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‘We were away when they arrived,’ Moro said simply. ‘When we returned, the fools were so busy ravishing the women, they had not even thought to post a guard.’
One of the children ran forward with a harsh laugh and grabbed the nearest corpse by the legs, swinging it from side to side furiously and the other children followed suit, running through the shadows, dodging the swinging bodies, helpless with laughter.
Drummond turned and moved into the sunlight again, his mouth dry. ‘I think we should be making a move.’
Mr Cheung didn’t speak. His face was strangely pale and there was shock and pain in his eyes as they returned to the village. Moro whistled for his horse, caught the bridle and led the way back to the lake.
‘What did you bring this time?’ he asked Drummond.
‘Automatic rifles, sub-machine guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition.’
The Tibetan nodded. ‘Good, but we could do with some explosive next time.’
Drummond glanced at Cheung enquiringly. ‘Can you manage that?’
The Chinese nodded. ‘I think so. Would a fortnight today be too soon?’
‘Not for me,’ Drummond said. ‘Two more trips and I’m finished. The sooner I get them done, the better I’ll like it.’
‘A fortnight, then,’ Moro said and they went over the escarpment and down to the shore beside the lake.
His men had unloaded the plane and already several packhorses were on their way to the village. Drummond gave him a final cigarette, climbed in and strapped himself into his seat. As the engine roared into life, Mr Cheung turned and held out his hand.
‘We are united in the same struggle,’ he said and climbed into the plane.
As he closed the door and fastened his seat belt, the Beaver turned into the wind and started to taxi along the shore, sand whipped up by the propeller rattled against the windows. A moment later, the bluff at the far end of the lake was rushing to meet them and they were rising into the air.
Drummond circled once and Moro, already back in the saddle, waved, turned his horse and galloped back towards the village.
Drummond checked his instruments and started to gain altitude. ‘Well, what did you think?’
‘Words fail me.’
‘I thought they would.’
Cheung lit a cigarette and sighed heavily. ‘To you, it is nothing. Jack. Dangerous, unpleasant, yes, but something you are mixed up in for one reason only – money.’
‘And to you it’s a holy war,’ Drummond said. ‘I know, only don’t start trying to get me to join the crusade. I had a bellyful of that kind of thing in Korea. Enough to last a lifetime.’
‘All right,’ Cheung said wearily. ‘What about these explosives Moro wants on the next trip? If I have them delivered to the railhead at Juma by next weekend can you pick them up?’
‘I’m flying down tomorrow with Major Hamid,’ Drummond said. ‘He’s taking a week’s leave. He thought he might enjoy it more if I went along. Why don’t you join us?’
Cheung shook his head. ‘I’d like to, but I’ve been getting behind with the paperwork and I’m supposed to be dining with the old Khan on Saturday night.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Drummond said.
Another two thousand. That brought the total standing to his credit in the Bank of Geneva to £23,000. Two more trips plus the money Ferguson owed him and he’d have a straight £30,000. After that, he was finished. Time he had a rest. He leaned back in the seat, humming to himself and concentrated on his instruments as he took the Beaver slanting across the glacier and into the pass.
Moro galloped alongside the packhorses, whistling, slashing their bony rumps with the heavy leather riding whip. He urged his mount forward and entered the village first, clattering over the loose stones and dismounted outside his house.
The children had disappeared and the street was quite deserted as he stood there listening to the sound of the Beaver in the distance, drawing happily on the English cigarette Drummond had given him.
Doors opened in the houses along the street and one by one soldiers emerged in peaked caps and drab quilted jackets. As Moro turned, the door to his house opened and a young officer emerged. He wore a beautifully tailored riding coat with fur collar and the red star of the Army of the People’s Republic gleamed brightly in his cap.
‘I did well?’ Moro said.
The young officer took the English cigarette from the Tibetan’s lips and inhaled deeply. A sunny smile appeared on his face.
‘Excellent. Really quite excellent.’
Moro nodded, the eager smile still firmly in place and together they stood there, listening to the sound of the Beaver fade into the pass.
2 (#u47efee06-3ab1-500a-a032-c0a73b7e79c5)
House of Pleasure
Drummond emerged from the hot room, dropped his towel on the tiled floor and dived into the plunge bath, swimming down to touch the brightly coloured mosaic face of Kali, the Great Mother, staring blindly into eternity through the green water as she had done for a thousand years.
He surfaced and one of the house girls moved out of the steam and squatted at the side of the ancient bath, holding a tray containing a slender coffee pot and tiny cups. Drummond swam towards her and she handed him down a cup as he floated there in the water.
She was like all the rest of them, startlingly beautiful, with delicate features and great kohl-rimmed eyes. Her green silken sari was saturated with steam, outlining to perfection the firm body, the curving breasts.
As Drummond sipped his coffee, he heard a harsh laugh somewhere near at hand and Hamid’s great voice boomed between the walls. He was singing the first stanza of Zukhmee-Dil, a ballad immensely popular on the North-West Frontier, at one time the favourite march of the Khyber Rifles.
Wullud sureen shuftauloo-maunind duryah,
Ufsose! mun n’shinnah.
Drummond handed his cup back to the
girl and threw the song back at the Pathan,
translating into English.
There’s a boy across the river with a
bottom like a peach, but, alas, I cannot
swim.
Hamid bellowed with laughter as he moved out of the steam, a towel about his waist. He was a Pathan of the Hazara tribe, dark-skinned, bearded. A handsome buccaneer of a man of six feet three with broad muscular shoulders.
He smiled hugely. ‘Feeling better, Jack, headache gone?’
‘Ready for anything,’ Drummond replied.
‘Me, too.’ The Pathan ran his fingers through the long hair of the girl who still squatted at the side of the bath. ‘A good song, that, but where love’s concerned, I’m the old-fashioned kind.’
He pulled the girl to her feet and the damp sari parted exposing her left breast. ‘Now there’s a thing.’ He swung her up into his arms and grinned down at Drummond. ‘See you later.’
Drummond swam lazily across to the other side of the bath and back again. He repeated the process twice and then hauled himself out over the stone edge, smoothed by time. He picked up his towel, wrapped it around his waist and padded across the warm tiles.
The next room was long and narrow with a vaulted roof and lined with cubicles, some with curtains drawn. From one he heard Hamid’s deep chuckle followed by the lighter laughter of the girl and smiled to himself.
He went into the end cubicle, pulled the bell cord in the corner, climbed on to the stone massage slab and waited. After a while, the curtain was drawn and Ram Singh, the proprietor, entered followed by several bearers carrying buckets of hot and cold water.
The Hindu smiled. ‘All is in order, Mr Drummond?’
‘You’ve made a new man of me,’ Drummond said. ‘We could do with you in Sadar.’
The Hindu rolled his eyes to heaven in simulated horror. ‘The end of the world, Mr Drummond. The end of the world. I will send Raika.’
He withdrew and Drummond lay there staring up at the ceiling. The end of the world. Well, that wasn’t far off as a description of Sadar. A capital city with a population of three thousand, which gave some idea of the size of Balpur itself. A barren, ugly land, harsh and cruel as its inhabitants. The last place God made. Well, not for much longer, Praise be to Allah.
The curtain rustled and when he turned his head, Raika had entered. She was strikingly beautiful and wore a ruby in one nostril and great silver ear-rings with little bells on the end that tinkled when she moved her head.
Her sari was of blue silk threaded with gold and outlined every curve of her graceful body. Drummond nodded, and without speaking she started to work.
First came the hot rinse, water so scalding that he had to stifle the cry of pain that rose in his throat. She worked on his limbs to start with, first with the brushes and then with practised hands, loosening taut muscles, relaxing him so completely that he seemed to be floating, suspended in mid-air.
And as always, he was amazed at the matter-of-factness of it all, the lack of overt sensuality. But then this was India where life and death, love and the flesh, were all a part of one great mystery.
She sluiced him down again with another bucket of hot water that was followed immediately by one so cold it drew the breath from his body. He gasped and there was a glint of laughter in her eyes, barely contained, so that at once she became real, a creature of flesh and blood.
She leaned over him, the damp sari gaping to the waist and Drummond cupped a hand over one sharply pointed breast. She went very still and stayed there in that position, leaning across him, her hand still reaching for the brush.
Drummond stared up at her, the nipple hardening against his palm and something stirred in her eyes. Her head came down slowly, the mouth slightly parted, and as he slid his free hand up around her neck, there was a discreet cough at the entrance.
Raika stood back at once completely unconcerned, and Drummond sat up. Ram Singh peered through the curtain, an anxious frown on his face.
‘So sorry, Mr Drummond, but there is a person to see you.’
Drummond frowned. ‘A person?’
‘A Miss Janet Tate.’ Ram Singh laughed nervously. ‘An American lady.’
‘In this place?’
Hamid appeared at the Hindu’s shoulder, a cigarette in his mouth. ‘A day for surprises, Jack. Any idea who she is?’
‘There’s one way of finding out.’
Drummond tightened the towel around his waist, left the cubicle and went into the next room. It was beautifully furnished with heavy carpets, low divans and round brass coffee tables at which several clients were relaxing after the rigours of the bath.
He crossed the room followed by Hamid and the Hindu, knelt on a divan and peered through the latticed partition of wrought iron into Ram Singh’s office.
Janet Tate stood at the desk, examining a figurine of a dancer. She put it down, turned and looked around her with interest, moving very slowly across the floor, incredibly lovely in the yellow dress, the long, shoulder-length black hair framing her calm face.
Hamid sighed softly. ‘A houri from Paradise itself, sent to delight us.’
Drummond straightened, a frown on his face. ‘Get me a robe, will you?’
The Hindu was back in a moment and helped him into it. ‘Aren’t you going to dress first?’ Hamid said.
Drummond grinned. ‘My curiosity won’t allow me to wait that long.’
When he opened the door and stepped into the office, Janet Tate was examining a tapestry hanging on one wall. She turned quickly and stood quite still.
The man who faced her was about forty, the crisp black hair already greying a little at the temples. He was perhaps six feet in height, well built with good, capable hands. She noticed them particularly as he fastened the belt of his robe.
But it was the face that interested her, the slight ironic quirk to the mouth of someone who laughed at himself and other people too much; the strong, well-defined bones of the Gael. Not handsome, the ugly, puckered scar running from the right eye to the corner of the mouth had taken care of that, but the eyes were like smoke slanting across a hillside on a winter’s day and she was aware of a strange, inexplicable hollowness inside her.
‘Mr Drummond? I’m Janet Tate.’
She didn’t hold out her hand. It was as if she was afraid to touch him, afraid of some elemental contact which, at this first moment, she might be unable to control.
And then he smiled, a smile of such devastating charm that the heart turned over inside her. He shook his head slowly. ‘You shouldn’t have come here, Miss Tate. It’s no place for a woman.’
‘That’s what the man at the hotel told me,’ she said. ‘But they have girls here. I saw two as I came in.’
And then she realised and her eyes widened. Drummond helped himself to a cigarette from a sandalwood box on the desk. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’m trying to get to Sadar. I believe you might be able to help.’
He frowned his surprise. ‘Why on earth do you want to go to Sadar?’
‘I’m a nurse,’ she said. ‘I’ve been sent here by the Society of Friends to escort the Khan of Balpur’s young son to our Chicago hospital. He’s to undergo serious eye surgery there.’
And then Drummond remembered. Father Kerrigan had told him about it before leaving. But the old priest had said they were expecting a doctor.
‘So you’re a Quaker.’
‘That’s right,’ she said calmly.
‘First visit to India.’
She nodded. ‘I’ve just finished a two-year tour of service in Vietnam. I was on my way home on leave anyway, so the Society asked me to make a detour.’
‘Some detour.’
‘You can take me?’
Drummond nodded. ‘No difficulty there. I fly a Beaver, there’s plenty of room. Just one other passenger – Major Hamid, Indian Army adviser in Balpur, not that they have much of an army for him to advise. We’ll take off about four-thirty, make an over-night stop at Juma and fly on through the mountains to Sadar in the morning. Much safer that way.’ He crushed his cigarette into the Benares ashtray. ‘If you’ll hang on, I’ll go and dress.’
He started for the door and she said quickly, ‘I was forgetting, I have a message for you from a Mr Ferguson.’
When he turned, it was the face of a different man, cold, hard, wiped clean of all expression, the eyes like slate.
