'If we're going to get caught, we're going to get caught.' Larkin was serious and hard-faced. 'It's either in the cards or it isn't.'
'Hey Peter,' Ewart called out as he saw Peter Marlowe leaving the hut.
'You forgot your armband.'
'Oh, thanks.' Peter Marlowe swore to himself as he went back to his bunk.
'Forgot the damned thing.'
'I'm always doing it. Can't be too careful.'
'That's right. Thanks again.'
Peter Marlowe joined the men walking the path beside the wall. He followed it north and turned the corner and before him was the gate. He slipped off his armband and felt suddenly naked and felt that the men who passed or approached were looking at him and wondering why this officer was not wearing an armband. Ahead, two hundred yards, was the end of the road west. The barricade was open now, for some of the work parties were returning from their day's work. Most of the laborers were exhausted, hauling the huge trailers with the stumps of trees that were dug with so much labor out of the swamps, destined for the camp cookhouses. Peter Marlowe remembered that the day after tomorrow he was going on such a party. He didn't mind the almost daily work parties to the airfield. That was easy work. But the wood detail was different. Hauling the logs was dangerous work. Many got ruptured from the lack of the tackle that would make the work easy. Many broke limbs and sprained ankles. They all had to go — the fit ones, once or twice a week, officers as well as men, for the cookhouse consumed much firewood — and it was fair that those who were fit collected for those who were not.
Beside the gate was the MP and on the opposite side of the gate the Korean guard leaned against the wall smoking, lethargically watching the men who passed. The MP was looking at the work party shuffling through the gate. There was one man lying on the trailer. One or two usually ended up that way, but they had to be very tired, or very sick, to be hauled back home to Changi.
Peter Marlowe slipped past the distracted guards and joined the men milling the huge concrete square.
He found his way into one of the cellblocks and began picking his way up the metal stairways and over the beds and bed rolls. There were men everywhere. On the stairways, in the corridors, and in the open cells —f our or five to a cell designed for one man. He felt the growing horror of pressure from above, from below, from all around. The stench was nauseating. Stench from rotting bodies. Stench of unwashed human bodies. Stench of a generation of confined human bodies. Stench of walls, prison walls.
Peter Marlowe found Cell 54. The door was shut, so he opened it and went in. Mac and Larkin were already there.
'Christ, the smell of this place is killing me.'
'Me too, cobber,' said Larkin. He was sweating. Mac was sweating. The air was close and the concrete walls were moist with their own wall-sweat and stained with the mold of years of wall-sweat.
The cell was about seven feet wide and eight feet long and ten feet high.
In the center of the cell, cemented to one wall, was a bed — a solid block of concrete three feet high and three feet wide and six feet long.
Protruding from the bed was a concrete pillow. In one corner of the cell was a toilet - a hole in the floor which joined to the sewer. The sewers no longer worked. There was a tiny barred window nine feet up one wall, but the sky could not be seen because the wall was two feet thick.
'Mac. We'll give them a few minutes, then get out of this bloody place,'
Larkin said.
'Ay, laddie.'
'At least let's open the door,' Peter Marlowe said, the sweat pouring off him.
'Better keep it closed, Peter. Safer,' Larkin replied uneasily.
'I'd rather be dead than live here.'
'Ay. Thank God for the outside.'
'Hey, Larkin.' Mac indicated the blankets lying on the concrete bed. 'I don't understand where the men are who live in the cell. They can't all be on a work party.'
'I don't know either.' Larkin was getting nervous. 'Let's get out of here…'
The door opened and the King came in beaming with pleasure. 'Hi, you guys!' In his arms were some packages and he stood aside as Tex came in, also laden. 'Put 'em on the bed, Tex.'
Tex put down the electric hot plate and the large stewpan and kicked the door shut as they watched, astonished.
'Go get some water,' the King said to Tex.
'Sure.'
'What's going on? Why did you want to see us?' said Larkin.
The King laughed. 'We're going to have a cook-up.'
'For Christ sake! You mean to say you got us in here just for that? Why the hell couldn't we have done it in our billet?' Larkin was furious. The King merely looked at him and grinned. He turned his back and opened a package. Tex returned with the water and put the stewpan on the electric stove.
'Rajah, look, what-' Peter Marlowe stopped.
The King was emptying the best part of two pounds of katchang idju beans into the water. Then he added salt and two heaping spoons of sugar. Then he turned around and opened another package wrapped in banana-leaf and held it up.
'Mother of God!'
There was a sudden stunned silence in the cell.
