The Game

by Laurie R. King

  The urchin donkey-boy could only be Kimball O’Hara’s son.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  We had no time to spend on explanations or even greetings, not with the maharaja’s stallion skimming across the ground in pursuit of reinforcements. O’Hara paused only long enough to look at Nesbit’s leg, then whirled and set off at a fast trot, his robes dancing around him and the rifle over his shoulder, the boy on his heels.

  “Wait!” I called. “We can double up on the horses.” But O’Hara never looked back.

  So Holmes and I rode my fresher horse, putting Nesbit up on the chestnut; once we had the wounded man in safety, I could always come back with both horses to fetch O’Hara and the child.

  We left them far behind across the terai. Once among the trees, however, we began to climb, dismounting every half mile or so to lead the horses around some precipice or across the slick stones of a quick-running stream. When we felt quite certain not only that we were well free of the Khanpur border but that we would see the maharaja’s men should they pursue us onto government land, we brought Nesbit down from his horse to see to his bleeding. Holmes loosed the belt tourniquet and ripped open the fabric to explore the bloody wound with delicate fingers.

  Nesbit, white-faced but in control, said, “The bullet will need to be cut out. But it’s doing no harm for the present. It’ll keep.”

  Holmes nodded, but replaced the too-snug belt tourniquet with lengths torn from the remains of his puggaree. I was about to suggest that I take the two animals back for the others while Nesbit rested, when Bindra’s chatter floated up the hill. We put Nesbit on one horse and the boy on the other, and hiked over hill and ice-girt stream until we were above the snow-line. Soon we came to a path, much trampled by booted men and heavy bullock-drawn carts.

  The encampment lay to the north, but Nesbit said, “There’s a dak bungalow a mile and a half to the south.”

  “I think we should go on to the encampment,” I said. “That leg needs a surgeon.”

  “All it needs is to have the bullet dug out; even the boy could manage that.”

  “It is right under the skin,” Holmes agreed.

  “Going to the encampment would necessarily bring the Army into our actions,” O’Hara pointed out in a mild voice. “Have we decided to do that?”

  I looked at the others and sighed. “All right. But just overnight. And if there’s any sign of fever, I’m going for a doctor myself.”

  We turned south and soon came to the promised dak bungalow, one of the network of travellers’ rests scattered across India for the use of European officials. It was a low stone building with two more ramshackle structures behind it, one for horses, the other for resident and visiting servants. Bindra led the horses away towards the one, while from the other scurried a startled pair of men, astonished at our unheralded approach and unaccustomed anyway to parties on the road at this time of year. The inside of the bungalow would have benefitted from a broom and scrub-brush, but the plaster had been whitewashed within the last year, and the place was too cold to smell of anything but damp.

  The men were even more taken aback by our scant baggage, which consisted of two rifles and a cloth bag belonging to Bindra, and that contained nothing but a blanket, some very old chapatis, a handful of dried apricots, and his mirror. With ceremony, the older of the two servants carried the grubby object before us into the bungalow, laid it onto a rough-hewn table, and turned to the business of making a fire, shaving slivers of dry cedar from a log with the heavy knife that had been left on the hearth for the purpose.

  Camp chairs were quickly brought, sheets for the two iron beds promised and bed-rolls for those condemned to the floor, but the first things Holmes demanded were a honed razor and a pot of well-boiled water. I sat before the fire and pointedly turned my back to the operation behind me. Clothing rustled, Holmes and O’Hara consulted briefly, and then the patient was wheezing a forced breath from his lungs as the razor bit in. In no more than thirty seconds came the dull tink of a metal slug sinking to the bottom of an enamelled dish-pan.

  Tea was brought and drunk with gratitude, and the khansama brought a hastily killed and curried chicken to our table. We five ate enough for a dozen civilised persons, and sprawled afterwards before the fire with tobacco in various forms—all but myself and, I noticed with private amusement, Bindra, whose eyes followed the cigarette given by Nesbit to O’Hara, but who did not then pull out one of the foul little bidis I felt sure he had about his person. Instead, the boy took out the five coloured balls, and with the supreme nonchalance that does nothing to conceal great pride, he juggled. His father watched, making noises of appreciation and awe, his chest swelling along with that of his son. Holmes scraped out a disreputable pipe that one of the servants had found for him, and filled it with black leaf. A contented silence fell on our unlikely little band.

  When Nesbit reached the end of his cigarette, he tossed it into the flames and glanced at where O’Hara sat, comfortably cross-legged on the floor. Bindra pocketed the balls and curled before his long-lost father, small head cradled by the man’s robes, the young face gazing at the low flames, eyes slowly closing in the warmth. O’Hara’s left hand rested on the tousled hair, his right played unceasingly with the beads of his rosary; he looked as content as the child.

  Nesbit broke the silence, keeping his voice low. “Why did you not tell me about the boy?”

  O’Hara smiled. “Because you would have wanted him. I was given over to Creighton’s hands when I was thirteen; plenty soon enough.”

  “But the child has been living unsheltered for three years. Surely having him come to us would have been better than wherever he’s been.”

  “Two years and three months, since we were separated. He has been among friends.” O’Hara’s fingers told the rosary, over and over, while the wood fire crackled and the boy’s breathing deepened.

  “But how on earth did he find us?” I wanted to know.

  The monk smiled down at his sleeping son. “Until twelve weeks ago, he was with his mother’s brother, in the mountains. When I succeeded in getting the amulet out, it passed through the hands of a man who knew where to find the boy. He told the lad I was safe, and then my son got it into his mind to watch Nesbit, that he might participate in his father’s rescue. You two came; he followed Holmes as he came and went, talking to Nesbit, purchasing many interesting things, and finally going to the horse-seller’s; when you arrived there to take possession of the donkey and the cart, Ram Bachadur himself lay sleeping, thanks to some drugged pilau he had eaten.”

  “Who was the man that helped you?” Nesbit demanded.

  The calm eyes looked back. “A friend.”

  “He was one of us, wasn’t he? Within the Survey?”

  “That is possible.”

  “What he’s done could be called treason.”

  “Or brotherhood.”

  “There is some man performing treason, from within the walls of the Survey. Men have died because of him. Men who were our brothers: Forbes, Mohammed Talibi, and a new boy, Bartholomew.”

  O’Hara’s fingers paused on his rosary, his head dipped as the names registered with him, but when he spoke again, his voice left no room for doubt. “I grieve for their deaths, Nesbit, but it was not he who put the knife to their throats.”

  Nesbit scowled at the man on the floor; still he had little choice at the moment but to put aside the question of the traitor in the Survey ranks, and go on. “But how did you end up in that prison in the first place?”

  “Pride,” O’Hara answered promptly. “Pride is a sweetmeat, to be savoured in small pieces; it makes for a poor feast. I know that you received my letter telling of the fakir’s ill treatment and the order of cotton—my friend Holmes here told me as much during one of our long Morse code conversations through the stones. But the means of my uncovering the thread, of picking it free from the surrounding design and following it to the source, I did not tell of that. I was clever,” he said, making it s
ound like a character flaw. “When I was good at The Game, there was none better; this time, two years and more ago, it happened I had my son with me, a son any man might be happy to claim, and I wanted him to witness his father’s cleverness and skill. The Wheel of Life turns hard and fast, and my pride rode its top but for a moment, before it spun down to crush me underneath.”

  He saw Nesbit’s impatience with the metaphor, and relented. “I went more deeply into suspect territory than I ought, and asked questions more pointed, and became more visible than any player of The Game dare do. I became, in short, a rank amateur, showing off for my son. His mother had died of the cholera when he was six, and he lived with his Tibetan grandparents for the three years after that. I thought the time had come to take him by my side, and as this was to be my last such expedition, I saw no harm in showing him some of the rules of our Game.”

  He sighed, and shook his head. “My Holy One spent long hours expounding on the Wheel that is life, trying to re-form me from the imp I was. In the Wheel that holds the essence of Tibetan Buddhism, the hub is formed of the conjoined animals whose individual natures are ignorance, anger, and lust. Taken together, the hub of Illusion is pride.

  “Yes, Nesbit, I see you wish fact and not philosophy. Very well. The boy and I went into Khanpur itself, selling copper pots. Which might have been innocent enough, but why then should a seller of pots take himself north out of the town for six or seven miles, to a place where there is no village, only a fort? Why should a seller of copperware be so interested in the maharaja’s air field, he ventures into the very buildings where the aeroplanes are stored? In my eagerness to come up with a prize for my last round in The Game, I chose to forget the danger of my opponent.

  “I would have been executed forthwith, I think, but for the presence of the boy, which puzzled the men who took me, and puzzled their master when we were brought before him. Had they let him go, I would have gone to my death with a degree of equanimity—after all, when one has cheated The Great Illusion as many times as I have, it is hardly sporting to complain when it catches one up. But they held the boy, and they were preparing to use him to open me up.

  “So I offered to give them what they wanted, without having to go to the effort and delay of torture, if only they would let him go free. And moreover, I told the maharaja, I would offer him a great prize, one he would never get from me by the brand or the rack, as soon as I had seen the child cross the Khanpur border. I promised him that it would be worth it, and he looked into my eyes, and he decided to gamble that I was giving him the truth.

  “I sent the boy to my friends, extracting from him first the promise that he must never enter Khanpur again without my word, and watched him go down the road and through the guard’s post. As soon as he had passed, I turned to my captor and told him who I was. That I was not only an agent of the British Intelligence service, but that I was also the boy known to the world through the writings of Rudyard Kipling.”

  “And you gave him your word that you wouldn’t try to escape under your own power,” Nesbit concluded. “Thus condemning me to a case of severe back-strain.”

  “I did make a considerable effort not to grow fat inside the prison,” O’Hara countered. “Since I thought it possible that such a scenario might come about.”

  “Possible, my foot,” his superior officer said with a grin. “You planned for it. That’s why you worded your vow the way you did. You knew someone would come after you sooner or later, and had to trust that they would be able to haul you off.”

  “Or drive me at gunpoint,” O’Hara said, shooting a grin of his own in my direction. “Yes, I admit it: another tit-bit of pride, to sweeten the tongue.”

  “The sweetness of the plan must have faded considerably, after two years in a cell.”

  “Not at all. I knew my son was safe, and I knew he would arrange things as needed, with the assistance of my … friends. Once I had the amulet away, I knew it was literally only a matter of time.”

  By way of response, Holmes reached forward to knock out his pipe against the stones of the fireplace, then pulled the heavy knife out of the cedar kindling-block and drove its point into the side of his boot-heel. Reluctantly, the heel parted, and Holmes picked from the base of it the small oilskin-wrapped amulet that had set us on our play of The Game long weeks before. He tossed it over to O’Hara, who dropped the rosary in order to catch it. He cupped the object in his right palm, his face going soft with affection.

  “One of the guards had a small son he loved, who fell ill,” O’Hara told us. “I cured the boy where the physicians could not, and in gratitude, the man passed my amulet on to a friend in Hijarkot, who would give it to a relative in a camel caravan, and so on. I was glad to hear that it survived.” He slipped it into his robes, and his hand resumed the beads. His left hand had not moved from the boy’s dark head.

  “And now, Mr O’Hara,” Nesbit said, his voice taking on the edge of a superior officer. “Do you have a report to give me?”

  With that demand, tension took hold of the dank stone room. It all came down to this: a report demanded and given. From the beginning, his friends had sworn to O’Hara’s loyalty, but his being locked in the maharaja’s gaol did nothing to obviate the doubts. He could as easily have been working for India as for Britain.

  But the imp Kim looked out of the middle-aged eyes, as if he knew what we were thinking.

  “Oah, of course I have a report,” he said. “I have ears, the guards have tongues, their master enjoys teasing his prisoners, and the hours are long for purposes of analysis. Do you wish my report now?”

  “The gist of it will do.”

  “The maharaja of Khanpur plots rebellion, but of a twisted and most secretive kind. He is using The Russian Bear to supply himself with guns and ammunition, which he will pass on to the most radical of firebrands he can find—the makings of tons of explosives, guns fresh from Germany. When he is ready, he will then secretly open his borders to the Bolshevik troops. But he has no intention of handing them India. Instead, he plans to allow them in just so far, and then raise the alarm. When the British respond, in force, after the Russians are extended into his land, he will shut the door behind The Bear’s back. The Bolsheviks will be trapped between Khanpur and the Indian Army, where they will be crushed entirely. For the second time, a maharaja of Khanpur will become an heroic defender of the Crown, and his reward this time, for saving British India from The Bear, will be vast.

  “His reward, in fact, will be India itself.”

  “The Lenin of the sub-continent,” I interjected softly.

  “You might say that,” O’Hara agreed. “Or a native Viceroy.”

  “Native prince, hereditary ruler,” Holmes mused. “The blood of the Moghuls in his veins, a thousand years of experience in his hands. A compromise between Congress and the Moslem League, certainly, but a shining opportunity as well, for India and England. Gandhi and Jinnah wouldn’t have a chance.”

  “The English would seize upon Khanpur’s maharaja with vast relief, that with a man of his stature in charge, they could now withdraw with honour.”

  “Leaving the country in the hands of a murderer and a madman,” I pointed out.

  “Which is why we cannot allow his plot to ripen even one week further.” It was O’Hara who spoke, which surprised me.

  “Wouldn’t continuing to involve yourself in Survey business be furthering the actions of the Wheel of Life?” I asked him.

  “One attains merit through action as well as by refraining from action,” he answered piously. “The innocent must be given the opportunity to attain self-knowledge, which the unfettered actions of the wicked would prevent.

  “To say nothing of the fact,” he added, “that it should be jolly fun.”

  Our startled laughter woke Bindra for a moment. He kneaded his eyes with his fists, located his father, and settled again, nuzzling into the robed lap with a sigh of contentment.

  “If I understand you aright,” Nesbit said,
ignoring my digression, “you would suggest that action be taken that does not bring the Army into this? Since,” he noted, his green eyes beginning to dance, “it was you who suggested that we might not wish to approach the encampment at this time.”

  “Oah, Nesbit, truly you are a man after my own heart.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “Well,” the Irish Buddhist said, “you were willing to carry me on your shoulders from The Forts to the borders of Khanpur, until Miss Russell drew her gun.” Holmes stirred, and I realised, belatedly, that he knew nothing of the events of the previous midnight. “But as that demand was not made upon your back and sinews, perhaps, given a few days for your leg to heal, you would not mind carrying the considerably lesser weight of the maharaja?”

  “Kidnap him?” The quirking of Nesbit’s mouth showed his love of the idea, although the hesitation in his eyes said he was thinking, too, of the report he would have to make to his superiors. Particularly if the plan went awry.

  “Invite him outside to Delhi, for conversations,” O’Hara suggested.

  Holmes took his pipe out of his mouth to point out gently, “He is in a heavily guarded fortress.”

  “There is at least one concealed entrance,” O’Hara said. “When he came to the Old Fort in the night, he did not always come smelling of the outside world, but of stones and dampness.”

  Holmes nodded. “I thought as much, the first time he came to my cell. But if a passageway links the Old Fort with the New, that would still require passing a number of guards. Unless it also has an opening to the outside.”

  I sat up as if brushed by a raw wire. “The zoo!” The three men looked at me. “When the maharaja showed us the zoo, I noticed a small pathway going around the back of the lion pen, past the entrance used by the zookeepers. The big path was marked heavily by bits of spilt food and the drag of equipment, but beyond it was the sort of footpath worn by a single set of feet, walking it with regularity. His dogs knew it as well—when they would have gone down it, he called them back. Sharply.”