The English Assassin (18 page)

“Phew!” She wriggled her toes into her emerald-green slingback sandals and led the way through her fellow holidaymakers and up the shingle towards the pier. “It could get yer darn, too much o’ this, eh? The ’eat, I mean.”

On the pier, having paid twopence each to go through the turnstile, Colonel Pyat found to his relief that the wind had changed direction and was blowing all the smells, save that of the sea, back towards the town where the Chinoiserie Pavilion’s green domes could be seen among the more down-to-earth Regency terraces. It certainly was hot and the sun hurt his eyes, making him wish he had brought his tinted spectacles. The cat struggled for a moment in his coat and then was still again.

“Wot a marf, wot a marf, wot a norf an’ sarf,” sang Mrs Cornelius. “Lumme, wot a marf ’e’s got. When ’e was a nipper, Cor Lord Lovel, ’is pore ol’ muvver use ter feed ’im wiv a shovel! Wot a gap (pore chap), ’e’s never bin known to larf—’cos if ’e did it’s a penny ter a quid, ’is face ud fall in ’arf!”

Colonel Pyat looked apprehensively at Mrs C. The last time she’d sung that particular song, it was just before she’d been violently sick in the gutter outside The Ship.

“This is wot I
corl
a Bank ’Oliday Monday,” continued Mrs Cornelius, seizing the limp cat finally from his arms. raising it close to her face and stroking it. “Let’s go on the ghost train now, eh?”

“You don’t want to overdo it, you know,” said Colonel Pyat.

“Wot? Me?” She shook with mirth. “You must be joking!”

They went on the ghost train. Colonel Pyat was frightened by the monsters and witches and skeletons which sprang at him from all sides, the screechings, the howls, the cackling laughter, the clammy stuff that touched his smooth-shaven cheeks, the spiderwebs, the flashing lights, the rush of cold air, the mirrors, the awful darkness through which they passed, but Mrs Cornelius—although she yelled and shrieked incessantly—had a lovely time.

They took a cup of tea and a bun each in the pier cafeteria, looking out over the sparkling sea. All the waitresses gathered round to stroke Mrs Cornelius’s cat. “Innit
tame
?” said one. Another offered it a bit of biscuit, which it refused. Another girl, with a scrawny face and a wretched body, brought it a saucer of milk. “’Ere, pussy. Pussy? Pussy?” The cat lapped the milk and the girl felt grateful all day.

They got on the dodgems. Mrs C. went in one car, with the cat stuffed down her bosom with only its little head sticking out, looking really comical, and Colonel Pyat went in another. Mrs Cornelius’s car was bright red and gold with a number 77 on it. Colonel Pyat’s car was green and white with a number 55 on it. The power arms cracked and flashed and sparks flew as the cars started up. Mrs C. leaned forward, driving her car head-on at Colonel P. who resigned himself to the thump which shook his bones and grazed his knee. Through the loudspeakers came the distorted voice of Nat Gonella singing ‘If I Had a Talking Picture of You’. “Yer too effin’ slow!” screamed Mrs C. delightedly, and off she went to deal damage to other unsuspecting drivers. Even the cat seemed to be enjoying himself on the dodgems. “Oo! Muvver!” shouted Mrs Cornelius as she flung back her turbaned head and took another victim.

Colonel Pyat began to feel queasy. As soon as the cars stopped moving, he got out and stood on the side while Mrs Cornelius had another turn. He was amazed that so much violent activity could take place on such an apparently flimsy structure as the pier. It must be considerably stronger than he thought. He lit a cigarette and strolled towards the rail, looking down through the gaps in the planks at the sea swishing below, listening to the distinctive noises of the woman he had married, wondering if, after the destruction of the town, this pier would still survive.

The cars had stopped again and Mrs Cornelius was clambering out and waddling across the floor to the boardwalk which ran round the outside of the dodgem arena. She was sweating and grinning when she joined him and she had picked up some of the oily aroma of the cars.

“Come on,” she said, seizing him by the arm and leading him further up the pier, “we still got time fer a dance.”

A smoky Indian rain fell through the hills and woods outside Simla and the high roads were slippery. Major Nye drove his Phantom V down twisting lanes flanked by white fences. The car’s violet body was splashed with mud and it was difficult to see through the haze that softened the landscape. In rain, thought the major, the world became timeless.

Turning into the drive outside his big wooden bungalow, he brought the limousine to a stop. A Sikh servant gave him an umbrella before taking over the car.

Major Nye walked through the rain to the verandah, folding the umbrella and listening to the sound of water on the leaves of the trees. It was like the ticking of a thousand watches. It smelled so fresh. Simla hadn’t changed much. That was something.

His wife and two little girls were still in Delhi. They had been reluctant to make this journey of return with him. But there had been people he wanted to see. He had felt the need to reassure the servants that he was still in the land of the living.

Inside, the house was cold; all the furniture was draped in white dust-covers. There were no smells and, save for the rain, no sounds. The place was dead. He felt tired, borne down by responsibility, by the sudden understanding that all his dedication had been pointless. How much longer could the Raj last, with the Chinese, the Russians and the Americans hammering at the gates?

He saw that a fire had been lit in the grate. Someone had been burning books. He picked up the poker and turned over the covers, which were only partially burned.
How Michael Found Jesus
was one title, and there were others:
Ragnarok and the Third Law of Thermodynamics
,
Time Search Through the Declining West
,
Bible Stories for Little Folk
,
A Cure for Cancer
,
How to Avoid Heat Death
. All religious and medical stuff, plainly. Who on earth could have bothered to set fire to them? He was crossing to the bell-pull when he was distracted by a sound from outside. On the verandah servants were shouting. He went to the window and opened it.

“What is it, Jenab Shah?” he asked the big Afghan butler.

The man shrugged and grinned in his thick beard. “Nothing, sahib. A mongoose killing a cobra. See.” He held up the limp body of the snake.

Major Nye nodded and closed the window. He went to the door and into the shady hallway. He walked up the uncarpeted stairs. He entered the bedroom which he and his wife had once shared. The bed and the rest of the furniture was also draped in white sheets. He grabbed the edge of a sheet covering a massive teak wardrobe and yanked it down. Dust filled the room. He coughed. He pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket and selected one, putting it into the lock of the wardrobe. The door creaked open, revealing a mirror in which, for a second, he regarded himself with surprise. He had aged. There was no doubt of it. But he had kept his figure. He reached into the wardrobe and selected an Indian coat of silk brocade. It was blue, with circular panels of slightly lighter blue stitched at intervals all over it. The buttons were diamonds and the cloth was lined with buckram. The high, stiff collar was fixed at the throat by two hidden brass buckles. There was also a scarlet sash. Major Nye took off his own jacket and drew the Indian coat over his white silk shirt. Carefully he did up all the buttons and then clipped the collar together. Finally he tied the sash about his waist. With his greying hair and white moustache, his clear blue eyes and his tan he could still look impressive; as impressive as when he had received the coat. It had been a present from his defeated enemy Sharan Khang, the old hill fox. Was Sharan Khang still perpetuating the fiction that his Himalayan Kingdom was independent? Major Nye smiled.

Wearing the coat, he went downstairs to the gunroom. With another key he unlocked the door. Lying on the table was the Mauser FG42 where he had left it last. Closing the door behind him, he went over to the gun and picked it up, brushing away the dust which had settled on the barrel. He slotted the telescopic sight into its mount, checked the magazine and cradled the gun in his left arm. A small drop of oil now stained his silken sleeve. He opened a drawer and found a box of cartridges. He put these into his left hand and then went out, locking the door again.

He looked at his wristwatch, checking the time. The rain had stopped for a moment. He began to smell the grass, the rhododendrons, the trees. He went outside and walked across the lawn which still had croquet hoops sticking in it from the last game, years before. On the far side of the lawn and partly obscured by foliage was the white ruin of the mansion he had built when he had first come to Simla.

Major Nye had always had a superstitious reluctance to visit the ruin, the result of a single Tibetan bomb dropped from a Caproni Ca 90 BB during the brief Italian crisis some years earlier. It had been the only plane ever to get as far as Simla.

The mansion’s roof had collapsed completely now and part of the front wall bulged outwards. All the windows were smashed and the double door at the front had been thrust out by the force of the blast. The only occupants of the house had been an ayah and Major Nye’s small son. They had both been killed.

Major Nye took a firmer grip on his rifle. He fitted shells into the magazine and then continued to stalk forward, but it was becoming harder to move at all. He mounted the first two broken steps, making himself look at the door. He was sweating.

Until this moment, he had never considered himself a coward, but he stopped dead before he reached the last step to the doorway. He shuddered at what his imagination made him see behind the doors. Trembling, he lifted the Mauser to his shoulder and, without bothering to sight, fired the whole magazine into the timber. Then he dropped the gun and ran, his face twisting in terror.

He shouted for his car. The Phantom V was ready. He got into it and drove away from Simla, his eyes wide with self-hatred.

In Delhi he booked a passage on a ship leaving Bombay a few days later. He didn’t see his wife or children, but stayed at his club. Next morning he took the train to Bombay and, even when his ship, the SS
Kao An
, was well out into the Arabian Sea, he was still weeping.

Prinz Lobkowitz straightened his uniform and stood shakily up in the open staff car as it rolled into Wenzslaslas Square in the early afternoon. The troops, in smart black-and-gold uniforms, stood in their ranks, straight and tall and ready for review. On all sides of the square the watching crowd was eight and ten people deep. The Mercedes reached the rostrum erected below the statue of the martyr-king. The crowd cheered, the soldiers presented arms. A whistle sounded and the statue blew up. A chunk of stone rushed past Prinz Lobkowitz’s head and he flung himself down into the car. General Josef, his aide, seated opposite the Prinz, drew his revolver and shouted for the driver to accelerate quickly, but the driver’s nerve was gone and he was having trouble getting the Mercedes back into gear.

Save for the dead and wounded, the troops remained in reasonably good order, but the crowd had panicked. The air was filled with its screams as it tried to escape from the square. Two or three shots sounded. This increased the tension. People ran in all directions.

The smoke and dust were clearing now. Lobkowitz saw that the entire statue had been destroyed. Hardly a stump of the pedestal had survived the blast. The temporary rostrum had become a heap of shattered wood and twisted metal. Prinz Lobkowitz’s standard lay half-buried in the rubble near a smashed, bloody corpse which he couldn’t identify.

General Josef, the aide, began shouting hoarse orders to his troops. Rifles ready, squads of soldiers broke from the square and drove their way through the terrified civilians, pouring into the surrounding buildings occupying them and searching for the assassins. Suddenly something cracked above Lobkowitz’s head. A banner had unfurled itself from a bouncing telephone wire. The banner bore a single word:

FREIHEIT

Lobkowitz pursed his lips. Terrorists. And it wasn’t as if he’d taken the country by force. He felt let down.

The Mercedes was in gear now, reversing towards the street by which it had entered the square. Lobkowitz tried to straighten up and see what was happening. Old General Josef pushed him down again. On the roof of a house on the far side of the square some figures appeared. They wore civilian dress but they had bandoliers of cartridges criss-crossed on their chests and there were rifles in their hands. They looked a bit like Slovak brigands. The men and women on the roof began to fire indiscriminately into the square. Some soldiers fell; some ran for cover.

“There’ll be hell to pay,” General Josef kept muttering. Lobkowitz wasn’t sure whether his aide was frightened of losing his job; whether Josef intended to sack his security officers; or whether he was vowing to take reprisals on the terrorists, whoever they were. Lobkowitz knew the terrorists could be anyone. They could be the disguised ‘volunteer’ soldiers of half a dozen different foreign armies; they could be anarchists; or mercenaries in the pay of some extreme right-wing group; they might be communards; they could even be Czech nationals. Time would tell.

Now the driver had swung the Mercedes round in a circle and headed down the broad, tree-lined Avenue Mozart, making for the Presidential Palace where they might still find safety. General Josef let the Prinz sit up. Josef put his revolver away, buttoning the holster.

“That’s the last time we use an open car,” he growled as he tidied his white hair and readjusted his cap. “It’ll be an armoured half-track next. The devil with public relations!”

“They didn’t do much damage.” Lobkowitz spoke mildly. He was unhappy in his uniform. It was too severe. He preferred the more comfortable and colourful uniforms of his native land. How much longer should he go on listening to these advisors?

“Freiheit!” muttered the aide bitterly. “What do they know of freedom? They think it means licence—self-expression. A little freedom is bought at great cost. I know. I was in the original Corps which made this damned city safe. You should have been here, Prinz, before we sent for you. The stink alone would have knocked you out. It wasn’t a city of liberty: it was a city of libertines.”