Timewars 06 The Khyber Connection

by Simon Hawke

  “I should have taken that bullet,” Churchill said. “I am a soldier whose duty is to die for queen and country if the need arises. He was a man of God who would not even carry a gun.”

  He was about as far from being a man of God as a man could get, thought Finn. His duty was to die, as well, if the need arose. He had discharged it. His death was not for nothing.

  “It’s over then,” said Finn, when they had gone. “We’ve done what we’ve come back here to do. Or Lucas has. Churchill will live now and go on to become prime minister of Great Britain. Ironic, isn’t it? We came here to find a disruption to adjust, and it found us.”

  “Something’s wrong,” Andre said.”If I could think straight, maybe I could figure out what the hell it is, but I can’t manage to do that now. All I know is that something’s wrong. It isn’t over yet. Maybe we should have remained with the field force.”

  “Not much chance of that, after Blood ordered us back,” said Finn. “Besides, I don’t know what the hell we should have done or should be doing. I just don’t know anything anymore, and I don’t much care either.”

  “You didn’t remember Churchill before I told you about him, did you?” said Andre.

  “What?”

  “Lucas was going to talk to you about that, but he never got the chance. When we first met Churchill, I didn’t remember him. I didn’t know anything about him. But Lucas remembered him.”

  “Lucas was always a history addict,” Finn said. “He used to say that you never know when you might need information that would help you … stay alive,” he finished lamely.

  “Then you knew?” said Andre.

  “Knew about what?”

  “About Churchill,” Andre said. “That he would become prime minister of Great Britain.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Finn, angry with her for thinking about Churchill when Lucas was dead. “To hell with Churchill. Churchill’s not an issue any longer. Whatever happened to begin the chain of events which led that Ghazi tribesman to kill Winston Churchill, whichever act interfered with history to bring that about, it’s been compensated for, Lucas did it. I wish it had been me, but I wasn’t even there. Damn it, I wasn’t even there!”

  “Finn,” said Andre, softly, “I didn’t know him as well as you did or as long, but I didn’t love him any less. He thought this was important. I didn’t know Churchill would become Prime Minister of Great Britain because there was nothing about him in the subknowledge of my implant education. There was nothing about him in the mission programming either. But Lucas knew. Lucas remembered. He didn’t know it from his subknowledge, and he didn’t know it from the mission programming. He just remembered. Do you understand?”

  Delaney simply stared at her.

  “Finn, you had to have encountered Churchill before Lucas died. You must have seen him at the officer’s conference at least. Think, Finn, did you know who he was? Who he would be?”

  “Of course I knew,” said Finn, frowning. “I even had a chance to talk with him for a while last night. Hell, I remember thinking that he was so serious for his age, that if he didn’t …”

  “What?”

  A blank look came over Finn’s face.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. ‘How could I have thought … “ His voice trailed off.

  “You didn’t know him either, did you?” Andre said. “His name didn’t trigger any responses. It was the same with me. It was the same with Lucas, too, don’t you understand? Lucas remembered who Churchill was, but not because the information was contained in his subknowledge or in the mission programming. He remembered reading it. If Churchill was important enough to have been written about in history books, how could he have been left out of the implant education programs? How could there have been nothing about him in the mission programming if it was a known historical fact that he served in this campaign?”

  “You’re right,” said Finn. “It wasn’t in my subknowledge, either. After you told me what Lucas said, I just assumed—Wait a minute. If a historical disruption somehow brought about Churchill’s death—if he actually caught that bullet—then that would have accounted for there being nothing about him in the implant education programs or in the mission programming, because he would never have survived to become prime minister of Great Britain. But then how could Lucas have read about him in history books? There must have been some sort of flaw in the mission programming.”

  “And in the implant education programs?” Andre said.

  “I admit that sounds unlikely, but—”

  ‘Sahib Finn?”

  They turned around to see their native attendant, Gunga Din, approaching hesitantly.

  “Yes, Din, what is it?” Finn said.

  “Soldier sahibs say time to leave for Peshawar,” said Din. “Mulvaney Sahib say must not waste daylight.”

  “He’s right,” said Finn. “Have you made everything ready, Din?”

  “Everything ready,” Din said. “Sahib Finn? Is permitted for this worthless one to pay respect Father Sahib?”

  “Of course it’s permitted, Din,” said Finn.

  Din approached the grave and stood over it for a moment, his lips moving as he silently said a prayer in his native tongue. When he was finished, he glanced at them with an embarrassed smile and thanked them profusely.

  Finn knelt down over the grave and placed his hand upon the mound of earth. “Good-bye, old friend,” he said.

  They turned and walked away. Din, too, felt the loss. Perhaps he did not feel it so profoundly as did Finn and Andre, but he was overcome with emotion at the death of the one man who had ever treated him as something more than what he was—an untouchable. As they walked back down toward the green, Din glanced over his shoulder for one last look at the “Father Sahib’s” grave. He squinted, blinked, then shook his head. He thought he had seen something, but there was nothing there now.

  For a moment, just the barest fraction of a second, as he looked back up toward the knoll where the cemetery was located, Din thought he saw someone standing over the grave. Perhaps, thought Din, it was only his imagination. Or perhaps it was a portent. He shut his eyes and muttered a quick prayer to Shiva. He thought he had seen a tall, dark figure, wearing a long robe that billowed in the wind.

  Sayyid Akbar stood high upon a precipice overlooking the Khyber Pass. Beyond, stretching as far as the eye could see, was the tortured landscape of the Himalayas, like giant rocky waves frozen into immobility. Below, at the bottom of the gorge, was a narrow, twisting trail, walled by sheer cliffs and broken by huge boulders. One small step forward would take him to oblivion, an oblivion he sometimes longed for. He had lived for a long time. The pathetic madman named Sadullah believed him to be a god, an incarnation of the Prophet or some minor deity of his absurd religion, but who knew? Who knew what twisted thoughts that passed for cogitation flashed through that demented mind? There was no need to understand him, so long as Sadullah could be used. And he was used so easily. As I am being used, thought Nikolai Drakov, whom Sadullah knew as Sayyid Akbar.

  In a few months it would be his birthday. He would be ninety-three. He looked thirty-seven. His body was in peak physical condition, and his youthful face was marred only by the knife scar that ran from below his left eye to just above the corner of his mouth. In his costume as Sayyid Akbar, he looked like a dashing bandit chieftain, but he felt old. Emotionally drained. They had done that to him. Drained him. Leeched from him everything he knew. And now he could not exist without them.

  As the sun rose above the peaks, thinning the mist, he looked down into the velvet-shrouded gorge, toward a narrow section of the pass hemmed in by two protruding rock formations. Like the Pillars of Hercules, he thought. The pillars that guard the gates. Three shapes stepped out of the undulating mist, walking out of one world into another. They looked up at him. He raised his arm to signal them.

  The three figures rapidly ascended toward him from the bottom of the gorge, rising up until they were lev
el with him and continuing on over his head to land behind him. He turned around as they shut off their jet-paks.

  “Give us your report,” said one of them.

  “Everything proceeds according to plan,” said Drakov. “The British are heavily engaged in the Malakand and at Chakdarra. Sadullah is working the tribesmen up into a frenzy about the coming Night of the Long Knives. He’ll lose the battle at the Malakand fort, and undoubtedly the British will beat him at Chakdarra, but that makes little difference. The British Raj is convinced the uprising is confined to that area and that all the tribes have flocked to join Sadullah, so they haven’t realised that I’ve rallied the remaining tribes to my side here. The garrisons in the Khyber Pass have been deserted, and even Colonel Warburton’s Khyber Rifles have gone over to me, convinced I am the Light of Islam. Warburton has been transferred back to Lahore. He’s retiring and going back to England. Without him to lead the Khyber Rifles, it was a simple matter to get them to join the jehad. That’s something it will take the British years to understand, that it isn’t the Empire the natives give their allegiance to, but individuals. As Oscar Wilde said, it is personalities and not principles that move the age. Meanwhile, I have finally succeeded in recruiting the last remaining independent warlord in the region. A local chieftain named Sharif Khan. The pass is now completely under my control. I have well over 10,000 men in my lashkar, more than enough to overrun Landi Kotal and destroy all the remaining forts in our path. Your way is clear.”

  “We’ll have to move quickly,” one of the three said. “There’s no telling how long this confluence will remain stable. There’s no margin for error, Drakov.”

  “There will be none, at least not on my part,” said Drakov. “Just see to it that you live up to your part of our agreement.”

  “You have no need for concern,” said another of the three. “Considering what is at stake, it’s a miniscule price to pay. And it gives all of us what we want. What we require. Your life is at stake as well as ours. The most important thing is that the British are kept ignorant of your strength in this area. They must not send more troops until we can mobilize.”

  “They won’t,” said Drakov. “Since the action at the Malakand Pass began, I’ve been intercepting all of their communications. The telegraph wires are all down and the only dispatches which get through are the ones I wish to get through. They still think they’re dealing with a small uprising. By the time they realize that every tribesman in the Hindu Kush is up in arms, it will be far too late.”

  “Good. It’s imperative that you control the pass. The sooner we can move, the better. We’ll see you again when we’re ready to cross over.”

  They switched on their jet-paks and descended into the gorge, arcing down toward the two pillars. Drakov watched them until they were swallowed by the mist. If any wandering tribesmen had been watching, Drakov thought, the legend of Sayyid Akbar had just grown greater. They would speak of how the Holy One communed with spirits, and they would anxiously await the moment when the host of heaven arrived. And they will arrive soon, thought Drakov. But not from heaven.

  Chapter 7

  They were travelling in the opposite direction from Chakdarra, where most of the enemy forces were concentrated, but they were still in hostile territory. To avoid drawing unwanted attention to themselves, they wore the white robes of the Ghazis over their clothing and wound turbans around their heads. Even from a short distance there was nothing to distinguish them from a roving band of tribesmen riding captured British horses. To help complete the disguise, they carried jezail rifles in addition to their own MartiniHenrys and armed themselves with charras, which like the clothing and the rifles, they had taken from tribesmen killed at the scene of the battle. Mulvaney carefully inspected Andre’s appearance before they set out, and grunted his approval.

  “It’ll do,” he said. “No one will take you for a woman in that getup. Now all we need is to smear a bit o’ dirt upon our faces to darken up our skin, and the lot of us’ll be able to pass as Pathans.”

  “Unless anyone gets close enough to see that red hair stickin’ out from beneath your puggaree,” said Learoyd.

  They adjusted Mulvaney’s turban and set off down the road to Peshawar. They travelled quickly and made it through the first day of their journey without incident. They stopped to pitch camp in the shelter of a rock formation which would hide them and their campfire. Ortheris boiled some water for tea, and they watched the shadows lengthen as the sun slowly sank behind the peaks.

  “What’ll you do now, miss?” said Learoyd.

  “I don’t quite know,” said Andre.

  Learoyd nodded, watching as Mulvaney and Ortheris saw to the horses with the help of Gunga Din. Finn was scouting around, looking to see if their position was vulnerable. They could afford to take no chances. They would stand watch in shifts, with the exception of Andre and Din, Mulvaney having insisted that it was work for soldiers. Neither Finn nor Andre were in a position to disagree.

  “It was too bad about the Father,” said Learoyd. “Were you close?”

  Andre nodded. “We’d known each other for a long time. He taught me almost all I know. It’s hard to believe he’s dead. I feel as if I’ve lost a relative. It’s the second time that’s happened to me. The first time, it was my brother. I never thought I could feel pain like that again.”

  “I know what you mean, miss,” said Learoyd, staring out into the growing darkness, the flames making dancing shadows on his face. “I lost someone once, myself.”

  “A brother?” Andre said.

  “My son,” Learoyd said softly.

  “I didn’t know you had a wife,” said Andre.

  “I don’t, not anymore,” Learoyd said. “It was a long time ago, when we first arrived in India. Bombay, it was. There was an outbreak of typhoid. My young son came down with it. I remember sittin’ up with him all night, prayin’ for the fever to break. It didn’t, and he died. My wife never forgave me. She blamed me for havin’ brought them to this godforsaken place, and placed the burden of responsibility for our son’s death squarely on my shoulders. He was just five years old. She went into hysterics and raved at me. After that she became very quiet and never said two words to me. She went back to London. I never saw nor heard from her again. Some time later a piece of paper arrived, informin’ me that I wasn’t married anymore, and that was an end of it.”

  “You were an officer,” said Andre.

  Learoyd looked at her with surprise, as if he hadn’t actually realised he had a listener.

  “Enlisted men don’t bring their wives with them,” she said.

  “I was a captain in the 4th Dragoon Guards,” Learoyd said. He shrugged. “It was a long time ago. Ages, seems like.”

  “What happened?” Andre said.

  “Why am I an infantry private now, you mean? I was broken. I was in a bit of a state after she left me. My commandin’ officer saw me sulking about and drinkin’ too much. I suppose he meant to snap me out of it. Provoked an argument. Told me I was better off without the bloody bitch. It was the wrong thing to say to me, you understand, and the worst time to say it. I thrashed him to within an inch of his life. Took five men to pull me off him, otherwise I’m sure I would have beaten him to death. All things considered, my punishment could have been far worse. Circumstances were taken into account, that sort of thing. I couldn’t remain with the Guards after that. I requested a transfer to an infantry regiment and it was expeditiously granted. As to the pain, well, it subsided after a while. After a while longer, it more or less went away. But the memory comes back every now and then.” He took a pull from his flask. “We do not, fortunately, have an infinite capacity for pain. But we do remember.”

  He handed her the flask. “Join me?”

  “Thank you, I will,” said Andre.

  “Do yourself a favour,” Learoyd said. “When we reach Peshawar, you keep right on goin’. This country is no place for someone like you.” He held up a hand to forestall her comment.
“I don’t mean to imply that you’re not up to it. I mean that it’s no place for you. No place for any of us. We don’t belong here. We came here with our bloody empire and our bloody customs and our bloody rules, and we’re tryin’ to impose the whole lot on people who want no part of it. I wonder how the folks at home would feel if Sadullah brought his Ghazi army into London, if he came with a corps of mullahs to do missionary work and instruct good Anglicans in the ways of Mohammad. Made them all build bloody mosques, closed down all the pubs and put veils on all the women. We’d start our own jehad. The lads and I are here for the duration, but you, there’s nothin’ to hold you here. Go back to London, find yourself a nice bloke and get married. Have yourself some kids, and talk about all this with the ladies over tea. Go home before this land withers your soul.”

  “Has it withered yours, Chris? “ she said.

  He sighed. “Perhaps it has. I don’t know if I could go back home now. I’ve been here too long. In London I’d likely wind up on Leicester Square with a tin cup. Soldierin’ is all I know.”

  “You’re an educated man,” she said.

  “That’s neither here nor there. Soldierin’ gets in your blood after a while. It changes a man. It’s all fine and good for a young chap just commissioned. He can parade around in his full dress, impressin’ all the girls. For a bloke like me, who’s been out on the front, it’s another matter. Your home becomes your barracks, your family the men you serve with. You begin to talk like them and think like them. If you spend any time on the frontier, you begin to go a little native. You go back home and it’s another world. One that doesn’t make much sense somehow.”