The Mercenaries

by John Harris

  Fagan watched her, shrewdly assessing the histrionic possibilities of the situation ‘Take her up, Ellie,’ he urged. ‘Show ‘em what you can do.’

  She stared at him for a moment, then she nodded. ‘Swing her,’ she said. ‘He wanted to know if I could fly. I’ll show him I can.’

  As the B.M.W. fired, Ira’s head appeared immediately from the tent. Ellie was wearing neither coat nor helmet, but she was waving the chocks away and, as he ran out, followed by Sammy, the little machine sped across the field, dust and scraps of chaff flying upwards in the propeller wash, one of the coolies running after it, trying vainly to lasso the tail with a rope and screaming, ‘Mastah! Peng Ah-Lun! Fly machine escape! ‘

  As Ira came to a stop, she pulled the machine up in a steep turn, the ace-of-clubs tail wagging, and began to climb sharply, the wings shimmering and translucent in the sun. until she was about three thousand feet up, then she stalled, the wings glinting, fell off in a dive and turned towards the tent. The engine buzzed like a hornet as she came over them, pulling up so low it set the tent flapping and heaving against its guys.

  For a quarter of an hour she treated them to a display which proved without any doubt her ability to fly an aeroplane, then she set the Fokker gently down again and taxied towards the tent. Fagan was grinning all over his face, enjoying the fury in Ira’s eyes. Sammy, knowing better, watched cautiously and kept out of the way.

  Ellie jumped briskly out of the cockpit and walked towards them, then her smile died as she saw Ira’s expression.

  ‘Well,’ she said, suddenly hostile again. ‘Wasn’t it good enough?’

  ‘What the hell did it prove?’ Ira demanded.

  ‘That I can fly a goddam ship,’ she snapped back. ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’d accepted that,’ Ira snorted. ‘You didn’t have to pull the wings off it to prove it.’

  She stared back at him, and abruptly the arrogance went from her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said shortly. ‘I guess I shouldn’t have.’

  There’s a roster board in the tent,’ Ira growled, his temper subsiding. ‘In future we stick to it.’

  As he turned away, she stood watching him for a moment, her eyes hurt, then Fagan laughed his shrill laugh.

  ‘Steady, the Buffs,’ he said. ‘Don’t let it get you down, old girl. It’s only the old Service working itself out of his system.’ She was still staring after Ira and she turned on him like a tiger. ‘Shut up,’ she snapped.

  Fagan’s face fell and he gave a wild gesture. ‘Listen, all I said...’

  Ellie stared at him with contempt. ‘You say too goddam much,’ she said. ‘You always did!‘

  Before the next week was out, all three machines were serviceable and Ira took them up in turn to satisfy himself they were properly rigged and the engines firing firmly.

  Fagan, restless and lacking in concentration, seemed bewildered by the precautions he was taking. ‘Will you, for the love of God, give over?’ he complained. ‘We all know how to make emergency landings. We can set ‘em down if the engine cuts. It’s just that they’re heavy on the controls, that’s all. You have to use a bit of strength with ‘em.’

  To prove his point, he insisted on taking up the Albatros, but his taxying was wild and almost removed the tail of the Avro; and his take-off, while it was as spectacular as Ellie’s, was not nearly as skilled. Clearly not intending to be outdone by her, he stalled, dived and spun the old machine until Ira’s hair stood on end and finally brought her down in an uncontrolled landing that was far too fast so that he had to apply rudder to avoid hitting the lorry. He swung wildly at the last moment to send all the coolies running for their lives, and sliced with his wing-tip through the frayed guy-ropes of one of the tents so that the whole lot came down across the tail of the machine.

  ‘Ach, well,’ he said with maddening cheerfulness, as they untangled the torn canvas from his elevators and rudder, ‘what’s a little mistake between friends?’

  Sammy eyed him as he swaggered away. ‘This geezer’s dangerous, Ira,’ he observed. ‘They’re both dangerous. They’ve got the look of doom on ‘em, and they’ll finish us between ‘em.’

  The loss of the tent and the hair-raising display of flying had been enough to make Ira decide that something would have to be done about Fagan, but before he could get him on one side to tell him loudly and clearly what he thought of him, a spectacular quarrel developed between Fagan and Ellie and, before they knew what was happening, he was in one of his fits of heavy self-deprecation and the dinner party they’d planned to celebrate the fact that they were finished turned into another of his disasters, as his usual aggressive hostility followed the bottle.

  As they tried to get him out to a taxi, all the old resentments against Ira burst out in bitter reproach. ‘Why should he always be tellin’ me what to do?’ he said to Ellie. ‘Why should he be running the show?’

  The argument was a repetition of a dozen others they’d heard and Ellie’s face was hot and resentful. ‘Maybe it’s because he’s run other shows before,’ she pointed out sharply, and Fagan gave a hoot of rage.

  ‘Did I not run our show?’ he demanded. ‘In South Africa?’ This final riposte, at which they always seemed to arrive as though they’d both been aiming for it all the time, provoked the usual explosion and the usual retort.

  ‘No, by God, you didn’t, you Irish ape! It didn’t start to go down the drain till you got your great maulers on it.’

  Kowalski looked relieved when he learned they were ready to leave for the north. ‘It’s just as well,’ he said. Tsu’s getting nervous and he’s keen to get his ships flying. I’ve arranged transport by river for the mechanics and the spares and tools. Carpenters can be hired when you arrive. The field’s to the north of Hwai-Yang, with two hangars, barracks and sheds. Maybe you’ll even see Tsu’s machines standing outside ready. The summer campaigns’ll be starting soon.’

  It was clear that General Tsu wanted everyone to know his warlike intentions because it was announced in the Shanghai papers that he had every intention of knocking seven bells out of Generals Kwei and Chiang, and was proposing to cross the Yangtze into Kiangsi and march south. Judging by the comments they heard in the bars, his announcement threw British, American, French and Japanese officials into a state of high alarm because his move could involve their gunboats in scuffles if his crossing was made too close to a treaty port.

  ‘Maybe he had too much samshui at dinner,’ Kowalski laughed. This goddam war’s been going on since 1911 and no one’s won yet ‘

  Two days later they saw Lawn and Geary off on the three-decker, Fan-Ling. The generator, the lathe and all the spare parts, tools and luggage were aboard, and Ira unwillingly handed over the money which he had been paid the night before by Kowalski.

  He trusted Geary about as far as he could throw him and he guessed that Lawn was weak enough to allow himself to be dragged after him into any kind of mischief that arose. They had never achieved very much, Geary working slowly and resentfully and Lawn following his example because he was too stupid to think for himself.

  ‘Get out to Kailin’--he gave them their instructions carefully--’and mark us out a landing strip. Then telegraph. You can have a full fortnight before we fly up.’

  The sun was bright on the brown river between the junks and sampans as he pushed his way off the steamer through the shouting vendors of eggs, rice cakes and bananas who crowded round him. Sammy was waiting for him on the bund with Ellie and Fagan, and by the time he’d reached them, Geary and Lawn had disappeared--into the bar, he suspected, to spend some of the money he’d given them for expenses.

  ‘I don’t trust those two birds,’ he said slowly, and Fagan gave a hoot of laughter.

  ‘I’m happy to let you have the responsibility, me old ardent son,’ he shouted, unpredictably friendly again. ‘A feller’s got to pee or get off the pot and Sammy says you’re a saint and I was always a dilettante. I might have been better
at flying otherwise.’

  The ship left in a cloud of smoke and sparks as relatives and friends of the passengers set off fireworks to speed on their way the demons which might be following them. Amid a crackle and a roar and a series of loud pops, the ropes were cast off to the shouts of the Chinese captain, while on the foredeck a grinning deckhand produced a gong and added to the clamour.

  Ira gazed after the steamer edging between the junks and sampans. Neither Geary nor Lawn had put in an appearance at the rail and it seemed like an omen for the future, because he knew perfectly well they hadn’t come to China either for love of flying or for love of him.

  He caught Ellie watching him with her sad, tired eyes, and smiled quickly.

  ‘I think it’ll be a good idea to keep well in touch with Kowalski,’ he said slowly. ‘Nobody down here knows where we’re going but him and, sure as hell, once we’re away from the coast, nobody’s going to give a damn either.’

  Part Two

  1

  Seen from the air, China appeared to be totally devoid of landmarks. There were no fields, no roads, no railways and, it seemed, no towns. There would be no ‘flying by Bradshaw’, and it was decided that Ira, as the only capable navigator among them, should lead in the Avro with Sammy as his passenger.

  As they pulled on their helmets, to Ira’s disgust, Fagan produced a flat bottle which was already half-empty.

  ‘Half past drinking-up time,’ he shouted. ‘Irish whiskey, no less. To keep us warm.’

  With his incredible genius for turning even a simple everyday problem into a catastrophe, he had managed to disappear the night before when Ira had been eager to get everyone to bed for an early start, and they had had to hire a taxi and go round all the night clubs and parties before they found him at the home of one of the officials of the British Consulate, riotously noisy and just on the point of disappearing upstairs with the official’s wife, while the official lay behind the settee in the lounge with a glass and a bottle still in his fists. A furious argument had followed and Ira had had to threaten to fetch Ellie before they had managed to drag him away, deflated and enraged and bitterly resentful of having to do what he was told.

  He gave his mad laugh and handed the flask to Ellie and, as his eyes flickered over his little party, Ira decided that he’d have looked to the future in inland China with horror if he’d been sharing it with only the Fagans.

  They were sweating in their heavy clothing but by the time they’d climbed to four thousand feet it was cool and, immediately, with the Avro in the lead and the two faster single-seaters weaving throttled back on either side, Ira turned and headed north. Behind him, he could see the dark sea marked by a great stain of yellow where the Yangtze brought down the mud from the north. The heavy clouds of the spring rains still hung over the horizon, thick, dark and menacing, the sky a strange deceptive place, changing from light to malevolence and back all the time.

  Then he saw Fagan had moved ahead, impatient with the slower Avro, and was pretending to offer him a tow with a piece of rope he was holding up, and his half-witted joke suddenly irritated Ira.

  He began to think of what lay ahead. It wasn’t going to be easy. For a lot of the time at Linchu they had worked under leaking tents which had not helped them with their ignition problems, and testing had had to be done when the marshy state of the field had enabled them to get off the ground. The ageing German machines were as likely to fade under them as not, and he was surprised in fact that something of the sort had not happened already. Whatever servicing had been done under Fagan’s rule--and he suspected that so long as the motors had fired he had considered them serviceable--had not been much more than perfunctory.

  Now that they were preparing to operate away from the coast, however, they could no longer afford to take chances because damaged parts were going to be virtually irreplaceable, and to add to his troubles, not surprisingly there had been no telegram from Hwai-Yang and he had had to take the decision to leave, not knowing what they were going to.

  He frowned, suddenly beginning to understand all the warnings that had been offered to him at all the farewell parties that had been thrown for them. Through all the tearful goodbyes and the long female faces and the offerings of silk stockings to tie to the struts as keepsakes, it had become quite clear that nobody expected to see them in Shanghai again for a long time, and Kowalski, arm-in-arm with a couple of short-skirted, long-legged shingled American girls from the Consulate, had summed it all up.

  ‘It’s a goddam queer situation you’ve got yourself into, Ira,’ he’d said. ‘Make no mistake about that.’

  Ira grimaced, realising for the first time what Kowalski meant. Fagan was going to be no help, and Ellie, a homeless embittered girl who’d lived out of a suitcase for so long she’d forgotten what it was to have roots, was likely to be as uncomfortable a companion as Fagan himself, with the mixture of hardness, gaiety and misery that showed in her deep, sad eyes.

  Mixed in with Geary and Lawn, whom he knew he couldn’t trust an inch, a chaotic political situation and a general who seemed about as trustworthy as a snake, it seemed to have all the elements of a comic opera. Out of the lot of them only Sammy seemed reliable.

  Apart from the single metal track, there seemed to be nothing in the flat sunlit country below to give them their bearings. All roads seemed to end within a few miles of Shanghai and only the thin ribbon of steel moving north in great loops indicated where the solitary railway lay. The hills soon slipped behind, and beyond them there was nothing but the featureless plain with innumerable small villages round Lake Tai, all of them surrounded by maize and sorghum fields and rice paddies where docile peasants laboured with ancient tools. There were no woods, no highways, nothing but lakes and interwoven cart-tracks spreading starfish-like from each village to connect it with those about it. A forced landing would leave them fifty miles from any modern form of transport or communications, and they would have to dismantle the aeroplane themselves and rely on ox-carts to return it to civilisation.

  But the Monosoupape roared out in a steady beat, and the three machines, rising and falling slowly together like horses on a roundabout, pressed further north. Once, his goggles up on his forehead, Ira saw a group of tombs, relics of the Emperors, the road to them through the horsetail pine and sweet gum lined with marble dragons and elephants, but nothing else to mark the empty land.

  Fuel had been arranged at fields ahead of them and they eventually stopped for the night near the city of Nanking which threw its grey rope of wall round hills, fields, mud huts and tiled roofs. Leaving the aeroplanes in the custody of an awed constable in a long gown and carrying a sword, they bedded down in a shabby inn with dirt floors built round a courtyard that was filled with people cooking, eating rice, drinking tea, washing mother-naked under the pump or playing strange games with blocks of ivory and coloured balls. It was impossible to sleep because of the din from the kicking mules and the scavenging pigs and dogs and the shouts of the sweetmeat and cake sellers moving through the crowd; and they rose early and, watched by gaping coolies, checked the uncertain German engines before they set off again, heading nearer the hills and the steep gorges of the Yangtze.

  Fagan had slept late, gaily and maddeningly indifferent to the performance of the always dubious Albatros, and after the first half-hour of flying it came as no surprise to Ira to see him dropping behind. After a while the round mackerel-shaped machine began to drop below him, the sun glinting on the curved upper wing, until finally it disappeared in a steep glide among the scrappy clouds.

  When they landed at Tangtu there was no sign of it and they waited the whole of the next day, with Ira alternately raging with fury against Fagan’s sloppiness and dancing with anxiety for his safety, before a young Chinese in a long gown arrived on a pony to tell them by means of signs and a torrent of high-pitched pidgin that the machine had come down safely and was now on its way in. They took the message to mean that Fagan had managed to make repairs, and when he didn’t ar
rive before dark they began to wonder about the bandits that infested the countryside and consider whether they ought to send out search parties. Hindered by the fact that they didn’t know where to send them, however, they decided to go on waiting and Fagan arrived unharmed in the middle of the next morning, with the Albatros hitched to the back of an ox-cart and riding himself in the straw, shouting and waving to them, quite untroubled by the delay.

  ‘Tempus bloody fugits, doesn’t it?’ he yelled. ‘Always game for a laugh is Mrs. Fagan’s boy.’

  For a moment Ira longed to be able to clap him in irons or something, but the matter was unexpectedly taken out of his hands by Ellie, who delivered such a dressing-down that Fagan disappeared, crestfallen, while Sammy ripped off the engine hood and found the fault was a simple matter of a broken petrol feed which Fagan ought, if he’d bothered, to have been able to repair.

  They got away again in the afternoon and eventually they came to the curving river once more with its old forts and fir trees, and the camphor, bamboo, cinnamon and mulberry groves that surrounded the little homesteads. Hwai-Yang came up at last, recognisable at once by the huge stone Tien An-Men stairway that rose from the river to the centre of the city, like a great smooth scar across its face. The steps were teeming with people and, as he passed overhead, Ira could see coolies carrying loads and sedan chairs moving up and down among the crowds gazing up at him.

  He circled the city for a while, looking for the field. There was no sign of any landing area but what were clearly hangars, barracks and sheds stood grouped together on the edge of a small open space to the north, next to a field of maize. There were a dozen oxen crossing it, however, followed by two coolies and a straggling group of stark-naked children and, seething with fury, Ira wondered what had happened to the markings he’d asked Geary and Lawn to set out.