The Mercenaries (41 page)

Then he heard the engine of a big car rev up and stop, and saw men in European tweed suits, complete with hats, watch chains and spats, walking from the trees towards him. The way they moved reassured him and, as they drew closer, he recognised Lieutenant Kee and Colonel Tong, whom Fagan had once tried to teach to read a map.

Ira waved and taxied the De Havilland to the edge of the field by the trees and, facing into the smoke, shut off his engine. A moment later the Avro, its engine poppling, came swooshing over his head to bump to the earth a hundred yards away. With his weight against the wing, Ellie swung it into wind and switched off.

‘Looks like the Marines have landed,’ she said.

Ira was just kicking the chocks under the wheels when Tong stopped alongside him and saluted. Kee smiled and, from behind him, they could see the face of the former pupil pilot. Yen, grinning from ear to ear.

‘I say,’ Kee said, in his old-fashioned schoolboy English, his breath hanging on the frosty air, ‘all is ready. Major. Petrol is jolly well waiting in the trees.’

‘Where’s the General?’ Ira asked.

‘In Tsosiehn. sir.’

Ira frowned. ‘Then, for Christ’s sake, get him out here,’ he snapped ‘Quick!’

Kee gestured, his smile vanishing. ‘You will have to come, too, you know,’ he said. ‘We have the automobile waiting.’

Ira stared. ‘Me? Why me, for God’s sake?’

‘My gracious, the General won’t move until he sees you.’

‘This isn’t what I was told.’

A long and bitter argument took place in the growing darkness. Ira had no wish to go into Tsosiehn and still less to leave Ellie alone. The tick of the cooling engines behind him sounded like a clock ticking away life.

‘I have trusted men here,’ Kee insisted. ‘One of them is Yen. She will be jolly safe.’

‘Why don’t
you
stay?’

’How will you talk with Tong?’ Kee asked simply. ‘He doesn’t speak your language. Also you do not speak his. I promise you on my honour, Yen is to be trusted. Surely, you know me well enough to believe me.’

Just when they seemed to be getting nowhere, Ellie joined in.

‘We’ve come a long way for this, Ira,’ she said in an unsteady voice. ‘We’d be crazy to go back without finishing it.’

‘I can’t leave you here alone,’ he said fiercely.

There was a faint cracked hysteria in her voice that she controlled with an effort as she gave him a push towards Kee. ‘I’ll die a million times before you come back,’ she said. ‘I’ll be expecting the necktie party every goddam minute, but I guess I’ll make it. I’ll refuel with Yen while I’m waiting. I guess it’ll stop me thinking too much.’

What unknown devil was driving her he couldn’t tell, and as he began to drag off his helmet with fingers that were stiff with cold, he felt bowed with weariness.

‘God,’ he said. ‘I feel a hundred years old.’

There were large groups of people across the road as they headed towards the town, camping in the fields and crouching round fires, and occasionally they heard the plink-plonk of a stringed instrument and the breathy whistle of a flute or the thump of a gong.

‘The city’s safe,’ Kee said. Typhus and cholera have frightened everybody away.’

After a while, a thin sliver of moon came up and they saw it reflected in the squares of paddy where the rushes were stark against the brilliant silver of the water. No one attempted to stop them and Kee drove the Pierce-Arrow he’d brought with one hand, the other pounding the klaxon all the way.

Outside the town, they stopped alongside a house with curved eaves and scorch marks on the front, where a couple of guides were waiting.

‘This is as far as we dare take the car,’ Kee said.

The guides spoke briefly with Tong and led the way through the piled refuse and rubbish along the bund. A thin stream of coolies moved past and, after a while, they came to a huddle of wailing women crouched over a group of bodies. Ira saw they were engaged in the grisly task of sewing heads to them.

‘Tsu officers,’ Kee said shortly. ‘Kwei executed them this afternoon. Naturally they cannot face their ancestors without their heads.’

Nearby a group of coolies waited with coffins but no one had eyes for the little party moving towards the town. There was a glow in the sky over the centre of the city where fires lit days before burned themselves to ashes, and occasionally they heard stray shouts and cries, and a whimper from the mob moving restlessly about the streets. Every now and then they passed a huddled figure, sometimes in uniform, but more often in the blue padded coat of a coolie, sometimes with his carrying pole still in his hands, lying with his back against a house, his feet among the rubbish.

‘Typhus,’ Kee said. ‘It is spreading.’

They entered the city through the great bronze-studded gate in the river wall just beyond the execution ground. It seemed to have been charred by fire and the arch above was black and oily. Groping their way in the dim light of a hanging lantern with their hands on the stones, they pushed into the shadows, the dim bulk of the city faint against the sky on their right, as they stumbled in and out of ditches and fell over broken masonry or charred beams. Above them the Chang-an-Chieh reared its tower over the scorched trees, a half-seen bulk ahead of them. There was the smell of burning everywhere, and the stink of death, and several times they heard rats squeaking among the rubble and their claws castanetting over the stones.

Skirting fallen houses and empty, stinking hovels, they scrambled over the cascade of broken bricks where De Sa’s petrol store had once stood, and headed down an alley, hardly daring to breathe.

The place was ominously quiet. An occasional stray shot echoed over the houses but every window and door was shuttered and barred, everybody out of sight and praying for daylight.

As they moved cautiously behind the Chang-an-Chieh, stumbling over the refuse, Ira could still hear the sound of the mob rising and falling in the distance, then he was splashing through stinking puddles where the ice cracked under his boots, and holding his breath as the smell of drains, ordure and years-old rotting rubbish came up to him. There was another puddle, reflecting the moon, and the shape of houses in silhouette, then they came to a low plank door where their guides stopped.

‘This is it!‘

After a while, with Kee scratching at the planks, the door opened. Beyond it, Ira saw a single bean-oil lamp and caught sight of General Tsu standing by a table, dressed in a long padded gown and a European felt hat, and then his wife and son, huddled together in a corner with the amah.

The room was bitterly cold and smelled of rotting vegetables and ammonia. Tsu seemed to have aged ten years since he had last seen him, his face the crinkled yellow-white of old parchment, and Madame Tsu had lost all her French charm and was thin and tired-looking. The boy, all dark eyes and long fingers, clutched the violin case beside the weeping amah.

As Ira stepped into the light, Madame Tsu rose and, crossing to him, fell on her knees and kissed his hands. He lifted her to her feet, embarrassed, and she turned to her husband and spoke rapidly in Chinese.

Tsu’s face remained inscrutable, and she turned to the boy. ‘It is Peng Ah-Lun, Philippe,’ she said in English, her voice wavering on the edge of hysteria. ‘Peng Ah-Lun has come to take us to Shanghai.’

Tsu seemed indifferent to his wife and son and even to Ira. He was speaking in Chinese now to Tong, and gesturing at a pile of trunks and boxes stacked in the comer of the room behind the door. Kee joined in and shook his head, and Tsu began to speak in a low angry voice.

Kee turned to Ira. ‘Major Penaluna,’ he said, his precise schoolboy English tumbling over itself in his desperation. ‘Please jolly well tell the General that we cannot take all this bloody baggage.’

Ira turned to Madame Tsu. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘we have to walk to the outskirts of the city. We have to fly. A suitcase each. No more.’

She swung round on her husband and spoke rapidly to him. Again he argued, a stubborn, stupid, argumentative old man, and with his wife in tears and pleading with him on her knees, Ira wanted to shake him. In the end, he spoke to Kee, who turned to Ira.

‘The General insists on taking the money, of course,’ he said. ‘Still, you know, there are eight of us and, between us, we ought to manage.’

Madame Tsu swung round on Ira again, her black eyes dull with unhappiness. ‘Can I take my jade?’ she begged. ‘It’s priceless. It will pay for lessons in Europe.’

‘What we can get in our pockets,’ Ira said. ‘No more.’

She threw open a suitcase, and began to hand round small cloth-wrapped packages, tears streaming down her face. The amah still crouched in a corner wailing, her face contorted, alongside the pale bewildered face of the boy.

After a while they were ready, two of them to each money box. Tsu straightened up, put on his coat, picked up his stick and moved to the door.

‘Tell the bastard to get hold of this bloody box,’ Ira snapped. ‘Tell him we don’t go unless he gives a hand.’

Kee’s words were fearful and hesitant and, for a moment, Tsu looked at Ira, then he took out a gold turnip of a watch, consulted it, and bent to take hold of one of the handles.

As they stepped outside, they could hear the mob baying nearby, and Madame Tsu almost collapsed in terrified hysteria. Tsu remained unmoved and unemotional, neither encouraging her nor helping her as they set off through the alleys, stumbling over stones and rubbish and broken beams.

The money boxes felt as though they weighed a ton and Ira was soon sweating. Behind them they could hear the noise of the mob again, growing louder. A few figures passed them in the dark, running, but no one took any notice. After a while, they came to where the Pierce-Arrow was waiting with its lights off. Without a word, Tsu put down the box he was carrying and climbed into the rear seat and leaned back. Ira stared at him in fury. Kee, ever polite, was straining to lift the money boxes into the car now and stuffing them round the General’s feet, then he helped Madame Tsu and the boy in after them. The amah collapsed by the roadside, weeping noisily.

With Tong and Ira standing on the running board, the car ground away from the city in low gear. A group of students ran past them, carrying banners, their voices raised, and Kee looked sick.

‘We are only just in time,’ he said. ‘They are seeking the General and I think they’ve found his hiding place.’

Ira glanced inside the car at the inscrutable old figure completely ignoring his half-hysterical wife and sobbing child.

‘It’s a pity they didn’t find him,’ he said.

They were heading through the crowds camping on the outskirts of the town now, the klaxon roaring and the engine revving in low gear. Occasionally, they saw the glint of a weapon, but no one tried to stop the car or look inside. At the airfield, there was silence and Ira was thankful to see the silhouettes of the two aeroplanes unharmed against the moonlight and a group of empty petrol drums. As the car stopped, Tsu climbed out and began to stride at once towards the aeroplanes.

‘You’d better fetch him back,’ Ira said to Kee. ‘We can’t do a thing till daylight.’

A figure rose out of the darkness. It was Ellie, a heavy revolver swinging from her hand. Followed by Yen, she crossed to Ira.

‘Everything’s ready,’ she said. ‘Tanks are full.’

‘We’re all right now, Ellie,’ he said thankfully. ‘It’s almost over. We’ll leave as soon as it’s light.’

Kee was leading the General away from the aeroplanes, protesting loudly in Chinese. He got Tsu quiet at last and approached Ira.

‘I am going to wait outside the city with Yen,’ he said. ‘I am worried, you know. I think the mob might jolly well find out where we are. Could you take off in the dark?’

Ira glanced at his watch. ‘For God’s sake, Kee,’ he said. ‘We have no lights and in two hours’ time, it’ll be dawn. Give us that long.’

Day came with a sword-blade of yellow low down over the town, and the violet sky changed to deep blue which grew lighter with every second. Trees and slopes began to emerge and the vivid streamer of light was followed by a pinkish winter glow. Ira, who had been stamping his feet, half-frozen, over the remains of half a dozen cigarettes, glanced at Ellie standing nearby, her hands deep in her pockets, her face in shadow. They had spoken little during the remaining two hours of darkness and, though several times he tried to explore her thoughts, she had remained silent and absorbed and hadn’t answered him.

‘Soon, now.’ he said.

She nodded and threw away her cigarette and he heard it hiss as it fell on the frosty grass. Nearby, against a tree, Tsu sat with Colonel Tong on one of the money boxes, huddled in his heavy overcoat. His wife, hugging her son to her, tried to keep them both warm with the lightweight cloak she wore.

A bird chirped somewhere in the bushes, then another and suddenly there seemed to be movement in the world as other small bodies moved and flexed their muscles. There was a mist over the field, lying in a flat grey-blue sheet two or three feet above the ground, slicing the aircraft in two and laying runnels of moisture on the wings between the ribs, and in the distance Ira could just see the tip of the Chang-an-Chieh, detached and floating. The mist worried him a little in case it delayed them and he decided to make a move.

He touched Ellie’s shoulder and she jumped and turned her head, the blonde hair falling across her eyes.

‘Time to go, Ellie,’ he said. ‘Let’s start up.’

She nodded and moved towards the aeroplanes and immediately Tsu came to life, climbed to his feet and began to walk after her.

‘The old bastard’s certainly in a hurry,’ Ira said. ‘If I had my way. I’d take his wife and child and leave him behind.’

With the help of Tong, they hoisted the sandbag ballast from the passenger cockpits and began to load the money boxes, stuffing them under the seats and lashing them in place. It soon became clear that Tsu intended to fly only with Ira and that he intended to take his money with him. His wife and the boy could do what they wished, it seemed, so long as they didn’t interfere with
his
escape.