Patrick O’Brian 3-Book Adventure Collection: The Road to Samarcand, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ dissolved one lump of best refined sugar in petrol tank, and lo, automobile un-mobile in five minutes, with incapable roarings of disabled engine and violent explosions from long pipe, accompanied by unpleasantly smelling clouds of smoke.’

      ‘What a beautiful idea,’ said Derrick. ‘But how can we get it into Shun Chi’s gas?’

      ‘Now for best part of stratagem,’ replied Li Han. ‘Ignorant and superstitious soldiery will buy inscribed sugar-lumps as charms to increase potency of petrol. They will insert said lumps themselves, to their ultimate confusion and downfall. I shall also realise three thousand per centum profit on prime cost of sugar,’ he added, in a tone of rather hollow cheerfulness.

      As they continued along the downward road into Liao-Meng their guide became more and more uneasy. At last he pointed to a distant clump of pines, told them that the rebels’ camp was just beyond it, and turned about.

      ‘We are well rid of him,’ said the Professor, looking after his disappearing figure. ‘The only men of any use to us are brave men.’ He nodded to Li Han, who bowed repeatedly, grasping the mane of his little ass.

      Some way out of the rebel encampment they separated, and Li Han went forward to peddle his lucky charms to the soldiers. The Professor took a last look through the Russian’s papers. ‘Yes, they are all here,’ he said, folding them up. ‘I think the first part should be easy enough. How do I look?’ He looked a strange sight in his tall sheepskin hat, with the incongruous horn-rimmed spectacles under it, and at another time Derrick might have been amused. But now he answered quite seriously, ‘Quite all right, sir. But perhaps you should look more sinister if you could manage it. You have rather a mild expression, you know.’

      ‘Ah, I must remember that,’ said the Professor, with a savage leer. ‘And you must not forget your part. You are a dull, taciturn young Mongol servant; you speak neither Chinese nor Russian, and you know nothing about anything.’

      ‘That shouldn’t be too difficult,’ said Derrick, with a faint grin. ‘And if anybody speaks to me in Mongol I can answer a few words convincingly enough. I can pretend to be an Usbeg or a Kazak: they won’t have any of them here.’

      They went on, on and on to the clump of trees: they passed a few pedlars with baskets of fruit for the soldiers, and as the road led round the trees they came to a well-fortified camp, surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by sentries. The Professor rode boldly up to the main gate: the sentries saluted, obviously expecting him, and they passed through the barbed wire. Derrick followed the Professor, looking neither to the right nor the left: he felt his heart hammering, but he kept his face expressionless and dull.

      In a moment they were past the sentries, and an orderly ran to take the Professor’s reins. He dismounted, gave Derrick a pack to carry, and asked in a loud, surly voice where Shun Chi was to be found. Before the soldier could answer a group of men came from a nearby hut, and Derrick saw that four of them were Europeans and two Chinese. The Professor blinked nervously: the men greeted him in Russian, and after a fit of coughing he replied hoarsely, holding his handkerchief up to his mouth. There was a general shaking of hands, and the orderly began to lead the horses away. Derrick was at something of a loss; he could not understand what the Professor was saying, and he did not know what to do. The Professor took no notice of him, but walked away with the men towards the hut, speaking much more confidently as the minutes went by: Derrick stood for a moment, then followed the orderly to the horse-lines and watched him bring their fodder. To the remarks of the Chinese he shrugged his shoulders and replied gutturally in Mongol. The man did not trouble with him any further, and Derrick wandered nonchalantly into the rebel camp.

      Presently he came to the flattened, greasy space where the lorries were lined up, and at the far end of the lorries he saw three tanks, with a group of men crowded round them. He went slowly towards them, and from the middle of the crowd he heard a well-known voice extolling the powers of the charms that were for sale. Wriggling in among them, he saw Li Han standing on a box of ammunition, holding up his lumps of sugar. He saw Derrick, gave him an imperceptible nod, and looked significantly towards a stone house in the middle of the camp.

      Derrick made no motion of reply, but slipped backwards out of the crowd, and walked in an oblique direction towards the middle of the camp. There were many soldiers about, but they took no notice of him: he looked for all the world like a Mongolian horse-boy, not a rare object in those parts. Only his face was out of character, for he could not put on the high, jutting cheek-bones or the wide-set, slit-like eyes of a Mongol; but there was little of that to be seen under the grease and his pulled-down hood. He walked with his legs stiffened and bowed, rolling in his gait; he chewed a piece of straw, and appeared to take little interest in anything around him. Slowly he approached the stone house and took its bearings: it was at the far end of the horse-lines, and there were a dozen ponies tethered to rings in its outer wall. On the side of the ponies there was a small square window, but none on the other sides. In the front of the house, on the side away from the window, there was the iron-studded door, and in front of that several armed guards lounged in the sunshine, smoking and playing dice. It seemed that the place had once been a shrine to one of the local deities, but Shun Chi had strengthened it out of all recognition.

      Derrick went twice round it, getting the geography of the camp well into his mind; then he strolled along under the window. He waited until no one was by, and leaning against the wall he whistled the first tune that came into his mind, whistling very softly. It was Annie Laurie that he chanced upon, and he had hardly drawn breath before the answering song came back in a loud Scots voice. ‘I’ll lay me doon and dee,’ sang Ross inside the stone house, ‘I’ll lay me doon and dee – if you don’t come very soon, I’ll lay me doon and dee.’ He sang with very little melody, but with immense conviction.

      With a quick glance round, Derrick vaulted on to the saddle of one of the tethered horses: standing on tip-toe on its back he could just see through the window. His uncle and Ross lay on the ground, tied hand and foot, and one of the guards was busy checking the song with his rifle-butt.

      The horse moved uneasily, but just before Derrick fell he thought he saw Sullivan wink at him. It was fortunate that he fell when he did, for just then a party of soldiers came round the corner of the house. Derrick walked away: it would not do to arouse suspicions by staying there. The window was too small to get through, he reflected, even if it had no bars; but at least he knew that they were alive, and he felt very much happier. He went round the camp and then wandered to the place where the Professor was engaged with Shun Chi and the Russians. On his way he passed Li Han, who gave him a faint nod to show that all was well, but went by quickly without a word: Li Han’s face was a queer, greenish colour.

      Derrick went on and squatted in the shade outside the hut: he looked quite natural there, and nobody took any notice of him. From where he sat he could see the line of tanks and lorries. The soldiers were busy round their petrol tanks, unscrewing the caps and putting in the inscribed charms. And inside the hut Derrick could hear the Professor’s voice, strong, firm, and apparently quite confident: he felt happy that the Professor had everything well in hand.

      But if he could have understood what they were saying, Derrick would have been far less cheerful. The Russians would keep talking about the machine-guns, their rates of fire, their cooling-systems, their spare parts – all things of which the Professor knew nothing whatsoever. He was as non-committal as possible, but he was dreading the moment when they would ask him a direct question that could not be evaded. He tried desperately to turn the conversation; he talked of the weather, of some recent archaeological discoveries near Kiev, of the museums in Moscow, of anything except machine-guns and mortar bombs.

      ‘Tell me, Ivan Petrovitch,’ said one of the Russians to him, ‘what is the news from Aksenova?’

      ‘Quite inconclusive so far,’ replied the Professor warily, wondering whether Aksenova СКАЧАТЬ