A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) Read Online Free PDF

thing’s an utter waste of time. You’re not going to arrest anybody. At least, not for spying.’
    ‘Major Beamish seemed to think otherwise about it being a waste of time, sir.’
    ‘Think? Think? He’s a professional soldier. They’re all alike and worse out here than back home. Totally automatic. Touch a button by accident and they go into action. I’ll tell you, Perron –’
    Perron was surprised to find that his name had registered.
    ‘– how this bloody farce you’re up to the neck in started.’
    Three days ago Purvis had encountered, in circumstances not clear, an old friend – obviously a breezy, hectic sort of man – who had whisked him up from whatever he’d been doing, dined him at the Taj and taken him off to the apartment in Marine Drive which Purvis’s friend had described as ‘always good for a lark’; as indeed it had proved, in so far as an uninterrupted flow of drink, food and merrymaking was concerned. Although Purvis did not say so, Perron understood that the larkiness had been infectious enough to make Purvis forget his chronic internal disorder and become expansive with his hostess to whom in a weak but hospitable moment he had promised one of two remaining bottles of whisky he’d managed to get hold of in England and bring out to India for personal consolation. She had declined but he’d insisted and then been invited to come to another party with or without the bottle on the evening of August 5.
    ‘I could have forgotten the whole damned thing,’ Purvis said, ‘if I hadn’t stupidly made a casual remark next day to thebloody fool officer I work with about the amount of careless talk going on in Bombay. He said – where for instance? And instead of shutting up I said “Well, take this odd party I was at last night where the Indian civilians were actually telling
us
that the Zipper invasion fleet wouldn’t sail for Malaya until the end of August because of the tides on the beaches around Port Swettenham,” and the next thing I knew the bloody man had reported it and I was hauled in front of that Brigadier Whatsit and congratulated on keeping my ears open. When he heard I’d been invited to the same flat tonight he was like a cat with two tails and before I knew where I was I was under strict security routine and told to say nothing more until I had instructions, and that was this morning when I was ordered to report to this Beamish fellow of yours. When Beamish told me I had to go to the party with a Field Security chap in disguise I thought he was joking. I tried to tell him you can hear that kind of talk anywhere in Bombay but he wouldn’t
listen.
’
    Perron put his empty glass on the drinks table.
    ‘Are we landing on beaches near Port Swettenham, sir?’
    ‘How the hell do I know? I’ve got no personal interest in Zipper. I’m not going, thank God. Are you?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Oh.’
    Purvis noticed Perron’s drink was finished. He said, ‘Help yourself, sergeant.’
    ‘Thank you, sir. But I think a clear head might be advisable this evening.’
    ‘Advisable? In this country?’
    Purvis became restless and Perron momentarily allowed himself to stop thinking of him as an officer with an officer’s responsibilities for getting the war over and done with and think of him as a man, one whom in other circumstances he might even like.
    ‘Well if you’re
on
Zipper,’ Purvis said, ‘I suppose you have to take all this incredible lack of security seriously. I don’t suppose you want to be shot out of the water by the Japanese before you’ve even set foot in the damned country, especially at this stage in the war.’
    ‘I should prefer not to be, sir.’
    ‘Does it bore you to call people sir?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    Purvis got up. He refilled his glass.
    ‘What is your actual job, sir, if I may ask?’
    ‘You may well ask. I’ve given up asking. I’ve even given up asking myself. Three times in my life the phone’s rung and the fellow on the other end has