‘Six hours, sir.’
‘Good God, man, what’s six hours on the Frontier! Why wake me up?’
Lakenham began again, patiently. ‘Captain Ogilvie’s mission,’
‘Yes, yes, yes! Oh, all right. Should Ogilvie have cleared the area by this time, assuming he’s still intact?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Very well, then. You’re my Chief Staff Officer, aren’t you? Get on with it, Lakenham. Use your initiative!’
Pointedly, General Fettleworth got back into bed and settled his balding head on his pillow. Lakenham shrugged and left the room. Within the next few minutes a runner had been despatched from headquarters and shortly after this a squadron of the Guides was moving south into Kohat. They returned to cantonments the following evening with word that they had come upon what had obviously been the site of an action — they had found a good deal of dried blood and some spent cartridges. Upon investigation they had discovered the concealed bodies of the British soldiers, and later had found some of the dispersed horses. There were no British survivors. There was no sign of any tribesmen and the area was now quiet. Divisional Headquarters, after receipt of this intelligence, was quiet no longer. An enraged Fettleworth sent at once for the officer commanding the squadron of Guides and received his detailed report in person. He then told this officer that he was to keep his mouth firmly shut about the concealment of the dead, and was to see to it, on pain of wholesale Courts Martial, that his troopers did likewise. As he remarked in private to Brigadier-General Lakenham, no one but a British officer would have thought of concealing dead men’s bodies. ‘It’s scarcely an old Pathan custom,’ he said scathingly, ‘to be so solicitous. They’re more likely to cut off their testicles and sew ‘em into their mouths. And I do not want the whole of Peshawar and Nowshera to be buzzing with rumours. You shall see to it, Lakenham. If you fail me, you’ll be out on your ear!’ And he added, ‘I’ll have that young man’s hide for this, if ever he comes back!’
*
That evening the bullock-cart and its escort rumbled into the tiny village of Janda Khel, thirty miles inside the border and perched in the foothills of the Waziri mountains extending out of Afghanistan. Dirty by now, sweat-soaked, weary, Ogilvie looked forward to nothing more than rest from the jolting cart, a long sleep in the evening cool. But this was not to be. Some men of the escort had gone ahead of them to spread the word of their coming — or rather to confirm their imminent arrival, for from time to time in those hills Ogilvie had seen lean bearded figures on the peaks, clutching the long-barrelled rifles and watching the movement along the pass, and reporting ahead, no doubt, to the village. Now, as they rumbled the last hundred yards or so towards the rough huts of the tribesmen, the villagers were emerging, lining the sides of the track to welcome the conveyors of arms, arms for use against the British. Hawk-faced men, dark eyed warriors, met Ogilvie’s stare boldly. They made no sound, but their gaze raked the bullock-cart with avid interest; Ogilvie felt they were almost licking their lips. Here and there, well in the background of events, a Pathan woman was to be seen. Some fat and grotesque, others slim and comely, all in their appointed places — a physical and moral step behind their menfolk. But above the veils their eyes held the same look of eager interest in the uncovering of Mr. Jones’s wares of war, a look of anticipation and a look of cruel, vengeful triumph. Ogilvie felt a shiver of real fear run along his spine; he was not surprised General Fettleworth was a worried man. If the men and women of Janda Khel were typical of the inhabitants of all Waziristan, then — with the dreadful assistance of men like Mr. Jones to arm them — the prospects were bleak. Ogilvie, now that he was ostensibly at one with Mr. Jones and had been doing his best to force all his thoughts and actions into the mould, found that he was already viewing these passionate fighting tribesmen with an eye very different from that of a remote regimental officer, an officer who saw them as it were at rifle’s length. In a curious way — since they were obviously accepting him at face value as a renegade acting on their side — he could identify with them. And, as a result, could the more closely and instinctively sense and appreciate the threat of their intentions. It was far from pleasant. He had enough action experience behind him to know very well that Waziristan’s hordes, thousand upon thousand of men like these, reinforced by similarly minded men right along the North-West Frontier, would have little difficulty in carving a wide swathe through the Raj, and decimating the Peshawar garrison with its women and children en route.
Jones, interrupting his mental imagery, gave him a hard nudge in the ribs. ‘Try and look happy,’ Jones urged. ‘You’re about to do yourself a bit of good, Mr. Wilshaw.’
‘Good?’ For a moment Ogilvie looked puzzled.
Jones lifted a hand and rubbed his thumb against his forefinger. ‘Oodle,’ he said softly. ‘Sponduliks. Money!’
‘I wouldn’t touch it, thank you.’
‘Yes, you will. Oh yes, you will, Mr. Wilshaw. You’ll take your share and look happy. God’s teeth, Mr. Wilshaw, do remember you’ve got a bloody job to do!’
They rumbled on, behind the flicking tail of the ruminatory bullock. Bullock speed — dead slow and stop. Soon a man came out and stood in their path, bringing them to a halt. ‘The malik,’ Jones whispered. ‘He’s the top bloke in the khel, kind of clan chief. Name of Gojun Khan.’ As he spoke, he got down nimbly from the cart. Ogilvie followed him. ‘Greetings, Gojun Khan,’ Jones said, giving an obsequious bow. ‘My visit, I think, was expected?’
‘You are welcome, seller of arms,’ Gojun Khan answered. The conversation was in Pushtu, and Ogilvie could follow it well enough — well enough to recognize the note of contempt in the tribal leader’s voice. He was a tall man, and leanly hard, and he was expressing the warrior’s contempt for the traitor and the tradesman with his body as well as with his voice. It was the same the world over, black or brown or white, the warrior talked with the warrior and despised all other manner of men. Then Gojun Khan’s cool gaze flicked like a lash over Ogilvie. ‘This man — who is he?’
‘Rumour has not flown ahead of us, Gojun Khan?’
The man smiled briefly, a mere flash of very white teeth in the dark, close face. ‘What reaches ahead of you is my concern, seller of arms. I have asked a question, and you have not answered it.’
‘I am sorry,’ Jones said. ‘This man, Mr. Wilshaw, is my new assistant who will shortly take over my territory — I’m retiring, you see. Going home at last, for good.’ He sweated, and glanced at Ogilvie. When Ogilvie, standing straight and still, did not move, Jones, with an edge to his voice, said in English, ‘Come, Mr. Wilshaw, Gojun Khan is a good customer.’
He had said ‘customer’ in a meaningful way. Ogilvie, unused as he was to dealing with ‘customers’ and not fully realizing the magic of the very word to all engaged in selling, be it manufacturing, wholesale, retail or tuppenny market stall, yet took in what it was his current superior was telling him to do. With as good a grace as he could muster, he did it. He bowed to Gojun Khan, seeing as he did so the man’s contemptuous face as a target for a British bullet, his body as good exercise for the cut of a claymore. Using every effort of his will, Ernest Wilshaw then predominated and Captain James Ogilvie of the Queen’s Own Royal Strathspeys, Her Majesty’s 114th Highland Regiment of Foot, was sunk without trace — though not without a few backward glances at a long family tradition of military service to the British Crown in the whole course of which an Ogilvie had never bowed his head to any man save the King of England always — since 1603 — and God on Sundays; let alone to a native whose black arse, he thought with a sudden savagery which was totally unlike him normally, had been specifically provided by God for kicking practice. Having bowed, he felt physically sick.
Gojun Khan merely said, ‘You also are welcome, assistant seller of arms,’ and beneath Ernest Wilshaw’s veneer, Ogilvie Sahib squirmed. After this the tribal leader turned his full attention to Mr. Jones, who moved to the back of the bullock-cart and demanded Mr.
Wilshaw’s immediate assistance in the unloading. Ogilvie brought out case after case of dismantled machine guns and rifles, box after box of British ammunition which he was told to stack beneath the shade of some trees. He worked hard, and as he worked he became more and more aware of the smell of the village, which stank to heaven of dried urine and human excreta and foul cooking smells coming from the dilapidated huts. Gojun Khan’s disdainful eyes flickered hungrily over the stock, counting Mr. Jones’s offerings, warily assessing a price in his mind. Along the route Mr. Jones had explained to Ogilvie that he never brought a vast quantity of arms at any one time, no more did any of his professional colleagues. ‘No question of travelling with some bloody great caravan,’ he had said, ‘even though small deliveries tend to up the overheads and cut the margins. Oh, no, Mr. Wilshaw, never a big delivery.’
‘Why’s that?’ Ogilvie had asked in his innocence.
Jones had laughed heartily. ‘Because I value my skin. Give the bastards just a small consignment, and they want to see you back again with more. Give ‘em enough to mount a campaign, and you’re a dead duck. Works out cheaper for ‘em that way. You don’t pay dead men, Mr. Wilshaw.’
Ogilvie remembered that as he saw Gojun Khan’s glance rest for a lingering moment on Jones’s back. As he looked at the arms salesman, Gojun was fingering a long, thin knife thrust into a dirty sash at his waist. It was fairly obvious that Mr. Jones’s life hung on a promise — a promise of a couple of hundred or so rifles next time; a time that henceforth would lie within the supply capabilities of Mr. Wilshaw (but only so long as the prudently forward-looking Mr. Jones was allowed to make his unmolested way back into British India, by which Mr. Jones, who had explained this also to his new assistant, meant, course, British held India.)
Once the stock was unloaded, there was some haggling over the price. Eventually Jones agreed, with a show of reluctance, to twenty thousand rupees for some seventy-five percent of his cargo, a rapacious demand for what Jones himself had called a load of junk; and this sum was handed over in hefty bags of cash which, except for one which he handed to Ogilvie with the words ‘Cumshaw, Mr. Wilshaw,’ Jones hung on hooks attached to a leather belt around his waist. Then he said he and his assistant would be grateful for food and lodging for the night, a request to which Gojun Khan acceded; and announced that he wished to discuss future supplies of arms after the two salesmen had eaten and refreshed themselves.
‘We are at your service, Gojun Khan,’ Jones said, and gave Ogilvie one of his meaningful glances. ‘Since it will be the last time I’ll have the pleasure myself, I’ll look forward to a good talk with you.’
When the khel leader had turned away the man from Birmingham took Ogilvie’s arm and led him into the lee of the bullock-cart, speaking into his ear. ‘Tonight’s the time you lay your ground-work, Mr. Wilshaw,’ he said. ‘You get yourself into Gojun’s good books, and believe me, you’re half-way home. The Pathans are like that, see. It’s melmastia — hospitality — partly. They’re hot on melmastia, Mr. Wilshaw. Means a lot to them. The stranger within the gates — you know what I mean. Can’t do enough for you, once you’re trusted. Get along with Gojun, and believe me, the word’ll spread fast. It’s largely up to you, but I’ll be putting in all the help I can, of course.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t worry about the thanks,’ Jones said with a chuckle. ‘Do you know, Mr. Wilshaw, there’s times when I’ve hated my job. Bloody detested it, and myself for doing it — but I’ve already talked enough about why I’ve done it. The thing is...well, don’t you see, I’m getting a bit of my own back now as well as doing something to right a wrong. Atone’s the word for that, I s’pose. Revenge is nice, too!’
‘Badal?’
‘Ah, badal!’ Jones chuckled again. Pay ‘em off in their own coin, like. So don’t you worry your head about me, or about feeling grateful for what I do to help. Just keep your mind right on the job, and learn to live the part. The key-word is authenticity and convincement, see? And just to aid that, we’ll have a repeat tonight of our little disagreement earlier, like I said before. That’ll scotch any possible feeling these lads may have — and myself I don’t think they have — that you got laid out for a purpose. All right?’
Ogilvie nodded. ‘I’m in your hands still, Mr. Jones.’
Jones clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Well said, Mr. Wilshaw. Take advantage of those hands while you can. Tomorrow, you’ll be on your own. I’m coming with you to just one more village, and that’s the lot. I’ve another customer waiting for the rest of the stock, which is by way of being bespoke. From then on, your job is to fix up contracts.’
They walked slowly back towards the clustered huts of the villagers, the target for many curious eyes, and a few discreet smiles from the women, the younger ones among them seeming interested in Ogilvie’s tall, tanned figure. His own thoughts being elsewhere he noted them with no more than half an eye, but registered that there were some beauties among them, with very desirable forms, girls who, little more than children now, would all too soon swell and droop into the ungainly replicas of their mothers, and whose hair, now soft and fine, would straggle into the matted, sleazy, smelly coverings of those older women. As he and Jones walked along, a man came up and directed them to a broken-down hut on the village outskirts, a hut now empty but for a frugal meal of maize and a handful of unappetizing roots, together with a pitcher of goats’ milk, sour and horrible.
Jones laughed at the sight of Ogilvie’s face. ‘You’ll have to get used to it,’ he warned. ‘You’ll be glad enough of it after a week or so. Our own rations won’t last forever, which is why I asked old Gojun to help out. Tuck in, Mr. Wilshaw!’ He rubbed his hands together hard, as if dredging up an unwilling appetite from the depths. ‘At least it’s nourishing.’
*
Gojun Khan, though every inch a warrior and a man of an innate dignity, was no cleaner than his tribesmen, and his hut stank of a lack of washing water. He sat cross-legged on a filthy mat, and behind him, while he talked with his arms suppliers, two of his wives sat, women as unclean as himself, and with half visible, sagging breasts that were no more than flaccid pouches of empty skin whose nipples fell slackly into the tops of their filthy garments. These women bickered together in low but sharp voices until bidden by their master to be silent; after which they contented themselves with mutually venomous glances.
‘Continue with your story, arms salesman,’ Gojun Khan said when he had dealt with his womenfolk. ‘Why are you leaving us to this beardless young man?’ His dark eyes flicked towards Ogilvie.
Jones said, ‘Gojun Khan, it is because I am not so young as I was and I am tired, and I wish to stay in my own land with my own family. For me, the fight is done.’
The native gave a brief nod. ‘I understand this, but I think that when the fighting is done, then the man also is done. I shall fight to my death. Assistant arms salesman, are you a man of spirit?’
‘I think so, Gojun Khan,’ Ogilvie answered.
‘You do not look like your superior,’ Gojun Khan said ruminatively, stroking his beard. ‘Why do you sell arms to your country’s enemies?’
‘I need to make a living,’ Ogilvie answered carefully. ‘I am doing nothing wrong in the eyes of the law. My company is permitted to sell its products wherever a market can be found, Gojun Khan.’ He added, ‘It is not for me to inquire what my customers do with what they buy. That is their own concern.’
‘So you ask no questions, assistant seller of arms?’
‘None.’
‘Yet as an intelligent man, as intelligent as your superior, you must surely ask questions of yourself?’
Ogilvie hesitated. ‘Perhaps, Gojun Khan. Perhaps.’
‘And what are these questions, and the answers you give yourself?’
Steadily Ogilvie gave the obvious answer: ‘I ask myself if the weapons we supply may from time to time be used against the British. And then I give myself this answer, Gojun Khan: what the eye does
not see, the heart does not grieve over.’
‘This is a saying of your country?’
‘Yes.’
‘A strange race, the British. Yet this outlook I have observed before, many times. The British like to be assured of what they wish to believe, and are able to pretend to themselves that the unacceptable does not exist. Like the ostrich, with its head in the sand, they are safe from what they cannot see. A strange thing, and unaccountable to a Pathan such as myself. But it takes many breeds to people the earth.’ Gojun Khan was silent for a while, then he spoke to Mr. Jones. ‘When you leave us, seller of arms, with no wish to return again, what will happen to you?’
Jones shrugged. ‘Nothing. I’ll take a ship home to Brum, and draw the company’s pay-off. I’ve made enough money to live on, Gojun Khan.’
‘You will need no addition to this money?’
Jones gave a sly smile. ‘Gojun Khan, I am wise enough to guess your thoughts. You are thinking that during my travels along the Frontier, and here in Waziristan, I have picked up many secrets. I have — that’s true, dead true. But I’ll not be telling them to the authorities, Gojun Khan. That way leads to trouble. You’ve rightly said that the British prefer not to see...but when they have seen, they grow angry and they act. Like Mr. Wilshaw, I have done nothing against the letter of the law...but the spirit, now that’s a different thing! My countrymen are not so different from yours, Gojun Khan, when it comes to badal. There would be reprisals against me...we in the profession never, never talk about our work — and in addition to that, we have our colleagues to consider. If one of us did as you suggest, Gojun Khan, how welcome would the others be in the Frontier villages in the future?’
Gojun Khan grinned. ‘Not welcome, seller of arms.’
‘What would happen to them?’
The malik grinned again and, wordlessly, drew a finger across his throat.
‘Well, exactly!’ Mr. Jones said amiably. ‘And if I were responsible for one of my colleagues getting the chop like that, well, I’d find a reception committee waiting for me when I got back home to Brum, wouldn’t I? But don’t forget something else, Gojun Khan.’
Soldier of the Raj Page 8
