"Now wouldn't that be a most wonderful fate? Walking these beautiful hills, free as time itself?"

"It would be," I said.

He took out his jade pin, the pin that had once saved his life. "I want you to have this."

I shook my head. "No. You must keep it, to test all the tea you'll drink with me, when the war is over."

The moment I spoke, I realized that he had stopped doing that ever since the night I had first met him and that, in all the time we had spent together, on every occasion when I had served him tea, I had never once seen him use the pin. He had always been certain of me.

"I have no further use for it," he said. He placed the jade pin in my palm and folded my fingers over it.

I embraced him tightly, unwilling to let him go, and remembered the days we had spent in his house on Armenian Street. I rubbed his paunch. "You must eat properly. This is shrinking."

"Leave my stomach alone," he said sternly, and for one short moment we almost succeeded in smiling at each other.

I never saw him again, not even after the war when I searched all over Ipoh for him. The townsfolk heard that he had been captured by the Japanese in the final days of the war, so they informed me, for he had been an active supporter of anti-Japanese activities.

"My brother told me his only grandson betrayed him to the Japanese," a pomelo merchant said to me with complete assurance.

But I felt sure, when I hiked those ageless hills, calling out his name, that the Japanese never found him. No, he had found something here and he had accepted it. And the strangest thing was that, in spite of the older monks in the various monasteries in the vicinity agreeing to its existence when I questioned them, I could never find my grandfather's temple again.

Chapter Fourteen.

I returned to the station hotel and went into the bar. Doors opened out onto a ten-foot-wide veranda that ran around the front of the station. Sunlight was kept to a minimum by large bamboo shades, and dusty ceiling fans spun around and around, casting shadows on the checkered tile floors. Low, cushioned rattan chairs surrounded the bar at the end of the veranda, where groups of Japanese soldiers were drinking, singing, and terrifying the waiters. Across the station, people were going in and out of the Ipoh municipal offices. It was windless, and the red sun flag of Nippon lay wrapped around the flagpole.

Kon's father had instructed me to go down and walk around. I bundled my sword in a cloth and went across the main road and entered the busy streets. Heat and smells welcomed me. Stalls were selling the fried yams and taro which had become the staple food for so many of us. Most of the shoppers carried stacks of money in baskets just to make the smallest purchases. Like the women in Penang, the women here had made no effort to look attractive, a deliberate tactic in order not to catch the eyes of the Jipunakui. A girl stared deliberately into my eyes, turned around, and walked away.

I followed her. She walked on without increasing her pace. We turned around corners and into alleyways until I was lost and the sounds of the streets were reduced to a soft hum. The girl knocked on the wooden door of a shop, which was made of interconnecting panels of wood. A small rectangle was taken out and she stepped over and inside. I followed her in.

The wooden slat was slammed back into place and hands, several pairs of them, gripped me hard and pushed me around. I suppressed my natural instinct to fight back. We entered another room, then a hallway, until I was confused by the turns. We came out in a courtyard and I blinked at the sharp sunlight, my annoyance increasing.

A man my age sat on a wooden bench, picking his nose. My fists linked and formed the triad hand signal Towkay Yeap had shown me. I was pushed down onto the cemented floor.

"So it's a half-breed," he sneered, "come to warn us against the Jipunakui."

From the movements behind me I guessed there were three more I could not see. The nose-picker now came forward. "Tell us then."

I shook my head. I had made it clear to Towkay Yeap that I would only tell it to Kon directly. There was no way of knowing who Saotome's mole was. I sensed the sudden movement behind me and turned to block the blow, but for once I was too slow. It caught me at the side of my head-there was a loud explosion within my brain-and then the explosion turned to darkness.

A mosquito woke me. I opened my eyes and slapped it away. The air was humid and laden with unseen moisture and I felt I was drowning. I found I was being carried on a stretcher and I turned over and dropped onto wet earth. Pushing myself up, I faced four strangers, all Chinese, with that particular appearance of toughness which spoke of life on the streets. Their hands held rusted Sten guns and they waved them at me to continue on the almost invisible path we were taking. The nose-picker was holding on to my sword and I vowed I would get it back from him, even if I had to kill him.

We walked on in silence. The forest was quiet, broken only by the drilling of woodpeckers and the calling of birds. Shafts of sunlight-was it still the same day?-mottled the leaves and branches; I had never seen so many shades of green and brown. We pushed through spotted ferns taller than any of us, their stems swinging back to hide our passage. The ground was covered with leaves as large as dinner plates, which crunched under our feet.

We walked until the light in the trees weakened into late afternoon. The pain in my head where I had been clubbed began to lessen and I felt less dizzy. We had to stop every time the scout ahead put up his hand. Once we ducked into the wet undergrowth as a patrol of Japanese troops moved through the jungle. I was certain we were heading toward the drier limestone cliffs, for the growth began to thin and the ground started to rise. I was soaking wet and my breathing was ragged. We must have been walking for three hours, though I was by no means certain.

The path rose steeply and then dipped into a vale. Above us the interlacing branches of trees acted as a natural canopy and we were safely out of sight of the planes flying above. Our lead scout pursed his lips and a bird-cry fluttered out. We waited in the clearing as, all around us, guerrillas rose out from the bushes. We had arrived at the outer fringes of the White Tiger camp.

With the guerrillas escorting us, the going became faster. We dropped into the vale and then the ground started to rise again, taking us to the cliffs, where we reached the end of the path. "What now?" I muttered, swatting at the flies around my face.

Kon appeared out of solid stone. The cave's entrance was concealed by a fold of rock, curved like the shell of a sea snail. He smiled when he saw me but, as I began to bow, he shook his head quickly.

"Don't act like a Japanese here," he warned me, his lips moving near my ear. My sword was returned to me and Kon grinned when he saw it. "You've come prepared."

According to the intelligence reports I had read, the White Tiger camp had originally been led by Yong Kwan, but it had gained its fame due to Kon's impressive guerrilla skills.

"Why did the camp adopt your name?" I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders and it pained me to see how bony they had become. "It was after one of the early raids. We'd burned down a military base and we had to run through the entire night. By dawn we were on the brink of collapse and we dug a hollow to hide. And then a tiger came, an albino. It was the most astonishing sight; none of us had ever dreamt such a thing existed. It just stood and looked at us before vanishing into the trees like a ghost. One of the men here had heard of my nickname and told the others. They took it as a good omen and, since then, the group has been called the White Tiger."

We entered the cave. It was cold inside and the walls were damp. The sound of dripping water added depth to the darkness. A narrow passageway opened up and inside the cliff was a small circular opening which let the sky in, similar to my grandfather's cave but smaller. "We cook whatever food we can find inside so the smoke doesn't escape through this opening," Kon said.

Sunlight spilled through the opening in the branches overhead and, as faces turned to watch us walk into the circle, I felt as though I was walking on stage, accompanied by the loyal light. In addition to the smell of food cooking there was a strong smell of bat droppings. Clumps of bats hung high up in the shadows, looking like some strange hairy moving fruit. Now and then one fell away to swoop down and up again, squeaking, before flapping away into the opening above.

I estimated the number of guerrillas to be around thirty, but the cave was quiet. No one seemed to speak. There were an equal number of Chinese men and women-the women often looking as tough as the men-and a small number of Indians and Malays.

"Where's Yong Kwan?"

"Out killing Japanese. We'll see him tonight."

"Is there a place to wash myself?" I asked.

Kon led me out of the cave to a spot where a bend in the stream had gouged out a shallow pool. I sank into it with pleasure.

"Your father sent me," I said to him.

He nodded. "I guessed that. How is he?"

"Quite well," I lied.

He raised an eyebrow at me in disbelief. I felt a sadness at the paths along which our lives had led us. Kon's father was right; we were both too young. I wondered how we would ever recondition ourselves once the war was over. Had our experiences damaged us for the rest of our lives?

"What are you doing here, really?" Kon asked.

"The Japs have laid bait to lure you out into the open. Have you heard of Saotome?"

He held up a hand to halt me. "Tell it to Yong Kwan tonight."

"What's he like?"

"He used to teach mathematics at a Chinese school. Probably trained by the Chinese. It wouldn't surprise me if he had tried to indoctrinate his students as well."

Strange how we referred to our own people in a manner set to distinguish them from us. After all, weren't Kon and I Chinese? Yet throughout our conversation we had spoken only in English.

"He's also a total bastard. Very cunning and ruthless. I have a feeling he's in this for something else, not just for the glory of Communism."

I ducked my head into the water and came out feeling better, cleaner. I climbed out of the river, dried myself and put on my clothes.

"How's Penang?" Kon asked.

"The Japanese executed hundreds of people after you blew up the radar station," I said, wanting him to know the price that had been paid on his behalf. But as soon as the words came out I was sorry. I was not completely free from blemish either. "That was uncalled for," I said. "I apologize."

He shook his head. "I deserved it. You didn't have to come. I told you, we're even now."

"There should never be talk of debts and payments between friends." I told him of Tanaka and his part in the trap Saotome had planned. "He's the bait Saotome is using to lure you out."

The expression on his face tightened.

"I didn't tell you the last time we met-William's dead; he went down with his ship. Edward is in a slave camp, and Isabel ..." With halting words I spoke about Isabel, and he was silent.

"Your aunt was correct, you know. The British are making plans to take back Malaya," he said. "We've been working with soldiers who are being parachuted in. Everything is in place for the assault."

"You still trust the British, after the way they betrayed us, abandoning us to the Japanese? I read many of the documents they left behind in their haste to evacuate. The whole defense of the country was a mess. There were even orders to the European community to leave secretly in the night, to board ships and sail away," I said.

"Who else do we have?" he asked, his voice bitter.

We heard movement behind us and turned, Kon's hand going for his knife.

I recognized Su Yen, the female guerrilla I had met at Tanaka's house. "I've been looking for you," she said to Kon.

"We could have killed you," Kon said.

She went to him and kissed him. He pushed her away and said, "Come on, we decided it's too dangerous to do that anymore."

She shrugged and said, "Yong Kwan won't be back until tonight and your friend can always find something else to amuse him." She looked at me briefly, and in her eyes I saw a warning to me not to stand in her way.

But Kon was firm, and sent her off.

"The baby?" I asked.

He nodded slightly. "She bled all the way back here. And she's changed after the experience. She hates everything and everyone now. I think Su Yen lost more than the baby when the midwife worked on her."

I really did not want to hear any more. I wanted desperately to get out of the forest. It frightened me, this vast, endless yet confined landscape without landmarks I could recognize. I would not have survived for long here and my respect for Kon grew stronger.

We heard voices and laughter. "That must be Yong Kwan returning. Come on, let's go back," Kon said. He touched me on my shoulder and stopped me. "Don't let anyone know Tanaka-san is my sensei. Yong Kwan will use it against me."

"I won't."

Yong Kwan was a balding man in his late thirties, stocky, with hard eyes. Like almost everyone there, his MPAJA uniform had seen better days.

I told him in detail about the ambush. "Saotome will be driven along the trunk road between Ipoh and Cameron Highlands, followed some distance behind by his troops. His intention is to lure you out and he especially wants Kon." Here I saw Yong Kwan look displeased that Saotome did not consider him important enough to capture.

"You'll probably be informed as to when Saotome will arrive by his mole here. You have a traitor in your midst and you can only catch him when he brings you the news," I said, as I concluded. "Now I must return to Penang. Please get one of your men to take me back."

He shook his head and pointed to two of his guerrillas. They came behind me and held my arms. One strung out a coiled rope and tied my hands together.

"You're a well-known collaborator. We're not letting you leave until we're certain of the truth of your claims."

I swore at him. He stepped up and swung his palm against my face. I spun from the force of the blow and dropped to the ground.

"Stop it!" Kon snapped. "He was sent by my father."

"Your father," Yong Kwan sneered. "An old, powerless man, addicted to opium, a brothel keeper? Sending him to inform us? I have the security of the entire camp on my hands. He stays tied up until we get Saotome." He kicked me when I attempted to rise to my feet.

Kon made a move toward Yong Kwan, but I said softly in Japanese, "Let him be. I'm telling the truth."

The words, meaningless to Yong Kwan, infuriated him. "What is that Japanese spy telling you now? And you, are you also the Japs' dog?" he asked Kon.

Kon looked deliberately at every one of the men surrounding Yong Kwan and walked out of the cave.

I lay trussed up on the ground the entire night. By dawn the next day I was cold and stiff. My bound wrists were sore and my ankles, where they had tethered me during the night, had started to bleed, staining the ropes. I was desperate to get away. I could not stay, for Yong Kwan would kill me. If I returned, Fujihara would kill me. I had been away from Penang for too long now and my absence would be noticed.

I lay and thought about the consequences of my association with Endo-san. And I had not a shred of doubt that if death was to be my fate then I would rather that Endo-san end my life.

Kon brought me a bowl of hot gruel, squatting down next to me as he fed me. He sent the sentry away. "We've received news. The contingent will be on the road in tomorrow at noon. Yong Kwan is holding the man who brought the information."

"Who is he?"

"A rice farmer from a small village a mile from here. The village has been providing us with food and medical supplies. He's admitted that he's working for the Japs for the money." He opened his knife and cut my ropes. "We'll need as much help as we can get. You've seen Saotome up close, so you'll have to identify him for us."

I got up, stretching my sore body. The sun was high as we made our way to the cave. A group of guerrillas surrounded Yong Kwan, who was pointing to a map. He saw us, but went on with his instructions. I saw that most of them deferred to Kon, glancing at him to see if he approved of Yong Kwan's plan. But I thought it was simple and effective and so did Kon.

"We divide into two groups," Yong Kwan said. "One group takes out the car carrying Saotome and the other will deal with the truck carrying the troops. And you," he pointed to me, "you'll be in the team attacking Saotome. I want him alive."

"What about the soldiers guarding Saotome?" Kon asked.

"The soldiers?" Yong Kwan laughed. "No need to bother bringing them back here."

"I'll be in that team as well," Kon said, his voice firm. We had both agreed that Saotome would probably place Tanaka in the same vehicle as himself.

There were four people in each of the two teams. Yong Kwan led the first, with Kon and me and another guerrilla following behind him. The second team, which broke away from us after an hour's trek, had three Chinese MPAJA guerrillas and a Malay. They would be stationed farther up the trunk road.

We trekked through the jungle, our passage made difficult by the complete absence of tracks or paths. There was just thick, soggy undergrowth. Sweat soaked my shirt and the rifle sling. I had left my sword behind, which made the going easier. The mosquitoes enjoyed dancing around our faces, tormenting us. Once we disturbed a hornbill and it cried out, annoyed as it flew off, its massive wings sounding like a woman slapping wet clothes on river rocks. Soon the black-tarred road could be glimpsed through the low-hanging branches as we emerged from the jungle.

Before the war, this road had been popular with people going up Cameron Highlands for their holidays. Yong Kwan had chosen to lay the ambush at the junction of the road to the Highlands. Cars always stopped here before turning. My father loved it up there, for it gave a welcome respite from the endless heat, and Isabel used to enjoy walking in the strawberry farms, the vegetable gardens and the misty, undulating tea plantations. I knew that around the bend was a hidden spot where a waterfall collected in a rock pool. We had had many a picnic there, swimming in the cold clear water, picking leeches off our bodies after the swim and chasing insects and butterflies. A feeling of loss lowered my spirits and Kon asked, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, just lost memories."

He understood. "The road to Cameron Highlands. You British had some good years here," he said in an ironic voice.