Hart of Empire (4 page)

Salisbury frowned at the irregularity of the request, but he knew Beaconsfield well enough to grasp when he was being asked and when he was being told. 'I'm sure that could be arranged, Prime Minister, but I'd like to add a caveat of my own - that we pay the two thousand pounds if Captain Hart's mission is successful and he returns to this country with the cloak intact.'

'Will that satisfy you, Hart?' Beaconsfield asked.

'It sounds fair.'

'Excellent.' Beaconsfield rose stiffly from his chair. 'Now I must be getting back to Number Ten. It's late.'

'I must go too,' said Salisbury.

George stood to shake hands. 'Good luck in Afghanistan, Hart,' said Beaconsfield.

'I'll second that,' added Salisbury, 'but remember this. Officially the government knows nothing of your mission. If anything goes wrong you're on your own. Is that understood?'

'Yes, my lord.'

'Very well. You'll be briefed tomorrow at the Foreign Office, nine sharp.'

As the door closed on the departing politicians, the duke turned to George. 'You've made the right decision, Hart. You wouldn't have enjoyed serving under that pretentious snob Wolseley who, had it been up to me, would never have been appointed. I wanted Napier, but the Cabinet said he was too old and that only Wolseley would do. Bloody fools! What do they know of military affairs?'

George was surprised that the duke was prepared to criticize openly the two men who had just left his house.

'Oh, make no mistake,' continued the duke, 'I admire Dizzy and his set as politicians, and would see them in government before any of the ghastly alternatives, particularly that old prig Gladstone. They, at least, act in the best interests of the service and the Empire. And Dizzy clearly has a high opinion of you or he wouldn't have asked you to undertake such an important mission. But enough of that. You should be getting along, too. Before you go, though, I have a favour to ask.'

'Your Royal Highness?'

'It's . . . a personal matter,' said the duke, colouring slightly. 'You'll be travelling to Afghanistan incognito, and not in any official capacity, but if you cross paths with my son Major Harry FitzGeorge, who's serving on General Roberts's staff, could you somehow encourage him to write more frequently to his mother? An odd request, I know, but she worries.'

'Of course,' said George, with a smile. 'All mothers do.'

'Yes, but some have more reason than others. With Harry and his brothers, it's one scrape after another,' said the duke, shaking his head. 'I imagined the military life would straighten them out, but it hasn't made a blind bit of difference. They're constantly in debt and I've lost count of the times I've had to pay off their creditors. If they had been anyone else's sons they'd have been cashiered years ago. But I'm convinced Harry in particular has good in him, and not a little aptitude for soldiering - lately he has shown signs of having put behind him the wildness of his youth. Why, only last week I received a letter from General Roberts complimenting Harry on his excellent intelligence work during the recent war. Naturally his mother is delighted.'

George could not imagine why the duke was talking so freely about his errant sons. 'If we do meet I'll do my best to carry out your request, sir, though I won't be at liberty to repeat this conversation.'

'No, of course not,' said the duke, his head cocked to one side. 'But I'm grateful to you for trying, and wish you the best of luck in Afghanistan. I once met an officer who was on the retreat in forty-two. He wouldn't talk about the horrors of the march, but he did say the Afghans were easily the toughest, most treacherous and pitiless foe he'd had the misfortune to encounter. So my advice is, expect the worst and trust no one. Oh, and one more thing, Captain. You may not agree with everything we're trying to achieve in Afghanistan, but remember where your loyalties lie.'

George was already nervous about the mission, and this was not the pep talk he had hoped for. But the duke's sentiments were genuine, and he marvelled again at the contrast between the public's perception of him as a cold, unimaginative bureaucrat and the warm-hearted family man before him. 'I'll endeavour to remember that, sir,' he said.

Chapter 3

Off Karachi, Sind province, midsummer 1879

The sun was setting as George got his first glimpse of British India from the poop-deck of the steamer
Windsor Castle
: a barren shoreline of low hills and stunted shrubs, soon giving way to the hustle and bustle of a working port as the ship approached Karachi, the capital of Sind and the nearest British-controlled port to Afghanistan.

It had taken just twenty-five days to cover the six thousand nautical miles that separated Karachi from Gravesend, though the sweltering weather and snail's pace through the Suez Canal had replicated the tedium of his earlier voyage to South Africa. This time he had kept to himself, exchanging the barest pleasantries with his fellow first-class passengers, the usual mix of army officers, civilian officials, businessmen and their families to be found on any passage to India. To anyone who enquired, he gave his name as James Harper, an employee of the Anglo-Indian Trading Company who was keen to investigate new opportunities in Afghanistan made possible by the recent treaty.

To back his cover, the Foreign Office had provided him with a false passport and a letter of introduction from the company chairman to the Amir of Kabul. He also carried with him a money-belt, containing sixty gold sovereigns, and a brand new six-shot Adams revolver. He regretted the loss of his grandfather's Colt at Rorke's Drift, but this weapon had the advantage of an extra shot and, because it did not need firing caps, was easier to reload.

George had spent much of the trip reading up on the history of Afghanistan, its people, customs and language. He now knew the country to be a largely roadless tract of grey-green mountains and dusty deserts, yet its strategic position astride the route from Persia and central Asia to India meant it had been fought over and traded through for thousands of years. Many of history's great conquerors - the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan - had passed through Afghanistan on their way to India. More recently the British had tramped in the opposite direction in the hope of bringing the Afghans to heel.

The chief obstacle to control, George discovered, was that Afghanistan was so ethnically diverse, with a multitude of races and nationalities, each with rival interests and antagonistic ambitions. In the south and east were the Pashto-speaking Pathans, descendants of the original Afghans from Syria, transplanted to the country in the time of Nebuchadnezzar; further north, beyond the Hindu Kush, lived Mongol-looking Hazaras, Turkic-featured Uzbeks and their neighbours the Tajiks, and to the west, in the mountain fastness of Nuristan, a tall people with fair hair, blue eyes and freckles.

Since 1740 the country had been nominally ruled by the shahs and amirs of Kabul, members of the Sadozai and Barakzai tribes of Pathans, but rarely had they established complete control. The exception was Dost Mahomed, scourge of the British and grandfather of the current ruler, who had died in 1863, thus ushering in a new era of internecine strife. The only thing Afghans seemed to have in common was the Muhammadan religion.

The more George had read about the Pathans - whose honour code, the
pashtunwali
, guaranteed life to friends and death to strangers - the less confident he had become that he would leave Afghanistan in one piece. To have any chance of survival, much less of carrying out his mission, he knew he needed a guide he could trust, and determined to find one at the earliest opportunity. But first he would have to acclimatise to the heat of the sub-continent which, though past its hot-season worst, was still severe enough to discourage most Europeans from venturing out between the hours of ten and two.

Fortunately it was early evening, with a light breeze cooling the deck, as the
Windsor Castle
passed slowly between Shark Island and the breakwater, coming to a halt in Karachi harbour off the wharfs of Kiamari Island. No sooner had the anchors dropped than the ship was surrounded by a swarm of native boats, their turbaned skippers loudly hawking their services as they fended the competition away. George watched with amusement as an aggrieved captain boarded his rival's boat and pushed the occupant overboard. The sodden victim took it in good part and, back on his vessel, continued searching for passengers to take to shore. George admired the fellow's stoicism and, having fetched his valise from his cabin and said goodbye to the ship's captain, he climbed down the rope-ladder, called the man to him and leapt aboard.

They agreed the extortionate fare of four annas - the equivalent of sixpence, more than most boatmen would earn in a day - and George was soon ashore and striding up the wharf towards the village of Kiamari where a second riot ensued as pairs of palanquin-wallahs vied for his custom. He selected the sturdiest duo he could find and, climbing inside the covered rickety litter, told them to head for the Hotel Metropole on Frere Road; a fellow traveller had assured him it was the best in town. The pair hoisted the litter to waist level and set off at a trot. Their route took them down Napier mole - named after Sir Charles Napier, who had conquered Sind in 1843 - past the Customs House and on up Bunder Road, the dividing line in Karachi between the narrow, people- and refuse-choked streets of the native town and the broader, tree-lined avenues and spacious bungalows of the European quarter. Bunder Road itself was something of a hybrid with its tall two- and three-storey public buildings, stores and hotels in the Indo-Gothic and Anglo-Mughal styles so beloved of the post-Mutiny period.

George had read of this, but nothing could have prepared him for the towering grandeur of the Metropole: set in its own lush gardens, three storeys high and as wide as a country mansion, it was distinctively Indian, with its Mughal arches, minarets and cupolas. Having paid off the palanquin, he gazed up in awe at the scale and splendour of the place. 'Welcome to the Metropole,
huzoor
,' said a voice to his left.

He swung round to see the smiling, bearded face of a turbaned doorman, six feet six if he was an inch, his smart white tunic, or
kurta
, and pyjama trousers held in place with a broad red sash. 'Thank you,' said George, as he entered the hotel's large vaulted lobby, his boots ringing on the polished marble floor.

George spent the next few days getting used to the heat and humidity, buying supplies and planning his route north. The quickest option was rail, a branch line between Karachi and Multan, eight hundred miles distant, having opened the year before. But George knew that if his mission was to have any chance of success he needed to learn Pashto, the language spoken in most of southern and central Afghanistan, which would take time. He decided to journey by train as far as Kotri, ten hours away, then continue up the Indus river by steamer, a more comfortable and leisurely means of travel.

He still required a tutor, and it dawned on him that if he could find a guide-cum-bodyguard who could also teach him the language he could kill three birds with the same stone. His initial enquiries drew a blank, until he overheard a comment by one porter to a colleague on his first day in the job: 'Work hard and you should do well. The food is good and the tips are the best in Karachi. But don't forget to give ten per cent of your pay, tips included, to Ilderim Khan,' he said, pointing to the giant doorkeeper.

'And if I don't?' asked the newcomer.

'You may not live to regret it. Ilderim's a Pathan from beyond the Khyber.'

He'd be ideal, thought George, who knew that the Khyber Pass led directly to Kabul, and that its tribesmen were among the fiercest in Afghanistan. It did not occur to him to ask why a member of such a proud race was employed as a humble doorkeeper, but Ilderim provided the answer anyway. 'Yes,
huzoor
,' he replied, to George's simple enquiry, 'I was born in the Khyber but I left twenty years ago to join the Corps of Guides.'

George had been at Sandhurst with a young subaltern destined for the Guides, and knew of the regiment's reputation as the finest in the sub-continent. Any young Indian soldier from the North West Frontier of the Punjab would have given his eye teeth to serve with it, hence the presence in the regiment of Pathans, Punjabi Muslims and Sikhs. But an Afghan recruit, George knew, would have been regarded by his people as a traitor. 'Why the Guides? Why not an Afghan regiment?'

Ilderim's brow darkened. 'If you'd seen the Afghan Army,
huzoor
, you wouldn't ask such a question. Its soldiers are a rabble, low-born, half trained and undisciplined. The Guides are different. I first heard of them from a cousin who was born near Peshawar and joined the corps in forty-six when it was raised to protect the frontier. On the few times I met him at family gatherings, he'd fill my young head with tales of the Guides' exploits during the Mutiny, particularly the legendary march from the Punjab to Delhi when the infantry covered almost six hundred miles in just twenty-two days. I could hardly wait until I was eighteen and old enough to enlist.'