolated, easy to identify and, doubtless, undefended, the power station was a much simpler target than the Air House. If they had really been after the power station, I thought, even those pilots would have been able to hit it. When Suparto returned he was blandly uncommunicative; however, I was beginning to know him, and I thought I detected a hint of satisfaction in his manner. For him, at any rate, things might be going according to plan.

At five o’clock we turned off the fans and the blow lamps and began the task of reassembling. The windings felt dry outside, but that meant little. Even if there were nothing else wrong with them, there might still be enough damp inside to break down the insulation. I should have liked to cook them longer, but Suparto would not allow it. I tried to persuade him that it was better to have a generator that did work at seven rather than one that did not work at six; but he merely shrugged.

I could see why, too. From his point of view, it did not matter whether the generator worked or not; all that mattered was that the verbose, ridiculous but dangerous Sanusi should continue to trust him until it was too late to withdraw from the trap that had been so carefully set. Sanusi had ordered me to repair the generator by sundown. For my sake, Suparto hoped that I would succeed in doing so; but if I failed, he had no intention of sharing the blame with me. As a loyal servant of the Nasjah Government, a patriotic agent provocateur, his responsibility was to the other General, the one he had been with in the garden of the New Harmony Club, the General who was now on his way to close the jaws of the trap, and liquidate Sanusi and his National Freedom Party once and for all.

The reassembly went far too well for my liking. I wanted difficulties and delays; I wanted to postpone the moment when the whole thing would be started up and I should know for certain that I had failed. But Osman and Alwi worked with feverish efficiency. Every part fitted neatly into place first time; every nut went on to every bolt as if it had been machined by an instrument-maker; Osman even began to sing as he worked. When I told him to stop it, he giggled happily.

At a little after five thirty, we were ready to test. I held the no-volts circuit-breaker trip plate into position, closed the circuit and told Osman to start up.

The diesel fired within about ten seconds. When it was up to speed, I let the trip plate go. It dropped instantly, the breaker flew out with a bang and the diesel chuffed to a standstill.

There was a horrified silence. I thought that Osman was going to burst into tears. Suparto raised his eyebrows.

“Well, Mr. Fraser?”

I took no notice of him. I was not so worried now; I knew that there was power there, because I had seen the meters kick. There just had not been enough to hold the circuit-breaker in.

I nodded to Osman. “Start up again.”

When it started this time I kept my finger on the trip plate and watched the meters. The voltage was all over the place and I guessed that there was still a lot of damp in the windings; but the probability now was that the heat of the diesel and the heat generated in the windings themselves would gradually complete the drying-out process; either that, or the insulation would break down disastrously. I kept the trip plate up. After about twenty minutes’ running the voltage had steadied appreciably. I gave it another five minutes and then tried releasing the plate. It held.

Osman grinned.

“Is it all right?” Suparto asked.

“I think it may be. It’s not delivering anything like full power yet, but it’ll improve, I think.”

“The General will be pleased. I congratulate you, Mr. Fraser.”

“The rest of this water ought to be mopped up. The drier the air in here, the better.”

“That shall be attended to.” He glanced at Osman and Alwi. “One of you had better stay here to supervise the work. I will send men down.”

“I will stay,” said Osman. “Alwi should test the transmitter.”

I was covered in grease and filth from head to foot, my shoes were full of water, my muscles ached and my legs were trembling. Suddenly, I felt so tired that I had to go over to the stairs and sit down.

Suparto followed me. “Are you sick, Mr. Fraser?”

“No, just tired. I didn’t have much sleep last night, you may remember.”

“But not too tired to report to the General, I hope?”

“Can’t you report to him?”

“It will be better for you and for the woman if you speak to him yourself.”

“All right.”

Alwi had already gone ahead. Suparto and I mounted the stairs slowly. When we reached the guard on the stairs, Suparto told him to report back to his N.C.O. The man followed us up to the ground floor, where Suparto made arrangements for the sub-basement to be cleaned up. The lift was working again now. It was the kind you operated yourself. When we were inside and the gates were closed, I asked Suparto about the air raids we had heard below.

“Were they trying for the power station?”

“No. The road and rail bridges over the river east of the city.”

“Did they destroy them?”

“They damaged them badly enough.”

“Badly enough for what?”

“Enough to prevent a retreat to the hills before the city is completely surrounded.”

“Doesn’t he realise that?”

Suparto pressed the button for the fifth floor and the lift started up.

“The General and Colonel Roda place a more optimistic interpretation on the attacks. They see them as a move to delay the Government troops who have mutinied, and who are on their way to join us here in the city.”

“That interpretation having been suggested by you, I take it?” When he said nothing, I asked: “Have any Government troops, in fact, mutinied?”

“The loyalty of one infantry unit was considered doubtful. It was disarmed yesterday.”

The lift stopped and we got out.

The General was preparing to leave for the foreign press conference at the Presidential Palace, and I had to wait in the outer office. While I was there, a station monitor speaker in the corner began to emit a frying sound and then the xylophone signal came on. Alwi had got the transmitter working again.

When the General appeared at the door of his office, I saw why I had been kept waiting. He had changed into a clean uniform and was wearing a tie. Roda and Suparto followed him out.

I stood up and the General came over to me. He nodded graciously; his thoughts were already in the Presidential Palace.

“Major Suparto has told me of your hard work,” he said. He glanced at the monitor speaker. “We can hear for ourselves that it has been successful, eh, Colonel?”

“As we expected, the tuan was too modest about his qualifications.” Roda grinned.

I ignored him. “I am glad to have been of service, General.”

“Sunda has need of good engineers,” he replied; “especially those of proved loyalty. It is my intention to set up intensive technical training schemes for the youth of our country. For a man like you, Mr. Fraser, there might be exceptional opportunities for advancement here.”

“You are very kind.”

“Those who serve us well will be well rewarded. Do not forget that, Mr. Fraser.”

“I have every reason to remember it, General.”

“Ah yes. We made a bargain. It shall be kept.”

Roda grinned again. “Deal gently therefore with the infidel,’ ” he quoted facetiously; “ ‘and grant them a gentle rest.’ ”

Sanusi frowned at the blasphemy but continued to look at me. “By this time tomorrow, Mr. Fraser, I shall have moved my headquarters and the security considerations which have compelled us to detain you here will no longer apply. You and the woman will then be free to leave. You agree, Major?”

“Of course, Boeng.” Suparto’s face was completely impassive.

“Meanwhile, the Major will see that your detention is not made too disagreeable.”

“Thank you, General.”

“We keep our promises, you see.”

With a proud lift of his chin, he strode on out of the office. Roda, with a nod to me, followed.

Suparto looked at me. “You see? It was as well that you reported yourself.”

“Was it? I can see why you find them easy to despise.”

He shrugged. “At least you will get a comfortable night’s sleep.”

He led the way out of the office. We went back along the corridor, through the swing doors and up to the apartment.

The man by the telephone was asleep. The bow-legged officer kicked him to his feet as Suparto entered.

Suparto looked round, then went over to the radio and switched it on. The announcer had begun to read a communiqué issued by National Freedom Party headquarters claiming that calm and order had been restored in all provinces. Suparto switched it off again.

“This morning,” he said, “an enemy bomb damaged the radio power supply. At the request of Boeng Sanusi, the tuan here repaired the damage and restored the power. Our Boeng has congratulated the tuan on his loyalty and skill, and given strict orders that both he and the woman with him should be treated with the greatest politeness and respect. They will remain in this apartment, but a guard on the terrace will no longer be necessary. Is it understood?”

There was a murmur of agreement. Suparto walked over to the drink table, picked up a bottle of whisky, and went out on to the terrace.

I followed.

Outside the living-room window he stopped and called the guard over. When the man came he dismissed him.

“You will not be so foolish as to try to leave the apartment, I hope, Mr. Fraser?”

“All I want to do is to rest.”

He put the bottle of whisky into my hand. “We have no use for this,” he said; “perhaps it will help you to sleep.”

He turned on his heel and went inside again.

I walked along the terrace.

Rosalie had heard our voices and was standing by the window waiting for me. As I approached, she switched on the light.

My appearance must have been a shock to her; it was a shock even to me when I saw myself in the mirror; but she did not say anything. She was waiting for me to make the first move.

I put the bottle down and kissed her. She held on to me for a moment, then she smiled.

“I heard what the Major said. Was it true?”

“More or less. Anyway, we have a reward. We are to be treated with consideration. You see, the sentry has already gone.”

“Does it mean they will let us go?”

“Well …” I hesitated. “Not yet. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. I must clean myself up first.”

She was watching me closely, and I knew that I was not going to be able to pretend to her for very long. I turned away as if to take my shirt off and saw that there were bowls of food and fruit on the table.

“You haven’t eaten,” I said. “I asked them to send it up for you.”

“Do you think I would eat when I did not know what had happened to you?”

“The rice will be cold,” I said stupidly.

She did not answer. She was still wondering what it was that I had not told her. I looked round the room. In some way she had managed to get rid of the plaster dust and rubble and make the place tidy. I wanted to comment on the fact, but I could not get the words out.

I sat down on the edge of the chair and started to unbutton my shirt. As I did so, she knelt down in front of me and took off my waterlogged shoes. I fumbled with the shirt. My fingers were scratched and sore, and one of the buttons caught in a loose thread. In a weak rage I tore it free. She looked up, and then, with a murmured apology, began to help me. Every stitch of clothing I had on smelt of oil and sweat and dirty water. When I had undressed, I gathered it all up and threw it out on to the terrace.

She smiled. “While you are bathing I will get out some clean things.”

Luckily there was still plenty of water left in the bathhouse; I had to soap myself several times from head to foot before I could get rid of the smell of oil.

When I got back to the room, she had switched off the top light so that there was not so much glare, and had put the bedside lamp on. There was a set of clean clothes ready for me on my bed, and also a neatly folded batik sarong.

“I can wash some of our clothes,” she explained, “but I cannot iron them. You have only those white trousers clean and two more shirts. There are some of Roy’s things there, but they will not fit you. Perhaps it is foolish to think of such things now but …”

“No. You’re quite right. Anyway, a sarong will be more comfortable. Up in Tangga I often wore one.”

“You do not object that it is one of mine?”

“Object? It’s a beauty.”

She watched me critically while I put it on.

“There are, perhaps, more suitable materials for a man,” she said at length; “but it does not look effeminate.”

“Good. Have you another one for yourself?”

“Oh yes. But while you were not here and the guard was outside, it was better that I looked as European as possible. In batik I look more Sundanese.”

“Then look Sundanese.”

She smiled, and, going to the other end of the room, began to take off her dress. In the next room they switched on the radio.

I opened the bottle of Jebb’s whisky that Suparto had given me, and poured out two drinks. I drank one straight down. Then I refilled the empty glass and took it over with me to my bed. The bruise on my stomach was beginning to be painful and I lay down gingerly. When I was stretched out flat, however, the muscles began to relax, the pain went and a delicious drowsiness began to steal over me. In the next room a voice on the radio was announcing that General Sanusi would shortly address a message to the world. I closed my eyes.

There was something moving against the fingers of my right hand and I half opened my eyes. Rosalie was gently removing the glass that I had been holding. Her hair was down over her shoulders, the sarong was fastened at her waist and she had a narrow scarf draped loosely over her breasts like a country woman. She looked beautiful. I remained still and watched while she placed the glass gently on the bedside table. Then, she glanced at me and saw that I was not asleep. She smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed. I took her hand.

“There’s something I’d better tell you,” I said.

“I know, but you are very tired. Sleep first.”

“Sanusi said that by this time tomorrow he would have moved his headquarters, and that we would be free.”

“And does he not mean it?”

“Oh yes, he means it, but there are things he doesn’t know.”

“Tell me.”

“He’s in a trap. It was all a trap; the garrison leaving the city unprotected; promises from men he thought he could trust that they would bring over their troops to his side; assurances that the country was waiting for his leadership, appeals to his vanity, warnings that if he hesitated he would be lost; anything to trick him into coming down from the hills with all his men so that the Government tanks and guns could move in and cut him to pieces. Well, it’s worked. Tomorrow he thinks that he’ll be moving over into the Presidential Palace. He won’t. He’ll be fighting for his life, here, and I don’t imagine that he has any chance at all of winning.”

She had been looking down at my hand. Now, her eyes looked into mine. “How do you know this? Who told you?”

“You may be better off if you don’t know.”

“Major Suparto.” It was a statement, not a question. I said nothing.

“They might still get away to the hills.”

“Not very many of them. And none from this building, I think. They know where Sanusi is, all right.”

“It will be bad again for us here.”

“I’m afraid it will.”

She took my hand and, leaning forward over me, held it against her breast so that my fingers touched one of the nipples. I felt it harden, and she smiled.

“You see,” she said, “I am not afraid.”

She pressed my hand, and then moved away. “You must sleep now, and I think I will sleep, too.”

She lay down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. I watched her face for a while, and then my eyes closed. After a moment or two, I heard her say my name.

“Yes, Rosalie?”

“Perhaps we should wear our clean clothes tomorrow.”