South By Java Head (34 page)

"Hardly." Yamata's tone was dry. "The only vessel we have here is our commander's, Colonel Kiseki's. It is fast enough, but too small -- just a launch, really only a mobile radio station. Communications are very difficult in these parts."
"I see." Van Effen looked at Nicolson. "The rest is obvious. Farnholme came to the conclusion that it was no longer safe for him to carry the diamonds round with him any longer -- nor the plans. The plans, I think, he gave to Miss Plenderleith aboard the Viroma, the diamonds on the island -- he emptied his own bag and filled it with grenades... I have never known a braver man."
Van Effen was silent for a few moments, then continued. "The poor renegade Muslim priest was just that and no more: Farnholme's story, told on the spur of the moment, was completely untrue, but typical of the audacity of the man -- to accuse someone else of what he was doing himself... And just one final thing -- my apologies to Mr. Walters here." Van Effen smiled faintly. "Farnholme wasn't the only one who was wandering into strange cabins that night. I spent over an hour in Mr. Walters's radio room. Mr. Walters slept well. I carry things with me that ensure that people will sleep well."
Walters stared at him, then glanced at Nicolson, remembering how he had felt that next morning, and Nicolson remembered how the radio operator had looked, white, strained and sick. Van Effen caught Walters's slow nod of understanding.
"I apologise, Mr. Walters. But I had to do it, I had to send out a message. I am a skilled operator, but it took me a long time. Each time I heard footsteps in the passage outside, I died a thousand deaths. But I got my message through."
"Course, speed and position, eh?" Nicolson said grimly.
"Plus a request not to bomb the oil cargo tanks. You just wanted the ship stopped, isn't that it?"
"More or less," Van Effen admitted. "I didn't expect them to make quite so thorough a job of stopping the ship, though. On the other hand, don't forget that if I hadn't sent the message, telling them the diamonds were on board, they would probably have blown the ship sky-high."
"So we all owe our lives to you," Nicolson said bitterly. "Thank you very much." He looked at him bleakly for a long, tense moment, then swung his gaze away, his eyes so obviously unseeing that no one thought to follow his gaze. But his eyes were very far indeed from unseeing, and there could be no doubt about it now. McKinnon had moved, and moved six inches, perhaps nearer nine, in the past few minutes, not in the uncontrolled, jerky twitchings of an unconscious man in deep-reaching pain, but in the stealthy, smoothly coordinated movements of a fully conscious person concentrating on inching silently across the ground, so silently, so soundlessly, with such imperceptible speed that only a man with his nerves strung up to a pitch of hyper-sensitivity could have seen it at all. But Nicolson saw it, knew there could be no mistake at all. Where originally there had been head, shoulders and arms lying in the bar of light that streamed out through the door, now there was only the back of the black head and one tanned forearm. Slowly, unconcernedly, his face an empty, expressionless mask, Nicolson let his gaze wander back to the company. Van Effen was speaking again, watching him with speculative curiosity.
"As you will have guessed by now, Mr. Nicolson, Farnholme remained safely in the pantry during the fight because he was sitting with two million pounds in his lap and wasn't going to risk any of it for any old-fashioned virtue of courage and honour and decency. I remained in the dining-saloon because I wasn't going to fire on my allies -- and you will recall that the only time I did -- at the sailor in the conning-tower of the submarine -- I missed. A very convincing miss, I've always thought. After the initial attack no Japanese 'plane attacked us on the Viroma, when we were clearing the boat -- or afterwards: I had signalled with a torch from the top of the wheelhouse.
"Similarly the submarine did not sink us -- the captain wouldn't have been very popular had he returned to base and reported that he had sent two million pounds worth of diamonds to the bottom of the South China Sea." He smiled, again without mirth. "You may remember that I wished to surrender to that submarine -- you adopted a rather hostile view-point about that."
"Then why did that 'plane attack us?"
"Who knows?" Van Effen shrugged his shoulders. "Getting desperate, I suppose. And don't forget that it had a seaplane in attendance -- it could have picked up one or two selected survivors."
"Such as yourself?"
"Such as myself," Van Effen admitted. "Shortly after this Siran found out that I hadn't the diamonds -- he searched my bag during one of the nights we were becalmed: I saw him do it and I let him do it, and there was nothing in it anyway. And it always lessened my chances of being stabbed in the back -- which happened to his next suspect, the unfortunate Ahmed. Again he chose wrongly." He looked at Siran with unconcealed distaste. "I suppose Ahmed woke up while you were rifling his bag?"
"An unfortunate accident." Siran waved an airy hand. "My knife slipped."
"You have very little time to live, Siran." There was something curiously prophetic about the tone of Van Effen's voice, and the contemptuous smile drained slowly from Siran's face. "You are too evil to live."
"Superstitious nonsense!" The smile was back, the upper lip curled over the even white teeth.
"We shall see, we shall see." Van Effen transferred his gaze to Nicolson. "That's all, Mr. Nicolson. You'll have guessed why Farnholme hit me over the head when the torpedo boat came alongside. He had to, if he was to save your lives. A very, very gallant man -- and a fast thinker." He turned and looked at Miss Plenderleith. "And you gave me quite a fright, too, when you said Farnholme had left all his stuff on the island. Then I realised right away that he couldn't have done that, because he'd never have a chance of going back there again. So I knew you must have it." He looked at her compassionately. "You are a very courageous lady, Miss Plenderleith. You deserved better than this."
He finished speaking, and again the deep, heavy silence fell over the council house. Now and again the little boy whimpered in his uneasy sleep, a small frightened sound, but Gudrun rocked and soothed him in her arms and by and by he lay still. Yamata was staring down at the stones, the thin aquiline face dark and brooding, seemingly in no hurry to move off. The prisoners were almost all looking at Van Effen, their expressions ranging from astonishment to blank incredulity. Behind them stood the guards, ten or twelve in all, alert and watchful and their guns ready in their hands. Nicolson risked a last quick look out through the lighted doorway, felt the breath checking in his throat and the almost unconscious tightening of his fists. The doorway and the lighted oblong beyond it were completely empty. McKinnon had gone. Slowly, carelessly, easing out his pent-up breath in a long soundless sigh, Nicolson looked away -- and found Van Effen's speculative eyes full upon him. Speculative -- and understanding. Even as Nicolson watched, Van Effen looked sideways through the door for a long, meaningful moment, looked back at Nicolson again. Nicolson felt the chill wave of defeat wash through his mind, wondered if he could get to Van Effen's throat before he spoke. But that would do no good, it would only postpone the inevitable. Even if he killed him -- but Nicolson knew he was fooling himself, he hadn't a chance, and even if he had, even to save themselves, he could do Van Effen no harm. He owed Van Effen a life -- Peter's. Van Effen could have freed himself very easily that morning -- the clam hadn't been all that large. He could have let Peter go and released himself by the use of both his hands: but he had elected, instead, to stand there in agony with the child in his arms and have his leg badly mauled and cut... Van Effen was smiling at him, and Nicolson knew it was too late to stop him from speaking.
"Beautifully done, wasn't it, Mr. Nicolson?"
Nicolson said nothing. Captain Yamata lifted his head and looked puzzled. "What was beautifully done, Colonel?"
"Oh, just the whole operation." Van Effen waved his hand. "From beginning to end." He smiled deprecatingly, and Nicolson could feel the blood pounding in his pulse.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Yamata growled. He rose to his feet. "Time we were going. I can hear the truck coming."
"Very well." Van Effen flexed his wounded leg stiffly: with the clam bite and the shrapnel wound in his thigh it was almost useless to him. "To see your colonel? tonight?"
"Inside the hour," Yamata said briefly. "tonight Colonel Kiseki entertains important headmen and chiefs in his villa. His son lies dead, but duty crushes grief. Crushes it, I say, not kills it. But the sight of all these prisoners will lighten his saddened heart."
Nicolson shivered. Someone, he thought wryly, walking over his grave. Even without the almost sadistic anticipation in Yamata's voice, he had no illusions as to what lay in store for himself. For a moment he thought of all the stories he had heard of Japanese atrocities in China, then resolutely pushed the thought away. An empty mind on a razor edge was his only hope, he knew, and that no hope at all. Not even with McKinnon out there, for what could McKinnon do except get himself killed. The thought that the bo'sun might try to make good his own escape never crossed Nicolson's mind. McKinnon just wasn't made that way... Van Effen was speaking again.
"And afterwards? When the colonel has seen the prisoners? You have quarters for them?"
"They won't need quarters," Yamata said brutally. "A burial party will be all that's required."
"I'm not joking, Captain Yamata," Van Effen said stiffly.
"Neither am I, Colonel." Yamata smiled, said no more. In the sudden silence they could hear the squeal of brakes and the blipping of an accelerator as the truck drew up in the middle of the kampong. Then Captain Findhorn cleared his throat.
"I am in charge of our party, Captain Yamata. Let me remind you of international wartime conventions." His voice was low and husky, but steady for all that. "As a captain in the British Mercantile Marine, I demand-----"
"Be quiet!" Yamata's voice was almost a shout, and his face was twisted in ugliness. He lowered his voice until it was almost a whisper, a caressing murmur more terrifying by far than a roar of anger. "You demand nothing, Captain. You are in no position to demand anything. International conventions! Bah! I spit at international conventions. These are for the weak, for simpletons and for children. The strong have no need for them. Colonel Kiseki has never heard of them. All Colonel Kiseki knows is that you have killed his son." Yamata shivered elaborately. "I fear no man on earth, but I fear Colonel Kiseki. Everyone fears Colonel Kiseki. At any time he is a terrible man. Ask your friend there. He has heard of him." He pointed at Telak, standing in the background between two armed guards.
"He is not a man." All Telak's left side was ridged and lumped in long streaks of coagulated blood. "He is a fiend. God will punish Colonel Kiseki."
"Ah, so?" Yamata said something quickly in Japanese, and Telak staggered back as a rifle butt jabbed cruelly into his face. "Our allies," Yamata purred apologetically, "but they have to be educated. In particular, they must not speak ill of our senior army officers... At any time, I said, Colonel Kiseki is a terrible man. But now that his only son has been killed..." He allowed his voice to trail off into silence.
"What will Colonel Kiseki do?" There was no trace of emotion, of any feeling in Van Effen's voice. "Surely the women and children------"
"They will be the first to go -- and they will take a long time going." Captain Yamata might have been discussing arrangements for a garden party. "Colonel Kiseki is a connoisseur, an artist in this sort of thing -- it is an education for lesser men such as myself to watch him. He thinks mental suffering is no less important than physical pain." Yamata was warming to his subject, and finding it more than pleasant. "For instance, his main attention will be directed towards Mr. Nicolson here."
"Inevitably," Van Effen murmured.
"Inevitably. So he will ignore Mr. Nicolson -- at first, that is. He will concentrate instead on the child. But he may spare the boy, I don't know, he has a strange weakness for very small children." Yamata frowned, then his face cleared. "So he will pass on to the girl here -- the one with the scarred face. Siran tells me she and Nicolson are very friendly, to say the least." He looked at Gudrun for a long moment of time, and the expression on his face woke murder in Nicolson's heart. "Colonel Kiseki has rather a special way with the ladies -- especially the young one: a rather ingenious combination of the green bamboo bed and the water treatment. You have heard of them, perhaps, Colonel?"
"I have heard of them." For the first time that evening Van Effen smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile, and Nicolson felt fear for the first time, the overwhelming certainty of ultimate defeat. Van Effen was toying with him, the cat with the mouse, sadistically lending false encouragement while waiting for the moment to pounce. "Yes, indeed I have heard of them. It should be a most interesting performance. I presume I shall be permitted to watch the -- ah -- festivities?"
"You shall be our guest of honour, my dear Colonel," Yamata purred.
"Excellent, excellent. As you say, it should be most educative." Van Effen looked at him quiz/ically, waved a lackadaisical hand towards the prisoners. "You think it likely that Colonel Kiseki will -- ah -- interview them all? Even the wounded?"
"They murdered his son," Yamata answered flatly.
"Quite so. They murdered his son." Van Effen looked again at the prisoners, and his eyes were bleak and cold. "But one of them also tried to murder me. I don't think Colonel Kiseki would miss just one of them, would he?"
Yamata raised his eyebrows. "I'm not quite certain that..."
"One of them tried to kill me," Van Effen said harshly. "I have a personal score to settle. I would take it as a great favour, Captain Yamata, to be able to settle that score now."
Yamata looked away from the soldier who was pouring the diamonds back into the torn bag and stroked his chin. Nicolson could once more feel the blood pounding in his pulse, forced himself to breathe quietly, normally. He doubted if anyone else knew what was going on.
"I suppose it is the least you are entitled to -- we owe you a very great deal. But the colonel-----" Suddenly the doubt and uncertainty cleared from Yamata's face, and he smiled. "But of course! You are a senior allied officer. An order from you-----"