Charlie Martz and Other Stories: The Unpublished Stories Read online

  “My file of things to do,” Clad said. “Notes in plain sight aren’t lost.” He saw Ah Min look at him curiously again.

  “You might just as well become familiar with it now, Minnie,” Clad said then. “The ones on the right are things to be done soon.” He pointed his pencil in the general direction of the darts. “The ones on the left are things to be done anytime. But sometimes my aim is off and the things to be done soon become things to be done anytime.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I see.”

  “For example,” Clad said, “that note I just filed. That’s to remind me—” He paused. “You know about the badminton thing?”

  “I heard some about it.”

  “It’s next Sunday. Here.” Clad’s dark face showed momentary concern. “That’s something we have to get on right away. Get the word about that it’s going to be here instead of K.L.”

  Ah Min said, “And the note is to remind you to write letters of explanation.”

  Clad shook his head. “I don’t have to remind myself of that. No, the one I just filed is a reminder to invite an old friend to the thing Sunday.” He nodded toward the board. “Read it. You can begin getting used to my handwriting.”

  Ah Min hesitated. “Which one is it?”

  “Somewhere on the right,” Clad said. “To be done soon.”

  She moved to the board now, pulled off one of the darts, and read the note aloud. “Phone Rad to bring up a case of Scotch from the Selangor Club Friday.”

  “No, not that one.”

  She tried another. “Find out where five-four Gurkhas are. Call Mitch for b.t.” Then looked at Clad questioningly.

  Clad nodded. Then asked, “You don’t understand it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Mitch is Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Mitchell. Fifth Battalion Fourth Prince of Wales’s Own Gurkha Rifles. I served with him during the war. So, when I heard he was somewhere down around K.L., I said to myself, get him to the badminton thing.”

  “The b.t.,” Ah Min said, still hesitantly, but nodding her head now.

  Clad smiled. “Minnie, my system just sounds complicated. If it wasn’t absolutely simple, I wouldn’t have any part of it.”

  Clad dictated fifteen letters that morning, and during the afternoon, Ah Min typed them. All of them announced the badminton tournament’s change of location and urged contestants to arrive early Sunday morning. All were identical but for the last paragraph. Clad varied these, adding something personal and for the most part mildly insulting to each.

  At four o’clock Ah Min left the police post. She walked past Clad’s green Riley, noticing the bullet marks from front to rear fender where Tam Lee’s Sten gunmen had swept the car. Perhaps they had been overanxious. Or Clad had an overabundance of luck. But luck couldn’t last for a man as lazy as he was. A man who never moved from his chair or noticed her dress. A man who threw darts and called her Minnie.

  She followed the main road through the village to her aunt’s house, a one-story structure made of plywood, bamboo, and roofed with attap; and as soon as she was inside, while her aunt silently prepared the rice, Ah Min composed the message to Tam Lee.

  She had planned to wait at least two weeks before contacting him; but that was out of the question now. If Clad was having her watched, which she doubted, then she would have to be that much more careful. But regardless of the risk she had to see Tam Lee within the next two days.

  It wouldn’t be necessary to tell him she was working at the police post. He would know that already. Nor would she have to sign it. She wrote: Fifteen villages will be left without police officials Sunday. I must see you. Please come to me or have me taken to you. Please. That was all.

  At dusk she left the note in the hole beneath the mangosteen tree beyond the north end of the village. Returning home, she saw Yeop, Clad’s office clerk, standing in front of his house watching her. As she passed him she looked up and smiled and Yeop seemed to lose his poise. As if he had been caught stealing, Ah Min thought. She continued on unhurriedly. Yeop would be less trouble than Clad.

  Before dawn Ah Min went to the mangosteen tree again. The note had been picked up.

  Clad was out of the office most of the day, seeing to the building of stands for Sunday, so Ah Min’s time was her own.

  She pictured Tam Lee reading her note, deliberating over it, convincing himself that it wasn’t a police trick. And finally he would contact her. She was certain of that. He would remember their months together in the jungle camps and hurry to her. He would be delighted and show his delight and ask her to return with him. That was something else to think about and decide.

  When Clad came in later in the afternoon, Ah Min reported that she had nothing to do.

  Clad shook his head. “I don’t have any letters.”

  “Or forms or things to be typewritten?”

  “No forms or things.” He looked beyond her. “Unless you want to give me a report on my ‘things to do.’”

  She looked at the corkboard. There were seven darts there, all grouped on the left or things to do anytime side. “Just list them on a sheet of paper,” Clad said. “We’ll call it our weekend report. All right?”

  Ah Min gathered the notes, carrying them to her desk in the outer office. But a moment later she was back.

  “I’m afraid I made a mistake.”

  “What?”

  “This note with ‘things to do anytime,’ but it should have been with ‘things to do soon.’ I think yesterday when I read it—when you were explaining this system?—I replaced it on the wrong side.”

  Clad unfolded the note. He was on his feet at once, studied the wall map behind him, then sat down again and picked up his telephone.

  “Operator . . . yes, Clad . . . I want to contact a Colonel G. A. H. Mitchell, fifth-fourth Gurkhas, either at Kajang or Seremban . . . Yes, I’ll wait.”

  Ah Min went to her desk in the outer office. She sat looking at the notes but listening to Clad. She heard him say, “Mitch!” almost shouting it, and who this was and how long it had been and something about India. There was frequent laughter. Finally Clad brought up the badminton event, inviting him, and after that there was a long silence.

  The man on the other end of the line was doing most of the talking now. From Clad there was only an occasional yes or no or mumbled two-syllable sound. Ah Min began to lose interest. She took out memo sheets and placed carbon paper between them carefully.

  Yeop was still watching her, she knew. But she was already growing accustomed to this. As if, because his watchfulness was so obvious, there was nothing to fear from it.

  Clad’s voice came to her again.

  “Of all the days to pick for a field problem . . . I know, I should have phoned before but . . . Mitch”—she pictured Clad suddenly straightening up—“Mitch, why not march them up here? It would be perfect! . . . Uh-huh . . . No, let them bash about in the woods for the day and march back Sunday afternoon . . . Yeah . . . Mitch, you’re the C.O., you know . . .”

  Ah Min shook her head very faintly, thinking, the most important thing in his life is a badminton contest. That followed closely by drinking Scotch whiskey stengahs (which she assumed must be one of his habits), or just sitting with his feet up and doing nothing.

  It was some moments before she realized Clad had rung off.

  Tam Lee came late that night, though not the way she expected he would.

  There was no sound. She opened her eyes in the darkness feeling someone close to her sleeping mat, and as she stirred, a hand closed dimly over her mouth. She was pulled to her feet; a gun barrel pressed into her back, yet there were still no sounds; none from her aunt in the next room, not even of footsteps as they left the house, keeping close to the shadows, or as they darted across the open yard to enter first the scrub brush then the tangled, clawing darkness of the jungle.

  They moved hurriedly, one man in front, one behind, and now there were swishing, rustling sounds and after minutes of this she heard th
e in-and-out gasps of her breathing. But no one spoke; not during the entire half hour of their travel, not until they had stopped in a clearing and stood listening for perhaps a full minute. Then one of the men cleared his throat, a short grunt of a sound, and said, “We have her.”

  They came into the clearing from three sides, a dozen men, no more than that; all of them heavily armed, all of them looking at Ah Min. She watched them, her gaze moving carefully from one to the next, then stopped.

  “Tam—”

  He was hatless, in plain, faded khaki, a carbine under his left arm pointed to the ground; but now, as Ah Min moved toward him, the barrel rose abruptly.

  “Tam?”

  “Say what you have to say.”

  She hesitated. “You don’t trust me?”

  “I have no reason to.”

  “No reason!” She paused to let her tone become quiet again. “After the months we were together?”

  “You’ve been to Taiping since then,” Tam Lee said flatly.

  “Do you think I wanted to go there?”

  “People come out of Taiping with our cause washed from their minds.”

  “I thought only of you,” Ah Min said quietly.

  “And now you work for the police.”

  “In the office of the police. There is a difference.” She had sensed the change in him, the holding back, the distrust; just as she knew his face was more drawn, starkly hollowed and impassive now, even though she could not see him clearly in the darkness.

  “Do you think I inform on you?”

  It was then, when Tam Lee said nothing but continued to stare at her, that she became afraid and could feel even the presence of fear inside her body. But don’t show it, she thought. Or cry or scream or run or try to hide—

  Quietly, continuing in the Hokkien dialect they were using, she said, “Would I send you the message of the villages if I worked for them?”

  “Fifteen villages, each one with its police officer gone for the day.” For a moment Tam Lee seemed to smile. “They make it inviting, don’t they? ‘Take your pick,’ they’re saying. ‘Look, it’s Sunday and no one is alert. The Malay policemen sleep or visit friends because the head one is at Ladang.’”

  Ah Min watched him. “Well?”

  “But they wait with grenades and heavy weapons,” Tam Lee said. “One or more of the fifteen could be raided, so all will be ready.”

  Now the girl frowned. “They want you to attack?”

  “To show ourselves. A plan to draw us out.”

  “But why assume that?”

  “I assume nothing. Our source in Kuala Lumpur warned us weeks ago. It was the idea of the man you work for. They put it in the newspaper so it would look authentic. ‘But how do we make certain they know about it?’ someone asks. And this man you work for says, ‘I send my girl out to them. Even if they don’t read the newspaper, or even if they miss the significance of fifteen unguarded villages, the girl will see to it that they know.’”

  Ah Min shook her head. “That isn’t true.”

  “How do you prove it isn’t?”

  “How can I prove it? I came here in good faith. Beyond that I can say nothing.”

  “You can confess; admit your guilt.”

  Ah Min watched him closely, holding his gaze. “You’ve changed,” she said after a moment. “No longer sure of yourself. You would even kill me because you’re not sure what else to do.”

  “Or perhaps,” Tam Lee said, “because you mean less to me than you imagine.”

  The bluntness of his words took her by surprise. But she said, still quietly, still controlled, and not taking her eyes from his face, “Then there is no reason not to kill me, is there?”

  The terrorist shrugged and the barrel of the carbine came up. “None I can think of.”

  “Let me ask you something first.”

  “Ask it.”

  “What will you do about the fifteen villages?”

  “Stay out of them, what else?”

  “But do nothing in turn?”

  “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Truthfully?”

  Tam seemed annoyed. “I don’t lie to anyone. Not even you.”

  “Then you have changed,” Ah Min said. “A year ago you would have a counter plan. Something to make the plot blow up in their face.”

  She was thinking quickly, picturing the villages ready and waiting for a terrorist attack; then picturing Clad and Ladang and the badminton court and the newly built stands to hold more than a hundred people.

  The stands filled with police and army people—

  Of course! But be careful, she thought, keeping her excitement in check and making herself gaze at Tam honestly and straightforwardly.

  “The obvious plan seems to have escaped you,” she said.

  His expression did not change, but she imagined his mixed feeling of curiosity and suspicion.

  “What plan?”

  “To attack Ladang.”

  “A village filled with soldiers and police.”

  Ah Min nodded. “And all of them watching the games. None worried you would dare come.”

  “How many of them?”

  “Sixteen contestants. As many as a hundred spectators. Perhaps more.” She paused, her eyes remaining on Tam. “Can you picture coming out of the rubber trees on the east side of the field, coming before they know you’re there, then throwing grenades and firing into them?”

  She waited expectantly. “Can you picture them, some on the ground, others running in panic?”

  Tam was staring, his eyes on her but not seeing her, and she thought, You have him. Now put the top on.

  “Tam”—her voice soft, controlled—“kill me if you have to. But kill them too. Go to Ladang on Sunday and kill them as they sit unsuspecting and foolish. Do that and my coming here, my dying, will be for some good.”

  He was studying her again. “This could just as easily be a trap.”

  “Tam,” she murmured, “trust me. I ask for nothing more. Not even my life.”

  He walked away from her slowly, beckoned to two of his men, and squatted down to talk. After only a few minutes he was standing before her again, this time much closer.

  “I can trust you now,” he said intently. “I can trust you at this moment. But remember—and remember it well—I can kill you at any time.”

  SHE DECIDED THAT THE best place to watch would be from the police post. Here, sitting at her desk and looking out past Clad’s Riley and the lines of cars now parked along both sides of the road, then beyond and through the thinly scattered palms that edged the parade ground, she could see the newly erected stands and a portion of the badminton court. This was also the safest place. When the firing began, even though over a hundred yards away, she would drop to the floor.

  For a while she watched the villagers filing by on their way to the spectacle. Some of them would be killed, no doubt. Well, they deserved to die, Ah Min decided, for supporting the recreation of these English.

  Even the weather supports them, she thought disgustedly. Today the usual afternoon rain had held off.

  Soon then, from the reaction of the crowd, she knew the games had begun. It was shortly after this that Yeop came into the office. A carbine was slung over his shoulder.

  “Work on Sunday?” the Malay said from the doorway.

  Ah Min rolled a sheet of paper into her typewriter. “I must practice this every day to be worth my wage.” Looking at him then she sensed his self-consciousness and almost smiled.

  “Is watching me your idea or Mr. Clad’s?”

  “Watching you?”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

  “I guard the cars.”

  Ah Min smiled. “Then we can be sure none will run away.”

  Yeop fumbled the screen door striking his head against it as he left and again Ah Min smiled. Watching me must be his idea, she thought. Only Yeop would think of so stupid a reason for being here.

  An hour passed, then a
nother. Her anxiety began to mount and more often now she faced the window, her gaze held on the stands and the corner of the badminton court that was visible.

  Still, when the door opened, she knew instantly that no one had passed the front of the office or had come directly from the road. She turned, still expecting to see Yeop again; but the thin, unsmiling, tight-faced man in the doorway was Tam Lee.

  She saw the revolver and parang in his belt. She saw the unwavering unblinking expression of his eyes, and she knew why he was here. He moved past her, looking into Clad’s office, then motioned her inside.

  “They failed,” he said.

  “They?”

  He moved toward her. “There is no time for that today. Just do one last good thing and don’t scream.”

  “You ran into an ambush and you think—”

  “Almost. My forward men found them. We tried first one way around, then the other, but their lines protect Ladang on three sides. No isolated patrol; an entire battalion of Gurkhas deployed and waiting.”

  “Gurkhas! There are none of those here.”

  But even as she spoke, as she heard Tam Lee say, “I know those animals when I see them,” she remembered a note on the wall and remembered a Colonel Gordon Mitchell and remembered Clad talking to him on the telephone, remembering part of it, not all, but enough—his words about a field problem.

  “Mitch, why not march them up here? Let them bash about in the woods for the day . . .”

  Of all the days—Ah Min stopped. She heard Clad again using the same words over the telephone. “Of all the days to pick for a field problem . . . I know, I should have phoned you before but . . .”

  She provided the rest herself, though it was still Clad’s voice in her mind: But my girl misplaced my note to call you.

  On the left side of the board, she thought dully, instead of the right.

  They had come, perhaps arriving sometime during the night; but up early and already maneuvering, their lines dug in, firmly established in time for Tam Lee. Of course he would think it was an ambush. Anyone would. And there would be no convincing him otherwise.

  She was aware of Tam again, the parang already in his hand, the blade not glistening but hard and cold looking. She closed her eyes and let him come to her.