The Pulse of Danger. Jon Cleary
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posts, well inside the border. We managed to avoid them, but unfortunately we then ran into a second post. We had quite a scrap, didn’t we, old chap?’
Li Bu-fang took no notice. He could have been a man waiting on a railway station for a train that he knew was bound to come; Singh and the others were passengers without tickets, strangers who didn’t interest him. There was a monotony about his indifference that was beginning to irritate Marquis: the latter looked back at Singh with a little more sympathy.
‘All my men were killed, but we managed to kill most of the enemy – those we didn’t kill took to the hills, as the saying has it.’ He glanced up at the towering mountains to the north. ‘That left my friend and me facing each other, the two most senior men of the little battle. A survival of the most fitting, as you might say. I took him prisoner. I’m beginning to wish he had volunteered for suicide. He is a damn’ nuisance, you know.’
‘Why didn’t you let him make for the hills?’ Breck asked.
‘He is a general, Mr. – Breck? How often does one capture a general? Especially a Chinese general.’
‘How do you know he’s a general?’ Wilkins said. ‘He has no badges of rank.’
Singh smiled and looked at Li Bu-fang. ‘I asked him his rank. Didn’t I, old chap?’ The Chinese lifted his head a little and Marquis saw the mark on his throat, as if a cord or something had been tightened round it. ‘I told you I wished he had preferred suicide. But he didn’t. The Chinese are supposed to be awfully fatalistic about dying, but not this chappie. I think the Communists are much more realistic and practical. Since they don’t believe in Heaven, a dead comrade is a – shall we say a dead loss?’ He smiled around at them; he was proud of his English colloquialisms; the years at Oxford hadn’t been wasted. ‘When I tried a little persuasion, he told me what I wanted to know. Then I found some papers—’ He stopped as Nancy leaned forward.
‘Did he tell you in English?’ Nancy looked at the Chinese with new interest.
‘No, Hindi. He doesn’t speak it awfully well, but he does speak it. A good general should always have at least one other language, eh, old chap? Comes in handy for surrendering.’
‘He speaks English, too, I’ll bet,’ said Marquis.
‘I’m sure he does.’ The Chinese remained staring down at his hands. He was not sullen; he looked more like a man who felt he was alone. Singh shook his head, then turned back to Marquis and the others. ‘I am taking him back to India, to my headquarters. He is all I have to offer in return for the men I have lost this past week.’ He paused for a moment and his face clouded. He put his fingers to his forehead and bowed his head slightly as if in prayer. Then he went on: ‘The battalion was not at full strength up there on the border, but I have lost something like three hundred men. Men who were my children. Some of them were descendants of families who have worked for my family for generations. My batman, for instance. His father had been personal servant to my father, and his father served my grandfather.’ He noticed their polite looks of curiosity. ‘I am the Kumar Sawai Dalpat Singh. My father was the Maharajah of Samarand. It means nothing to you gentlemen? Ladies?’ He looked disappointed, then he shrugged. ‘Samarand was a princedom that no longer exists. When India became independent, my father’s state was absorbed. A democracy cannot afford princes. A pity, don’t you think?’
‘I think so,’ said Eve.
‘You would,’ said Marquis without rancour.
‘My husband is a socialist and a republican.’ Then Eve looked with surprise at the Chinese, who had grinned suddenly. ‘What’s so funny?’
Li Bu-fang bowed his head slightly to Marquis. He had an attractive smile, one that completely changed his face. ‘I am pleased to meet a fellow socialist.’ He had a soft pleasant voice, the sibilants hissing a little.
‘Up the workers!’ said Tom Breck, grinning.
‘I’m not your sort,’ Marquis said to Li Bu-fang. ‘Alongside you, I’m a right-wing reactionary, a joker who wouldn’t shake hands with a left-handed archbishop. I’m not a canvasser in your cause, mate.’ He looked back at Singh. ‘But I don’t vote for princes, either. Now where do you go from here?’
Singh seemed to be considering the remark about princes. Then once again he shrugged: even in the days of princes, no one had ever voted for them. ‘The easiest course would be to head for Thimbu, the capital, and hope the authorities there would allow me to smuggle him out over the new motor road. But they may not allow that—’
‘I wouldn’t blame them.’
Singh nodded. ‘Neither should I. No one can blame them if they don’t want to antagonise the Chinese, give them an excuse for invasion. One man, even a general, may seem an insignificant excuse for an invasion, but I don’t think the Chinese want much more. They could soon twist it into something that made very good propaganda. No, I think I shall have to by-pass Thimbu.’ He turned round in his chair and looked over his shoulder at the steep hill that blocked out the view to the south-east. ‘That’s the way I’ll have to go.’
‘Take him all that way on your own?’ Nancy’s voice cracked with incredulity. ‘It must be nearly a hundred miles into India – as the crow flies, that is. And you won’t be following the crow. You’ll be climbing up and down mountains all the way.’
Singh nodded and looked at Li Bu-fang. ‘Do you think we’ll make it, old chap?’
Li Bu-fang grinned, suddenly enjoying himself: the battle hadn’t finished back there in the mountains, it was only just beginning. ‘I assure you you won’t, Colonel.’
2
Late that afternoon Singh came to see Marquis. All through the day there had been a growing air of tension throughout the camp: the Indian and the Chinese were the eye of a storm that had yet to break. The Bhutanese porters had stopped their laughter and their games; as they worked they stared up at the camp where Singh and Li Bu-fang sat outside the kitchen tent, all their innocence now gone behind a mask that was frightening because it was unreadable. Even the Brecks had fallen silent; Nancy, uncertain of herself, now looked as vulnerable as Tom. Wilkins made no attempt to disguise what he felt: once, as he passed Singh, he called out, ‘When are you leaving, Colonel?’ and passed on before the Indian could answer: it was not a question but a suggestion, as frank and blunt as a Yorkshire question could be. Eve busied herself about the camp, trying to hide the elation she felt: she knew with the newcomers’ advent, Jack would have to think seriously about breaking camp and beginning the journey home.
As Singh came down towards him, Marquis looked up from the note-book in which he was entering the particulars of the plants now being readied to be taken back to England. Half the garden had been dug up and the stack of polythene bags had already reached a formidable size; Marquis had begun to wonder if he would need to hire more porters to carry out the collection. That would mean asking Eve for more money. He had already exceeded the budget he had been allowed by the Royal Horticultural Society, the co-backers of his part of the expedition. But he knew he would force himself to ask Eve: this was the greatest collection of plants he had ever achieved, and he would be damned if he’d leave any of it behind.
‘Marquis, I want a word with you.’
Marquis closed his note-book, stood up slowly, dismissed Nimchu and the other porters who had been working in the garden, then turned to Singh. He did it all unhurriedly and deliberately, and when he at last looked at the Indian, the latter’s face was flushed. ‘What can I do for you?’
Singh contained his anger and forced a smile, a polite grimace that looked as if it might tear a muscle or two. ‘I’m not accustomed to being kept waiting, old chap. But then you are probably aware of that.’
‘I’d guessed it,’ said Marquis and smiled broadly. ‘But then I’m not accustomed to jumping to attention when spoken to.’
‘You’d have made a poor soldier.’
Marquis