‘So they chose me. And the Royal Westerns,’ Murdoch observed.
‘Quite. Britain’s most famous fighting soldier, who also has a name well known and feared in Waziristan, and one of Britain’s most famous regiments, which is also remembered and respected in the area. It is assumed that your presence, and that of the Westerns, will make the Pathans pause to think before starting anything.’
‘Or act like a red rag to a bull.’
‘There is that possibility. There is no suggestion, of course, that you attempt to police such a huge area with six hundred men. You have more than a full division up there. They are mainly Indian troops, and they are scattered about in garrisons, but they are a sizeable force, and can be concentrated in time of trouble.’
‘Hm,’ Murdoch said. ‘Where are these garrisons?’
The secretary handed Birdwood a wand, with which he pointed at the map. ‘There is a strong one here, at Razmak. That is in the very heart of the Mahsud country. The Mahsuds, who are themselves an enclave surrounded by Wazirs, have always been the most warlike of the hill people. Presumably they have had to be, to survive. So Razmak is garrisoned by a brigade of six battalions, including one British, and also has a mountain artillery battery. To the north, along the River Tochi, is another brigade, of seven battalions, and there is yet another brigade concentrated around Wana, in the south. You will of course have another brigade in garrison at Peshawar as a general reserve, and it is anticipated that you will make there your headquarters, as it has good rail and radio links with us here.’
‘And these are all seasoned troops?’ Murdoch asked.
‘Ah. No, I’m afraid I cannot say that they are. And there is another factor of which you must be made aware. It is the Government’s policy, wherever possible, to recruit on the ground, as it were.’ He paused, gazing at Murdoch.
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘There can be no doubt that the tribesmen are natural soldiers.’
‘So are the Irish. What you are saying is the equivalent of the British garrison in Ulster being forced to recruit only from members of the IRA.’
‘Well, it worked very well with both the Sikhs and the Nepalese. The Sikhs and the Gurkhas are the best soldiers in the Indian army.’
‘With respect, sir,’ Murdoch said. ‘They became so after their armies had been utterly defeated by the British. We have never actually smashed the Wazirs or the Mahsuds, have we? We’ve won some punitive actions, nothing more.’
‘That’s a good point. Believe me, I don’t disagree with you, Murdoch. But we are here to implement Government policy, and must do what we can. However, you will be aware that the loyalty of certain troops has not yet been proved. You will also have gathered that your main problem is lack of cavalry. This it is hoped the Westerns will remedy. But obviously we have always suffered from lack of mobility where the Pathans are concerned. Oh, by the way, you also have at your disposal a brigade of armoured cars. But these are stationed in Peshwar. They aren’t really of too much use in the mountains.’
‘No, sir,’ Murdoch agreed grimly.
‘However, what you do have, and is of inestimable value in the mountains, is a squadron of De Havilland Nine As...they call them Ninaks. They are bombers which can winkle out any enemy lashkars, even in places inaccessible to troops. They are, of course, only to be used offensively in cases of open warfare.’
‘Yes,’ Murdoch said.
‘So there you have it. You’ll want to see the situation for yourself, and make your own dispositions, of course. However, if there is anything else I can tell you, please ask.’
‘There is one thing more, sir,’ Murdoch said. ‘Is Shere Khan still alive?’
‘Shere Khan? Oh, you mean that old Mahsud reprobate. Oh, indeed he is, so far as I know. He’s fairly ancient now, of course, and I believe he leaves the day-to-day running of tribal matters to his son, Abdul.’
‘He also had some daughters, I believe,’ Murdoch said.
‘I’m sure he did. Most of these fellows have more children than they can count. I would leave him well alone, if I were you, as long as he leaves you alone. He wasn’t involved in last year’s business, which was a relief to us all. As you probably know, he isn’t a real Mahsud at all, nor are his people. They’re kindred, and it suits us to give them that name, but Shere Khan’s people live away from the main body of the tribe, in the valley of the Kurram, which is really Turi country. It is also of course right up against Afghanistan, and in the old days Shere Khan would whip across the border when the pressure got too heavy.’
‘Yes,’ Murdoch said. ‘What is the situation in Afghanistan now? I was told in London that there was some Russian penetration.’
‘There is always Russian penetration into Afghanistan. What we don’t know, nowadays, is whether it is imperialistic, as in the days of the Tsars, or whether they are merely trying to convert the Afghans to communism. The fact is, Amanullah, the amir, signed a treaty of friendship with Soviet Russia three years ago. Now, in 1919, after that little war we had with him, he signed a treaty of friendship with us as well, and in fact we then recognized the complete independence of Afghanistan, for the first time, I may add. Reports from our agents indicate that he does seem to have rather a large number of Russian advisers in residence, but, as he is an independent monarch, we have no say in that. Afghanistan I would also leave well alone, Murdoch, unless they start something. And even if they do, remember that it would be a matter for the Government to decide what action should be taken. There is a difference between tribal warfare and international warfare.’
‘And if I find it necessary to undertake a punitive expedition against a Pathan tribe, and they flee across the border?’
‘I would consider very carefully before pursuing. Certainly I think you ought to be in touch with GHQ before acting on your own. But hopefully, Murdoch, you won’t have to undertake any punitive expeditions. You are here to overawe, sufficiently to prevent any trouble. If you manage to get through your tour of duty and return home without having fired a single shot in anger, you will be a very popular man.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Murdoch agreed.
*
‘What do you think?’ Ralph asked as they sipped whisky and soda and waited for Lee and Jennifer to return to the hotel.
‘I think we’re on a hiding to nothing,’ Murdoch said. ‘I’ve been given military command of an occupied country which doesn’t yet know it’s been occupied. I’ve been given a large number of troops, of which many are unreliable. And I’ve virtually been forbidden to take any preventive action, or even to shoot unless the other fellow shoots first and I’ve ascertained that he was actually shooting to kill.’
‘Hm,’ Ralph said. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘The job, of course,’ Murdoch answered. ‘That was what I was sent here to do. But I intend to use my judgement, not theirs. Here are the girls.’
Lee and Jennifer were exhausted, but excited and delighted with the sights and sounds of Delhi. So much so that Murdoch decided to take advantage of Birdwood’s offer, and they all went down to Agra, taking the ayah and the baby. He wanted time to assimilate everything he had been told, in any event, and he also wanted time to find out what had happened to the regiment; he had telegraphed Bombay and learned that C Squadron had still not arrived.
However, thoughts of the job in hand were driven from his mind as he and Lee stood inside the red sandstone walls and gazed at the red and white marble of the Taj Mahal. Lee consulted her book.
‘This says it took twenty thousand workmen eleven years to build the mausoleum, and another ten years to finish the whole place. At a cost of forty million rupees.’
‘And the rupee was worth somewhat more then than it is now,’ Murdoch pointed out, gazing at the four gleaming minarets which rose one from each corner of the grave, and at the marble screen which guarded the entrance, studded with precious stones.
‘When I die, do you suppose you could build som
ething like this over me?’ Lee asked.
‘I’m sure George and I can manage something. Let’s see...Taj means tall hat, doesn’t it? So this is literally the tall hat of Mahal. I suppose, the crown of the Begum Mumtaz Mahal is what old Shah Jehan had in mind. We could erect your riding hat on a whip stuck in the ground on the croquet lawn, and surround it with bits of broken glass, tastefully arranged, of course.’
‘You brute. But really, can you imagine the power that man had, to spend all of that time and money on a grave for his wife?’
‘And it was only four hundred years ago,’ Murdoch said thoughtfully. ‘He used to rule these people we’re going to live with. I’ll bet they still remember that kind of power.’
‘Which we can’t match. Not even the British empire.’
‘No,’ Murdoch agreed. ‘Because the true ruler of the British empire is the Chancellor of the Exchequer.’
*
To his great relief, on his return to Delhi Sergeant Denning was able to tell him that Colonel Ramage had reported the entire regiment now assembled; they would travel north by special train. Murdoch sent off a message immediately instructing them to proceed direct to Peshawar by the quickest possible route, and then put an end to the holiday and took himself and Manly-Smith, and their wives, north.
From the capital it was a fourteen-hour train journey to Lahore; they left at dawn and arrived at nine that night. The route was through high land most of the way, and was intensely interesting, however slow, for it took them by way of Panipat, where the Mughal Conqueror Babur had decisively defeated the Hindu kings of Delhi, and founded the empire which was to last, officially, for more than three hundred years, and then, as they swung west, just on dusk, Amritsar itself. But they caught only a glimpse of the Golden Temple and the Pool of Immortality. ‘We’ll come back to it when we’ve settled in,’ Murdoch promised.
From Lahore it was a nineteen-hour run to Peshawar, and as this was the end of the line the run was done in one, with the usual stops at various wayside stations and some fairly large towns, including Rawalpindi. The country undulated, and they descended to the bridge over the huge Chenab, one of the tributaries of the Indus, before climbing again to the high plateau, and as the day went on they could make out the peaks of the Hindu Kush away to the north.
‘Pathan country,’ Murdoch said.
‘How close are we to where your ancestor made the charge?’ Lee wanted to know.
‘Oh, a long way. That was in Baluchistan, south-west from here. We might have a look at it when we’ve time.’
‘There’s so much exploring to be done,’ she agreed. But now she was more interested in Peshawar, and the bungalow which was to be her home for the next few years.
As they arrived in the middle of the night they could do little until morning, and in fact Murdoch elected to sleep on the train rather than move themselves at that hour. The next day they found themselves in a sizeable city set in the middle of an intensely irrigated plain, the water coming from the Kabul River to the east and the Khyber River to the west; the rivers reminded Murdoch that Kabul itself, the capital of Afghanistan, was only two hundred miles away — two thirds less distance than Delhi — and that the Khyber Pass, through which the rivers flowed, was under forty. Indeed the name Peshawar means, simply, frontier town.
The plain, although some six hundred feet above sea level, lay in a depression between two much higher areas, and was warm enough to support crops of sugar cane as well as wheat and maize — there were cane mills outside the city. The city itself contained many splendid buildings, dominated by the pure white Mahabat Khan Mosque, one of the treasures of Muslim architecture, built in 1630, and, on a more prosaic level, Government House, built by the British quite recently. There were also, naturally, a vast number of shanty areas, but the streets were wide and the air clean.
Lee was fascinated, and by the inhabitants, who were mainly Pathan — tall, fair-skinned people. She was less pleased when they were taken outside the city itself to the huge, forbidding fortress of Bala Hissar. This had been built by the Emperor Babur in 1526, and rebuilt by the Sikhs in 1830 when they had attempted to hold this country. Now it was very much a British cantonment, with the Union Jack floating lazily above the white walls and the garrison encamped in and around it.
‘We’re not going to live in a fort?’ she demanded.
Actually the officers’ residential area was extremely pleasant, and Lee’s humour was quite restored when she saw the commanding general’s ‘bungalow’. Murdoch had always understood a bungalow to mean a single-storey dwelling, but this had two storeys, the living area on the ground floor, which was surrounded by wide, shady verandas, and the bedrooms on an upper floor which rose out of the centre of the building and overlooked the veranda roofs. The windows also overlooked an extensive garden, dominated by multicoloured hibiscus hedges.
‘Now this is rather nice,’ she remarked.
Ralph and Jennifer had a smaller bungalow close at hand, and the other officers were all virtually within shouting distance.
A perfect retinue of servants lined up on the first morning for Lee’s inspection. ‘What on earth am I to do with all these people?’ she asked Murdoch.
‘I’d let them get on with whatever they were doing before you came,’ he suggested. ‘The British taxpayer is footing the bill.’
Fortunately the butler, whose name was Kohar, spoke good English, and if Lee was rather taken aback to discover that it was he, and not the housekeeper, with whom she would be dealing, on all subjects, the pair of them and George Reynolds soon became the best of friends. Lee went trotting off to the bazaar most mornings in search of Indian delicacies such as saffron, and learned how to concoct vast, mouth-burning curries, but also some of the exquisitely flavoured Kashmiri dishes like murg massalam, or baked spice chicken, in which the various curry flavours were very lightly used, the bird being marinated in honey, almonds and raisins before being baked in the oven, or Raan, the magnificent spiced leg of lamb. Every evening she and Jennifer compared notes to see who had learned more during the preceding twenty-four hours. As there were quite a few other officers’ wives in the cantonment, there was a lot to be learned.
Murdoch was delighted to see her so happy. It removed one possible burden from his mind. There were enough others. If Maffey was pleased to have such a distinguished soldier as his general officer commanding, Murdoch’s immediate subordinates were not quite so enthusiastic. It was easy to see that they wanted nothing more than a continuance of their pleasant garrison life, with its cocktail parties and bridge parties, and polo matches and cricket on Sunday afternoons, and were unsure how the arrival of a famous fighting man was going to affect their lives.
‘Relax, gentlemen,’ Murdoch told them at his first staff meeting. ‘I’m here to enforce peace, not wage war. But we’ll have peace more easily if we tighten things up a bit.’
Because it was, still, a frontier, and a certain amount of laxness had spread through the garrison. This consisted of two battalions of Indian infantry, one of British — the Northamptonshires — and a battery of artillery. All were under the command of Colonel West, who was, in fact, what would once have been called a brigadier. He was a capable officer, with Great War experience, but Murdoch soon realized he did not have the greatest confidence in his sepoys. He telegraphed Birdwood and requested that one of the Indian battalions be replaced by a battalion of Gurkhas.
‘Things will improve when the Westerns get here,’ he promised the Colonel. ‘But if you don’t mind, I will keep Colonel Ramage and his men as an independent entity, I will need them to show the flag.’
He then persuaded Squadron-Leader Eccles to take him for a flight in one of the Ninaks. This was a relatively large aeroplane with an enormous wingspan. Murdoch was carefully strapped into his cockpit and given a flying helmet and goggles, and held his breath as the aircraft raced along the grass runway and then soared into the sky. Lee was green with envy as neither of them had ever flown before
.
As instructed, Eccles flew north to the Khyber Pass itself, low enough so that Murdoch could look up at the mountains to either side, and then banked off to the west. It was utterly exhilarating, to be several hundred feet above the ground, watching the country unfolding beneath him, the rushing rivers, the valleys and sudden peaks, the little villages, the pasturage covered in sheep and goats...and the herdsmen looking up at the plane. Murdoch had his binoculars with him, and he could see that every man had his rifle slung on his back — and these were modern rifles, not the old long-barrelled jezails which his father had fought against.
After an hour Eccles pointed down at the river flowing beneath them, and Murdoch realized it was the Kurram, which came down through the Peiwar Kotal Pass eventually to join the Tochi River before they both flowed into the mighty Indus. There was little difference in the country, the size or architecture of the villages, or the composition of the herds down there, but Murdoch felt his pulse quicken —somewhere below him was the land of Shere Khan’s Mahsuds.
He passed his notebook forward with the query, and Eccles nodded and turned his machine. They flew close to the mountain wall which marked the border, then banked again, and the Squadron Leader pointed to a sizeable town, guarded by a fort perched on a hill to the north. Murdoch saw a mosque, and several good-sized buildings clustered in the centre of the other, smaller houses. ‘Mahrain’, Eccles wrote, and passed the notebook back.
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