The Pulse of Danger. Jon Cleary
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read: that the victors should never acknowledge their indebtedness to each other in front of the defeated enemy: it was a sign of weakness and at once gave the enemy hope for revenge. It was probably a Roman or a Chinese or a Frenchman who had written it; the English and the Americans were too sentimental about their enemies once they were defeated; and it could not have been a Russian or a German, he found them unreadable. And it could not have been an Irishman or an Australian: whenever they won anything, they then started a fight amongst themselves.
He looked up towards the kitchen tent at the two men, the tall Indian and the thickset Chinese each ignoring the other as he ate, each self-contained in a sort of national arrogance.
Then he looked down at the leopard, grudgingly admiring the dead beast. Its long tail, so beautiful when the animal was alive, now lay like a coil of frayed rope on the grass; the skin, no longer living, already looked as if it had lost its sheen. The head was still attached to the body and now the skin had been peeled away he could see the amazing muscular development of the neck, thick as that of some tigresses he had seen, even though the tigresses must have been at least twice the weight of this graceful beast. The leopard would have torn him to pieces before he could have cleared his eyes of the tears that had blinded him.
‘What actually happened?’ Eve asked; and when he told her she said, ‘That wouldn’t happen back in Kensington.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. The Jaguars on Cromwell Road are just as lethal.’
He’s dodging the argument again, she thought; but before she could say anything Wilkins and the Brecks were coming across the bridge.
‘We heard some shots. Didn’t sound like rifle shots—’ Then they all looked across at the kitchen tent and saw the two strangers. It was Tom Breck who said, ‘Soldiers? Up here?’
‘Whatever happened to Bhutan’s neutrality?’ said Wilkins, slipping his sarcasm out of its sheath for a moment.
Marquis glanced at him, and Eve prepared herself for a sharp exchange between the two men. She saw Jack’s eyes darken as they always did when temper gripped him; he had the Irish weakness of wearing his emotions on his face. Then he turned away, casually, and said, ‘Let’s find out.’
He led the way up to the kitchen tent. He introduced Wilkins and the Brecks, then he sat down at the head of the table and looked at the Indian. ‘Now maybe you’d better put us in the picture, Colonel.’ He kept the note of worry out of his voice and hoped that his expression was equally bland. ‘If our camp is going to be turned into a battleground, we’d like to get to hell out of it.’
‘Of course.’ Singh leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs; unshaven, unwashed, he still carried an air of authority with him. And an air of something else, Marquis thought. An out-of-date peacock pride? A demolished splendour? Marquis couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He had the feeling that he was looking at a ghost that was only too substantial, that mocked its own grave. The Taj Mahal could have been turned into a bowling alley, but this man would still go there.
Singh took the cigarette Wilkins offered him, lit it and drew on it with relish. Wilkins offered the packet to the Chinese, but the latter shook his head. Singh blew out smoke, then looked at the cigarette between his long elegant fingers. ‘Ah, Benson and Hedges. Jolly good.’
‘My last packet.’ They were Wilkins’s one snob symbol: he couldn’t afford the Savile Row suit, the Aston Martin. He had bought a dozen cartons just before leaving London and had severely rationed himself to a certain number of cigarettes a day. It was the story of Lis life: even his snobbery had to be on the bargain-rate level.
‘I used to smoke them when I was at Oxford. Before the war they used to make a special cigarette for my father. He was very particular about his pleasures. Pleasure, he used to say, was the foretaste of Heaven. He had sixty wives, including my dear mother. He expected a very special Heaven, too, I’m afraid.’ Singh looked at Marquis. ‘You don’t smoke, old chap?’
‘My husband is afraid of lung cancer,’ said Eve, drawing on her own cigarette. ‘He doesn’t believe in hastening towards Heaven.’
‘It is a pity all pleasures have their price. Or don’t you agree, Mr. Marquis?’
Marquis saw the Chinese flick a quick glance at the Indian, then the almond eyes were still again, staring down at the bound hands resting on the table in front of him. The inscrutable bloody Orient was not as inscrutable as it thought: behind the impassive face Marquis had glimpsed a mind that was lively and (or was he wrong?) even optimistic. He jerked a thumb at the Chinese. ‘Does he speak English?’
‘I don’t know, old chap. I’ve been chatting to him for almost eighteen hours now, but I haven’t got a word out of him. Later on, when I feel a little stronger, I’ll have a real chin-wag with him.’ There was no mistaking his meaning. He stared at the Chinese, his dark face turning to wood; for all his educated accent and his out-of-date schoolboy slang, Singh looked to Marquis as if he could be as cruel and direct as any wild tribesman of the Indian hills. He had been brought up on pig-sticking; he could turn the lance to other uses. Then abruptly Singh seemed to remember the others, and he looked back at them and smiled. ‘But to put you in the picture. I’m afraid it is not a jolly one.’
‘I knew it,’ said Wilkins, but he might just as well have not spoken for all the notice the others took of him. They all leaned forward, concerned with what Singh might have to tell them. Marquis saw the eyes of the Chinese shine for a moment, but the muscles of the face remained fixed. But the eyes had given Li Bu-fang away: he was laughing at them.
‘These chaps,’ Singh nodded at Li Bu-fang, ‘have set up some posts right across the border here in Bhutan. At least three, possibly more. Border posts with quite a large number of men manning them. Fifty or sixty men to a post. They’re building up for something.’
‘Invasion,’ said Nancy, and put on her glasses to look at the Chinese with an expression that startled Eve with its intensity.
‘That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here,’ said Marquis.
The Indian’s face stiffened again, as it had when he had looked at the Chinese a moment ago. He looked obliquely at Marquis, seeming to recognise for the first time that he was not really wanted here. At the same time it became obvious to Marquis that Singh was a man who expected to be welcomed wherever he went. Not the expectation of a man looking for popularity, like a politician or pop singer on the make, but that of a man accustomed to being welcomed. You’re not only in the wrong country, Marquis thought, you’re in the wrong century.
‘No, it doesn’t, does it? Do I have to explain to you, Mr. Marquis?’
Everyone looked at Marquis, embarrassed by the sudden tension between the two men. Even the Chinese looked up for a moment, then his gaze quickly slid back to his hands. Marquis knew then that Li Bu-fang could speak English and he wondered for a moment if he should continue this discussion, which could become an argument, in front of the Chinese. Then he mentally shrugged: the man was the Indian’s prisoner and the latter’s concern.
‘You are in my camp, Colonel. Foreign military men in uniform are prohibited visitors to this country – I’m sure you know that as well as I do, and that it applies to Indians as much as Chinese. I could get it in the neck for harbouring you. That’s why I think I’m entitled to an explanation.’
Eve hesitated, then she said, ‘I think my husband is right.’
Singh looked about the table, at Wilkins and the Brecks, who nodded their agreement; then he looked back at Marquis. ‘I was – I am the commander of a battalion that has been doing border duty in the North-East Frontier Agency for the past two months. A week ago we were overrun by a brigade of Chinese. I escaped with some of my men, eighteen to be exact—’ He spoke directly to Marquis, as if the latter was the one he felt might judge him too harshly: cowardice was a disease of lesser men. ‘I did not run away, Mr. Marquis. It was the circumstances of the fighting in the mountains that I was one of those who were cut off.’
‘I’m not criticising