Jones smiled. 'Must have been an inside job. I hear the King nearly had a heart attack!'
'What's the King got to do with my money?' Smedly-Taylor asked.
'Nothing.' Jones began counting the money. There were, indeed, three hundred and sixty dollars, enough for twelve Rusa tikus haunches at thirty dollars each, which was their real price, not sixty dollars as Smedly-Taylor believed. Jones smiled to himself thinking that Smedly-Taylor could well afford to pay double, now that he had so much money. He wondered how Smedly-Taylor had managed to effect the theft, but he knew Smedly-Taylor was right to keep a tight rein on his secrets. Like the other three Rusa tikus. The ones that he and Blakely had cooked and eaten in secret this afternoon. Blakely had eaten one, he had eaten the other two. And the two added to the one he had just devoured was the reason that he was satiated. 'My God,' he said, rubbing his stomach, 'don't think I could eat as much every day!'
'You'll get used to it,' Sellars said. 'I'm still hungry. Try and get some more, there's a good chap.'
Smedly-Taylor said, 'How about a rubber or two?'
'Admirable,' said Sellars. 'Who'll we get as a fourth?'
'Samson?'
Jones laughed. 'I'll bet he'd be very upset if he knew about the meat.'
'How long do you think it'll take our fellows to come to Singapore?'
Sellars asked, trying to conceal his anxiety.
Smedly-Taylor looked at Jones. 'A few days. At the most a week. If the Japs here are really going to give in.'
'If they leave us the wireless, they mean to.'
'I hope so. My God, I hope so.'
They looked at one another, the goodness of the food forgotten, lost in the worry of the future.
'Nothing to worry about. It's — it's going to be all right,' Smedly-Taylor said, outwardly confident. But inside he was panicked, thinking of Maisie and his sons and daughter, wondering if they were alive.
Just before dawn a four-engined airplane roared over the camp. Whether it was Allied or Japanese no one knew, but at the first sound of the engines the men had been panic-stricken waiting for the expected bombs that would rain down. When the bombs did not fall and the airplane droned away, the panic built once more. Perhaps they've forgotten us — they'll never come.
Ewart groped his way into the hut and shook Peter Marlowe awake.
'Peter, there's a rumor that the plane circled the airfield — that a man parachuted out of it!'
'Did you see it?'
'No.'
'Did you talk to anyone who did?'
'No. It's just a rumor.' Ewart tried not to show his fear. 'I'm scared to death that as soon as the fleet comes into the harbor the Japs'll go crazy.'
'They won't!'
'I went up to the Camp Commandant's office. There's a whole group of chaps there, they keep giving out news bulletins. The last one said that —'
for a moment Ewart couldn't speak, then he continued, 'that the casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are over three hundred thousand. They say people are still dying like flies there — that this hell-bomb does something to the air and keeps on killing. My God, if that happened to London and I was in charge of a camp like this I'd — I'd slaughter everyone. I would, by God I would.' Peter Marlowe calmed him, then left the hut and walked to the gate in the gathering light. Inside, he was still afraid. He knew that Ewart was right. Such a hell-bomb was too much. But he knew, of a sudden, a great truth, and he blessed the brains that had invented the bombs. Only the bombs had saved Changi from oblivion. Oh yes, he told himself, whatever happens because of the bombs, I will bless the first two and the men who made them. Only they have given me back my life when there was truly no hope of life. And though the first two have consumed a multitude, by their very vastness they have saved the lives of countless hundred thousand others. Ours.' And theirs. By the Lord God, this is the truth.
He found himself beside the main gate. The guards were there, as usual.
Their backs were toward the camp, but they still had rifles. In their hands.
Peter Marlowe watched them curiously. He was sure that these men would blindly die in defense of men who only a day ago were their despised enemies. My God, Peter Marlowe thought, how incredible some people are.
Then suddenly, out of the growing light of dawn, he saw an apparition. A strange man, a real man who had breadth and thickness, a man who looked like a man. A white man. He wore a strange green uniform and his parachute boots were polished and his beret medal flashed like fire and he had a revolver on his wide belt and there was a neat field pack on his back.
The man walked the center of the road, his heels click-clicking until he was in front of the guardhouse.
The man — now Peter Marlowe could see that he wore the rank of a captain — the captain stopped and glared at the guards and then he said,
'Salute, you bloody bastards.'
When the guards stared at him stupidly, the captain went up to the nearest guard and ripped the bayoneted rifle out of his hands and stuck it viciously in the ground, and said again, 'Salute me, you bloody bastards.'
The guards stared at him nervously. Then the captain pulled out his revolver and fired a single round into the earth at the feet of the guards and said, 'Salute, you bloody bastards.'
Awata, the Japanese sergeant, Awata the Fearful, sweating and nervous, stepped forward and bowed. Then they all bowed.
'That's better, you bloody bastards,' the captain said. Then he tore the rifle out of each man's hands and threw it on the ground. 'Get back in the bloody guardhouse.'
