'But we had a pact!' Larkin shouted. 'We agreed, the three of us, that we'd not cook anything weird without telling the other first.'
'I told Mac and he agreed.'
'But I didn't, dammit!'
'Oh come on, Colonel! We've had to catch them and cook them secretly and listen to you say how good the cook-up was. We're just as squeamish as you.'
'Well, next time I want to know. That's a bloody order!'
'Yes, sir!' Peter Marlowe chuckled.
They delivered the container to the hospital cookhouse. To the special tiny cookhouse that fed the desperately sick.
When they got back to the bungalow Mac was waiting. His skin was gray-yellow and his eyes were bloodshot and his hands shaking, but he was over the fever. He could smile again.
'Good to have you back, cobber,' Larkin said, sitting down.
'Ay.'
Peter Marlowe absently took out the little piece of rag. 'Oh, by the way,'
he said with studied negligence, 'this might come in handy sometime.'
Mac unwrapped the rag without interest.
'Oh my bloody word!' Larkin said.
'Dammit, Peter,' Mac said, his fingers shaking, 'are you trying to give me a heart attack?'
Peter Marlowe kept his voice as flat as his face, enjoying his excitement hugely. 'No point in getting all upset about nothing.' Then he could contain his smile no longer. He beamed.
'You and your blasted Pommy underplay.' Larkin tried to be sour, but he was beaming too. 'Where'd you get it, cobber?'
Peter Marlowe shrugged.
'Stupid question. Sorry, Peter,' Larkin said apologetically.
Peter Marlowe knew he would be never asked again. It was far better they did not know about the village.
Now it was dusk.
Larkin was guarding. Peter Marlowe was guarding. Under cover of his mosquito net, Mac joined the condenser. Then, unable to wait any longer, with a prayer he fiddled the connecting wire into the electric source.
Sweating, he listened into the single earphone.
An agony of waiting. It was suffocating under the net, and the concrete walls and concrete floor held the heat of the vanishing sun. A mosquito droned angrily. Mac cursed but did not try to find it and kill it, for suddenly there was static in the earphone.
His tense fingers, wet with the sweat that ran down his arms, slipped on the screwdriver. He dried them. Delicately he found the screw that turned the turner and began to twist, gently, oh so gently. Static. Only static. Then suddenly he heard the music. It was a Glenn Miller recording.
The music stopped, and an announcer said, 'This is Calcutta. We continue the Glenn Miller recital with his recording 'Moonlight Serenade.''
Through the doorway Mac could see Larkin squatting in the shadows, and beyond him men walking the corridor between the rows of cement bungalows. He wanted to rush out and shout, 'You laddies want to hear the news in a little while? I've got Calcutta tuned in!'
Mac listened for another minute, then disconnected the radio and carefully put the water bottles back into their sheaths of green-gray felt and left them carelessly on the beds. There would be a news broadcast from Calcutta at ten, so to save time Mac hid the wire and the earphone under the mattress instead of putting them into the third bottle.
He had been hunched under the net for so long that he had a crick in his back, and he groaned when he stood up.
Larkin looked back from his station outside. 'What's the matter, cobber?
Can't you sleep?'
'Nay, laddie,' said Mac, coming out to squat beside him.
'You should take it easy, first day out of hospital.' Larkin did not need to be told that it worked. Mac's eyes were lit with excitement. Larkin punched him playfully. 'You're all right, you old bastard.'
'Where's Peter?' Mac asked, knowing that he was guarding by the showers.
'Over there. Stupid bugger's just sitting. Look at him.'
'Hey, mahlu sana!' Mac called out.
Peter Marlowe already knew that Mac had finished, but he got up and walked back and said, 'Mahlu sendiris,' which means 'Mahlu yourself.'
He, too, did not need to be told.
'How about a game of bridge?' Mac asked.
'Who's the fourth?'
'Hey, Gavin,' Larkin called out. 'You want to make a fourth?'
