Eric Ambler - State of Siege

“Up through the drain, tuan .” This was Engineer Alwi, wide-eyed with wonder. “It bubbled up through the drain. I saw it.”

“Then what the Hell’s the good of poking about trying to get it to run back down the drain?” I demanded. “Don’t you see what happened? The bomb collapsed the drain conduit as well and the water from the crater took that way out. We must be below the crater here. Naturally the water won’t run back uphill. We’ll have to pump it out.”

“What do you need, Mr. Fraser?” This was Suparto.

“A powerful rotary pump. A fire-truck would do the job, or maybe there’s a sewage-disposal unit. Any pump that will lift water twenty feet at a reasonable speed. There’s nothing to be done until we get it.”

But Suparto was already hurrying up the stairs. Osman and Alwi stood there in the water looking at me sheepishly.

“Where does the exhaust from the diesel go?” I asked.

“There is a pipe, tuan ,” said Osman. “It comes out at the back of the building.”

“There must be a ventilator shaft. Where is it?”

“There in the corner, tuan .”

“Where does that come out?”

“I don’t know, tuan .” He wrung his hands. “How should I know?”

“All right, Osman. Don’t worry. Just go upstairs and see if you can follow it. It looks as if it may come out where we can reach it from the outside. You understand? Then, when the fire-truck comes, we can run the hose down through the ventilating shaft and reach the water that way. It will be quicker.”

“Yes, tuan .” He was smiling eagerly as he clambered out of the water and squelched away up the stairs.

I was left with Alwi. He was waiting attentively for his orders. It occurred to me suddenly that all I had to do was to invent some task for him that would take him out of sight for a few minutes, to be free to walk out of the building. It was unlikely that anyone would try to stop me. If anyone did, I could say that I had gone to inspect the ventilator. If all went well, I could be at the British Consulate in ten minutes. True, my passport was at the police department awaiting an exit permit; but providing that I was not stopped by a patrol, that would not matter. I would be safe.

When the day-dream was over, I sat down on the stairs and wondered idly if Suparto were counting on my reluctance to abandon Rosalie to keep me from escaping, or whether he had preferred to rely upon more direct methods.

“Alwi,” I said, “a guard should have been posted at the top of the stairs to prevent unauthorised persons interfering with our work. Go and see if he is there.”

He looked a bit mystified, but he went readily enough. I lit my last cigarette. He was back before I had taken two puffs.

“The guard is there in position, tuan .”

Suparto was, after all, a realist.

“Very well,” I said. “Now tell me. Was the generator set running when the water came in?”

“Yes, tuan . There was a loss of power. My colleague, Osman, came down and found the water. The motor stopped running as he came in.”

“Did any fuses blow?”

“We have not looked, tuan .”

I lowered myself into the water and waded over to the switchboard. The generator set itself had been made by the Krupp engine works at Kiel, but the board was Japanese. There was a “no-volts” circuit-breaker on it and that had tripped. After a bit, I discovered that the motor control box was linked to the circuit-breaker. It seemed likely that the motor was undamaged and that it had cut out automatically as a result of the electrical failure. No fuses had blown. It was possible, I decided, that the generator windings had not burnt out and that the loss of power had been due simply to the damp insulation; but it would be a long time before I knew for certain one way or the other. There was one other hope, a faint one.

“Can’t you adapt the equipment to use the mains power?”

Alwi looked at me reproachfully. “But that is direct current, tuan . One hundred and thirty volts.”

So that was that.

It was eleven thirty then. Soon, Osman came to report that he had found the ventilator shaft opening and that it was near enough to the ground to serve as a duct for the hose pipe. There was an extractor fan fitted to the basement end of the shaft. So that there should be no delay when the pump arrived, I told them to get some tools and remove the fan. When that was done, we sat on the stairs and waited.

Just before noon there was another air raid. This time the target seemed to be on the outskirts of the city. Presumably, the fact that the radio station was no longer on the air had satisfied them. Down in the subbasement we could feel the concussion of the bombs. The lights flickered once, and Alwi said that it must be the power station that was being attacked; but, to my relief, the lights stayed on. About ten minutes later, Suparto arrived, accompanied by a terrified fireman wearing a steel helmet, and reported that a motor pump was outside.

I sent Osman up to show them the ventilator shaft. At twelve thirty they started to pump. There was a delay when Suparto noticed that the water was being allowed to run back into the bomb crater; but after another hose had been fitted to carry the water from the pump to a drain farther along the road, the work was uninterrupted. By one fifteen, the water in the basement had sunk to the level of the intake hose nozzle, and further pumping was impossible. There was still an inch or so of water on the floor, but it was well clear of the generator housing and could be dealt with later.

Suparto was looking pleased. “You must admit, Mr. Fraser,” he said sportively, “that the General’s methods sometimes produce results.”

“What results?”

“You have made progress.”

“We haven’t even started yet.”

I called for a hand lamp and made a careful inspection of the generator. This told me nothing that I did not know already. The thing was designed to deliver alternating current at five hundred volts, and the windings were soaking wet. I also knew there was only one course open to me; that was to dismantle the thing, dry the windings out as best I could, reassemble it and hope to God it worked.

Suparto was standing over me, watching expectantly. To get rid of him I explained that I should want heating appliances of some sort, preferably blow lamps, a couple of electric fans, some thin sheet iron and a block and tackle. When he had gone to give the necessary orders, I began, with Osman and Alwi, the dismantling process.

In one of the ceiling joists there was a ring bolt that had obviously been put there to lower the generator into place when it had been originally installed. I managed, eventually, to get a rope sling round the armature; then, by using the block and tackle rigged to the ring bolt above, I was able to sway the armature clear of the housing. But the job took well over an hour. The coupling to the generator had proved all but inaccessible, and we had had much more dismantling to do than I had anticipated. We had, moreover, removed the fan from the ventilator shaft to get the hose through, and the heat down there became overpowering. By the time we were ready to start drying out, we were too exhausted to go on without a rest.

Suparto had food brought to us- nassi goreng and fruit-and we squatted on the stairs while we ate. I got some cigarettes, too. Suparto watched us keenly, like a trainer; with us but not of us.

“What about Miss Linden?” I asked him. “Has she had any food?”

“I will see that she gets some.”

“And drinking-water, and cigarettes?”

“Very well.” He looked at his watch. “It is three hours to sundown, Mr. Fraser. It will be necessary soon for me to report to the General.”