The Pulse of Danger

Singh seemed to be considering the remark about princes. Then once again he shrugged: even in the days of princes, no one had ever voted for them. ‘The easiest course would be to head for Thimbu, the capital, and hope the authorities there would allow me to smuggle him out over the new motor road. But they may not allow that—’

‘I wouldn’t blame them.’

Singh nodded. ‘Neither should I. No one can blame them if they don’t want to antagonise the Chinese, give them an excuse for invasion. One man, even a general, may seem an insignificant excuse for an invasion, but I don’t think the Chinese want much more. They could soon twist it into something that made very good propaganda. No, I think I shall have to by-pass Thimbu.’ He turned round in his chair and looked over his shoulder at the steep hill that blocked out the view to the south-east. ‘That’s the way I’ll have to go.’

‘Take him all that way on your own?’ Nancy’s voice cracked with incredulity. ‘It must be nearly a hundred miles into India – as the crow flies, that is. And you won’t be following the crow. You’ll be climbing up and down mountains all the way.’

Singh nodded and looked at Li Bu-fang. ‘Do you think we’ll make it, old chap?’

Li Bu-fang grinned, suddenly enjoying himself: the battle hadn’t finished back there in the mountains, it was only just beginning. ‘I assure you you won’t, Colonel.’

2

Late that afternoon Singh came to see Marquis. All through the day there had been a growing air of tension throughout the camp: the Indian and the Chinese were the eye of a storm that had yet to break. The Bhutanese porters had stopped their laughter and their games; as they worked they stared up at the camp where Singh and Li Bu-fang sat outside the kitchen tent, all their innocence now gone behind a mask that was frightening because it was unreadable. Even the Brecks had fallen silent; Nancy, uncertain of herself, now looked as vulnerable as Tom. Wilkins made no attempt to disguise what he felt: once, as he passed Singh, he called out, ‘When are you leaving, Colonel?’ and passed on before the Indian could answer: it was not a question but a suggestion, as frank and blunt as a Yorkshire question could be. Eve busied herself about the camp, trying to hide the elation she felt: she knew with the newcomers’ advent, Jack would have to think seriously about breaking camp and beginning the journey home.

As Singh came down towards him, Marquis looked up from the note-book in which he was entering the particulars of the plants now being readied to be taken back to England. Half the garden had been dug up and the stack of polythene bags had already reached a formidable size; Marquis had begun to wonder if he would need to hire more porters to carry out the collection. That would mean asking Eve for more money. He had already exceeded the budget he had been allowed by the Royal Horticultural Society, the co-backers of his part of the expedition. But he knew he would force himself to ask Eve: this was the greatest collection of plants he had ever achieved, and he would be damned if he’d leave any of it behind.

‘Marquis, I want a word with you.’

Marquis closed his note-book, stood up slowly, dismissed Nimchu and the other porters who had been working in the garden, then turned to Singh. He did it all unhurriedly and deliberately, and when he at last looked at the Indian, the latter’s face was flushed. ‘What can I do for you?’

Singh contained his anger and forced a smile, a polite grimace that looked as if it might tear a muscle or two. ‘I’m not accustomed to being kept waiting, old chap. But then you are probably aware of that.’

‘I’d guessed it,’ said Marquis and smiled broadly. ‘But then I’m not accustomed to jumping to attention when spoken to.’

‘You’d have made a poor soldier.’

Marquis nodded good-humouredly, determined not to let the other man upset him. ‘I’d have made a poor lot of things. A poor politician, a poor diplomat’ – he grinned – ‘a poor prince, too, eh?’

Singh suddenly smiled; he was not going to stoke up an antagonism that was pointless. Occasionally, very occasionally, he regretted the arrogance he had inherited: it was a birthmark that was not always acceptable in all circles. ‘Forgive my myopia, old chap, but I’ve never been able to see Australians as princes. You might have made the grade in medieval times, but you were a little late for that.’

Marquis shook his head in wonder. ‘You must have been a pain in the neck to the British Raj, Colonel. Did they ever gaol you princes?’

‘Hardly, old chap,’ said Singh, and looked horrified at the thought.

‘A pity,’ said Marquis. ‘Well, what can I do for you?’

‘I shall be on my way first thing in the morning with our friend.’ He nodded up towards the kitchen tent where Li Bu-fang, his hands still bound, sat at the table surveying the camp activity like an early spectator waiting for the main event to begin. Tsering came out of the tent and appeared to snarl at him; but the Chinese turned away with all the disdain of an old mandarin. ‘Could you give me enough food for five days for the two of us?’

‘Five days?’

Singh smiled without opening his lips, another grimace, but this time not caused by any attitude of Marquis. ‘If we are not over the mountains in five days, old chap, then we’ll be dead somewhere up there in the snow.’

The Indian’s fatalism took what remained of the antagonism out of Marquis. He had never feared death, but he had never had to contemplate it as coldly as Singh was now doing. Suddenly he was aware of it; the air for a moment was chillingly still. He looked up towards the mountains. The last of the westering sun, already gone from this narrow valley, caught the high peaks, turning them to jagged burnished shields against the darkening eastern sky. The wind had begun to turn from the south even since this morning: a mile of wind-torn snow lay like a brass sword across the sunlit sky, stretching due west from the highest peak. ‘I don’t fancy your chances, Colonel.’

Singh shrugged. ‘What other way is there? If I went the easy way, down to Thimbu, the Bhutanese might let me go on through to India. Then again they might not. They might just throw me into prison and forget all about me. They certainly wouldn’t allow me to take my prisoner with me. The last thing they want at this moment is to be accused by the Chinese of taking sides.’

Marquis nodded. ‘I guess you’re right. But I don’t know if I can give you all the food you’re asking for. We’re short as it is—’

‘You can’t refuse Colonel Singh.’ Eve, unobserved by either man, had come down from her tent. ‘He needs the food more than we do, Jack.’

Marquis wondered if Indian princes hit their wives when the latter interfered in their husbands’ affairs; but that would be a full-time job, with sixty spouses all lined up for a marital clout. He didn’t voice the question. It was obvious that Singh was as much on Eve’s side as she was on his. I’m up against the British Raj, Marquis thought; now I know how Gandhi felt. ‘Love, I don’t dispute his need. But that will cut our own stay short—’

‘You could send Chungma and Tashi back to get supplies for us.’

He grinned, admiring her strategy: the war colleges of the world had never known what they had missed when they refused to admit women. ‘It would take too long. And I’d be without two men just when I need them most. My wife is in a hurry to leave here, Colonel.’

‘I don’t blame her, old man. It must be a lonely life up here for a woman. And uncomfortable.’

‘I don’t blame her, either,’ said Marquis, suddenly trapped into admitting what he had felt for some weeks. But he felt more than just concern for her discomfort. All at once he knew she was in danger; everyone in camp was in danger, but all his concern at this moment was for her. He looked at her and, not wanting to frighten her, disguised his anxiety with a wink. She smiled at him, a little puzzled by his sudden change of attitude, but said nothing.

Marquis turned back to Singh. ‘I’ll give you the food, Colonel. And some blankets and a pup tent.’

Singh bowed his head slightly. His look of arrogant amusement suddenly went and at once he seemed to take on a new dignity. ‘There is something I did not tell you before – a reason why I must get back to India—’ He hesitated, as if wondering whether he should go ahead; then he reached into his battle tunic and took out some papers. ‘I found these in the post where’ – he faltered a moment – ‘where I lost the last of my men. A dying Chinese was trying to burn them. I killed him and took them from him. Then the general appeared out of nowhere and we had quite a bash, just the two of us.’ He touched the dried cut above his eye. ‘He seemed terribly keen that I should not read these papers. Do you read Chinese?’ Marquis and Eve shook their heads. ‘Neither do I. At Oxford I read English History. Not an awfully useful subject for this part of the world. I should have taken languages.’

‘What do you reckon they are?’ Marquis nodded at the papers.

‘I don’t know. But if the general thought they were so important, they could be battle orders or something along those lines. Whatever they are, he thought them important enough to try and kill me for them.’

‘I’m no soldier, as I told you, but why should valuable papers be kept in a forward post? Aren’t those sort of things kept well behind the lines?’

‘That’s the idea, old chap. But somehow it never seems to work. You would be surprised at the number of mistakes our side made in World War Two. And don’t forget, our friend up there is a general – it was probably one of his staff whom I caught trying to burn them. If these papers are important, I’m very happy to know that the Chinese can be just as incompetent as we. It gives one hope.’

Marquis looked up towards Li Bu-fang, who was staring down at them, his face as blank as one of the rocks that studded the bank behind him. He had the look of a man who possessed more than hope; he was a man who had faith: he wore it like another badge of rank. He turned his head and looked down the valley again. The bastard is so confident, Marquis thought; and looked down the valley himself, but saw nothing to shake his own confidence. But I’m not confident, he told himself, I’m worried; and tried to borrow some of the Chinese inscrutability.

‘If those papers are important,’ he said, ‘the Chow hasn’t yet finished with trying to kill you.’

‘No,’ said Singh. ‘But I haven’t given up the idea of killing him, either.’

‘Just don’t do it in my camp,’ said Marquis, and left Eve and Singh and went up to the porters’ tents. Nimchu saw him coming and came a few steps to met him. ‘Nimchu, I want Chungma to leave now for Sham Dzong. He’s to buy enough rice and tsampa to last us for a week, and get back here as soon as he can.’

‘Chungma is only one man, sahib. He will not be able to carry so much food himself.’

‘I know that!’ Marquis snapped, and was at once regretful of his sharpness; there was no need to work off his worry on Nimchu. He smiled, trying to take the edge off his voice: ‘Get him to hire two more porters, Nimchu, bring them back with him. We’ll need them anyway, to help us carry out the collection. Tell him to get moving at once. If he takes his finger out, he can make four or five miles before dark. I want him back in three days at the outside.’

Nimchu nodded, then shouted orders in his own language. Chungma, the youngest of the porters, short, squat, moving always in quick jerky movements like a boxer waiting for an opponent to make a move, showed no surprise at the sudden journey he had to make. He grinned cheerfully and ducked into his tent to collect what he would take with him. Marquis knew that most Bhutanese, for all their country’s isolation, were gregarious and he had noticed that over the past few weeks the porters had begun to ask when they would be returning to Thimbu. He was sure that Chungma would find a diversion or two in the three days that he would be gone.

Nimchu watched Chungma disappear into the tent, then he turned back to Marquis. He was the oldest of the porters, somewhere in his early forties, and the most travelled. The leader of a previous expedition had taken him to London as a bonus; it had been such a shock to his system that he had almost died of lack of oxygen climbing Highgate Hill. He had returned to Bhutan after only a month, shaking his head at the devastation that could be caused by civilisation. There had been similar reactions to other trips he had made, to Delhi, Calcutta, Rangoon, Singapore. An itching curiosity had drawn him to the wider world, but always he came back to this land where the mountains and the gods were one and the same. Marquis had first met him in Burma in 1950 and had used him as a porter on an expedition to the headwaters of the Irrawaddy. He had used him again in 1956 on a trip through Assam, and an affection and respect for each other had developed and still survived despite the six years’ separation between that last trip and this one. Sometimes, feeling traitorous towards Eve, Marquis felt that Nimchu was the only one with whom he had real affinity on these journeys into the wild and lonely mountains.

‘The strangers, sahib.’ Nimchu ran a finger up and down the side of his long well-shaped nose. He was a handsome man, spoiled only by his wall eye and the long scar on the cheek below it, a legacy of an encounter with a leopard. His voice was soft, that of a man used to the silences of nature; but Marquis knew that it could erupt in terrible storms of temper, and there were several lesser porters who had made the mistake of thinking Nimchu’s soft voice was a sign of weakness. ‘Are they staying with us?’

‘They are leaving in the morning, Nimchu. What do you think of them?’

Nimchu knew Marquis well enough to know that the latter wanted a frank answer; the sahib didn’t ask idle questions of his porters. ‘I do not like them in my country, sahib. I heard the news on the wireless, that China and India are fighting. We do not want them to bring the fight into our country.’

‘How do the other porters feel?’

‘The same as I, sahib.’