The Tiger Warrior

by David Gibbins

  “Quetta,” Costas murmured. “The same place Wauchope was?”

  “Exactly,” Jack exclaimed. “That’s the linchpin of the story. After Rampa, the two men part ways. Perhaps in their pact in the jungle they mapped out their future, the time when they’d get together again. They coincide once, in 1889, when Wauchope takes a refresher course at the survey school at Chatham. They even co-author a paper, on the Roman coins of south India. They were meant to present it jointly at the Royal United Services Institute in London, but Wauchope was recalled to duty. Next, they appear together in Quetta almost twenty years later, in 1907, both retired. They dine as honored guests in the regimental messes, they meet the explorer Aurel Stein, they spend hours in the bazaar talking to travelers, equipping themselves. And then, one morning in April 1908, they gear themselves up, hobnailed boots and puttees, tweed jodhpurs, sheepskin coats, turbans, rucksacks, revolvers. Two old colonels off on a final great adventure. Quetta has seen this kind of thing before. Howard’s Tibetan servant Huang-li waves them off He’s been with Howard over the years, since Howard was taken as a boy to a refuge in Tibet during the Indian Mutiny. Huang-li is never seen again either. The two colonels march off toward the Bolan Pass into Afghanistan, and disappear into the great cleft in the mountains. That’s the last anyone hears of them.”

  “That’s so cool,” Rebecca said. “Its just like The Man Who Would Be King, Kipling’s story. Now I know why you put that on the top of the pile for me to read on Seaquest II, Dad. Two British soldiers disappearing into the mountains, in search of treasure.”

  “Treasure?” Costas said.

  “I think Rebecca’s one step ahead,” Jack murmured.

  “Chip off the old block,” Pradesh said, grinning.

  “So what’s the pull for these guys, of Afghanistan?” Costas said.

  “Adventure. War.” Pradesh clicked open a small case on his lap. Inside was a row of eight medals—three elaborate stars on the left and three service medals on the right, two of them with multiple campaign clasps over the ribbons. “These are Wauchope’s medals. Before disappearing he bequeathed all of his military possessions to the Regimental Mess of the Madras Sappers, with instructions that they should be auctioned among the officers and the proceeds distributed to famine relief charities. As a young officer before Rampa he had been in Madras during the terrible famine of 1877, and it affected him deeply. But by the time an inquest was held in 1924 into the disappearance and the two men were declared dead, there was little interest in the medals. They’ve been languishing in the museum storeroom at Bangalore ever since. I felt that they should be in the old headquarters of the Survey of India, where they’d be displayed alongside the memorabilia of the other pioneers. These men are remembered for committing their lives to mapping India and improving the welfare of the people. They are remembered by their Indian and Pakistani successors with pride and affection.”

  “Isn’t the northwest frontier headquarters in what’s now Pakistan?” Costas said.

  “That’s another reason why I’m coming with you to Kyrgyzstan,” Pradesh replied cheerfully. “There’s a Pakistani sapper contingent attached to the coalition base at Bishkek. I purchased the medals myself under the terms of Wauchope’s will, and saw that the money went to charity. I’m going to pass them to the commanding officer of the Pakistani sappers and he’ll see them safely to the museum.”

  “I thought you guys were at war,” Costas said.

  “Only our countries. Major Singh and I are close friends. We were both seconded at the same time to instruct in jungle survey at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. That’s how I knew something of Howard and Wauchope’s later careers, from the records there. When Jack first told me about his interest in the Rampa Rebellion, I was stunned. I had no idea he was from the same Howard family.”

  Costas peered at the medals. “Those two on the right, with the clasps. Different campaigns?”

  Pradesh nodded. “Those are the Indian General Service Medals, with clasps for Hazara, Waziristan, Tirah. As a survey officer, Wauchope was involved in almost all of the Afghan frontier expeditions of the 1880s and 1890s.”

  “But no clasp for Rampa,” Jack said.

  Pradesh shook his head. “The government considered the rebellion a civil disturbance. It was a matter of politics, keeping it hush-hush. Nobody wanted internal unrest to be advertised in the wake of the Indian Mutiny. They agreed to consider it as active service in the soldiers’ records, but no medal was given.”

  “And this one?” Costas pointed at the third campaign medal.

  “The Afghan War of 1878 to 1880. Wauchope was there, as assistant engineer in the Bazar Valley Field Force, before being deployed to Rampa.” He lifted the medal up and turned it over.

  Costas’ eyes lit up. “An elephant!”

  Jack grinned at Pradesh. “I have to apologize for my friend. He has an elephant fixation. We found some underwater off Egypt.”

  “Underwater?” Pradesh looked incredulous. “Did I hear you right? You found elephants underwater?”

  “Later.”

  Rebecca leaned across and touched the medal. “It looks just like Hannibal in the Alps,” she murmured. “My mother told me about that once when we met, and I did a drawing of it. So they used elephants in Afghanistan too. That’s so cool.” Jack smiled at her, and looked over. It was a beautiful medal, hanging from a red and green ribbon. On the obverse was Queen Victoria, Empress of India. On the reverse was a column on the march, with cavalry and infantry, dominated by an elephant carrying dismantled field guns on its back. Behind it was a towering mountain range, and in the exergue the word Afghanistan and the dates 1878-79-80. It was the medal John Howard would have received had he joined the Khyber Field Force after the jungle, as he was slated to do. Had the Rampa Rebellion not strung on for months longer than expected. Had he not been the only officer to withstand the fever. Had his son Edward not become ill, and had another officer not offered to take his place in Afghanistan, to allow him to be closer to his family. It was a gesture of kindness that made no difference at all, as Edward had died so quickly while Howard was still in the jungle. To Jack the medal seemed to represent all the odd quirks of fate, and the anguish of loss. Plenty of sapper officers had died in Afghanistan. Had Howard gone there, it was possible that Jack would not have been here today.

  Costas suddenly saw something, and pressed his nose against the window. “Holy cow. What was that?”

  They followed his gaze. A line of red flashes punctuated the darkness far below. “Airstrike against a mountain ridge,” Pradesh murmured. “American or British warplanes, maybe Pakistani, low-flying. We’re over the Taliban heartland now. Bandit country.”

  “Do we have any countermeasures? The chaff dispensers?” Costas said, looking at Jack anxiously.

  “We’re flying high, over forty thousand feet. The Taliban have nothing that can get us. The Americans didn’t supply the mujahedin in the 1980s with anything bigger than the Stinger, and those are mostly gone.”

  “Right,” Costas said. “I forgot. We armed these guys.”

  “Before the Russians arrived, the Afghans mainly had old British weapons, hangovers from the Great Game,” Pradesh said. “Lee-Enfield rifles, Martini-Henrys, even Snider-Enfields from the 1860s. They made their own imitations, the so-called Khyber Pass rifles. These weapons are still around today and not to be underestimated. The Afghans were brilliant marksmen with their own homegrown guns, the matchlock jezails. With British rifles they were superb. This is sniper country, huge vistas with lots of upland vantage points. The traditional Afghan marksman despises the Taliban recruit who sprays the air with his Kalashnikov while shouting jihadist slogans. He despises him for his poor marksmanship as much as for his Wahabist fanaticism. Afghan society is one where violent death is omnipresent, but within an honorable tradition. No Afghan warrior wants to die. He’s contemptuous of the suicide bomber. He loathes fundamentalism. The martyr mentality and the Kalashnikov, those are
the two weak points in the Taliban armor.”

  “Sounds like this war should be won for us by the Afghans,” Costas said.

  “A few hundred Afghan mountain men armed with sniper rifles could cripple the Taliban. The Afghans just have to be persuaded that the Taliban are their worst enemy. And they need to know that the coalition will stay on afterward to rebuild the country.”

  “A lot of work for sappers,” Costas said.

  “We’re all ready for it,” Pradesh replied enthusiastically. “My fellow officers and I have pored over all the archives from the 1878 war, when the Madras Sappers built bridges in the Khyber Pass. We could do it again.” They looked up as the copilot came down the aisle, gesturing at Pradesh. “My turn to fly,” Pradesh said, getting up. “I need to get my fixed-wing log up to date. See you later.”

  “Dad.” Rebecca was looking at the book on her lap again. “I’ve just noticed. There’s something in pencil, in the margin. I can barely read it.”

  “What’s the book?” Costas asked.

  “Wood’s Source of the River Oxus,” Jack said. “From my cabin. Howard’s own copy. I showed it to you earlier.”

  “Oh, yeah. Fascinating stuff on mining.”

  “While you were all snoring away, I got to the part where he discovers the lapis lazuli mines,” Rebecca said. “It’s incredibly exciting. It’s like an adventure novel. He says there were three grades of lapis.” She read out a passage: “These are the Neeli, or indigo color; the Asmani, or light blue; and the Suvsi, or green. He says the Neeli is the most valuable. The richest colors are found in the darkest rock, and the nearer the river the greater is said to be the purity of the stone.”

  “Neeli,” Costas said. “Sounds like Nielo, from the tomb inscription-sappheiros nielo minium.”

  Jack nodded. “It’s the same word, in Pashtun and in Latin. It must be the Indo-European root. If I’m right, the Roman sculptor in the jungle, the guy who did that inscription, had actually been to the mines in Afghanistan. His choice of that word for ‘dark’ may well have come from contact with locals who described the best lapis lazuli that way.” He leaned over Rebecca. “The writing in the margin. Where am I looking?”

  “Beside the paragraph I just read.”

  Jack peered closely. “You’re right. I hadn’t seen that. There are so many other notes by Howard in the margins of the book, and I hadn’t looked at this page closely.” He took the open book from her and peered at it under his seat light. “It’s definitely Howard’s handwriting, Howard’s. It’s absolutely distinctive, even though you can barely see the pencil.” He peered again, and then slowly read it out. “It is said, if you put together peridot and lapis lazuli, then you have the secret of eternal life. They must be the correct-shaped crystals. Ancient Chinese wisdom, told to me by my ayah.” He lowered the book. “Good God.”

  “Peridot and lapis lazuli,” Costas exclaimed. “That combination again. Who was his ayah?”

  “His nanny,” Jack murmured. “She looked after him when he was a boy in Bihar, where his father had an indigo plantation near the border with Nepal. She was the great-aunt of Howard’s servant Huang-li, the one who waved them off from Quetta in 1908. During the Indian Mutiny, when Howard was a little boy, she took him up into the Himalayas. Later she became his own children’s ayah, and then the next generation’s. Nobody ever knew how old she was, but she lived to be well over a hundred. In the 1930s, she retired and disappeared to live out her remaining life in the mountains of Tibet. She was never heard from again. She claimed that her ancestors came from far away in the east, from northern China. When my grandfather was a boy she told him stories of the First Emperor, the great emperor Qin who unified China in the third century BC. She told him she was descended from the guardian of the First Emperor’s tomb. A legend, perhaps, but it enthralled my grandfather. One of the other books he gave me was the Records of the Grand Historian, the account of the dynasty of Qin. It had been another one of John Howard’s books, found in his study after he disappeared.”

  “Speaking of family legends, what about Howard’s disappearance?” Costas said. “Talk about something that would have enthralled children. You must have wondered whether he and Wauchope found some fabled treasure and lived out their lives like kings in some hidden mountain fastness, just like Kipling’s story.”

  “Well, there was one story. It was told by Howard’s wife, my great-great-grandmother. Everyone except my grandfather dismissed what she said because she’d become unwell. Howard had done everything he could for her. But as soon as their children had grown up, she deteriorated. She’d never been able to deal with the death of her first son. She was looked after by her sisters, but then she went into an institution. Howard had money from his father’s indigo fortune, and no expense was spared for her comfort. Only when he knew there was no hope did Howard return to India. But he saw her again in England several times before he disappeared, the last time in 1907 just after he retired. He took her away for a few days to a cottage on the Welsh border. It seemed to be a brief window of happiness. It was a beautiful early summer, and they walked in the hills. That was how she remembered it, in a moment of lucidity when my grandfather visited her in the hospital years later. After Howard met up with Wauchope in Quetta, he never saw his wife again. But she lived for many years longer, in a kind of shadowland, not dying until 1933.”

  “Did she remember anything else?” Rebecca said, her voice emotional.

  “She told my grandfather that when she shut her eyes tight, she was standing, holding hands with her son Edward, looking into a place of sparkling beauty, like a magical cave. Only Edward was older than he ever was, a little boy, not a babe in arms. Then she saw Howard, a proud young man in uniform, a twinkle in his eye, little Edward’s father, her beloved husband, and the little boy ran, arms outstretched, crying out the word Dada over and over again, a word he had barely been old enough to say in his short life. She said in that moment she was in the perfect place. She spent a lot of time in that hospital with her eyes shut tight.”

  Rebecca was in tears, and Jack held her hand. “She did say one other thing. Everyone dismissed it because the hospital was run by nuns, and they thought she was just repeating some religious mantra. She said her husband had gone in search of the Son of Heaven.”

  “A Christian nunnery?” Costas said. “They must have said that to a lot of widows.”

  “That’s what everyone thought.” Jack leaned forward, his eyes ablaze. “But for my grandfather, then a young naval officer, it struck a chord and stayed with him. Fifty years later, when he was an old man himself, he called me at school. He was incredibly excited, and I had to drop everything and visit him. That was when he gave me the Records of the Grand Historian. He’d been thumbing through it, and he saw those exact words. Son of Heaven. He suddenly remembered where he’d seen them before. As a naval cadet, he’d put in at Shanghai and traveled to Xian, to see the fabled tomb of the First Emperor. His photograph of it in 1924 was one of the earliest to reach the west. That was where he’d seen those words, Son of Heaven. It was the traditional title of the Chinese emperor.”

  Rebecca wiped her eyes. “I remember it. The terracotta warriors exhibit.”

  “But there’s more to it than that,” Jack continued. “My grandfather had dug out his old print of the vast tomb mound, as big as an Egyptian pyramid, still completely unexcavated, years before the terracotta warriors were discovered. The tomb of the First Emperor, of Shihuangdi, Son of Heaven. He had the Records with him, and read the passage describing what was inside. Fabulous treasures, a replica of the world in miniature, the chamber decorated to represent the heavens, with the greatest light of all falling on the tomb. Then he had a brainstorm. That was when he called me. Howard’s wife wasn’t saying Son of Heaven, but Sun of Heaven. The sun, the greatest light in the sky, the light that would ensure the emperor’s immortality. The greatest jewel in the heavens. That’s what Howard’s wife had meant. He had told her he was going in search of a
fabled lost jewel.”

  “I knew it.” Costas grinned. “A treasure hunt.”

  “All that stuff,” Rebecca murmured. “How you thought it out, Dad. Pretty cool.”

  Jack sat back. “All I’ve done is open up an old chest of drawers and let it spill out.”

  The red warning light flashed above them. Jack glanced at Rebecca’s seat belt and then out of the window, into the gray light of dawn. The descent to Bishkek airport was bumpy, through fierce crosswinds. Through holes in the cloud he saw flashes of land below, a dull flat wasteland and the airfield perimeter. A line of giant C-7 Galaxy transport aircraft stood on the tarmac, where the U.S. transit base for Afghanistan shared the runway with the civilian airport. The engines of the Embraer suddenly revved up to a whine. They had been bumped down too low, and were doing a circuit before landing. Jack sat back and shut his eyes, feeling tired enough to fall asleep in an instant. He suddenly had a vivid picture of his grandfather’s face, from the day they had spent together poring over the Chinese records. His grandfather had told him about the age-old quest for eternal life, about the First Emperor’s expeditions to find the sacred Isles of the Immortals. Jack had only been a boy, but he had told his grandfather how one day he would search for treasures like that. He remembered what his grandfather had told him as they parted, the last time he ever saw him. He said he had sailed over a million miles in his life at sea, and that it was the journeys he relished most, not the destinations. Now, years later, after half a lifetime spent hunting down the greatest treasures in the world, Jack thought he understood. And then he remembered his grandfather playfully jostling him, and pretending to be an old Chinese sage. Beware the Sacred Isles. The quest for immortality is a fool’s errand, and the First Emperor was the biggest fool of them all Stray too close, and you face mortal danger