The Mercenaries (17 page)

‘If you want trouble,’ Sammy grinned, ‘just listen to them two across the lawn.’ He indicated Fagan’s houseboys huddled in a chattering group near the pond. They say she found out he went with a woman in Shanghai. She’ll probably shoot him, Ira.’

Ira laughed. ‘Let’s go and help her,’ he suggested.

They found Fagan in the bedroom, with his back against the wall, still wearing on his chest the remains of a plate of food Ellie had thrown at him. His cheek was marked by two long scratches as though a set of nails had been dragged across his face, and Ellie was walking up and down in front of him, wearing nothing but the briefest of slips that did nothing to hide her figure. She was swinging Fagan’s Colt and was obviously not unwilling to pull the trigger. Fagan was watching her with hypnotised fear as she waved the weapon under his nose, and she showed no surprise as she saw Ira and Sammy and made no move to cover herself.

‘I ought to shoot him,’ she said harshly. ‘Nobody would miss him.’

Ira stepped between them. ‘Give it to me, Ellie,’ he said, indicating the gun.

Ellie swung round on him, her eyes big and angry. ‘Quit telling me what to do,’ she snapped. ‘Or I might shoot you first.’

Ira held out his hand. ‘Come on, Ellie,’ he urged.

She stared at him for a long time, then he saw sudden tears spring to her eyes and she meekly handed over the gun and flung herself into a chair, crouching against the wall, her long legs doubled up under her chin, the despairing look in her eyes again.

‘I ought to have shot him first and asked questions afterwards.’ she said.

Ira nodded to Sammy, who gave Fagan a shove. The Irishman seemed to come to life with a start and, as he scuttled for safety, Ira pushed the door to behind them.

For a moment he stared at Ellie, then he picked up Fagan’s whisky flask which stood near the bed. ‘Here, Ellie,’ he said, pouring out a stiff drink. ‘Have a go at this.’

She took it from him and swallowed it at a gulp. She shuddered, gazing at him with tragic eyes, then, impulsively, she snatched his hand in both of hers and hung on to it as though drawing strength from his calm.

‘Thanks, Ira,’ she said. ‘You’re O.K.’

‘Go to sleep, Ellie,’ he urged. ‘I’ll keep him out of your hair till it’s over.’

For a long time she held on to his hand, then, impulsively, she pulled it to her mouth and kissed it. She seemed to be making a tremendous effort to gain control of herself.

‘O.K., Ira,’ she said at last. ‘I’m all right now. Tomorrow you won’t know anything ever happened.’

He put his hand on her shoulder and felt her shiver beneath his touch Her eyes followed him all the way to the door.

Outside, Sammy was standing on the verandah.

‘Poor bloody Ellie,’ Ira said, haunted by the hopeless look that was in her eyes again.

‘Poor bloody Ellie be damned,’ Sammy said mercilessly. ‘She picked him.’

Sammy’s implacable enmity irritated Ira suddenly. ‘Lay off her, Sammy,’ he said. ‘Just for a bit, lay off her.’

Sammy glanced at him quickly, his face curious, then he nodded. ‘O.K.. Ira,’ he said easily. ‘But I’ll bet that bloody Fagan didn’t do a thing in Shanghai except booze. I’ll believe that story about the spares when they turn up.’

Ira nodded. ‘We’ll keep him over in our place till it’s blown over,’ he suggested. ‘He can sleep on the floor.’

‘You’ll be lucky,’ Sammy said. ‘He’s ‘opped it. Into the city.’

Ira stared over the trees. The fireworks were still exploding at intervals and he could hear faint shouts coming over the shabby roofs.

‘He’ll find it a bit rough down there,’ he observed.

They had a drink together before they returned to their rooms, but the night was half gone and Ira hardly seemed to have fallen off again when it was daylight and he was awake, feeling he’d never been to sleep at all, his mouth gummy and his eyes gritty with sleeplessness.

The noise from the city seemed to be growing louder with daylight and he lit a cigarette and walked down to the scrap of waste ground in front of the bungalow where they parked the ancient Peugeot every night, to make sure nothing had been stolen from it. It was not unknown for mirrors, tyres and even wheels to disappear and find their way into the market, to be sold back to the original owner the following week.

Sammy appeared on the verandah dressed in a kimono and jerked his head towards the city. ‘Sounds like the Rovers are playing at home,’ he said.

There was no sound from the next bungalow, however, and Ira was just looking forward to a peaceful day, with Ellie sleeping off her tears and Fagan drunk somewhere in the town, when he saw one of General Tsu’s Model-T Fords heading from the city towards him, bouncing and banging on the rough unmade road. The very way it was being driven alerted him at once to disaster. A door burst open as the car swayed and was snatched shut again, then it turned in front of the bungalow, the front wheels wobbling in the ruts and throwing up the dust as it stopped. Lao almost fell out into Ira’s arms. For once, he looked hot and flurried.

‘General Tsu wishes his air force to move at once,’ he announced.

Ira tossed away his cigarette and beckoned to Sammy, who was already hurrying towards him. He knew exactly what to do and he’d been thinking over it for days, anticipating Lao’s warning.

‘General Tsu wishes you to go to Tsosiehn fifty miles along the river,’ Lao was saying. ‘Nothing must be allowed to fall into the hands of General Kwei.’

‘Nothing worth having will,’ Ira said, his mind already working fast. ‘What’s happened?’

Lao was already climbing back into the car and the driver was starting the engine. He asked no questions of Ira and between them for a moment there was a mutual respect. Lao was an intelligent, able man, and Ira suspected that, despite his ignorance of aircraft, he was honest, too. He made no attempt to make the bad news more palatable.

There has been a battle,’ he said calmly. ‘General Kwei had arms supplied by the Kuomintang Nationalists and General Tsu’s troops have been defeated. He has already moved his yamen further west along the river.’

Ira gave him a grim look. ‘What about petrol?’ he asked.

Lao looked at him frankly. ‘There will be no petrol in Hwai-Yang now,’ he said. The students have made sure there will be none.’

Ira frowned, puzzled, and Lao gave him a stiff smile. ‘General Chiang and his warlords have begun to fight a different kind of war,’ he explained. They have discovered you can fight with words as well as swords. They have persuaded the students that the Kuomintang is the party to support and that they must do all they can to hamper its enemies. I’m afraid all our petrol vanished long since into the gutters or south to Kwei.’

Ira nodded. ‘It’s as well to know.’ he commented. ‘We won’t waste time over it.’

Lao managed another smile, a warmer one this time. ‘You have about twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘General Kwei’s cavalry is already heading round the lakes towards Hwai-Yang.’

4

‘Well, that was short and bloody sweet,’ Sammy commented as they began to throw their spares into boxes and bum what they didn’t need. He was far from disturbed by the emergency. The crisis, he felt, was Tsu’s, not his.

The one thing that was firmly in Ira’s mind was that nothing must be abandoned that might conceivably be useful. They were so short of everything--even the simplest articles like three-quarter wood screws--he couldn’t afford to leave behind a single thing he could carry away with him.

In spite of a hurried search of the bars in the city, Fagan was not to be found, so they had left Ellie at the bungalow to pack up their possessions and, as soon as they reached the airfield, had bullied the unwilling Lawn into taking the Crossley to search for him and pick up Ellie on the return journey. Then, with the aid of the Chinese pupils, they had set the coolies to crating up every single spare, every nut and bolt they possessed, every screwdriver, every scrap of fabric, dope and paint, every can, every funnel, every yard of hose. Hwai-Yang was bad enough; their next stop might be even bleaker.

Sammy seemed to be the only person on the field Ira needed to consult. He was adult and responsible despite his youth and could be relied on to do everything he was asked.

‘I’m going to fly out everything that’ll fly,’ Ira said. ‘And fly ‘em as far as we can. Let’s just hope the weather doesn’t shut down.’

The spring storms had by no means finished and, if it rained, all their efforts would come to nothing. A downpour that wouldn’t stop Kwei’s troops could certainly stop aeroplanes flying. Even a high wind would be sufficient to ground the fragile Farman.

‘I reckon we can get to Tsosiehn on the petrol we’ve got,’ he went on, spreading a map on the grass. ‘And I want you to take the Avro, and go ahead of us and find a field.’ He drew a rough circle to the south of Tsosiehn. ‘This area’s off the road from Canton and Peter Cheng says it’s flat enough to fly from. There’s a village here near Tsosiehn--Yaochow--and you shouldn’t have any difficulty identifying it. Tsosiehn’s the usual Chinese river town--walls and a bloody great pagoda, the Chang-an-Chieh, right alongside the water. You ought to pick it up as soon as you get west of here. Cheng says it’s so beautiful all the other pagodas in China fly through the air to fall on their knees before it. O.K.?’

‘O.K.’ Sammy was laconic and grave-faced. ‘I’ll look out for ‘em at five hundred feet.’

Ira smiled. ‘Take Cheng with you. There are some Tsu troops down there, so get ‘em to help. As a precaution, grab some carts and have ‘em waiting in case there’s no petrol and we have to strip the machines when we arrive and tow ‘em to safety. If you can find lorries, so much the better, and petrol better still. And get a message to this chap, De Sa, who’s supposed to have Fagan’s spares. Find out what he’s got.’

Sammy nodded again. ‘What about the machines that won’t fly?’

‘We salvage what we can--even off the Wingless Wonder --and burn ‘em.’

‘His Nibs is going to like that.’

Ira laughed. He could just imagine the Baptist General’s horror when he found out they were planning to abandon the ramshackle machines he had bought at such expense. But Kwei, according to Sammy’s rumours, had Russian advisers now and even if Kwei wouldn’t know what to do with the old machines his advisers would. They might have engineers with them and access to enough spare parts to get them flying again, and Ira had no intention of allowing the opposition to get control of the air between Hwai-Yang and Tsosiehn. In spite of the dubious nature of Tsu’s air force, it was stronger than Kwei’s, which, so far as they could tell, still consisted only of a single balloon.

‘He’s got to like it,’ he said. ‘There’s no alternative.’

The Crossley arrived back in the afternoon. Fagan was only half-sobered and in a bad temper and Lawn was shaking with nerves. They’d had to run from an unexpected mob of students rampaging along the bund, smashing windows and attacking any Tsu soldiers they could find.

‘Ach, the pride of ‘em,’ Fagan jeered. ‘The bounce and, Holy Mother of God, the self-importance. They’re threatening to sweep away all the warlords and all the foreign gunboats. They say Tsu won’t fight and the time’s come to get rid of him.’

The only gleam of hope was that Lawn had learned that the petrol Fagan had ordered in Shanghai actually existed and was near Tsosiehn, on a junk whose captain had no intention of venturing any further until he knew whether Tsu or Kwei controlled the river.

‘Did I not tell you?’ Fagan jeered. ‘Did I not offer you a look at the invoice?’ He gestured towards Hwai-Yang, impatient to be off. ‘We’re best out of here,’ he said excitedly, more than willing to shuffle off any responsibility he owed. ‘Tsu’s finished in this province. They’re shouting down there for Kwei.’

Ira ignored his excitement and Fagan lit a cigarette quickly, his hands nervous. ‘They’ve chopped a few more heads off,’ he said, with a shrill laugh. ‘But it doesn’t seem to have stopped much. The chi-chi in the shipping office says the kids have all joined the Kuomintang, and a Yank gunboat’s arrived to take everybody down-river who wants to go.’

Ellie stood nearby, watching Ira as though Fagan didn’t exist. She was holding a suitcase and a few cushions she’d collected. They seemed an odd burden, but they seemed to represent the comfort she’d never had time to enjoy.

‘Ready, Ellie?’ Ira asked her.

She nodded calmly, her face expressionless, as though he’d never seen her half-naked and suicidal the night before. Only her eyes betrayed the fact that she’d been crying. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Nothing to it.’

She seemed to have a gift for taking things as they came. The only thing in her life she seemed unable to handle was Fagan who, even now, couldn’t resist trying to be funny.

‘Been having a good blub on the way out,’ he said gaily. ‘She’ll get over it.’

They spent the morning hoisting the generator and the lathe and the engine from the Wingless Wonder on to the thirty-hundredweight, and stacking the vices and boxes of tools and spares, the tents and the ladders and the trestles and fitter’s benches, the barometers and wind-speed indicators Kowalski had sent them from Shanghai, stuffing the gaps with mattresses, sleeping bags, canvas sheets, tarpaulins, suitcases, trunks, crates and baskets.

The field was a confusion of hurrying figures and loud with the sound of hammering as crates were nailed up. Ira was just superintending the last few spares when Sammy appeared alongside him.

‘Ira!‘ His face was tragic. ‘We forgot Mei-Mei! We can’t leave her behind to go on the
Fan-Ling
. If the students catch her you know what they’ll do to her.’

It seemed to be standard practice in the pointless and savage little civil war that had been tearing China apart for two generations that women were mere chattels who could be dragged off, raped on the spot or simply butchered and left in the gutter. The South China daily papers that came up on the steamers were always full of harrowing details of villages that had been taken over.

‘Take one of the Peugeots, Sammy,’ Ira said. ‘And shove her into it. She can travel on the lorry with Lawn.’