Music on the Bamboo Radio Read online

  Nicholas half smiled. Major Fox pronounced the acronym like ‘bag’ but with a sheep-like bleat in the centre.

  ‘We have two main roles,’ the major continued. ‘The first is to gather information from partisan fighters like Kwan and Tai Lo Fu and send this back to our H Q in Chungking. We supply them with arms, ammunitions and explosives in return. The plastic explosive for which you translated the notes came from me.’

  ‘They didn’t understand what to do with it,’ Nicholas remarked.

  Major Fox grinned a little sheepishly and said, ‘Yes. That was rather stupid of me. All deliveries since then have had instructions in Chinese.’ He sipped his tea before going on. ‘Our second role is to be in touch with and support prisoners of war. As I’m sure you know from your visit to Kowloon to buy medicine, the situation there is far from jolly. People are near starving. In the prison camps, it is far, far worse. The Japanese withhold medical supplies, issue only the most basic and poorest quality of foodstuffs, give out no clothing or bedding. What is worse, the men are forced to work long hours, regardless of the weather, labouring to build the airport.’

  ‘You remember?’ Ah Kwan cut in. ‘You see me when you go Kowloon with Ah Mee. I no coolie. I pretend I coolie. Can talk to prisoner, take him something.’

  In his mind, Nicholas recalled the hand clamped on his shoulder, the Japanese shadows on the ground, Ah Mee fainting and Ah Kwan, caked with sweat and dust.

  ‘Kwan has not only been fighting with Tai Lo Fu,’ Major Fox explained. ‘He has also been what we call “playing music on the bamboo radio”.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Nicholas asked. He had never heard of a radio made out of bamboo.

  ‘It’s code,’ the major said, ‘a sort of slang for secret messages. The information and news Kwan smuggles to the prisoners in the camps is like music to their ears. It boosts their morale, lets them know they are not forgotten. Sometimes news can be a better tonic than medicine. Medicine just cures your ills but news can give you hope. The network in which Kwan operates we jokingly call the bamboo radio.’

  ‘I’ve not had any news for a long time,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘Then let me give you some,’ Major Fox replied. ‘In Europe, the Nazis are being defeated. Italy has been taken by the Allies. Ten weeks ago, an invasion force of one hundred and fifty-six thousand British, American and Canadian troops landed in France. The Japanese are also being defeated. All across the Pacific, the American forces are pushing them back. Island by island. It won’t be long before we have them on the run.’

  ‘How long?’ Nicholas asked.

  ‘Who can tell?’ the major answered. ‘A matter of months, I’d say. A year. Not longer.’

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ Nicholas requested.

  ‘Fire away!’ Major Fox said.

  Nicholas hesitated. He wanted to ask a question but he was afraid, terribly afraid, of the answer. He looked along the terrace as if searching for a way to escape from the truth should it not be what he wanted.

  It looked so homely. Dai Kam lay in his usual place in front of the temple door. From under the lintel a faint drift of blue smoke rose into the air to be snatched away by a light breeze. On the roof of the gatehouse, Laan Doh Mao slept on the hot tiles. From inside the house, Nicholas could hear Venerable Grandmother humming and, down the far end of the terrace, a pig squealed.

  ‘What happened to my parents?’ Nicholas asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Major Fox said. ‘That’s the truth. You’re not a little boy now, you’re almost a man, and I’m not going to lie to you. If your parents were dead, I would tell you. But I really don’t know.’

  Nicholas left the table and went along the terrace. Hearing his footsteps, Dai Kam half woke, peered at him in a sleep-bleary way then, satisfied it was only Nicholas coming towards him, let his head flop back on the flagstones. Nicholas knelt next to the dog and stroked his side, feeling his ribs moving slowly up and down as he breathed. There was, he thought, still a chance his parents were alive and, as Dai Kam lazily wagged his tail on the stones, Nicholas suddenly recalled one of his mother’s favourite expressions – no news is good news.

  After a few minutes. Nicholas returned to the table under the tree and said, ‘Why have you come here?’

  Major Fox looked Nicholas straight in the eye and replied, ‘I’ll be quite blunt. I need your help to play some music on the bamboo radio.’

  He reached under his chair and removed a package the size of a large book from the satchel. It was tied about with string and wrapped in the same kind of dark brown, waterproof paper as had enclosed the explosive.

  ‘I want you to deliver this for me. In Kowloon.’

  ‘Is it a bomb?’ Nicholas wanted to know.

  ‘Take it.’ Major Fox held the package out. ‘But be careful.’

  Nicholas accepted the package. His hands dropped as he took it: it weighed far more than he had expected.

  ‘What is it?’ Nicholas asked, placing it on the table. ‘It’s very heavy.’

  ‘Open it,’ the major ordered.

  Undoing the string, Nicholas folded back the paper to display a small cardboard box. He removed the lid. Inside was a thin envelope, an oblong wrapped in khaki cloth and a glass bottle of cloudy liquid padded round with cotton wool.

  ‘The envelope is a message,’ Major Fox said. ‘The cloth – well, you unwrap it.’

  Nicholas doubled back the material. In it was something which glittered in the dappled sunlight cutting through the tree above.

  ‘That’s a bar of gold,’ the major said. ‘Twelve ounces of twenty-four-carat gold.’

  Nicholas ran his finger over it. The surface was smooth and warm.

  ‘How much is it worth?’

  ‘Thousands of dollars,’ Major Fox replied, ‘but that,’ he pointed to the bottle, ‘is much more valuable. That’s worth hundreds of lives. Human lives.’

  ‘I don’t see,’ Nicholas said, ‘how a small bottle can be worth…’

  ‘I’ll explain,’ interrupted the major. ‘In the prison camps in Kowloon, men – British soldiers, sailors and airmen – are dying of a disease called diphtheria. It starts off as nothing more than a sore throat but, within hours, it gets worse and your throat fills with a grey mucus, a sort of sticky film. In less than a day, unless you’re very lucky, you’re dead. That bottle contains diphtheria prophylactic vaccine, enough to halt the epidemic.’

  ‘And the gold?’ Nicholas enquired.

  ‘In time of war,’ Major Fox answered cryptically, ‘gold is very useful.’

  ‘Why can’t Ah Kwan take the package?’ Nicholas asked.

  ‘Japanese know me,’ Ah Kwan said. ‘If he see me, he kill me.’ He shrugged. ‘If he kill me, no worry! But if I killed…’

  ‘… the vaccine won’t get through,’ the major cut in. ‘Will you do it? Kwan will go with you to help you but he cannot – he dare not – go close to the prison camp. If the Japanese caught him they would torture him before killing him. Even someone as strong and staunch as Kwan may talk when the torturer starts his work. I can’t risk that. Kwan knows too much.’

  ‘Can’t you use someone else?’ Nicholas ventured.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ the major answered. ‘The Japanese had a big drive against us. Most of our agents – our undercover men – were taken, tortured and executed.’

  Nicholas looked at the bottle again. It seemed so innocuous, just a little bottle with a red rubber bung secured with a metal clip.

  ‘Hundreds of lives?’ he mused out loud.

  ‘At least three hundred,’ Major Fox said.

  When he had been considering going with Tai Lo Fu to destroy the Waterloo Road bridge, Nicholas had consulted Tang and Ah Mee – and his photograph. Yet now, it seemed to him, he had no choice. This was not a matter of knocking out the Kowloon to Canton railway. This concerned the lives of prisoners. He thought for a moment of his father. If he were alive – and the major had not reported him dead – he might be in that
prison camp. It stood to reason. His father had been a soldier, albeit a volunteer one. And he might, at that very moment, be lying on a bed in a fever, his throat sore and getting worse.

  ‘Yes,’ Nicholas said at last, his voice quiet and resolute. ‘I’ll deliver it.’

  Nicholas lay on the gravelly soil, squirming his way beneath the lantana thicket, pulling himself along on his elbows. The branches snagged his clothing and hat. Every time he crushed a leaf or brushed a floret of blossoms, they gave off the unpleasant smell of cats. The only good thing about the plant, he thought, was that the flowers attracted a myriad of butterflies. Huge swallowtails hovered just over his head, landing on the blooms to taste their nectar. Their wings beat as their long tongues, coiled like watch-springs, unfurled and dipped into the flower-heads. Some of the insects were so close to his face Nicholas could feel the draught of their wings fanning his brow.

  Reaching the far end of the thicket, Nicholas found himself on a ledge covered by boulders. Ah Kwan crouched behind one of them, wiping his brow.

  ‘Ho yit,’ he exclaimed in Cantonese, his voice low. ‘Very hot.’

  ‘Hot,’ Nicholas confirmed as he edged nearer to Ah Kwan.

  Below them, not two hundred metres away, were the streets and tenements of the Sham Shui Po area of Kowloon. Beyond the buildings, the sea shone like liquid mercury under the harsh sun. Only the tree-covered hills of Stonecutters’ Island two kilometres offshore offered any respite from the sun’s glare.

  ‘Can you see the prison?’ Ah Kwan asked.

  Nicholas studied the space between the tenements and the sea. He knew where to look from the map of Kowloon which Major Fox had shown him when briefing him on his mission.

  Where the tenements ended was a barracks containing twelve rows of accommodation huts, assorted storehouses and other low sheds. In the centre was a parade ground and at one end, backing on to the shoreline, stood a substantial four-storey building with a flat roof.

  ‘You ready?’ Ah Kwan ventured.

  ‘I’m ready,’ Nicholas declared.

  He was surprised not to find himself excited. When he had gone with the partisans to sabotage the bridge, he had felt a huge sense of adventure, an electric charge of danger rush through him. Now he was calm, cool, collected. He had a job to do – a vital job. If he failed, there would be no second chance. Not for him nor for any prisoner who contracted diphtheria.

  Checking the package was safe under his jacket, Nicholas looked at Ah Kwan and said, ‘I go now.’

  Ah Kwan touched his shoulder.

  ‘You are a very brave man,’ he said. ‘It’s very dangerous down there. You take care of yourself.’

  Nicholas slipped around the boulders, slithered down a slope of loose stones to a narrow path, adjusted his clothes, tightened the knot in the cord of his cane hat, brushed the dust off his trousers and set off downwards.

  As he went, Ah Kwan’s voice echoed in his mind. You are a very brave man, it said. Not boy. Man.

  When he reached the streets they were not busy. A few people walked in the cover of the arcaded pavements but there were no shops open or hawkers trading. Compared to the pre-war years, Nicholas found himself in a ghost town.

  Indeed, he thought as he walked along, the people were not unlike ghosts. They were squinny, emaciated folk who walked lethargically, without any sense of drive or real purpose. He noticed almost everyone had thin wrists and ankles. The skin on their necks was drawn and their cheekbones were prominent. More than a few had sunken eyes and the flesh around them was tinted with grey.

  These, Nicholas realized, were the signs of advanced starvation. They brought to his mind the man who had tried to barter his wife to Tang. He wondered how many of the people around him now had sold their children. The thought sent a shiver down his back and made him feel both guilty and conspicuous. He was well fed, fat by comparison to those around him. He would, he considered, be worth selling himself.

  As he turned into a wide road which led towards the prison camp, Nicholas saw ahead a small gathering of a dozen or so people clustered around a doorway. He was instantly on his guard. A group of so many might attract the attention of Japanese soldiers yet, as he watched the crowd, three Japanese officers walked by, casting no more than a cursory glance at the congregation.

  Curious, Nicholas approached the people. On the pavement before them squatted an old man with a wooden board laid out in front of him upon which were arranged a number of bits of meat attached to lengths of grey string. It was a few seconds before Nicholas realized what he was looking at. The strings were tails. The old man was selling rats and mice for food.

  Haifa kilometre further along the road, Nicholas turned left down a street leading to the sea front and arrived at the prison camp main entrance. This consisted of a tall gate and a sentry box with a two-storey stone building to the right. Two Japanese guards occupied the sentry box whilst, just inside the gate, several more lingered in the shade of the building. They paid him not the slightest attention as he stood in the arcade of the tenement building across the street.

  The camp perimeter consisted of a barbed-wire fence about four metres high. Behind that was a space about three metres across in which, Nicholas noted, there was a trip wire of some sort then, across the space, another barbed-wire fence.

  Between two tenements, fifty metres from the gate, he found an alley which Major Fox had recommended as a temporary hide-out and escape route. He entered it and hunched down behind a derelict cart. The hot air of the late afternoon was stifling, the stink of sewage in the alley almost overpowering, yet Nicholas stuck it out. He had his orders.

  At six o’clock, the sound of feet marching along the road signified the return of the forced-labour parties. Nicholas got up, rubbed his legs to get his circulation going and stepped out of the alley.

  Along the road marched a bedraggled column of several hundred prisoners of war, accompanied by Japanese soldiers. They were in a sorry state. Gaunt and dressed in not much better than rags, they were coated with dust, their skins tanned and leathery from working long hours under the sub-tropical sun. Some wore tattered hats, either the remains of their military headgear or bamboo coolie hats, but most were bare-headed. A few were barefoot, their feet horny and their toenails like shavings of horse’s hoof.

  Nicholas went to the edge of the kerb, joining a small number of onlookers, most of them women. He was watching for one man. As he surveyed the, approaching prisoners, he could hear Major Fox informing him: ‘Your contact is Flight Lieutenant Drake. His nickname’s Frank – after Sir Francis Drake – but his real name is Edwin Charles Drake. Quite tall with a moustache. As he passes you, he will give you a signal by making a circle with the index finger and thumb of his left hand. As soon as he does this, another prisoner will cause a diversion. You slip forward and give him the package. That done, leg it down the alley.’

  The column drew nearer. Nicholas risked removing his varnished cane hat so that he might see better and be easily recognized by his contact. He knew his clothing and dark hair would pass muster if seen by the guards from a distance. Besides, the guards marched with their rifles over their shoulders: they were not expecting trouble.

  Nicholas let his eyes jump from row to row as the men marched by to wheel right into the camp. He could not see a single man with a moustache. It was not until the end of the column reached him that he saw Flight Lieutenant Drake.

  His heart sank. The moustachioed man was not marching. He was being half carried and half dragged between two other prisoners. His head lolled from side to side, his feet hardly able to keep in step with his two supporters. There was no way possible for Nicholas to get the package to him.

  Nicholas’s thoughts were in turmoil. Major Fox’s orders had been firm. ‘If you don’t succeed,’ he had said, ‘get back to the rendezvous with Kwan. We’ll just have to find another way. Don’t concern yourself.’ Yet Nicholas was concerned. A lot depended on him and he did not want to be a failure. Furthermore, Dr
ake was plainly semi-conscious. He might have caught diphtheria: the contents of the box could save his life.

  At the rear of the column, two Japanese guards kept pace about five metres back. They were not looking at the prisoners but talking to each other.

  There was nothing for it. Nicholas had to act – and act fast.

  Touching the plum-stone carving hanging around his neck for luck, he darted forward and into the centre of the marching column. As he ran forwards, dropping his hat, he realized his clothing was dark coloured: most of the prisoners wore the remnants of khaki uniforms. He would stick out like a telegraph pole in a tennis court.

  Yet there was no turning back. The two guards at the rear had ended their conversation. One was looking at the column.

  Two ranks in front of him, Nicholas spied his salvation. It was a prisoner who had clearly once been a Royal Navy petty officer. He wore bedraggled navy blue shorts under a once white shirt. A red warrant officer’s badge was still clinging to the sleeve. Nicholas squeezed forward to position himself next to the sailor who was carrying a bucket.

  ‘What’re you up to, Johnny?’ he asked in an exhausted voice as Nicholas fell in beside him.

  Nicholas ignored him. The column turned and, in a matter of metres, he was inside the camp.

  The prisoners headed towards the parade ground where a number of Japanese officers stood on a dais. One of them clutched a clipboard. It was obvious what was going to happen: there was going to be a count of prisoners. If he was still in the ranks when the tally was made, Nicholas would be discovered.

  The column slowed as the first ranks fanned out into lines. Nicholas, deciding to risk all once more, dashed for the cover of one of the barrack huts.

  The wooden steps were only three metres away, but it seemed like thirty. As he leapt up them, he prayed the door was unlocked. If it was not, he would be trapped in full view of the guards at the rear of the column who were now marching smartly behind their charges, putting on a show for their superiors.