State of Siege (3 page)

As I approached, they turned and stiffened up. One of the majors took a pace forward and nodded curtly. He was a slim, handsome little man with the flat features and high cheekbones of the southern Sundanese, and a tight, arrogant mouth. His English was almost perfect.

“Mr. Gedge?”

“No. My name’s Fraser. I’m the resident consulting engineer. You are …?”

“Major Suparto. I am glad to meet you, Mr. Fraser.” We shook hands and he turned to the group behind him. “I introduce Majors Idrus, Djaja and Tukang, Captains Kerani and Emas.” There were more curt nods as he turned to me again.

“We had expected Mr. Gedge to give us the honour of welcoming us on our arrival, Mr. Fraser.”

“You are certainly welcome, Major. Unfortunately, Mr. Gedge is rather busy just now, but he would like to see you gentlemen in his office.”

Major Suparto appeared to consider this. Then, suddenly, he smiled. It was such a charming, good-humoured smile that it deceived me for a moment; as it was meant to. I nearly smiled back.

“Very well, Mr. Fraser. We will accept you as Mr. Gedge’s deputy.” The smile went as suddenly as it had arrived. “You do not think that if we went to his office immediately he would be busy merely in order to keep us waiting?”

“We haven’t much time here for protocol, Major,” I said; “but you will have no reason to complain of discourtesy.”

“I hope not.” He smiled again. “Very well. Then we can go. Perhaps I may drive with you, Mr. Fraser.”

“Certainly.”

The rest followed in the other jeeps. As we went, I explained the geography of the camp, and stopped at a point on the track from which they could all get a view of the dam. There were exclamations of wonder from the jeeps behind us, but Major Suparto did not seem greatly interested. As I drove on, however, I saw him examining me out of the corners of his eyes. Then he spoke.

“What is a liaison manager, Mr. Fraser?”

“I think it’s a new appointment.”

“And unnecessary, no doubt. No, do not answer. I will not embarrass you.”

“You’re not embarrassing me, Major. I just don’t happen to know the answer to your question.”

“I admire your discretion, Mr. Fraser.”

I took no notice of that one.

“I am a reasonable man, Mr. Fraser,” he went on after a bit. “I shall be able to accept this situation philosophically. But my companions are a little different. They may look for other satisfactions. Things may grow difficult. I think that it would be as well for Mr. Gedge to remember that.”

“I’ll tell him what you say, but I think you’ll find that he’ll be very understanding.”

He did not speak again until we pulled up outside Gedge’s office; but as I went to get out, he put a hand on my arm.

“Understanding is a fine thing,” he said; “but sometimes it is better to carry a revolver.”

I looked at him carefully. “If I were you, Major, I wouldn’t make any jokes like that in front of Mr. Gedge. He might think that you were trying to intimidate him, and he wouldn’t care for that.”

He stared at me, and, although his hands did not move, I was for a moment acutely aware of the pistol at his belt. Then, he smiled. “I like you, Mr. Fraser,” he said; “I am sure that we shall be friends.”

The meeting with Gedge passed off fairly well. All the liaison managers claimed to have had administrative
experience. A more surprising thing was that they all spoke some English. Although English is now a second official language in Sunda (Malay being the first) not many Sundanese can speak it yet. There was some tension when the discrepancies between what they had been told about their jobs in Selampang and what they were told by Gedge became apparent, but, in the end, they seemed to accept the situation good-humouredly enough. Major Suparto nodded and smiled like a father pleased with the behaviour of his children in adult company. Later that evening, there was a further meeting with heads of departments. They had all been warned in advance and were ready. Each one had to take a liaison manager. In effect he would be a kind of trainee. Let him potter around. If he could make himself useful, so much the better. If not, it would not matter.

None of them claimed any technical knowledge. Major Suparto asked to go to transport. The supply, plant, electrical, construction and power-lines departments took the rest.

The first hint of trouble came three days later from the construction department. Captain Emas had attacked and badly beaten up one of the men working in number-three bay of the power house. Questioned about the incident, Captain Emas stated that the man had been insufficiently respectful. The following week two more men were beaten up by Captain Emas for the
same reason. The truth emerged gradually. It appeared that Captain Emas was organising a construction workers’ union, and that the men who had been beaten up had shown a disrespectful reluctance to pay dues. The secretary and treasurer of the union was Captain Emas.

Gedge was in a difficult position. All the project labour had been recruited locally and such minor disputes as had arisen had hitherto been settled by consultation with the village headmen. No formal union organisation had been found necessary. Unfortunately, under the Sundanese labour charter, membership of a union was obligatory for manual workers. Captain Emas obviously knew that. If he were fired and sent back to Selampang, he would simply complain to the Ministry of Public Works that he had found an illegal situation and been victimised for trying to remedy it. The Ministry would be delighted. In no time at all, Captain Emas would be back armed with special powers to organise all Tangga Valley labour.

Gedge chose the lesser evil. He called a meeting of headmen, reminded them of the law, and secured their agreement to his applying to the labourers’ union in the capital for an official organiser. He also instructed them that a record of all dues paid to Captain Emas must be kept in future so that Captain Emas could be held accountable for them later. He then called Captain Emas in and repeated the instruction in his presence.

That took care of Captain Emas for a few weeks, but it soon transpired that Majors Djaja and Tukang had been operating the same racket in the plant and electrical departments. Further meetings of headmen proved necessary.

All this was tiresome enough. The headmen felt that their authority was being undermined and were being obstructive; the workmen resented having to pay union dues just because somebody in Selampang said they had to, and were slacking on the job; small difficulties were beginning to cause big delays. But there was worse to come.

About fifteen miles east of the valley camp, on the road up from Port Kail which was used by the supply trucks, there were several big rubber estates. Two of these were still run by Dutchmen.

The position of the Dutch who remained in Sunda was both difficult and dangerous. The majority were employees of the few Dutch business houses which, under Government supervision, were still permitted to operate; banks, for example. The rest were mostly rubber planters in out-lying areas where anti-Dutch feeling had been less violent; men who, rather than face the bitter prospect of having to abandon everything they possessed and start afresh in another country, were prepared to accept the new dangers of life in Sunda.

For the Dutch, those dangers were very real. When there was trouble in the streets, the greatest risk that
any European ran was in being taken for a Dutchman. After a ghastly series of incidents in Selampang, the Chief of Police had even made a regulation authorising any European in charge of a car involved in an accident to drive right on for a kilometre before stopping to report to the police. If he stopped at the scene of the accident, both he and his passengers were invariably beaten up, and often murdered by the crowd. Men or women, it made no difference. The explanation that the victims had seemed to be Dutch would always serve to excuse the crime. Dutch owners of rubber estates were in an almost hopeless position. They were not allowed to sell or mortgage their estates, except to the Government, who would pay them in blocked currency which could not be exported. If they continued to operate their estates they had to sell their entire output to the Government at a price fixed by the Government. On the other hand, they had to pay their estate workers at minimum wage rates which made it virtually impossible for the estate to remain solvent. If they wanted to survive, their only chance was to conceal a proportion of their output from the Government inspectors and sell it for Straits dollars to the Chinese junk masters who made a rich business out of buying “black” rubber in Sunda and running it to Singapore.

Mulder and Smit were both men of about fifty, who had spent most of their lives in Sunda. Mulder had been born there. Neither had any capital in Holland. Every
guilder they had was in their estates. Moreover, both had Sundanese wives and large families of whom they were very fond. Inevitably, they had decided to stay.

In the early days at the camp we had seen a good deal of both men. During the first few months, indeed, before the road was properly completed, we had used their guest rooms almost as if we rented them. Smit was a huge, red-faced man with a fat chuckle and an incredible capacity for bottled beer. Mulder had a passion for German
lieder
, which he would sing, accompanied by a phonograph, on the smallest pretext. With each other they played chess; with us, poker. Later, we had been able to repay some of their hospitality, but they never really liked coming to the camp. No women were allowed in the European club, so we could not ask them to bring their wives; and there were many Sundanese in the camp for whom the mere presence of a Dutchman was an irritant. When the liaison managers arrived I had seen neither of them for weeks.

Early one morning about three months before I was due to leave, Mulder drove into the camp with the news that Smit and his wife had been murdered.

The first part of the story was easily told. At one o’clock that morning, Mulder and his wife had been wakened by the Smits’ eldest son, a boy of sixteen. He said that two men had driven up to the bungalow half an hour earlier and battered on the door until they were admitted. The noise had wakened him. He had
heard his father speaking to them and there had been an argument. His father had become angry. Suddenly, there had been four shots. His mother had screamed and more shots had been fired. The men had then driven away. His mother and father were wounded. He had left the ayah to look after them and run for help.

By the time Mulder had arrived at the bungalow, Smit was dead. The wife had died shortly afterwards. Later, he had taken the children and their ayah back with him to his bungalow. Fearing for the safety of his own family, he had stayed with them until daylight before driving up to the camp to ask us to report the matter by radio to the police at Port Kail.

From the way he told it, it was fairly obvious that he knew more than he was saying. When I got him alone and had promised to keep my mouth shut, he told me the rest.

A week earlier two Sundanese had come to see him with a proposal. They said that they knew that he was smuggling rubber out of the country and being paid for it in Straits dollars. They wanted a half share in the proceeds of all future consignments. If they did not get it, unpleasant things would happen both to his family and to him. They would give him two days to think it over. Meanwhile, he was to tell nobody.

He went to Smit and found that the men had been to see him also. The two planters discussed the situation carefully. They knew that they were helpless. There
was, of course, no question of their appealing for police protection. Apart from the fact that they would have to admit to the smuggling, which for Dutchmen would be suicidal, there was also the possibility that the men themselves might be connected with the police. They decided, in the end, to pay up, but to bargain first. They thought that an offer of ten per cent might satisfy the men.

It did not. The men became angry. They gave Mulder a further twenty-four hours to agree, and also demanded two thousand Straits dollars in cash as an earnest of his intentions.

That had been the previous night. The men must have gone straight to Smit, realised from what he said that the victims had been consulting together, and decided to show Mulder that they meant business. They had succeeded. Mulder was ready now to give them his whole estate if they asked for it.

But I was still a bit puzzled. Smit had not been the sort of man who is easily intimidated. It was difficult to think of his opening the door to a couple of thugs in the middle of the night without a loaded gun in his hand. As for Mulder; if he had asked me to help him to ambush the two men and leave their bodies for the kites, I should not have been greatly surprised.

It was not until I had persuaded him to talk about the two men that I understood. It would have been death to touch either of them. They were Sundanese
army officers, a major and a captain. The descriptions that he gave left me in no doubt as to their identity. I persuaded Mulder to go with me to Gedge and repeat the story.

That night when Major Idrus and Captain Kerani arrived at Mulder’s bungalow, Gedge and I were waiting behind the screen doors into the bedroom. We heard them describe what they had done to Smit and his wife, and threaten Mulder with the same treatment if he did not pay. Then we came out armed with shotguns and a shorthand record of what we had heard. For a while the air was thick with protestations. In the end, however, a deal was made. If Major Idrus and Captain Kerani left Mulder alone, we would take no further action. Mulder would lodge our signed statements at his bank, so that if anything happened to him the statements would go to the police. It was a miserable arrangement, but, short of involving Mulder in police inquiries, it was the best that we could do. Idrus and Kerani were smiling when they left to drive back to the camp in a supply-department truck. They had reason to smile; they had got away with murder.

We stayed behind with Mulder for a while and drank too much gin. For Gedge it did not improve the occasion.

“How would you like to stay on here, Steve?” he asked suddenly as I drove the jeep back to the camp.