Home>>read The Damascened Blade free online

The Damascened Blade(69)

By:Barbara Cleverly


‘Good afternoon, Commander! I count myself fortunate to be able to engage a few moments of your valuable time. God knows where you’ve been! It’s taken them long enough to find you. By the time they’d searched the football field, the polo ground, the bazaar and apparently Lily Coblenz’s bedroom, the best part of half an hour had passed. My time is valuable. But now perhaps you’ll tell me if I’ve got this right? The Afghanis have snatched my old friend Dermot Rathmore. Correct so far?’

‘Yes,’ said Joe, determined not to be caught on the back foot by Sir George. ‘In a nutshell, that is one of our problems.’

‘And fast becoming one of my problems,’ continued Sir George. ‘And at the same time, Miss Coblenz has allowed herself to drift into the hands of a particularly inscrutable and shadowy young man of Afridi blood and her present whereabouts is precisely unknown. Correct? And as though that were not enough, we also have the Amir of Afghanistan who is sitting in Kabul moaning, I’m told, and awaiting medical treatment which it is beginning to look as though he will not be receiving in the foreseeable future since the doctor he has ordered up is detained for who knows how much longer at the fort with you. So, Joe, I’m asking you this question – what are you going to do about it?’

Sir George seemed, for the first time since Joe had known him, to lose confidence momentarily. He heard the hollow flourish of his own last question and hurried to answer it himself. ‘In fact I know what your answer would be – “Nothing.” Nor could I blame you. There are always people ready to exploit an awkward situation and the death of Zeman is a damned awkward situation, I can tell you. The American Embassy don’t know that Miss Lily has, as the Australians would say, “gone walkabout” nor does her father but when they find out there will be a mild – not such a mild – diplomatic explosion to say nothing of an outburst of paternal rage. His Excellency is not too pleased and is indeed sabre-rattling to an alarming degree about the sequestration of Rathmore. Now in my book the more often Rathmore disappears into the trackless Himalayas and the longer he stays there the happier I shall be but not everybody sees it that way. I am told to mobilize all the force I can, and that includes the Peshawar garrison, and set off into the altogether unexplored interior and – cost what it may – bring these birds back to hand. I pause for your reply.’

‘I think,’ said Joe, ‘before you hear my reply you should hear James’s. He’s here with me now and has heard your comments.’

‘Ah! You’ve got Jock Lindsay at your elbow, have you? I’d have expected that berserking old moss-trooper to be out there skirmishing already! Put him on!’

‘Lindsay!’ Sir George’s merry voice came cheerfully over the air. ‘Sorry you should have got landed with this. Should have explained that wherever Sandilands goes trouble follows! I’m sorry all this should be going on in your back garden. Now, I’m here to ask you – will you be prepared to climb on to a horse, gather up a division of lusty Scouts and gallop across the intervening countryside firing from the hip, shooting down the opposition and bring these two safely back again? Rather your style I think, Jock? Would you be prepared to do that?’

‘No,’ said James Lindsay. ‘I need hardly tell you, sir, that this one calls for velvet glove not mailed fist. It’s our opinion that a mass assault on the enemy position would result in unacceptable carnage and the first of the casualties would in all likelihood be the two hostages. We would ask you to do all that you can to persuade the military to keep their sabres firmly sheathed until we’ve had time to put our own plan into operation.’

‘Ah! You have a plan?’

‘We have made some progress regarding the location of our quarry, sir. We believe them to have sought refuge with the Afridi Malik, Ramazad Khan – yes, the father of Zeman, sir – in his fort at Mahdan Khotal.’

Joe thought he heard a groan and a splutter at the other end but James persevered. ‘It’s one thing,’ he said, ‘to have located our wandering charges but it’s going to be quite another to extricate them from the situation they’ve got themselves into.’

‘I’m not stupid, Lindsay,’ said Sir George testily. ‘And of all the places within many hundreds of miles that I would rather they didn’t end up – Mahdan Khotal! – and of all the people I would rather they didn’t end up with – Ramazad Khan! If I was writing his end-of-term report I would say, “Ramazad Khan is incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood.” He is archetypally a tricky bastard, two-faced, an eye to the main chance, in fact an eye to nothing else, so don’t make the mistake of believing anything he says and don’t be deceived by the seeming sincerity. But realize that Mahdan Khotal isn’t a mud brick pill-box perched on a hillside. It’s more in the nature of a medieval castle, or I might say, a strong medieval fortified palace covering a considerable acreage. Not the sort of place you stroll into having rung the doorbell! Now – as to the extrication of the wanderers, what precisely do you have in mind?’