The Triumph

by Christopher Nicole

  But what would he feel about doing it? If he felt no regrets for having executed Chand Bibi, who was about the coldest-hearted killer he had ever encountered, he had always felt some pity for her daughter, whose entire life had been confounded by her mother’s sudden death. It was difficult to be sure why he felt that way. Part had been the natural pity of any thinking human being for a child, suddenly and brutally orphaned at the age of nine — and Yasmin had actually seen her mother dangling from the rope. But it was salutary to remind himself that had he not caught up with Chand Bibi and destroyed her army in the last of his famous cavalry charges, Yasmin would have grown up in the Mahsud nation and the Mahsud way. She would have learned that the British were her hereditary enemies, and that the most famous deed she could accomplish for her people would be to sit on the chest of a wounded British soldier, and having sliced away his genitals, then slowly and carefully remove his nose and lips and ears before poking out his eyes.

  She had been saved that. But might it not be bred in her heart and mind? And in any event, had she really been taught a lot different, in Russia? Not on the evidence of 1938.

  Yet he had not killed her then. Of course, she had, in his terms, been innocent then. She had tricked her way into his apartment when he was alone there, produced a pistol and told him she was going to shoot him. How naïve could one be, when confronting a man with thirty-eight years’ experience of killing people, without being killed himself? She had wanted to savour her moment of triumphal revenge, and had wound up disarmed and a prisoner. Yet the gun had been hers, and she was the intruder. Had he, as he so easily could have done, turned it on her and announced that it had gone off during the struggle, no one would have doubted him for a moment.

  Instead, he had handed her over to the police for deportation. He had not expected ever to see her again That he had done so had to be her decision, and not a trick of Fate. He could only wait to find out what had inspired that decision.

  The rustle of the water submerged all other sounds, yet he knew when she was there. A lifetime of soldiering caused the hair on the back of his neck to prickle, the adrenalin to start flowing into his arteries, long before she appeared, some ten yards to his right, her boots and the hem of her skirt wet from where she had waded the stream. And she had not yet seen him, looked first to her right, and only then to her left. By then he had picked up the revolver.

  She inhaled, sharply, an attractive gesture. ‘Are there enemies in these hills, Sir Murdoch?’ Her English contained only a trace of accent.

  ‘One tends to be careful,’ Murdoch replied.

  She came towards him. ‘Do you walk in the woods every afternoon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That is what the women in the camp told me.’ She stood above him. ‘So I assumed there had to be a reason.’

  ‘I thought you might like a little chat,’ Murdoch said. ‘And tried to make it easy for you.’

  ‘You are a true gentleman,’ she acknowledged. ‘And this chat was to end with my execution?’ She pointed at the revolver, which lay on his lap — his finger was still on the trigger.

  ‘I was interested to know whether you considered we still have some unfinished business.’

  ‘Indeed we have, Sir Murdoch. We have to beat the Germans. Is that not why you are here?’

  ‘So tell me why you are here. I imagine you can fight the Germans just as enthusiastically, and far more effectively, on the Russian front.’

  ‘I am a Commissar in the Russian Army. I go where I am sent, to fight.’

  ‘And the fact that you knew I was here had nothing to do with where you were sent?’

  Yaskin regarded him for several seconds, then she suddenly stretched. ‘It is warm. Much warmer than I had expected.’

  ‘It will be much colder come January. If you are still here.’

  ‘Of course I will still be here, Sir Murdoch. Unless, perhaps, Germany has surrendered by then.’ She smiled at him. ‘Or you have shot me.’

  She stepped away from him, and round the tree. He stood up, moving slowly and carefully, back still pressed against the trunk, and waited. When she did not reappear, he stepped round the tree himself, revolver held in both hands. But he slowly lowered it as he watched her, feeling somewhat embarrassed.

  Yasmin had discarded belt and beret, and was sitting down to pull off her boots. Her back was to him, but she had no doubt he was there. In many ways they were well matched, he thought.

  But perhaps that was being optimistic, because having discarded her boots, she now pulled up her skirt and rolled down her stockings; he could hardly compare his legs with those smoothly sheened limbs. Then she stood up, and removed her blouse; she wore no brassiere. He watched, because she obviously intended him to, as she slid her skirt and drawers past her knees and stepped out of them. He had thought Annaliese von Reger the most perfectly formed human creature on God’s earth, except for her mother. He had thought Monique Deschards comparable only to Jennifer Manly-Smith as the most compelling of all God’s female creations. And he had thought his wife the most lovable of all women, and still did think so. But here was the most earthily desirable of women, a tremble of muscle at thigh and shoulder and even affecting the heavy breasts; with her hair cut short there was no distraction from the effect of her powerful body.

  He had thought that about her mother too — and Chand Bibi’s hair had always been long.

  She stepped into the water and sank to her knees, giving a little shudder as she did so. ‘It is so cold,’ she said. ‘And so refreshing. Why do you not join me, Sir Murdoch?’

  ‘Sudden cold is bad for the rheumatism,’ he said.

  She looked over her shoulder. ‘I do not believe you suffer from rheumatism. You move like a young man.’

  ‘Only in some directions.’

  She gave a tinkle of laughter. ‘I must find out in which they are.’

  Murdoch picked up her holster, extracted the pistol, and pocketed the magazine.

  ‘I have others, at the camp,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ he agreed. He holstered his own gun, went through her clothing, found the long, slim-bladed knife sheathed on the inside of her skirt.

  ‘I never knew you were interested in women’s under-wear,’ she said, facing him as she scooped water over her shoulders, idly.

  ‘I am interested in everything about you, Yasmin,’ he said, and tossed the knife several feet away. Then he sat down, facing her. ‘Now I can enjoy you.’

  She stood up. Water dripped from shoulder and armpit and nipple and pubic bush. ‘I want you to enjoy me, Sir Murdoch.’

  ‘I am doing so,’ he said. ‘But I will bet I am not doing so half as much as Sergeant Ferris, my bodyguard, just up the hill over there.’

  *

  He thought her angry squeal as she had dropped back into the water represented a victory of sorts: she really was a far more moral creature than Annaliese von Reger. That night as they sat around their camp fire and drank the vodka the Russians had also brought with them in large quantities she merely glowered at him.

  ‘I would say she’s definitely bearing a grudge,’ MacLean confided.

  ‘This is a recent one,’ Murdoch told him.

  Sherepkin had a great deal to say. ‘Generalissimo Stalin feels that now is the time for a big push,’ he said. ‘He is confident that with a concerted effort here, in the direction of Sarajevo, you will tie up a great number of German forces. And with the great Russian armies battering at the Germans in the east, and the British and the Americans fighting in the west, the defeat of the Hitlerites will be brought that much closer.’

  Tito listened, nodding sagely, and as the evening wore on and the vodka level sank in the bottles, Sherepkin grew ever more expansive. By the time he was carried to his sleeping bag he was talking about the fall of Sarajevo. Tito, who could drink any man under the table, also went to bed, but next morning he sat beside Murdoch to shave in the crisp morning air.

  ‘What do you think?’ T
ito asked.

  ‘You will be outgunned, and outnumbered,’ Murdoch told him. ‘Even now. Chipping away as you are doing is the best way to occupy the Germans in Yugoslavia. It is a matter of pure mathematics. You have perhaps five thousand men at your disposal, and Mikhailovitch may have five thousand more. Ten thousand men. And what is the German occupying force? Two hundred thousand men? You are doing far more effective work by just being here, than you could ever do by getting your force destroyed, even if your people were to take two Germans for e very one of them, because at the end of it they would still be able to afford to withdraw a hundred and fifty thousand for service elsewhere.’

  ‘I have never heard of war estimated in such terms before,’ Tito said thoughtfully. ‘Have you never led your men into battle against overwhelming odds? I know you have. I have read of your deeds.’

  Murdoch smiled. ‘On at least one occasion I didn’t have much choice, because I was surrounded and had to fight or die. On the others, I was required to make tactical sacrifices to aid the army as a whole.’

  ‘Well, that is what we must do. This war involves everyone. We are only a small part of it. But the Generalissimo has ordered me to carry out an offensive here in Yugoslavia, and I will do so.’

  ‘The decision must be yours,’ Murdoch agreed.

  ‘But you do not agree with it.’

  ‘No, I do not.’

  Tito wiped his chin, and slapped Murdoch on the shoulder. ‘Then you do not have to take part in it.’

  Murdoch grinned at him. ‘How will I know what you need replacing, afterwards?’ he asked.

  *

  For the next fortnight everyone was too busy for Murdoch ever to see Yasmin more than in passing. No doubt she remained angry with him. No doubt she had come to Yugoslavia to murder him. But it was not possible while they were surrounded with so much hustle and bustle, and while one of MacLean’s men was always at his shoulder. So no doubt her milk was curdling, he supposed — if women like Yasmin Bogoljubova had any milk.

  Meanwhile, elaborate plans were laid. Tito, on the insistence of Sherepkin, sent messengers to Mikhailovitch and to all the small guerrilla commanders, such as Kostitch, calling on them to join with his people in the grand offensive. Meetings were held, at which Tito and Mikhailovitch sat opposite each other, and discussed the forces they would bring into the field and the areas in which they would operate. They even discussed tactical plans. But neither would combine with the other.

  ‘It would, of course, be far more effective if your several forces were to be thoroughly integrated,’ Murdoch told Tito.

  The Marshal shook his head. ‘That can never be, with Mikhailovitch.’

  ‘The man is not to be trusted,’ Sherepkin growled. ‘We know this, in Moscow.’

  ‘With respect, Sir Murdoch,’ MacLean decided, ‘I would like you to remain at base camp and monitor events from there. I will accompany the Marshal in the field.’ He met Murdoch’s gaze. ‘You did agree to accept my command, sir. And frankly, you are not expendable. While I am sure your influence on events will be much greater than mine, should things go astray.’

  Murdoch had to agree he was right. But it was nonetheless galling to watch the men, and the women, for Tito had armed every woman able and willing to fight, march off down the hillside to take up their positions. He simply had to remember, he kept telling himself, that he was now a very senior soldier indeed. Montgomery did not get involved in the thick of the fighting, and neither did Eisenhower — which of course was the reason why they were still commanding armies and he was relegated to this side show — illegally.

  At least Yasmin accompanied the Russians. He could relax somewhat. Perhaps she would get her head shot off. He sent his bodyguard off with MacLean.

  *

  The army melted away, and the hillside was utterly quiet. Only a few hundred women, some guards, the goats and cattle, and the dog Tigger were left. They might have been a community of farmers, minding their own business. Under the guidance of their patriarch, Murdoch thought irritably.

  It was impossible to know what was happening down there in the valleys and beyond the lake, because Tito had decreed radio silence; each man in his command knew what he was required to do, and hopefully further orders would not be necessary. At the appointed hour the faint rumble of gunfire came up into the hills, and through binoculars Murdoch could make out smoke rising into the still air. That had to be an outlying engagement.

  Two days later the planes came. One of the women was on spotting duty, and she hurried down to the encampment to warn of the approach. ‘Avione!’ she shouted. ‘Avione!’

  Murdoch levelled his glasses, made out a squadron of Junkers 87s, flying low, looking — he hustled everyone into the caves, which formed a network through the mountainside, remained himself near the entrance with a dozen men. The dive bombers flew on, past them, and then suddenly turned back. Someone had spotted something...or perhaps they had just been told to bomb wherever they saw water — the one essential of life the guerrillas could not conceal.

  The planes screamed down at the mountain with that so familiar wail, and the bombs fell from their undercarriages. The mountain shook and columns of earth and rock and water hurled themselves into the sky.

  ‘They know we are here,’ said the senior remaining partisan, Colonel Ivkov, watching the explosions coming closer.

  ‘No,’ Murdoch said. ‘They are guessing. And they cannot destroy the water. No matter how they block it or dam it, it will re-emerge somewhere else.’

  But the partisans were getting restless, gripping their rifles the more tightly, staring out of the aperture, until one leapt to his feet, gun to his shoulder, and fired. Instantly another followed his example, and then all twelve of them were blazing away.

  ‘Damnation,’ Murdoch muttered.

  The rifle bullets were doing no damage, but the men had been seen, and now one of the Junkers was flying straight at the cave mouth.

  ‘Back,’ Murdoch snapped. ‘Fall back.’ There was another, smaller exit lower down the hill which could be used if this one became totally blocked. ‘Back.’

  The men hesitated, and Murdoch looked past them at the deadly egg dropping from beneath the aircraft’s wheels. Then there was nothing at all.

  *

  Murdoch was aware less of pain than of a crushed feeling, which left him exhausted. His nostrils were clear, because he could breathe, yet he inhaled dirt and dust to suggest that they had recently been blocked. And memory was a kaleidoscope of movement, up and down, jolting and uncomfortable, as if he had been slowly rolling down to hell. But he looked at blue sky, so bright it hurt his eyes.

  He heard voices, and tried to turn his head. This was painful, and he decided it would be better to turn his whole body. But that was impossible.

  He lay still, and considered his situation. He was bandaged, in several places, and cocooned in his sleeping bag. He was also naked. And very thirsty.

  He opened his mouth, drew a long breath, and called ‘Hello.’

  He heard feet, and then the brightness of the sky was obscured. He was looking at Yasmin Bogoljubova. Desperately he tried to move his arm, to find his revolver. But his revolver had gone with his clothes; as his bodyguard had gone with MacLean.

  ‘You must not be restless,’ Yasmin told him.

  Murdoch licked his lips. She too seemed to be unarmed — she was not wearing her pistol. But he remembered the knife beneath her skirt. On the other hand, she looked tired rather than aggressive, or even mocking, as on so many occasions. She even looked concerned.

  ‘I am very thirsty,’ he said.

  ‘I will fetch water.’

  She came back a few minutes later with an enamel mug, knelt beside him, and raised his head, held the mug to his lips. Water trickled down his throat.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘At the moment, looking after you.’

  ‘Should you not be fighting?’

  She pulled a face, and t
ook the cup away. ‘Are you hungry?’ Murdoch realized that he was, very hungry.

  ‘You should eat,’ Yasmin told him. ‘You have not eaten for several days.’

  ‘Several days?’

  She frowned at him. ‘Try not to be excited. Yes. You have been semi-conscious, unable to move, for three days, since my return, and you were out for the day before that, too. Do you not remember? The cave fell in on you.’

  ‘Then how the hell did I survive?’

  ‘The women dug you out. You were lucky, in that sense. Most of the men with you were killed outright. You were even luckier in that you did not break anything serious, merely got a bad bump on the head. How is your head?’

  ‘It hurts,’ Murdoch said, realizing that it did.

  ‘And you were even luckier that I returned the following day,’ Yasmin told him. ‘The women did not know what to do with you.’

  ‘But you did.’

  ‘Of course. I am trained as a nurse, amongst other things. I realized at once that you were suffering from severe concussion, and also from the effects of being buried alive. I had you bathed and bandaged and placed in your sleeping bag. And I fed you medicine.’

  ‘You, did all that, Yasmin?’

  Her smile was twisted. ‘Why not? You could be my commanding officer, now. I do not know, for certain. I will fetch food.’

  Again he tried to move, to look after her, but gave it up after a few seconds. And by then she was back, with a bowl of gruel. She sat beside him, raised his head to rest on her lap, and began to feed him. ‘Do you realize there are thirteen separate scars on your body? I counted them. That was before the various cuts and bruises caused by the falling rock. You are a very tough old man, Sir Murdoch.’

  ‘So I’ve been told. Why did you come back so quickly? What happened to the offensive?’

  ‘It was a disaster.’

  His turn to frown at her. ‘A disaster?’