The Command

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘My army,’ said their commander, and saluted Murdoch with his sword. ‘You will see, General Mackinder, that it is but a fraction the size of yours. I am Abdul Hussein ibn Shere ibn Ali ibn Muhammad. I am the son of the khan.’

  He was about forty years old, tall and strongly built, like his sister, and handsome too, beneath the full beard.

  ‘I have heard much about you,’ Murdoch said, ‘and am pleased to make your acquaintance.’ He shook hands, introduced Lee and his officers.

  ‘You travel in much state,’ Abdul Hussein observed, gazing at Lee.

  ‘I am ruler of North West India,’ Murdoch reminded him.

  They left their horses with the troopers and walked up a narrow, winding street of steps to reach the palace, which was situated in the central square Murdoch had observed from the air, opposite the mosque. The town was less impressive from the ground, the houses being old and in many cases dilapidated, and the streets dirty. People gathered to either side to stare at the white officers and, even more, at the white woman. ‘I would say you are the first they have ever seen,’ Murdoch remarked.

  ‘That is so, General Mackinder,’ Abdul Hussein agreed. ‘The very first. But perhaps, as your influence spreads, Lady Mackinder will not be the last.’

  However decrepit the town as a whole, the palace remained a place of splendour. They entered through a white marble portico, surrounded by bowing servants and nautch girls, walked by a large pool of translucent water, and mounted a flight of broad steps. At the top a curtain was held for them by two guards in red tunics and they found themselves in a splendid reception chamber where the marble floors, now black, were covered with priceless rugs. Here there were gathered several Mahsud chieftains, who bowed to the British party. At the far end of the hall there was another short flight of steps, and at the top sat Shere Khan. He rose as Murdoch approached, still tall and well built, richly dressed, but with the lower part of his face and neck concealed by a full white beard.

  He held out both his hands. ‘General Mackinder,’ he said. ‘Many years ago, thirty years ago, I fought against your father.’

  ‘I know,’ Murdoch said.

  ‘He died in these hills, of fever.’

  ‘Yes,’ Murdoch said.

  ‘And you have come to take his place. You, an even greater warrior than your father. I have heard much about you, General Mackinder.’

  ‘Indeed, your excellency? From what source?’

  Shere Khan smiled. ‘I have many sources, General. And this is your charming wife?’ He bowed over Lee’s hand. ‘You are blessed with great good fortune, General. As am I, that you have come to visit me, in peace. With so many men.’

  ‘My escort,’ Murdoch told him.

  ‘The Royal Western Dragoon Guards. Yes, I remember them well. My people think of them as their enemies, but I have reassured them that you have come in peace. Otherwise my warriors would have entered the town, and caused a disturbance.’

  Lee caught her breath, although Shere Khan continued to smile.

  But Murdoch also continued to smile. The time was twelve fourteen. ‘That would have been unwise, your excellency,’ he said. ‘Who knows, it might have caused the destruction of your city.’

  Shere Khan’s nostrils flared. ‘You are so bold, with six hundred men, General?’

  ‘My strength is limitless,’ Murdoch told him, and listened to the drone of the aeroplane engines.

  Several of the Mahsuds ran outside into the courtyard to stare at the six bombers, flying low over the town, waggling their wings at the British camp before swinging away to the south and east.

  ‘Those too, are part of my escort,’ Murdoch told Shere Khan.

  *

  ‘You sure scored off him,’ Lee confessed when they regained the camp. ‘I didn’t know you’d arranged for the planes.’

  ‘It pays to surprise.’

  ‘Even me? I really had the willies there for a moment. That man was threatening you.’

  ‘Yes. He’s not quite as benevolent as he appears. Still, now we know where we stand.’ Except that he didn’t, personally. No women had appeared at the meal, save for the serving girls. But next morning, as the dragoons were breaking camp and preparing to resume their march, the major-domo again appeared.

  ‘My master bids you farewell, Great General,’ he said, ‘and utters a prayer to Allah that the British and the Mahsuds may always remain in peace.’

  ‘Tell your master that I reciprocate his desire,’ Murdoch said.

  ‘I am also asked to give you this, Great General.’

  It was a single sheet of folded paper. Murdoch felt his pulse quicken as he took it; almost, he thought, he could smell her perfume.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and opened it.

  Chand Bibi had written:

  You come in glory, Murdoch Mackinder. As I always knew you would. And you are accompanied by your lovely wife. You have men, and machine guns, and bombing planes. We have nothing but our wits and our courage. But you are in our country now, my Murdoch. And you are my enemy, and the enemy of my people, now and for all eternity. I will yet see you again. On my terms.

  Chapter Nine: The North West Frontier, 1925-29

  Murdoch showed Ramage the note; Peter did not know what had actually happened in the tent between Murdoch and Chand Bibi in 1916, but he knew the crimes of which she had been accused by Morton.

  ‘God damn,’ the colonel said. ‘So we know she’s there. What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘There is damn all I can do about it,’ Murdoch said. ‘Even if I arrested her, there is no one left able to give evidence against her. And she is no more guilty than any member of her tribe. But at least we know where we stand. We know that Shere Khan hates us as much as he ever did. We know that his people would love to go to war against us. So we are just going to wait and see, Peter. Every day we are here is going to make them just a little more edgy. And the moment they step out of line...’

  ‘You are going to wipe them off the face of the earth. You’d really like a war to begin up here,’ Peter said.

  ‘Wouldn’t you? If Johnnie Morton was right about what those savages did to our people?’

  ‘If he was right,’ Ramage pointed out.

  ‘We know it happened, Peter. Bodies were found. Too horribly cut up for anything but immediate burial.’

  ‘I know that, Murdoch. And I would like to take it out of those blighters, and their beastly women, as much as anyone. But for God’s sake...let them make the first move.

  ‘I shall,’ Murdoch promised. ‘Believe me.’

  *

  He was confident that Shere Khan’s Mahsuds would make the first move, eventually, out of sheer frustration. Especially after he replied to Chand Bibi’s letter, giving his note to one of the Mahsud shepherds they encountered as they rode out of the valley of the Kurram. He wrote: ‘As you say, Chand Bibi, I have come to you, and you know my purpose. It is to destroy you, and all those people who are guilty of the murder of my soldiers. It is but a matter of waiting, until the time is ripe.’

  He did not sign his letter either, but she would know who it was from.

  ‘There is something going on,’ Lee remarked as they walked their horses through the valley towards the Kohat Pass. ‘Between you and that Shere Khan character.’

  ‘We hate each other’s guts, if that’s what you mean.’ Murdoch said.

  ‘But he can’t do anything about it. And you...you’re trying to make him do something about it, aren’t you, Murdoch?’

  ‘Let’s say I’m trying to anticipate the future,’ Murdoch told her. ‘That is a good soldiering principle. It’s nothing for you to worry your head about.’

  But he was disappointed. He kept the garrison at Peshawar virtually under arms well into 1925, as well as those at Razmak and Tochi and Wana, and had his aircraft make regular patrols over Waziristan, but, perhaps because of this, the North West Frontier remained quieter than anyone could remember. Later that year General Birdwood lef
t, and was replaced by Bill Ironside. Ironside was only a year older than Murdoch; they had been at Sandhurst together. Now he came up to Peshawar to inspect the troops and greet his old friend; they had not seen each other for some years, but Murdoch knew Ironside had had both a busy and successful war, in which he had commanded troops in the Middle East and on the western front, as well as in northern Russia following the collapse of the tsarist government.

  ‘Murdoch!’ The two men clasped hands at the railway station. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased everyone is with the situation here. Whitehall is wondering why the War Office didn’t send you out in 1919.’

  Murdoch grinned. It’s not for want of trying.’

  ‘Oh, we hear all about it. Riding with the Westerns the length and breadth of the country. Having your bombers make fly-pasts over likely trouble spots. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, of course. You’re probably lucky the Socialists only stayed in power a year, or they’d have had you back out of here. But right now you’re Stanley Baldwin’s blue-eyed boy. I think you always were Churchill’s.’

  Churchill was now Chancellor of the Exchequer in the recently elected Conservative Government.

  ‘We happen to see eye to eye on most things, that’s all,’ Murdoch confessed. ‘You remember Lee?’

  They had met, briefly, before the war. Lee was all smiles. She was enjoying life in Peshawar more than she ever had before. When she had first married Murdoch she had, as an American, found both the structure of army society, and the structure of Edwardian imperialistic society, a little hard to take. Reserve had changed to admiration during the Great War, and here in India, especially with Murdoch in a position of such authority, she had discovered the true pleasures of imperialism. And of conservatism. As wife of the general officer commanding, she was able to set fashion, and she had no intention of being caught up in the bobbed hair and short skirts which were becoming prevalent in both England and America. She had always worn her hair short when very long hair had been in fashion. Now, perversely, she had grown it in her early forties, although she wore it up except when in bed. Just as she kept her hems well below the knee, and by example encouraged her officers’ wives to do the same.

  But they were a happy community. The initial stiffness had passed off very rapidly, and however much Lee enjoyed her retinue of servants, and the deference paid her by all and sundry, even by Lieutenant-General Ironside — he might be Murdoch’s superior but he had not been knighted — she could yet let her hair down, and by her own happiness inspire it in those around her.

  She was also finding in India an inexhaustible treasure house of things to do and places to visit. Once the winter was over she persuaded Murdoch to take time off occasionally. They went back to Amritsar properly to explore the Sikh holy city, and then she talked him into a long trip down to Quetta in Northern Baluchistan.

  Quetta was actually only two hundred miles further south-west than Wana but it was an impossible journey to make on foot or by horse, as the way was barred by the mountains of Zhob. However, Murdoch himself was keen to visit an area so rich in British military history, and having ascertained that the garrison in Quetta had laid down an airstrip, he used one of the Ninaks, with Lee and himself crushed into the rear cockpit.

  It was a tremendous flight, with mountains higher than ten thousand feet rising to either side, and Quetta itself was all they had hoped. Lying where it was, between the Bolan and Khojak passes, Quetta had always been of supreme military importance. What interested Murdoch was that just north of it, in Afghanistan beyond the Khojak Pass, were both Maiwand and Kandahar. Maiwand was where in July 1880 a British army in the field had been virtually annihilated, and Kandahar was where Field Marshal Lord Roberts had marched his army of ten thousand men, over three hundred miles from Kabul, across the mountains, in twenty-two days, to avenge that defeat. It had been ‘Bobs’s’ greatest military feat, and had culminated in the crushing victory of Kandahar which ended the Second Afghan War. Murdoch’s father, as a subaltern, had been on that march.

  ‘We simply have to get into Afghanistan, one day,’ Lee said. ‘I know, let’s invade.’

  *

  Ironside was impressed with what he saw of Murdoch’s control of the North West Frontier Province, and so was his successor when he too was removed for other duties after a year. Ironside was clearly one of the men of the future, in the eyes of the War Office. Sir Charles Harington, who replaced him, was a man of the past. His principal claim to fame was of having averted war between Great Britain and the resurgent Turkey in 1921, by his firmness at Constantinople when in command of a handful of troops. He was far senior to either Ironside or Murdoch, and was aware that this would be his last important military posting before the pre-retirement round of colonial governorships began.

  Like his predecessor he toured the North West Province, by air, and seemed pleased with what he found. Murdoch had by now become thoroughly familiar with all the aspects of his command, and had commenced implementing the various ideas which had come to him during his tour of inspection: he had had airstrips laid out at Tochi, Razmak and Wana, and fuel dumps installed, to give his air force vastly increased mobility, and he had also made the camps, wherever possible, into permanent fortifications.

  ‘You certainly seem to have these fellows licked into shape, Mackinder,’ Harington said. ‘I’d like you to take another tour of duty, if you will.’

  It had never occurred to Murdoch not to take another, but he was somewhat surprised to discover that he was at the end of his first three-year tour of duty. If he felt reasonably satisfied at what he had achieved, it would be intensely galling to leave and immediately have the rising he felt was simmering under the surface explode the moment his train pulled out of the station. Besides, he was enjoying the life, the independence, the totality of command. He had now had two of the native Indian regiments replaced with Gurkha battalions, and felt he had a really powerful little army under his orders...and one which was devoted to him as well.

  As for the Mahsuds, it seemed obvious that they were not going to try conclusions after all. No doubt the days of death and glory on the frontier were gone, forever. Equally, no doubt, he had demonstrated that too conclusively on his visit to them back in 1924. Shere Khan had understood that his tribesmen could not take on bombers, at least where they could not find shelter across the border in Afghanistan. No doubt even Chand Bibi had had to understand that. He had not heard from her for well over two years. He did not expect ever to hear from her again.

  And he had not seen her for ten years. He wondered if she was still as beautiful.

  *

  But it had to be a joint decision. ‘Harington has invited me to take another tour of duty,’ he told Lee after the Commander-in-Chief had left. ‘Think you can stand another three years up here?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t planning to move, in a hurry,’ she said. ‘I’ve only just got the garden licked into shape. And there’s a whole lot more of India I want to see. Anyway, Ian is coming out to join the regiment here, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Murdoch said.

  ‘You’re not bothered about that, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not. Peter Ramage knows the score. Ian will be treated as any other subaltern, no better and no worse. But I’d like you to remember that as well.’

  She blew him a kiss. ‘Surely I can have him to tea, now and then.’

  There was also Manly-Smith to consider. ‘I imagine you’re ready to return to active duty,’ Murdoch said, having told him his plans.

  ‘With the regiment? Are they being moved?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Starting this year one squadron is going to be returned to England each year for a year, for training and replacements, before coming back out here. So we’ll be down slightly on our establishments. But I think they are due to remain here for another tour, as well. They’re doing too good a job.’

  ‘Then I’ll be with them if I remain with you.’

  ‘That’s true. You’d proba
bly get promotion quicker if you were with them, though.’

  ‘I’m happy the way things are,’ Ralph said.

  He was indeed. Despite his reassuring words to Lee, Murdoch had been a little worried as to the relationship between Ralph and his father-in-law, but Ralph and the sergeant-major had struck up a perfect friendship, which never transcended the difference in their stations and yet permitted Bert Yeald to visit his daughter once a week, have a cup of tea, and play with the grandchildren. Ralph had in fact taken to life on the frontier as if he had been born to it, and his unceasing energy had led him into some remarkable hobbies. The most surprising, and the most dangerous, in Murdoch’s eyes, was jumping from one of the Ninaks by parachute. The airmen had of course been trained to it, but why anyone should want to do it for pleasure defeated Murdoch. He was, however, delighted to find his ADC such a continuing source of interest and support.

  So was Jennifer, who had again become a mother. But Murdoch was determined to do something about Ralph, and had him promoted major while the Mackinders were home on long leave; Ralph remained in Peshawar to handle the day-to-day business of the command — he and Jennifer and the children would take their long leave after Murdoch and Lee returned.

  *

  It was a magnificent trip. They took their time, as it was their time, and did all the things they hadn’t been able to do on the voyage out. At Port Said they left the ship to spend a week in Cairo, and Lee had her long-awaited look at the pyramids. Then from Alexandria they took a ship to Piraeus, and spent a week in Athens so that she could look at the Acropolis.

  Then they voyaged to Naples, and inspected the ruins of Pompeii before going up to Venice, where they joined the Orient Express for the trip to Paris and then Folkestone.