Passage of Arms (26 page)

The grilles at the entrance to the control section were less imposing than the outer gates, but more efficient. A Very pistol was fired to give the P.I.A.T. crew light to aim by, but the bomb only bent and jammed the long sliding bolts. A second bomb aimed at the hinges was equally unsuccessful. By this time, too, the defenders had come to their senses. A flare was lobbed from the roof of the building on to the road, and a burst of rifle fire from behind the grille forced the P.I.A.T. crew to take cover behind the outer wall where they could do no more damage. The flare from the roof was now followed by grenades. Caught in the narrow space between the outer wall and the jail itself, the attackers began to suffer casualties.

However, they were well-trained and ably led. The surprise attack having failed, they set about blasting their way in. With the aid of smoke grenades and covering fire from across the road outside, more men were rushed through the broken outer gates. They had orders to work round the sides of the building, deal with the defenders on the roof, and then dynamite their way through from the rear.

Inside the control section, Major Gani, whose interrogation of Voychinski had been interrupted at an interesting point, was on the telephone to General Iskaq at his headquarters in the Inner Zone.

"No, sir," he was saying, "I cannot tell you how strong the attacking force is. It is impossible to estimate. But they are well armed, with machine-guns and an anti-tank weapon of some kind. Our guards are armed with only rifles and grenades. It is imperative that you send armoured cars and troops."

"Anti-tank weapons?"

"They burst open the main gate with two shots."

The General hesitated. Only four of his ten obsolete armoured cars were at that moment capable of taking the road. The rest had mechanical trouble of one sort or another. Three, which were awaiting spare parts from Italy, had been out of commission for months. The thought of exposing even one of the effective cars to the fire of anti-tank weapons made his heart sink.

He put a touch of impatience into his voice.
 
"Unless they destroy the outer wall first, they cannot use such long-range weapons against the building. The jail is of brick. Every window is barred. You have the main gate covered. Why do you need more troops?"

"These guards are not troops/' Major Gani replied. He knew that he had made a mistake in mentioning the anti-tank weapons, and tried to regain the initiative. "I must remind you, sir," he went on quickly, "that we are holding important prisoners here. This is an attempt to free them."

"Of course. But they will not be freed."

"Then send troops, sir."

"They will not be freed," the General repeated sharply. "Better if they should all be killed."

"You authorise me to kill those five prisoners, sir, including the American and British subjects?"

"It would be the insurgents who would be held responsible. But that will not be necessary. We will keep them. Has the white man talked yet?"

"No, sir.
 
He . . ."

Somewhere overhead a grenade burst, and slabs of plaster fell down from the ceiling of the head jailer's office from which Major Gani was speaking. As the plaster dust billowed up, he heard the General asking if they had been cut off.

He managed to croak into the mouthpiece, "Send troops," before the dust forced him to start coughing; then, he hung up. If the General were left wondering what had happened, so much the better. The troops would be dispatched with more urgency.

He had misread the General's thought processes. The General was a hard man to stampede. So far, only about half of the available Party men had been armed with weapons from the intercepted shipments, and they had very little ammunition. Subsequent interceptions would no doubt improve that position, but, until they did, the 'militia' was not effective. As far as the General was concerned, the Inner Zone plan was still in force. That meant that the garrison did not dissipate its small strength by chasing off in all directions to fight wherever the rebels chose to attack. The thrust at the power station was obviously a diversion for the attempt on the jail; but that knowledge changed nothing. The power station was difficult to defend. The jail was virtually a stronghold. Gani was an Intelligence officer, unused to battle and therefore over-anxious. His reckless demand for armoured cars showed that. He must learn that there was more to soldiering than he had realised. The experience might make him more respectful.

The General's only misgiving at that moment concerned his authorisation to kill the white prisoners. It would be annoying if Gani lost his head and killed them prematurely. For a moment or two he considered telephoning the jail and countermanding the authorisation; but he concluded finally that any hint of indecision on his part could be misinterpreted just then. If there were a serious change in the situation at the jail, Gani would obviously report it. Meanwhile, it was best to leave things as they were.

At that moment, in fact, the situation at the jail was changing more rapidly than even Major Gani knew. There had been fighting on the roof, and the jail guards up there had been cornered by the water tank. It was only a matter of time before the enemy winkled them out and gained access to the stairs leading below. With a steadiness and decision which would have surprised the General Major Gani prepared to evacuate the control section and fall back behind the grilles and steel doors of the men's cell block. What he did not know was that, under cover of the roof fighting, a party had made its way to the rear of the building and was at that moment setting demolition charges in one of the drains.

Orders had been given to remove Sutan and Voychinski from the interrogation rooms and transfer them immediately to cells in the men's block, when the man who had taped the charges lighted the fuse.

IV

Greg's cell was less than a hundred feet from the explosion. The blast wave slammed him against the wall, smashed the light fitting, and snatched the zinc screen out of the window embrasure as if it had been paper.

Since the attack had begun, he had been sitting there as wretched and perplexed as a child listening to a quarrel between adults. Outside in the corridor, there had been some confused shouting at first, and then the guards, apparently in response to an order, had all left. The other prisoners in that section had begun to carry on excited conversations in Malay through the door grilles. The exercise yard had been quiet. The sounds had been coming from the other side of the jail. He had started then to worry about Dorothy. If, as it seemed, there were some sort of jail riot going on, she could be in danger.

Now, as he got to his feet and went to the unscreened window, he could see a cloud of dust and smoke drifting across the moonlit yard. At the same moment, there was the crash of a grille opening along the corridor behind him and the sound of running, struggling, shouting men. Then, the air was shattered by a long burst of submachine-gun fire and the shouts changed to screams.

The Committee member in charge of the raiding force was a former army officer, Colonel Oda, whom Hallett had met on one of his trips into insurgent territory. The Colonel had a protruding lower lip which curled inauspiciously at the smallest hint of opposition to his wishes ; but he was not wholly unreasonable, and had been persuaded in the end that the proposal of his second-in-command to kill the American and British
Vice-Consuls
and commandeer their cars was both politically unsound and tactically unnecessary. On the subject of those in the jail, however, he had been adamant. He and he alone would decide what was to be done with them; prisoners and guards, white or brown. After further discussion he had agreed, reluctantly, to allow the foreign diplomatic representatives to accompany the attacking force. They would go as neutral observers of the justice meted out by the Committee of the Faithful.

The reason for even that concession had soon become apparent. Neutral or no, the observers had been ordered, before the assault began, to park their beflagged cars bumper to bumper fifty yards from the jail entrance, in order to provide cover for the Colonel's battle headquarters among the trees beside the road. During the early stages of the fighting, Hallett and Wilson had been obliged to crouch behind the cars while carbine bullets from the roof of the jail had ripped through the door panels into the upholstery.

Half an hour after the first P.I.A.T. mortar bomb had been fired, the demolition charge blew out the rear wall of the control section. Two minutes after that, the sound of firing ceased. There was some shouting. Then, the second-in-command appeared at the main gate and called out that the place was taken. The Colonel walked across the road. He took no notice of Hallett and Wilson. They exchanged questioning glances, then left the cars and followed him.

As they went through the main gate the damaged grilles beyond were being levered open by the men inside. Lanterns had been brought. By their yellow light it was possible to see a group of guards huddled by an office door with their hands clasped behind their heads. The bodies of the guards who had been killed in the forecourt were lying face downwards at the foot of the steps. Their blood had drained into a broad puddle. The Colonel did not trouble to walk round it.

The blast of the demolition charge had brought down a great deal of plaster. The dust of it hanging in the air made Hallett and Wilson cough. It did not seem to affect the Colonel. He was talking to his second-in-command. When he saw the captured guards, however, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder at Hallett.

"Do you know where your American and British prisoners are in this place?" he asked.

"I know where they were, Colonel." Hallett began coughing again.

The Colonel looked at one of the soldiers covering the guards. "Keys," he said.

The soldier looked at the six terrified guards. Three of them had long key chains at their belts. The soldier grinned and took out a knife. Then, he stepped forward and swung the knife upwards. The guard screamed as the double blade of the knife slashed through the belt and across his stomach simultaneously. As he doubled up in agony, the soldier snatched the belt away and handed the keys to the Colonel. The other two guards with keys hastily unfastened their belts and let them drop to the floor. The soldier with the knife laughed.

The Colonel pulled his lip in and nodded to Hallett.

"You may release your prisoners," he said; "but do not try to take them away from here."

"Very well, Colonel."

But the Colonel was already walking on. "Voychinski can wait," he was saying to the second-in-command. "The one who matters is our Sutan."

The guard with the stomach wound had sunk to the floor and was looking down stupidly at the blood pouring over his hands. Wilson picked up one of the belts and took the key chain off it. His face was white as he looked at Hallett.

"If you want to see that Nilsen's all right," he said quietly, "I'll look after the two women."

Hallett nodded.
 
"Okay."

He took the other belt and went on down the corridor. The demolition charge had wrecked the building here, and he had to pick his way over piles of rubble to get to the passage leading to the men's cell block. The soldiers there had seen him with their Colonel and made no move to stop him. In any case, they were too busy stripping the bodies of the dead guards to care much about a white man. He stumbled on, using the flashlight from his car to light the way and shutting his ears to the cries of two men who were not yet dead. From beyond the open grille ahead of him came the sound of prisoners calling to one another and pounding on the doors of their cells. One man was screaming hysterically that the place was on fire and that they would all be burnt alive. As Hallett went along trying to make out the cell numbers, he shouted in Malay that everything was all right and that all prisoners would soon be released. Under cover of the excited cries that followed this announcement he called out quietly: "Mr. Nilsen."

"Here."

He had already passed the cell. He went back, fumbling with the flashlight and the keys, and called again.

"Where are you? Keep talking."

"Right here. Is that Hallett? What's going on? Is my wife all right? What's happened?" He was trying, not quite successfully, to keep a tremor out of his voice.

Hallett began trying the keys. "Take it easy, Mr. Nilsen. I've got to find the right key. The jail's been taken over temporarily by the insurgents. The British Consul's gone along to get your wife and Mrs. Lukey."

"Is she all right?"

"There was no fighting on that side. They may be scared, but I'm pretty sure they're not hurt. Wait a minute. This looks as if it might be the right one."

A moment later he had the cell door open, and saw the prisoner's face livid and desperate in the beam of the flashlight.

Hallett made himself smile. "Dr. Livingstone, I presume," he said, and then: "Steady, Mr. Nilsen. Sit down a moment."

"I just want to get out of here." But he did as he was told. "It sounded as if they'd blown the whole place up," he added weakly.

"Only a bit of it. Now listen. We're in a curious sort of spot. Sutan's friends came to get him. Okay, they've got him. They won't hold this place for long, though. As soon as it starts to get light they'll be high-tailing it back to the hills. Where that leaves you and Mrs. Nilsen, I don't know, unless you ask them to take you along. Even if they'd agree, I wouldn't advise that."