Year Of The Tiger

10

The day was exhilarating, like new wine, and the blue sky dipped away to the horizon as they rode out through the main gates of Changu shortly after noon the following day.

They were mounted on small and wiry Tibetan horses and Katya urged her mount into a gallop and took the lead. She wore riding breeches and soft Russian boots and her hat and collar were of black astrakhan.

Chavasse, wearing the Tibetan boots and shuba he had arrived in, went after her, scattering a grazing flock of yaks as he and Katya skirted the herdsmen’s encampment and rode up out of the valley.

The steppes were saffron yellow, golden in the sunlight, and he reined in beside a dark pool of water at the foot of some tall rocks where wind whispered through the dry grass. A bird cried as it lifted across the slope and a strange, inexplicable sadness fell upon him.

He shivered for no accountable reason and then Katya called to him, her voice carried by the wind from the top of a hill in the distance, and he urged his mount forward and went after her.

There was a fine haze over the land that masked the distances and the wind was as warm as a caress. He reined in on top of the hill and saw a river running through a deep gorge below and Katya standing on the edge of the cliffs.

He cantered down the slope, dismounted andsent his horse to join hers with a smack on the rump. He paused to light a cigarette and as he looked up, she turned and headed his way.

She moved through the dry grass towards him and the sun was behind her and the image blurred at the edges. She looked unreal and ethereal and utterly transitory, as if at any moment she might fly away. But when she spoke, the spell was broken at once.

“Let’s sit down, Paul.”

They flung themselves on the short grass and, after a while, he closed his eyes and relaxed. It was so pleasant, he thought, so wonderfully pleasant to lie in the sun with the right person and do nothing.

He decided there was a lot to be said for beachcombing. Something tickled his nose and he opened his eyes and caught her gently stroking his face with a blade of grass.

“You know, I haven’t done this for years,” he said.

“But you should. After all, life is for living.”

“You’ve got a point there,” he told her. “The trouble is, I never seem to have the time. Some sort of personality flaw, I suppose.”

She chuckled. “I don’t believe you. Were you the same way when you were a little boy?”

He wrinkled his brow and narrowed his eyes as he tried to somehow measure the limitless depths of the sky. “I can’t really remember. My father was French and my mother was English. He was killed fighting with his regiment at Arras in 1940 when the panzers went through Belgium and France like a knife through butter. My mother and I got out through Dunkirk.”

“What happened after you got to England?”

He found himself opening up in a way he hadn’t done in years, thinking back into the past, half-remembered events suddenly coming to life again.

By the time he had worked his way through to his two years as a lecturer at Cambridge University, almost an hour had gone by.

He stopped talking, and she frowned down at him. “But I don’t understand. You had everything you ever wanted and the prospect of a brilliant academic future, and yet you threw it all away.”

“I changed my ideas about living, that’s all,” he said. “One summer vacation, I helped a friend of mine get a relative out of Czechoslovakia. I found I rather enjoyed the experience.”

She sighed and shook her head despairingly as though he were a small boy she had discovered engaging in some foolishness. “So you decided to take this sort of thing up permanently?”

“Oh, now I’m expert at it,” he said. “They even called me in to help get the Dalai Lama to India last year.”

He was giving away too much of himself, he knew that, but she had a strange effect on him, like that of no other woman he’d known before.

“And what does your mother think about it all?”

Chavasse grinned. “She believes I’m some sort of civil servant, which I am, in a way.”

Katya still looked puzzled. “And you honestly like this sort of life? Constantly putting your head on the block, never knowing when the axe might fall?”

“Oh, it isn’t quite as bad as that all the time,” he said. “Working for the Bureau can mean anything from a job like this to making sure nobody shoots Comrade Khrushchev when he visits London. Don’t you approve?”

“It isn’t a question of approving or disapproving. It’s got nothing to do with politics or government or anything like that. It’s just that to me, it seems so wrong to see a fine brain wasted.”

He closed his eyes, remembering that someone else had once said the same thing. Katya’s voice moved on and then it began to rise and fall and then it was the rushing of the river in the gorge and then the quiet trickle of water over stones.

He awakened suddenly. Above him, clouds turned and wheeled across the sky, hinting at a break in the weather. Katya had gone, and he scrambled to his feet and looked about.

There was no sign of her and a slight twinge of panic sent him running to the edge of the cliff. She was standing on a boulder at the water’s edge, throwing stones into the river in an abstracted manner. As his boots crushed across the shingle, she turned towards him.

“You deserted me,” he told her. “I wakened to find you gone, like the enchanted Tartar princess in the fairy tale.”

She jumped down from the boulder and stumbled and he moved forward quickly and caught her in his arms. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, Paul, I wish it were like a fairy tale,” she said. “I wish this were an enchanted day standing still in time and that you and I were together for ever and ever.”

There was a depth and poignancy in her voice that brought a sudden lump to his throat. For a moment he gazed down into her eyes, and then he kissed her gently. She melted into him and the earth moved, but suddenly she broke away and stumbled across the shingle to the path.

When he reached the top of the cliffs, she was already mounted and galloping away, and it took him a moment or so to catch his horse.

As he went over the top of the hill, clouds moved cross the sun and a great belt of shadow spilled darkness across the ground.

He saw Katya moving towards it and he urged his horse into a gallop because, for some incomprehensible reason, he felt a desperate urgency to reach her before the shadow did.

When he was still thirty or forty yards away, it enveloped her and he reined in his horse. The shadow passed over him in turn and he felt suddenly chilled as fear touched his heart with ice-cold fingers.

For a little while he sat there listening to the sound of her horse’s hooves fade into the distance, and when she disappeared, hidden by a fold in the ground, he urged his horse into a walk and followed her.

When he reached the gate of the house, Joro was waiting for him, his face serious. As Chavasse dismounted and handed him the reins, the Tibetan said, “Captain Tsen’s been here asking questions.”

“What about?” Chavasse said.

“He’s making out a report for Lhasa,” Joro told him. “He questioned me for half an hour. I told him we were camped near Rudok when they attacked us. I said they dropped the bodies of the two guards down a hole in the ground.”

“Sounds reasonable enough,” Chavasse said. “Where is he now?”

“Inside. He was about to leave when the Stranoff woman came back. What happened out there? Did you two quarrel?”

Chavasse shook his head. “We decided to have a race on the way home, but my horse was winded.” He took his time in lighting a cigarette and said rapidly, “Everything’s going smoothly so far. The doctor is willing to come with us, and so is the woman.”

Joro frowned. “Are you sure she can be trusted?”

At that moment, the house door opened and Katya and Captain Tsen moved out onto the steps.

“This would seem to be about as good a time as any to find out,” Chavasse said, and walked across the courtyard to meet them.

Katya looked quite calm and completely relaxed and Captain Tsen smiled politely. “I hope you enjoyed your ride, comrade.”

“In such charming company, how could I fail to?” Chavasse bowed slightly to Katya. “I’m sorry I was eliminated so early in the race. I’m afraid my mount wasn’t up to it.”

“We must see if we can find you a better one next time,” she said. “I believe Captain Tsen wanted a word with you.”

Tsen raised a hand. “But there is really no hurry. I simply wish to hear your own account of your unhappy experience, comrade. For my report to Lhasa, you understand. As it happens, the good doctor has invited me to dinner this evening. Perhaps we could talk then?”

“A pleasure,” Chavasse told him.

The Chinese smiled. “Until this evening, then.”

He saluted Katya, clicked his heels together like a Prussian and walked away across the courtyard.

“You must excuse me,” Katya said. “I have to see the cook about the evening meal.”

Her tone was formal, almost cold, and before Chavasse could reply she had turned and vanished into the interior of the house. For a moment he stood there, a slight frown on his face, and then he followed her in.

He found Hoffner in the library sitting in front of a roaring fire with a book on his knee, drinking tea from a delicate porcelain cup. The old man looked up. “Did you enjoy your ride?”

Chavasse warmed his hands at the fire. “It was pleasant enough, but the courtryside round here is dreadfully monotonous. I don’t think I could stand it for long.”

“Oh, it has its points,” Hoffner said. “I suppose you know Tsen’s been here?”

Chavasse nodded. “I met him on his way out. He’s already had a word with Joro. It’s nothing to worry about, only some report he has to send to Lhasa. He said he’d have a word with me tonight after dinner.”

“Katya seemed very subdued when she came in,” the old man said tentatively. “I take it you’ve had a word with her?”

Chavasse sat down in the opposite chair and helped himself to tea. “She’s far from happy about the whole thing, but she’s willing to go along.”

“Presumably you haven’t told her the real reason I’m leaving?”

Chavasse shook his head. “There’s no need. The reason you’ve given is a perfectly logical one.” He hesitated and then continued. “As a matter of fact, Doctor, if anything ever goes wrong with this business and the Chinese question you, tell them exactly what you’ve told Katya. That you’re an old man in poor health who prefers to end his days in his own country. The beauty of it is that it makes perfect sense. They’d probably accept it without probing any deeper.”

The old man smiled faintly and shook his head. “But I have the greatest possible faith in the fact that nothing will go wrong.”

At that moment, there was the sound of a vehicle braking to a halt outside. Hoffner frowned and put down his cup. “Now I wonder who that can be.”

As Chavasse started to his feet, the door opened and Katya rushed in. “Colonel Li!” she said quickly in Russian.

Chavasse was aware of the extreme pallor of her face, of the dark eyes suddenly smudged with shadow. He managed one quick smile of confidence as the coldness seeped through him, then picked up his cup of tea.

“What an unexpected pleasure,” he said calmly.

There were quick footsteps in the hall and a man paused in the doorway. He was almost as tall as Chavasse, his uniform perfectly tailored to his slim figure, and a khaki greatcoat with a fur collar swung from his shoulders.

He carried a riding crop in his gloved hand and, smiling, touched it to the brim of his fur cap. “My dear Doctor, how very nice to see you.”

He spoke in Chinese in a deep, pleasant voice and it was obvious that, like Katya, he had European blood in him. His eyes lifted slightly at the corners, but they were shrewd and kindly in a bronzed, healthy face and the lips below the straight nose were well-formed and full of humour.

“We didn’t expect to see you back before the end of the week, Colonel,” Hoffner said calmly.

“As the English would say, something came up.” Li turned to Katya and lifted one of her hands to his lips. “My dear, you look as charming as usual.”

She managed a tight smile. “We’ve had an unexpected guest since you were here last, Colonel. Allow me to introduce you to Comrade Kurbsky, a foreign correspondent of Pravda who is here to interview the doctor.”

The colonel turned to face Chavasse, who held out his hand. “An honour, Colonel.”

Colonel Li smiled good-naturedly and shook hands. “But I’ve already had the pleasure of making Comrade Kurbsky’s acquaintance,” he announced.

There was a moment’s complete silence in which the whole world seemed to stop breathing. “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Chavasse said carefully.

“But surely you remember, comrade?” Li’s mouth curved good-humouredly. “Four nights ago at Rangong? We stayed at the village inn together. Filthy hole, wasn’t it?”

Chavasse took a quick step forward, kicked Colonel Li’s feet from under him and sent him backwards over Hoffner’s chair with a stiff right arm.

As he ran out into the hall, he was already reaching for the Walther. There was no time to think of Hoffner or Katya now. This was a matter of survival and in life, as in war, it was the quick and the unexpected that won the day.

A jeep was parked at the bottom of the steps outside the front door and four soldiers lounged beside it, chatting idly. They glanced up in alarm and he turned to go back inside.

Colonel Li appeared in the hall, an automatic in one hand. Chavasse raised the Walther and pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. He tried again without success, threw the useless weapon at Li’s head and vaulted over the parapet into the courtyard.

He landed badly, losing his balance, and as he got to his feet, there was a sudden pain in his ankle. He gritted his teeth and ran for the gate.

Behind him, boots pounded and he heard Li call loudly, “No shooting!”

He was within a yard of the gate when a foot tripped him and he hurtled to the ground, instinctively putting his hands to his face and rolling away to avoid the swinging kicks. A foot caught him in the side, another grazed his face, and then he was on his feet again, standing with his back to the wall.

He caught one brief glimpse of Katya Stranoff’s face as she stood in the entrance with Hoffner, and then the four soldiers started to move in.

One of them carried a long military truncheon and darted forward and swung at Chavasse’s head. Chavasse ducked, and as the truncheon dented the wall behind him, he lifted a foot into the man’s crotch. The truncheon rattled against the ground as the man collapsed.

The other three soldiers hesitated for a moment and then one of them pulled out his bayonet and started forward cautiously.

Colonel Li was running across the courtyard, and he cried out, “No. I want him alive!”

Chavasse dropped to one knee, snatched up the truncheon and smashed it across the soldier’s arm. The bone snapped like a dry twig and the man screamed, the bayonet slipping from his nerveless hand.

As Chavasse started to rise, the other two soldiers came in with a rush. The first one kicked him in the side, lifting him against the wall.

He grabbed for the man’s foot and they fell to the ground, rolling over and over. As Chavasse pulled himself on top, Colonel Li, who had arrived at that precise moment, picked up the truncheon and hit him one neat and expert blow across the back of the neck.