“Well, he’s got me, and everyone at IMU.”
“No, I mean a girlfriend.”
Jack snorted, pointing at Costas. “That? You must be kidding. They never last more than ten seconds. Can you blame them?”
Rebecca shook her head. “Men are so stupid about themselves. They don’t even know what makes a man attractive to a woman.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a techno nerd. He couldn’t care less.”
Rebecca shook her head and sighed. The cabin lights flickered on and the pilot’s voice came over the speaker. “Jack, you asked for a wake-up call over the Afghan border. We’re less than two hours to destination.” Costas and Pradesh stirred, and woke up. There was another jolt of turbulence, and Pradesh peered past Costas through the window. It was four a.m. local time and still dark, and lights were twinkling far below. “That turbulence was bang on time,” he said. “It always seems to happen here. We’ve just passed Quetta in northern Pakistan, and we must be over the Bolan Pass now. We’re flying over Afghanistan.”
“Load and lock,” Costas said, yawning and stretching extravagantly. He raised his seat and took an orange juice from the fridge beside them. “I’ve got a headache,” he said. “I think it was the jungle. I got dehydrated.” He gulped the juice, then took another can.
“It’s that palm toddy you drank,” Jack said. “I did warn you.”
“I only had a few sips,” Costas said. “But I’ll stick to my rule from now on. Never drink on operations.” He downed the second juice, and binned the can. “It’ll make that first tequila on the beach all the more delightful. When we get to Hawaii. Tomorrow.” He gave Jack a bleary, slightly accusatory glare.
“We’re sort of heading there,” Jack said. “In a roundabout way.”
“North from India to Kyrgyzstan in central Asia,” Costas said. “Yeah, right.”
Kyrgyzstan. In less than two hours they would land at Bishkek airport, and a couple of hours after that he would be with Katya. A message from her had been awaiting him when they had returned from the jungle to Seaquest II, about an amazing new discovery she had made. He had called back immediately and told her about her uncle. Her response had been matter-of-fact, as he had expected it would be, but she had sounded distant. He had steered the conversation toward the archaeology. She had outlined her discovery to him and wanted his firsthand advice. That was a good enough reason to pull the schedule forward, but now there was added urgency. He had immediately put in another call to have the IMU Embraer fueled up and ready for them at the Madras airport when they arrived there less than two hours later.
“Okay, Jack,” Costas said. “Bring us up to speed on your ancestor. Here’s where I’ve got to so far. Howard and the other guy, the Irish-American officer, Wauchope, escape from the jungle. And my guess is, what happened to them after that has something to do with why we’re flying up here now. And with the inscription in that tomb. We’re not just coming up here to see Katya.”
Jack took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay. The rest of the story. Howard and Wauchope made it with the sappers back to the steamer Shamrock. They had buried Bebbie in the jungle, not at the village where we saw the memorial inscription. But neither of them left any account of what had happened. We’ve got Lieutenant Hamilton’s record of his skirmish in the jungle, and the folk memory of that day from the Koya people, everything Pradesh told us. But nothing from Howard, who commanded the sapper detachment. His diary ends abruptly that morning on the Shamrock. It’s at odds with his professionalism. That’s what first set the alarm bells ringing for me.”
“Maybe it was a cover-up for the death of that guy Bebbie,” Costas said. “If he really was shot by the sappers.”
“I think there was more to it than that,” Jack replied carefully. “I think there was the shock of the sacrificial scene, what they saw from the Shamrock. Then I think they saw what we saw inside that shrine. They would both have been well-versed in Latin from school. Wauchope was known for reading Greek and Latin classics when he was on campaign. I think they saw that inscription. I think that was their binding pact. Not to tell anyone what they had read. They saw the earthquake seal in the shrine just after they’d escaped, so the secret was theirs.”
“What happened to them after the rebellion?”
“Wauchope left the Madras Sappers to join the Survey of India, one of the most coveted appointments for an engineer officer. He spent most of the next twenty years on the northwest frontier, starting in Baluchistan and working east, carrying out surveys for the Boundary Commission on what became known as the Durant Line, delimiting the border of Afghanistan. His boundary markers are still there like latter-day altars of Alexander the Great. He was famed for his climbing ability and endurance, a born mountaineer. But the malaria he picked up in Rampa finally caught up with him and forced his early retirement, in 1900. After five years recovering his health in the mountains of Switzerland he returned to his beloved India, exploring the remote valleys of the borderland, adopting traditional garb and living with tribesmen. The last we hear of him was in Quetta in the early summer of 1909, when he was fifty-five years old.”
“And Howard?”
“He was the last sapper officer out of Rampa, months later, the only one who could withstand the malaria, probably because of his Indian childhood. The death of his eighteen-month-old son Edward in Bangalore while he was in the jungle was a terrible blow. Howard had been slated for great things as a soldier but opted for the engineer route, joining the Indian Public Works Department and then returning to England, to the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. He taught survey to young officers and immersed himself in the academic life of the corps. He became an ardent supporter of the movement that eventually led to the universal language Esperanto. Perhaps the urge came from his experience in Rampa, where they hadn’t been able to speak the Koya language without an interpreter. Maybe it was some kind of atonement. He only returned to India once his children had grown up and gone to boarding school. I always assumed that his career decision had a lot to do with his son Edward, with his need to provide a better home for his children, in England. But now I think there was more to it than that. I think it goes back to that day in the jungle in 1879. And I don’t mean what they might have seen in the shrine. I mean something else, something he saw or did, that traumatized him. Maybe it was human sacrifice. Something he was powerless to stop.”
“Not exactly the glorious image of soldiering,” Costas said.
Pradesh shifted and cleared his throat. “I can sympathize. The worst thing for a soldier is being sent on a mission where you don’t have the political will or the resources to finish the job. I’ve experienced it, on a peacekeeping mission in Africa. Being powerless to stop genocide. If you do intervene, you may ease one person’s suffering, but it can make the feeling of impotence worse. One of my sappers shot a woman who’d been terribly mutilated. He was haunted by her face. He said that all the faces that previously had been one mass of tormented humanity had suddenly become real individuals, and that was what made it intolerable for him. He had nightmares about them all coming to him, asking why he hadn’t chosen to end their suffering too. He couldn’t live with it, and shot himself.”
Jack saw Rebecca’s face, and he squeezed her hand. “It could have been like that for Howard,” he said quietly. “So little knowledge of the emotional response to trauma has survived from the Victorian period. Yet men brought up on romance and courtly deeds ended up seeing and doing terrible things. They internalized these experiences all their lives, somehow using the reservoir of manly Victorian courage to live with it, bottling it up to the end.”
“You said he went back to India,” Costas said.
“That’s where it gets really fascinating,” Jack replied. “He returned to the Public Works Department, building bridges, canals, roads, and was principal of a college for native engineers. Then, in 1905, aged fifty, he finally returned to real soldiering. He became commanding royal engineer of the Quetta Division of the Indian army, up against the Afghan frontier in Baluchistan. It was one of the hot spots of the British Empire, about the most dangerous place in the world. Howard relished it, and for a while it was as if he were making up for lost time. But then, in 1907, a full colonel, he abruptly took half-pay and retired.”
“Quetta,” Costas murmured. “The same place Wauchope was?”
“Exactly,” Jack exclaimed. “That’s the linchpin of the story. After Rampa, the two men part ways. Perhaps in their pact in the jungle they mapped out their future, the time when they’d get together again. They coincide once, in 1889, when Wauchope takes a refresher course at the survey school at Chatham. They even co-author a paper, on the Roman coins of south India. They were meant to present it jointly at the Royal United Services Institute in London, but Wauchope was recalled to duty. Next, they appear together in Quetta almost twenty years later, in 1907, both retired. They dine as honored guests in the regimental messes, they meet the explorer Aurel Stein, they
