The Lotus and the Wind (27 page)

At last he said wearily,
‘Lo bhayo, nanil Jaunu parchha,’
and they returned to the dell, saddled up, and worked southward through the mountains until they came to the Meshed road.

His appointment with the Sheikh Abu Daabi was for half an hour after dusk, in the sheikh’s house. He had tried to make it earlier but without success; the sheikh was insistent. Robin paced the long upstairs room of the lodgings, his head bent under the low roof, and reviewed his plans. A British steamer lay alongside the quay not a hundred yards away. She was due to sail for India two hours after dusk with her cargo of dates. Yesterday he had slipped on board and made his arrangements with the master, who obviously had not believed what little of his story he could reveal. He would have liked to be on board now, but Abu Daabi said he had something important to disclose. Besides, the shipmaster didn’t want them to embark during the loading.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon of April 30th, 1881, the sun had inclined to the west, and the streets of Basra were deserted. From the window he could see the masts of the steamer and an empty reach of the river. The Shatt-al-Arab, the joined Tigris and Euphrates, flowed silently at high flood level past the foot of the street. The melting snows of Ararat and a hundred other mountains had filled and overfilled its bed. Above the city the floods covered the Mesopotamian plain.

Jagbir slept. Each time Robin reached that end of the room he paused and stooped down to brush the flies from his companion’s face. They had seen much together and travelled far since they left the Akkal oasis five months before. They had visited Bushire but they had not gone by the shortest route. The Russians could not fly over the intervening country between Turkestan and the Persian Gulf. If they had any intentions in that direction there ought to be a continuous line, traceable on the land, connecting the one with the other. So Robin and Jagbir had journeyed south and west and south again, hunting like dogs for the scent. They did not know exactly what they were looking for, but they knew what the clues would be.

Firstly, there was gossip. When strangers travelled the roads and asked questions there was gossip. Sharp eyes would note, idle tongues relate--a man in such-and-such clothes passed here in such-and-such a month; he asked the way to Hamadan; he asked where Qasim lived; he looked for a long time at the stream.

Secondly, there was gold. When a great power interested itself in a country where the people were generally poor, it had to use money. The larger its interest, the larger would be the outlay of money. In certain areas more money would flow than had flowed before, and, most revealing, it would flow in new channels. The gold must go to the people whom Russia regarded as helpers, allies, or potential allies. It was not always hard to surmise who these might be, because an invader’s natural friends are those who, like him, wish to upset the existing order. In Asia this did not mean the people, the peasantry, for they did not count. It meant not the chief khan but the second, who would like to be first; not the feudal rulers but the elder sons waiting impatiently for power and restive under the suspicions and hard restraints of Mohammedan fathers.

Thirdly, there was the knowledge they had already garnered. It was possible for them to pretend to more than they knew. Of suspects Robin could ask questions a shade more pressing than he would otherwise have been able to. At times he could, by mentioning a name or a fact, lead a man to believe that he was himself a Russian agent, and so get another name, follow that up, and, like a rolling snowball, gather still more names, more information.

As they passed through Teheran they had, by circuitous means, contacted the British Embassy, got more gold, made a report, and handed over the papers taken from the surveyor at Bezmein. As Robin had suspected, the printed documents were of no importance. The dialect of the phrase book was that used around Bushire. That first report would have reached India long ago. He wondered what Hayling would think of it. He had made another and final report two days ago and handed it to the shipmaster here in Basra for safe custody until he could board the ship himself. Looking back at his work, he could see that there had been mistakes, false trails, some danger. But, in the large, there had been no doubt. A direct line of Russian interest and Russian preparation led from the southern border of Turkestan to the Persian Gulf. There was no need at the moment to follow it farther on land by turning east and traversing the deserts to the Indian frontier at the Bolan Pass. It
must
go in that direction--unless the Russians proposed to attack the Turkish Empire here in Mesopotamia, instead of the British Empire. Agents working out of India could unearth the plan in more detail.

When he returned to India he could say that his evidence had led him to two conclusions: that the Russians intended to use two routes of invasion, the central and the southern; and that the principal weight of the attack would be in the south. Further, he could say that the centre was the level of deception, where the clues were comparatively easy to find, and that the south was the level of truth. That poison bottle had been no prop in a charade. Therefore, the Russians will feint a single, central attack through Balkh and Kabul; once we move our troops to counter this, the real Russian attack will come in along the southern route, directed on the Bolan Pass.

It was all very neat, neater than he had the right to expect after only nine months’ work. Only the original impulse which had launched this quest now seemed strangely misdirected. Perhaps no one would ever find out what Selim Beg had meant, or what he had discovered. Perhaps he had meant just what he said, for his clues, having been meticulously followed, had led to Basra. Robin had gone north from Balkh, asking about horses. By way of Bukhara, Khiva, the Akkal oasis, Meshed, Gurgan, Teheran, Hamadan, Isfahan, and Bushire, he had come to Basra.

He had not been happy these last five months. There were too many people, perhaps, too many cities, too much intrigue. He had wondered often whether he would meet Muralev and, if he did, whether such a meeting would make this work in the south seem less or more important. He thought it would depend what happened--if the woman tried to kill him, for instance, that would be one thing; if she did not, it would be another. It would depend on what Muralev did too, how he looked, how he spoke.

Also Robin was a little unhappy because he knew he had failed to see much that another, more experienced agent might have seen. Hayling had picked the wrong man after all. The trail ended in the squalid gutters of Basra.

He looked out. The sun was low and the streets beginning to stir with noise and movement. A breeze ruffled the river, and a few dhows crept out from the bank and heeled into the racing current. He awakened Jagbir.

The Sheikh Abu Daabi’s house lay on the south-western extremity of Basra. The road thither led away from the Shatt-al-Arab and across a vile-smelling creek which bisected the town. A dozen narrow bridges spanned the creek. The crowd was thick on the bridge that Robin and Jagbir chose to use. When they reached the mid-point, where a press of people and donkeys pushed them on, they saw the Muralevs. Robin sighed in sudden relief; this had to happen, everything would have been wrong without it. Then he thought that the Muralevs, Lenya at least, had seen them first. There might have been a plan. He felt very tired. There would be struggles and manoeuvrings, lies, threats. The Arabs edged away and stared insultingly at the unveiled woman as though she had been a harlot dancing naked on the bridge. Beyond the bridge the narrow street ran on south-westward. There was a coffee shop on the right-hand side near the end of the bridge, and a stunted tree. A Turkish policeman in a red fez stood under the tree, his rifle slung on his shoulder.

Robin looked straight ahead. Jagbir dropped his hand to the handle of his knife. The Muralevs stopped in front of them, blocking the bridge. Peter Muralev said in his accurate Persian, ‘Khussro, it is a pleasure to see you again.’ He tugged at his ear and smiled shyly.

Robin turned. He saw with a shock that Muralev looked ill. His skin was pale grey and shiny with sweat, and his eyes deep-sunk behind the spectacles. They were a new pair, with thin steel rims. The woman would have a pistol and she meant to kill him. He read it in her sparkling eyes and parted lips. The lust of battle was in her.

But he had to get back to Anne. The whole search, which should have been like a scouring, cleansing wind in his mind, was turning to a foul breath. He had found the secret they had sent him out to find, but he had found nothing else. Peter Muralev was as ill and as wretched as he, and still had not found the home of the bird that had dropped a brown feather at his feet.

It was Jagbir who spoke, a short, wonderful sentence of warning and triumph. ‘Greeting! We have done our task and are returning to my lord’s place.’ Robin saw that he had told Lenya Muralev it was no good killing them, because their report to India had already been made.

‘Oh, yes?’ said Muralev absently. ‘That is good. I hope you will like it at home.’

The woman cut in. ‘It was a profitable journey? Are you sure that you have as yet paid the full price for your goods?’ Looking at her, Robin knew that she would kill him with her own hands if all else failed. It was not personal spite. She had some sound reason, on the imperial plane.

Muralev said, ‘Will you come and have a cup of coffee with us?’

‘No,’ answered Jagbir and tried to push past them, but the woman turned with him, and he could not get rid of her. She walked at his side, talking animatedly; Peter Muralev followed with Robin. At the coffee shop Jagbir seemed to change his tactics. He said, ‘This will do,’ and squatted down in the very front of the shop, directly under the policeman’s eye. Lenya Muralev hesitated, then joined him, and Robin and Peter followed suit. The woman ordered black Arab coffee and a dish of sweetmeats.

To Robin, Muralev said, ‘I suppose you couldn’t keep those books of birds that were in my box?’

‘No. I’m sorry. We burned them all. It took a long time.’

Muralev nodded and was silent. At length he said, ‘I apologize about the poison.’ Robin felt the old sympathy rising in him. Muralev might have put the blame on his wife, where it certainly belonged, but he had not.

Jagbir said, ‘She did it.’

The woman smiled widely. ‘I did. I thought it was necessary, and I was right. It wasn’t enough, even. After all, here you are, safe and well. Besides, there are no rules, are there? You think it was not--cricket?’ She said the word in English.

‘We’re not playing cricket,’ Robin said. ‘I’m not playing any game.’ To her it was like polo or pigsticking, but more exciting.

Muralev shook his head slowly. ‘Nor am I. It was wrong, the poison. It did not fit in. It was wrong, untrue.’

‘My husband is a dreamer,’ the woman said, ‘but also a genius.’ She looked at Peter with a sort of warm, uncertain pride. Robin saw her with a new and newly painful understanding. She was a good woman and she loved her husband. The thing that Muralev felt for her could not properly be called love because it had none of the attributes of love. Can a bark love the rope that ties it to the wharfside? And in the end what would happen? He must be near when that time came, to find out. Would the strong, brave rope be left trailing forlorn in the water, broken, while the ship heeled to the wind in the open sea? Would there be a tidy unfastening and casting off? Would--could the ship stay for ever by the pier while the wind blew, and wild, mysterious birds flew overhead in the night?

Lenya Muralev caught his scrutiny and the expression behind it, and said, ‘Do you have a wife?’ When Robin nodded she said, ‘She will not be happy that you are here. You dream and are happy sometimes, I think. Perhaps it will be better for her the way things will have to be. She will be happy thinking that you would have come back eagerly to her, that she and you could have lived happily ever after. Only you didn’t come back.’

Robin looked her steadily in the eye. He was not afraid of her. She was afraid of him, and not because of what he knew. She must be afraid all the time of Peter. Was Anne afraid? To Muralev he said, ‘Did you find the bird?’ Muralev took off his spectacles, fumbled in his pocket, and drew out the crumpled feather. ‘No.’

Robin wanted to say: You won’t find it here. But there was no need. Muralev knew that.

Muralev began to talk, the feather in his palm, while the woman fidgeted impatiently and Jagbir, next to her, kept his hand on his knife. Muralev talked of the Takla Makan desert, where he had never been. He would go there one day. Robin noticed Jagbir’s glance at the sky. Their ship would sail in less than three hours now. If they delayed their escape much longer her thugs would have time to arrive. Basra had the worst reputation of any city in the Middle East. He had not seen her make a signal, but a servant could have been following them on the bridge and gone off unnoticed to gather the cut-throats.

Muralev tried to explain why he must go to the Takla Makan, and Robin forgot about the ship and about the murderous gang already perhaps collecting in back alleys around the cafe. It was not easy to understand what Muralev meant. They spoke in Persian, and the ideas were abstract, while their vocabularies were limited to concrete things. Muralev talked of the monastic ideal which, in the West, men now laughed at; but in the East they did not laugh at it. He asked what made a Hindu mystic climb a tall mountain and stay on its summit in contemplation all his life. Why was such a man called a mystic?

Robin said, ‘Why, then? You’ve asked the questions. Do you have no answer?’

Muralev looked at him with sad eyes, his spectacles in one hand, the barred feather in the other. The shopkeeper lit a lamp in the back of the shop. Muralev said, ‘I have an answer. Desire. The mystic has desire--desire for God, if you like. What I have not solved is whether that desire is evil and selfish, or good and the true gift of God.’

Robin nodded. Muralev would never find the answer to that question because it was in its nature unanswerable. That meant--From the corner of his eye he noticed that the Turkish policeman was watching Jagbir’s back with bent brows. Suddenly Jagbir reached across the table, seized Muralev’s coffee cup, and dashed the dregs into his own face. After a second’s motionless pause he sprang to his feet, the coffee dripping from his cheeks, and cried, ‘You--!