“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?”