Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

Lunch was watered-down rice, tapioca and cabbages. A large Caucasian nurse with a bright, rosy smile ladled the food on metal dishes while a glum-looking lady followed behind and dropped off little tapioca buns.

The shelling resumed. This time the rounds landed closer though they did not sound as large as the earlier ones. Moustache Monty told everyone that they were likely mortar rounds. One of them almost struck the Sisters’ Quarters and probably did some damage because they heard glass shattering. It turned the mood sombre. Moustache Monty tried to read but ended up slipping into a reverie propped up on his bed. Amal was the only one who nattered on.

It was almost one pm when the corridor outside began to stir with a little more activity than usual. A doctor hurried in and conferred with a group of nurses and a superintendent who wore a white blouse with three pips on the shoulders. Vivian however, wasn’t with them.

Amal at last fell silent when the nurses began evacuating the patients on the ground-floor wards, wheeling them out one after another depending on the severity of their wounds. Those on the floor abandoned their litters and shambled after them. Moustache Monty held a brief conference with a few patients and seemed to have decided to stay, contrary to the counsel of the hospital administration.

The sound of gunfire got Amal leaping to his feet and rushing out of the ward.

Moustache Monty tracked him with condescension in his gaze. “I say it’s safer to stay put,” said he. “We’re protected by the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross. Follow my lead and you’ll live. For a start—” more gunfire drew his attention briefly to the corridor— ”bow to them. Show them reverence and they’ll leave you alone. If you run they’ll shoot you.”

No sooner had Moustache Monty spoken Amal returned, his face gloomy. “They’re fighting in the balconies,” he reported. “No good running to the tunnels because Indian soldiers also hiding there. Japs will shoot them all.”

“My point, exactly,” said Moustache Monty.

As it turned out a regiment of the Indian Division had retreated from Ayer Rajah Road and taken cover at the Military Hospital with Japanese troops in pursuit. Amal led them through the western set of windows for their escape. Then they were in the hospital’s backyard—a forested bluff that offered excellent concealment. But from where he stood Anton could see squads of Japanese soldiers crouching behind trees and shrubs along the incline, waiting to execute any escapees.

Somehow he had to find a way.

“Don’t get jumpy or you’ll get us killed,” Moustache Monty told Amal warningly. “Follow my lead and you’ll be fine.”

But Amal appeared not to have heard him. He moistened his drying lips, crouched beside Anton and leaned over to him. “No one is allowed to leave the hospital,” he said in a grim whisper. “They’re killing anyone who can’t walk.”

There was nothing Anton could say to it. He was watching the doorway just as Vivian entered, looking anxious but not frightened. Their gazes met briefly and Anton was surprised when she pulled Amal away.

They got into an adjacent room and she pressed an object of considerable weight into Amal’s hands. It was a Nambu pistol— the standard sidearm of a Japanese officer. She pointed at a film of transparent tape attached to the weapon’s butt and Amal realised with a start that it was a neuro-transmitter.

“You’re CODEX,” Amal whispered.

Vivian did not reply. She took out a palm-sized touchpad and remotely programmed the neuro-transmitter in a series of taps. She showed the readings to Amal and then stowed it.

“That’s all I can do for you.” She also gave him a toy cricket clicker. “Keep him alive and destroy it when it’s over.”

They left the room. Vivian clapped briskly down the corridor and disappeared around a corner. Bizarre as it seemed there was little time to ponder. Amal tucked the weapon in his trousers and returned to the ward. He stood by the doorway and peeked down the corridor, now alive with shouting and cracks of gunfire. Against the daylight he saw Japanese soldiers in steel helmets, their silhouettes bristling with the leaves and branches they’d stuck on as camouflage. He could make out the long, spindly tips of their bayonets.

A doctor, hoisting a white flag and a Red Cross armband high, rushed to meet them. A Japanese soldier uttered some kind of war cry and speared him through the thorax. The doctor crumpled to the ground and there he lay unmoving.

“What’s happening?” asked Anton.

Amal raised a hand to silence him. With remarkable composure he went on observing the marauding soldiers skewering a patient hobbling with a leg cast. Screams coursed down the corridor. Even Moustache Monty was turning white; the sheets drawn up to his chest, his opened book lying upside down on his belly.

Amal watched a soldier emerge from one of the rooms along the corridor. He wasn’t wearing camouflage like the others, and carried only a pistol strung to his belt. From the same belt hung a samurai sword. Anticipation sent Amal’s heart into a flutter. It was exactly what he needed—a Japanese captain with a sidearm.

The acrid odour of gunpower wafted in, reeking of an undignified death. Amal hoisted Anton up by the armpits and led him to another bed at the far end of the ward.

“Stay here and pretend you are very scared.”

“I am very scared!” wailed Anton.

“Good.” Amal grinned and tucked him into bed and pulled up the sheets for him. “You must fall and lie very still when he shoot you, okay? Don’t blink!”

“Of course I’ll fall when he shoots me! What are you talking about, Amal?”

Amal did not elaborate. He returned to his place by the doorway and waited until the captain entered the next ward before diving under the bed of the first patient who lay nearest to the doorway.

The gambit, however ludicrous it seemed, might just work.

Pistol shots rang out from behind the wall, and true enough the Japanese captain came tramping in a moment later. He had an weathered face framed in a light beard. In the shadow of his netted helmet his eyes darted about in a frenzied sort of manner, as if livid over something.

Without warning he turned and, having failed to notice Amal hiding under the bed, shot the first patient between the eyes. He then turned his attention upon Moustache Monty, who lifted his arms and held up the Red Cross armband. Moustache Monty was midway through the word “Geneva” when a pistol shot cracked open his skull. He slumped across the bed and whatever remained of his head fell into Amal’s view. A thin stream of blood pelted onto the linoleum.

After the Japanese captain executed the two other Caucasian patients in a similar fashion he began marching towards Anton like the Reaper himself. Just then Amal emerged and stole up to him from behind, brandishing a steel pipe that had once been a section of a bedpost. With a well-placed blow he knocked the pistol from the captain’s hand. The weapon clattered to the floor, still stringed to the belt. A slash from his pocket knife cut the pistol free.

He then feigned an accidental kick and sent the pistol skittering to the edge of Anton’s bed and followed up with a punch to the side of the captain’s face, deliberately holding back such that the blow did not knock him out. The captain staggered, and seizing the opportunity Amal dived for the weapon and deliberately slid it under the bed while pulling out the one he kept hidden in his trousers. When he turned around the Japanese captain was upon him like a feral beast, teeth gnashing, utterly oblivious to an important detail: the Nambu pistol in Amal’s hand wasn’t strung like his.