Year Of The Tiger

5

It had stopped raining and a white band of moonlight sprawled across the bed. Chavasse lay in that half-world between sleeping and waking and stared up through the gloom at the ceiling.

After a while, he glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. He lay back against the pillow for a moment longer, his body wet with perspiration, and then lifted the blankets aside and slipped out of bed. He quickly dried his body on a towel and dressed, pulling a thick, woollen sweater over his head before opening the window and stepping out onto the terrace.

The flat-roofed houses of Leh straggled down to the Indus below; the immense walls of the gorge were dark shadows against the sky. It was peaceful and quiet, the only sound a dog barking somewhere across the river, his voice a muted bell in the night.

Chavasse lit a cigarette, his hands cupped against the wind. As he flicked away the match, a bank of cloud rolled away from the moon and the countryside was bathed in a hard white light. The night sky was incredibly beautiful, with stars strung away to the horizon, where the mountain lifted uneasily to meet them.

He inhaled the freshness of the earth, wet after the rain, and wondered why everything couldn’t be as simple and uncomplicated as this. You only had to stand and look at it and it cost you nothing except a little time and it gave so much.

And then a small wind touched him coldly on the cheek, sending a wave of greyness through him, reminding him that half an hour’s flying time away through the darkness was the border. The wind called to him as it moaned across the rooftops, and he turned and went inside.

The hotel was wrapped in quiet and as he went downstairs, a blast of hot, stale air met him from the small hall where an ancient fan creaked uselessly in the ceiling, hardly causing a movement in the atmosphere.

The Hindu night clerk was asleep at his desk, head propped between his hands, and Chavasse moved softly past him and went into the bar.

Kerensky sat at a table by the window, a napkin tucked under his chin. He was the only customer, and a waiter hovered nearby and watched with awe as the Pole steadily demolished the large roasted chicken on his plate.

Chavasse went behind the bar, poured himself a large Scotch and added ice water. As he crossed to where Kerensky sat, the Pole looked up and grinned.

“Ah, there you are. I was just going to have you wakened. What about something to eat?”

Chavasse shook his head. “Nothing for me, thanks.”

“How do you feel?” Kerensky asked.

“Fine.” Chavasse stood at the window and looked out across the terrace into the moonlight. “It’s certainly the right night for it.”

“Couldn’t have been better.” Kerensky chuckled. “In this moonlight, I can fly through the passes with no trouble, and that was always the most dangerous part of the operation. It’s going to be a piece of cake.”

“I hope you’re right,” Chavasse said.

“But I always am. During the war I flew over one hundred operations. Every time something bad happened, I felt lousy beforehand. Through my grandmother on my mother’s side, I have Gypsy blood. I always know, I assure you, and tonight I feel good.”

He leaned over and poured vodka into Chavasse’s empty glass. “Drink up and we’ll go to the airstrip. I sent Joro up there an hour ago with my local man.”

Chavasse looked down into his glass, a slight frown on his face. Somewhere in his being, a primitive instinct, perhaps that slight mystical element common to all ancient races and inherited from his Breton ancestors, told him that it was no good. In spite of what Kerensky said, it was no good!

Accepting that fact, he was taken possession of by a strange fatalistic calm. He raised his glass and smiled and took the vodka down in one easy swallow.

“I’m ready when you are,” he said.

The airstrip was half a mile outside Leh on a flat plain beside the river. It was not an official stopping place for any of the big airlines and had been constructed by the R.A.F. as an emergency strip during the war.

There was one prefabricated concrete hangar still painted in the grey-green camouflage of wartime, and rainwater dripped steadily through its sagging roof as they went inside.

The plane squatted in the middle of the hangar, the scarlet and silver of its fuselage gleaming in the light thrown out by two hurricane lamps suspended from the rafters. Jagbar, Kerensky’s mechanic, was sitting at the controls, a look of intense concentration on his face as he listened to the sound of the engine. Joro was sitting beside him.

Jagbar jumped down to the ground and Joro followed him. “How does it sound?” Kerensky said.

Jagbar grinned, exposing stained and decaying teeth. “Perfect, sahib.”

“And fuel?”

“I’ve filled her to capacity, including the emergency tank.”

Kerensky nodded and patted the side of the plane. “Fly well for me, angel,” he crooned in Polish, and turned to Chavasse. “I’m ready when you are.”

Chavasse looked at the Tibetan and smiled. “I’ll have my disguise now, such as it is.”

Joro nodded and pulled a bundle out of the plane. It contained a brown woollen robe, a sheepskin shuba and cap and a pair of Tibetan boots in untanned hide.

Chavasse changed quickly and turned to Kerensky. “Will I do?”

The Pole nodded. “At a distance, no one would look at you twice, but remember to keep that face covered. It’s as Gallic as a packet of Gauloises or the Pigalle on a Saturday night. Distinctly out of keeping with the Tibetan steppes.”

Chavasse grinned. “I’ll try to remember that.”

He and Joro climbed into the plane first, and then Kerensky slipped into the pilot’s seat. He opened the map and turned to Joro.

“You’re sure about that border patrol?”

The Tibetan nodded confidently. “They are supposed to patrol daily to the Pangong Tso Pass, but lately it has been unsafe for them to do so. There are only ten men and a sergeant. They stay pretty close to Rudok.”

Kerensky leaned down to Jagbar. “Look for me in about two hours.”

The mechanic nodded and pulled the chocks away; Kerensky taxied slowly out of the hangar and turned into the wind. A moment later, the end of the airstrip was rushing to meet them. He pulled the stick back and the plane lifted into the gorge, rock walls flashing by on either side.

The mountains rose to meet them, gigantic and awe-inspiring, and they climbed higher and swung in a gentle curve that carried them between twin peaks and into another pass.

The rock walls were uncomfortably close, and Chavasse turned away hurriedly and looked for something to do. Joro was sitting with one of the submachine guns on his knee, carefully loading spare clips from a box of ammunition.

Chavasse took out his own weapon, a Walther, and checked its action – not that a handgun would be of much use to him if he ran into real trouble. He slipped it back into the soft leather holster at his hip and reached for the other submachine gun.

Within half an hour, they seemed lost in a landscape so barren, it might have been the moon. Great snow-covered peaks towered on every side and Kerensky, handling the plane with genius, moved through a maze that seemed to have no ending. Beyond the peaks, the stars were like diamond chips set in a black velvet cushion, brighter than Chavasse had ever known.

On several occasions, they dropped in air pockets. Once, as they curved from one pass into another, Chavasse could have sworn that their right wingtip touched the rock wall, but they flew on, Kerensky’s great hands steady on the controls.

Suddenly, they skimmed over the shoulder of a mountain and three hundred feet below, a lake glittered in the moonlight.

“Pangong Tso!” Joro shouted above the roar of the engine.

The great pass lifted to meet them. Kerensky eased back the stick slightly, but as the plane rose, so did the frozen earth beneath.

Chavasse held his breath and waited for the crash, but it didn’t come. With fifty feet to spare, they were over the hump and flashing between rock walls on one side and a glacier on the other.

Beneath them, a dark plateau rolled away into the distance as far as the eye could see. Kerensky turned and smiled in the dim light thrown out by the instrument panel. “Thought you might like to know we’re now over Tibet,” he shouted. “I’m altering course slightly to bypass Rudok. No sense in advertising.”

The plane banked sharply to the east and then resumed level flight. The view was spectacular as the rolling steppes stretched away to the horizon. Here and there, hollows and valleys lay dark and forbidding, thrown into relief by the white moonlight, which picked out the higher stretches of ground.

And then a lake appeared, and a few moments later, another. Joro tapped Kerensky on the shoulder and the Pole nodded and took the plane down.

The sand flat at the eastern end of the lake gleamed white in the moonlight and Kerensky circled once and started to put the plane’s nose down for a landing. Suddenly he banked sharply and started to climb.

“What’s wrong?” Chavasse cried.

“Thought I saw a light down there,” Kerensky said. “Just over the hill from the shore. I’ll go down and take a look.”

He took the plane round once more, but there was no sign of a light. “What do you think?” he said over his shoulder.

Chavasse looked enquiringly at Joro and the Tibetan shrugged. “If there was a light, it could only have been a herdsman’s fire. Chinese soldiers wouldn’t dare to spend a night in the open in this area.”

“That settles it.” Chavasse tapped Kerensky on the shoulder. “Put her down.”

Kerenksy nodded and circled the lake once more before turning into the wind for a perfect landing on the shore. Chavasse didn’t waste any time. As the plane taxied to a halt, he opened the door, jumped to the ground and turned to help Joro down with the guns and ammunition.

Sand, whipped up by the propeller, enveloped him in a cloud of stinging particles, but within a few moments the boxes were on the ground and Joro was beside him.

Kerenksy reached over to close the door. “One week from now, same time, same place,” he shouted above the roar of the engine. “And be here on time. I don’t want to hang around.”

Chavasse and Joro quickly dragged the boxes out of the way and stood back and watched as Kerenksy taxied along to the other end of the strand and turned into the wind.

As he moved forward, the engine note deepened, and a few moments later the plane banked away across the lake, gaining height all the time, and disappeared towards the northwest.

His ears still ringing with the sound of the plane’s engine, Chavasse turned to Joro. “We’d better find somewhere to dump this little lot until your pals from Yalung Gompa can pick it up.”

He moved across the sand towards a narrow gully which cut into the side of the hill about forty yards away. Strange how the sound of the engine still rang in his ears, but the gully looked just the place.

He turned to call Joro and a jeep appeared on the crest of the hill as if by magic.

In that first frozen moment of panic he was aware of the peak caps of the soldiers and the long ugly barrel of the machine gun mounted on a swivel, and then he was running into the open, one hand reaching for his Walther.

“Look out, Joro,” he cried in English.

The heavy barrel of the machine gun was already swinging towards the Tibetan, and ribbons of fire stabbed through the night, kicking up the sand in great fountains.

Joro flung himself sideways, rolling desperately, and Chavasse dropped to one knee and got off a couple of shots to draw their fire.

Joro scrambled to his feet and disappeared into the shelter of a jumbled mass of boulders at the water’s edge as the barrel of the machine gun turned towards Chavasse. He retreated into the mouth of the gully, flinging himself flat on his face as bullets hammered the rocks beside him.

A splinter cut his cheek and when he got to his feet and tried to move farther into the sheltering darkness, a bullet sliced across his left shoulder. He hugged the earth again and waited and when the bullets at last stopped coming, the silence was even harder to bear. He cautiously scrambled to his feet again, and immediately there was a muffled explosion and the gully was bathed in a hard white light.

He looked up at the descending flare and waited, because there was no place to run to. After a while, stones rattled down and two Chinese soldiers appeared on the rim of the gully, burp guns ready. As he raised the Walther to fire, a third man appeared between them.

He stood on the edge of the gully, a slight smile on his face, so close that Chavasse could see the feather in his Tyrolean hat and the fur collar of his hunting jacket.

“Don’t be a damned fool,” the man said calmly in English. “That thing’s going to do you no good at all.”

Chavasse looked up at him in astonishment and then, in spite of the pain in his shoulder, he laughed. It had, after all, been a night for surprises.

“You know, I think you’ve got something there,” he said, and tossed the Walther across and waited for them to come for him.