the most brilliant minds in the colonial service. The Prime Minister, William Gladstone, and his cabinet were aware of and highly appreciative of his qualities. However, towards his underlings, his manner was patronizing and condescending. Behind his back they called him “Sir Over Bearing’.
Now he ignored Penrod as he went on with his reading, making notes in the margins with a gold pen. At last he stood up from his desk, and left Penrod standing while he went to the windows that overlooked the river to Giza and the stark silhouettes of the three mighty pyramids on the far bank.
That damned idiot, Baring mused to himself. He has got us into this pretty pickle of rotten fish. From the outset he had opposed the appointment of Chinese Gordon. He had wanted to send Sam Baker, but Gladstone and Lord Hartington, the Secretary of War, had overruled him. It is in Gordon’s nature to provoke conflict. The Sudan was to be abandoned. His job was to bring our people out of that doomed land, not to confront the Mad Mahdi and his Dervishes. I warned Gladstone of precisely this, Gordon is trying to dictate terms and force the Prime Minister and the cabinet to send an army to reoccupy the Sudan. If it were not for the unfortunate citizens that he has incarcerated with him, and for the honour of the Empire, we should let Chinese Gordon stew in his own juice.
As Baring turned away from the window and the contemplation of those immemorial monuments across the Nile, his eye fell on a copy of
The Times of London that lay on the table beside his favourite armchair. He frowned more deeply. And then we have also to take into account the uninformed and sentimental opinions of the sweating masses, so readily manipulated by those petty potentates of the press.
He could almost recite the leading article from memory: “We know that General Gordon is surrounded by hostile tribes and cut off from communication with Cairo and London. Under these circumstances the House has the right to ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are going to do anything to relieve him. Are they going to remain indifferent to the fate of the one man on whom they have counted to extricate them from their dilemmas, to leave him to shift for himself, and make not a single effort on his behalf?” was what Lord Randolph Churchill had said to the Commons, as reported on 16 March 1885. Damned demagogue! Baring thought now, and looked up at the Hussar captain. “Ballantyne, I want you to go back to Khartoum.” He spoke directly to Penrod for the first time since he had entered the room.
“Of course, sir. I can leave within the hour,” Penrod responded. He knew that the one word the master of Egypt liked to hear above all others was ‘yes’.
Baring allowed himself a wintry smile, an extraordinary mark of his approval. His intelligence system was wide-reaching and pervasive. Its roots burrowed into every level of Egyptian society, from the highest levels of the government and the military to the forbidden councils of the mullahs in their mosques and the bishops in their cathedrals and Coptic monasteries. He had his agents in the palaces of the Khedive and the harems of the pashas, in the souks, bazaars and brothels of the greatest cities and the meanest villages.
Penrod was nothing but a tiny tadpole in the festering swamp of intrigue in whose waters Sir Evelyn Baring set his lines and into which he cast his net. However, recently he had become quite fond of the lad. Behind the good looks and dandified appearance, Baring had detected a bright, quick mind and an attention to duty that reminded him of himself at the same age. Penrod Ballantyne’s family connections were solid. His elder brother was a baronet and had large estates on the Scottish Borders. He himself had a significant income from a family trust, and the purple ribbon on his chest bore ample witness to his courage. Moreover, the young dog had shown a natural aptitude for intelligence work. Indeed, he was gradually and subtly making himself valuable not indispensable, for nobody was that, but valuable. The only possible weakness that Baring had so far detected in him he carried in his trousers.
“I will give you no written message, for the usual reasons,” he said.
“Naturally, sir.”
“There is one message for General Gordon, and another for David Benbrook, the British consul. The messages are not to be confused. It may seem to you that they are contradictory, but pray do not let that trouble you.”
“Yes, sir.” Penrod divined that Baring trusted Benbrook well enough because he lacked brilliance. Just as he trusted Chinese Gordon not at all because of his brilliance.
“This is what you are to convey to them.” Baring spoke for half an hour without consulting any slip of paper, barely pausing to draw breath. “Have you got that, Ballantyne?”
“I have, sir.”
One of the fellow’s assets is his appearance, Baring thought. No one can readily believe that behind those whiskers and those wonderfully pleasing features is a mind that can assimilate such a lengthy, complicated message at the first recital, then deliver it accurately a month later. “Very well,” he said flatly. “But you must impress on General Gordon that Her Majesty’s Government has no intention whatsoever of reconquering the Sudan. The British Army now making its way up the Nile is in no way an expeditionary force. It is not an army of reoccupation. It is a rescue column of minimal strength. The objective of the desert column is to insert a small body of regular first-line troops into Khartoum to bolster the de fences of the city long enough for us to evacuate all our people. Once this has been achieved we intend to abandon the city to the Dervish and come away.”
“I understand, sir.”
“As soon as you have delivered your messages to Benbrook and Gordon you are to return northwards and join Stewart’s relief column. You will act as guide, lead him across the bight of the Nile to where Gordon’s own steamers are waiting at Metemma to take them upriver. You will attempt to keep in contact with me. The usual codes, mind.”
“Of course, Sir Evelyn.”
“Very well, then. Major Adams of General Wolseley’s staff is waiting for you on the second floor. I understand that you are acquainted with him.”
“I am, sir.” Of course Baring knew that Penrod had won his VC by rescuing Samuel Adams from the bloody battlefield of El Obeid.
“Adams will give you a more detailed briefing, and provide you with the passes and requisitions you will need. You can catch the Cook’s steamer this evening and be in Assouan by Tuesday noon. From there you are on your own. How long to Khartoum, Ballantyne? You have made the journey many times before.”
“It depends on conditions in the Desert of the Mother of Stones. If the wells are holding I can cut the great S-bend of the river and reach Khartoum in twenty-one days, sir,” Penrod answered crisply. “Twenty-six at the outside.”
Baring nodded. “Make it twenty rather than twenty-six. Let yourself out.” Baring dismissed him, without offering to shake hands. He was lost in his despatches again before Penrod reached the door. It was not important to Baring that people liked him. Only that they did their job.
Colonel Sam Adams was delighted to see Penrod again. He was walking with only a single stick now. “The sawbones tells me I’ll be playing polo again by Christmas.” Neither mentioned the long ride back from the battlefield of El Obeid. All that needed to be said on that subject had been said long ago, but Adams glanced admiringly at the bronze cross on Penrod’s chest.
Penrod composed a cipher telegraph to the intelligence officer with the vanguard of the Desert Column that was assembling at Wadi Haifa eight hundred miles up the Nile. Adams’s adjutant took it to the telegraphist on the ground floor and returned with the confirmation that it had been sent and received. Then Colonel Adams invited Penrod to lunch at Shephard’s Hotel, but Penrod begged a prior engagement. As soon as he had his travel papers he left. A groom had his charger at the gate and it was less than half an hour’s ride along the riverbank to the Gheziera Club.
Lady Agatha was waiting for him on the Ladies’ Veranda. She was just twenty and the youngest daughter of a duke. Viscount Wolseley, the commander-in-chief of the British Army in Egypt, was her godfather. She had an income of twenty thousand a year. Added to this, she was blonde, petite and exquisite, but an enormous handful for any man.
“I would rather have the French clap than Lady Agatha,” Penrod had recently overheard a wag remark at the Shephard’s bar, and had been undecided whether to laugh or call the fellow outside. In the end he had bought him a drink.
“You are late, Penrod.” She was reclining in a cane chair and pouted as he came up the steps from the garden. He kissed her hand, then glanced at the clock over the garden entrance to the dining room. She saw the gesture. “Ten minutes can be an eternity.”
