There was a pistol holster on Rheza Khan’s saddle and his hand moved towards it.
‘We don’t want any unnecessary bloodshed,’ said Edgar Troop, ‘so oblige me by keeping your hands where we can see them and – to shut down all unwelcome possibilities – you do the same, Alice. Cover them while I get their guns. Joe.’
Joe watched while he collected a .303 rifle from Rheza Khan and slipped the pistol from its holster. Unloading both, he threw them out of reach and told Rheza to dismount. An expert search of his clothing turned up no further firearms and he turned his attention to Alice. She reached behind her back and handed over a revolver by its barrel.
‘Here, take it,’ she snapped. ‘And you can keep your brothel-keeper’s hands off me!’
Taking no notice, Troop proceeded to pat down her clothing, a dispassionate, professional procedure, but the figure-hugging silk shirt, jodhpurs and soft leather boots concealed nothing that should not have been there. His inspection completed, Edgar gathered up the guns then took charge of the horses and with reins looped over his arm led them round the fort to picket them in the shade. Rheza Khan’s horse had a neat bedding roll on the crupper, Alice’s had two deep leather pannier bags. Her eyes followed these with anxiety.
Returning to them, Edgar said cheerfully, ‘Can’t offer you much but if you’d like to step into our parlour my colleague would gladly supply a cup of tea. Before we bed you both down in the cellar for the night.’
Making the prisoners walk ahead of them, Joe and Edgar went back to the lookout room and while Joe kept them covered, Edgar, with half an eye to the window and the approach road, poured out cups of tea and offered one to Alice. She ignored the outstretched hand. Turning to Joe, she said almost casually, ‘This cellar in which you’re planning on keeping us locked up for the night – what did you say it contained?’
‘Military equipment,’ Joe replied, ‘to be precise, army rifles. .303s. Brand new. On their way north. Rheza Khan could tell you more but there’s a consignment of a hundred. The last of who knows how many other consignments which have passed through this fort under ICTC markings on an ICTC pack train – you tell me! You may not be able to tell me how many down to the last hundred but I’ll bet your precious accountant here knows. It’s not going to inflate your reputation with your society friends in Simla and elsewhere when they hear that you’ve been gun-running to a volatile tribe right on their doorstep.’
With chalk-white face and eyes narrowed to slits, Alice turned from Joe to Rheza Khan and back again. Joe leaned forward and spoke earnestly, ‘Alice, listen! This is the end of the road for you. There only needs to be the whisper of a rumour that ICTC have been supplying dissidents in tribal territory for the British authorities to act with ferocious speed.’
Edgar Troop intervened. ‘And there’s more to it than that, Alice. Times change, the management changes. ICTC drifts into the hands of the competent Mrs Conyers-Sharpe, the ramshackle remains of the Russian Empire drift into the hands of the Bolshevik establishment but the game remains the same – Russian eyes turn to northern India, British eyes, my own amongst them incidentally, are turned where they have always been – to their northern neighbours. You know this, I know this, but above all, George Jardine and others know it. And to those concerned to preserve a precarious balance, the arrival on the scene of five hundred? a thousand? more? modern rifles is a matter of acute concern.’
With care and with something approaching pity Joe was studying Alice’s face as these revelations unfolded. As he watched there came to him a moment of blinding clarity. ‘Is it possible,’ he said, a note of wonder in his voice, ‘that you were unaware of this? You, Rheza Khan, is it possible that you managed to conceal your gun-running operation from all, including your boss, the managing director of ICTC? Is this possible?’
Neither said a word.
‘Could it be,’ Joe went on, turning to Alice, ‘that, preoccupied with your own jewellery run, you weren’t aware of the other smuggling going on?’
‘And I’ll add something to that,’ said Edgar Troop, speaking slowly and with ferocity. ‘Lionel Conyers, your “brother”, gunned down with surgical precision on the Kalka road – Korsovsky likewise a few days ago – and what did they have in common? The only thing they shared was the lethal knowledge that the managing director of ICTC, the pretty façade, was not who she claimed to be. The authorities have searched high and low – I understand I even came under suspicion myself! (suspicion carefully planted!) – looking for the trigger man. Once aware that you were being blackmailed all assumed that the blackmailer and the murderer were one. Not so! Tell me,’ he added, with something approaching geniality, turning to Rheza Khan, ‘is it not a fact that no one has been as anxious as you have always been to keep Alice in place and supplying you? You’re a fine shot, Rheza, all acknowledge this and the killings would for you have been money for old rope. I’m not certain whether Charlie Carter had time to get around to establishing your whereabouts at the time of Korsovsky’s killing – he’s been rather busy harassing me and Reggie and the other chaps at the chummery. I hope for your sake that you’re not thinking of counting on your boss for an alibi!’
He turned a scornful look on Alice. ‘Poor little Alice, you ran into someone even more manipulative than you are yourself! How does it feel to be led by the nose – to be used?’ Edgar Troop asked softly. ‘To be used by this tailor’s dummy in his old school tie? How does it feel, I wonder?’
The question floated in the air while all stood silent and as though frozen. Expressionless, Alice spoke at last. She was gazing through the window, her face a blank. ‘Just how it has always felt,’ she said bitterly. ‘When I look at my life I realize that I have known nothing else. I’ve been abused, deceived and betrayed by men for as long as I can remember. C’est normal, quoi? It’s what I have come to expect. And it’s what I prepare for.’ She looked back at Rheza Khan. ‘But you? What was special about you, I wonder? I believed you. I believed in you. I thought perhaps – at last – I had found a man.’
Rheza Khan had remained still, apparently unconcerned, slightly smiling. ‘No, Alice,’ he said at last, ‘I had found you. And I’m sorry to say this but your period of usefulness, for which I have been more than grateful, is over. And, as they say – “I shall always take an interest in your future career,” but it’s going to be no concern of mine. The frontier is about to explode and I think the omniscient Sir George has heard rumours – but no more than rumours. The arms are in place. But arms by themselves are nothing; arms are nothing without money. To exploit them there are men to pay, men who not only need pay but need food and clothing and all the things that go with a successful armed uprising – and, believe me, I’m not backing an unsuccessful uprising! And, at this moment, Alice conveniently arrives! Pockets full of jewels! I’ve worked out their value once or twice. Very negotiable and designed to provide Alice and – if you can believe it – my humble self as well with a comfortable lifestyle somewhere far from this border. But I have men, good men and well-mounted who only await my signal to descend on this ramshackle fort. And what do they find when they get here?’ He laughed, it seemed, in genuine amusement. ‘A superannuated Russian moujik, a puzzled London policeman and a hysterical little girl who’s going to have her toys snatched away.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Edgar. ‘We seem to be listening in to a lovers’ tiff! Better not to intrude, eh, Joe? I’ll go and unlock downstairs and they can have all the time in the world for their recriminations! And Rheza Khan can spend some time wondering just how he’s going to do any signalling from the cellar.’
He turned and, leaving Joe covering them, clattered off down the spiral staircase. Joe gestured to Rheza to move further over to his left away from Alice. He sensed that Alice was dangerously disturbed by what she had just heard and he didn’t want to risk a wild cat attack. Not while they were under his supervision. Alice tossed her head, understanding him. She took hold of her felt hat and, holding it in front of her,
began in a leisurely fashion to fan her face, in a theatrically provocative and dismissive gesture.
The grating of a heavy door down below was the signal. Moving steadily away from Alice as directed, his eyes fixed on Joe’s revolver, Rheza Khan worked his way round to Joe’s left. Moving backwards slowly, he stumbled on the uneven floor and leant over to balance himself. In a lightning movement he pulled a slim knife from the inside of his riding boot. At that same moment a voice burst like a shell in Joe’s head: Watch your left flank! and he hurled himself to his right, firing instinctively as he fell a round that caught Rheza Khan in the right thigh. The knife, a flash of silver, sliced through the space Joe had a split second ago occupied to sink itself in the doorpost. From the floor, Joe watched, horrified, as Alice took her hand from inside her felt hat and pointed. The small revolver was only just visible in her palm. ‘No! No! For God’s sake, Alice! Don’t do this!’ Joe called urgently, but with a tight smile and deaf to his protests, she took unhurried aim and fired.
The pistol banged noisily in the confined space and awoke an echo across the hill. Rheza Khan had only a brief moment to register complete surprise before the bullet hit him straight between the eyes. His body slithered to the ground between them. Joe lay on one elbow, his gun trained on Alice, and she stood, still smiling, her gun now pointing at him. ‘Stand-off, Joe?’ she said. ‘If you’re wondering why I shot him and not you, well…’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘At least you’ve never concealed the fact that you were out to get me. And you’re such a gentleman! You could have had me, you know, and I do believe it mightn’t have been such a penance but you’re not an exploiter. Perhaps the only one such I’ve ever met. And I’ll trust my judgement further. I don’t think you would ever kill a woman. Certainly not by shooting her in the back which is going to be your only option!’
She ran to the window embrasure and, turning, jumped up on to the wide sill. She stood for a moment outlined in the window and gazing down across the baked and empty hillside. She looked defiantly over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t know about the rifles, Joe. And I never asked Rheza Khan to kill anyone for me. I was brought up to tell the truth, remember!’
She twisted her body neatly and let herself down from the sill, hanging on until she was steady, and then released her grip. It was a long drop but she landed with balanced grace. She looked up, hair glowing red in the slanting sun, smiled at Joe and was gone. Helplessly, Joe watched from the window while feet clattered up the stairs and Edgar Troop called from outside the heavy door. Joe shouted to him to come in.
‘What the hell?’
Troop looked from the body to Joe and, startled, looked around for Alice.
‘Rheza Khan had a knife hidden in his boot,’ said Joe pointing to the door post. ‘Just missed me. Alice didn’t miss though! She shot him. She had a gun.’
‘She bloody didn’t have a gun!’ Edgar exploded. ‘God, Joe, you saw me search her! The only bumps under her clothes were legitimately there!’
‘You omitted to search her hat! She took it out of her hat! When she said she was always prepared for betrayal, she wasn’t kidding.’
‘You let her get away! Idiot! Where the hell’s she gone? Did you do this on purpose?’ He bounded to the window, cocked his gun and leaned out covering the path up to the fort. ‘I’ll get her when she makes her dash for the road.’
‘You won’t, you know!’ said Joe. ‘You couldn’t shoot her, any more than I could. You know it and she knew it.’
‘Don’t count on it!’ Troop snarled.
The clatter of horses’ hooves pounding on the loose scree and excited whinnying rose up from below. Troop leant despairingly over the wide windowsill. ‘Bloody hell! That’s our horses! The bitch has spooked our horses! Get down there, Joe, and get them back while I cover the road.’
Joe ran downstairs and took stock of the scene in the rear courtyard. Cut reins – three sets, he noted – were dangling from a willow tree but of horses no sign. With a few slashes, Alice had rendered three unrideable and, tearing down a willow branch, had thrashed them out on to the bare mountain, sending them skittering off back the way they had come. The fourth? Bent twigs showed him where she had ridden through the scrub away from the fort in the opposite direction from the approach road. He guessed her plan was to circle widely, out of rifle range, back to the main track and then on – to where? Would she take the road back to Simla or would she continue on for a while, branching left to Joginder Nagar?
He continued down the road in a desultory way for a while, fatuously whistling and calling for horses long out of earshot. He was not looking forward to facing Edgar Troop again and the idea of spending the night cut off from civilization with him in this dreadful place was infinitely depressing.
The sound of a rifle shot behind the fort as he trudged back up the road startled and alarmed him. He made slowly towards it, approaching carefully at the last until, peering round a corner of the building, he saw Edgar Troop returning from the scrub carrying his rifle and a bunch of wild sage in one hand and a fat golden pheasant in the other.
‘This is our supper,’ he said, catching sight of Joe, good humour seemingly restored. ‘Better than the bully beef tin I had in my saddlebag. No luck with the horses? Didn’t really expect it. Silly buggers’ll be half-way to Simla by now! Come on – I’ll get the fire going if you pluck the bird. Not much improved by being hit amidships with a round from a service rifle but still better than bully beef.’
Back in the main room of the fort only a stain on the floor remained of Rheza Khan.
‘What have you done with him?’ Joe asked.
‘Down in the cellar with the other rats,’ said Troop cheerfully. ‘Now all we have to do is get through the evening as best we may. We’ll take it in turns to watch through the night until first light and then we both stand guard and hope that when we hear horses coming up the road, they’re carrying Charlie Carter and his mob and not Rheza Khan’s followers coming to check the contents of the cellar and wondering why they’ve not been whistled up by the boss!’
The pheasant was tough but full of flavour and night fell suddenly as they cut it into strips with Edgar’s knife and shared it out. Edgar won the toss and decided that Joe should take the first watch. Rifle in hand and a prey to many misgivings, Joe sat looking over the empty hills as twilight turned to moonlight, and listened to the sounds of forest creatures all around, snuffling and padding under the open window. Here and there he spotted the gleam of strange eyes.
Somewhere out there, he thought in sudden dismay, is Alice. Alone, virtually unarmed and miles from civilization. Reliant on a tired horse. Come back in, Alice! Don’t be alone! We’ll think of something! I know we will!
As he watched, the night was assailed by a wavering, blood-chilling scream which brought Joe to his feet, alarmed and in terror. From a corner beyond the circle of firelight came Edgar Troop’s gravelly voice, ‘Jackal, Joe! Take it easy!’
Joe gathered Charlie’s poshteen tight about his shoulders and shivered on.
He took up his second watch when the night was at its blackest two hours or so before he could expect to see the first flush of dawn over the rim of the eastern hills. He rubbed his gritty eyelids and peered, unbelieving, into the darkness. No, he was not mistaken. There was light in the distance where no light should be. A moving light. No – lights. He watched on. The eerie sight of a swarm of glow-worms wriggling its way through the hills and onward towards the fort startled him into full wakefulness. Hurriedly he shook Edgar who leapt, instantly alert, to the window. He snatched the binoculars from Joe, saying at last, ‘We’ve got company! Lots of it, I’d say. Judging by the spacing of those torches – at least fifty men.’
As the glow-worms drew level with the fort the bobbing torches were suddenly extinguished and there was movement which told Joe that men were spreading out to cover the fort. Joe asked uneasily, ‘Ours or theirs? And if ours, how are we going to attract their attention? They might take us for enemy and
open fire.’
‘They might be a party of Rheza Khan’s people coming to take delivery of a bundook or two. Possible but not likely. Too many of them. But get the torch out of my right saddlebag. Got it? Signal something. Anything.’
Standing in the window embrasure Joe began to signal.
‘What are you sending?’ said Troop.
‘Well, anyone who was on the Western Front might recognize it – something we used to use in the trenches. “O… K” – something we picked up from the Yanks. I think it stands for “orl korrect”.’
At once someone at the head of the advancing column began to signal back.
‘What’s that?’ said Troop anxiously.
‘Dee dah, dee dah, dee dah. Ack, ack, ack,’ said Joe. ‘ “A” for “Acknowledged”. Didn’t they have the Morse code in the army of Imperial Russia?’
‘If they had, there wouldn’t be anyone down there who’d know it and if there was anyone down there who knew it, they wouldn’t have a torch and if anyone down there knew it and had a torch it wouldn’t occur to them to reply, if I know anything about the Imperial Russian Army.’
Soon they heard the clatter of advancing hooves and then the jingle of curb chains and the clash of equipment. Just below the fort the column halted and two men cantered up the hill alone.
‘Who goes there?’ said Joe.
‘Friend.’
‘Advance one and be recognized,’ said Joe remembering the formula.
‘This is getting all very Sandhurst!’ said Edgar Troop.
They walked out to meet their visitors, a young British officer and a bearded sowar, his lance pennant fluttering in the wind off the hill.
‘Good God!’ said the advancing figure in cheerful tones. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting to find but I wasn’t expecting to find you, Edgar! You tricky old bastard! Before we say any more, be good enough to tell me – just for the time being, of course – which side you’re on. I like to establish these things.’
Ragtime in Simla Page 28
