“What’s between you two?” the King asked.
“I nearly killed him. Once.”
Suddenly the conversation ceased and both men listened intently. All they could hear was a sigh, an undercurrent. The King looked around quickly. Seeing nothing extraordinary, he got up and climbed through the window, Peter Marlowe close behind. The men in the hut were listening too.
The King peered towards the corner of the jail. Nothing seemed to be wrong. Men still walked up and down.
“What do you think?” the King asked softly.
“Don’t know,” said Peter Marlowe, concentrating. Men were still walking by the jail, but now an almost imperceptible quickening had been added to their walk.
“Hey, look,” Tex whispered.
Rounding the corner of the jail and heading up the slope towards them was Captain Brough. Then other officers began to appear behind him, all heading for various enlisted men’s huts.
“Got to mean trouble,” Tex said sourly.
“Maybe it’s a search,” Max said.
The King was on his knees in an instant, unlocking the black box. Peter Marlowe said hurriedly, “I’ll see you later.”
“Here,” the King said, throwing him a pack of Kooas, “see you tonight if you like.”
Peter Marlowe raced out of the hut and down the slope. The King jerked out the three watches that were buried in the coffee beans and got up. He thought for a moment, then he stood on his chair and stuffed the three watches into the atap thatch. He knew that all the men had seen the new hiding place but he did not care, for that could not be helped now. Then he locked the black box and Brough was at the door.
“All right, you guys, outside.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Peter Marlowe was thinking of nothing except his water bottle as he shoved through the sweating hive of men forming up on the asphalt road. He tried desperately to remember if he had filled the bottle, but he could not remember for sure.
He ran up the stairs from the street towards his hut. But the hut was already empty and a soiled Korean guard already stood in the doorway. Peter Marlowe knew that he would not be allowed to pass, so he turned back and ducked under the lee of the hut and up the other side. He ran for the other door and was beside his bunk with his water bottle in his hand before the guard saw him.
The Korean swore at him sullenly and walked over and motioned for him to put the water bottle back. But Peter Marlowe saluted with a flourish and said in Malay, which most of the guards understood, “Greetings, sir. We may have a long time to wait, and I beg thee, let me take my water bottle with me, for I have dysentery.” As he spoke he shook the bottle. It was full.
The guard jerked the bottle out of his hands and sniffed it suspiciously. Then he poured some of the water onto the floor and shoved the bottle back at Peter Marlowe and cursed him again and pointed at the men on parade below.
Peter Marlowe bowed, weak with relief, and ran to join his group in line.
“Where the hell have you been, Peter?” Spence asked, dysentery pain adding to his anxiety.
“Never mind, I’m here.” Now that Peter Marlowe had his water bottle he was giddy. “Come on, Spence, get the bods lined up,” he said, needling him.
“Go to hell. Come on, you chaps, get into line.” Spence counted the men and then said, “Where’s Bones?”
“In hospital,” Ewart said. “Went just after breakfast. I took him myself.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me before?”
“I’ve been working in the gardens all day, for Christ sake! Pick on someone else!”
“Keep your blasted shirt on!”
But Peter Marlowe wasn’t listening to the curses and chatter and rumors. He hoped that the colonel and Mac had their water bottles too.
When his group was accounted for, Captain Spence walked along the road to Lieutenant Colonel Sellars, who was in nominal charge of four huts, and saluted. “Sixty-four, all correct, sir. Nineteen here, twenty-three in hospital, twenty-two on work parties.”
“All right, Spence.”
And as soon as Sellars had all the numbers from his four huts, he totaled them and took them up the line to Colonel Smedly-Taylor, who was responsible for ten huts. Then Smedly-Taylor took them up the line. Then the next officer took them up the line, and this procedure was repeated throughout the camp, inside and outside the jail, until totals were given to the Camp Commandant. The Camp Commandant added the figures of men inside the camp to the number of men in hospital and the number of men on work parties, and then he passed the totals over to Captain Yoshima, the Japanese interpreter. Yoshima cursed the Camp Commandant because the total was one short.
There was an aching hour of panic until the missing body was found in the cemetery. Colonel Dr. Rofer, RAMS, cursed his assistant, Colonel Dr. Kennedy, who tried to explain that it was difficult to keep a tally to the instant, and Colonel Rofer cursed him anyway and said that that was his job. Then Rofer apologetically went to the Camp Commandant, who cursed his inefficiency, and then the Camp Commandant went to Yoshima and tried to explain politely that the body had been found but it was difficult to keep numbers accurate to the second. And Yoshima cursed the Camp Commandant for inefficiency and told him that he was responsible — if he couldn’t keep a simple number perhaps it was about time another officer took charge of the camp.
While the anger sped up and down the line, Korean guards were searching the huts, particularly the officers’ huts. Here would be the radio they sought. The link, the hope of the men. They wanted to find the radio as they had found the one five months ago. But the guards sweltered as the men on parade sweltered, and their search was perfunctory.
The men sweated and cursed. A few fainted. The dysenteric streamed to the latrines. Those who were very sick squatted where they were or lay where they were and let the pain swirl and consummate. The fit did not notice the stench. The stench was normal and the stream was normal and the waiting was normal.
After three hours the search was completed. The men were dismissed. They swarmed for their huts and the shade, or lay on their beds gasping, or went to the showers and waited and fumed until the water cooled the ache from their heads.
Peter Marlowe walked out of the shower. He wrapped his sarong around his waist and went to the concrete bungalow of his friends, his unit.
“Puki ’mahlu!” Mac grinned. Major McCoy was a tough little Scot who carried himself neatly erect. Twenty-five years in the Malayan jungles had etched his face deeply — that and hard liquor and hard playing and bouts of fever.
“’Mahlu senderis,” Peter Marlowe said, squatting happily. The Malay obscenity always delighted him. It had no absolute translation into English, though “puki” was a four-letter part of a woman and “’mahlu” meant “ashamed.”
“Can’t you bastards speak the King’s English for once?” Colonel Larkin said. He was lying on his mattress, which was on the floor. Larkin was short of breath from the heat and his head ached with the aftermath of malaria.
Mac winked at Peter Marlowe. “We keep explaining and nothing can get through the thickness of his head. There’s nae hope for the colonel!”
“Too right, cobber,” Peter Marlowe said, aping Larkin’s Australian accent.
“Why the hell I ever got in with you two,” Larkin groaned wearily, “I’ll never know.”
Mac grinned. “Because he’s lazy, eh, Peter? You and I do all the work, eh? An’ he sits and pretends to be bedridden — just because he’s a wee touch of malaria.”