town of perhaps five thousand people. The Chinese commandant for the entire area lives there, Colonel Li.”
“And Hoffner is confined to his house?”
“He occasionally walked in the streets, but he is forbidden to leave the town.” Joro shrugged. “They don’t bother to guard him closely, if that’s what you want to know. Where would he go, a frail old man?”
“That means we can probably work something out without too much difficulty,” Chavasse said. “After all, we’ll only have to get him from Changu to this landing ground you’ve found near Rudok, and then Kerensky can take over.”
“There may be difficulties you have not foreseen,” Juro said. “For instance, there is Hoffner’s housekeeper. She may prove awkward. She was not there on the last occasion I saw Hoffner, but I believe she is still with him, and I don’t trust her.”
“Why not?” Chavasse asked.
“For the best of all possible reasons,” Joro told him. “She is Chinese – or rather her mother was. Her father was Russian, which is as bad. Her name is Katya Stranoff. She had been travelling with her father from Sinkiang to Lhasa, and he died on the way.”
“And Hoffner took her in?”
Joro nodded. “It is his great fault that he must always help others, no matter what the cost to himself.”
Chavasse thought about it for a moment, a frown on his face. Finally he said, “What it comes down to is this: You don’t trust her, but you’ve nothing concrete to go on. For all we know, she may be perfectly harmless?”
“That is so,” Joro said reluctantly.
“Then we’ll have to take a chance on her. When we get to the monastery, you’ll have to go to Changu anyway to spy out the land for me. But we can sort all that out later.”
Ferguson got to his feet. “If that’s all for the moment, we’d better be getting back to Srinagar. I’ve got plenty to arrange before that plane takes off, and you could use the time to catch up on a little sleep, Paul.”
Chavasse nodded. “That’s the best idea you’ve had yet.” He smiled and shook hands with Joro. “Until this afternoon then.”
They left him sitting on the grassy bank and walked back through the camp to the car. As they drove away, Ferguson said, “What did you think of him?”
“He was everything you said he was and then some. I couldn’t have wished for a better companion.”
“I must say that after listening to what he had to say, the whole thing looks as if it might be rather easier than I thought,” Ferguson said. “Of course there’s this woman he mentioned, but she’s probably harmless.”
“Probably,” Chavasse agreed, and sighed.
There always seemed to be a woman around somewhere, and this one was the unknown quantity with a vengeance. However, time would tell. He eased himself into a comfortable position in the seat, tilted his hat forward and closed his eyes.
5
It had stopped raining and a white band of moonlight sprawled across the bed. Chavasse lay in that half-world between sleeping and waking and stared up through the gloom at the ceiling.
After a while, he glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. He lay back against the pillow for a moment longer, his body wet with perspiration, and then lifted the blankets aside and slipped out of bed. He quickly dried his body on a towel and dressed, pulling a thick, woollen sweater over his head before opening the window and stepping out onto the terrace.
The flat-roofed houses of Leh straggled down to the Indus below; the immense walls of the gorge were dark shadows against the sky. It was peaceful and quiet, the only sound a dog barking somewhere across the river, his voice a muted bell in the night.
Chavasse lit a cigarette, his hands cupped against the wind. As he flicked away the match, a bank of cloud rolled away from the moon and the countryside was bathed in a hard white light. The night sky was incredibly beautiful, with stars strung away to the horizon, where the mountain lifted uneasily to meet them.
He inhaled the freshness of the earth, wet after the rain, and wondered why everything couldn’t be as simple and uncomplicated as this. You only had to stand and look at it and it cost you nothing except a little time and it gave so much.
And then a small wind touched him coldly on the cheek, sending a wave of greyness through him, reminding him that half an hour’s flying time away through the darkness was the border. The wind called to him as it moaned across the rooftops, and he turned and went inside.
The hotel was wrapped in quiet and as he went downstairs, a blast of hot, stale air met him from the small hall where an ancient fan creaked uselessly in the ceiling, hardly causing a movement in the atmosphere.
The Hindu night clerk was asleep at his desk, head propped between his hands, and Chavasse moved softly past him and went into the bar.
Kerensky sat at a table by the window, a napkin tucked under his chin. He was the only customer, and a waiter hovered nearby and watched with awe as the Pole steadily demolished the large roasted chicken on his plate.
Chavasse went behind the bar, poured himself a large Scotch and added ice water. As he crossed to where Kerensky sat, the Pole looked up and grinned.
“Ah, there you are. I was just going to have you wakened. What about something to eat?”
Chavasse shook his head. “Nothing for me, thanks.”
“How do you feel?” Kerensky asked.
“Fine.” Chavasse stood at the window and looked out across the terrace into the moonlight. “It’s certainly the right night for it.”
“Couldn’t have been better.” Kerensky chuckled. “In this moonlight, I can fly through the passes with no trouble, and that was always the most dangerous part of the operation. It’s going to be a piece of cake.”
“I hope you’re right,” Chavasse said.
“But I always am. During the war I flew over one hundred operations. Every time something bad happened, I felt lousy beforehand. Through my grandmother on my mother’s side, I have Gypsy blood. I always know, I assure you, and tonight I feel good.”
He leaned over and poured vodka into Chavasse’s empty glass. “Drink up and we’ll go to the airstrip. I sent Joro up there an hour ago with my local man.”
Chavasse looked down into his glass, a slight frown on his face. Somewhere in his being, a primitive instinct, perhaps that slight mystical element common to all ancient races and inherited from his Breton ancestors, told him that it was no good. In spite of what Kerensky said, it was no good!
Accepting that fact, he was taken possession of by a strange fatalistic calm. He raised his glass and smiled and took the vodka down in one easy swallow.
“I’m ready when you are,” he said.
The airstrip was half a mile outside Leh on a flat plain beside the river. It was not an official stopping place for any of the big airlines and had been constructed by the R.A.F. as an emergency strip during the war.
There was one prefabricated concrete hangar still painted in the grey-green camouflage of wartime, and rainwater dripped steadily through its sagging roof as they went inside.
The plane squatted in the middle of the hangar, the scarlet and silver of its fuselage gleaming in the light thrown out by two hurricane lamps suspended from the rafters. Jagbar, Kerensky’s mechanic, was sitting at the controls, a look of intense concentration on his face as he listened to the sound of the engine. Joro was sitting beside him.
Jagbar jumped down to the ground and Joro followed him. “How does it sound?” Kerensky said.
Jagbar grinned, exposing stained and decaying teeth. “Perfect, sahib.”
“And fuel?”
“I’ve filled her to capacity, including the emergency tank.”
Kerensky nodded and patted the side of the plane. “Fly well for me, angel,” he crooned in Polish, and turned to Chavasse. “I’m ready when you are.”
