“All of this is so risky,” Professor Duffy said. “How did our little backwater Fragrant Harbour become so frightening and complicated?”

Plan under way, we all went back to our rooms, billets, and homes to bide our time until everything was in place.

From their months at the HKCC helping the Kempeitai and drinking at Cheung’s bar, Tanaka and Horace were sure that the regular laundry day was Thursday. So they were surprised when the white truck appeared out back on Wednesday instead.

And then on Monday, unexpectedly, two coolies came, each with a pair of rattan baskets on a long pole, to pick up anything soiled over the weekend and urgently in need of a wash. Everything came back the next day. Were they on to us? Or was this week an anomaly?

In the meantime, Noma had started joshing them in new ways. “How did you miss that strike, Horace? How can you be a real Japanese soldier if you give up your wicket so easily?” Did he suspect Horace’s change of heart, or was he just disappointed that Horace didn’t seem to be as good a cricket player as he’d hoped?

He also began taking Tanaka into the more brutal interrogation rooms. “Too much blood for a gentle civilian, Tanaka? You have to get tough if you want to be a real soldier.” Noma pressured Tanaka to beat an old friend from school, and forced him to break the man’s hand. Tanaka felt sure that next time Noma would make him kill the man.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Tanaka said when I stopped by to find out what they’d learned about the laundry. “It’s only a matter of time before we’re executed in that basement ourselves, or sent to Canton to be executed there.”

On Wednesday, I went to the club dressed as a coolie so that if Cheung was around, he wouldn’t recognize me. I skulked around the delivery door at Jackson Road, where both the kitchen of the Cricket Club and the side door of the Supreme Court were. All day I loitered, but no laundry truck came.

On Thursday, I went back, and spent a long morning waiting. At last, in the early afternoon, when my stomach was grumbling with hunger, I saw the truck round the corner and pull up to the door. I watched the workers come and go, and waited for an opening when they were dropping things off inside. But they’d posted a guard by the rear of the truck. They must have a system to guard against thieves and looters.