The Mercenaries (11 page)

General Tsu came forward to meet them, carrying a gold-mounted cane and wearing a skull cap with the red button of authority. His grey silk gown was even more voluminous than the one he’d worn on their arrival but his feet were still thrust into his tartan carpet slippers.

Behind him was a group of other officers, all wearing ill-fitting cotton uniforms with stiff Prussian collars. Some of them wore riding breeches with puttees, and some of them flannel trousers with elastic-sided boots, but they all had strapped to their waists revolvers and swords which they clearly had no intention of removing merely for a meal.

‘Colonel Tong So-Lin.’ Lao began the introductions with a small stout Chinese whose wide mouth seemed to be packed to capacity with gold teeth. ‘In command of General Tsu’s artillery. Colonel Chok Wo. In command of the cavalry. Colonel Ching Kuey. Supplies . . .‘

Grubby-looking biscuits and sticky drinks in small glasses were handed round, then dinner was announced by a cracked gong and there was a great deal of fuss as they all tried to sit down simultaneously.

‘It would be jolly impolite to be seated while someone else is still standing,’ Kee explained in a whisper. ‘We must all sit together, you know.’

When they were all finally seated Tsu rose and placed his hands together inside his sleeves.

‘Ah Fah-Wui charred in heaven,’ he intoned. ‘Heh-Lo be thy name.’

Ira could have sworn that Lao winced, but Lieutenant Kee seemed delighted.

‘Grace,’ he explained in a whisper. ‘A jolly good try. The Baptist General is a Christian.’

‘By the Holies, is he that indeed?’ Fagan said, startled.

‘Converted by the American Mission in 1924, you know,’ Kee went on. They are very proud of him. He is known as the Baptist General because he insists on all his troops being jolly well baptised. He does it himself. Very easy. In one go, on parade. Hosepipe.’

The meal started with them all wiping their faces with hot towels, but many of the dishes, served on an American-cloth-covered table in blue and white porcelain bowls, were either tasteless or so highly spiced as to be almost uneatable and, according to Kee, were only offered out of politeness because of their rarity or because they were aphrodisiacs, and most of the hundred-year-old eggs, dormice in treacle and larks’ tongues were left untouched.

‘The meal is jolly well worthless,’ Kee pointed out gaily ‘But the insignificant cook hopes you are jolly well pleased, you know.’

There were at least fifteen courses, most of them consumed by holding the bowl beneath the nose and sucking loudly at what was on the chopsticks. Noise seemed to be an essential part of the appreciation, and it was obviously normal practice to pick out titbits of dough and suet as big as tennis balls and offer them to a neighbour. Hot rice wine, Japanese beer, rose-petal gin and Curacao, which the Warlord of the South-West seemed to feel was the drink of Europeans, were served; and at the end Kee played ‘If You Were The Only Girl In The World’ on the wheezy old pianola and a group of sing-song girls appeared, dressed in lace-fringed trousers, their faces enamelled and rouged, to chant amorous songs. Judging by the way the officers followed them out afterwards, the songs and the aphrodisiacs in the meal had been more than effective.

‘Half-time,’ Fagan said as everyone sat back, belching loudly to show their appreciation. ‘Time for a sausage and a glass of wine before we start again.’

While they were recovering their breath, a great cast-iron urn in the garden filled with prayer paper was lit and fireworks tied in bunches to trees like blossom were set off. Surrounded by blue smoke, staccato crackling and sprays of golden sparks, General Tsu and several of the officers knelt and touched their foreheads to the floor, and the gay gossipy Kee explained that prayers were being offered up for the success of the summer campaigns.

‘I thought he was a Christian,’ Fagan said in bewilderment, and Kee gave a chirrup of delighted laughter.

‘Oh, he is,’ he said. ‘But he also jolly well believes in being on the safe side as well, you know.’

As the fizzing and crackling died away, they were introduced to the General’s wife, a French-born Chinese who had met her husband when she was a student in Shanghai. She was small, intelligent and attractive in a brocade dress, and Ira managed to converse with her in French, then the General’s son, Philippe, was brought in by an amah, a boy about eleven in a grey silk gown and carrying a violin.

The Warlord’s son will now entertain us,’ Lao announced.

They had been expecting the usual diabolic noises which small boys make on violins but Philippe Tsu was already an expert despite his youth. He played several short pieces by Brahms and a longer one by Debussy.

‘Sure, the child’s a prodigy,’ Fagan said, already a little drunk and owlish and laying on his accent like a stage Irishman.

‘I was a violinist, too,’ Madame Tsu explained in English. ‘My father was a concert pianist. The boy is a genius and should not really be here in Hwai-Yang. I have taught him all I know now and he ought to go to Paris or Rome to be taught properly.’ She smiled her sad resigned smile. ‘Perhaps, soon, my husband will retire and we shall go to Shanghai or Hong Kong, and from there I shall be able to take him to Europe.’

It was almost midnight and a damp breeze was blowing when General Tsu announced that they would go out to the airfield to see his air force.

Ira would far rather have gone to bed and he could see Ellie was pale and drawn with tiredness, but it was no good arguing, because the string of ageing cars with their patched tyres had already appeared outside the gate, their brass oil-lamps flickering as the engines throbbed and clattered, every one of them bearing General Tsu’s personal red flag with an orange circle in the centre. It was like being part of some musical comedy cavalcade and Ira kept catching Sammy’s eye and having to resist the urge to laugh.

‘General Tsu likes to move with the modern times, you know,’ Kee explained earnestly. ‘He has seen the magnificent legation flags on the cars in Shanghai.’

The road out to the airfield was a rutted track and the cars rattled and roared and banged in a tinny procession out of the city, honking madly to clear the road. Bounced in the rear of an ancient Peugeot, clutched by a shaken and disgusted Ellie, Ira wondered how much longer the performance was going to continue.

‘Sure as hell wish they’d let me go to bed,’ Ellie shouted above the din.

‘Sure as hell wish they would,’ Ira yelled back with a grin. ‘Perhaps I could then.’

One of Tsu’s regiments was drawn up on the airfield waiting for them, every second man holding a torch, and at Lao’s signal the officer in charge, a small man in a baggy uniform, waved his sword and began to put them through a short drill. It was about as edifying as the salute outside Tsu’s house. Several of the soldiers didn’t appear to know what to do and the officer descended on them in a fury, shrieking abuse and sending them staggering with cuffs at the side of the head. It was funny enough to be embarrassing, but General Tsu was beaming with pleasure.

Lao’s stiff aristocratic face showed no indication of what he was thinking as he gestured. ‘We will now see our air force,’ he announced.

Outside a lopsided barracks hut that creaked and clanked as the wind sighed through it. General Tsu’s would-be pilots were lined up, and Ira was startled to see how pathetically young and timid they seemed. They all appeared to be still in their teens and their clothes were a mixture of the ill-fitting unmatching uniforms and long silk gowns. One of them wore cotton trousers and spats and another leggings, and only one of them, a tall thin man slightly older than the rest, appeared to have any confidence in himself.

‘This is Captain Yang,’ Lao introduced. ‘He is our commanding officer He has had much experience. He was trained by the illustrious Americans.’

Yang, a brash young man who had only recently returned to China, said he’d learned to fly in a Pennsylvania air circus, but there was something about him that roused Ira’s suspicions at once, something that indicated that his ardent professionalism was false. He appeared to suspect that Ira was dubious about him and seemed a little uneasy as he introduced the pupils in a whining nasal voice with a strong Mid-Western accent like Ellie’s.

‘Lieutenant Cheng Peter. Lieutenant Lan Hu-Siang. Lieutenant Yen Shuan. Lieutenant Tsai Kwan . .’

The pupils shook hands and bobbed their heads, the flat bus conductors’ hats they wore, ill-fitting and moth-eaten, shaking on their skulls as they nodded.

‘They are honoured to meet their illustrious teachers,’ Kee said with a gaiety that seemed a little mad under the circumstances. They hope they will jolly soon also be able to fly.’

Ira nodded back at the would-be pilots. ‘Do they speak English?’ he asked.

Kee shook his head. ‘Only one, Lieutenant Cheng. Unfortunately, they have not all had the benefit of a Western education as I have.’

Ira grinned. ‘Well, I don’t speak Chinese,’ he pointed out.

‘The much-travelled Captain Yang does.’

‘Fine. How do we get him or you into a two-seater machine with the pilot and the pupil.’

This was something that had clearly not occurred to anyone. For a second, Yang and Kee and Lao stared at each other, then Lao smiled his acid smile, as though he were laughing at them all.

‘Doubtless we can work out something,’ he said.

‘Think so?’ Ira asked. ‘How would you translate: Please apply more rudder. The torque from the engine is pulling the machine to the left?’

In the distance, beyond the Bessoneau hangars, they could see the flare of more torches where another group of soldiers stood. As they had noticed earlier, the hangars were as bad as the field. There were great rents in the perished canvas and several of the guy ropes were drooping or missing. An ancient Crossley tender sagged in front of one of them, its tyres missing, the bonnet red with rust, and nearby stood an old Albion lorry and several large petrol drums. Fagan tapped one as they passed and it gave a hollow sound.

‘Empty,’ he said. He was still drunk and there was a wild look in his eye. He was obviously looking for trouble, and Ira made time to pass a warning to Sammy to be on his guard.

Tsu was obviously trying to impress them with his armed might: Beyond the tender, several elderly guns, many of them without breeches, were drawn up--among them a six-incher that Ira had never seen outside a museum, a battered .75, a Vickers-Maxim pom-pom, a tiny Hotchkiss, and a group of ancient Russian weapons that had found their way down from the north--probably after the Russo-Japanese War.

Someone had been busy while they had been in the city and, against the moonlight, they could see five ancient aircraft lined up beyond their own machines. For the most part, they were mere elementary contraptions of linen and spruce and Ira could already hear Fagan laughing in a thin derisive way that sounded crazier than ever.

‘Sure, the one on the end’s a pre-war Bleriot,’ he was saying. ‘Twenty-five-horse Anzani engine. And by the Holy Whirligig, a Parasol!‘

Others Ira recognised as a Maurice Farman and an Aviatik, and his voice was awed as he spoke. ‘I wonder what crook sold them this lot,’ he said.

Only one of the machines, a black Fokker D7 at the end of the line, appeared to be airworthy, but as they drew closer they realised that, in fact, it was only half a machine. Though it appeared to have guns, it had no wings.

‘What happened to that?’ Ira asked.

‘It has not yet been assembled,’ Yang said quickly, and Lao frowned.

‘It was incomplete,’ he informed them coldly, not attempting to hide anything. ‘It was bought in Russia but it came without the wings and they have never turned up.’

At close quarters the machines were even more horrifying than at a distance. Tsu’s legendary aircraft were nothing more than a collection of museum-pieces, sagging, tattered and rusted. But, preceded by two men bearing torches, they moved solemnly along the line, first past the lopsided Avro, then the Albatros and their own D7, and in comparison with the rest of them, the three patched old machines they’d flown in were shining with newness. On the others--mostly cumbersome old French, British and German machines which had been discarded as obsolete in the first years of the war, the woodwork was unvarnished and warped, and the fabric, rotten and yellow with age, hung limply on the wings and fuselages where it was quite clear there were broken struts and strengtheners. Bracing wires were looped and twisted and the turnbuckles were stiff with lack of use, and the guns they carried and the ammunition that still lay in the breeches were patched with rust. The tyres had long since been replaced by pieces of thick rope secured to the rims of the wheels by wire and every machine was marked by mould where damp had attacked the undoped areas.

‘Holy Mother of God,’ Fagan said. ‘Surely the old fart doesn’t expect us to fly in these.’

With a shock Ira realised he did. General Tsu was standing in front of the gimcrack collection of wrecks now with a beaming smile on his face and even the stiff-faced Lao was gesturing them forward.

On closer inspection, the machines looked even worse. Control wires were broken and ailerons rusted solid. On the Parasol, the rudder hung askew and on the Bleriot the padding round the cockpits and parts of the fabric looked as though they had been chewed by rats. Only the wingless Fokker and the Aviatik, which turned out to be Yang’s personal machine, were in a reasonable condition but every single aeroplane had been painted with Tsu’s insignia on rudder, wings and fuselage.

Their faces expressionless, they climbed into the machines, trying to hold back their laughter and avoid showing what they were thinking, while General Tsu stood with an uncertain Yang and watched them, his face beaming with pride.

‘Well, the Aviatik ought to fly,’ Sammy grinned, climbing down after a while. ‘I suppose Yang’s seen to that.’

‘And the Maurice Farman
might
,’ Ira pointed out. ‘It just
might
.’

Lao had stepped forward, his smile stiff. ‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ he said, ‘you will give us an exhibition of flying.’