The Pulse of Danger

While they ate, Marquis and Eve left them alone. Nimchu and the other porters had now returned to camp with the leopard and the gooral. Tsering came out of his kitchen tent with a long knife that he sharpened on a stone. He stopped once, to look up at the Chinese general; he ran the blade along his thumb, then looked at Nimchu. The latter shook his head; and Tsering shrugged like a disappointed man. Then he set to work on the two carcasses, skinning them with the practised hand of a man who had been doing this since he was a child. As he slit the throat of the leopard, he glanced once more up at the Chinese; he grinned and committed murder by proxy. Nimchu and the other porters had cast curious, hostile glances up at the two strangers outside the kitchen tent, but then they had gone back to work digging up plants from the garden. Marquis, who hadn’t seen Tsering’s gestures, looked down at Nimchu and the others, wondering what they thought of these invaders.

‘I’d like to keep the leopard skin,’ Eve said. ‘It would make a nice handbag.’

‘Too many holes in it. He put about five bullets into it. He’s a handy man with that Sten gun. It wasn’t an easy shot. I mean, if he wanted to miss me.’

‘You’re lucky he is handy with it.’ She looked down at the leopard, now almost divested of its skin, and shuddered. The bloody carcass could have been Jack’s. ‘He could have killed you, darling.’

He nodded, not wanting to disturb her further by telling her how close he had come to death. He had not yet thanked the Indian for saving his life, but he wanted to do it when and if he had a moment alone with him. For some reason he could not name, he did not want to thank Singh in front of the Chinese. He remembered something he had read: that the victors should never acknowledge their indebtedness to each other in front of the defeated enemy: it was a sign of weakness and at once gave the enemy hope for revenge. It was probably a Roman or a Chinese or a Frenchman who had written it; the English and the Americans were too sentimental about their enemies once they were defeated; and it could not have been a Russian or a German, he found them unreadable. And it could not have been an Irishman or an Australian: whenever they won anything, they then started a fight amongst themselves.

He looked up towards the kitchen tent at the two men, the tall Indian and the thickset Chinese each ignoring the other as he ate, each self-contained in a sort of national arrogance.

Then he looked down at the leopard, grudgingly admiring the dead beast. Its long tail, so beautiful when the animal was alive, now lay like a coil of frayed rope on the grass; the skin, no longer living, already looked as if it had lost its sheen. The head was still attached to the body and now the skin had been peeled away he could see the amazing muscular development of the neck, thick as that of some tigresses he had seen, even though the tigresses must have been at least twice the weight of this graceful beast. The leopard would have torn him to pieces before he could have cleared his eyes of the tears that had blinded him.

‘What actually happened?’ Eve asked; and when he told her she said, ‘That wouldn’t happen back in Kensington.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. The Jaguars on Cromwell Road are just as lethal.’

He’s dodging the argument again, she thought; but before she could say anything Wilkins and the Brecks were coming across the bridge.

‘We heard some shots. Didn’t sound like rifle shots—’ Then they all looked across at the kitchen tent and saw the two strangers. It was Tom Breck who said, ‘Soldiers? Up here?’

‘Whatever happened to Bhutan’s neutrality?’ said Wilkins, slipping his sarcasm out of its sheath for a moment.

Marquis glanced at him, and Eve prepared herself for a sharp exchange between the two men. She saw Jack’s eyes darken as they always did when temper gripped him; he had the Irish weakness of wearing his emotions on his face. Then he turned away, casually, and said, ‘Let’s find out.’

He led the way up to the kitchen tent. He introduced Wilkins and the Brecks, then he sat down at the head of the table and looked at the Indian. ‘Now maybe you’d better put us in the picture, Colonel.’ He kept the note of worry out of his voice and hoped that his expression was equally bland. ‘If our camp is going to be turned into a battleground, we’d like to get to hell out of it.’

‘Of course.’ Singh leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs; unshaven, unwashed, he still carried an air of authority with him. And an air of something else, Marquis thought. An out-of-date peacock pride? A demolished splendour? Marquis couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He had the feeling that he was looking at a ghost that was only too substantial, that mocked its own grave. The Taj Mahal could have been turned into a bowling alley, but this man would still go there.

Singh took the cigarette Wilkins offered him, lit it and drew on it with relish. Wilkins offered the packet to the Chinese, but the latter shook his head. Singh blew out smoke, then looked at the cigarette between his long elegant fingers. ‘Ah, Benson and Hedges. Jolly good.’

‘My last packet.’ They were Wilkins’s one snob symbol: he couldn’t afford the Savile Row suit, the Aston Martin. He had bought a dozen cartons just before leaving London and had severely rationed himself to a certain number of cigarettes a day. It was the story of Lis life: even his snobbery had to be on the bargain-rate level.

‘I used to smoke them when I was at Oxford. Before the war they used to make a special cigarette for my father. He was very particular about his pleasures. Pleasure, he used to say, was the foretaste of Heaven. He had sixty wives, including my dear mother. He expected a very special Heaven, too, I’m afraid.’ Singh looked at Marquis. ‘You don’t smoke, old chap?’

‘My husband is afraid of lung cancer,’ said Eve, drawing on her own cigarette. ‘He doesn’t believe in hastening towards Heaven.’

‘It is a pity all pleasures have their price. Or don’t you agree, Mr. Marquis?’

Marquis saw the Chinese flick a quick glance at the Indian, then the almond eyes were still again, staring down at the bound hands resting on the table in front of him. The inscrutable bloody Orient was not as inscrutable as it thought: behind the impassive face Marquis had glimpsed a mind that was lively and (or was he wrong?) even optimistic. He jerked a thumb at the Chinese. ‘Does he speak English?’

‘I don’t know, old chap. I’ve been chatting to him for almost eighteen hours now, but I haven’t got a word out of him. Later on, when I feel a little stronger, I’ll have a real chin-wag with him.’ There was no mistaking his meaning. He stared at the Chinese, his dark face turning to wood; for all his educated accent and his out-of-date schoolboy slang, Singh looked to Marquis as if he could be as cruel and direct as any wild tribesman of the Indian hills. He had been brought up on pig-sticking; he could turn the lance to other uses. Then abruptly Singh seemed to remember the others, and he looked back at them and smiled. ‘But to put you in the picture. I’m afraid it is not a jolly one.’

‘I knew it,’ said Wilkins, but he might just as well have not spoken for all the notice the others took of him. They all leaned forward, concerned with what Singh might have to tell them. Marquis saw the eyes of the Chinese shine for a moment, but the muscles of the face remained fixed. But the eyes had given Li Bu-fang away: he was laughing at them.

‘These chaps,’ Singh nodded at Li Bu-fang, ‘have set up some posts right across the border here in Bhutan. At least three, possibly more. Border posts with quite a large number of men manning them. Fifty or sixty men to a post. They’re building up for something.’

‘Invasion,’ said Nancy, and put on her glasses to look at the Chinese with an expression that startled Eve with its intensity.

‘That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here,’ said Marquis.

The Indian’s face stiffened again, as it had when he had looked at the Chinese a moment ago. He looked obliquely at Marquis, seeming to recognise for the first time that he was not really wanted here. At the same time it became obvious to Marquis that Singh was a man who expected to be welcomed wherever he went. Not the expectation of a man looking for popularity, like a politician or pop singer on the make, but that of a man accustomed to being welcomed. You’re not only in the wrong country, Marquis thought, you’re in the wrong century.

‘No, it doesn’t, does it? Do I have to explain to you, Mr. Marquis?’

Everyone looked at Marquis, embarrassed by the sudden tension between the two men. Even the Chinese looked up for a moment, then his gaze quickly slid back to his hands. Marquis knew then that Li Bu-fang could speak English and he wondered for a moment if he should continue this discussion, which could become an argument, in front of the Chinese. Then he mentally shrugged: the man was the Indian’s prisoner and the latter’s concern.

‘You are in my camp, Colonel. Foreign military men in uniform are prohibited visitors to this country – I’m sure you know that as well as I do, and that it applies to Indians as much as Chinese. I could get it in the neck for harbouring you. That’s why I think I’m entitled to an explanation.’

Eve hesitated, then she said, ‘I think my husband is right.’

Singh looked about the table, at Wilkins and the Brecks, who nodded their agreement; then he looked back at Marquis. ‘I was – I am the commander of a battalion that has been doing border duty in the North-East Frontier Agency for the past two months. A week ago we were overrun by a brigade of Chinese. I escaped with some of my men, eighteen to be exact—’ He spoke directly to Marquis, as if the latter was the one he felt might judge him too harshly: cowardice was a disease of lesser men. ‘I did not run away, Mr. Marquis. It was the circumstances of the fighting in the mountains that I was one of those who were cut off.’

‘I’m not criticising you, Colonel,’ Marquis said quietly. ‘Go on.’

Singh hesitated, then he went on: ‘Our only way of escape was west over the mountains into Bhutan. Yesterday morning we came upon the first of the Chinese border posts, well inside the border. We managed to avoid them, but unfortunately we then ran into a second post. We had quite a scrap, didn’t we, old chap?’

Li Bu-fang took no notice. He could have been a man waiting on a railway station for a train that he knew was bound to come; Singh and the others were passengers without tickets, strangers who didn’t interest him. There was a monotony about his indifference that was beginning to irritate Marquis: the latter looked back at Singh with a little more sympathy.

‘All my men were killed, but we managed to kill most of the enemy – those we didn’t kill took to the hills, as the saying has it.’ He glanced up at the towering mountains to the north. ‘That left my friend and me facing each other, the two most senior men of the little battle. A survival of the most fitting, as you might say. I took him prisoner. I’m beginning to wish he had volunteered for suicide. He is a damn’ nuisance, you know.’

‘Why didn’t you let him make for the hills?’ Breck asked.

‘He is a general, Mr. – Breck? How often does one capture a general? Especially a Chinese general.’

‘How do you know he’s a general?’ Wilkins said. ‘He has no badges of rank.’

Singh smiled and looked at Li Bu-fang. ‘I asked him his rank. Didn’t I, old chap?’ The Chinese lifted his head a little and Marquis saw the mark on his throat, as if a cord or something had been tightened round it. ‘I told you I wished he had preferred suicide. But he didn’t. The Chinese are supposed to be awfully fatalistic about dying, but not this chappie. I think the Communists are much more realistic and practical. Since they don’t believe in Heaven, a dead comrade is a – shall we say a dead loss?’ He smiled around at them; he was proud of his English colloquialisms; the years at Oxford hadn’t been wasted. ‘When I tried a little persuasion, he told me what I wanted to know. Then I found some papers—’ He stopped as Nancy leaned forward.

‘Did he tell you in English?’ Nancy looked at the Chinese with new interest.

‘No, Hindi. He doesn’t speak it awfully well, but he does speak it. A good general should always have at least one other language, eh, old chap? Comes in handy for surrendering.’

‘He speaks English, too, I’ll bet,’ said Marquis.

‘I’m sure he does.’ The Chinese remained staring down at his hands. He was not sullen; he looked more like a man who felt he was alone. Singh shook his head, then turned back to Marquis and the others. ‘I am taking him back to India, to my headquarters. He is all I have to offer in return for the men I have lost this past week.’ He paused for a moment and his face clouded. He put his fingers to his forehead and bowed his head slightly as if in prayer. Then he went on: ‘The battalion was not at full strength up there on the border, but I have lost something like three hundred men. Men who were my children. Some of them were descendants of families who have worked for my family for generations. My batman, for instance. His father had been personal servant to my father, and his father served my grandfather.’ He noticed their polite looks of curiosity. ‘I am the Kumar Sawai Dalpat Singh. My father was the Maharajah of Samarand. It means nothing to you gentlemen? Ladies?’ He looked disappointed, then he shrugged. ‘Samarand was a princedom that no longer exists. When India became independent, my father’s state was absorbed. A democracy cannot afford princes. A pity, don’t you think?’

‘I think so,’ said Eve.

‘You would,’ said Marquis without rancour.

‘My husband is a socialist and a republican.’ Then Eve looked with surprise at the Chinese, who had grinned suddenly. ‘What’s so funny?’

Li Bu-fang bowed his head slightly to Marquis. He had an attractive smile, one that completely changed his face. ‘I am pleased to meet a fellow socialist.’ He had a soft pleasant voice, the sibilants hissing a little.

‘Up the workers!’ said Tom Breck, grinning.

‘I’m not your sort,’ Marquis said to Li Bu-fang. ‘Alongside you, I’m a right-wing reactionary, a joker who wouldn’t shake hands with a left-handed archbishop. I’m not a canvasser in your cause, mate.’ He looked back at Singh. ‘But I don’t vote for princes, either. Now where do you go from here?’