After an hour’s steady slog someone in the leading party lit up a flare. Two more were ignited and positioned halfway along the column in a formation that Lily guessed would have looked like the head of an arrow if observed from a crag overhead. At a signal from the hills and unseen by Lily, the head torch bearer appeared to swing his light around in a particular pattern and the convoy moved ahead. ‘He’s showing his passport,’ Lily thought. The next time, she heard the signal – a high-pitched, short whistle – which precipitated the answering wave of the flare. ‘We’re being passed down the line! But what line? Going where?’ She looked at the sky again and tried vainly to catch a glance at her wristwatch. ‘Sure as eggs, it’s not Afghanistan we’re headed for!’
Plodding along in the moonlight at an easier pace, Lily had time to speculate on the reasons for abducting poor old Rathmore. What on earth did Iskander want with him? He obviously disliked the man and Rathmore qualified as a credible hostage on account of his wealth and influence but Lily was afraid there was more to it than simple banditry. Iskander must have some dark reason for making off with him. Iskander, she knew, had not been satisfied with the official account of his kinsman’s death. He must have reasoned or got evidence that Rathmore was responsible. Lily thought back to the evening of the feast and to Zeman’s challenge to Rathmore’s calculated rudeness. Rathmore’s self-esteem had been badly dented. He had lost face before an audience of military men and the enemy but also, and perhaps more importantly, he had come off worst in her eyes and Lily was in no doubt that Rathmore had set out to impress her. Had Rathmore taken it into his head to punish Zeman? To kill him? She couldn’t see how this could have been managed but Iskander seemed to have worked it out.
And now he was taking him off somewhere into the wilderness to kill him. Probably to torture him to death. Lily remembered with a shudder the appalling treatment meted out to captured prisoners by these men of the hills. In Simla Edward Dalrymple-Webster had embarked with relish on a highly coloured account of the staking-out, the emasculation, the eye-gouging and the skinning-alive suffered at the hands of the Pathan. Lily had assumed he had exaggerated in his desperate attempt to make an impression but she had been chilled by something James had said – ‘We never leave a wounded man behind in Pathan territory. Oh, no. The whole gasht will risk its life to carry every last man – and his rifle – to safety.’ And she had pushed him further with a question. ‘But suppose you couldn’t get back to him? What then?’ And James had replied with slow matter-of-factness, “Then we’d shoot him where he lay. Quick and clean. It’s what we would all want. It’s what we all expect.’
The troop ahead seemed to have called a halt at last. Dawn was breaking in the sky over her left shoulder and as she rode up to the main body she found she could make out familiar faces in the pale light. All looked weary and tense and the frequent glances up into the surrounding rocks did not go unremarked by Lily. They were not, apparently, riding into entirely friendly country. The horses steamed gently in the morning mist and made their way down to the stream to drink. She saw Rathmore being cut free and the cloth taken off his head. Was he aware of the danger he was in? Lily was consumed by a sudden rush of hot anger at the difficulties he had caused them by his arrogance and stupidity and now, she suspected, by his murderous guilt. And she would have to stand helplessly by and watch while these bandits tortured the truth out of him.
He turned and recognized her and, face crimson with rage, shouted her name. ‘Traitor!’ he added. And, ‘Baggage!’ The idiot appeared to be blaming her for the trouble they were in. When Lily got angry she didn’t shout back. In any ruckus, she reckoned it was the one who kept his head that won. Sitting as tall as she could in the saddle she fixed him with a stare in which she hoped hauteur was blended with an equal amount of derision.
‘Sir. You are the author not only of your own misfortune but of mine also! Your abduction cannot be laid at my door. For the fact that your hide is still in one piece, however, you may thank me.’
‘In one piece? What the hell are you talking about, you Yankee bitch?’
‘They threatened to skin you alive if I didn’t come along quietly. They caught me as I was about to ring the alarm bell. Take your time to work it out and when you have I’ll listen to your apology.’
She slithered from her horse and led it towards the stream.
Chapter Eleven
Threading his way neatly along the lines of communication linking the fort with Peshawar and Peshawar with the air base at Miram Shah, Fred, by being the only person in the fort who knew exactly what he wanted, had got his own way. Replacing the receiver he smiled with conspiratorial satisfaction at Joe and James and looked at his watch. ‘08.00 hours. There’ll be a plane up in half an hour – I’d be happier with half a dozen but one’ll have to do for now. It’ll be landing here in… oh… just over an hour and then we’ll tell the pilot what all this is about. I’ll go and get a bit of a map together showing the search area and get the football field marked out for landing. All right if I take a squad of your blokes with me, James?’ And he had bustled off, competent, purposeful, relishing the vindication of his views at last. But as he left the room some of his confidence left with him and James seemed sunk in gloom once again.
‘You’ve done everything you could as a matter of urgency and first response,’ said Joe, ‘but let us note that we have a very serious situation here, one far beyond your immediate responsibility, James. Obviously, we’ve got to report back to Peshawar and seek their instructions.’
‘How can I find the words to do that? said James despairingly.’Tell me – how do I explain all this in a few words?’
‘Here’s the phone, James!’ said Joe. ‘This should come from you, not from me. I’m nobody. My only job is or has been to keep an eye on blasted Lily and a right balls I’ve made of that! Now – make a few notes. Pick up the telephone. Ring up Sir John Deane in Peshawar and seek instructions. Tell him, in the first place, that Rathmore’s disappeared. We may look on him as a bumbling halfwit in whose ultimate fate we have no personal concern but he’s quite a prominent citizen. He has the ear of some brass hats in Delhi and Calcutta who will be interested to say the least in his fate. And the first thing you say to Peshawar is, “Your one-man trade delegation has been kidnapped. Sorry!” And the second thing you have to say is, “Zeman Khan, a prominent Afghani national, closely associated – indeed, closely related – to the Amir of Afghanistan, is dead in our care. The diagnosis from a reliable medical source speaks of food poisoning. Zeman’s associate, kinsman, second-in-command and close friend rejects this diagnosis and has snatched Rathmore as a hostage it seems, threatening this or that unless the matter is reinvestigated or indeed investigated.” And while the poor man is digesting this so welcome piece of information you should add that Lily Coblenz, American citizen, guest of the British Government, has also apparently been snatched. Unless, of course, she has run off to join the circus.
‘And if all this mixed information doesn’t stand his hair on end, I will be astonished. But what we need is instructions. You’re not the Viceroy, still less am I. Throw the whole dismal heap into his lap and stand back – that would be my advice. And why don’t you do it now, James? And while you’re about it – why not send a tough reply to Iskander? Threaten him with the full weight of the entire Indian Army. Call Lord Roberts back from the grave – he’d know what to do!’