The Pulse of Danger. Jon Cleary
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rip the air inches above his head and he ducked. The short burst of automatic fire started the valley thundering; again the echoes were snatched away by the wind. But he heard nothing, only felt the thud on the ground as the leopard landed less than a yard from him; his eyes suddenly cleared, and he stepped back as the dying beast reached out for him with a weakly savage paw. He stood on shivering legs, staring down at the leopard as it snarled up at him, coughing angrily in its throat, its jaws working to get at him, its eyes yellow with a fierceness about which its body could do nothing. Then the head dropped and it was dead.
‘Jolly lucky shot, that. I almost blew your head off, instead of hitting him. Just as well you ducked, old man.’
Marquis turned, in control of himself again. On the other side of the river stood an Indian soldier, a Sten gun held loosely in the crook of his arm. Beside him, his hands bound together, was a second soldier, a Chinese.
‘Is there any way of crossing this river?’ the Indian asked.
Marquis nodded downstream. ‘There’s a bridge down opposite our camp.’
‘Jolly good.’ They had to shout to make themselves heard above the hiss of the water as it boiled past the rocks that tried to block its path. ‘Are you going back there now?’
Marquis looked down at the dead leopard, then at the gooral still wedged in above the rock. He would send Nimchu and a couple of the other porters back for them. The shots would have frightened off any other game that might be about, and the carcasses would be safe for some time. In any case he had to find out what the Indian and the Chinese were doing here.
He walked back along the bank of the river, watching the other two men as they picked their way along the narrow track on the other side. The Chinese walked with his head bent; with his hands tied in front of him he looked like a man deep in meditative prayer. The Indian kept glancing across at Marquis, smiling and nodding like a man throwing silent greetings across a crowded room. Occasionally he prodded the man in front of him with the barrel of his Sten gun, but the Chinese either ignored it or did not feel it. Captor and captive, it was obvious to Marquis even at this distance that they hated each other’s guts.
Before they reached the camp, Eve, Nimchu and three of the porters had come up the track to meet them. ‘What’s the matter? I heard the shots—’ Then Eve looked across the river and saw the two strangers as they came round an outcrop of rock. She saw the Sten gun carried by the Indian, and she looked quickly at Marquis to see if he had been wounded. ‘Did he shoot at you?’
He shook his head, warmed by her concern for him. He took the hand she had put out to him, and quickly told her what had happened. He spoke to the porters, telling them to collect the dead beasts; then, still hand in hand with Eve, he continued on towards the camp. She kept glancing across towards the two men opposite, and Marquis saw the Indian smile at her and incline his head in a slight bow. The Chinese remained uninterested.
‘Who are they?’ He could feel the tightness of her fingers on his. ‘The shorter one’s Chinese, isn’t he?’
‘I think so. He’s too big for a Bhutanese or a Sherpa.’ He looked across at the baggy grey uniform and the cap with ear-flaps that the man wore. ‘I’ve never seen a Chinese uniform before. If he’s a Red, he’s out of his territory. So’s the Indian, for that matter.’
‘What about the Indian? He looks pretty pleased with himself.’
‘Maybe he’s just glad to see us.’
‘Are you glad to see him?’
He didn’t answer that, just pressed her fingers. They came into the camp and walked down to the end of the bridge to wait for the two strangers as they crossed it. The Chinese slipped once or twice as the narrow catwalk swayed beneath him and, with his hands tied together, had trouble in keeping his balance; but the Indian made no attempt to help him, just paused and watched as if he would be pleased to see the Chinese topple over on to the rocks and be swept away by the rushing cataract. Then, wet from the spray flung up from below the bridge, they were clambering up the bank and Marquis and Eve advanced to meet them. The Indian slung his Sten gun over one shoulder, saluted Eve and put out his hand to Marquis.
‘Awfully pleased to meet you.’ His accent was high and fluting, a northern Indian provinces accent overlaid with an Oxford exaggeration that was now out of date. It suggested a languid world that was also gone: tea at four, Ascot hats in a Delhi garden, polo, gossip, and a shoving match among the rajahs to see who could stand closest to the British Raj. But the hand the Indian put out was not languid: the fingers were almost as strong as Marquis’s own. ‘I am Lieutenant-Colonel Dalpat Singh, Indian Army. This is General Li Bu-fang, Chinese Army.’ His black eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘The wrong Chinese Army, I’m afraid. He’s not one of Chiang Kai-shek’s chaps, are you, old man?’ He looked at the Chinese, who turned his head away and stared down the valley. Singh looked back at Marquis and Eve. ‘Chinese politeness died out with Communism. It’s always the way when one allows the masses to take over.’
Marquis, a paid-up member of the masses, ignored the Indian’s remark and introduced himself and Eve. ‘You’re out of your territory, aren’t you, Colonel?’
‘Oh, indeed we are. Both of us.’ He looked at the Chinese again, but the latter still remained detached from them, continuing to stare down the valley as if waiting patiently for someone to come. For a moment a flush of temper stained the Indian’s face, then he shrugged and smiled. He was a handsome man, tall and well-built, his jowls and waist perhaps a little soft and thick for a soldier in the field. He wore thick woollen khaki battle-dress with his badges of rank woven on the shoulder-straps, and a chocolate-brown turban that was stained with blood from a dried cut above his right eye. The eyes themselves were black and amused, almost mocking: they would have seen the human in Indra, the god who drank ambrosia for no other reason but to get drunk. But now, too, they were tired eyes: the Indian had almost reached the point of exhaustion where he would begin to mock himself. ‘I wonder if we might have a cup of tea? We haven’t had a bite to eat since yesterday at noon.’
Marquis led them up to the camp, and soon Tsering brought them tea, tsampa cakes, honey and fruit. At first it looked as if the Chinese would refuse to eat; then he seemed to make up his mind that it was pointless to starve himself to death. He sat down at the rough table opposite Singh and awkwardly, with his hands still bound, began to eat. The Indian himself was obviously famished and had begun to eat as soon as the food was put in front of him.
While they ate, Marquis and Eve left them alone. Nimchu and the other porters had now returned to camp with the leopard and the gooral. Tsering came out of his kitchen tent with a long knife that he sharpened on a stone. He stopped once, to look up at the Chinese general; he ran the blade along his thumb, then looked at Nimchu. The latter shook his head; and Tsering shrugged like a disappointed man. Then he set to work on the two carcasses, skinning them with the practised hand of a man who had been doing this since he was a child. As he slit the throat of the leopard, he glanced once more up at the Chinese; he grinned and committed murder by proxy. Nimchu and the other porters had cast curious, hostile glances up at the two strangers outside the kitchen tent, but then they had gone back to work digging up plants from the garden. Marquis, who hadn’t seen Tsering’s gestures, looked down at Nimchu and the others, wondering what they thought of these invaders.
‘I’d like to keep the leopard skin,’ Eve said. ‘It would make a nice handbag.’
‘Too many holes in it. He put about five bullets into it. He’s a handy man with that Sten gun. It wasn’t an easy shot. I mean, if he wanted to miss me.’
‘You’re lucky he is handy with it.’ She looked down at the leopard, now almost divested of its skin, and shuddered. The bloody carcass could have been Jack’s. ‘He could have killed you, darling.’
He nodded, not wanting to disturb her further by telling her how close he had come to death. He had not yet thanked the Indian for saving