The Mercenaries (21 page)

Inevitably, it was Sammy who was first to greet him as he landed at Yaochow. He came slowly from where he was working over the Fokker, followed by Peter Cheng and Wang, the carpenter. After a while, Ellie appeared out of the farmhouse, followed at a distance by Fagan.

The very way Sammy walked told Ira something disastrous had happened and he knew it was connected with the machine guns and bombs he’d seen in Shanghai. Sammy never walked when he could run, and he knew that Fagan’s habit, when he was not caught in some farcical misdemeanour, was to be there first, jovial, noisy and exuberant in his welcome. The very fact that he came at a distance behind the others and didn’t hurry indicated he was unwilling to face Ira.

‘Hello, Sammy,’ Ira said as casually as he could. ‘Keep ‘em flying?’

Sammy nodded. He looked tired. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘We kept ‘em flying. The Fokker got a broken ball in one of the main races and was trying to run on a square one. We can fix it, though. And Peter Cheng’s nearly off and Tsai’s not far behind.’

His thin bony face looked strained and somehow he seemed older suddenly. ‘But if we don’t get some spares soon, Ira, we’re sunk,’ he blurted out. ‘You can’t run an aeroplane on bits of string, binding tape and bent nails.’

Ira jumped to the ground and slapped his shoulder. They’ll be up in three weeks to a month,’ he said. ‘Some of ‘em sooner. I’ve got the Avro agent behind us. They’re a bit scared of Chiang down there, I think.’

‘Well, that’s something.’ Sammy’s face brightened, then he frowned. ‘Now we can start.’

Something turned over and dropped into the pit of Ira’s stomach.

‘Start what?’ he asked.

Sammy turned and gestured at Fagan. ‘Ask him,’ he said flatly. ‘The bastard’s done it again.’

‘Done what?’

‘He hypnotises himself with his own bloody visions.’

‘Sammy!’ Ira roared. ‘For Christ’s sake, what’s happened?’

For once, Sammy stared at him mutinously and said nothing. Ira glanced at Ellie. Her expression was nervous, and he swung round as Fagan stopped in front of them, smiling, beyond redemption. Immediately, a wary expression appeared on the Irishman’s face as he saw Ira’s anger, and his eyes became shifty.

‘Let’s have it.’ Ira said ‘What’s happened?’

Fagan stopped and licked his lips before he spoke. Then he glanced at Ellie and drew a deep breath.

‘Didn’t you get the message?’ he asked. The one I sent to Kowalski.’

‘I got it. I guessed it was from you. What’s it all about?’

Fagan gestured, grinning his unconvincing clown’s grin. ‘Mafeking’s been relieved,’ he said. ‘I made a deal with the Pride of the Missionaries. I told him there was a curse on us and we’d never get his pilots trained. I suggested we stopped arsing about and did the job ourselves.’

Sammy stared at Fagan for a moment, then he turned away and walked back to the Fokker, his shoulders drooping with disgust. Fagan glanced at him and went on hurriedly, his manner nervous.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’ll be easy. Tsu’s going to increase all our salaries by fifty a month, with two hundred bonus for the balloon and four hundred for Kwei’s plane.’

He looked uneasy as Ira remained silent, then he laughed nervously. ‘An’ me with me pockets flappin’,’ he said in a high-pitched voice, ‘an’ Ellie hangin’ on to the purse strings.’

For a long time Ira said nothing, and there was an awkward silence while Fagan watched him uncertainly. Ellie stood just behind him, her eyes on Ira’s face.

Ira drew a deep slow breath, trembling with rage. ‘Did you sign anything?’ he asked.

‘Sure!’ Fagan grinned and Ira knew he was thinking he’d got away with it. ‘You’ll remember it was arranged that I could, when you weren’t around. The contracts are sound. Lao knew you and he got ‘em drawn up properly.’

‘You bloody fool!‘ Ira said in a low voice. This was never our affair. We could always stand on the sidelines and look on. This makes us part of Tsu’s army, part of his goddamned war!’

Fagan stared at him for a moment then he suddenly became angry. ‘Well, Sweet Sufferin’ J.,’ he exploded, ‘
I
’m sick to God’s green death of ferryin’ Chinks round the sky.’

Ira turned away, his brows down, his mind stiff with rage. ‘I think you’re off your bloody rocker,’ he said.

Fagan’s face grew dark, and he grabbed Ira’s arm. ‘I’m sick of circuits and bumps,’ he shouted, his temper flaring. This’ll be like the old days.’

Ira shook off his hand angrily. ‘Old days, my foot!’ he snorted. ‘In the old days, we had machines that would fly and guns that would shoot, and a whole blasted organisation behind us to back us up.’

Fagan hesitated, unnerved by Ira’s unrelenting fury, then he gestured and began to talk, fast, as though he knew he could never manage to convince. ‘God, man,’ he said. There’s money to be made, and we did this sort of thing every day in France.’

Ira was walking away now and Fagan was having to shout after him. ‘He only wants us to do what Kwei’s plane’s doing,’ he said. ‘He’ll pay well!‘

Ira showed no sign of having heard and Fagan stumbled to silence. He glanced at Ellie standing beside him, her mouth twisted with contempt.

‘Well, hell, what’s wrong with that?’ he asked lamely.

3

The warm summer rains had finished and the weather seemed set fair with high brassy suns over the flat jade greenery of the paddy fields and the darker green of camphor and mulberry. The countryside seemed to be bursting into rich new colour with the hillsides pink and white with flowers.

Colonel Lao almost lived at Yaochow because General Tsu, scared by the unexpected appearance of Kwei’s aged plane over his villages at Wukang, had no intention of allowing his air force to back down on the agreement Fagan had made. Smarting under Ira’s fury, Fagan became apologetic to the point of tears, then defiant and finally drunk.

‘You could always quit,’ Ellie pointed out flatly to Ira. ‘And go home.’

Ira eyed her coldly. Whatever else his father had been, he’d been a rigid disciplinarian when it had come to lies and kept vows. Ira’s head had often ached with the thumps he’d received for not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or for making promises he’d only half intended to keep.

‘He signed an agreement, didn’t he?’ he said.

Ellie shrugged. ‘What’s an agreement? What’s a contract?’

‘Precisely what it says--an agreement, a contract.’

Ellie stared at him, her grey eyes appraising. She had been on the point of pushing the argument a little further. ‘The slopeheads don’t expect you to keep to them,’ she’d been going to say, but seeing the look in his eyes, she changed her mind.

‘Yeah,’ she said instead. ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.’

The Lewis and the two German Spandaus turned up shortly afterwards, but they were damaged and rusty and didn’t look at all like the weapons Ira had seen in the warehouse in Shanghai.

He shrugged, suddenly depressed by the whole business. ‘We’d better get ‘em working, Sammy,’ he said. ‘The bloody fool seems eager to get himself killed.’

By this time, Fagan’s drunkenness and noisy defiance had changed to a desperate eagerness to do the job he’d agreed on, but he was still full of explanations and apologies, promising not to involve Ira, and swearing to the point of being a bore to take care of himself.

Ira sighed. ‘If we’re going to do the job,’ he said to Sammy as they began to strip the weapons, ‘we might as well have guns that function. Otherwise he’ll only get himself knocked off and then we’ll have Ellie to look after, too.’

They set to work with oil and fine emery paper and, finding a metal lathe on one of the river steamers, Sammy obtained permission through De Sa from the Chinese captain to use it for a day. The captain was distinctly uneasy about it, as he felt it would mean he had thrown in his lot with General Tsu and, with things as they were along the river, he had no wish to commit himself that far. A handful of Shanghai dollars convinced him it was worth while, however, and not long afterwards, the Fokker was in service again and equipped with an uncertain gun and a rough sight of wire, ring and bead.

With the dew still wet on the tiles of the curving roofs and the early sun burnishing the carved wood of the Chang-an-Chieh, it took off, moisture from the wet grass spraying out behind in the prop wash, and headed east to look for General Kwei’s balloon.

They had struggled for days repairing and installing the damaged interrupter gear from the Wingless Wonder and bolting the single Spandau into place and checking the crude sight. Fagan had smoked cigarette after cigarette as they had worked, first full of despair and then full of an almost hysterical hope, but because of his inability with machinery unable to do much to help them.

‘It’s only one,’ Ira said as he had finally climbed into the cockpit, his face taut from lack of sleep. ‘Remember that. And there wasn’t enough decent ammunition to fill the belts--only the Japanese stuff and some defective Buckingham Lao dug up. But you shouldn’t have any trouble. There’ll be no opposition.’

Fagan managed a shaky smile, nervous with strain. ‘And no anti-aircraft fire, either,’ he said. ‘No reports to make out and no explanations if it doesn’t come off.’

They all stopped work and turned to watch as the little machine bumped and bucketed along the uneven ground, rising slowly over the river to circle and return over the field. The Chinese pupils stared with open-mouthed admiration as it snarled across the field, its wheels just above the grass, the sun making the wings translucent, and seeing the look on their young faces, Ira found himself remembering his own early innocence and joy in flight.

Fagan waved to them as he lifted the Fokker above the trees, then he roared up in a steep climb towards the east. Ira stared after it with Sammy, then he became aware of Ellie alongside him, her expression enigmatic.

‘He’ll be all right, Ellie,’ he said.

He wasn’t being honest with her, he knew, because Fagan was crazy enough to get himself into trouble, even in a clear sky devoid of enemies, and she was aware he wasn’t telling the truth. She gave a shrug of indifference that was still touched with unhappiness, as though she couldn’t ever make up her mind whether to regard Fagan as a lover or a rather stupid child.

Ira glanced again at the dwindling shape of the Fokker, suddenly conscious of the old empty sick feeling of wondering if it would come back.

‘He’s determined to burn this goddamned balloon,’ Ellie said slowly. ‘I guess he wants to prove something--that he can or that he’s a man’--she shrugged--’maybe just that he can earn money.’ Unpredictably, she suddenly sounded concerned for Fagan and anxious that he should succeed.

Ira gestured. ‘There’s not much to be afraid of, Ellie,’ he pointed out. ‘All he’s got to do is get to it before they wind it down.’

Ellie looked at him and her mouth twisted in a wry smile. ‘Sounds easy,’ she said. ‘Except he’s not so hot.’

Fagan returned after an hour, his engine spluttering, and as he slammed the Fokker to the ground, clumsily and hurriedly, he almost hit the Farman that was circling cautiously with Ellie and Peter Cheng aboard. Taxying fast and dangerously towards the farmhouse, he switched off, and as the propeller jerked to a stop, he climbed out and stood by the cockpit, fishing in his pockets for a cigarette and lighting it with the swift, jerky movements of a marionette that told them at once that something had gone wrong and that he’d not done what he’d set out to do.

The gun,’ he choked, barely able to speak for fury. ‘The bloody gun jammed! I couldn’t clear it.’

Sammy was clambering on to the machine already to examine the Spandau. ‘Split case,’ he said at once. ‘This rotten ammunition Tsu gets.’

Fagan flung away his cigarette unsmoked. ‘I’ve got to have two guns,’ he said. ‘We can’t rely on one bloody weapon when it’s as old as this one is.’

Ira caught Ellie’s eye on Fagan, almost willing him to succeed, and he made his mind up quickly. ‘We’ll mount you another one,’ he said quietly. ‘Did you see the balloon?’

‘I saw it.’ Fagan was lighting another cigarette now with shaking hands. ‘Ach, the self-importance of it! And divil a machine gun for miles and no sign of opposition. Then the gun jammed and I had to clear it with the cocking handle. By the time I came round for another try, it was almost on the ground, looking like a bloody hippopotamus’s appendix. Then the gun stopped altogether and a cartridge case got stuck under the bottom of the control column somewhere. There I was, licked entirely and all despairin’, and when I worked it free, sure, the bloody engine started sounding like someone kickin’ trash-cans around.’

Sammy had unscrewed the panel from the side of the engine by this time and was peering inside. ‘P’r’aps it wouldn’t have,’ he said bitterly, no forgiveness in his voice, ‘if them spares of yours had turned up when they should.’

Fagan glared and flung his cigarette away. ‘Some rat-faced bloody skunk of a comprador,’ he shouted. ‘I expect they got pinched on the way. I fixed ‘em.’

‘I believe you,’ Sammy said calmly. ‘Thousands wouldn’t, though.’

Fagan stepped forward, his fists clenched. Sammy, in the cap, waistcoat and stiff collar that seemed to be his uniform, put up his own fists, glaring, and Ira stepped between them, giving them both a shove.

‘Cut it out,’ he said.

Sammy turned without a word and Ira pulled Fagan to one side. Behind them, the B.M.W. cooled, contracting with little unexpected ticks and clonks.

‘Any anti-aircraft fire?’ he asked.

Fagan allowed himself to be drawn away. ‘No, divil a bit of it,’ he muttered. ‘Divil a plane. Not even a whistle of rifle-fire. If the gun had worked, I couldn’t have failed.’

Ira looked at him wearily. He was making a lot of fuss, he knew, to hide the fact that he was inefficient, inexperienced and uncertain.

‘You won’t fail next time,’ he encouraged.

Sammy lifted his head from where he was sprawled over the engine compartment and spoke over his shoulder, his face still unrelenting.

‘Watch it, man,’ he said. ‘They say old Kwei’s got a couple of Russian fliers with him now and they know what they’re up to.’