Flashman in the Great Game. George Fraser MacDonald
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eyes half-shut, but watching me, ‘tell me precisely what you heard in Russia, touchin’ on an Indian rebellion. Every word of it.’
So I told him, exactly as I remembered it – how Scud East and I had lain quaking in our nightshirts in the gallery at Starotorsk, and overheard about ‘Item Seven’, which was the Russian plan for an invasion of India. They’d have done it, too, but Yakub Beg’s riders scuppered their army up on the Syr Daria, with Flashy running about roaring with a bellyful of bhang, performing unconscious prodigies of valour. I’d set it all out in my report to Dalhousie, leaving out the discreditable bits (you can find those in my earlier memoirs, along with the licentious details). It was a report of nicely judged modesty, that official one, calculated to convince Dalhousie that I was the nearest thing to Hereward the Wake he was ever likely to meet – and why not? I’d suffered for my credit.
But the information about an Indian rebellion had been slight. All we’d discovered was that when the Russian army reached the Khyber, their agents in India would rouse the natives – and particularly John Company’s sepoys – to rise against the British. I didn’t doubt it was true, at the time; it seemed an obvious ploy. But that was more than a year ago, and Russia was no threat to India any longer, I supposed.
They heard me out, in a silence that lasted a full minute after I’d finished, and then Wood says quietly:
‘It fits, my lord.’
‘Too dam’ well,’ says Pam, and came hobbling back to his chair again. ‘It’s all pat. You see, Flashman, Russia may be spent as an armed power, for the present – but that don’t mean she’ll leave us at peace in India, what? This scheme for a rebellion – by George, if I were a Russian political, invasion or no invasion, I fancy I could achieve somethin’ in India, given the right agents. Couldn’t I just, though!’ He growled in his throat, heaving restlessly and cursing his gouty foot. ‘Did you know, there’s an Indian superstition that the British Raj will come to an end exactly a hundred years after the Battle of Plassey?’ He picked up one of the chapattis and peered at it. ‘Dam’ thing isn’t even sugared. Well, the hundredth anniversary of Plassey falls next June the twenty-third. Interestin’. Now then, tell me – what d’you know about a Russian nobleman called Count Nicholas Ignatieff?’
He shot it at me so abruptly that I must have started a good six inches. There’s a choice collection of ruffians whose names you can mention if you want to ruin my digestion for an hour or two – Charity Spring and Bismarck, Rudi Starnberg and Wesley Hardin, for example – but I’d put N. P. Ignatieff up with the leaders any time. He was the brute who’d nearly put paid to me in Russia – a gotch-eyed, freezing ghoul of a man who’d dragged me half way to China in chains, and threatened me with exposure in a cage and knouting to death, and like pleasantries. I hadn’t cared above half for the conversation thus far, with its bloody mutiny cakes and the sinister way they kept dragging in my report to Dalhousie – but at the introduction of Ignatieff’s name my bowels began to play the Hallelujah Chorus in earnest. It took me all my time to keep a straight face and tell Pam what I knew – that Ignatieff had been one of the late Tsar’s closest advisers, and that he was a political agent of immense skill and utter ruthlessness; I ended with a reminiscence of the last time I’d seen him, under that hideous row of gallows at Fort Raim. Ellenborough exclaimed in disgust, Wood shuddered delicately, and Pam sipped his port.
‘Interestin’ life you’ve led,’ says he. ‘Thought I remembered his name from your report – he was one of the prime movers behind the Russian plan for invasion an’ Indian rebellion, as I recall. Capable chap, what?’
‘My lord,’ says I, ‘he’s the devil, and that’s a fact.’
‘Just so,’ says Pam. ‘An’ the devil will find mischief.’ He nodded to Ellenborough. ‘Tell him, my lord. Pay close heed to this, Flashman.’
Ellenborough cleared his throat and fixed his boozy spaniel eyes on me. ‘Count Ignatieff,’ says he, ‘has made two clandestine visits to India in the past year. Our politicals first had word of him last autumn at Ghuznee; he came over the Khyber disguised as an Afridi horse-coper, to Peshawar. There we lost him – as you might expect, one disguised man among so many natives—’
‘But my lord, that can’t be!’ I couldn’t help interrupting. ‘You can’t lose Ignatieff, if you know what to look for. However he’s disguised, there’s one thing he can’t hide – his eyes! One of em’s half-brown, half-blue!’
‘He can if he puts a patch over it,’ says Ellenborough. ‘India’s full of one-eyed men. In any event, we picked up his trail again – and on both occasions it led to the same place – Jhansi. He spent two months there, all told, usually out of sight, and our people were never able to lay a hand on him. What he was doing, they couldn’t discover – except that it was mischief. Now, we see what the mischief was –’ and he pointed to the chapattis. ‘Brewing insurrection, beyond a doubt. And having done his infernal work – back over the hills to Afghanistan. This summer he was in St Petersburg – but from what our politicals did learn, he’s expected back in Jhansi again. We don’t know when.’
No doubt it was the subject under discussion, but there didn’t seem to be an ounce of heat coming from the blazing fire behind me; the room felt suddenly cold, and I was aware of the rain slashing at the panes and the wind moaning in the dark outside. I was looking at Ellenborough, but in his face I could see Ignatieff’s hideous parti-coloured eye, and hear that soft icy voice hissing past the long cigarette between his teeth.
‘Plain enough, what?’ says Pam. ‘The mine’s laid, in Jhansi – an’ if it explodes … God knows what might follow. India looks tranquil enough – but how many other Jhansis, how many other Ignatieffs, are there?’ He shrugged. ‘We don’t know, but we can be certain there’s no more sensitive spot than this one. The Russians have picked Jhansi with care – we only annexed it four years ago, on the old Raja’s death, an’ we’ve still barely more than a foothold there. Thug country, it used to be, an’ still pretty wild, for all it’s one of the richest thrones in India. Worst of all, it’s ruled by a woman – the Rani, the Raja’s widow. She was old when she married him, I gather, an’ there was no legitimate heir, so we took it under our wing – an’ she didn’t like it. She rules under our tutelage these days – but she remains as implacable an enemy as we have in India. Fertile soil for Master Ignatieff to sow his plots.’
He paused, and then looked straight at me. ‘Aye – the mine’s laid in Jhansi. But precisely when an’ where they’ll try to fire it, an’ whether it’ll go off or not … this we must know – an’ prevent at all costs.’
The way he said it went through me like an icicle. I’d been sure all along that I wasn’t being lectured for fun, but now, looking at their heavy faces, I knew that unless my poltroon instinct was sadly at fault, some truly hellish proposal was about to emerge. I waited quaking for the axe to fall, while Pam stirred his false teeth with his tongue – which was a damned unnerving sight, I may tell you – and then delivered sentence.
‘Last week, the Board of Control decided to send an extraordinary agent to Jhansi. His task will be to discover what the Russians have been doing there, how serious is the unrest in the sepoy garrison, and to deal with this hostile beldam of a Rani by persuadin’ her, if possible, that loyalty to the British Raj is in her best interest.’ He struck his finger on the table. ‘An’ if an’ when this man Ignatieff returns to Jhansi again – to deal with him, too. Not a task for an ordinary political, you’ll agree.’
No, but I was realising, with mounting horror, who they did think it was a task for. But I could only sit, with my spine dissolving and my face set in an expression of attentive idiocy, while he went inexorably on.
‘The Board of Control chose you without hesitation, Flashman. I approved the choice myself. You don’t know it, but I’ve been watchin’ you since my time as Foreign Secretary. You’ve been a political – an’ a deuced successful one. I daresay you think that the work you did in Middle Asia last year has gone unrecognised, but that’s not so.’ He rumbled at me impressively, wagging his great