The Forever Engine - eARC

by Frank Chadwick

“Yeah, pretty snappy greatcoats.”

  “Ja. All insignia removed, as you said. You see?”

  “That’ll fool everyone, no doubt.”

  He looked at me and smiled condescendingly.

  “I see, Herr Professor. You believe our party of thirty-four men, all of military age and bearing, who speak only English and German and who carry the latest military rifles, would fool everyone if only we had thought to wear different colored coats. I think not, and I must tell you, speaking as a military man, that there are advantages to the peasants knowing we are capable of taking care of ourselves. Bandits infest these hills, but they attack only the weak.”

  He was right. The lack of insignia wasn’t so much intended to fool people as to give the two governments what in my time we called “plausible deniability.”

  I left von Schtecker and joined Gabrielle. Her gear was again at her feet, but I took a closer look this time. A rucksack that looked about three-quarters full. A long blanket roll wrapped in a rubberized canvas ground cloth, with the two ends of the roll tied together. She’d wear that over one shoulder and across her body. She had a canvas haversack for over the other shoulder, a good-sized canteen also on a long shoulder strap, a brown leather gun case, and a leather bandolier with big, thick ammunition pouches on it. Her headgear was a grayish-white cloth-covered cork sun helmet, stained and worn. None of her gear looked new except for the leather gun case.

  “You’ve done this before,” I said. “What are you packin’?”

  “Many things. Spare stockings and underwear, one clean blouse, some concentrated—”

  “No, I meant what’s in the gun case?”

  “Ah. It is the shotgun. I find that more useful than the rifle in most cases. I used to carry the twenty-gauge with two barrels, but this is a new gun from your country, designed by Monsieur John Browning. Have you heard of him in your time?”

  “Now and then. May I?”

  She nodded, and I unzipped the case and carefully slipped the shotgun out.

  “Oh, baby!”

  She had a Winchester Model 1887 twelve-gauge lever action, and it was like new. What was I thinking? It was new. They’d only been making them for about a year.

  “You like?” she asked.

  “Shit, yeah. Only thing is, I’m beginning to feel undergunned with just a Webley. The magazine holds five and one in the action?”

  “I do not carry it with a round in the chamber. I do not think that safe, but yes, five cartridges in the magazine. The twenty-gauge was adequate for most purposes, but ammunition was sometimes difficult to find. Also the number five buckshot is too light, I think, if the target is a man. The double-zero shot of the twelve gauge is better.”

  That was certainly true, if a little cold-blooded. Hard to beat double-ought buck for taking down a person.

  “You ever shoot a man?”

  “Non, but nearly so. I have had to threaten to do this thing.”

  “Think you could put the trigger if you had to?”

  “Oui,” she answered simply, and I believed her.

  “So what made you point a shotgun at someone?”

  “Bandits threatened to steal the supplies of our expedition. There were eight of them, très féroce.”

  “Eight of them, and you with only two rounds. That why you decided to go with a lever action?”

  “Perhaps, although against the bandits there were two of us, and Jeanne had both the revolver and carbine, so really we were quite adequately armed.”

  “Your friend Jeanne sounds like . . .” I started but then I stopped, remembering a famous engraving of a woman with a revolver and carbine facing eight Persian bandits. A surge of excitement went through me.

  “I have fourteen balls at your disposal; go find six more friends,” I said.

  Gabrielle laughed and shook her head.

  “Jeanne never said that, but they put it on the picture anyway. They did not put me in the picture, I suppose because I was simply a helpless woman.”

  “But Jeanne Dieulafoy was—is a woman as well. My God, Gabi, you were on the Dieulafoy expedition to Susiana?”

  I sat down on the chair next to her, partly because I felt a bit light-headed.

  “Yes, it was my first real adventure. And yes, Jeanne is a woman, but no one would consider her helpless or defenseless. You have heard of the expedition?”

  “Heard of it? I’m an ancient historian. My specialty, other than Roman coinage, is Achaemenid Persia. Jeanne Dieulafoy’s photographs of the inscriptions and architecture at Susa are still one of our key resources. Hell, half the books on the Persian Army have her photograph of the Frieze of the Immortals on the cover. Most of those buildings and artifacts were gone by my time, either destroyed or badly degraded by the elements, so all we have is her photographs. Anyone serious about Achaemenid Persia owns a portfolio of her work.”

  “It would please her very much to hear that. You should meet her when . . .” She stopped, and the excitement left her face. “Oh, you cannot. After this, you will be gone.”

  We unloaded at the waterfront in lashing rain and then trudged the two hundred yards through scattered warehouses and sheds to the city gates, which were closed and secured. It took another fifteen minutes of shouting and finally a couple shots from my Webley to rouse someone, then another ten minutes before they got someone who spoke Turkish. The garrison was nominally Turkish, but this was Bosnia. Bosnian, along with all the other Slavic languages, was not part of my repertoire.

  We got an angry Turkish officer next, shouting at us through the postern window to go away and come back in the morning. It was well after midnight, and he’d probably been sound asleep.

  “Tell this scoundrel to open the gate at once, unless he wants my fist in his nose,” Gordon ordered.

  “Captain Gordon of the British Army sends his respects to the garrison commander,” I translated. “The commandant has been told of our coming and will be anxious to see us. We are on an important mission for the Sublime Porte.”

  The Sublime Porte, the grand gate at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul where the sultan’s vizier traditionally greeted representatives of foreign governments, had come to mean the Turkish foreign ministry. The Turkish officer hesitated.

  “Look for yourself,” I added. “Do we look like a band of wandering gypsies? These are soldiers on a secret mission. We are going to fight the Serbs, with Allah’s blessing and your commander’s help.”

  I took a chance mentioning the Serbs, but it sealed the deal. The officer stuck his head out a bit and looked the company over, then nodded and withdrew. We heard a barked order and in a few seconds heard the heavy beam withdrawn from the gate. Then it opened onto a courtyard.

  My first view of Višegràd was not very impressive, but it’s hard for any town to wow you in the middle of a thunderstorm. The courtyard was no more than thirty yards square, lined with a couple small one-story brick buildings. Lightning flashed, and I saw the suggestion of taller buildings beyond them.

  “We need accommodations for our party for the night, somewhere out of the weather,” I told the officer.

  “My commander will decide that.”

  “What is your name, Effendi?” I asked.

  “Lieutenant Kadir Malak.”

  “Lieutenant Malak, I ask you to think for a moment. Your commandant is asleep. He will wish to rouse himself and prepare a reception for us, but will be embarrassed to make us wait while he does so. May I suggest you send a runner to him now, and that you see to our billeting, giving him time to prepare for us without embarrassment?”

  Malak nodded thoughtfully, even as I was speaking, then sent one of the small group of soldiers milling around running into the heart of the town.

  “I know of a stable near here where you may stay. You have silver to pay the proprietor?”

  * * *

  An hour later, Gordon and I entered the office of the commandant, a middle-aged officer, slender in the face and limbs but large in the belly. He rose and smil
ed in greeting as Lieutenant Malak escorted us in. I saw a clutter of telegrams on his desk and suspected he had been catching up on his orders as to how to handle us. There was also a pen and ink, writing paper, sealing wax, and two folded and sealed letters, the wax seals on them probably still warm.

  “Gentlemen, peace be upon you,” he said in Turkish.

  “And upon you,” I answered in Turkmen. “May I present Captain Gordon of Her Most Britannic Majesty’s Service.”

  “Staff Major Cevik, at your disposal. Please be seated. I have ordered refreshments. Please.”

  I translated the introduction, and we all sat in straight-backed chairs, Gordon and I in front of his desk, Malak against the wall.

  “Forgive me,” I said, “if my Turkish is poor. I speak Turkmen.”

  “Ah, yes, it sounded unusual. Your accent, it is up-country, we would say, but understandable.”

  “Your rank—Erkan-ı Harb Binbaşısı—it caused me a moment’s pause. Do I address you as pasha or bey?”

  A major was normally addressed as Effendi, the lowest of the three forms of respectful address, but I wasn’t sure for a “staff major.” Throwing in the possibility of pasha was pure flattery. I can kiss ass when the situation calls for it.

  Cevik chuckled.

  “Bey. Only very exalted men—generals and governors, are pashas.”

  One servant brought in a silver ice bucket with a bottle of champagne and another brought a tray with three glasses. I had expected coffee, not alcohol. The servant popped the cork and began pouring. Cevik Bey must have seen my look and laughed again.

  “You are surprised to see me serve champagne? I am a good Moslem, I assure you. I follow all the teachings of the prophet. But also I love champagne. So I thought long about it. I prayed for guidance, and this is the thought Allah sent to me: champagne did not exist in Mohammed’s time, so he cannot have said it was a sin to drink it. You agree?”

  In answer I raised my glass in a toast.

  “To our joint endeavor,” I said, first in Turkmen then English.

  Then we got down to business. Gordon laid out our plan: hire boats and travel twenty-five miles up the Lim River to the border village of Uvats. The Lim flowed into the Drina about seven miles upstream from Višegràd. Depending on the speed of the boats, and how fast the rivers were flowing after all this rain, we could make the trip in a long day or a long morning. From Uvats we would have to travel overland. The large Serbian town of Priboj straddled the Lim River just across the border, and Gabrielle had told us Serbian batteries commanded the river, so we’d have to go overland from there. Kokin Brod was only a dozen miles southeast of Priboj, but it was through mountainous countryside.

  Cevik Bey frowned through the description, but more in thought than irritation, I thought.

  “So, you will not go from here by land? A pity. I know a man who has mules for sale. Very good price.”

  There was enough regret in Cevik’s expression that I suspected he would have gotten a piece of the “very good price.”

  “Ask him if we can get enough boats to move all his troops upriver,” Gordon ordered.

  “No, not on such short notice,” he answered after I translated the question. “I doubt we can find enough to move over fifty men by tomorrow, and that may cost you a pretty penny. You have silver?”

  The fact that Cevik Bey had, in an offhanded and conversational tone, let me know the Turks would not be underwriting the expedition was not lost on me. As to money, Gordon had over five hundred pounds’ worth of British, Turkish, German, and Serbian currency in his “war chest,” but there was no point in advertising the fact.

  “We have silver, Cevik Bey, although our pockets are not bottomless.”

  “Ah, whose are?” he asked with a shrug.

  “Ask him if he will support the mission as he was ordered to,” Gordon said.

  I did, but with a bit more diplomacy.

  “Yes, of course we will help. These Serbs, they make nothing but trouble. They deserve to be punished, and will be. But my orders are we cannot cross in force without provocation. You understand?”

  I translated for Gordon and then translated his reply back, but without the insult and profanity.

  “The threat posed by the Old Man of the Mountain is as great to Turkey as it is to Britain,” I said. “Surely the Sublime Porte intends more vigorous Turkish action.”

  “Ah, but the Sublime Porte also knows that the world judges the vigor of Turkish actions differently than it does those of others,” Cevik Bey answered. “Less than two years ago the Bulgarians raided across the Danube on a regular basis, intent on provoking war. The world paid little attention to the vigor of their actions. But when Turkey responded with force, the world noticed. Great Britain itself noticed, and joined the world in condemning the vigor of Turkey’s response. ‘Outrage’ was the word the British prime minister used, I believe, and the British newspapers used stronger words, ugly words.

  “So now Britain remembers its friend Turkey. This makes us happy. It makes me happy, Mr. Fargo. I have always admired the British.”

  To prove the point he flashed Gordon an enormous smile. Not knowing the gist of the exchange, Gordon returned the smile, if with less enthusiasm.

  “However, our other neighbors are not so friendly as Britain,” Cevik Bey continued. “When you are gone, we will still live next to them. So it must be clear to the world that Serbia is the more . . . vigorous participant in this incident, and that Turkey acts only in response to their crimes.”

  “How do you plan to arrange that?” I asked.

  Cevik Bey took another sip of champagne and considered his answer.

  “I have a battalion of Bosnian riflemen and two mountain guns. I will march them overland to Uvats and wait there. We will cross the border when and if it is necessary to prevent harm to you, our friends.”

  “How will you know when we are in difficulty?”

  “Signal rockets,” he answered, and waved his hand as if in imitation of a rocket spiraling up into the sky. “We will send a dozen with you. Send them up if you need help.”

  “And how will we stay alive while we’re waiting for you to march a battalion and drag two guns up those mountain valleys?”

  “Ah, I send soldiers with you as well, just not so many as to be a provocation, you see? I sent a platoon of good riflemen ahead to Uvats under a sergeant I trust very much. Also, he speaks English. He was American once, but converted to Islam. He is . . . scouting into Serbia, actually. But I sent no Turkish officer, so no provocation. You see?”

  Not entirely, but it sounded as if the patrol he had out, if it was lost, was expendable. We probably were as well, in his mind. I translated for Gordon to give myself time to think it over.

  “It’s important you not react with surprise or anger to this,” I said to Gordon as a preface. His frown grew deeper, eyes darker.

  “Just tell me what the bloody Wog said.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cevik stiffen. He may not have spoken English, but he knew the word “wog.”

  “Look at me, not him when I tell you this. He understands the word you just used. Are you trying to blow this mission up?” I asked calmly, as if discussing the weather. “Are you trying to get the Turks so pissed off they’ll send us away and you won’t have to go through with it? Because that’s how it looks to me, and it’s probably how it will look to General Buller as well.”

  He didn’t say anything in reply, but his face began getting red—whether with anger or shame I couldn’t say. Probably both—they usually keep company.

  “Cevik Bey will back us up with a battalion once we’re in trouble,” I said. “But for now we get just a rifle platoon he sent to scout ahead into Serbia.”

  Gordon sat quietly for a moment, lips compressed in a hard thin line.

  “One platoon?” he said finally.

  “Here’s a better question: all the local officers along the border were alerted and told to cooperate. How did he kn
ow we’d come here and send someone ahead?”

  His anger disappeared, replaced by confusion and then curiosity.

  “A spy?” he asked.

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so. Too complicated, too many spies. Maybe he was just being proactive, but I bet he already had his guys out there and is using our appearance as an excuse. We’re his fig leaf for maybe going over the line in poking the Serbs.”

  He thought about it for a moment and then nodded.

  “Very well. Tell him we appreciate his help and foresight.”

  Not bad. I passed the sentiment along, and Cevik Bey smiled again.

  “Will you cable ahead to Uvats and have your men waiting?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, the telegraph to the frontier is out of service. It happens fairly often. I have written a dispatch to the commander of the Jandarma in Uvats and another to Sergeant Durson, when you find him.” He held up the two sealed letters. “Sergeant Durson reads, by the way. Quite admirable for a sergeant. He may not be in Uvats but he was to keep the Uvats Jandarma informed of his activity. Finding him should not be a problem.”

  I translated for Gordon, who took the news without visible reaction aside from a small nod. He was getting better at this.

  “You understand,” I said to Cevik Bey, “that even with this platoon of riflemen, who I am sure are among your very best, our party may suffer casualties before you can come to our assistance?”

  His face became serious, with a trace of sadness in his eyes. “Ah, let us hope not. If so, it would cause me great distress.”

  “Because of how much you admire the British,” I offered.

  He smiled, bowed his head slightly, and spread his hands. “We understand each other perfectly. But let us pray it does not come to that. Ibrahim Durson is an excellent sergeant. His men are always under control, and he follows orders exactly. He also never makes annoying suggestions. It is bad for a sergeant to have ideas of his own. Does Captain Gordon not agree with this?”

  “He says he likes it when sergeants know their place and keep their opinions to themselves,” I translated for Gordon.

  “I don’t know about sergeants, but I certainly agree with respect to translators.”