by John Masters
At the change-over Jagbir said hesitantly, ‘I don’t think I should go out now, lord.’
Robin said quickly, ‘Of course not, son, we’ll leave it for a day.’ He thought: It is not really strange that Jagbir should be frightened; he does not like being alone. Jagbir went on. ‘No. I feel sure that woman will have the ground about the camp most carefully searched to-morrow.’
Jagbir was right. In the middle of the morning the whole surveying party and all the guards came out of the camp and walked in circles, at intervals of a few paces, around the grove. One stopped by the three bushes where Robin had lain, and stirred the sand with his foot. Then others came to him. The woman walked out from the camp to look, and shortly afterwards they all seemed to give up the search, returning into the trees. At noon the surveying party set out with horses and plane tables and theodolites, and during the afternoon the watchers saw them working along an east-west line a mile or so from the foot of the mountains.
‘Now they’ve found our hiding-place,’ Robin said slowly. ‘We can’t go back.’
‘By night we can, lord, as long as we don’t go to those three bushes. They’ll never catch us if we’re careful. But we must go together. Out at dusk, back before dawn.’
‘How much food have we got left?’
‘Four, five days for us and the horses. It’ll take us a day to reach a place where we can buy some more.’
On the second night under the new arrangement the same Russian that Robin had seen before left the camp just as they crept into position. He almost walked into them. He hurried on towards Bezmein, jingling money in his pocket and smoking a foul cheroot.
When he had gone Jagbir whispered, ‘We can get him on his way back. Nearer the village.’ Robin nodded. The Russian might have nothing of interest on him, but time was running out.
After half an hour they walked silently closer to the village. Most of the villagers had gone to bed, and only a few lights shone out from the meagre, mud-built hovels. Later someone began to sing. Much later still, when the chill of the desert had frozen them to the sand, they heard the Russian come out on his return journey.
Jagbir muttered, ‘Do you want me to kill him?’
‘No.’
The Russian staggered past them. Lying down as they were, they could see his head nodding against the stars. Twice he fell down and lay a while, breathing heavily and muttering to himself. When he was half-way to the camp they ran up silently, one on each side. Robin pushed him gently from behind. He ran forward to catch up with his falling body and ran into the ground, his legs still working. Jagbir jumped on to his back, cupped one hand over his mouth, and punched him hard on the side of the head.
Robin whispered, ‘I can’t see. Search him. Has he got any matches?’
After a pause--’Yes.’
Jagbir emptied the Russian’s pockets. Soon Robin held a little pile of papers in his hand, besides a small knife, a dirty handkerchief, a slide rule, two cheroots, and some small change. Then he crouched down and held out his robe like a tent over the Russian’s head. Jagbir lit a match under its shelter. A trickle of blood from above the unconscious man’s eye ran down the side of his face. His shirt was torn, and there was no sunburn line around the base of his neck. The brown continued down evenly. His face was almost darker than ordinary sunburn could have made it, for, like all Russians, he wore a hat even at night. Yet Russian was his native tongue. Robin did not know that language but he knew enough to recognize the sound of it. The match burned out, and he carefully put the dead stick in his turban. Jagbir lit another, and Robin began to examine the loot from the Russian’s pockets.
There were two official-looking printed documents. He’d have to take them. There was a booklet of logarithm tables. No sense in taking that. Another booklet, thin and paper-bound. As Jagbir kept striking matches Robin turned over the pages; this was a phrase book--Russian on one side of each page, and, on the other, Persian. From a quick glance he thought it was not classical Persian but a dialect of some kind--and not the eastern dialect, Zaboli Persian, which he himself had learned. In the back of the book he found an outline map of Persia. Someone, presumably the owner, had underlined Bushire in pencil. Bushire was a town and seaport on Persia’s southern coast, on the Persian Gulf.
Robin kept the documents and the phrase book. Then, in an effort to show that the robbery had been the work of common thieves, they scattered the rest of the Russian’s belongings carelessly around, kept his small change, and took the ring off his finger. It was worth trying, because the Russian might want to keep quiet about the affair anyway, for fear of trouble over being drunk. On the way to the dell Robin took the matchsticks from his turban and buried them in the sand.
As soon as it was light Jagbir went to the eyrie and stood sentry there. Robin remained in the dell with the papers.
The party to which the drunken man belonged was certainly surveying the course of the railway which, as the government of India already knew, the Russians were in process of building south-eastward from Krasnovodsk. But the drunken surveyor had some interest in South Persia, as evidenced by the map and the phrase book. The dialect would be a South Persian one of some kind. Did this all mean, then, that the Russians intended to push the railway south into Persia and across Persia to the gulf, near Bushire? It might--but he’d better not cast his surmises too far ahead of his facts. Let him take the situation at its face value only.
The facts of geography were unalterable. Here on the edge of the Akkal oasis he was near the beginning of that direct, central invasion route which ran from the Caspian through Balkh and Kabul to Peshawar. The drunken surveyor’s map, and the language in which someone had decided he should be instructed, and the appearance of the visitors to the camp, pointed not straight ahead but to the right, the south.
Very well. If the Russians were going to use the southern route in force, there would be some signs to show the fact. He would have to go south and find them.
He went down to the eyrie and told Jagbir. Before they left, Robin stared once more at the grove that hid the Muralevs, and across the Black Desert, which the poison had befouled. Selim Beg had written ‘Horses, north.’ Every clue since then had pointed west, and now south. The trail would take him from here towards great cities and into the steaming bustle of the Persian Gulf. He wanted to know where Muralev would go now. Muralev wouldn’t find his bustard on the shores of the Gulf, that was certain. He’d be unhappy down there. It would be like the poisoning and the subterfuges.--a level of deception forced on him by his wife’s love for him and his own love for his country.
At last he said wearily, ‘Lo bhayo, nanil Jaunu parchha,’ and they returned to the dell, saddled up, and worked southward through the mountains until they came to the Meshed road.
CHAPTER 16
His appointment with the Sheikh Abu Daabi was for half an hour after dusk, in the sheikh’s house. He had tried to make it earlier but without success; the sheikh was insistent. Robin paced the long upstairs room of the lodgings, his head bent under the low roof, and reviewed his plans. A British steamer lay alongside the quay not a hundred yards away. She was due to sail for India two hours after dusk with her cargo of dates. Yesterday he had slipped on board and made his arrangements with the master, who obviously had not believed what little of his story he could reveal. He would have liked to be on board now, but Abu Daabi said he had something important to disclose. Besides, the shipmaster didn’t want them to embark during the loading.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon of April 30th, 1881, the sun had inclined to the west, and the streets of Basra were deserted. From the window he could see the masts of the steamer and an empty reach of the river. The Shatt-al-Arab, the joined Tigris and Euphrates, flowed silently at high flood level past the foot of the street. The melting snows of Ararat and a hundred other mountains had filled and overfilled its bed. Above the city the floods covered the Mesopotamian plain.
Jagbir slept. Each time Robin reached that end o
f the room he paused and stooped down to brush the flies from his companion’s face. They had seen much together and travelled far since they left the Akkal oasis five months before. They had visited Bushire but they had not gone by the shortest route. The Russians could not fly over the intervening country between Turkestan and the Persian Gulf. If they had any intentions in that direction there ought to be a continuous line, traceable on the land, connecting the one with the other. So Robin and Jagbir had journeyed south and west and south again, hunting like dogs for the scent. They did not know exactly what they were looking for, but they knew what the clues would be.
Firstly, there was gossip. When strangers travelled the roads and asked questions there was gossip. Sharp eyes would note, idle tongues relate--a man in such-and-such clothes passed here in such-and-such a month; he asked the way to Hamadan; he asked where Qasim lived; he looked for a long time at the stream.
Secondly, there was gold. When a great power interested itself in a country where the people were generally poor, it had to use money. The larger its interest, the larger would be the outlay of money. In certain areas more money would flow than had flowed before, and, most revealing, it would flow in new channels. The gold must go to the people whom Russia regarded as helpers, allies, or potential allies. It was not always hard to surmise who these might be, because an invader’s natural friends are those who, like him, wish to upset the existing order. In Asia this did not mean the people, the peasantry, for they did not count. It meant not the chief khan but the second, who would like to be first; not the feudal rulers but the elder sons waiting impatiently for power and restive under the suspicions and hard restraints of Mohammedan fathers.
Thirdly, there was the knowledge they had already garnered. It was possible for them to pretend to more than they knew. Of suspects Robin could ask questions a shade more pressing than he would otherwise have been able to. At times he could, by mentioning a name or a fact, lead a man to believe that he was himself a Russian agent, and so get another name, follow that up, and, like a rolling snowball, gather still more names, more information.
As they passed through Teheran they had, by circuitous means, contacted the British Embassy, got more gold, made a report, and handed over the papers taken from the surveyor at Bezmein. As Robin had suspected, the printed documents were of no importance. The dialect of the phrase book was that used around Bushire. That first report would have reached India long ago. He wondered what Hayling would think of it. He had made another and final report two days ago and handed it to the shipmaster here in Basra for safe custody until he could board the ship himself. Looking back at his work, he could see that there had been mistakes, false trails, some danger. But, in the large, there had been no doubt. A direct line of Russian interest and Russian preparation led from the southern border of Turkestan to the Persian Gulf. There was no need at the moment to follow it farther on land by turning east and traversing the deserts to the Indian frontier at the Bolan Pass. It must go in that direction--unless the Russians proposed to attack the Turkish Empire here in Mesopotamia, instead of the British Empire. Agents working out of India could unearth the plan in more detail.
When he returned to India he could say that his evidence had led him to two conclusions: that the Russians intended to use two routes of invasion, the central and the southern; and that the principal weight of the attack would be in the south. Further, he could say that the centre was the level of deception, where the clues were comparatively easy to find, and that the south was the level of truth. That poison bottle had been no prop in a charade. Therefore, the Russians will feint a single, central attack through Balkh and Kabul; once we move our troops to counter this, the real Russian attack will come in along the southern route, directed on the Bolan Pass.
It was all very neat, neater than he had the right to expect after only nine months’ work. Only the original impulse which had launched this quest now seemed strangely misdirected. Perhaps no one would ever find out what Selim Beg had meant, or what he had discovered. Perhaps he had meant just what he said, for his clues, having been meticulously followed, had led to Basra. Robin had gone north from Balkh, asking about horses. By way of Bukhara, Khiva, the Akkal oasis, Meshed, Gurgan, Teheran, Hamadan, Isfahan, and Bushire, he had come to Basra.
He had not been happy these last five months. There were too many people, perhaps, too many cities, too much intrigue. He had wondered often whether he would meet Muralev and, if he did, whether such a meeting would make this work in the south seem less or more important. He thought it would depend what happened--if the woman tried to kill him, for instance, that would be one thing; if she did not, it would be another. It would depend on what Muralev did too, how he looked, how he spoke.
Also Robin was a little unhappy because he knew he had failed to see much that another, more experienced agent might have seen. Hayling had picked the wrong man after all. The trail ended in the squalid gutters of Basra.
He looked out. The sun was low and the streets beginning to stir with noise and movement. A breeze ruffled the river, and a few dhows crept out from the bank and heeled into the racing current. He awakened Jagbir.
The Sheikh Abu Daabi’s house lay on the south-western extremity of Basra. The road thither led away from the Shatt-al-Arab and across a vile-smelling creek which bisected the town. A dozen narrow bridges spanned the creek. The crowd was thick on the bridge that Robin and Jagbir chose to use. When they reached the mid-point, where a press of people and donkeys pushed them on, they saw the Muralevs. Robin sighed in sudden relief; this had to happen, everything would have been wrong without it. Then he thought that the Muralevs, Lenya at least, had seen them first. There might have been a plan. He felt very tired. There would be struggles and manoeuvrings, lies, threats. The Arabs edged away and stared insultingly at the unveiled woman as though she had been a harlot dancing naked on the bridge. Beyond the bridge the narrow street ran on south-westward. There was a coffee shop on the right-hand side near the end of the bridge, and a stunted tree. A Turkish policeman in a red fez stood under the tree, his rifle slung on his shoulder.
Robin looked straight ahead. Jagbir dropped his hand to the handle of his knife. The Muralevs stopped in front of them, blocking the bridge. Peter Muralev said in his accurate Persian, ‘Khussro, it is a pleasure to see you again.’ He tugged at his ear and smiled shyly.
Robin turned. He saw with a shock that Muralev looked ill. His skin was pale grey and shiny with sweat, and his eyes deep-sunk behind the spectacles. They were a new pair, with thin steel rims. The woman would have a pistol and she meant to kill him. He read it in her sparkling eyes and parted lips. The lust of battle was in her.
But he had to get back to Anne. The whole search, which should have been like a scouring, cleansing wind in his mind, was turning to a foul breath. He had found the secret they had sent him out to find, but he had found nothing else. Peter Muralev was as ill and as wretched as he, and still had not found the home of the bird that had dropped a brown feather at his feet.
It was Jagbir who spoke, a short, wonderful sentence of warning and triumph. ‘Greeting! We have done our task and are returning to my lord’s place.’ Robin saw that he had told Lenya Muralev it was no good killing them, because their report to India had already been made.
‘Oh, yes?’ said Muralev absently. ‘That is good. I hope you will like it at home.’
The woman cut in. ‘It was a profitable journey? Are you sure that you have as yet paid the full price for your goods?’ Looking at her, Robin knew that she would kill him with her own hands if all else failed. It was not personal spite. She had some sound reason, on the imperial plane.
Muralev said, ‘Will you come and have a cup of coffee with us?’
‘No,’ answered Jagbir and tried to push past them, but the woman turned with him, and he could not get rid of her. She walked at his side, talking animatedly; Peter Muralev followed with Robin. At the coffee shop Jagbir seemed to change his tactics. He said, ‘This will d
o,’ and squatted down in the very front of the shop, directly under the policeman’s eye. Lenya Muralev hesitated, then joined him, and Robin and Peter followed suit. The woman ordered black Arab coffee and a dish of sweetmeats.
To Robin, Muralev said, ‘I suppose you couldn’t keep those books of birds that were in my box?’
‘No. I’m sorry. We burned them all. It took a long time.’
Muralev nodded and was silent. At length he said, ‘I apologize about the poison.’ Robin felt the old sympathy rising in him. Muralev might have put the blame on his wife, where it certainly belonged, but he had not.
Jagbir said, ‘She did it.’
The woman smiled widely. ‘I did. I thought it was necessary, and I was right. It wasn’t enough, even. After all, here you are, safe and well. Besides, there are no rules, are there? You think it was not--cricket?’ She said the word in English.
‘We’re not playing cricket,’ Robin said. ‘I’m not playing any game.’ To her it was like polo or pigsticking, but more exciting.
Muralev shook his head slowly. ‘Nor am I. It was wrong, the poison. It did not fit in. It was wrong, untrue.’
‘My husband is a dreamer,’ the woman said, ‘but also a genius.’ She looked at Peter with a sort of warm, uncertain pride. Robin saw her with a new and newly painful understanding. She was a good woman and she loved her husband. The thing that Muralev felt for her could not properly be called love because it had none of the attributes of love. Can a bark love the rope that ties it to the wharfside? And in the end what would happen? He must be near when that time came, to find out. Would the strong, brave rope be left trailing forlorn in the water, broken, while the ship heeled to the wind in the open sea? Would there be a tidy unfastening and casting off? Would--could the ship stay for ever by the pier while the wind blew, and wild, mysterious birds flew overhead in the night?
