A Spider In The Eye

by Mark Hayes

  I’ve long suspected that one of the things the editors of Fleet Street, and by extension their sub-continent stablemates, hate most is when one of these irrelevant little tribal chiefs get caught and summarily shot. Because let’s face it…

  ‘Valiant EIC dispatch New Muldarin’

  …is a poor headline you can only use once.

  Whereas…

  ‘Muldarin Terror Strikes Again’

  …is one you can use every time someone steals a regimental goat. Hence, in all honesty, my disparagement of the idea when M first brought up the subject.

  But taking down passenger liners. If there was some truth to that. If they had not simply been lost in storms or crashed somewhere in the mountains. If there really was a ‘New Muldarin’ behind it. Then it required a whole different level of sophistication, something far beyond the usual tribal chief turned bandit.

  As to why someone would be hitting passenger ships? I couldn’t fathom a guess. Though this writer chap Wells being ultimately behind it still seemed like a bit of a stretch to me. I’d be more inclined to believe there was some international intrigue at play. If I were to take a stab at anyone it would be the Russians. God only knows you can’t trust the Tsars. Even if the Romanovs have been intermarrying with the progeny of our good Queen’s loins for the last couple of centuries. I certainly wouldn’t put it past them. Something was not right about all this, of that I was sure.

  The article did, however, manage to add to my trepidation about the three-month patrol in the region. The thought crossed my mind that The Ministry was hoping that my ship was going to be attacked. It made as much sense as anything else I could come up with. It was a far from reassuring thought. Though why they’d think such an occurrence would get me, of all people, close to Wells, I couldn’t guess. It sounded like the most likely outcome of such a plan would be a painful, pointless death for yours truly.

  As ideas go, that was one I was dead-set against.

  Company House proved to be disappointingly bland once you got through the doors. For all its grand edifice, inside it was just a long succession of beige corridors and stuffy offices. Within those offices, people as bland as their surroundings stamped my paperwork. Then they’d tell me to go to another office three floors and a quarter of a mile away to sit and wait for it to be stamped again. This went on tediously for some time. I got the feeling the clerks were playing their own little game of giving Hannibal the runaround. Either that or the bureaucracy of Company House was such that it made the Inland Revenue seem like cheerful amateurs.

  Many of the clerks seemed to share surnames, mannerisms, even the same little nervous tics. It was as if a strange experiment in nepotism and inbreeding was underway. Most of the low-level clerks were, in fact, British Indians. We’ve been in India a long time, so creating white collar jobs for the expatriates’ families has long been an industry in its own right. White British Indians had it seemed long ago replaced the native middle class in the caste system, at least in government jobs. And a nation of nearing a billion needs a lot of paperwork I have no doubt, but even so, I got the impression the Company House revelled in creating more, and every one of these tedious little men had their own little rubber stamp to add to my forms.

  I was, it is fair to say, hacked off when I finally arrived at the final stamping ground. There I was told that I had to report to the Company airfield the following morning to join up with my berth. When I asked what I was supposed to do until then, I was told, none too politely, “Push off and find a hotel.” I was less than impressed.

  It was getting towards evening by that time. After four hours walking corridors with a kit bag and collecting stamps, I was tired, hot, and drenched in sweat. So I was feeling more than a little ill-used. The thought of now having to find a hotel, while dragging my kit around, you may be surprised to learn, didn’t fill me with a wealth of joy.

  My weapons, or at least the ones that had come with the uniform, had been returned to me by the master of arms when I left the Empress. As such, I was walking around armed, and I’d had to fight off the urge to shoot someone. The last of these snivelling clerks who had been wasting my day was top of that list.

  The weapons were a standard service revolver in need of gun oil, three pouches of shells, and a well-used airman’s sabre. Well-used is being polite about it; it looked as blunt as a butter knife and as well looked after as a rusting pair of garden shears. I’d have given anything for a good blackjack of lead shot, and a switchblade. Thankfully the razor I’d acquired on the Empress made for a reasonable weapon at a pinch and I’d taken to keeping it tucked in my boot.

  As I was shipping out the following morning, I’d have no time to find anything more serviceable. So I was going to have to strip down the pistol and get it in good order and lay my hands on a decent whetstone to sharpen the blade.

  If I were heading into combat, which this venture had all the hallmarks of, I’d damn well go there with weapons in good order. Sometimes, I knew, running away or surrendering just isn’t an option.

  That said, running away or holding up my hands were still going to be my two preferred ways of dealing with combat if it looked like it might get dicey. Well, running away, at any rate. Some of the things that happened to those who got captured by hill bandits didn’t bear thinking about.

  I considered finding a spare office and bedding down for the night in a chair. Just to save me the hassle of finding a hotel. But bunks on a military ship aren’t known for comfort, and I was going to be sleeping in one for the next few months. The idea of a real bed won out. So, when I finally found my way out of the maze of beige corridors, I hailed a cab on the pavement.

  A cab is probably stretching it a little. What I actually caught was a cross between a steam engine and a tricycle. Powered by an ancient copper boiler that made alarming squealing sounds as it leaked pressure, it proved to be only marginally faster than walking and not entirely as comfortable.

  It did have one virtue, a chatty driver that seemed to know where he was going and who had a vague appreciation of the concept of safe driving. I suspect all the same that he went the longest way round and charged me double. So despite the mild worry that the boiler might explode at any moment, and the angry shouts in Hindi the driver directed at other road users, it was much like taking a London black cab ride. In fact, considering the screaming boiler and the likely translation of the names he was calling drivers who got in his way, it was almost exactly like catching a London black cab.

  Eventually, I got to the Jewel in the Crown hotel. Which was, despite being apparently owned by the cab driver’s ‘uncle’, halfway reasonable. I managed to get a room, a lukewarm shower, a change of shirt and returned to the bar in short order. Though after all the delays at Company House I had already missed dinner.

  There was a piano in the corner of the bar being played by a half-blind tone-deaf man in a monkey suit. Who for a half blind, tone-deaf man who had probably never touched a keyboard before was managing a reasonable rendition of something akin to lounge music. I did my best to tune it out, order a scotch and perched myself at the bar.

  I was on my third when I became aware that the seat beside me had just been filled by someone with expensive perfume, who was ordering a gin and tonic in a Home Counties accent. I looked up and made use of the mirror back bar to get a look at the perfume’s wearer and got my first pleasant surprise in a while.

  She was a diminutive but attractive looking woman, fair skinned, with shortish hair cut in a fashion that had been all the rage in London a summer or two before. So was probably the height of fashion out here on the other side of the Empire. She was also wearing evening wear, of the type that suggests cocktail parties on the veranda, and importantly, from my perspective, seemed very much alone.

  Being the gentleman that I’m not, and having a pocket full of rupees that The Ministry had supplied, I offered to pay for the lady’s drink. Hotel bars and the oldest of professions being much the same the world over, there
was, it seemed to me, a fair chance it would serve as an introduction to a pleasurable evening’s commerce. Though such assumptions as I made proved, as usual, to be false.

  You would think just once something would break my way, wouldn’t you…?

  In my defence, I was about to ship out on a three-month tour, which I suspected would be somewhat lacking in female company. No matter what they may say about airmen, in my experience only the usual amount of us are the kind of men who like to grease another airman’s piston, and while I have nothing against the chaps who go in for that kind of thing, I prefer to make port when in port with one who isn’t a chap, if you catch my drift.

  I’d also spent the better part of the previous week in the company of the beautiful, sadly unobtainable, Saffron Wells. A week in which I didn’t get so much as a sly peck on the cheek, while spending it with a woman who courted my company when we were together in public, if only to avoid the attentions of others. I would be lying if I was to say that hadn’t been the cause of some frustration on my part.

  Before that, as I’m sure you remember, I’d spent several of months at Her Majesty’s less than accommodating pleasure. So, you’ll have to forgive me if I was of a mind to make the most of what chances fate provided. I’m not sure any court could convict me on those grounds, and what possible harm could come of it…?

  Of course, hindsight is a wonderfully annoying thing, but let’s not fly ahead of ourselves.

  “My mother told me never to accept a drink off a stranger,” the lady in question replied to my offer. There was, however, the slightest of twinkles in her eye as she turned to look at me. Though now I think back, it may have been a squint…

  “First officer Hannibal Smyth of the Company Air Navy,” I replied, offering her a broad smile and my hand.

  “Justine Casey, of the Calcutta Gazette,” she vouched safe in return, and with only a moment of hesitation took the proffered hand in a surprisingly firm grip. She shook it twice in a mildly dramatic fashion and returned my grin.

  It appeared my luck may finally be on the turn, so I smiled all the wider.

  “Well, as we’re now no longer strangers, let me buy you that drink,” I said, throwing a bundle of rupees onto the counter that were gamefully snapped up by the barman.

  Yes, I know it was a hackneyed old line to lay on her, and throwing money about in such a fashion is scarcely better. I’m sure I deserve nothing but your scorn for that, but sometimes you just have to throw a line out there to see if you can hook a fish. Besides, I’ve a winning smile and as such can pull off such a line. Or at least so I tell myself. On occasion, such a line has been known to at least start a conversation and, you’ll note, I never claimed to be particularly original.

  “Oh, what the hell, make it a double and I’ll let you.” She laughed, which to me sounded reasonably promising.

  “Justine?” I found myself having to inquire.

  “Don’t, please, just assume my parents had a sense of humour, okay,” she said, and I laughed lightly in return. Then she added the somewhat expectedly, “Besides… Hannibal?”

  “Yes I know, the elephants…” I said, hinting my own parents were to blame for that moniker, which is as you’re aware by now something of a lie. My mother called me Harry, and only she knew who my father was… In regards to Hannibal, I am entirely to blame for my misfortune. It sounded grandiose in a good way when I first adopted it.

  Four rounds later, with her insisting on buying one of them, we were getting along nicely. She was telling me all the latest Calcutta gossip, which seemed much like London gossip in that it revolved around who was sleeping with their gardener. Who had gone to ‘the country’ for a few months when the pills had become a problem. As well as which debutants had made their debuts before the season and with whom. All the kind of stuff she could never print of course, scandalous as it undoubtedly would be to Calcutta society. To me, I’ll admit, it sounded like the usually bored housewife rag gossip which was probably rooted more in jealousy than truth, but I faked an interest in the who’s while laughing at the what’s. Which made for an entertaining time of it.

  She also talked about the worrying news from the north. Another airship, Russian this time, had disappeared near the Afghan border. It may have been unrelated to the other disappearances of course. The Russians were having the usual problems with the Afghans, which have been going on for a couple of centuries or more.

  Every few decades the Russians would leave, and the British would march into ‘protect’ the Afghans for a few years. Then, in turn, they would march out, and the Russians would take a turn. No one was entirely sure why anyone would want the country, not even the Afghans, I suspect. Other than it had the misfortune to serve as a buffer between Russia and British India.

  Whoever ‘owned’ Afghanistan at any given time would be fighting a war, until they left again, against tribesmen supplied by the other side. Then when the liberators moved in, those weapons would be turned against them, and the vanquished would take a turn at supplying the tribes with guns and bombs.

  It never seemed to occur to anyone that leaving the Afghans to their own devices would probably be the best way to bring peace to the country. The important thing was the British and Russians never shot at each other, only at the unfortunate Afghans. Thus they preserved the peace between the two great empires, and each got a chance to try out their latest weapons against hopelessly out-matched but incredibly resilient tribesmen. Not that those lobbying parliament to liberate Afghanistan from Russian aggression again were motivated by money, perish the thought. I am sure all those arms dealers and manufacturers of airships were solely motivated out of a sense of duty towards the poor Afghan people.

  And if you believe that, I have some magic beans for sale…

  Anyway, the ongoing debacle of the Afghan wars aside, a Russian ship disappearing over Afghan territory was more than likely just one caught up in that whole torrid mess up there and had been shot down.

  Still, that was three ships in a couple of months that had disappeared. Which didn’t bode well in my opinion, particularly as I was being sent to that general area. So I was starting to grow a tad concerned if truth be told. Over the years I have found I am rather fond of my airships staying in the air as intended. I am old fashioned like that.

  Anyway, to get back to the bar and leave my impending doom aside for a moment… I told several outrageous lies to Justine in between her own stories. Lies which made her laugh, whether she believed them or not. So in this fashion, we entertained each other for a couple of hours and probably annoyed a few of the hotel’s more sober guests with our laughter, as we kept drinking.

  To cut a long story short, at some point around midnight, I, quite drunkenly and equally happily went to my room with Justine Casey on my arm.

  Oh and yes, I know her name sounds made up, I’m not entirely dim. I just assumed that was because it was. Further, if she wanted to use a nom de plume for the evening, that was her business. I certainly had no qualms about that. If by extension she wanted to spend a night with a stranger and no consequences, then I was happy to oblige.

  It’s all fun and games as long as you’re both consenting adults and not looking for more than a one night fling. So if she wanted to be Justine Casey tonight, well good for her. All I cared about was that she was small, blonde, had a cute smile, and a devilish sense of humour, and no hang-ups about going back to a gentleman’s room for the oldest of pass times.

  All considered, I’m sure we would’ve had a great night together if, after I opened the door to my room and stepped through ahead of her, she hadn’t smashed me across the back of the head with something blunt and heavy.

  The lesson here is always hold the door open for a lady and let her walk in first.

  CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH

  The Hand Of America Lays Upon My Interests

  It was the fake-maid from the Empress somewhat unsurprisingly. I recognised her from the way she expertly knocked me out cold. But after
all, with my luck who else could it have been?

  Okay, that’s actually an ever-growing list of suspects, but all the same, she was near the top of that list.

  Being taken by surprise and assaulted in some way it appeared was an occupational hazard in my new profession as The Ministry’s cat’s paw, come pawn, come… Well if truth be told, I wasn’t sure what I was at the time. The only thing I knew for sure was an increasing amount of my time seemed to be spent taking blows to the back of the head. I was starting to think some kind of hat might be in order. Specifically, a hat that was steel framed and heavily padded, but I digress.

  I awoke this time to discover that I was in the process of having the last of my limbs tied to a bed by an attractive petite blonde woman, further to which I’d been stripped to nothing but my vest, socks, and underpants. Now, admittedly, there have been times in my life when this sort of thing would’ve counted as entertainment. Indeed, there were establishments that I’d occasionally frequented just off Tottenham Court Road where things like this were exactly what attracted the clientele. Though, in fairness, in such establishments, they seldom brained you with a pistol butt first…

  I suspected, if somewhat hazily, that on this occasion this wasn’t the prelude to a night of sexual congress for the discerning gentleman. As the lady involved in this odd little encounter, whatever else she might have in mind, didn’t look to me like she was acting out of carnal desire.

  Sex, in short, was off the agenda. Had I not been somewhere between terrified and confused right at that moment, I might have considered that to be a shame.

  As it was, I put up a token defence. Trying as best I was able to free myself and fight off her attempts to tie the last of my limbs down, I didn’t even succeed in landing a single kick, however, as she grabbed my only free ankle. I had bugger all leverage because of how tightly my arms and other leg were already tied down, and it was clear she was in no mood for any argument from me.