The Mercenaries

by The Mercenaries (The Jade Wind) (retail) (epub)

  The room was bitterly cold and smelled of rotting vegetables and ammonia. Tsu seemed to have aged ten years since he had last seen him, his face the crinkled yellow-white of old parchment, and Madame Tsu had lost all her French charm and was thin and tired-looking. The boy, all dark eyes and long fingers, clutched the violin case beside the weeping amah.

  As Ira stepped into the light, Madame Tsu rose and, crossing to him, fell on her knees and kissed his hands. He lifted her to her feet, embarrassed, and she turned to her husband and spoke rapidly in Chinese.

  Tsu’s face remained inscrutable, and she turned to the boy. ‘It is Peng Ah-Lun, Philippe,’ she said in English, her voice wavering on the edge of hysteria. ‘Pen Ah-Lun has come to take us to Shanghai.’

  Tsu seemed indifferent to his wife and son and even to Ira. He was speaking in Chinese now to Tong, and gesturing at a pile of trunks and boxes stacked in the corner of the room behind the door. Kee joined in and shook his head, and Tsu began to speak in a low angry voice.

  Kee turned to Ira. ‘Major Penaluna,’ he said, his precise schoolboy English tumbling over itself in his desperation. ‘Please jolly well tell the general that we cannot take all this bloody baggage.’

  Ira turned to Madame Tsu. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘we have to walk to the outskirts of the city. We have to fly. A suitcase each. No more.’

  She swung round on her husband and spoke rapidly to him. Again he argued, a stubborn, stupid, argumentative old man, and with his wife in tears and pleading with him on her knees, Ira wanted to shake him. In the end, he spoke to Kee, who turned to Ira.

  ‘The general insists on taking the money, of course,’ he said. ‘Still, you know, there are eight of us and, between us, we ought to manage.’

  Madame Tsu swung round on Ira again, her black eyes dull with unhappiness. ‘Can I take my jade?’ she begged. ‘It’s priceless. It will pay for lessons in Europe.’

  ‘What we can get in our pockets,’ Ira said. ‘No more.’

  She threw open a suitcase, and began to hand round small cloth-wrapped packages, tears streaming down her face. The amah still crouched in a corner wailing, her face contorted, alongside the pale bewildered face of the boy.

  After a while they were ready, two of them to each money box. Tsu straightened up, put on his coat, picked up his stick and moved to the door.

  ‘Tell the bastard to get hold of this bloody box,’ Ira snapped. ‘Tell him we don’t go unless he gives a hand.’

  Kee’s words were fearful and hesitant and, for a moment, Tsu looked at Ira, then he took out a gold turnip of a watch, consulted it, and bent to take hold of one of the handles.

  As they stepped outside, they could hear the mob baying nearby, and Madame Tsu almost collapsed in terrified hysteria. Tsu remained unmoved and unemotional, neither encouraging her nor helping her as they set off through the alleys, stumbling over stones and rubbish and broken beams.

  The money boxes felt as though they weighed a ton and Ira was soon sweating. Behind them they could hear the noise of the mob again, growing louder. A few figures passed them in the dark, running, but no one took any notice. After a while, they came to where the Pierce-Arrow was waiting with its lights off. Without a word, Tsu put down the box he was carrying and climbed into the rear seat and leaned back. Ira stared at him in fury. Kee, ever polite, was straining to lift the money boxes into the car now and stuffing them round the general’s feet, then he helped Madame Tsu and the boy in after them. The amah collapsed by the roadside, weeping noisily.

  With Tong and Ira standing on the running board, the car ground away from the city in low gear. A group of students ran past them, carrying banners, their voices raised, and Kee looked sick.

  ‘We are only just in time,’ he said. ‘They are seeking the general and I think they’ve found his hiding place.’

  Ira glanced inside the car at the inscrutable old figure completely ignoring his half-hysterical wife and sobbing child.

  ‘It’s a pity they didn’t find him,’ he said.

  They were heading through the crowds camping on the outskirts of the town now, the klaxon roaring and the engine revving in low gear. Occasionally, they saw the glint of a weapon, but no one tried to stop the car or look inside. At the airfield, there was silence and Ira was thankful to see the silhouettes of the two aeroplanes unharmed against the moonlight and a group of empty petrol drums. As the car stopped, Tsu climbed out and began to stride at once towards the aeroplanes.

  ‘You’d better fetch him back,’ Ira said to Kee. ‘We can’t do a thing till daylight.’

  A figure rose out of the darkness. It was Ellie, a heavy revolver swinging from her hand. Followed by Yen, she crossed to Ira.

  ‘Everything’s ready,’ she said. ‘Tanks are full.’

  ‘We’re all right now, Ellie,’ he said thankfully. ‘It’s almost over. We’ll leave as soon as it’s light.’

  Kee was leading the general away from the aeroplanes, protesting loudly in Chinese. He got Tsu quiet at last and approached Ira.

  ‘I am going to wait outside the city with Yen,’ he said. ‘I am worried, you know. I think the mob might jolly well find out where we are. Could you take off in the dark?’

  Ira glanced at his watch. ‘For God’s sake, Kee,’ he said. ‘We have no lights and in two hours’ time, it’ll be dawn. Give us that long.’

  * * *

  Day came with a sword-blade of yellow low down over the town, and the violet sky changed to deep blue which grew lighter with every second. Trees and slopes began to emerge and the vivid streamer of light was followed by a pinkish winter glow. Ira, who had been stamping his feet, half-frozen, over the remains of half a dozen cigarettes, glanced at Ellie standing nearby, her hands deep in her pockets, her face in shadow. They had spoken little during the remaining two hours of darkness and, though several times he tried to explore her thoughts, she had remained silent and absorbed and hadn’t answered him.

  ‘Soon, now,’ he said.

  She nodded and threw away her cigarette and he heard it hiss as it fell on the frosty grass. Nearby, against a tree, Tsu sat with Colonel Tong on one of the money boxes, huddled in his heavy overcoat. His wife, hugging her son to her, tried to keep them both warm with the lightweight cloak she wore.

  A bird chirped somewhere in the bushes, then another and suddenly there seemed to be movement in the world as other small bodies moved and flexed their muscles. There was a mist over the field, lying in a flat grey-blue sheet two or three feet above the ground, slicing the aircraft in two and laying runnels of moisture on the wings between the ribs, and in the distance Ira could just see the tip of the Chang-an-Chieh, detached and floating. The mist worried him a little in case it delayed them and he decided to make a move.

  He touched Ellie’s shoulder and she jumped and turned her head, the blonde hair falling across her eyes.

  ‘Time to go, Ellie,’ he said. ‘Let’s start up.’

  She nodded and moved towards the aeroplanes and immediately Tsu came to life, climbed to his feet and began to walk after her.

  ‘The old bastard’s certainly in a hurry,’ Ira said. ‘If I had my way, I’d take his wife and child and leave him behind.’

  With the help of Tong, they hoisted the sandbag ballast from the passenger cockpits and began to load the money boxes, stuffing them under the seats and lashing them in place. It soon became clear that Tsu intended to fly only with Ira and that he intended to take his money with him. His wife and the boy could do what they wished, it seemed, so long as they didn’t interfere with his escape.

  They were staring round for a sign of any wind when they heard the car roaring up the road again and the croak of its klaxon. Kee entered the field going flat out, the front wheels wavering every time they hit a bump. He swung round so fast alongside the De Havilland, they thought he was going to lose control and hit it.

  ‘They’ve jolly well found us, you know!’ He was shouting as he fell out of the car. ‘They’re on their way here now. I lo
st Yen.’

  Tsu seemed to realise what had happened and began to run for the De Havilland in the bent-legged waddle of an old man. Ira caught him just as he was about to stick his foot through the fabric of the wing and swung him round with such force that he fell to the ground.

  He turned to Kee, his face furious. ‘Tell the old fool he does as I say!’ he raged. ‘Or we turn him loose for the mob to get him!’

  Kee jabbered quickly and Tsu shouted back at him. Kee stuck his ground, however, and after a while Tsu calmed down, though Ira noticed that he remained close to the plane.

  They packed Madame Tsu and the boy into the rear cockpit of the Avro, the boy still clutching the violin, and Ira shouted instructions to them as Ellie climbed into the pilot’s seat.

  ‘Keep your heads down,’ he yelled, then as Ellie switched on, he swung on the propeller. At first it wouldn’t fire and he prayed that the cold hadn’t affected it. Forcing himself to keep calm, he turned it backwards, the valves gasping and the pistons clonk-clonking slowly as they sucked in fuel. When he tried again, it fired in a cloud of blue smoke.

  Madame Tsu was still wearing an old-fashioned European hat clamped on her thick black hair with pins and a scarf. He tried to persuade her to remove it but she either didn’t understand or couldn’t hear and she was sitting there, white-faced and petrified with fear, as Ira began to pass the packages of jade up to her. After two or three, she began to thrust them back at him.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘They are yours! I am giving them to you! For coming!’

  ‘Wait until we’re safe, madame,’ he yelled at her. ‘You might change your mind.’

  ‘No! Whatever happens, they’re yours! There was no one else with the courage to come! Only you! I want you to have them!’

  He stuffed the packages into the capacious pockets of his flying coat without arguing and dragged away the chocks, then, with Kee and Tong linking arms to heave the propeller, they got the De Havilland started, too, and Kee pushed Tsu into the rear cockpit on top of the money boxes. The engines were still warming up when the mob burst out of the mist on to the field. Tong promptly bolted for the trees but Kee stood his ground, his face deathly pale.

  ‘Go, please, sir,’ he shouted to Ira, his manners still untouched. ‘Go now!’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Ira said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I shall die, sir.’

  ‘For Tsu? He’s not worth it, Kee. Climb on the wing. I’ll fly you out.’

  The mob had streamed across the field now and had stopped about a hundred yards away in a long straggling line across their path, defying them to plough through them. Deafened by the screeching of Tsu from the rear cockpit, Ira felt sick at their courage and at the hatred in their faces.

  ‘For God’s sake, Kee,’ he yelled. ‘Get on the wing and hang on to a strut! We’ll make it somehow!’

  For a moment, Kee stared at the mob, then he gave Ira a bleak smile and began to walk towards the line of coolies at an oblique angle, shouting in Chinese.

  At once, the mob began to curdle and moved towards him in little groups and eddies, and it was only then that Ira realised he was trying to draw them out of the track of the aeroplanes. As he walked, however, one of the coolies lifted his arm and Ira saw he held a revolver, and as Kee stumbled before the heavy bullet and fell, the mob surged over him, beating and smashing and kicking and tearing. Ira saw sticks rising and falling and fragments of clothing flying through the air, then the bloody wreckage which had been Kee was hoisted up on the end of pitchforks, and the baying of the mob became like the howling of wild animals.

  Tsu was still screaming and jabbing Ira’s shoulder with his stick, indicating that he should take off, but the mob were still across their path, marshalled by the students into a wide half-circle, defying him to carve his way through them. For a second, he stared at them, his mind stiff with rage and fear, then impulsively, he pulled the throttle back until the engine was idling and climbed out of the cockpit again and, using his fists, pushed and pummelled Tsu off the money boxes. With the old man shrieking his protests, he hoisted one of them out and threw it on the ground. Then he smashed the hasp with his revolver and, carrying it under his arm, staggered like a laden donkey away from the aircraft and flung it down again. Tsu was spluttering with rage as the silver cascade caught the sun.

  ‘Look!’ Ira yelled, picking up handfuls of the money and tossing it as far as he could from him. ‘Money! Plenchee good joss!’

  The baying seemed to stop at once as the coolies realised what he was throwing about the frosted grass, then one end of the human barrier began to melt as they ran for the coins. Even as the line crumbled and broke, Ira bolted back towards the De Havilland. The students were shrieking with rage now as the coolies scattered towards the money, lashing out at them with sticks and carrying poles. A few went down under the blows, but to most of them each of the silver coins that Ira had scattered in the stubble meant a lifetime’s savings, and the instinct for wealth was greater than the newly acquired instinct for hatred. The shining pile of coins disappeared under a swarm of blue-clad bodies that kicked, gouged, fought and screamed as they struggled to get their hands on just one of the precious pieces of metal.

  The line had broken into scattered groups now and there was a gap in front of the De Havilland with the length of the field beyond. As he tore the chocks free and scrambled into the cockpit, Ira turned and waved to Ellie and she opened the throttle immediately and began to move forward. In the brief instant as the Avro passed him, he saw Madame Tsu’s hat fly off and her long black hair stream out behind her.

  As he fell into his seat, his harness still unfastened, he thrust his own throttle wide open and with a rich roar of exhausts, the De Havilland began to bump with rocking wings after the Avro. A few of the students ran forward and tried futilely to grab the wings and one of them even stepped deliberately into his path, and Ira saw him flung aside in a bloody pulp as the propeller hit him, then the two machines were rising together from the ground, the Avro just in front and above.

  The river mist was burning off into wispy veils as they banked low over the end of the field. The De Havilland was still lower and on the inside ready to take up the leading position when the Liberty spluttered and coughed. Ira’s heart stopped with it. Ahead of them the Chang-an-Chieh loomed, bulky and dangerous, and he glanced down and backwards at the field where the coolies had cleared the ground of the coins and were now standing in a circle, shaking their fists. If the engine failed him now, they’d tear him limb from limb.

  But the engine picked up again in an uneven beat and he saw the Avro just behind and to the right, beyond his wing tip.

  Ellie raised her hand and waved encouragement, then over the roar of the engine he heard the familiar clack-clack of a machine gun and caught a glimpse of it mounted on a lorry in the roadway near the pagoda, surrounded by soldiers. He glanced quickly up and across at the Avro and Ellie waved again to indicate she was safe, then, almost immediately, he saw the blunt nose dip and spurts of blue smoke as the engine began to falter.

  Her head disappeared inside the cockpit at once as she fought with the controls, then he saw a stream of whitish vapour spin out in the wake of the plane and his heart died inside him as he saw a tiny jet of flame under the engine. In numb despair he saw it grow larger, then smoke began to pour from the cockpit. The Avro was wobbling now and he saw Ellie lift her arm again, though it was impossible to tell whether she was waving to him or protecting herself from the growing flames.

  For a minute longer the machine wobbled along unevenly, the crimson tongues licking back towards the comma-tail, then a great flare of red, as though a furnace door had been opened, hid both Ellie and her passengers, and the nose dropped and the blazing mass passed so close to the De Havilland, Ira could hear the roaring of the flames.

  He watched with a sick futile horror as it curved towards the river in a long slow bank, trailing a swelling arc of dark smoke, then a wing tip caught one of the u
pper eaves of the Chang-an-Chieh and the tail swung over in a frightful cartwheel that sent rooftiles flying.

  Shocked, he watched the machine hit the ground and carve a line of wreckage through the hovels that lined the riverbank, still moving like a Catherine wheel and trailing flying fragments of burning wreckage in its wake, then it hit the burned-out steamer lying on the mud and plunged beyond it into the river in a tremendous gout of water.

  Chapter 9

  Ira was waiting with Kowalski on the staging at Pootung when Sammy and the others stepped ashore. Sammy’s eyes lit up at once as he saw him and he ran forward awkwardly, his bandaged arm stiff against his chest.

  ‘We made it, Ira,’ he said. ‘We made it!’

  He glanced round him as Ira didn’t respond to his joy, and his face fell. ‘Where’s Ellie?’ he asked.

  With Kowalski grave-faced behind him, Ira told him. The anaesthesia of shock had worn off dining the journey south. It had all happened so quickly and so unexpectedly, just when they seemed to be safe, he still couldn’t believe it. He had turned over Tsosiehn, glancing constantly towards the point beyond his wing, fully expecting to see the Avro there. Unseeingly, he had circled the spot where the aeroplane had gone into the river, praying he would see Ellie’s head come to the surface, but there had been only a burning patch of petrol on the water, a floating fragment of wing, the shattered hovels sprayed with burning petrol, and the coolies running through the streets towards the scene of the crash.

  For what seemed ages he had circled over the mudflats, seeing the faces of the Chinese as they had looked up at him, then Tsu had started yelling and pointing to the east, no sign of grief or compassion on his face.

  Dumb, stupefied, and devoid of emotion, still flying the De Havilland instinctively in a cold empty void, Ira had felt bereft of reason and numbed by a sick feeling of guilt, knowing that if he and Sammy hadn’t wanted to go to Tsosiehn it would never have happened. He had circled the river once more but the hovels along the banks were well ablaze by this time, and there had been nothing else – just the tailplane, torn off in the crash, lying on the mud, and that floating wing and the patch of burning petrol on the water.