INCARNATION

by Daniel Easterman

  ‘Tunnels? You mean this isn’t the only one?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve sometimes heard other people refer to them. They’re supposed to have been built a long time ago, during a siege, to let people move about in safety. But I can’t be sure. They may just be a legend.’

  ‘Like the people who live in them?’

  ‘I don’t know. What would they live on? Where would they find water? They’d go blind without light.’

  ‘But someone or something is in here with us, there can be no doubt of that.’

  ‘No. Perhaps they aren’t a legend after all. My father said that when the Chinese defeated Yakub Beg some of his soldiers took their wives and children down to the tunnels, and that they stayed there and grew old and died, and that the children had children of their own.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘There are people in every city who drop behind, like someone at the rear of a camel train in the desert. Who knows where they go, what they do to survive?’

  They walked on in silence, not knowing what to make of any of this. There were footsteps, certainly, and other tiny noises they could not interpret. The tunnel stretched out in front of them, as though it meant to swallow them.

  They passed an opening to one side. David stopped and shone the torch inside. Another, narrower tunnel had been dug through the earth, its sides strengthened by rough mud-bricks that must have been made down here and dried somewhere on the surface.

  ‘It seems to go back quite a distance,’ said David. ‘I wish there was a chance to explore, but we’ve no time to waste.’

  They passed two more tunnels. Though they stopped and looked inside only to find them empty, each time they were assailed by a sense of watching eyes somewhere back in the darkness. Had they learned to see in the dark after all? When David looked back down the main tunnel the lamps had been extinguished.

  Three hours after stepping into the tunnel, they came to a square door built of heavy timber and studded with enormous iron nails. A huge brass lock occupied about a quarter of each wing. Koranic verses had been inlaid along the sides, in Arabic and Chinese. In the centre, an inscription had been engraved in a lozenge-shaped sheet of copper: ‘The Shrine of Abakh Hoja, may God have compassion on him’.

  David dropped the rope, and he and Nabila set to work on the lock. Though untended all this time, the door was still in good shape, and the lock as hard to break open as it had been when a key was last turned in it.

  ‘What do we do?’ asked Nabila. In spite of her equilibrium, she was beginning to find the tunnel claustrophobic and unnerving, and the discovery that they might find themselves trapped at the very end of their journey had brought her close to panic.

  ‘It’s a beautiful door,’ said David, ‘but we have no choice. I’ll have to break the hinges.’

  ‘With what?’

  In reply, he opened one of his rucksacks and drew out a short crowbar.

  It wasn’t easy to slip the flat end of the crowbar between the door and the jamb, but the wood had softened a lot, and, once he had forced an opening, the rest was simple. Under pressure, the wood and screws gave way, and the door fell in at the back. Laying one wing of the door to one side, they pushed the other back on its hinges. Ahead of them stood a steep flight of steps, cobweb-choked like those at the other end.

  ‘I’ll go up first,’ said Nabila. Suddenly, she wanted to be free of the darkness. ‘Will you be all right on your own?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be fine. You’ll have to haul the old man up. We’ll leave the trailer down here, though - there’s no need for it now. Here’s the rope.’

  She climbed up, choking on dust and cobwebs, striking out at spiders as they fell on her hair and face. Ten steps. Twenty steps. And then, quite abruptly, a ceiling above her head. She must be under the floor of the shrine. Careful not to stumble backwards, she reached up and placed one hand against the ceiling, fearful that it would be as stoutly locked against her as the door had been. She pushed upwards, and at first it seemed that it was locked on the other side, or that heavy weights had been laid on top of it; but another push persuaded the flooring above her to give way, and a last shove sent it flying back with a crash.

  ‘Are you all right up there?’ called David. His voice sounded weak and lost, as though it already belonged to a different world.

  ‘I’m fine’ she called back. ‘How are our friends?’

  ‘Very quiet.’

  She took a deep breath and climbed out of the opening. Her eyes felt blurred. The air up here seemed entirely fresh after the tunnel, and she drank it in greedily. She hadn’t a clue where she was. Taking the torch from her belt, she snapped it on.

  Her head was just above a tiled floor, and her first guess was that she was in one of the many rooms of the shrine complex. Then the torch moved on, and she picked up a clutter of strange shapes. Slowly, she brought the light back and focused on the shapes one by one. They were nothing more than pieces of rubble, some large, some tiny, scattered everywhere across the floor. The further out she looked, the more there seemed to be.

  ‘David,’ she shouted down, ‘I think you should come up here.’

  She scrabbled out on to the floor and waited for him. There was a scuffling sound, then he was with her. Carefully, she pointed out to him what she had seen.

  He took the torch from her and switched it off. No need to draw attention to themselves. He then looked up. An open sky with the faintest hint of dawn, sprinkled with stars, with Venus rising. And far off against the horizon, the setting moon.

  ‘They’ve destroyed it,’ he said. ‘They’ve demolished the shrine.’

  Even as he spoke, a heavy engine burst into life not far away.

  ‘That’s a tank engine,’ he said. He walked a little in the direction from which the sound was coming.

  Lined up in rows, a division of heavy tanks stood waiting for dawn. Their crews were sleeping on the ground beside their vehicles. Someone laughed nearby, then a gruff voice told him to be quiet.

  ‘Let’s haul our equipment up and see if we can get out of here before light. I don’t give much for our chances if they clap eyes on us.’

  ‘What about Ma Deming?’ Nabila asked.

  ‘I think it’s best if we leave him where he is. He’s right underneath where the shrine used to be. This rubble is probably packed full with old bones. If there’s any blessing here, he’ll get his share.’

  ‘And what about them?’ she asked.

  ‘Our friends in the tunnel?’

  ‘Yes. Do we leave this doorway open for them to find a way out of here, or do we close it to stop the army rinding a secret way in to Kashgar?’

  ‘I don’t think the army needs secret entrances. Let’s leave it open, let them do what they choose with it.’

  He went back down and started attaching bags to the rope. Nabila hauled them up and stacked them to one side. It would be a lot to carry for the first phase of their journey.

  David’s head appeared at last above the entrance hole. Nabila helped him up. Her hand remained in his. He could barely see her amid so much blackness.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do this without you.’

  She drew him to her and kissed him. Here and there around them, tank drivers set their engines racing.

  She brushed a tangle of cobwebs from his hair and stroked his cheek, then kissed him harder. That was when the voice came.

  ‘Step apart slowly, keep your hands in the air. Don’t even breathe.’ The language was Chinese, the dialect Cantonese.

  As they pulled away, David looked round. A single guard holding a heavy-duty submachine-gun.

  ‘Kneel down,’ commanded the guard. ‘I’m getting help.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  David looked round in desperation. Their only weapons were in the bags. He still held the torch: it was a long Maglite, made of metal and capable of being used as a club. But how the hell was h
e going to get close enough to have half a chance?

  The soldier made up his mind for him.

  ‘Shoudiantong!’ he barked.

  David had no choice. He lowered his arm and let the torch fall to the ground. He did not think the guard would shoot them unless provoked by a direct assault. But once he examined the contents of the bags neither his life nor Nabila’s would be worth anything.

  David’s Chinese accent was far from perfect; but he realized that the soldier, probably away from Canton for the first time in his life, would most likely take it for a regional dialect of Mandarin, which he would know only imperfectly, if at all. In the dark, he and Nabila could pass as Han Chinese.

  ‘We’ve just got here from Yengisar,’ he said. ‘The Uighurs started attacking us. Our children were killed. and my wife and I just got away with our lives.’ He hoped the remark about dead children would make its mark.

  ‘There’s been no word of trouble in Yengisar.’

  David took a step towards him.

  ‘What do you mean, “There’s no word of trouble”?’ he asked. ‘They’re killing Chinese children. There’s blood everywhere. Can’t you take our word for it? We got out with a few possessions, and we headed this way hoping the army would look after us. We want to go back to Peking. I was a senior cadre, I was due for promotion and a one-way ticket back home, and now look at me.’

  He took another step in the soldier’s direction, arms raised in a gesture of supplication, a picture of harmlessness.

  ‘You’ll have to speak to my captain. I’m just here as a guard. It’s my job to keep the Muslims out of here. If you’re a cadre, you’ll be all right.’

  But David knew that, once the sun came up, their fate would be sealed. He took another step towards the guard. The man prodded him hard with the barrel of his gun, knocking him back several paces.

  ‘Stay where you are, and don’t move again unless I tell you.’

  With his free hand, he reached into a pouch on his waist and pulled out a handset. The light was growing. David wondered if the guard would distract himself enough to make a rugby tackle a reasonable risk.

  At that moment, the handset fell from the guard’s hand, smashing against the marble floor at his feet. David looked round, astonished, thinking Nabila had intervened somehow, but she was still behind him, unmoving as before, her hands on her head. The next instant, David looked back at the guard. He was staggering, trying to keep his balance. The machine-gun dropped with a loud clatter to the ground.

  David heard a hissing sound, then a dozen more, and each time the guard seemed to stagger or spin a little, until finally he fell to the ground, crumpled, jerking, coughing and moaning in an attempt to cry out. David bent down beside him.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  But the only answer came in the form of wheezes and gurgles.

  Nabila joined them. She had brought the torch, and while David shielded the light from the nearest tanks, she shone it on the man. His face and throat were peppered with tiny darts, forty or fifty of them in all. She pulled one out and sniffed it.

  ‘Scorpion,’ she said. ‘But this has been concentrated. I can make out some vegetable poisons as well. It’s hard to be sure ...’

  The guard started to convulse. Nabila tried to hold him down, while David looked round desperately for something to put him out of his misery.

  ‘I have a knife,’ he said. ‘It’s in one of the rucksacks.’ Nabila shook her head. ‘Help me here. He’s almost dead.’ Behind them, another tank sang out, as though playing its part in a ritual to summon the dawn. Still, the only true light was from the moon and stars; but at any moment the first faint strokes of the coming day might appear on the eastern horizon.

  The guard cried out in a choked and garbled voice, calling perhaps on his mother or his friends for help, or simply calling out against whatever simple thing had turned his life to agony. The cry seemed to pass through all his limbs. Suddenly everything in him went rigid, and his back arched incredibly, like a bow, and a great cry started to come from him, which Nabila had to stifle, and they both held him like farmers with a steer, and for a moment there was overwhelming panic in his eyes. He died like that, with blood in his eyes and in his ears. Nabila let his head fall back against the ground, and set about removing the darts from his neck and face, very carefully.

  David relaxed the grip he’d kept on the man’s legs. As he did so, he glanced round. He caught sight of their bags, and a few yards away, the opening to the steps leading down to the tunnel. There, in the opening, a small shadow was standing, watching. David got up and made to go to it, but it vanished.

  ‘We have to get rid of the body,’ he said. ‘If his friends find him like this, there’ll be a manhunt from here to the Pamirs.’

  They carried him to the tunnel entrance. David shone the torch down; as far as he could see, there was no one at the bottom.

  They manhandled the guard to the opening, then let him fall. There was a heavy crunch, then silence.

  They closed the wooden doors, and moved some of the rubble over them, so that the spot was well covered.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said David.

  Nabila looked up. Beyond the tanks, she could see trees on the horizon. A star hung, luminous and diamond-hard, near the head of a tall cypress. And from the horizon itself there appeared a thin glow that signalled the coming day.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Cadogan Place London

  ‘Fuck on oota’ it! Ah said, fuck off.’

  The Big Issue seller looked again at the six-foot excuse for a human being. He decided he was wasting his time in return for nothing but insults, made a gesture and went off in search of someone more in harmony with the coming millennium of love and universal brotherhood.

  Calum Kilbride glowered after him. He hated beggars. He couldn’t see the point of them. Or understand why they gravitated towards him as a possible source of bounty and goodwill. Perhaps they were all blind. Or mentally crippled. During the months he’d spent in India and Pakistan he’d seen more than his fair share. He’d never given any of them a penny, however hideous their deformities or pitiful their aspect. "Ah’m fucking poor mahself!" had been his constant cry, sometimes punctuated by pulling out the empty linings of his trouser pockets. "All Ah keep in ma troosers is ma balls. So fuck off, ye radge wee turd." Beggars in India and Pakistan never believed this. You didn’t get to travel thousands of miles across the globe on what they earned.

  He looked up at the house. Whoever lived here wasn’t poor, wasn’t even moderately well off. If they kept anything in their trousers, it was hand-made designer underpants that they wore once and threw away. He’d sniffed them when he’d turned up at the clinic. Not designer underpants, but pound coins, a hell of a lot of them, all sloshing about this kid Maddie.

  In his dreams, he often imagined that a big London publisher had offered him a million-pound advance for a book of raw Scottish ravings. ‘Just talk dirty,’ the publisher said, dealing out the fifty-pound notes, ‘and make sure you write it in Scottish.’ Dirty Scottish words were the in thing, apparently. And drugs. He’d have to put in lots of the white stuff and have loads of characters in severe mental trouble on account of it. Calum already considered himself a master of the Dirty Scottish genre. He knew that one day the big screen in the Edinburgh Odeon would be shouting his own words back at him in stereo. Fuck the beggars then, eh? Fuck everybody.

  In the meantime, he reckoned he could pick up a couple of hundred here if he played his cards right. He had it all worked out in his head. "Ah’m down tae ma last fifty pee." "Ah’ve had a gruellin’ trip, Ah’m near dead wi’ the fatigue." "Ah wis robbed by loonies gettin’ ootay China." If only he could get to the wee dame in person, he was sure he could exert his charm and charisma, perhaps even his sexual allure to make an impact on her emotions and her pocket. He’d cleaned himself up and changed his clothes since getting back. Nothing spectacular, but he’d caught sight of himself in a
couple of shop windows. He didn’t doubt for a moment that he could still pull the birds.

  He reached up and pressed the bell.

  He waited. A little time passed, then unhurried footsteps approached.

  ‘Sorry,’ was Elizabeth’s first expression on seeing him on her doorstep. ‘We have a rule. No hawkers. I thought you all knew. You’re wasting your time here.’

  He caught her just as she was closing the door.

  ‘You’re no’ Maddie Laing are you?’

  ‘Maddie? I don’t understand, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Ah cannae tell you. All Ah know is Ah wis given this address by a man called Rose. Ah have a letter fir this Maddie. Fae China.’

  Elizabeth’s chin went up. There were only two possibilities.

  ‘You’d better come in.’

  ‘It’s no’ you, is it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t me.’

  ‘But she’s here, eh?’

  ‘We’ll see, we’ll see. For God’s sake, wipe your feet on the rug.’

  It had been raining most of the day. He’d let himself get wet in the hope of extracting a few more drops of compassion out of them.

  She took him to the living room. He gawped once or twice and collapsed into a large armchair.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Wha’?’

  ‘Would you like a drink? Sherry - no, perhaps not - gin, whisky? Ah, yes, you seem like a whisky sort of person.’

  ‘Maybe a wee ...'

  ‘Yes, I know. Dram. Certainly. I’ll join you. I scarcely touch the stuff nowadays. How about you?’

  ‘Ah ... Ah’ve been on ma feet. Travellin’, likes.’

  ‘Yes. You suggested that. I seem to remember the booze in China leaves something to be desired. A pale imitation, if you can get it at all.’

  ‘It’s a’ fuckin’ ...'

  ‘Don’t say it. This is a tranquil house.’ She smiled wickedly at him. He seemed like fun. Not the sort of person she met every day.