The Tiger Warrior

by David Gibbins

  Then he stopped. He slid back down into the hollow and rolled over, face up to the heavens, pulling the rifle with him, holding it against his chest, opening the bolt. He had done it over and over again, bringing himself to the brink. His grandmother had said it was shiatse, self-discipline. He had already dealt with the woman’s uncle, the one whose place he would soon take among the twelve. He had known the man would say nothing, a man trained in the way of the tiger warrior, so he had left him to die in squalor, to be devoured by rats inside the jungle shrine. He and his men had found the inscription inside, and there had been enough time before the Maoists stumbled on them to read the words and see where the quest for the sacred treasure would lead. But before that he had come here, to watch, to wait, to see whether the woman would lead them farther. He knew that her uncle had told her about his own quest, about the clues he had found. The Brotherhood had eyes and ears everywhere. And her fate was sealed. When one of the twelve strayed, his clan was forfeit. It had always been the way. But he had to remind himself And he was here not just to kill, but to watch, to follow. It was his test, his duty set by the Brotherhood, his rite of passage before he could join the twelve. He drew back his sleeve, touching the image tattooed on his forearm, still raw and bleeding. He reached toward the horse which had been standing behind him in the hollow, its flanks rising and falling almost imperceptibly, eyes half-open, red-rimmed. He pressed the tattoo against its flank, and his whole forearm came up red, covered with the blood that was lying like sweat on the horse. He lay back again, exultant. Their blood had mingled. They had become one. The blood of the heavenly steed. The blood of the tiger warrior.

  Jack awoke with a start as the plane lurched and shuddered, its engines increasing to a whine and then settling down again. He tightened his seat belt. Rebecca was sitting beside him, reading. Opposite them Costas and Pradesh were dozing fitfully. Jack glanced at the navigation map on the foldout screen in front of him, then looked out of the window to his right. He could see where the valley of the Indus had given way to the crumpled foothills of Baluchistan, the northwestern province of Pakistan. They were close to the border with Afghanistan, over the tribal lands which had changed little since the days of British rule. Beyond Afghanistan lay their destination, the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, wedged between the mountains that led to China on one side and Russia on the other, astride the lattice of caravan routes and rugged upland passes that made up the northern arm of the Silk Route. Jack stared into the haze, gripping the armrests. Katya was out there somewhere, in one of the most forbidding landscapes on earth. Up here the prospect of finding her seemed inconceivably remote, yet all being well they would be with her in a matter of hours.

  Jack glanced over at the two men. Costas was wearing another Hawaiian shirt he had somehow kept in reserve on Seaquest II, replacing the one that had been shredded in the jungle. There was a bulge on his right shoulder where a dressing covered the bullet wound he had received from the Chinese gunman, fortunately only a graze. Pradesh was wearing Indian army khaki stripped of all identifying insignia, a sensible precaution in Pakistani airspace. The evening before, he and his two sappers had kept the Maoist terrorists at bay while the helicopter had landed in the jungle, allowing them to escape with only a few dings in the fuselage. Pradesh had known exactly what he was doing, and Jack was grateful to him. Once back on Seaquest II they had been able to wash and change, but there was no time to sleep. The IMU Embraer jet had flown out from England to meet them, and in the early hours of the morning the Lynx had taken them from the ship to a military airfield near Madras for the long flight north. Jack glanced at his watch. Almost four hours gone now. They should touch down at the U.S. base at Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan by mid-morning.

  The horrifying image from the waterfall was still imprinted on Jack’s mind. He had no doubt that the decomposed body was Hai Chen, Katya’s uncle. The tattoo they had seen on his arm was more elaborate than those on the Chinese corpses outside, but showed the same image of a fearsome tiger, almost a dragon. It was clear that Hai Chen was not just an innocent victim, a naïve anthropologist in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone had left him to die slowly, in a cruelly calculated way. He had been on a trail that seemed increasingly to parallel the quest Jack now found himself on, and the outcome looked decidedly unpleasant. There was more at stake here than mining speculation. Jack needed to talk to Katya, in person. She was going to have to tell him everything she knew.

  Jack tried to forget the image and focus on the archaeology. His mind was still reeling from their discovery. A Roman tomb in south India. A tomb near the Roman site of Arikamedu had always been conceivable, perhaps a merchant or a sea captain. But they had discovered the tomb of a Roman legionary. A legionary who may have been a survivor of the Battle of Carrhae. It was a remarkable link to the fragment of the ancient Periplus from Egypt, to the proof that some of those legionaries had escaped east into central Asia. If the legionary who had carved those battle scenes in the jungle had really been one of Crassus’ men, he must have made his way south from the Silk Route, somewhere below their flight path now. And there was the extraordinary reference in the tomb inscription. Jack squinted through the window toward Afghanistan, still seeing nothing in the early morning haze. One word from the inscription kept going through his head. Sappheiros. Lapis lazuli. The legionary had found something, something so precious he had left a clue on his tomb inscription. Something that another legionary, Fabius, his brother-in-arms, the soldier in the carving, had also possessed, taken away with him. Something in two parts. Jack began drumming his fingers on the armrest. This had become more than a fantastic trail of escape and adventure from two thousand years ago. It had become a treasure hunt.

  “Dad.” Rebecca nudged him. “This book is incredible.” Rebecca had her reading light on, and he could see the title page. Lieutenant John Wood, Bengal Navy. A Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Source of the River Oxus. Jack raised his seat upright. “It’s one of my favorites. He wrote it in the 1830s, before the British had begun to interfere in Afghanistan,” he said, sipping at a bottle of water. “Like other early British explorers who trekked out there you can see that he really empathized with the people. He was Scottish and says it’s something to do with being born and bred in the mountains. It’s also a great adventure story. On the trail of Alexander the Great. And that book was a treasured possession of your great-great-great-grandfather. He pored over it. When I put my hand on it, I feel close to him.”

  “So do I,” Rebecca said. She closed the book on a slip of paper, and picked up a typescript Jack had also given her. “And this is incredible too. Your biography of Colonel Howard. I nearly cried when I read about his baby boy, taking ill and dying within a day in Bangalore, while his dad was hundreds of miles away in the jungle. It’s heartwrenching. I can’t imagine what the boy’s mother felt like, waking up one morning with a baby boy in her arms, then watching him lowered into his grave that same evening.” Rebecca was talking quietly, trying not to wake the other two, but her words were choked with emotion. “You don’t hear much about the women, do you? These adventures, the wars, they’re all about men. But the women had to deal with so much loss and anguish. You’d think that all the childhood deaths in those days would have made them used to it, but I bet it didn’t. Maybe all that stiff upper lip stuff was a way of dealing with it.”

  Jack nodded. “It was a big adventure for the British out here, but life was fragile. Diseases like cholera, diphtheria, blackwater fever, could take you within a day, strike without warning. All those images we have of exaggerated Victorian gentility in India—tea parties, the gentle clink of croquet, cosseted families sitting on verandahs—all of that was a kind of veneer. This was a place where you woke up never knowing whether you’d be going to bed again that night, or be lowered into a grave. This was a place for risk-takers, for people who relished living on the edge.”

  “That’s why you love it, isn’t it, Dad? All of this history. You rea
lly wish you’d been one of these Royal Engineer officers, don’t you? You’d get war, adventure, bossing people around, you know, even archaeology if you were a survey officer, plus all those leaves and furloughs they had when they could go off exploring the mountains and looking for lost treasure. Perfect.”

  Jack laughed. “Luckily, I can be all of those things in the present day, and I can transport myself into the past. To really strike out on the trail of discovery you have to empathize with those you’re following, know their minds.”

  “Costas says your great gift is diversion. He says you’re always going after one thing, then something else crops up. He says you need a woman to pin you down. Make you more reliable.”

  Jack nodded across at the crumpled, snoring figure opposite. “He can hardly talk.”

  “Does he have, you know, a friend?” Rebecca asked.

  “Well, he’s got me, and everyone at IMU.”

  “No, I mean a girlfriend.”

  Jack snorted, pointing at Costas. “That? You must be kidding. They never last more than ten seconds. Can you blame them?”

  Rebecca shook her head. “Men are so stupid about themselves. They don’t even know what makes a man attractive to a woman.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s a techno nerd. He couldn’t care less.”

  Rebecca shook her head and sighed. The cabin lights flickered on and the pilot’s voice came over the speaker. “Jack, you asked for a wake-up call over the Afghan border. We’re less than two hours to destination.” Costas and Pradesh stirred, and woke up. There was another jolt of turbulence, and Pradesh peered past Costas through the window. It was four a.m. local time and still dark, and lights were twinkling far below. “That turbulence was bang on time,” he said. “It always seems to happen here. We’ve just passed Quetta in northern Pakistan, and we must be over the Bolan Pass now. We’re flying over Afghanistan.”

  “Load and lock,” Costas said, yawning and stretching extravagantly. He raised his seat and took an orange juice from the fridge beside them. “I’ve got a headache,” he said. “I think it was the jungle. I got dehydrated.” He gulped the juice, then took another can.

  “It’s that palm toddy you drank,” Jack said. “I did warn you.”

  “I only had a few sips,” Costas said. “But I’ll stick to my rule from now on. Never drink on operations.” He downed the second juice, and binned the can. “It’ll make that first tequila on the beach all the more delightful. When we get to Hawaii. Tomorrow.” He gave Jack a bleary, slightly accusatory glare.

  “We’re sort of heading there,” Jack said. “In a roundabout way.”

  “North from India to Kyrgyzstan in central Asia,” Costas said. “Yeah, right.”

  Kyrgyzstan. In less than two hours they would land at Bishkek airport, and a couple of hours after that he would be with Katya. A message from her had been awaiting him when they had returned from the jungle to Seaquest II, about an amazing new discovery she had made. He had called back immediately and told her about her uncle. Her response had been matter-of-fact, as he had expected it would be, but she had sounded distant. He had steered the conversation toward the archaeology. She had outlined her discovery to him and wanted his firsthand advice. That was a good enough reason to pull the schedule forward, but now there was added urgency. He had immediately put in another call to have the IMU Embraer fueled up and ready for them at the Madras airport when they arrived there less than two hours later.

  “Okay, Jack,” Costas said. “Bring us up to speed on your ancestor. Here’s where I’ve got to so far. Howard and the other guy, the Irish-American officer, Wauchope, escape from the jungle. And my guess is, what happened to them after that has something to do with why we’re flying up here now. And with the inscription in that tomb. We’re not just coming up here to see Katya.”

  Jack took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay. The rest of the story. Howard and Wauchope made it with the sappers back to the steamer Shamrock. They had buried Bebbie in the jungle, not at the village where we saw the memorial inscription. But neither of them left any account of what had happened. We’ve got Lieutenant Hamilton’s record of his skirmish in the jungle, and the folk memory of that day from the Kóya people, everything Pradesh told us. But nothing from Howard, who commanded the sapper detachment. His diary ends abruptly that morning on the Shamrock. It’s at odds with his professionalism. That’s what first set the alarm bells ringing for me.”

  “Maybe it was a cover-up for the death of that guy Bebbie,” Costas said. “If he really was shot by the sappers.”

  “I think there was more to it than that,” Jack replied carefully. “I think there was the shock of the sacrificial scene, what they saw from the Shamrock. Then I think they saw what we saw inside that shrine. They would both have been well-versed in Latin from school. Wauchope was known for reading Greek and Latin classics when he was on campaign. I think they saw that inscription. I think that was their binding pact. Not to tell anyone what they had read. They saw the earthquake seal in the shrine just after they’d escaped, so the secret was theirs.”

  “What happened to them after the rebellion?”

  “Wauchope left the Madras Sappers to join the Survey of India, one of the most coveted appointments for an engineer officer. He spent most of the next twenty years on the northwest frontier, starting in Baluchistan and working east, carrying out surveys for the Boundary Commission on what became known as the Durant Line, delimiting the border of Afghanistan. His boundary markers are still there like latter-day altars of Alexander the Great. He was famed for his climbing ability and endurance, a born mountaineer. But the malaria he picked up in Rampa finally caught up with him and forced his early retirement, in 1900. After five years recovering his health in the mountains of Switzerland he returned to his beloved India, exploring the remote valleys of the borderland, adopting traditional garb and living with tribesmen. The last we hear of him was in Quetta in the early summer of 1909, when he was fifty-five years old.”

  “And Howard?”

  “He was the last sapper officer out of Rampa, months later, the only one who could withstand the malaria, probably because of his Indian childhood. The death of his eighteen-month-old son Edward in Bangalore while he was in the jungle was a terrible blow. Howard had been slated for great things as a soldier but opted for the engineer route, joining the Indian Public Works Department and then returning to England, to the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. He taught survey to young officers and immersed himself in the academic life of the corps. He became an ardent supporter of the movement that eventually led to the universal language Esperanto. Perhaps the urge came from his experience in Rampa, where they hadn’t been able to speak the Kóya language without an interpreter. Maybe it was some kind of atonement. He only returned to India once his children had grown up and gone to boarding school. I always assumed that his career decision had a lot to do with his son Edward, with his need to provide a better home for his children, in England. But now I think there was more to it than that. I think it goes back to that day in the jungle in 1879. And I don’t mean what they might have seen in the shrine. I mean something else, something he saw or did, that traumatized him. Maybe it was human sacrifice. Something he was powerless to stop.”

  “Not exactly the glorious image of soldiering,” Costas said.

  Pradesh shifted and cleared his throat. “I can sympathize. The worst thing for a soldier is being sent on a mission where you don’t have the political will or the resources to finish the job. I’ve experienced it, on a peacekeeping mission in Africa. Being powerless to stop genocide. If you do intervene, you may ease one person’s suffering, but it can make the feeling of impotence worse. One of my sappers shot a woman who’d been terribly mutilated. He was haunted by her face. He said that all the faces that previously had been one mass of tormented humanity had suddenly become real individuals, and that was what made it intolerable for him. He had nightmares about them all coming to him, asking why he hadn’t chosen to
end their suffering too. He couldn’t live with it, and shot himself.”

  Jack saw Rebecca’s face, and he squeezed her hand. “It could have been like that for Howard,” he said quietly. “So little knowledge of the emotional response to trauma has survived from the Victorian period. Yet men brought up on romance and courtly deeds ended up seeing and doing terrible things. They internalized these experiences all their lives, somehow using the reservoir of manly Victorian courage to live with it, bottling it up to the end.”

  “You said he went back to India,” Costas said.

  “That’s where it gets really fascinating,” Jack replied. “He returned to the Public Works Department, building bridges, canals, roads, and was principal of a college for native engineers. Then, in 1905, aged fifty, he finally returned to real soldiering. He became commanding royal engineer of the Quetta Division of the Indian army, up against the Afghan frontier in Baluchistan. It was one of the hot spots of the British Empire, about the most dangerous place in the world. Howard relished it, and for a while it was as if he were making up for lost time. But then, in 1907, a full colonel, he abruptly took half-pay and retired.”