George Fraser MacDonald

The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection


Скачать книгу

      After he’d finished havering, and not saying what couldn’t be said, he turned to go, still looking uneasy. Then he stopped, hesitated, and came out with it.

      ‘See here,’ says he, ‘I should not be saying this, but if the grip does come – which I don’t believe it will, mind – and ye find yourself in mortal danger, there’s a thing you can do.” He glowered at me, mauling his whiskers. “As a last resort only, mallum? Ye’ll think it strange, but it’s a word – a password, if ye like. Utter it anywhere within the bounds of Lahore Fort – dropped into conversation, or shouted from the housetops if need be – and the odds are there’ll be those who’ll pass it, and a friend will come to you. Ye follow? Well, the word is ‘Wisconsin’.”

      He was as deadly serious as I’d ever seen him. “‘Wisconsin’,” I repeated, and he nodded.

      “Never breathe it unless ye have to. It’s the name of a river in North America.”

      It might have been the name of a privy in Penzance for all the good it seemed likely to be. Well, I was wrong there.

      a Barber.

      b Organisation, business.

      c Little fellow.

      d All right.

      e Indian hemp.

      f An agent, in this case Broadfoot’s official representative in Lahore, through whom everyday business was openly transacted, and diplomatic messages exchanged.

       Chapter 4

      I’ve set out on my country’s service more times than I can count, always reluctantly, and often as not in a state of alarm; but at least I’ve usually known what I was meant to be doing, and why. The Punjab business was different. As I wended my sweltering, dust-driven way to Ferozepore on the frontier, the whole thing seemed more unlikely by the mile. I was going to a country in uproar, whose mutinous army might invade us at any moment. I was to present a legal case at a court of profligate, murderous intriguers on whom, war or no war, I was also to spy – both being tasks for which I was untrained, whatever Broadfoot might say. I had been assured that the work was entirely safe – and told almost in the same breath that when all hell broke loose I had only to holler “Wisconsin!” and a genie or Broadfoot’s grandmother or the Household Brigade would emerge from a bottle and see me right. Just so. Well, I didn’t believe a word of it.

      You see, tyro though I was, I knew the political service and the kind of larks it could get up to, like not telling a fellow until it was too late. Two fearsome possibilities had occurred to my distrustful mind: either I was a decoy to distract the enemy from other agents, or I was being placed in the deep field to receive secret instructions when war started. In either case I foresaw fatal consequences, and to make matters worse, I had dark misgivings about the native assistant Broadfoot had assigned to me – you remember, the “chota-wallah” who was to carry my green bag.

      “It can’t last,” says he cheerfully – and I wondered how long he could, with that impossible task and the mercury at 107. “They’re just waitin’ for an excuse, an’ if I don’t give ’em one – why, they’ll roll over the river as soon as the cold weather comes, horse, foot an’ guns, you’ll see. We ought to go in an’ smash ’em now, while they’re in two minds an’ gettin’ over the cholera – five thousand of the Khalsa have died in Lahore, but it’s past its worst.”

      He was seeing me down to the ferry at daybreak; when I mentioned the great assembly of our troops I’d seen above Meerut he laughed and pointed back to the cantonment, where the 62nd were drilling, the red and buff figures like dolls in the heat haze.

      “Never mind what’s on the Grand Trunk,” says he. “That’s what’s here, my boy – seven thousand men, one-third British, an’ only light guns. Up there,” he pointed north, “is the Khalsa – one hundred thousand of the finest native army in Asia, with heavy guns. They’re two days’ march away. Our nearest reinforcements are Gilbert’s ten thousand at Umballa, a week’s march away, and Wheeler’s five thousand at Ludhiana – only five days’ march. Strong on mathematics, are you?”

      I’d heard vague talk in Simla, as you know, about our weakness on the frontier, but it’s different when you’re on the spot, and hear the figures. “But why –?” I was beginning, and Nicolson chuckled and shook his head.

      “– doesn’t Gough reinforce now?” he mimicked me. “Because it would provoke Lahore – my goodness, it provokes Lahore if one of our sepoys walks north to the latrines! I hear they’re goin’ to demand that we withdraw even the troops we have up here now – perhaps that’ll start the war, even if your Soochet legacy doesn’t.” He knew about that, and had twitted me about how I’d be languishing at the feet of “the fair sultana” while honest soldiers like him were chasing infiltrators along the river.

      “Mind you, she may be out of office by the time you get there. There’s talk that Prince Peshora – he’s another of old Runjeet’s by-blows – is goin’ to have a try for the throne; they say he has most of the Khalsa on his side. What price a palace revolution, what? Why, if I were you, I’d apply for the job!”