His trained eye had at once noticed the extra ripples on the surface of the water caused by one of the charges. Examining them more closely, Colonel Nicholson thought he saw a brown patch against the wood. He hesitated for a moment, then moved on and stopped a few yards further off, above another pile. Once again he leant over the parapet.
‘That’s funny,’ he muttered.
Again he hesitated, then crossed the line and looked over the other side. Another patch of brown was visible a bare inch below the surface. This made him feel vaguely annoyed, like the sight of a blot disfiguring his work. He decided to walk on, went as far as the end of the platform, turned round and retraced his steps, as the patrol had done before him, then stopped once more, wrapped in thought and shaking his head. Finally he shrugged his shoulders and turned towards the right bank. He kept talking to himself the whole time.
‘That wasn’t there two days ago,’ he mumbled. ‘The water level was higher, it’s true. Probably some muck that’s been washed up against the piles and stuck there. Yet . . .’
The ghost of a suspicion flashed through his mind, but the truth was too extraordinary for him to grasp it immediately. Yet he was no longer in a cheerful mood. His morning was spoilt. He turned round again to have another look at the anomaly, found no explanation, and finally stepped off the bridge still feeling rather puzzled.
‘It can’t be true,’ he muttered, as he contemplated the vague suspicion skimming through his brain. ‘Unless it’s one of those Chinese Communist bands . . .’
Sabotage was firmly associated in his mind with gangster activity.
‘It can’t be true,’ he repeated, still unable to recapture his light-hearted mood.
The train was now in sight, though still some way off, struggling up the line. The Colonel calculated that it would take at least ten minutes to arrive. Saito, who was strolling up and down between the bridge and the company, watched him approach and felt embarrassed as he always did in the Englishman’s presence. Colonel Nicholson suddenly made up his mind as he drew level with the Japanese.
‘Colonel Saito,’ he declared in a lordly manner, ‘there’s something rather odd going on. We’d better look into it more closely before the train goes across.’
Without waiting for an answer, he scrambled quickly down the slope. His intention was to take the small native canoe moored under the bridge and make a tour of inspection round the piles. As he reached the beach he instinctively swept it with his trained glance and noticed the length of electric wire on the shining pebbles. Colonel Nicholson frowned and walked over towards it.
7
It was while he was scrambling down the slope, with an ease born of the daily habit of light exercise and the peaceful contemplation of everyday truths, that he came into Shears’s field of view. The Japanese colonel followed close behind him. It was only then that Shears realized that adversity still had a card up its sleeve. Joyce had been aware of this for some time. In the state of trance to which he had managed to force himself he had seen the Colonel’s behaviour on the bridge without any further feeling of alarm. But he seized his dagger as soon as he saw the figure of Saito following behind him on the beach.
Shears noticed that as Colonel Nicholson approached he seemed to be dragging the Japanese officer along in his wake. In the face of this incoherent situation he felt himself give way to a sort of hysteria; he began babbling to himself:
‘But the other fellow’s leading him to it! It’s our own colonel who’s taking him there! If only I could explain, have a word with him, just a word!’
The sound of the puffing engine could be heard in the distance. All the Japanese were probably now on parade, ready to present arms. The two men on the beach were invisible from the camp. Number One made an angry gesture as he instantly grasped the whole situation and instinctively realized what action would have to be taken, the action which a situation of this sort required and demanded of every man who had enlisted in the ranks of the Plastic and Destructions Company. He too seized his knife. He tore it out of his belt and held it in front of him according to the school training, palm downwards, the nails underneath, the thumb running along the root of the blade – not in order to use it, but in the wild hope that he would be able to influence Joyce by suggestion, and moved by the same instinct which had induced him a little earlier to follow the movements of the patrol.
Colonel Nicholson had stopped in front of the wire. Saito was coming up behind him, waddling along on his stumpy legs. All the emotions that Shears had felt in the morning were nothing to what he felt at that moment. He began talking out loud, brandishing the dagger in front of him above his head.
‘He won’t be able to do it! There’s a limit to what you can expect of a lad of that age who’s been brought up in the ordinary way and spent his whole life in an office. I was mad to let him have his way. It was up to me to take his place. He won’t be able to do it!’
Saito had caught up with Colonel Nicholson, who had bent down and picked up the wire. Shears felt his heart thumping against his ribs.
‘He won’t be able to do it! Three minutes more, just three minutes, and the train will be here. He won’t be able to do it!’
One of the Siamese partisans crouching by his rifle gazed at him in terror. Luckily the jungle muffled the sound of his voice. He was hunched up, clenching his fist round the knife which he held motionless in front of him.
‘He won’t be able to do it! God Almighty, make him lose his head; make him fighting mad – just for ten seconds!’
As he uttered this wild prayer, he noticed a movement in the undergrowth, and the bushes parted. He stiffened and held his breath. Joyce was silently creeping down the slope, bent double, with his knife in his hand. Shears fastened his eyes on him, and kept them there.
Saito, whose mind worked slowly, was crouching at the water’s edge with his back to the forest, in the Oriental’s favourite position which he instinctively adopted whenever any unforeseen event made him forget to guard himself against it. He too had picked up the wire. Shears heard a few words spoken in English:
‘This is really rather alarming, Colonel Saito.’
After that there was a short silence. The Jap was pulling the strands apart in his fingers. Joyce had arrived unobserved behind the two men.
‘My God,’ the Colonel suddenly yelled, ‘the bridge has been mined, Colonel Saito! Those damn things I saw against the piles were explosives! And this wire . . .’
He had turned round towards the jungle, while Saito let the weight of these words sink in. Shears watched still more intently. As his fist flashed across from right to left, he saw an answering flash on the opposite bank. He at once recognized the familiar change that had come over the man crouching there.
So he had been able to do it! He had done it. Not a muscle in his tensed body had faltered while the steel went in with hardly any resistance. He had gone through the subsidiary gestures without a tremor. And at that very moment, partly in order to obey the instructions he had received and partly because he felt the overwhelming need to cling to something human, he had brought his left fist down on to the neck of the enemy whose throat he had just slit. In his death-spasm Saito had begun to straighten his legs and was in a semi-upright position. Joyce had clasped him with all his strength against his own body, partly to stifle him and partly to still the trembling which had started in his own limbs.
The Jap had collapsed. He had not uttered a sound, apart from the death rattle, which Shears only heard because he was expecting it. For a few seconds Joyce lay paralysed underneath his adversary, who had fallen on top of him and was drenching him with his blood. He had had the strength to win the first round. Now he was not sure that he had enough will-power to struggle free. At last he gave a heave. In a single movement he threw off the lifeless body, which rolled half into the water, then looked round.
Both banks were deserted. He had won, but his pride could not dispel either his horror or disgust. With an effort he got up on t
o his hands and knees. There were still a few simple things he had to do. First of all, explain himself. Two words would be enough. Colonel Nicholson had remained rooted to the spot, petrified by the suddenness of the scene he had witnessed.
‘Officer! British officer, sir!’ Joyce muttered. ‘The bridge is going up. Stand clear!’
He could not recognize his own voice. The effort of moving his lips caused him untold labour. Yet this fellow here did not even seem to hear him!
‘British officer, sir!’ he repeated in despair. ‘Force 316 from Calcutta. Commandos. Orders to blow up the bridge.’
Colonel Nicholson at last showed some sign of life. A strange light sparkled in his eyes. He spoke in a hollow voice:
‘Blow up the bridge?’
‘Stand clear, sir. Here comes the train. They’ll think you’re in on it too.’
The Colonel still did not move.
This was no time for argument. He would have to act. The puffing of the engine could be heard quite distinctly. Joyce realized that his legs would not carry the weight of his body. On all fours he clambered up the slope, back to his position in the undergrowth.
‘Blow up the bridge!’ the Colonel repeated.
He had not moved an inch. He had blankly watched Joyce’s painful progress, as though trying to grasp the meaning of the words. Suddenly he moved and followed in his footsteps. He tore through the curtain of branches which had just closed behind him and stumbled on the hide-out with the generator, on which he at once laid his hand.
‘Blow up the bridge!’ the Colonel once more exclaimed.
‘British officer, sir!’ Joyce stammered almost plaintively. ‘British officer from Calcutta. Orders . . .’
He did not finish the sentence. Colonel Nicholson had launched himself at him with a yell:
‘Help!’
8
‘Two men lost. Some damage done but bridge intact thanks to British Colonel’s heroism.’
Such was the concise report which Warden, the only survivor of the trio, sent to Calcutta on his return to base.
When he read this signal Colonel Green felt that there were a lot of points which needed clearing up in this strange business, and asked for an explanation. Warden replied that he had nothing further to say. His CO then decided that he had been long enough in the jungles of Siam and that a man could not be left on his own in that dangerous spot when the Japanese were probably going to search the area. At this stage of the war Force 316 was in a strong position. A second team was dropped on to a DZ some distance away to maintain contact with the Siamese, and Warden was recalled to HQ. A submarine came to take him off from a secret beach in the Bay of Bengal, which he managed to reach after an eventful two weeks’ march. Three days later he was in Calcutta and reported to Colonel Green.
He gave him a brief summary of the preparations for the attack, then came to the operation itself. From the top of the hill he had witnessed the whole scene; not a detail had escaped him. He began speaking in the cool, calculated tone which he normally used; but as he went on with his story his voice changed. During the last month that he had spent as the only white man surrounded by Siamese partisans a flood of unexpressed sensations had been surging through him. Each episode in the drama constantly recurred, bubbling through his brain, yet with his usual love of logic he instinctively struggled to find a rational explanation and to reduce them all to a handful of universal principles.
The outcome of these conflicting mental exercises came to light one day in the offices of Force 316. He had not been able to confine himself to a dry military report. He had felt an urgent need to unleash the storm of his fears and anxiety, his doubts and rage, and also to reveal quite candidly the reasons for the grotesque sequel in so far as he could fathom them. He was impelled by his sense of duty to give in addition a factual account of what had happened. He tried to stick to this and occasionally succeeded, only to give way again and again to the torrent of his uncontrollable temper. The result was a strange combination of almost incoherent invective mingled with the elements of an impassioned address, sprinkled here and there with extravagant contradictions and only an occasional ‘fact’.
Colonel Green listened patiently and attentively to this piece of fantastic rhetoric, in which he could see no sign of the cool reasoning for which Professor Warden was famous. He was interested in facts more than anything else. But he interrupted the junior officer as little as possible. He had had some experience in dealing with men returning from similiar missions, to which they had devoted themselves heart and soul only to see their efforts result in an ignominious failure for which they themselves were not responsible. In such cases he made a fairly liberal allowance for the ‘human element’, closing his eyes to their aberrations and pretending to overlook the occasional lack of respect in their tone of voice.
‘I suppose you’d say the lad behaved like a fool, sir. Well, yes, he did; but no one in his place could have done better. I watched him. I didn’t take my eyes off him for a second. I could guess what he was saying to that colonel. He did what I should have done in his place. I watched him as he dragged himself off. The train was almost there. I didn’t know what was happening myself until the other fellow rushed at him. I only realized later, when I’d had time to think. And Shears claimed that he thought too much! My God, he didn’t think too much; he didn’t think enough! He should have been more perceptive, more discerning. Then he would have understood that in our job it’s no good cutting any old throat. You’ve got to cut the right one. Isn’t that so, sir?
‘More insight, that’s what he needed; then he would have known who his enemy really was, realized it was that old bull-shitter who couldn’t stand the idea of his fine work being destroyed. A really perceptive mind would have deduced that from the way he strode along the platform. I had my glasses trained on him, sir; if only it had been a rifle! He had the sanctimonious smile of a conqueror on his lips, I remember. A splendid example of the man of action, sir, as we say in Force 316. He never let misfortune get him down; always made a last effort. It was he who shouted to the Japs for help!
‘That old brute with his blue eyes had probably spent his whole life dreaming of constructing something which would last. In the absence of a town or a cathedral, he plumped for this bridge. You couldn’t really expect him to let it be destroyed – not a regular of the old school, sir, not likely! I’m sure he had read the whole of Kipling as a boy and I bet he recited chunks of it as the construction gradually took shape above the water. “Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it, and which is more, you’ll be a man, my son” – I can just hear him!
‘He had a highly developed sense of duty and admired a job well done. He was also fond of action – just as you are, sir, just as we all are. This idiotic worship of action, to which our little typists subscribe as much as our great generals! I’m not sure where it all leads to, when I stop to think about it. I’ve been thinking about it for the last month, sir. Perhaps that silly old fool was really quite a decent fellow at heart? Perhaps he really had a genuine ideal? An ideal as sacred as our own? Perhaps the same ideal as ours? Perhaps all that hocus-pocus he believed in can be traced back to the same source that provides the impetus which lies behind our own activities? That mysterious atmosphere in which our natural impulses stir us to the point of action. Looking at it like that, perhaps, the “result” may have no meaning at all – it’s only the intrinsic quality of the effort that counts. Or else this dream-world, as far as I can see, is simply a hell afflicted with devilish standards which warp our judgement, lead the way to every form of dishonesty and culminate in a result which is bound to be deplorable. I tell you, sir, I’ve been thinking about all this for the last month. Here we are, for instance, blundering into this part of the world in order to teach Orientals how to handle plastic so as to destroy trains and blow up bridges. Well . . .’
‘Tell me what happened in the end,’ Colonel Green quietly broke in. ‘Nothing matters, remember, apart from actio
n.’
‘Nothing matters apart from action, sir . . . Joyce’s expression when he came out of his hide-out! And he didn’t falter. He struck home according to the text-book, I’ll vouch for that. All he needed was just a little more judgement. The other chap rushed at him with such fury that they both rolled down the slope towards the river. They didn’t stop till they were almost in the water. To the naked eye they looked as if they were both lying there quite still. But I saw the details through my glasses. One was on top of the other. The body in uniform was crushing the naked blood-stained body, crushing it with all its weight, while two furious hands were squeezing the other’s throat. I could see it all quite clearly. He was stretched out with his arms flung wide, next to the corpse in which the dagger was still embedded. At that moment, sir, he realized his mistake, I’m sure. He realized, I’m sure he realized, that he had misjudged the Colonel.
‘I saw him. His hand was close to the hilt of his knife. He seized it. He stiffened. I could almost see his muscles flexing. For a moment I thought he had made up his mind. But it was too late. He had no strength left. He had given all he had. He was unable to do anything more – or else he was unwilling to. He dropped his knife and gave in. Total surrender, sir. You know what it’s like, when you have to give up completely? He resigned himself to his fate. He moved his lips and uttered just one word. No one will ever know if it was an oath or a prayer, or even a polite conventional expression of utter despair. He wasn’t bloody-minded, sir, or if he was he didn’t show it. He always treated his superior officers with respect. Good God, Shears and I only just managed to stop him springing to attention each time he spoke to either of us! I bet you he said “sir” before passing out, sir. Everything depended on him. It was all over.
‘Then several things happened all at once, several “facts”, as you would no doubt call them, sir. They were all muddled in my mind, but I’ve sorted them out since. The train was arriving. The roar of the engine was growing louder every second; but it wasn’t loud enough to drown the yells of that lunatic, who was shouting for help at the top of his voice in parade-ground tones!