The Mercenaries

by John Harris

  She lit a cigarette quickly as he watched her, then she glanced up at him briefly, and nodded her head. ‘Go ahead,’ she urged. ‘I’m sure.’

  Ira caught Sammy’s eyes and saw they were worried, too, but clearly there was no arguing with her. He began to do hurried sums in his head.

  ‘We should arrive at Tsosiehn just before dark,’ he said. ‘We could leave the day after at first light.’

  He glanced again at Ellie but she didn’t even meet his eyes and turned away to drag her leather helmet and flying jacket from her valise. She’d worn neither of them for weeks now and they were at the bottom of all her belongings on the lorry, but she tossed them across one of the crates and stood waiting silently.

  For a moment longer Ira hesitated, but she showed no sign of backing out, and he turned towards the De Havilland.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  There was a British naval guardpost in the Tsosiehn Road, built of sandbags and barbed wire and manned by British sailors, with Sikh policemen standing behind. In front of it the narrow flagstoned street was noisy with students. They seemed to be mere children, but behind them, carrying bamboo staves, were throngs of howling coolies and, as the lorry-passed, the mob became threatening. Whistles shrilled at once and the sailors fixed bayonets and moved forward, and immediately the crowd became hundreds of individual coolies darting down alleys that were knee-deep in rubbish and torn paper. The steamer’s bridge was piled with armour and its decks were jammed with missionaries, their faces bruised, their children screaming with fright. Trunks and cases and even furniture were stacked around the deckhouses, but Sammy bullied and argued his way aboard with their crates of spares, the Chengs and the Wangs, turning fiercely on the officer who wanted to refuse them passage and jamming their belongings with other bales and boxes along the rail as a protection against bullets.

  ‘Why don’t the politicians at home do something?’ A woman with grey straggling hair and a red blotched face spat at Ira as he went down the gangplank. ‘We’ve lost everything and they’re torturing people in Hupeh.’ She looked like a coolie’s wife with her plain face full of bitterness, her shabby padded Chinese clothes and her grimy hands.

  The gunboat from Tsosiehn which was to escort them down-stream was already under way, its decks as crowded as the steamer’s, its smoke stack full of bullet-holes and patches, its bridge wadded with sandbags. The steamer’s siren let off a long blast.

  ‘Ding hao, Sammy,’ Ira shouted from the shore. ‘We’ll be waiting on the bund at Pootung when you arrive.’

  Sammy waved. ‘Keep ‘em flying, Ira!‘

  They drove back to the airfield through lines of pickets who tried to stop them, and the only answer was to put the vehicles into top gear and move as fast as possible so that the line crumbled and drew back, throwing melon rinds, rocks and filth as they passed.

  The field looked desolate when they returned and the sawmill nearby was silent, the big log raft on which they had journeyed with such difficulty from Tsosiehn not long before lying in a backwater, still not dismantled but empty of people, student banners flying from the reed huts. Lao appeared from behind the two aircraft and they punctured the petrol tanks of the car and the lorry and tossed a match on to the spilled petrol.

  It was heartbreaking to destroy their own possessions like this, but Lao didn’t want them and in Ira’s bitter mood he felt he’d rather see them burned than turned over to the mob that had ruined him. With hard unforgiving eyes he watched the burning vehicles which not very long before they’d laboured so hard to save, then he turned to Ellie waiting by the De Havilland.

  He had lain awake most of the night, trying to decide what was in her mind. She had refused to tell him, huddled silently in his arms, making love with a quiet tenderness that worried him in spite of its gentleness. But she had refused to discuss her decision and he had been obliged to accept it in the end without knowing what was behind it.

  Her eyes were as sombre as his own as she looked at him, waiting his decisions.

  ‘You take the Avro, Ellie,’ he said quietly. ‘She’s safe and her engine’s as sweet as a nut. I’ll take off first and, when we arrive. I’ll land first in case there’s trouble.’

  She managed a smile and turned away. Her face set, she climbed into the Avro, fastening her leather coat and harness and pulling her helmet down over her hair.

  For a moment, Ira stood by the wing, trying to read her thoughts, then she turned, smiling--a sweet smile suddenly, as though she’d been purged of all fears and anxieties.

  ‘Contact, Ira.’

  As he heaved on the propeller, the Mono came into crackling life, blue flames and smoke jetting from beneath the cowling. Tossing the chocks into the rear cockpit, he leaned his weight against the quivering wing tip and helped her turn into wind, then, giving careful instructions to Lao and his men, he climbed into the De Havilland. The engine missed at first, but at the third heave, the Liberty burst into a metallic howl and the machine began to thrust against the chocks. At Ira’s signal, Lao’s men pulled them away and threw them aboard, and as the machine jolted forward, the Avro began to rumble in pursuit through the smoke of the burning vehicles.

  8

  They passed over Tsosiehn just as dusk was approaching. It seemed empty apart from a few scattered lights, and the Chang-an-Chieh Pagoda seemed deserted. There were chunks of ice along the bund but the river seemed empty of vessels apart from a burnt-out steamer lying where it had been run ashore.

  They swept over the pagoda and the cemetery where they’d buried Fagan and Tsai, losing height rapidly as they headed towards Yaochow, and Ira glanced round to see the Avro about a hundred yards behind and to the right. He waved, then signalled with his hand and pointed downwards, and he saw Ellie’s arm go up in reply. Throttling back, he began to circle for the landing and, as he sank lower, he could see a long stream of smoke rising from the misty purple of the field towards the east, and a yellow flag flapping from the post where they’d always hung the windsock.

  He came in over the edge of the perimeter, half-frozen with the cold, his cheeks dead and white below his goggles. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Avro circling behind him, then the next moment, his wheels were bumping on the uneven surface of the field. As the De Havilland rolled to a stop, he kept the engine ticking over, his eyes flickering about him, waiting for the rush of armed men that would force him to take off again. So far, Lao had been as good as his word and at Shincheh and Liaochang they had renewed their acquaintance with grinning pupil pilots who had been entrusted with the refuelling.

  The sun had gone down and already the stubble was grey with frost-rime. The burned-out Peugeot and the Fokker still stood together near the farmhouse where they’d abandoned them, but the Peugeot had lost its wheels and its tonneau had been stripped. The farmhouse door hung open just as they’d left it, and he could see scattered rusty tins among the skid marks and the scorched grass where the petrol dump had gone up, fringed with blackened fragments of metal. Yaochow seemed a place of weeping, inhabited by ghosts, and it gave him an odd unnerving feeling that he ought never to have come back.

  Then he heard the engine of a big car rev up and stop, and saw men in European tweed suits, complete with hats, watch chains and spats, walking from the trees towards him. The way they moved reassured him and, as they drew closer, he recognised Lieutenant Kee and Colonel Tong, whom Fagan had once tried to teach to read a map.

  Ira waved and taxied the De Havilland to the edge of the field by the trees and, facing into the smoke, shut off his engine. A moment later the Avro, its engine poppling, came swooshing over his head to bump to the earth a hundred yards away. With his weight against the wing, Ellie swung it into wind and switched off.

  ‘Looks like the Marines have landed,’ she said.

  Ira was just kicking the chocks under the wheels when Tong stopped alongside him and saluted. Kee smiled and, from behind him, they could see the face of the former pupil pilo
t. Yen, grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘I say,’ Kee said, in his old-fashioned schoolboy English, his breath hanging on the frosty air, ‘all is ready. Major. Petrol is jolly well waiting in the trees.’

  ‘Where’s the General?’ Ira asked.

  ‘In Tsosiehn. sir.’

  Ira frowned. ‘Then, for Christ’s sake, get him out here,’ he snapped ‘Quick!’

  Kee gestured, his smile vanishing. ‘You will have to come, too, you know,’ he said. ‘We have the automobile waiting.’

  Ira stared. ‘Me? Why me, for God’s sake?’

  ‘My gracious, the General won’t move until he sees you.’

  ‘This isn’t what I was told.’

  A long and bitter argument took place in the growing darkness. Ira had no wish to go into Tsosiehn and still less to leave Ellie alone. The tick of the cooling engines behind him sounded like a clock ticking away life.

  ‘I have trusted men here,’ Kee insisted. ‘One of them is Yen. She will be jolly safe.’

  ‘Why don’t you stay?’

  ’How will you talk with Tong?’ Kee asked simply. ‘He doesn’t speak your language. Also you do not speak his. I promise you on my honour, Yen is to be trusted. Surely, you know me well enough to believe me.’

  Just when they seemed to be getting nowhere, Ellie joined in.

  ‘We’ve come a long way for this, Ira,’ she said in an unsteady voice. ‘We’d be crazy to go back without finishing it.’

  ‘I can’t leave you here alone,’ he said fiercely.

  There was a faint cracked hysteria in her voice that she controlled with an effort as she gave him a push towards Kee. ‘I’ll die a million times before you come back,’ she said. ‘I’ll be expecting the necktie party every goddam minute, but I guess I’ll make it. I’ll refuel with Yen while I’m waiting. I guess it’ll stop me thinking too much.’

  What unknown devil was driving her he couldn’t tell, and as he began to drag off his helmet with fingers that were stiff with cold, he felt bowed with weariness.

  ‘God,’ he said. ‘I feel a hundred years old.’

  There were large groups of people across the road as they headed towards the town, camping in the fields and crouching round fires, and occasionally they heard the plink-plonk of a stringed instrument and the breathy whistle of a flute or the thump of a gong.

  ‘The city’s safe,’ Kee said. Typhus and cholera have frightened everybody away.’

  After a while, a thin sliver of moon came up and they saw it reflected in the squares of paddy where the rushes were stark against the brilliant silver of the water. No one attempted to stop them and Kee drove the Pierce-Arrow he’d brought with one hand, the other pounding the klaxon all the way.

  Outside the town, they stopped alongside a house with curved eaves and scorch marks on the front, where a couple of guides were waiting.

  ‘This is as far as we dare take the car,’ Kee said.

  The guides spoke briefly with Tong and led the way through the piled refuse and rubbish along the bund. A thin stream of coolies moved past and, after a while, they came to a huddle of wailing women crouched over a group of bodies. Ira saw they were engaged in the grisly task of sewing heads to them.

  ‘Tsu officers,’ Kee said shortly. ‘Kwei executed them this afternoon. Naturally they cannot face their ancestors without their heads.’

  Nearby a group of coolies waited with coffins but no one had eyes for the little party moving towards the town. There was a glow in the sky over the centre of the city where fires lit days before burned themselves to ashes, and occasionally they heard stray shouts and cries, and a whimper from the mob moving restlessly about the streets. Every now and then they passed a huddled figure, sometimes in uniform, but more often in the blue padded coat of a coolie, sometimes with his carrying pole still in his hands, lying with his back against a house, his feet among the rubbish.

  ‘Typhus,’ Kee said. ‘It is spreading.’

  They entered the city through the great bronze-studded gate in the river wall just beyond the execution ground. It seemed to have been charred by fire and the arch above was black and oily. Groping their way in the dim light of a hanging lantern with their hands on the stones, they pushed into the shadows, the dim bulk of the city faint against the sky on their right, as they stumbled in and out of ditches and fell over broken masonry or charred beams. Above them the Chang-an-Chieh reared its tower over the scorched trees, a half-seen bulk ahead of them. There was the smell of burning everywhere, and the stink of death, and several times they heard rats squeaking among the rubble and their claws castanetting over the stones.

  Skirting fallen houses and empty, stinking hovels, they scrambled over the cascade of broken bricks where De Sa’s petrol store had once stood, and headed down an alley, hardly daring to breathe.

  The place was ominously quiet. An occasional stray shot echoed over the houses but every window and door was shuttered and barred, everybody out of sight and praying for daylight.

  As they moved cautiously behind the Chang-an-Chieh, stumbling over the refuse, Ira could still hear the sound of the mob rising and falling in the distance, then he was splashing through stinking puddles where the ice cracked under his boots, and holding his breath as the smell of drains, ordure and years-old rotting rubbish came up to him. There was another puddle, reflecting the moon, and the shape of houses in silhouette, then they came to a low plank door where their guides stopped.

  ‘This is it!‘

  After a while, with Kee scratching at the planks, the door opened. Beyond it, Ira saw a single bean-oil lamp and caught sight of General Tsu standing by a table, dressed in a long padded gown and a European felt hat, and then his wife and son, huddled together in a corner with the amah.

  The room was bitterly cold and smelled of rotting vegetables and ammonia. Tsu seemed to have aged ten years since he had last seen him, his face the crinkled yellow-white of old parchment, and Madame Tsu had lost all her French charm and was thin and tired-looking. The boy, all dark eyes and long fingers, clutched the violin case beside the weeping amah.

  As Ira stepped into the light, Madame Tsu rose and, crossing to him, fell on her knees and kissed his hands. He lifted her to her feet, embarrassed, and she turned to her husband and spoke rapidly in Chinese.

  Tsu’s face remained inscrutable, and she turned to the boy. ‘It is Peng Ah-Lun, Philippe,’ she said in English, her voice wavering on the edge of hysteria. ‘Peng Ah-Lun has come to take us to Shanghai.’

  Tsu seemed indifferent to his wife and son and even to Ira. He was speaking in Chinese now to Tong, and gesturing at a pile of trunks and boxes stacked in the comer of the room behind the door. Kee joined in and shook his head, and Tsu began to speak in a low angry voice.

  Kee turned to Ira. ‘Major Penaluna,’ he said, his precise schoolboy English tumbling over itself in his desperation. ‘Please jolly well tell the General that we cannot take all this bloody baggage.’

  Ira turned to Madame Tsu. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘we have to walk to the outskirts of the city. We have to fly. A suitcase each. No more.’

  She swung round on her husband and spoke rapidly to him. Again he argued, a stubborn, stupid, argumentative old man, and with his wife in tears and pleading with him on her knees, Ira wanted to shake him. In the end, he spoke to Kee, who turned to Ira.

  ‘The General insists on taking the money, of course,’ he said. ‘Still, you know, there are eight of us and, between us, we ought to manage.’

  Madame Tsu swung round on Ira again, her black eyes dull with unhappiness. ‘Can I take my jade?’ she begged. ‘It’s priceless. It will pay for lessons in Europe.’

  ‘What we can get in our pockets,’ Ira said. ‘No more.’

  She threw open a suitcase, and began to hand round small cloth-wrapped packages, tears streaming down her face. The amah still crouched in a corner wailing, her face contorted, alongside the pale bewildered face of the boy.

  After a while they were ready, two of
them to each money box. Tsu straightened up, put on his coat, picked up his stick and moved to the door.

  ‘Tell the bastard to get hold of this bloody box,’ Ira snapped. ‘Tell him we don’t go unless he gives a hand.’

  Kee’s words were fearful and hesitant and, for a moment, Tsu looked at Ira, then he took out a gold turnip of a watch, consulted it, and bent to take hold of one of the handles.

  As they stepped outside, they could hear the mob baying nearby, and Madame Tsu almost collapsed in terrified hysteria. Tsu remained unmoved and unemotional, neither encouraging her nor helping her as they set off through the alleys, stumbling over stones and rubbish and broken beams.

  The money boxes felt as though they weighed a ton and Ira was soon sweating. Behind them they could hear the noise of the mob again, growing louder. A few figures passed them in the dark, running, but no one took any notice. After a while, they came to where the Pierce-Arrow was waiting with its lights off. Without a word, Tsu put down the box he was carrying and climbed into the rear seat and leaned back. Ira stared at him in fury. Kee, ever polite, was straining to lift the money boxes into the car now and stuffing them round the General’s feet, then he helped Madame Tsu and the boy in after them. The amah collapsed by the roadside, weeping noisily.

  With Tong and Ira standing on the running board, the car ground away from the city in low gear. A group of students ran past them, carrying banners, their voices raised, and Kee looked sick.

  ‘We are only just in time,’ he said. ‘They are seeking the General and I think they’ve found his hiding place.’

  Ira glanced inside the car at the inscrutable old figure completely ignoring his half-hysterical wife and sobbing child.

  ‘It’s a pity they didn’t find him,’ he said.

  They were heading through the crowds camping on the outskirts of the town now, the klaxon roaring and the engine revving in low gear. Occasionally, they saw the glint of a weapon, but no one tried to stop the car or look inside. At the airfield, there was silence and Ira was thankful to see the silhouettes of the two aeroplanes unharmed against the moonlight and a group of empty petrol drums. As the car stopped, Tsu climbed out and began to stride at once towards the aeroplanes.