*
‘We’ll not have long to go now,’ Healey said. ‘At least, we shouldn’t — if my information’s correct, we should pick up friend Nashkar at the end of the pass.’
‘Or he’ll pick us up.’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact that’s more likely. He’ll have sentries posted, and scouts out as well.’ Healey yawned. ‘My God, Ogilvie, a man gets bloody tired at this height! I’m still tired, even after a good night’s sleep.’ They had bivouaced shortly after midnight, and prepared a frugal meal from the remains of Mr. Jones’s provisions, and then slept in their clothes in Ogilvie’s small tent. They had moved on again after a dawn breakfast.
Ogilvie agreed about the tiredness; the thin air made the smallest movement into something of a conscious effort, and he was aware all the time of his breathing. But he was able to take this more or less cheerfully, for he felt that every step now was bringing him closer to the centre of events and that before much longer he would be on his way out of Waziristan. He asked Healey if he thought O’Kelly had been right in saying that there was rivalry between the tribes, between those in Waziristan and those in, say, Tirah and Bajaur to the north. Healey thought that was accurate enough.
‘There’s always rivalry,’ he said.
‘But jealousy — because Waziristan has the prophet, the holy man?’
‘Very possibly. Yes, I’d agree with that. But it won’t help us when the time comes.’
‘They’ll unite?’
‘You bet they will! The eternal bickering and jockeying for position’ll come afterwards — and by that time, old man, we won’t be around to watch!’
‘You sound as though you expect defeat.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Healey said. ‘We British have pulled through bad patches before now, and I dare say we’ll do so again. But it’s going to stretch us to the limit, you know. We’ll need lines of communication out to all points of the compass —unless we can bring about an abortion of the whole thing between us!’
Soon after this, Healey, who had been scanning the surrounding peaks through Ogilvie’s binoculars — another legacy from Mr. Jones — pulled his horse up short. Ogilvie also halted. At first Healey didn’t say anything, but just went on looking intently at one point far above and still some way ahead. Then he gave a short laugh and said, ‘Bag of bones. Here — you have a look.’
Ogilvie took the glasses. ‘Whereabouts?’
Healey showed him.
‘I don’t see...oh, wait a moment — on a sort of flat ledge?’
‘Yes. What d’you make of it?’
‘Looks like a — a carving out of rock. Isn’t there something in America — the Grand Canyon, isn’t it, with all the presidents of—’
‘On a rather larger scale, old man, and this isn’t America. And that’s no carving. Have another look.’
Ogilvie did so, taking his time. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not moving, I’m certain.’
‘Quite right. Perpetual unmotion.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Healey...what is it?’
‘It’s your holy man,’ Healey said calmly.
Ogilvie whistled in astonishment, but felt a thrill of excitement stirring his blood. ‘What’s he doing up there?’
‘Ruminating. Sadhu on a peak, staring into the face of heaven. Also, if I’m not much mistaken, plotting something nasty. I’ll tell you something else.’
‘What?’ Ogilvie was still looking intently through the binoculars, watching that distant immobile face set against the clear blue of the sky.
‘Nashkar Ali Khan won’t be far away. I told you before, we’re already in the pass where he’s to be found. For my money, we’re under observation already. We’ll get on, Ogilvie, and await developments. From now on, watch your step carefully.’
‘I’ll do that, all right!’
They moved ahead, jogging along the pass, avoiding falls of rock and boulders, keeping their eyes skinned for any movement ahead or to the sides. There was a curious feeling in Ogilvie’s stomach, a vague loose wateriness, the feeling that always came to him before action but this time with an indefinable difference. This time he was moving, knowingly, into what could be a particularly nasty trap, the most dangerous ambush of his career so far. Whether or not he came out alive would depend not upon skill at arms or upon good tactics, nothing so soldierly as that, but upon the use for good or ill he could make of his tongue. For backing he would have no trained troops or comforting N.C.O.s, but only Captain Healey, who was very much an unknown quantity still. And he was a long, long way from base with no line of communication open and no guns handy; to say nothing of the total lack of a supply column!
The very air seemed still — seemed hostile in its very stillness and the surrounding jagged solitude. He felt that a thousand eyes were watching, that a thousand rifle-sights were bringing him into sniper-shot. They were deep into the pass by this time, and its high rock sides were shutting out the sky, bringing coldness and gloom and fear. The sounds of the horses’ hooves rasped at his nerves as they sent their message of approach echoing off the cavern-like rock.
Then minutes later the first movement showed itself.
Ogilvie failed at first to see it; but heard Healey’s warning voice beside him, kept low: ‘We’ve made contact. Just keep going.’
‘Where’s the contact?’
‘Left, and a little ahead. Sniper behind a boulder, on a ledge.’
Ogilvie looked from the corner of his eye. He saw the long, thin barrel pointing downwards. Soon after this, more became visible, and then two heads showed. Those two heads presaged the multitude; Nashkar Ali Khan was well guarded in his mountain retreat, however temporary a headquarters it might be; and now his quarterguard, as it were, was streaming nimbly down the side of the pass.
Healey halted his horse, reaching out to Ogilvie’s bridle. ‘Leave this to me,’ he said.
As the first of the tribesmen came up, wearing what seemed to be livery of a sort, Healey spoke to them in their own dialect. Ogilvie could follow most of it without too much difficulty. Healey, who was obviously known as someone already in brotherhood with their leader, was explaining Ogilvie’s desire to trade with Nashkar Ali Khan. He said, ‘Wilshaw Sahib brings the promise of much comfort to our leader, the comfort of many weapons and bullets.’
A dark, sinewy hand was laid on Healey’s bridle, another on Ogilvie’s. ‘Earless One, you will come with us.’
‘Even so, brother.’ They allowed their horses to be led forward along the pass. The war-equipped Pathans surged around them, hemming them in. The very air was heavy with the smell of their bodies; Ogilvie saw lice crawling on the skin of more than one of them. For the first time thoughts of disease came into his mind: typhus, cholera, dysentery the triple scourges of the British Army in India. He felt unclean, more unclean than he had felt even in the village huts, in the bazaar at Maizar. To some extent he believed this was mental, because he had come to do an unclean thing. He had come to kill a defenceless old man, the sadhu on the mountain top, that ruminating rock-carving. But possibly that immobile figure was far from defenceless; Nashkar Ali Khan’s garrison was his as well.
*
The finery was tinsel, rubbishy. Cheap decorative jewellery such as Mr. Jones might have made a handsome profit from — and very likely had. There were few of the outward trappings of power or authority or imminent conquest of a part of an Empire about Nashkar Ali Khan as he sat like a spider in a cave leading off a rock fissure beside the main pass. Ogilvie, at first, had been conscious of a sense of disappointment. He had half expected some romantic storybook character, a Genghis Khan or an Atilla the Hun from out of the history text-books. There was nothing of romance or legend about Nashkar Ali Khan, who was almost as dirty as his common soldiery, and smelt as much too. His hair was dank and matted and his beard and moustache were greasy from food not yet washed off. But there was no doubt about the fact that the man was a leader. It was in his eyes, in the cut of his face, in his mann
er and in his speech. Wash him and starch him, give him a bun and a bosom, cut a foot or so from his height...yes, this man was of the stuff of emperors as well.
Greeting Healey, the Pathan swept his gaze curiously over Ogilvie. Then his attention went back to Healey. Incisively he said, ‘Your story in detail, Earless One.’
Healey gave it. He described the meeting and the journey, with obvious exceptions, and also described how he had heard that the seller of arms had been wishing to contact the leader and that he had already made agreements with some of the khels in the eastern part of the country.
‘A man to be trusted, Earless One?’ Nashkar stroked a hand along his greasy moustache.
‘This is my belief, Highness. Rumour speaks well of him.’
‘Rumour speaks that he is willing to provide arms against his own countrymen?’
‘Even so, Highness.’
Nashkar scanned Ogilvie again; the face was expressionless, but Ogilvie, perhaps through his own sensitivity, felt the scorn like the lash of a rawhide whip. ‘Describe your wares,’ the Pathan ordered in a harsh voice.
Ogilvie did so, in detail; bringing out his printed pamphlets in support.
Nashkar said, ‘I, also, have heard the talk that says you have impressed my khel leaders. I, also, have heard the talk that says you wished to trade with me, with Nashkar Ali Khan. Why is this, Wilshaw Sahib?’
‘Highness, my commissions. Clearly your orders will be large. I am only starting in this trade, as perhaps you also know. I must make money.’
‘So you come to me, to provide your living for you?’
‘I shall give you good service, and fast delivery.’
‘And competitive prices?’
‘We must discuss a price, Highness, but it will be a fair one.’
The cold eyes went into him like slivers of ice. ‘And this fast delivery, Wilshaw Sahib. How fast? Where are your arms? In your English city of Birmingham?’
‘Yes, Highness—’
The Pathan laughed scornfully. ‘Come now, Wilshaw Sahib! Six weeks for your message to reach England, six weeks for your British merchants to delay, and six weeks for your promised cargo to reach Bombay — or longer, to come more safely overland through Persia and Afghanistan. Four months — which is four months too long!’
‘Highness, you forget that I can cable to England, which is fast. And our merchants are not slow. But better than this: I have arsenals concealed in Abbottabad. My supply can be very quick, I do not need to await replenishments from England, indeed, your khels will be supplied from Abbottabad.’
Nashkar nodded slowly, as if interested; he went on nodding for a while, with a curious glitter in his eyes, a wily glitter that worried Ogilvie, and then he said, ‘I am told that you are well spoken for by the other seller of arms — Jones Sahib, a man whom the leaders of the khels have come to trust. This is so?’
‘I am grateful to Jones Sahib for speaking well of me. I have come to take his place.’
Surprisingly, Nashkar Ali Khan roared with laughter at this; he shook and rumbled, he slapped at his thighs, he gasped with merriment. His entourage, grouped around Healey and Ogilvie, smirked politely. When the laughter had run through him Nashkar said, Wilshaw Sahib, you speak the truth perhaps — more, I believe, than you yourself imagine. It has been interesting to exchange words with you — words exchanged in fun, in play only. Mere teasing.’
Ogilvie said, ‘I don’t understand, Highness.’ He glanced sideways at Healey, saw the quickly extinguished flicker of warning in his face. He was aware of a rustle running through the assembled Pathans, a rustle of what seemed to be anticipation. Something clearly, had gone wrong.
Nashkar Ali Khan, smiling coldly, said, ‘Wilshaw Sahib, I have a surprise for you,’ and made a signal to a member of the entourage. This man left the cavern with two others, all three of them heavily armed. With fear pricking into his very guts, Ogilvie waited in a heavy silence. A few minutes later he heard footsteps and he looked towards the mouth of the cavern. The three men were coming back, with a fourth. A stout, short, ragged figure with a heavy brown moustache, a figure trying hard to keep its end up by means of a cocky bounciness that had lost its mainspring — Mr. Jones of Brum.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Well, well, if it isn’t Mr. Wilshaw. Well, now, isn’t that nice? How’ve you been making out, may I ask, Mr. Wilshaw?’
‘I’ve got where I wanted, Mr. Jones.’
‘That’s fine. I hope you bring off a nice deal, Mr. Wilshaw, I do indeed. Retiring I may be, but I’ve not lost interest, far from it.’ Jones stopped and brought out the green handkerchief. He mopped at his face and neck. It was cool, almost cold, in the cavern but the arms salesman was sweating lice a pig. ‘Yes, well. What do you want of me, Highness?’
Ogilvie looked across at Nashkar Ali Khan, who was standing with folded arms, watching Jones. The Pathan’s face gave nothing away but there was now no doubt that everything had taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line. Glancing quickly at Healey, Ogilvie found the same lack of expression but was aware of a vein pumping hard in the side of Healey’s neck beneath one of the naked earholes.
Answering Jones’s question Nashkar said, ‘Tell Wilshaw Sahib what has happened so far.’
‘What has happened, Highness?’
‘To you.’
Jones drooped pathetically. He lifted his arms, let them fall again to his sides, and said, ‘They stopped me, Mr. Wilshaw. Just as I was about to cross the border out.’
‘Why was that?’
Jones said, ‘I don’t know, really. They’ve always trusted me, and I’ve always trusted them. I told you once, you can rely on the word of a Pathan because in his own way he’s a gentleman. Or was. Times have changed — seems like.’ He gave Nashkar a hurt look.
‘It was necessary to detain you, seller of arms, at this moment of history, as I have already told you. It would have been necessary to detain anybody attempting to leave our country — just in case he had learned certain things that I do not wish to be made known yet beyond our frontiers.’ He paused. ‘I think you know to what I am referring, Jones Sahib.’
‘No,’ the fat man said. He looked lost, not at all the confident Jones Ogilvie had known. ‘I really don’t know, Highness. I — I just sell for my firm, that’s all, I don’t meddle.’ Once again Ogilvie looked at Healey; he recalled that officer’s words about Jones, the man who lived on dirty money and in effect traded with the lives of British soldiers. In this unexpected situation, Healey’s reactions might not be entirely dependable; in spite of training and discipline, something might show.
Then, once again, and as suddenly as before, the situation changed, growing more menacing. Nashkar Ali Khan smiled and said, ‘But — and this I have not yet told you — you have a loud voice, Jones Sahib, a voice that is easily overheard, even so far away as Abbottabad,’ and then Ogilvie remembered how he had tried to silence Jones that evening, so long ago it seemed, when the arms salesman had bellowed angrily about decency and his own motives.
‘You were allowed to enter Waziristan without hindrance,’ Nashkar Ali Khan said softly, a hand falling to the curved knife at his waist, ‘but, as you have already found, the leaving is not so free.’
So, Ogilvie thought with a heavy heart, they had been expected all along and, no doubt, watched every inch of the way thereafter.
The Pathan gestured towards Healey. ‘You have seen the Earless One. Pain proved his trustworthiness. Much more pain is coming your way, Jones Sahib, and yours, Wilshaw Sahib, but not to prove a trustworthiness that is not there. It will be to make you talk, and I shall start with you, Jones Sahib. Fat men talk faster when the flesh is pricked, the wind escapes as from a pricked pig’s bladder!’
They were ordered to walk through to the back of the cavern, whence they climbed a steeply ascending passage to emerge into the open. They came on to a wide expanse of flat, table-like rock. The tribesmen formed a rough circle, with Jones quaking in the centre. A blade wa
s pressed into Ogilvie’s back. He watched Edward Healey, standing a little apart from the others, his face still without readable expression. Ogilvie wondered how it was that Captain Healey, so close, apparently, to Nashkar Ali Khan, had not known the wind’s direction better than this...and that he had been so sure that Jones had crossed the border into safety.
*
A fire was started, and long irons were brought to red heat. Jones sweated more than ever, and made great play with the green handkerchief, which was by now no more than a dirty wet rag. He was ordered to strip, and he did so with alacrity and obsequiousness, as though obedience could propitiate the Pathan. He looked grotesque and pathetic, a lump of quivering lard. All the same, there was an obstinacy about his face, or it could have been bravado, that said he was going to do the decent thing this time. In point of fact, as Ogilvie knew, he had little enough to tell beyond the one damning fact that Wilshaw Sahib was not Wilshaw Sahib at all.
That, and that alone. But it would be more than enough to shift the torture on to Ogilvie.
Jones gave a loud cry as a tribesman brought a heated iron from the fire and pushed the red-hot end towards him.
Nashkar Ali Khan lifted an inquiring eyebrow.
Jones said in a high voice, ‘No, no!’ Then, as the iron jabbed suddenly into his buttocks, he leapt screaming into the air. Landing again, he received another jab. Clapping his hands over his bottom he ran, still screaming, desperately seeking escape, trying to break the circle of wild Pathans. He was hurled back into the arena by brutal hands, to become an object of derisive laughter, as he scuttled and cried and twisted away from the searing, searching iron.
Ogilvie felt sick, really physically sick to retching point. He knew he could save poor Jones further pain and that indeed there was little point in his not doing so straight away, since Jones would obviously break before long. He looked across at Healey, seeking some sort of sign, some guidance in what he ought to do. But there was nothing — nothing in Healey’s face beyond a horrible kind of fascination in Jones’s painful indignity, as if Captain Healey were only too delighted a spectator of the profit motive getting its just punishment. There was no pity, and there was also no fear. But then Healey had no cause for alarm in a personal sense — Jones knew nothing about his identity; and even if Ogilvie should be uncovered and sacrificed, Healey’s work as an agent would continue and once he had his facts he would run out and make his report to his superiors in Ootacamund.
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