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The Damascened Blade(67)

By:Barbara Cleverly


MARDANCOTAL.

‘Thank you, Maggie!’ said James fervently. ‘There! I told you – if he’d wanted to hit Joe, he would have done!’

Fred looked at him in puzzlement. ‘I say, do you mind telling us what’s going on?’

James explained who Maggie was and the trick she had played to give them this information. ‘Normally the old dear would just bellow out any information we needed and quite a lot we didn’t need but today she was silent and eager to hurry on. Friendly as ever but silent. The whole tribe must have been put under some pressure not to tell us what they knew! And it doesn’t take much wit to work out what the pressure was! The Powindah have to travel for hundreds of miles through Amanullah’s country. If they crossed him – or one of his lieutenants, let’s say Iskander – he could make their lives very unpleasant. I thought the old Malik was making quite a show of not telling us anything. Someone was watching him and us. Maybe one of our own Mounted Infantry, maybe someone up in the crags, most likely one of the three men of his escort. Now he’s squared with the Amir and his bully boys as far as appearances are concerned but Maggie – Maggie must have found out something she didn’t quite like the sound or sight of and found her own way of letting us know.’

‘I’ve known Maggie for years,’ said Grace from her armchair. ‘It would be my guess that she knows there’s a girl involved. I don’t think she’d risk the well-being of the tribe for any old chap – I mean, I can’t see Rathmore’s plight tugging at her heartstrings – but, bless her, she’s always stood up for her sex. If it came to her ears – and there’s not much that doesn’t – that a young girl had been carried off against her will, she’d go out of her way to make sure the right people knew about it.’

James pointed to the map. ‘Mahdan Khotal. I’ll bet anything that’s where the buggers are!’

Hugh stirred excitedly and peered more closely at the map. ‘I say! There! But that’s near where I saw the flash of light on my way over here! Look! Can’t be more than five miles east of . . . what do you call it? Mahdan Khotal, did you say? What is that anyway?’

‘It’s the village, the fortified village of Ramazad Khan. The father of Zeman Khan,’ said James. He looked carefully again at the map and, smiling, shook his head. ‘Clever Iskander! Can you see what he’s done?’ His finger traced the route the Afghanis had taken from the fort up towards the Khyber. ‘He leads us off in this direction – the direction we expected him to take, straight back to Kabul – but then he disappears before he gets half-way through the pass. He must have gone down one of these defiles. There are plenty we’ve never explored. And then he slogs it over these ridges and down more defiles, thirty miles or more of tough riding, I’d say, but all through Afridi country, and approaches Mahdan Khotal from the back. He’s done a huge loop, put us right off the track and now he’s sitting up there in that eyrie above the Bazar Valley watching us! He can’t be more than fifteen miles away as the crow flies!’

‘Hooting with laughter every time he sees the plane take off towards Afghanistan!’ said Fred admiringly. ‘But look, James, if that’s where he is it’s an afternoon’s stroll down the valley to get at him, isn’t it? What do we do now? Gather the troops? Get reinforcements from Peshawar? Attack in force? Not yet! First we get a flight of bombers up from Miram Shah and give the buggers a surprise. Soften them up a bit. It worked for us last year in Mahsud territory. I’ll just go and check how many we could muster – if we got the go-ahead, of course.’ And he hurried off to the communications room.

He left Joe, James and Hugh looking at each other in consternation.

‘Hadn’t realized Fred was such a fire-eater,’ said James, with a speculative look at Hugh.

‘Who would blame him?’ said Hugh awkwardly. ‘I mean . . . after what happened to his nephew last year.’

‘What did happen to his nephew?’ said James. ‘Can’t say it’s generally known up here in army circles.’

‘Philip . . . I think he was called Philip . . . came out from England a fully trained pilot, eighteen years old, eager to see some action, regretful to have missed the war . . . you know the sort of thing . . . and his first sortie was a recce over Waziristan.’

James sighed. The Wazirs were the most fierce and least tractable of all the surrounding Pathan tribes. He didn’t want to hear the rest of the story.

‘He never came back.’ Hugh spoke reluctantly. ‘No sign of the plane and his body was never recovered. The whole op was being run by Fred.’ He fell silent, uncomfortable with the information he had just imparted.