Free State of Siege by Eric Ambler Page B

their houses. Groups of more than three persons assembling in the streets would be treated as hostile and dealt with accordingly. Admittedly, this was harsh, but if the people were to be protected against the Godless forces of reaction, harshness was necessary. All loyal, right-thinking men would understand the necessity. Through discipline the way lay open to freedom.
    The voice stopped. A few seconds later the recognition signal began again.
    The sunlight was pouring on to the terrace now. Atthat time yesterday I had lain half-awake on the spare bed in the living room, trying to ignore the sounds of traffic coming up from the square below. Today, there was scarcely a sound. Now and again a vehicle drove up to the Air Terminal entrance, but apart from that the square was silent. Like a wary animal, the whole city seemed to have gone to ground. Six floors down, in the roadway, a soldier hawked and spat, and the noise interested the soldier on the terrace sufficiently to make him look down over the balustrade.
    “Freedom!” said Rosalie sharply. She used the Sundanese word
“merkeda”
and made it sound like a curse.
    She was sitting in the chair behind the drawn curtain, the sunlight casting the pattern of the material across her face. I could not see her eyes, but her hands were gripping the arms of the chair tightly and her whole body was tense.
    I shrugged. “All political parties use that word.” I paused, then added: “Why don’t you lie down and try to get some rest?”
    She did not answer, and after a moment or two I went over and put my hand on her shoulder. As I touched her, she sobbed and began to cry helplessly. I put my arm round her and waited. When I felt that the worst of it was over, I led her to the bed and made her lie down. Then, I went back to the chair, took my shirt off and wondered what it was she did not like about freedom. In the next room the recognition signalstopped again and the voice began to repeat the earlier announcement.
    I was quite sure that she had gone to sleep, but, as the announcement ended, I heard her sigh and looked over at her.
    She was watching me.
    “There is something I wish to say,” she said.
    “Go to sleep. You will feel better.”
    She shook her head. “It is about my father. I did not tell you the truth. I said that he died in a Japanese prison camp. That is not true.”
    “Is he alive then?”
    “No. He died, but not in that way.”
    I waited.
    For a moment or so she stared at the ceiling, then she went on. “My father was in a camp in Siam. When he came back, we went outside the city to a small place where my father owned a plot of land. We thought that for us it would be safer where there were other Eurasian families, because of the way the
pemoedas
hated us.”
    “Pemoedas?”
    “That is what we called the young soldiers of the liberation army. Anyone who was not Sundanese they wanted to kill. When the Amboina troops left, there was nothing to stop them. Even the police were afraid of them, or perhaps they did not care.”
    She paused, and then went on slowly. “One day, a lotof them came in trucks. They had guns, and they made everyone in the village leave their houses and stand in the square while they searched the houses. They said that they were looking for hidden arms, but they were really looting. They took everything of value that there was and put it in the trucks. Then, one of them saw my father. Some of the other men in the village had made him stand among them so that he would not be noticed, but this
pemoeda
saw him and shouted to the others that he had found a Dutchman. The others came running up. Some of them were boys of fifteen or sixteen.” She drew a deep breath. “They took my father, and tied him by the wrists to a hook at the back of one of the trucks. They said that he should stay there until there was nothing left of him but his hands. Then they drove the truck fast up and down the road and round the square in front of us. And