Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [18]
Alarm panel, smoke alarm and what I presumed were air-conditioner controls were to the right of the door, along with a fire extinguisher fixed to the wall. Large display boards and photographs covered the rest of the walls. To the front left were figures, wax figures. Gloating Japanese military in their green-brown uniforms, some sitting, others standing, looking down at four forlorn-looking Allied officers dressed in pale tropical kit. One of these officers was looking over his shoulder at me as if registering the intrusion.
A recorded voice began its recitation. Simone and I were the only people in this first room. The captions indicated that the tableaux represented the moment the Allies surrendered Singapore to the Japanese.
I used my camera. I posed with Simone in various spots and managed to capture virtually every inch of the room. I know Sami said I should focus on the Japanese surrender room, but if I was coming back here, I needed to know if there were any hidden mantraps. There didn’t seem to be any cameras in operation, not visible ones anyway. If I was on camera, I wanted to appear simply as an over-enthusiastic tourist, so I babbled nonsense as I posed and reposed Simone.
The door behind us opened and a loud group of Europeans erupted into the room. I took Simone by the arm and we moved on.
The second of the surrender rooms was a long room and we were the only living bodies in it. There was just the two of us amongst a couple of dozen wax mannequins. We stood at the entrance and I used my camera to grab a quick panoramic sequence. There was no telling if the people behind us were about to come charging in. They gave the appearance of being the sort of tourists who do five continents in three hours or less.
There were long tables on each side of the room and a pedestrian corridor down the middle. A low wooden railing on either side defined the boundary. I noted that there was an empty chair at the head of the table to my immediate right. A battered leather briefcase lay on the table in front of the empty seat. A long row of seated, uniformed Japanese and Allied military types stretched into near infinity. A naval officer in white was standing between the table and the pedestrian way on my right. There was a support pillar beside him and there was a transparent screen protecting his back from any groping hands, I presumed.
The other side of the room was almost a mirror image, except in this case the standing figure in front of the table was dressed in khaki. He also had a screen protecting his back. There didn’t appear to be any cameras in this room either but I wasn’t betting they weren’t there. I’d check the images later. I was, however, prepared to bet there was some sort of proximity alarm system to prevent anyone looting anything from the display. It was probably just an infrared beam, like the others I’d seen placed around the various displays we’d just looked at.
So in case there was a keyhole camera or two at work, I again posed Simone strategically and took a whole bunch of shots. When the boisterous crowd from next door came in, it was time for us to bail out.
“Aquarium,” Simone said as we walked down the fort access road. I would have gladly settled for a drink, but yes, we were still in tourist mode and the aquarium was next on the agenda.
Before the entrance into the aquarium itself was a pool divided by a bridge. One side contained fishes of the finned variety. The other side of the pool had turtles and goldfish in it. Huge turtles, enormous things. We stopped for a moment to watch them. Very occasionally they stuck their heads up out of the water to breathe.
“Such old faces,” Simone commented, and I guess she was right. These things live to a great old age. Suddenly she squealed, grabbed my arm and pointed into the shadows at the far side of the pool.
There, at the bottom of the pool, was a body. It was black and almost lost in the shadows cast by the bridge leading into the aquarium. But it wasn’t a dead body. It was very much alive. A plume of bubbles exploded to