In the Mouth of the Tiger (84 page)

We explored Singapore over the next few days, buying an old Wolseley
from the reopened pre-war firm of Wearn's and driving ourselves all over the island. The more we saw, the harder we found it to believe that Singapore had been through the fire and blood of Japanese occupation. Even the detritus of war – the crashed Zeros lying in the lallang, the roofless buildings and the odd burned-out tank or truck – seemed part and parcel of any Eastern city, where order and civilisation have always lain cheek by jowl with chaos and decay.

Certainly the landmarks of pre-war Singapore were untouched. The Tanglin Club still slumbered behind its grove of coconut palms, the Swimming Club still basked beside the sea, and the Chicken Grill at the Sea View Hotel still hummed with customers. Even Aw Boon Haw's Tiger Balm Gardens seemed unchanged, the jade dragons and golden tigers as bogus and awe-inspiring as they had ever been.

One evening I suddenly realised just how much I had missed Malaya, and reached for Denis's hand. We were returning to the hotel from a drive along the East Coast Road, and a glorious sunset bathed the Singapore Straits. ‘We are home at last, aren't we?' I said. ‘I hope we never have to go away again.'

Denis squeezed my hand. ‘We are here to do a job,' he said. ‘But I dare say we'll stay on after it's completed. I can think of worse places to put down roots than Singapore.'

‘What sort of job are we here to do?' I asked.

Denis didn't answer me directly. ‘We were too soft last time, Norma,' he said. ‘Much too soft. And because we were too soft a lot of fine people are dead and buried. We're not going to let that happen ever again. This time we are going to play them at their own dirty game – and beat them at it hands down.' His voice was so harsh that I looked up into his face with surprise, and saw that his jaw was clenched and his mouth a thin, hard line.

‘I take it you're talking about your work for British Intelligence,' I said. ‘But who are the people we're going to beat at their own game? I thought the war was over.'

Denis shrugged. ‘The shooting war is over but that's no excuse for taking our eyes off the ball. We did that after the Great War, and look what happened. Hitler happened. Mussolini happened. Tojo happened.' He took a deep breath. ‘As for who the enemy might be, I don't think anyone knows as yet. They might be the Communists, or neo-fascists like the Soka-gakkai in Japan. Or even madcap nationalists. But whoever they are, we're going to nip their mendacious little plans in the bud before decent people die.'

It was extremely unlike Denis to talk like this, and I stared at him. Usually he was the most tolerant and affable of men, but today he sounded like an embittered fanatic. It wasn't so much the words he used as the way he used them, almost spitting them out.

I was about to say something but his eyes were so cold and so vividly blue that I looked away, letting the moment pass.

We'd been in Singapore for about a week when we had a meeting with a man called Cheng Swee. Cheng Swee had been one of Denis's business colleagues before the war, which meant he had been one of Denis's agents. We met in a private corner of the dining room at Raffles, with a table set for three and a waiter hovering to take our order.

I opened the conversation with a platitude: ‘You must have been through some awful times, Mr Cheng.'

‘It was a terrible time,' he said. He was a small man, impeccably dressed in a Savile Row suit, and he shivered delicately. ‘Every day I would contact my friends and colleagues just to find out who had been taken by the Kempeitai. How I survived I really do not know. I suppose that the Japanese needed some of us to keep the economy alive. But they watched us like hawks, and pounced without rhyme or reason. I think they enjoyed seeing our fear.'

It was still unusual for a Chinese to be the guest of Europeans, even in the rough and tumble days immediately after the war, and the boy who brought us drinks banged down Cheng Swee's stengah with visible disapproval.

‘Put that glass down again properly.' Denis had snatched the man's hand so hard that he literally yelped with pain and surprise. ‘And then apologise to Mr Cheng.' His voice was low but so coldly furious that even I was shocked.

And then, just as suddenly as it had started the incident was over. The glass was replaced reverentially, the apology given. Cheng Swee inclined his head graciously. ‘Thank you, Mr Elesmere-Elliott, but I do assure you that I took no offence. The boy is a
sombong
, not worthy of concern.'

‘Bad manners are always worthy of concern,' Denis said. His anger was still there, making his eyes vivid blue, his mouth the thin hard line I'd seen a few days before. It was only when I reached out and touched him that I saw him make an attempt to relax. It worried me, this change in Denis. The capacity for sudden anger had always been there, but since the war – since Thursday Island in particular – it had been much closer to the surface. Like a flint that sparked at the slightest touch.

I am sure that war changes men in ways we still don't understand. Denis
had seen and done dreadful things, and those things had changed him. I had a sudden vivid memory of the tiger outside our bamboo hut on the Telom River, and Denis smiling at it through his gunsights, never once intending to fire. I wondered if he would have held his hand today.

We talked for hours that night, and I learned exactly how the new British Intelligence apparatus was to be reassembled in liberated Singapore. Cheng Swee was to be a central figure in the rebuilding. He was a towkey, perhaps the most powerful in Malaya after the loss of so many Chinese leaders during the war. Losses partly due to the savage purges of the Kempeitai, but also incurred in the internecine war which had raged between the Kuomintang and the Communists all through the Japanese occupation.

‘I want you to be my principal go-between,' Denis said quite early in the conversation. ‘You are acceptable to both the Communists and the Kuomintang, and your connections to the British can be explained away as purely commercial. Your relationship with me will be commercial, too. I will be your principal supplier of goods, and so it will be quite understandable for me to provide you and your friends with the credit facilities you will need. In turn, you will find and convince key people to cooperate with us.'

Cheng Swee inclined his head. ‘I understand my obligations perfectly, Mr Elesmere-Elliott.' Then he gave a small, polite cough. ‘May I ask where you will be getting these goods you intend to sell to me and my colleagues?'

‘They will be what the Japanese left behind,' Denis said shortly. ‘Confiscated tin and rubber. Bauxite. Palm oil and rice. Some manufactured goods. And of course war disposals – motor vehicles, boats and the like. There is an awful lot of it, lying in godowns all over Malaya and Indo-China. Over eighty million dollars worth in Malaya alone. It is now owned by the Allied War Reparations Commission, and the Commission will be disposing of it through me and one or two other selected people.'

The simplicity of the plan was rather breathtaking. In one go, the government was establishing a marketing structure for the sale of a mountain of seized Japanese material, and at the same time it was providing huge funds to buy intelligence and influence throughout the Far East. All without the need to appropriate a single cent of public money. Or to trouble sensitive consciences in Whitehall.

‘There is one problem we need to face,' Cheng Swee said thoughtfully. ‘The problem of the turncoats. I will have no real persuasion amongst my Chinese brethren unless I can promise them that the turncoats have been
dealt with. They have a great deal of power, you see.' The turncoats were the Chinese traders who had prospered under the Japanese. They had earned the hatred of the general population and many had already left with their fortunes for Siam and Indo-China. But there were still a lot of them in Singapore, tough, ruthless men running large businesses and often surrounded by private armies of thugs and bullies.

‘Then they will be expelled,' Denis said simply. ‘Give me a list, a considered list, of those whom you think should go, and I'll talk to the Military Administration. We can have them deported as undesirable aliens.'

‘Surely some of them would have been born here?' I interposed. ‘They may be undesirable, but they wouldn't be aliens.'

Both Denis and Cheng Swee looked at me. ‘All Chinese are invitees in Malaya, Norma,' Denis said quietly. ‘We decide who is and who is not an alien.'

The waiter came with coffee, placing Cheng Swee's before him with almost comical reverence. When he left, Cheng Swee made an elegant gesture with his hands.

‘I owe you a great deal, Mr Elesmere-Elliott,' he said. ‘And I think you will find me a loyal and grateful friend. As a token of my gratitude I would like you to be my guests until you find a home. The Adelphi is noisy and uncomfortable and could not be pleasant for the children. Please use my brother's house on Woodlands Road. It has been empty for almost a year, since my brother was taken by the Kempeitai, but it has a full staff, and it is clean and convenient.'

In our room that night I poured us both a nightcap gin and tonic, and sat Denis down facing me. ‘I'm a little worried,' I said frankly. ‘I learnt things this evening that I'm not sure I should know. I appreciate that you once promised me that you would never keep a secret from me, and I love you for saying that. But now I'm going to let you off the hook.'

‘I haven't kept you in the picture for purely sentimental reasons,' Denis said gently. ‘I need you to know what's going on, for my sake as well as yours. This is a tricky game we are playing, Norma, and no doubt there will be times when you will have to act on your own initiative. So the more you know the better. We will have to be a team. As we were in Australia, dealing with secret cables.'

‘I didn't think spying was a husband and wife business,' I said. ‘I thought that spying was one lonely man against the world.' I gave a wry shrug. ‘I think
that may be a direct quote from an Oppenheim novel.'

Denis was shaking his head. ‘All serious intelligence work needs a team. And the best teams come from within families. Blood is thicker than water, after all. It's usually the males of the species, fathers and sons, or brothers, or cousins. But there have been quite a few husband and wife combinations, too. Norman and Mabel Brookes, for instance. You know what those two got up to during the war, don't you?'

I had heard the stories, from Ivan and from Alan Hillgarth. Sir Norman and Lady Brookes – leaders of the Melbourne social scene – had penetrated General Douglas MacArthur's staff so well that Canberra often knew what MacArthur was up to before Washington did. Their
modus operandi
was simplicity itself. Charming Sir Norman would invite influential but lonely American servicemen home to tennis parties, high teas and champagne dinners. Equally charming Lady Brookes supplied them with patriotic and enthusiastic young ladies – the cream of Victoria's social set – who promptly did their duty by milking them dry, in more senses than one. The best
femmes fatales
in the industry, the DNI had called them. One of them actually married General MacArthur's Chief of Staff, and sauntered into Tokyo for the victory celebrations on his arm.

‘Then I will be the most loyal Mata Hari who ever existed,' I said, raising my glass.

But I was not as enthusiastic as I tried to sound. Denis's new ferocity rather frightened me, and the thought of being involved in spying again sent shivers down my spine. But of course I didn't even contemplate saying no. I loved my husband and would have followed him to Hell itself.

We moved into the Cheng mansion the next afternoon. It was a large, four-storey structure designed in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright. I say ‘in the style of' because while it resembled a Wright house it didn't feel like a Wright house. Its jutting verandahs and sweeping, curved corners were awkward rather than elegant, and the pink external paintwork made me feel bilious. It was just as bad inside. The vast hall was paved in pale green marble, and the walls were the same sickly colour so that one felt one was swimming under water.

The servants were magnificent. There were a dozen of them at least, and they whipped away our bags and had unpacked for us within half an hour of our arrival. They were all members of the broader Cheng family, and we were to learn that the senior members – the housekeeper Mrs Cheng Lee and the
butler Mr Siew – had studied at the Swiss Hoteliers School in Hong Kong before the war. Mrs Cheng Lee in particular was disconcertingly efficient, anticipating every want almost before we could articulate it.

‘I hope Mem and Tuan will like living here,' she said after our first dinner. She stood at the doorway of the dining room, backing out like a retainer in a Hollywood movie. ‘Anything you like we can arrange. Please just tell us what pleases you.'

‘I'm quite sure we will be very comfortable,' I said.

But almost from that first evening I knew that I could never be happy in that house. There was an unusual atmosphere about the place. It puzzled me at first, and then rather frightened me. It was always so quiet and still, almost as if the house was brooding over some long-gone tragedy. In my experience, servants tended to hang about a bit, moving things, laying the table, pottering with dusters and so on. But not the staff in this house. They would serve a meal and disappear back to their quarters while we were still eating, or bring in a tray of icy-cold
ayer limau
and vanish before anyone had taken a single sip. The cleaning was done before we rose in the morning, the washing taken away and returned as if by magic. Even the children seemed a little oppressed by the unnatural quietness, and I missed their chatter and rumbustious play.

‘You look after us very well, Mrs Cheng,' I said finally, ‘but the house always seems so still. It is as if it is a tomb and not a house. You and the boys won't stay in the place a moment longer than you need. You seem to want to escape, as if being here is a torture to you all.'