Year Of The Tiger

12

Trudging along in the rain at the end of the column, Chavasse presented an extraordinary picture. His eyes had withdrawn into dark sockets, his hair was filthy and matted and his gaunt body was covered by an ancient and verminous sheepskin shuba.

His wrists were tied tightly together in front of him and the other end of the long rope was looped over the pommel of his guard’s high wooden saddle.

He was beginning to feel tired. The rain, blown against his face by the high wind, was icy cold and his stomach ached for food. He slowed a little, and immediately his guard tugged sharply on the rope, sending him stumbling forward onto his face.

The man screamed angrily in Chinese and Chavasse got to his feet painfully and started to hobble forward again. “All right, you bastard,” he shouted in English. “Keep your bloody hair on.”

He could see Colonel Li riding at the front of the column of thirty men, all mounted alike on wiry Tibetan horses, submachine guns across their backs, and he wondered again at the strange mixture of the old and the new that seemed so typical of the Chinese.

Despite the size of the area under his supervision, Colonel Li had only three jeeps and one truck, and when he made his rounds of the villages on the high plateau, where security was bad and he needed a strong escort, he was compelled to use cavalry.

The rain increased in force and Chavasse trudged on, feeling utterly miserable, the coldness seeping into his very bones.

He was perhaps at the lowest point in his life, and he knew that the fact that he admitted this even to himself was extremely dangerous. Colonel Li would have been surprised if he’d known how close he’d been to cracking. He raised his bound hands to wipe rain from his face and stumbled on.

For almost three weeks he had been beaten and humiliated in every conceivable way. Night after night, the bell in his cell had rung and the red light had flashed and sometimes they had come for him and sometimes they had not.

It was all part of a plan. All good sound psychology. Pavlov had started it with his dogs and the bell that sounded at mealtimes, had shown the world that gradually, by changing the order of things, you could produce a complete neurotic breakdown until a man became as broken in spirit as he was in body. Then and only then, the Party believed, could the process of rebirth begin. When the process was finished, the Party had another loyal and efficient zombie to swell its ranks.

He wondered how Katya and Dr. Hoffner were making out. And then there was Joro. Colonel Li had made no reference to the Tibetan since the day Chavasse had been taken.

The rain hammered against his face and he gave up trying to shrug it off and withdrew into his secret and inner self, the one trick that had kept him going for the past twenty-two days.

For a moment, he thought longingly of his cell; at least it had been dry and one had food occasionally. And then he shuddered, remembering the night they had come for him eight times and the day Li and Captain Tsen between them had interrogated him for twenty-four hours.

He wondered why Li had decided to take him with him on his tour of inspection – Li, with his phony kindness and fine scholarly face masking the heart of a fiend.

Chavasse tried to imagine how he would kill him if he had the chance. It was a game which had relieved the tedium of many long hours in his cell, but he was too exhausted to think straight and his body was shaking with the cold.

He stumbled and fell again and this time there was no impatient tug on the rope. When he looked up, he saw that the column had halted in the shelter of an outcrop of rock overlooking a valley in which a small village nestled, the smoke from its fires heavy on the rain.

The guard unhooked the rope from his saddle and Chavasse went and sat against a rock, taking advantage of the brief respite, his head resting on his knees.

A stone rattled in front of him and Colonel Li said in English, “But Paul, you really look quite ill. Can I do anything for you?”

He sounded genuinely concerned and Chavasse looked up and said wearily, “Why don’t you go fly your kite?”

Colonel Li laughed pleasantly, sat himself on a nearby boulder and poured hot tea into a plastic cup from his flask. He held it forward. “Here, have some.”

Chavasse hesitated for a moment and then snatched the cup before Li could change his mind and swallowed the contents.

The tea was red-hot and it burned its way down into his gullet. He leaned over, coughing and choking, and Li patted him on the back. “There now, you’ll feel better in a moment.”

After a while, Chavasse sat up and handed him the cup. “I’d like to know what’s going on behind that smile,” he said. “You haven’t brought me out here for the good of my health, that’s obvious.”

“For the good of your soul, Paul,” Colonel Li said. “For the good of your immortal soul.”

“Communist version, of course.”

Li smiled faintly and inserted a cigarette into his jade holder. “You know, I’ve grown very fond of you during the past three weeks, Paul. I’m really quite determined to bring you over to our side. Such good material going to waste.”

“I’ll see you in hell first,” Chavasse told him.

“I don’t think so.” Li shook his head. “You seem to forget that I have an irritating habit of always getting what I want in the end.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh, but I do. For example, when you first came to me, you refused to tell me who you really were. I found out for myself quite quickly from intelligence records in Peking. Next, I wanted to know what you were doing here.”

“You’ve been trying to find that out for three weeks,” Chavasse said, “and how far have you got?”

Li chuckled. “But I’ve known from the beginning. Katya told me all about it that first night. You were hoping to get Doctor Hoffner out of Tibet.”

Chavasse moistened dry lips. “Katya told you?” he said dully.

“But of course. It’s really very simple. It was quite obvious to me that you had a reason for being at Hoffner’s house posing as Kurbsky. I invited the good doctor to tell me all he knew. Being the humanitarian he is, he of course declined. I pointed out that his attitude might have an adverse effect on our future relations. Katya stepped in at once and told me the whole story to save him any possible unpleasantness.”

“So now you know,” Chavasse said. “I’m glad she had the sense to tell you. What have you done with them?”

“They’re both still at Hoffner’s house. I’m afraid I’ll have to send them to Lhasa eventually and from there to Peking, but only when this affair is cleared up.”

“But what else is there to know?” Chavasse asked.

“Many things.” Colonel Li shrugged. “How you entered Tibet. Who helped you when you got here, what happened to Kurbsky and his escort.”

“You’ve been asking me those questions for three weeks,” Chavasse told him, “and where has it got you? Don’t you ever give up?”

“No, Paul, I do not.” Li’s voice was suddenly ice-cold. “Because in the first place, I’m not entirely a fool. There’s something wrong with this affair, something not quite right about it. I want to know what it is.”

Chavasse laughed in his face. “You might as well shoot me and get it over with.”

“Oh, no, Paul. I won’t do that. Before I’m finished with you, you’re going to tell me what I want to know – the truth. The whole truth, and you’ll tell me because you want to. Afterwards, you’ll go to Peking, where I’ve no doubt the Central Committee will find you a most valuable ally.”

“Kill me,” Chavasse told him. “You’ll save us both a lot of grief.”

Colonel Li shook his head. “I’m going to help you, Paul. I’m going to save you in spite of yourself.”

He stood up quickly and walked away and, a moment later, mounted his horse at the head of the column. Chavasse waited for his guard and after a while, the man came and looped the end of the rope over the pommel of his saddle again and the column moved off down the slope into the valley.

As they neared the village, dogs ran to meet them, their barking hollow on the damp air. They darted in and out amongst the horses and the soldiers cursed and kicked out at them.

A few ragged and undernourished children hovered on the perimeter of things, keeping pace with the column as it entered the village.

Chavasse decided that he had seldom seen a more miserable sight in his life than the mud streets and wretched hovels grouped round the large square. He trailed along at the rear of the column, dogs yapping at his heels as the children ran beside him shouting excitedly.

In the centre of the square there was a large stone platform, and here the headman waited with a few elders grouped around him. Colonel Li reined in his horse beside them and waited while his men galloped through the wretched streets, turning the inhabitants out into the rain, herding them into the square.

Within ten minutes their task was done and a crowd of perhaps a hundred and fifty people were gathered in the square. Li made a sign and a soldier pushed Chavasse forward and up onto the stone.

He looked out into the rain over the sea of sullen, apathetic faces, at the cavalrymen lined up at the rear, and wondered what was supposed to happen now.

He soon found out. Colonel Li raised a hand for silence. “People of Sela!” he shouted. “Many times in the past I have told you of the foreign devils who are our enemies. Those of the Western world who would do us harm. Today I bring you such a one that you might look upon him for yourselves.”

There was a slight stirring in the crowd, but otherwise not a flicker of interest, and he continued, “I could tell you many bad things about this man. I could say that he has murdered your own countrymen, that he intends you all great harm, but he has been guilty of one single crime more diabolical than all the rest put together.”

There was suddenly complete silence as everyone waited and Li said slowly, “This man is one of those who helped kidnap the Dalai Lama – who snatched the living God away by force to India, where he is now held captive against his will.”

There was a sudden cry from someone at the back, and then another. In a moment, the whole crowd was surging forward. A stone curved through the air. Chavasse moved to avoid it and another caught him above his right eye, drawing blood.

Filth and ordure of every description snatched up from the mud of the square was thrown at him, and within minutes he was plastered from head to foot.

Colonel Li had wheeled his horse away as they began, but now he called from the edge of the crowd, “What punishment is fit for such a monster?”

For a moment, the crowed paused, and then someone screamed, “Kill him! Kill him!”

Chavasse kicked out in a panic as a hand reached for his feet and fingers grabbed the edge of his tattered robe. Someone caught hold of the rope which was still fastened to his wrists and pulled on it, jerking him headfirst into the crowd.

He was on his face in the mud surrounded by a forest of legs, and fear rose into his throat, choking him, and he screamed and kicked out frantically and then the crowd scattered as the cavalrymen thundered into them.

They cleared a circle and he scrambled to his feet and faced them. The people looked at him silently, hate in their eyes, and Colonel Li urged his horse forward and said, “No, death would be the easy way out, comrades. We must help him to change. To become like us. To think like us. Is this not so?”

There was a sullen murmur from the crowd and, as Li inclined his head, the cavalrymen herded them away.

Li smiled down at Chavasse. “You see, Paul, without me they would have killed you. I really am your friend after all.”

Chavasse, glaring up at him with hate in his heart, could think of nothing to say.