The Lotus and the Wind (26 page)

After a couple of days they would cause the whole of the route to be searched.

Robin felt strength returning to his body, but his mind fretted, and he was sick. He could not believe that Muralev would pollute the desert with man-made poison. If he had, he’d lost the mysterious quality which united him to Robin and to the secrets of the open places. It could have been the woman alone. He would have to believe so or he would not want to continue. Only one thing was sure, that someone had earnestly tried to kill him and Jagbir. ‘The charade ceases to be pretence when an agent gets hold of something really important.’ He never forgot Hayling’s words. Yet--yet he was here, and alive. So many other methods could have been devised to kill him in the Black Desert, methods that could not have failed.

Jagbir said, ‘We have to get fodder and more food.’ They had already eaten largely at a nomad encampment.

‘What about this camel?’

‘It depends where we’re going next, lord. Either buy another or sell this and buy two horses.’

‘I don’t know where we’ll be going. We’d better get horses and ask about the Muralevs.’

Jagbir considered and said, ‘Isn’t that dangerous, lord?’

‘A little. But we can’t hide the fact that we’ve arrived. They’ll find that out as soon as they begin to inquire. All these nomads have seen us. We must get some information and then disappear again.’

Bearing a little to the east, they came to a small hamlet. Its principal tradesman knew nothing of the Muralevs, but he knew where Robin could certainly get hold of them. If they were Russians, he said, they would be heading for an encampment outside the village of Bezmein. He took Robin up to the flat roof of his house and pointed west. ‘There, that’s Bezmein. It’s over ten miles away. It’s no larger than this, but a lot of the caravans stop there because they have women and liquor and we don’t. A party of Russians arrived several weeks ago and camped outside it, on the far side. Nobody knows what they are doing. They walk about with big boards and tall things on three wooden legs. They won’t let us go near them. But they go into Bezmein, some of them, and get drunk like all kafirs and yell and sing and womanize.’ He spat over the parapet.

Robin said, ‘Thank you. But you misunderstand the purpose of my questions. I do not want to meet these Russians. They say I owe them money. So if they should happen to ask after us, perhaps you will. . .?’ He handed over a couple of silver coins. The merchant nodded and spat again. ‘To hell with all unbelievers!’

‘Amen.’

When they had bought two horses, sold the camel, and transacted their other business, Robin and Jagbir headed eastward out of the village. Bezmein was to the west.

The wind blew all night and hid their tracks as they circled round until in the dawn they camped in a fold of ground at the limit of the hills. It was like a little eyrie. The Bezmein oasis lay among thin trees half a mile in front of them and fifty feet lower, so that they overlooked it. They could see the village and, about a quarter of a mile to its left, a grove of trees. They saw in the grove at least five tents. There was as yet no need to go closer. The party there could only be surveyors. Later, if they could, they must try and find out what the Russians were surveying for, but first they had to be sure that the Muralevs were coming here.

In the middle of the day the Muralevs came. From the ridge that sheltered their little valley, Robin and Jagbir saw the dust of the caravan miles out in the Black Desert. The Muralevs were riding ahead as usual, on little ponies. A mile behind them followed half a dozen loaded camels, two more horses, and six armed men. Even from that distance the weariness of all of them showed in their paces and in the hunched, rolling way the men sat their animals. Some of the surveyors came out of the camp to greet them, then they all disappeared.

Robin sent Jagbir to search the hillside for water--where they could take the ponies after dark--and a sheltered place where they could light a small fire and cook their food. Then he settled down to watch the camp. He saw men working under the trees, and soon another tent rose. He saw Muralev and a stranger come to the edge of the scrub and stand a while with their backs to him, staring out to the north. In that direction he and Jagbir were supposed to be lying dead. A little later another man rode out on a camel. Robin hoped he would go north into the Black Desert, because then he could not return with news in less than three days. But the rider went first into Bezmein village, came out again after an hour, and headed east for the hamlet where Robin had talked with the merchant on the rooftop. He would learn something there, all right. He would be back late in the evening or early the following morning.

In the twilight Jagbir returned. ‘I’ve found a good place. A little dell two miles up this valley.’

‘Good. We’ll not be able to get close to that camp except at night. And one of us will have to stay with the ponies.’

‘We ought to work together, lord. The ponies will be all right. They’re not frightened. The wolves aren’t hungry yet.’ Robin agreed. Jagbir knew. They hurried to the dell, ate quickly, tethered the ponies with strong cord, and returned to the eyrie. Jagbir said, ‘Lord, when it’s dark I stay here with the rifle. You go forward and find a good place, where you can lie up even by day. You will try to get into the camp to-night, perhaps? You lie in the hiding-place all to-morrow too. Then to-morrow evening we change over.’

‘How are we going to eat, cook, feed the horses?’

‘The one who is here with the rifle can do all that at night. It is only by day that he must be here, in the eyrie, all the time. With the rifle, by day, he can make the enemy go slowly if they discover the one who’s lying out. By night he can do nothing.’

‘All right.’

They settled down to the new routine. Robin went the first night and found that Uzbeg sentries guarded the camp. Lying on the desert, he saw their black sheepskin caps and their slung rifles against the dim lamps in the tents behind.

There was no hope of entering the grove under these conditions. Before dawn he found a trio of bushes two hundred yards from the eastern edge of the camp, and with his hands burrowed in the sand until it nearly covered him. Then he put down his head, placed a pebble in his mouth to suck, and lay still as the sun came up. He lay still until the sun went down. No visitors came this day to the camp. The nomads grazing their flocks kept away in the distance to the north. Villagers came out from Bezmein but did not approach the camp. The surveyors did not leave, nor did the Muralevs. The messenger on the camel returned early, and Robin heard angry voices. Later Lenya Muralev came to the edge of the grove and stared suspiciously around the horizon, searching the hills with particular care.

The following night Jagbir took over. By day Robin saw from the eyrie that five visitors came to the oasis. They came from the south, where a track emerged from the mountains a mile or two east of Bezmein. At the change-over that evening Jagbir said, ‘Those men who came, they’re still there. They’re not white unless they’re in disguise. They don’t seem to be Uzbegs, Afghans, Turkis, or Persians--at least not the kind of Persians we saw in Balkh and Kabul. They seemed to be speaking a sort of Persian, not Zaboli like ours.’

The next day, lying in hiding behind the three bushes, Robin saw the visitors depart. They returned the way they had come, one by one, at long intervals, passing close by him. He thought they might be tribal chieftains from South Persia, Qashqai perhaps. One other thing of interest he saw--a Russian who left the camp at dusk and returned, very drunk, at midnight. The sentries took no notice of him and did not even challenge him but stood aside and let him find his own stumbling way into the encampment.

At the change-over Jagbir said hesitantly, ‘I don’t think I should go out now, lord.’

Robin said quickly, ‘Of course not, son, we’ll leave it for a day.’ He thought: It is not really strange that Jagbir should be frightened; he does not like being alone. Jagbir went on. ‘No. I feel sure that woman will have the ground about the camp most carefully searched to-morrow.’

Jagbir was right. In the middle of the morning the whole surveying party and all the guards came out of the camp and walked in circles, at intervals of a few paces, around the grove. One stopped by the three bushes where Robin had lain, and stirred the sand with his foot. Then others came to him. The woman walked out from the camp to look, and shortly afterwards they all seemed to give up the search, returning into the trees. At noon the surveying party set out with horses and plane tables and theodolites, and during the afternoon the watchers saw them working along an east-west line a mile or so from the foot of the mountains.

‘Now they’ve found our hiding-place,’ Robin said slowly. ‘We can’t go back.’

‘By night we can, lord, as long as we don’t go to those three bushes. They’ll never catch us if we’re careful. But we must go together. Out at dusk, back before dawn.’

‘How much food have we got left?’

‘Four, five days for us and the horses. It’ll take us a day to reach a place where we can buy some more.’

On the second night under the new arrangement the same Russian that Robin had seen before left the camp just as they crept into position. He almost walked into them. He hurried on towards Bezmein, jingling money in his pocket and smoking a foul cheroot.

When he had gone Jagbir whispered, ‘We can get him on his way back. Nearer the village.’ Robin nodded. The Russian might have nothing of interest on him, but time was running out.

After half an hour they walked silently closer to the village. Most of the villagers had gone to bed, and only a few lights shone out from the meagre, mud-built hovels. Later someone began to sing. Much later still, when the chill of the desert had frozen them to the sand, they heard the Russian come out on his return journey.

Jagbir muttered, ‘Do you want me to kill him?’

‘No.’

The Russian staggered past them. Lying down as they were, they could see his head nodding against the stars. Twice he fell down and lay a while, breathing heavily and muttering to himself. When he was half-way to the camp they ran up silently, one on each side. Robin pushed him gently from behind. He ran forward to catch up with his falling body and ran into the ground, his legs still working. Jagbir jumped on to his back, cupped one hand over his mouth, and punched him hard on the side of the head.

Robin whispered, ‘I can’t see. Search him. Has he got any matches?’

After a pause--’Yes.’

Jagbir emptied the Russian’s pockets. Soon Robin held a little pile of papers in his hand, besides a small knife, a dirty handkerchief, a slide rule, two cheroots, and some small change. Then he crouched down and held out his robe like a tent over the Russian’s head. Jagbir lit a match under its shelter. A trickle of blood from above the unconscious man’s eye ran down the side of his face. His shirt was torn, and there was no sunburn line around the base of his neck. The brown continued down evenly. His face was almost darker than ordinary sunburn could have made it, for, like all Russians, he wore a hat even at night. Yet Russian was his native tongue. Robin did not know that language but he knew enough to recognize the sound of it. The match burned out, and he carefully put the dead stick in his turban. Jagbir lit another, and Robin began to examine the loot from the Russian’s pockets.

There were two official-looking printed documents. He’d have to take them. There was a booklet of logarithm tables. No sense in taking that. Another booklet, thin and paper-bound. As Jagbir kept striking matches Robin turned over the pages; this was a phrase book--Russian on one side of each page, and, on the other, Persian. From a quick glance he thought it was not classical Persian but a dialect of some kind--and not the eastern dialect, Zaboli Persian, which he himself had learned. In the back of the book he found an outline map of Persia. Someone, presumably the owner, had underlined Bushire in pencil. Bushire was a town and seaport on Persia’s southern coast, on the Persian Gulf.

Robin kept the documents and the phrase book. Then, in an effort to show that the robbery had been the work of common thieves, they scattered the rest of the Russian’s belongings carelessly around, kept his small change, and took the ring off his finger. It was worth trying, because the Russian might want to keep quiet about the affair anyway, for fear of trouble over being drunk. On the way to the dell Robin took the matchsticks from his turban and buried them in the sand.

As soon as it was light Jagbir went to the eyrie and stood sentry there. Robin remained in the dell with the papers.

The party to which the drunken man belonged was certainly surveying the course of the railway which, as the government of India already knew, the Russians were in process of building south-eastward from Krasnovodsk. But the drunken surveyor had some interest in South Persia, as evidenced by the map and the phrase book. The dialect would be a South Persian one of some kind. Did this all mean, then, that the Russians intended to push the railway south into Persia and across Persia to the gulf, near Bushire? It might--but he’d better not cast his surmises too far ahead of his facts. Let him take the situation at its face value only.

The facts of geography were unalterable. Here on the edge of the Akkal oasis he was near the beginning of that direct, central invasion route which ran from the Caspian through Balkh and Kabul to Peshawar. The drunken surveyor’s map, and the language in which someone had decided he should be instructed, and the appearance of the visitors to the camp, pointed not straight ahead but to the right, the south.

Very well. If the Russians were going to use the southern route in force, there would be some signs to show the fact. He would have to go south and find them.

He went down to the eyrie and told Jagbir. Before they left, Robin stared once more at the grove that hid the Muralevs, and across the Black Desert, which the poison had befouled. Selim Beg had written ‘Horses, north.’ Every clue since then had pointed west, and now south. The trail would take him from here towards great cities and into the steaming bustle of the Persian Gulf. He wanted to know where Muralev would go now. Muralev wouldn’t find his bustard on the shores of the Gulf, that was certain. He’d be unhappy down there. It would be like the poisoning and the subterfuges.--a level of deception forced on him by his wife’s love for him and his own love for his country.