The Challenging Heights (28 page)

‘There it is, sir!’

The white Legation building lay just outside Ambul and they could see the Union Jack still flying from the roof. Putting the nose down, Dicken dropped to five hundred feet and began to circle.

‘Message down there, sir!’

As they banked low over the building they read the words, made up from white towels and strips of material laid out on the lawn: ‘FLY HIGH. DO NOT LAND. ALL WELL.’

Despite the message, there was no sign of life, no movement, no hands waving from windows.

‘Better drop the two halves of the panel separately,’ Dicken advised. ‘And we’ll see if anybody comes out to collect it.’

Flying low over the building, they managed to land the first half-panel right on the doorstep. No one came out to pick it up.

‘I’m going to fly low,’ Dicken said. ‘See if you can see any light in the building, or any faces at the windows.’

But the windows had been boarded up, and dark figures moved among the trees near the surrounding wall with more groups along the heights overlooking it and near the royal palace, clearly firing at the aeroplane.

‘Drop the other half,’ Dicken ordered. ‘One half’s no good to anybody.’

As Babington leaned over the side of his cockpit, there was a bang from somewhere in front of Dicken who was immediately covered with hot black oil. As Babington turned to report that the panel had gone, his eyes widened.

‘Christ, sir,’ he said. ‘You all right?’

‘I’ll have to land!’

Babington was as unflappable as ever. ‘Get some height first, sir,’ he said. ‘I want to send a message.’

Pulling back the stick, Dicken began to climb so that the little propeller on the wing which worked the generator could force out enough voltage for Babington to transmit. As the engine began to splutter and finally died, the wireless operator lifted his head.

‘Got it away, sir,’ he said.

Arpur aerodrome lay several miles away so, finding a patch of flat land between the rocky hills, Dicken sideslipped off height and floated in to land. But the tyres were shot through and the machine stood on its nose. As he scrambled clear, barely able to see for the oil on his face, he saw there were bullet holes in the machine, one of them in the engine sump.

As they were examining it, from among a group of rocks a head popped up, then another, and another, and within minutes they were surrounded by a mob of heavily-armed shouting tribesmen. Then an ancient Ford Tin Lizzie appeared, clattering over the ground, its front wheels wobbling and shaking on the stony surface. It seemed to have no driver but there were rifles sticking out from the sides. As it stopped near them, six or seven dark-skinned men with unshaven faces wearing balaclava helmets climbed out and walked slowly towards them, their rifles at the ready. One of them, obviously an NCO, halted the others and advanced on Dicken. At the last moment, he lifted the rifle quickly and fired it in the air. The bullet whistled past Dicken’s nose.

The NCO grinned. ‘Prisoner, sahib,’ he said.

Within minutes the men from the car had become a mob, all of them waving rifles or knives. They were speaking Pushtu and, since Dicken could only speak Urdu, they were not able to communicate.

He produced his blood chit hurriedly but nobody could read, though after a while a man wearing a military-looking greatcoat arrived who claimed to be a brigadier in the royal army. Though he wasn’t hostile, he clearly didn’t set much store by the blood chit, and it appeared that while he and his fellow countrymen associated khaki with the British, because of the winter season Dicken and Babington were wearing blue.

Since they were carrying no arms and the bomb racks were empty, the Rezhans found nothing more aggressive than a Very pistol, so that their hostile manner changed. Trying to explain the peaceful nature of their mission, Dicken persuaded the brigadier to post sentries on the wrecked machine, then they were led down the slopes to a stony village where they were given tea and chupattis. That night they spent crammed together with a dozen malodorous tribesmen round a charcoal fire in a very small farm building entirely devoid of ventilation.

For two days they remained there, making up crosswords and playing draughts with matchsticks on a board drawn in the dust, then on the third morning a decrepit Chevrolet van appeared which brought wheels and tyres for the damaged machine. It was explained that the Rezhan air force also flew DH9s.

The damaged wheels were replaced and, using the mob which was still hanging around out of curiosity, they turned the DH the right side up, hitched the tail to the back of the van, and set off for the airfield with the armed guard, twenty-three men aboard a vehicle designed to carry twelve.

The Rezhans at the airfield were not hostile, merely curious, until they saw Dicken studying their old DH9s. They were in a dreadful condition. They had no instruments and where the altimeters should have been there were just holes. The pilots were Russians who were refugees from the Revolution and the annoyance they showed, Dicken suspected, came less from hostility than from shame at the condition of the machines.

The commanding officer was a large fat Rezhan who wore a pale green jersey, the same balaclava helmet as the rest of them, and a bandolier stuffed with bullets. Since he was the commander of the whole Rezhan air force, he was conscious of his importance and had a little office at the end of the landing strip where he took off his bandolier and invited them to sit down to lunch with him. The meal was curried goat and there was a sentry on the door with a rifle but, halfway through the meal, the sentry propped his weapon in a corner and sat down alongside Babington and started to eat with them. While they were eating, one of the Russian pilots appeared, demanding bombs, so the commander wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and opened a large safe in his office to take out a very nasty-looking Cooper 20-pounder. The Russian disappeared with it in a suitcase.

During the afternoon, they were told they were to be taken to a hotel and, climbing into a car, they trundled off the airfield to a shabby-looking building. It was a two-storeyed affair with a single room downstairs, where battered armchairs were grouped round a few potted palms. They climbed to an outside balcony from which led several bedrooms. The room they were given matched the shabbiness downstairs, with two sagging beds covered with grey-looking sheets, what appeared to be old army blankets, and a threadbare bedspread covered with Pushtu symbols. The door was locked behind them and they knew there was a sentry outside because they could hear him hawking and spitting and clicking the bolt of his rifle.

During the night they were awakened by shouts and screams and the banging of doors, but, deciding not to get involved, they went back to sleep. The following morning they saw the door was open and, scrambling out, they saw the sentry lying in a heap, minus his rifle and obviously very dead.

There were more bodies on the stairs and in the hall, and they learned that Bachi-i-Adab’s men had got through the lines the previous night and broken in to ransack the place before the King’s troops could push them out again.

The Legations of other foreign powers in Ambul were nearer to the city than the British Legation so, during the next two or three days, they tried to make contact with them to find out what was happening. They were successful with the French Legation, but the French knew nothing, though they believed there had been no casualties, and, bombarding the Rezhan commander with questions, they learned that the British Legation was still displaying signals on the lawn advising against landing either at Arpur or anywhere else.

Though allowed a certain amount of freedom, they were always watched carefully by an armed guard led by a small sergeant with black curly hair, a black toothbrush moustache and large flat feet who became known to them as Charlie Chaplin. Learning that the Rezhan wireless equipment had been repaired, Dicken insisted on seeing the Rezhan Foreign Minister. Charlie Chaplin clearly had no idea what a foreign minister was but, after a long argument, he produced a boy who had lived in India and spoke some English, and, explaining what he wanted, Dicken saw that the boy understood.

The following day the boy returned with a safe conduct pass and they were led to a fort on the edge of the town which was also the King’s palace. The Rezhans clearly had little idea of hygiene, and refuse had been flung into the alleys and left to the scavenging birds, while the ground, dusty in summer, was at the moment a quagmire of mud, spattering the walls of the palace, blurring the expert filigrees of Pathan craftsmen and dulling the colours of foliage and clothing. The Foreign Minister’s quarters contained chipped furniture, and neglected wood carvings rubbed shoulders with threadbare drapes and unrevered ornaments, the mud walls visible through gaping holes in the panelling.

The Minister, one of the King’s unwilling converts, was a short thickset man with a three-day-old beard, wearing a shabby European suit that looked as if it had been sent on the back of a camel from an Indian bazaar. His tie was worn without a collar and on his head was a European felt hat which he didn’t bother to remove. Though he was full of smiles and apologies, it was clear immediately that he was giving nothing away.

The people in the Legation were still alive, it seemed, but there had been little communication with them and the Foreign Minister obviously didn’t intend to risk his neck between the firing lines to find anything out.

‘Then may I get into contact with India, via Peshawar, perhaps also via Quetta, using the Rezhan wireless station?’

The Foreign Minister agreed, but, escorted to the room at the top of the palace where the wireless station consisted of several elderly British army radio sets, Dicken’s requests were met with blank stares. In the end, Babington persuaded the wireless operators to let him have a go and he bent over the set, frowning heavily. ‘We’ll be lucky to get in contact with anyone across the road with this lot,’ he muttered.

However, to cries of wonder from the Rezhan operators, he finally got the set working, though they were unable to raise either Peshawar or Quetta.

‘We can always have a go with the set from the machine, sir,’ he suggested.

But when they tried, the accumulators ran down quickly and they were again unable to make contact.

‘How about getting permission to send a message by land line to Peshawar?’

To their surprise permission was granted at once and, with the aid of the English-speaking student, they made out the message and sent it off.

During this period, the Rezhan air force was constantly in the air, dropping on the rebels bombs which were doubtless all carried by suitcase from the commanding officer’s safe. Every time they took off, they were met by a fusillade of fire from the area round the British Legation and in the end one of the machines went out of control and crashed within a few hundred yards of where they stood and burst into flames. Immediately, thousands of insurgents poured forward to cut the throats of the crew but, as they spread in a huge cloud of running figures, the King’s troops opened fire and, with a wail, they scattered, leaving several of their number lying silently alongside the blazing aircraft.

There still seemed to be no contact with the British Embassy and Babington began to grow irritated.

‘What they need in there,’ he said, ‘is a good wireless operator.’

The air force commander offered to find them a guide, but by this time shells were falling in and around the Legation and they heard that several people had been hit and cut with glass or flying splinters of wood.

Eventually, a Rezhan dressed in long white robes, a waistcoat and a fez, appeared, and said he was bearer to Sir Andrew MacAllister, the Minister.

‘The sahibs must not let anyone see their uniforms,’ he warned. ‘The King’s Russian pilots wear uniforms very similar and have been bombing the rebels, and if you fall into their hands they will think you are Russian and–’ He drew his finger across his throat.

The ancient Chevrolet appeared after dark and they drove away through the streets of the town. In the villages near the Legation, there were bodies everywhere, their stomachs swollen, and the houses were charred, the stonework black and oily. Leaving the car and groping their way in the dim light of a torch, they pushed into the shadows, the bulk of the buildings faint against the sky. There was a stink of death and several times they heard rats squeaking among the rubble and their claws castanetting over the stones.

Eventually the Rezhan guide held up his hand and they sank down in the shadows of a wall which they realised surrounded the garden of the Legation. It had a large scorched hole in it.

‘Rebel field gun misfire,’ the Rezhan said. He gestured to left and right. ‘Here are Bachi-i-Adab’s army. Here are King’s army. We must wait.’

A lot of firing was going on and they could hear the whack-whack of bullets. Among the trees huge fires were blazing. There was no sign of life from the Legation, a large rambling white building full of arches and colonnades to catch the cool winds during the hot summer. In the moonlight, it looked a little like the Parthenon in Athens. Nearby was a large house obviously belonging to one of the Legation staff, but it had been hit by shells and one end had collapsed.

The guide pointed to the Legation. ‘I will go first. When firing stops, next one go.’

A breeze had got up and it was cold enough to make them shiver. The guide tapped Dicken on the shoulder and slipped away and a moment later they saw him running across the lawn, with his head well down. Eventually he vanished into the shadows alongside the Legation.

‘You next, Babington.’

Babington’s teeth flashed as he grinned and, ducking his head, he slipped through the hole in the Legation wall and began to run as the guide had run, his head down and following a zigzag route. As he disappeared, the firing swelled up and Dicken had to crouch down lower against the shattered wall.

After a while he heard voices and, sinking into the shadows, became aware of rebel soldiers nearby. As they moved in and out of the trees in the moonlight, he could see they were armed to the teeth. They obviously suspected something was afoot and were searching the undergrowth. Dicken could hear them talking to each other and occasionally a burst of laughter, then they disappeared, except for one who remained watching the Legation.