The Mercenaries (25 page)

Mei-Mei greeted them with a grave face as they arrived. Sammy glanced at Ira and, touching her hand, gave her a little push so that she moved ahead of him towards her room.

Ira found Ellie lying on her bed. She’d stopped crying and was smoking, her hand hanging loosely on the covers. She looked up as he appeared, her eyes puffed and red, then she swung her feet to the floor and crushed her cigarette into an ashtray Sammy had made her from a piston.

She managed a twisted smile that seemed to indicate suffering, bewilderment and uncertainty all at the same time. Whatever Fagan had meant to her, their lives had been involved enough together for her to be shocked by his death. ‘What now?’ she asked. ‘Where do we go from here?’

He offered her another cigarette and lit one himself. The defeated look in her eyes suddenly reminded him of what Sammy had said when he had first met them. ‘They’ve got the look of doom on ‘em, those two,’ he had insisted. ‘They’ll finish us between ‘em.’

He thrust the thought aside and, fishing in his pocket, produced the letter the Chinese doctor had written on his instructions.

‘Death certificate, Ellie,’ he said, placing it beside her hand. The best thing you can do is take the next steamer down to Shanghai and get the insurance paid over. I don’t suppose, with Eddie looking after it, there’ll be any trouble.’

‘No, I guess not.’

He studied her for a second. With Fagan dead, he couldn’t see any reason for her to stay in Tsosiehn. The city had little to recommend it, especially now, and he knew she’d never liked it.

‘You’ll be all right,’ he said.

‘I guess so.’

She seemed frozen inside and it wasn’t easy talking to her.

‘Mei-Mei’ll help you get your stuff together,’ he went on. ‘And one of us will drive you to the steamer. Get Eddie to buy you a ticket home.’

She lifted her eyes. ‘Home? Ira, my brother was killed in the war. My dad broke his neck and my mother married again. I don’t even know where she is. Where is home, for God’s sake, apart from here?’

Ira shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, just get the hell out of it, Ellie,’ he said.

She looked up at him. ‘Suppose I don’t want to,’ she said.

‘Why in God’s name not?’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve gotten used to this,’ she said. ‘It started with Ches in 1919. Even before. It’s always been hotels, other people’s houses, and tents in some lousy little joint miles from nowhere. What would I do?’

‘Get a job.’

‘What doing?’

Her voice broke as she spoke and the way she looked at him, curiously waif-like for a moment, tore at his heart. He was at a loss what to reply.

‘Flying’s the only thing I can do,’ she pointed out. The only thing I’ve ever done. And who’d offer me a job flying--a woman?’

‘I would.’ Ira was being honest. Whatever her faults, she could fly an aeroplane.

She shrugged. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You. I’ll go to Shanghai and I’ll draw the dough. I’ll make it over to us.’

Ira had just been lighting another cigarette from the old one and he lifted his eyes, staring.

‘Us?’

‘Yeah. Why not? You. Me. Sammy. With Eddie to look after the business end. This outfit. One day when Tsu’s paid us off, maybe we’ll be able to buy back the ships and start that air carrying company you’ve always fancied.’

‘If Tsu’s defeated,’ Ira said bluntly, ‘they’ll be ours for the taking. And it may not be too long. I wouldn’t give you a bent Chinese dollar for his alliance with General Choy.’

She shrugged. ‘O.K., then. The dough’ll be ours as capital. Does the idea appeal to you?’

Ira puffed at his cigarette for a moment, then he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It appeals. It’d appeal to Sammy, too, I know.’ She gave a shaky smile and he realised he’d never seen her smile much since he’d known her.

‘When Ches was killed,’ she said gently, ‘Pat was good to me. He cheered me up, because that came easy to him. We drank a lot together and made love. Everybody needs love, even widows.’

She paused. ‘I guess he was as lousy at that, though, as he was at everything else,’ she went on slowly. ‘Most of the time he just made me want to weep.’ She glanced up at Ira. There wasn’t much to him, Ira, but you never find these things out till too late, I guess, and by then he needed me and I was stuck with him. You know what he used to say. “I don’t know whether I inherited the airplanes with Ellie, or Ellie with the airplanes.” ‘

Ira tossed his cigarette away, waiting. She seemed in the mood for exposing her soul.

‘I’ll go to Shanghai,’ she said. ‘But I’ll come right back. I’ll be part of the outfit. I’ll draw a wage and do as I’m told.’ She managed a twisted smile that was heartbreaking in its loneliness. ‘I guess, like Pat, you’ve inherited me with the airplanes now.’

Until the
Fan-Ling
arrived on its voyage downstream, Ellie insisted on carrying on the training, and while Sammy and Ira worked on the damaged Fokker, she got Lieutenant Tsai off on his first solo. It was not as successful as that of Cheng, who was now flying circuits that were growing steadily more confident, but at least it meant that the thing for which they’d come to China was beginning at last to pay dividends. Ira’s spares had finally turned up and Cheng and Tsai were growing daily more expert, while two other pupils, Lieutenants Sung and Yen, were now also approaching the point of flying alone.

Wang and Sammy patched up the Fokker while Cheng and Tsai continued their slow circuits in the Albatros, and Ira took it up at last to test the guns. He placed a group of empty drums at the end of the field and, for some time, dived on them, firing until he was satisfied. Then he put the machine into a steep climb and flew along an old canal where the patches of water reflected the sky.

At ten thousand feet, the view was immense. To the east he could see the drift of blue smoke from where Tsu had his lines. Alongside him, the linen rippling along the wings and bellying slightly in the suction above them, made him realise how fragile the machine was and how tremendous was the power of flight. What he was sitting in was nothing more than a bracing of quivering wires, wood and linen bolted to a three-ply and linen body, yet on a day like this of blue, pink and crystal, it enabled him to see for fifty miles in any direction.

This was what aeroplanes were for, he thought, not the destruction of human beings down on the earth. In this uplifting loneliness of the profound sky, flying became a different thing, the gift of the angels. Down near the ground, it was reduced to the level to which humanity reduced all its greatest boons.

He made up his mind suddenly. The sooner the killing was over and they were gone, the better. What was it Kowalski had said? Get all you can out of it, but make sure you’ve left a line of retreat open to the coast. Perhaps Fagan had been right to grab with both hands while it lasted

When he landed, Sammy was waiting for him, his fingers grimy with oil, and Ira stood by the machine, his helmet and goggles in his hand.

‘I didn’t come out here to go to war, Sammy,’ he said slowly, ‘but since Fagan contracted us into Tsu’s army, let’s take on Kwei’s air force and get some of that money out of Tsu so we can get out and start up on our own again. With Ellie’s insurance and what we’ve earned, we’ll have capital.’

Sammy nodded, his eyes enthusiastic. ‘Sounds fine to me, Ira,’ he said.

‘You and Mei-Mei can set up home.’

Sammy’s enthusiasm died unexpectedly. ‘She’s got to be able to speak enough English to say “I will” first,’ he said. ‘And she don’t seem to catch on that quick, Ira.’

Ira paused, then he slapped his gloves against his leg. ‘We’ll start as soon as the Fokker’s ready,’ he said.

By the time they saw Ellie off on the steamer, the resentment that had quietened the city after the machine gunning of the students had begun to fade a little and it was beginning to come to noisy life again. Ellie, too, had recovered quickly from Fagan’s death and was full of plans and ideas.

‘I’ll get Eddie to set up the details,’ she said as she waited by the gangway, somehow a little plainer and less striking in a cheap cotton dress instead of her usual breeches and shirt. ‘We’ll have somewhere to put our dough then.’

She seemed so enthusiastic, even Sammy warmed to her. ‘What’ll we call ourselves?’ she asked.

‘Penaluna, Fagan and Shapiro,’ Sammy said immediately.

Her laugh still had an edge on it but it was growing less forced every day. ‘Sounds like an attorney’s office,’ she said.

Sammy grinned. ‘Always did fancy having me name on a hangar wall.’

She pecked him on the cheek and picked up the old leather coat which was the only protection against the weather she seemed to possess. ‘Keep ‘em flying, Sammy,’ she said.

Her kiss for Ira was on the mouth and it suddenly dawned on him it was more than a mere friendly gesture.

‘You’re a good guy, Ira,’ she said quietly.

They waited through the usual ceremony of fire-crackers and gongs until the huge three-decker was in midstream. Ellie was near the stern, still waving, fragile somehow in her cheap dress and with the old leather coat and the threadbare suitcase holding her few possessions.

Ira watched her for a while, his thoughts busy. There was more to Ellie than he’d believed. He’d imagined her hard-boiled, toughened by living out of suitcases since she was a child, making her home in tents and hotels and any shabby hut on the corner of a flying field as she’d followed first her father, then Chester Putnam and then Fagan. Behind the stiff unrelenting facade she’d built in front of her, however, there was a gentler Ellie, a warmer womanly Ellie with a soft curving mouth whom not many people were privileged to see.

Sammy was studying his face, and he turned away abruptly, sensing that Sammy knew what he was thinking.

‘Let’s get on with the job,’ he said shortly.

The news from the east and south wasn’t good. The long-projected Kuomintang advance to the north was well under way at last. News travelled slowly in China but they had learned that Chiang had fifty thousand men under his command and that Changsha had fallen already and the Chiang troops had reached the border of Hupeh, hundreds of miles to the north of Canton. None of the northern warlords seemed to be co-operating with each other against them yet; although they’d long since realised their only hope was in a unified movement against the Canton troops, their greed and the mutual suspicion that existed between them prevented them from trusting each other, and nobody seemed to be siding with Tsu as had been promised. In spite of his alliance. General Choy seemed to be leaving the river flank wide open, and Tsu’s attempt to stand along the ridge of hills near Wu-kang had been a failure, and Kwei’s less corrupt organisation and better backing had forced him to give up two or three villages nearer to Tsosiehn.

The Chiang flags began to appear again, and there was another parade along the bund, this time with buglers, determinedly offkey and flat, and coolies screeching and cheering in unison and chanting the Sun Yat-Sen slogans they’d been taught by the students.

There was no shooting this time, because the students had outposts down the streets and by the time the Tsu soldiers came clanking up with their machine gun the crowd had dispersed, and nothing much was done in the way of reprisal, except that two elderly half-witted coolies later appeared on the bund, their hands tied behind them, and knelt down to be shot in the back of the head by a scruffy-looking Tsu sergeant with a big German revolver that threw them a yard forward on to their faces.

Tsu’s hold on Tsosiehn was still shaky and only a big victory could save him. Lao appeared on the airfield again.

‘We have paid for action,’ he said. ‘We are prepared to pay again for action.’

Ira grinned at him. ‘Colonel Lao,’ he said. ‘You’re going to get so much damned action, it’ll break the bank. Tell General Tsu to get his money boxes open. I’m after some of that gold he carries around. No cheques. No Tsu money. Shanghai, Mexican or American dollars only.’

He took off fast and lifted the Fokker in a steep turn past the Chang-an-Chieh towards the east. Almost as soon as he had passed over Tsu’s encampments, he saw a regiment of soldiers moving west towards Tsosiehn and he roared down towards them, his eyes narrow, his face grim, his guns clack-clacking, smoke and the smell of cordite streaking back. He saw the line crumple as men dived for the ditches, and a colonel waving his sword in fury at the aeroplane leapt from the saddle and bolted for safety. Twice he climbed into the sky, waiting for the column to re-form, then fell down in a steep dive with his guns shaking and saw the column disperse and finally begin to straggle back towards Hwai-Yang.

As he roared up. a third time, he saw a group of carts heading towards Wukang and he circled, high in the air, anxious not to draw attention to himself until he’d established that they were Kwei soldiers carrying ammunition or supplies. Faces turned up towards him as he roared down from the rear and he saw the drivers whipping the trotting ponies into a gallop, the waggons rolling and bouncing along the uneven road behind them. As the guns clattered, the ponies pulling the first cart went over, and the vehicle, under its own momentum, piled on top of them in a terrible heap of kicking legs and scattered boxes. The second waggon, rattling along close behind, swerved and overturned, wheels spinning, and the third crashed into that in a tangle of crippled animals and cursing men.

Back at Tsosiehn, he climbed from the machine and lit a cigarette without speaking. Sammy watched him, saying nothing, wiping the oil off the engine with a rag.

‘All right, Ira?’ he asked quietly after a while.

Ira studied his cigarette, his face expressionless, then he nodded. ‘All right, Sammy,’ he said.

‘Don’t go and break your neck, Ira.’

Ira’s grim mood persisted. ‘Would it matter much, Sammy?’ he asked.

Sammy frowned and blinked quickly. ‘It would to me,’ he said hotly.

Ira looked up. Sammy was staring at him, his face serious.

‘Would it, Sammy?’

‘You know bleddy well it would,’ Sammy blurted out.

Ira grinned unexpectedly. ‘I didn’t know you cared, Sammy,’ he said. ‘Give us a kiss.’