High Road to China

In the lead Bristol, O’Malley checked his instruments, looked to either side of him at the other two planes, then raised his hand. He pushed the throttle forward, set the rudder to neutral, let the plane pick up speed as it began to roll. He had always flown by the seat of his pants, knowing the exact moment when whatever had to be done should be done; but this Bristol was carrying a bigger weight load than he had ever taken into the air before and he kept an eye on the airspeed indicator. He saw it go past the 45 miles an hour when one could usually lift the machine off the ground; he let it build, 50, 55, then he gently pulled the stick back and felt, or rather sensed, the ground slip away from beneath him. As soon as he was airborne, knew he had enough power to keep climbing, he looked back. But there was no need for him to be anxious. Eve Tozer and George Weyman were climbing behind him, coming up smoothly and banking to follow him as he set the course down through the valley to Redhill, then to follow the railway line to Ashford in Kent and on to the coast. They were flying in wartime V-formation with O’Malley as leader. Three armed warplanes flying in war formation, heading for some sort of showdown on the other side of the world: I’m dreaming, thought O’Malley. Then he looked up at the clouds closing down on him, heard the sirens of the wind singing as they brushed by him, felt their fingers against his face, knew the dream was the heart of reality and rejoiced.

That day the world was having its usual convulsions. Bolshevist troops were advancing on Warsaw and falling back before Baron Wrangel’s White Army in the Crimea; Parer and McIntosh landed in their DH9 in Darwin, having taken exactly eight months to fly the 10,000 miles from London; there was heavy selling on the New York Stock Exchange; Landru, the French Bluebeard, was swapping jokes with newspapermen while police sifted the ashes in his villa for the bones of his victims. News was being made that might become history or just another tick in the continuing tremor of time passing.

But O’Malley, Eve and Weyman knew none of that and would not have cared if they had known. Sun Nan, heart in mouth, bowler hat pressed to his stomach like a poultice, had never had any interest in the world outside China anyway. He peered ahead through his goggles, looking for the Middle Kingdom beyond the grey horizon.

They crossed the coast at Folkestone, O’Malley watching the thunderheads building up in the Channel to the south of them. Twenty-five minutes later they were over the mouth of the Somme, the thunderstorms behind them.

A few more minutes’ flying, then familiar territory to O’Malley and Weyman lay below. O’Malley looked back and across, pointed down at the ground. Weyman nodded, then O’Malley saw him thump his gloved hand on the cockpit rim in an angry gesture. O’Malley understood, but gestures now were futile and too late. He looked down at the flat landscape, searched for the hill he had walked up that July morning four years ago; but at this height there were no hills. He saw the trenches zigzagging across the earth, the scar tissue of war; weeds and bushes and wild flowers were growing in them now, but in his mind they were only proud flesh on the wounds. He flew over the shattered towns and villages, saw the rebuilding going on; people stopped in the squares and looked up, but nobody waved. A cleared patch of ground stood in the loop of a winding road; crosses, like white asterisks, stood in ranks, the dead drawn up for inspection. They died in ranks like that, O’Malley thought. Oh Christ! he yelled aloud into the wind and behind his goggles his eyes streamed.

Eve saw the wings of the plane ahead of her wobble; she moved up closer, wondering what message O’Malley wanted to convey to her. But he didn’t look towards her; instead she saw him push his goggles up and wipe his eyes with a handkerchief. Then she looked down at the ground, saw the trenches and the ruined farmhouses and the church with the shattered steeple like a broken tooth, and remembered Arthur Henty telling her that more men had died that first morning of the battle on the ground below her than on any other day in the entire history of war. And for what? Henty had said; but she had known he had not been asking the question of her. Then she saw O’Malley looking across at her and she lifted her hand and waved. It was meant to be a gesture of sympathy, but there was no way of knowing that he understood it.

They landed at Le Bourget to refuel. The French aerodrome official checked them in, looked at their planes, went away and came back with two gendarmes. He gestured at the rear cockpits of O’Malley’s and Weyman’s planes. The Lewis guns were locked in position and covered by canvas sleeves, but there was no mistaking what they were.

‘It is not permitted, m’sieu, for private aeroplanes with machine-guns to fly across France.’

‘These are not private machines.’ O’Malley’s French was adequate if not fluent. A six months’ affair with a girl in Auxi had improved his schoolboy French in every possible way. ‘We are delivering them to the Greek government in Athens.’

‘Have you papers?’

‘We were told the Greek embassy in Paris would arrange for our transit. Everything was done in a hurry. The machines were only ordered yesterday. Things are very bad in Thrace, as you know.’

The official didn’t know, didn’t even know where Thrace was, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He said doggedly, ‘You need papers.’

‘M’sieu, I admit we should have papers, but there wasn’t time. It was a holiday in England yesterday – the French embassy was closed – and everything is so urgent. As you know, the Turks are attacking and winning.’

The official once again didn’t know, which was just as well, since the Turks were losing badly. But the sergeant of the two gendarmes opened his eyes wide, then nodded. ‘Damned Turks. I fought against them in Syria. We were supposed to have beaten them.’

‘The Greeks will beat them with these machines,’ said O’Malley. ‘Your government is also supplying them with some of your wonderful aeroplanes. With your Spads and Nieuports and these machines of ours, the Turks will be beaten in a matter of weeks.’

It was the official’s turn to nod, but he wasn’t going to give up so easily. ‘Who is the lady?’

Eve, whose French, learned at Boston’s Winsor School, was good enough to allow her to follow the conversation, was about to introduce herself when O’Malley, with a bow to her, said, ‘She is the daughter of the Greek Foreign Minister. She is hurrying back to be with him.’

‘Does she speak French?’

Before Eve could answer for herself O’Malley said, ‘Unfortunately, no.’

‘Does she have a passport?’

‘As you know, the Greek government, since the war, has not got around to printing passports.’

The official once more didn’t know; as O’Malley hoped he wouldn’t, since he didn’t know himself what was the Greek situation on passports. ‘Who is the Chinese gentleman?’

‘The Foreign Minister’s butler. The Minister used to be the Greek ambassador in Peking.’

‘Let them go,’ said the sergeant. ‘We’re holding up giving those damned Turks a hiding.’

The official sighed, shrugged. ‘Just don’t fire your machine-guns at anything before you cross out of France, m’sieu.’ He bowed to Eve, shook hands with George Weyman, then followed O’Malley across to his plane. As the latter climbed into his cockpit the Frenchman said, ‘I always admire a good liar, m’sieu, and the English are so good at it.’

‘And the French, too,’ said O’Malley, taking a risk. ‘Let’s give credit where credit is due.’

The Frenchman acknowledged the compliment. He was a thin man with sad, bagged eyes in a bony, mournful face. He was still weary from the war, too old to be hopeful about the peace. ‘Just where are you going, m’sieu?’

‘China.’

The Frenchman smiled. ‘A good lie, m’sieu. Keep it up. Bon voyage.’

They took off again, heading almost due east. They ran into rain squalls south of Strasbourg and O’Malley gestured to the others to widen the gap between them; they flew blind for ten minutes, then came out into bright, almost horizontal sunlight. They flew on yellow rails, through brilliantly white clouds, and at last slid down towards the sun-shot blue of Lake Constance, the Bodensee. They landed at Friederichshafen, going in past the huge Zeppelin sheds. They parked their planes at the end of the field and at once saw the big Mercedes staff car speeding down towards them. It skidded to a halt on the grass and two men jumped out.

‘Sprechen sie deutsch?’ He was a plump, blond man, hair cut en brosse, a personification of the cartoon German.

‘Unfortunately, no,’ said O’Malley. ‘Sprechen sie englisch?’

‘Yes,’ said the plump man and twisted his little finger in his ear as if getting ready for the foreign language. ‘I was a prisoner of war for two years.’

The other German, a younger man with dark hair and eyes that would never admit surrender or defeat, only half-hid his sneer. ‘Herr Bultmann is proud of his English and where he learned it.’

‘At least I survived,’ said Bultmann, as if that had been the purpose of war. He explained to the ex-enemy, ‘I flew in Zeppelins. Unfortunately we were brought down. Herr Pommer was ground crew. He learned his English from a book.’ He looked at O’Malley and Weyman, as if he knew they would understand that ground crew could never be shot down. Then for the first time he saw the guns on two of the planes. ‘You are armed? Why?’

‘We are on our way to Turkey,’ said O’Malley. ‘As you know, things are going badly for your ex-allies there. These machines have been bought by the Nationalists.’

‘British aeroplanes?’

O’Malley shrugged. ‘You know what governments are like, even our own. They will sell anything to anyone, if there is a profit in it. Herr Weyman and I are just paid civil servants.’

‘But the Treaty of – where was it? Sèvres? – I thought the Turks were not allowed to have any military equipment. Like us.’

‘Ah, what are treaties? They’ll be turning a blind eye to you, too, in a year or two.’

‘If they do, the wrong people will get the equipment. Who is the lady?’

‘Daughter of the ex-Foreign Minister of Turkey. She speaks neither English nor German, unfortunately. The Chinese is her father’s butler.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Bultmann, still smiling and friendly, his prisoner-of-war English impeccable. ‘I do not believe a word of it. You will have to come with us, please.’

Then another car came speeding down the field. This was another Mercedes, but this one had never been a wartime staff car; it was a private one, badly needing a coat of paint but still looking huge and powerful and opulent. The man who got out of it, though not huge and powerful, also had a suggestion of opulence about him. He wore a homburg, a winged collar with a grey silk cravat, black jacket, grey waistcoat, striped trousers and grey spats. He could have been a diplomat, a successful lawyer or a gigolo. Only when he got closer did Eve, who had an eye for such things, see that everything he wore was like the car, pre-war and frayed at the edges.

‘What is the trouble, Herr Bultmann?’ He spoke in German in a soft voice that didn’t quite disguise the harsh Prussian accent.

‘No trouble, sir. The English party just have to explain why they are flying armed aeroplanes over German territory.’

The newcomer turned to face O’Malley and the others. He was a very tall, lean man with a bony, handsome face that gave no close hint of his age: he could have been an old twenty or a young forty. He had cool, insolent eyes, a sensual mouth and an air of contempt for the world and everyone in it. Eve thought him one of the handsomest men she had seen in a long time.

He took off his hat, exposing sleek blond hair, clicked his heels and bowed to Eve. ‘I am Baron Conrad von Kern,’ he said in English. ‘I live just along the lake. I saw your aeroplanes come in and I was curious. The last time I saw a Bristol Fighter was two years ago. I shot it down in flames.’

‘Bully for you,’ said O’Malley.

‘It was pointless,’ said Kern, not looking at O’Malley but at Eve. ‘We had lost the war by then. Where are you taking these machines now?’

‘To China,’ said Eve, and introduced herself, O’Malley and Weyman. She did not include Sun Nan in the introductions, but Kern had already dismissed the Chinese as baggage that could be ignored. ‘It is imperative, Baron, that we are not delayed.’

‘There is something fishy here, sir,’ said Bultmann, showing off his colloquial English. ‘A moment ago the lady was supposed to be Turkish and unable to speak English.’

‘You said you didn’t believe us,’ said O’Malley, as if that disposed of his lie.

‘How soon do you wish to leave?’ Kern was still giving all his attention to Eve.

‘Tomorrow morning.’ Eve recognized the Baron for what he was, a lady-killer, and she accepted the opportunity to take advantage of it. After all, there was little risk of his attempting to emulate the unfortunate Mexican. ‘All we want is an hotel where we can spend the night, to refuel our machines in the morning and to be off first thing.’

‘One has to be careful, sir,’ said Bultmann. ‘You have read what the Bolshevists have done in Saxony, they have taken over some of the towns, declared Soviets.’

‘Do we look like Bolshevists?’ said Eve indignantly.

‘If I take them as my guests and leave their aeroplanes in your charge overnight, will that satisfy you, Herr Bultmann?’ Kern put it as a request, but he made it sound like an order.

O’Malley looked at Bultmann and Pommer. He hated Prussian militarism, had fought against it, had rejoiced that it had been defeated. But it had not been, not entirely; and now he was glad of it. Bultmann stiffened to attention, clicked his heels.

‘Yes, Herr Baron. First thing in the morning I shall telephone my superiors for instructions.’

‘Do that, Herr Bultmann. In the meantime, Fräulein Tozer – ’ He gestured towards his massive car.

‘Thank you,’ said Eve. ‘What about Mr O’Malley, Mr Weyman and Mr Sun Nan?’

Kern looked at the three men as if surprised he should be asked to play host to them. Then he looked at Bultmann. ‘Can’t you accommodate them, Herr Bultmann?’

Bultmann was prepared to go just so far in interpreting a request as an order. He allowed himself a touch of Bolshevism: ‘It will be enough for me to look after the aeroplanes, Herr Baron. They are your responsibility, sir.’

Kern lifted his chin and his mouth tightened. But he didn’t threaten to have Bultmann court-martialled: he knew better than any of those present that the old days were over. He stalked to his car. ‘You will ride in front with me, Fräulein Tozer.’

George Weyman spoke for the first time. ‘I’m not leaving these machines here with these Huns.’

‘It is some time, Herr Weyman, since Attila and his Huns were through here,’ said Kern. ‘Herr Bultmann and Herr Pommer are good Germans, nothing more, nothing less.’

Weyman looked as if he was about to deny there were any good Germans, but O’Malley cut in: ‘George, we don’t have any choice. These aren’t our machines, they’re Miss Tozer’s.’

‘And I say we leave them with Herr Bultmann,’ said Eve. ‘Get into the car, Mr Weyman.’

Weyman flushed, looked at O’Malley as if accusing him of being a traitor. But the latter was already pushing Sun Nan ahead of him into the back seat of the car. He pushed Sun Nan across the seat, sat himself in the middle. ‘Come on, George. You’re next to me.’

Reluctantly, still awkward with rage, Weyman got into the car, left the door open and sat staring straight ahead. Kern drew himself up; then he closed the rear door with a slam. He went round and got in behind the wheel. He nodded to Bultmann and Pommer as they clicked their heels and stood to attention, then he swung the car round.

‘Wait!’ Eve suddenly cried. As Kern jerked the car to a halt she jumped out and ran across to her plane. She came back with the hessian-wrapped box and a small overnight bag. ‘Thank you, Baron. Flying is no good for a girl’s complexion. I’ll need my creams for repairs.’

‘I have never seen a complexion less in need of repairs.’

In the back seat the two Englishmen and the Chinese glanced at each other, joined for a moment in their contempt for such flattery. The United Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom knew how much encouragement was proper for women.

They drove out of the airfield, past the vast hangars where two airships were moored, their noses sticking out of the sheds like those of giant porpoises. The Zeppelins looked harmless enough, but once on leave in London O’Malley had seen one caught in a web of searchlights over the city and he could never remember seeing anything so eerie and menacing. He looked at George Weyman, who had lost his parents in a Zeppelin raid.

‘And they’re worried about a couple of guns on our machines,’ said Weyman bitterly. ‘All of those should have been burnt.’

‘It’s all over, George,’ O’Malley said, and tried not to sound too weary of Weyman’s hatred; after all, his own parents were safe in Tanganyika, profiting from what the Germans had lost. ‘Try to forget it.’

‘Not bloody likely.’

The road ran along the edge of the lake. Sail-boats were coming in, the sun behind them turning them into huge translucent moths. The water shone like a burnished shield and summer was a great green bloom of trees. If the war had been through here there was no evidence left of it.

‘I was on my way to a tea dance over in Constance,’ said Kern, gesturing at his clothes. In the back seat the three men glanced at each other again: going dancing in the afternoon? ‘I was driving to catch the ferry when I saw your aeroplanes fly over. I turned round at once. I am still fascinated by war machines.’

‘What did you fly?’ O’Malley could not resist the professional question.

‘Albatros D’s and Fokker Triplanes. I was with von Richthofen.’

‘How many kills did you have?’ said Eve.

If Kern noticed the slightly sarcastic edge to her voice he gave no sign. ‘I shot down thirty-two machines. But I never looked upon them as kills.’

‘The same number as Mr O’Malley. It’s a pity we aren’t staying longer. You would have a lot to compare and talk about.’

‘We might have had, at the time,’ said O’Malley. ‘You forget, Miss Tozer, I told you I was glad the war was over. That part of it, anyway.’

Eve didn’t look back, but at Kern. ‘And you, Baron?’

But Kern didn’t answer. He turned the car off the main road and it began to climb a hill. On the crest, on the edge of a sheer drop that fell down towards the lake, stood a small castle. Spired and turreted, light as a pencil drawing, it looked unreal as it perched against the salmon sky.

‘It’s like something from a fairy tale!’ Eve exclaimed. ‘Is it yours?’

‘It is now,’ said Kern, taking the car across a drawbridge and under a portcullis into a small courtyard. ‘It belonged to my uncle, but he and my two cousins were killed in the war. Then my aunt died of a broken heart. Women do,’ he added, not defensively but challengingly, as if the others doubted him.

‘So do men, occasionally,’ said Eve gently.

Servants came out, two men and a woman, all elderly: museum pieces, O’Malley thought, prewar waxworks figures wound up and put back into service. They bowed to the Baron and his guests, but not to Sun Nan; obviously they thought he was just an Oriental mirror of themselves. But their faces showed no surprise when Kern told them to show Sun Nan to a room of his own with the other guests.

‘You have had a long flight,’ said Kern as he led them into the high-ceilinged entrance hall of the castle. The walls were darkly ornate with carved timber, but the floor was flagstones and their heels echoed hollowly. Skeletons walking, thought O’Malley; and shivered. And wondered how many ghosts Kern entertained here in his moments alone.

‘Take a bath and rest for a while,’ said Kern, speaking all the time to Eve; the others could do what they liked. ‘We shall dine at eight.’

An hour later Eve walked out of her bedroom on to a terrace. Refreshed, wearing a clean blouse and skirt that had been in her overnight bag, she felt pleased at the day’s progress. She still had a long way to go to save her father, but the trip had started well. She took the gold watch from the pocket of her skirt, opened it and watched the moving second hand: again the bomb image sprang to her mind and her hand jerked of its own accord as if to throw the watch over the wall of the terrace. Instead she snapped the lid shut and shoved the watch back in her pocket.

She stood beside the stone wall and looked down at the lake turning blue-grey in the soft twilight. Pigeons murmured in the trees below her; out on the lake a last sail-boat drew a silver line behind it towards home. It was all so peaceful, and on the other side of the world her father might already be dead. She put her hand to her throat, feeling the sudden thickening pain inside it.

‘It all looks untouched,’ said O’Malley behind her. ‘It’s hard to realize they lost the war.’

‘Those in the cities know they lost it.’ She took her hand away from her throat, recovering quickly. ‘That’s what I read. Millions of unemployed, money not worth the paper it’s printed on.’

‘You sound sorry for them.’

‘I might be, if I thought about them. I was a long way from the war, Mr O’Malley, and I didn’t lose anyone in it. No fathers or brothers or even a cousin. I might feel differently if I had. Did you lose anyone?’

‘No relatives. Just friends.’ He turned back to looking out at the lake, closing a door on the war. ‘We may be in trouble tomorrow morning if Herr Bultmann gets officialdom on his side. German officialdom is the worst kind.’

‘We can’t afford to lose even a day, not so soon. What do you suggest?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve run out of invention. And Bultmann thinks I’m a liar anyway.’

‘You are a liar, Mr O’Malley, but I’m not sure yet how serious a one. You are also not averse to swindling a lady out of some money, making a quick profit if you can. Am I right?’

O’Malley smiled, unabashed. ‘Anyone who makes a profit out of you, Miss Tozer, deserves a medal. I talked to Arthur Henty yesterday before you went back to London. I wanted to know a bit more about you before I started following you to the ends of the earth. I gather your grandfather wasn’t above a bit of swindling if he could make a profit.’

‘Did Mr Henty say that?’

‘No. But I put two and two together. I don’t think any white man would make a fortune in China if he was entirely honest and stuck to his scruples. I must ask Mr Sun about it some time.’

‘My father is honest.’

‘Arthur Henty didn’t say he wasn’t. And I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Until you ask Mr Sun, is that what you mean?’

Eve realized she was looking at O’Malley carefully for the first time. She had always had a lively interest in men and she had had two serious affairs, one of which had petered out and the other had been broken off sharply when she had discovered the man in question had been as interested in getting into her bank account as getting into her bed. But there had been no disillusionment; as she had told Arthur Henty in London (only yesterday?) she was mad about good-looking men. Quite apart from the worry and distraction of what had happened to her father, perhaps she had not been interested in O’Malley purely as a man because he was not good-looking. He was just above medium height, well-built, clear-skinned and healthy-looking; but he was not handsome. He had brown curly hair that was in need of a cut, a broad blunt face with a long upper lip only relieved by the well-shaped nose above it, and eyes that were too mocking ever to offer an invitation to a girl who believed in romance.

‘I don’t think Mr Sun would be the man to ask. He’d be too influenced by his master, as he calls him.’

‘Just who are you, Mr O’Malley, besides being an ex-ace?’ She cupped one elbow in her hand, put the other hand under her chin.