Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 4: Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman on the March, Flashman and the Tiger. George Fraser MacDonald
Читать онлайн книгу.
things up – and devilish dull for the collators, who passed it on for sifting and summary by the two Chinese supervisors whose names, I swear to God, were Mr Fat and Mr Lin. By the time they’d pieced and deduced and remembered – well, it’s surprising what can emerge from even the most mundane scraps of information.
For example, it was the strangest thing that enabled us to foresee the end of the great siege of Nanking in April ’60. The Imperialists had huge entrenchments circling the city, and the river blockaded on both sides, but couldn’t breach the rebel defences. The Taipings, hemmed within the city, had various forces loose in the countryside, but nothing apparently strong enough to raise the siege. It was such a stalemate that a great fair had actually been established between the Imp lines and the city walls, where both sides used to meet and fraternise, and the Imps sold all manner of goods to the Taipings! They brought food, opium, women, even arms and powder, which the Taipings bought with the silver they’d found in Nanking when they captured it back in ’53.
A ludicrous state of affairs, even for China; it took my fancy, and when one of our spies sent down particulars of the market trading, I happened to glance through it – and noted an item which seemed a trifle odd. I ain’t given to browsing over such things, you may be sure, and I wish to heaven I’d never seen this one, for what I noticed proved to be a vital clue, and set Bruce thinking earlier than he need have done, with the most ghastly consequences to myself.
“Here’s a rum thing, Mr Fat,” says I. “Why should the Taipings be buying bolts of black silk? Dammit, they spent 500 taelsa on it this week – more than they spent on cartridge. Are they expecting funerals?”
“Most singular,” says he. “Mr Lin, have the goodness to examine the return for last week.”
So they did – and the Taipings had bought even more black silk then. They clucked over it, and burrowed into their records, and came to an astonishing conclusion.
Whenever the Taipings undertook any desperate military action, they invariably raised black silk flags in every company, which their soldiers were bound to follow on pain of death – they even had executioners posted in the ranks to behead any shirkers, which must have done wonders for their recruiting, I’d have thought. And when we learned presently that the black silk had been sent out of the city to two of the Taiping armies in the field – the Golden Lions of the famous Loyal Prince Lee, and the Celestial Singers under Chen Yu-cheng – it was fairly obvious that Lee and Chen were about to fall on the Imp besiegers. Which, in due course, they did, and our knowing about it in advance enabled the Hon. F. W. A. Bruce to plan and scheme most infernally, as I said. (If you wonder that the Imps didn’t realise the significance of the black silk they were selling the Taipings – why, that’s the Imperial Chinese Army for you. Even if they had, they’d likely just have yawned, or deserted.)
I was fool enough to be mildly pleased at spotting the item – Fat and Lin regarded me with awe for days – but I wasn’t much interested, having discovered far more important matter in the secret files, which enabled me to bring off a splendid coup, thus:
It appeared that Countess H—, wife of a senior attaché at the Russian mission, paid weekly visits to a Chinese hairdresser, and, under the pretext of being beautified, regularly entertained four(!) stalwart Manchoo Bannermen in a room above the shop, later driving home with a new coiffure and a smug expression.
[Official conclusion by Fat and Lin: the subject is vulnerable, and may be coerced if access should be required to her husband’s papers. Action: none.]
[Unofficial conclusion by Flashy: the subject is a slim, vicious-looking piece who smokes brown cigarettes and drinks like a fish at diplomatic bunfights, but has hitherto been invulnerable by reason of her chilly disdain. Action: advise subject by anonymous note that if she doesn’t change her hairdresser, her husband will learn something to her disadvantage. Supply her with address of alternative establishment, and arrange to drop in during her appointments.]
So you see, you can’t overestimate the importance of good intelligence work. Fascinating woman; d’you know, she smoked those damned brown cigarettes all the time, even when … And kept a tumbler of vodka on the bedside table. But I digress. Bruce was preparing his bombshell, and it was on my return from an exhausting afternoon at the hairdresser’s that he informed me, out of the blue, that he was sending me to Nanking.
There was a time when the notion of intruding on the mutual slaughter of millions of Chinese would have had me squawking like an agitated hen, but I knew better now. I nodded judiciously, while my face went crimson (which it does out of sheer funk, often mistaken for rage and resolution) and my liver turned its accustomed white. Aloud I wondered, frowning, if I were the best man to send … a clever Chinese might do it better … one didn’t know how long it would take … have to be on hand when Elgin arrived … might our policy not be compromised if a senior British officer were seen near rebel headquarters … strict neutrality … of course, Bruce knew best …
“It can’t be helped,” says he briskly. “It would be folly not to employ your special talents in this emergency. The battle is fully joined before Nanking, and there’s no doubt the Taipings will crush the Imps utterly in the Yangtse valley, which will alter the whole balance in China; at a stroke the rebels become masters of everything between Kwangsi and the Yellow Sea.” He swept his hand across the southern half of China on his wall map.
“I said some weeks ago that a time might come when we must talk to the Taipings,” says he, and for once the cherub face was set and heavy. “Well, it is now. After this battle, Lee’s hands will be free, and it’s my belief that he will march on Shanghai. If he does, then we and France and America and Russia can ignore the Taipings no longer; we’ll be bound to choose once and for all between them and the Manchoos.” He rubbed a hand across his jaw. “And that’s a perilous choice. We’ve avoided it for ten years, and I’m damned if I want to see it made now, in haste.”
I said nothing; I was too busy recalling, with my innards dissolving, that at the last great battle for Nanking, when the Taipings took it in ’53, the carnage had been frightful beyond contemplation. Every Manchoo in the garrison had been massacred, 20,000 dead in a single day, all the women burned alive – and it would be infinitely worse now, with both Taipings and Imp fugitives joining in an orgy of slaughter and pillage, raping, burning, and butchering everything in sight. Just the place to send poor Flashy, with his little white flag, crying: “Please, sir – may I have a word … ?”
“We can only maintain a de facto neutrality by keeping ’em at a distance,” Bruce was saying. “If they advance on Shanghai, we’re bound either to fight – and God help us – or come to terms with them, which the Manchoos would regard as a flagrant betrayal – and God help our Pekin expedition. So it is our task to see that the Taipings don’t come to Shanghai.”
“How the deuce d’you do that?” I demanded. “If they beat the Imps at Nanking, and have blood in their eye, they won’t stand still!”
“You don’t know the Taipings, Sir Harry,” says he. “None of us does – except to know that with them anything is possible. I think they’ll come to Shanghai – but this crazy king of theirs is capable of declaring a Seven Year Tranquillity, or some such stuff! Or launching his armies west to Yunnan. It is possible they may do nothing at all. That’s why you must go to Nanking.”
“What can I hope to accomplish?” I protested, and he took a turn round the room, fingered a few papers, sat down, and stared at the floor. Devising some novel means of plunging me into the soup, no doubt.
“I don’t know, Sir Harry,” says he at last. “You must persuade ’em not to march on Shanghai – at least for a few months – but how you’re to do it …” He lifted his head and looked me in the eye. “The devil of it is, I can’t send you with any authority. I’ve not replied to Lee’s letter, but I’m having a verbal hint discreetly conveyed to him that he may expect a … an English visitor. No one official, of course; simply a gentleman from the London Missionary Society who wishes to visit the Heavenly