Алистер Маклин - Borrowed Time

‘I’m pleased to say you did.’

Mike took the amulet and pressed down hard on the metal loop at the top. The centre of the front panel dropped inwards and glided aside. In the gap a small lens could be seen gleaming.

‘Oh, boy’ Amrit said, shaking his head. ‘It’s a camera.’

Mike pressed a high spot on the grooved edge of the disc and the back panel opened. It had a spring-loaded carrier for a flat circular film cartridge.

‘It’s sixteen mil,’ Mike said, ‘it takes twenty shots per cartridge, and it works in low light. It’s auto-focus, so all you have to worry about is getting it pointed the right way so it catches what you happen to be looking at.’

‘How does it fire?’

‘Press on the point of Narsingh’s chin. Like this.’

Amrit watched. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘Right. It’s good, isn’t it?’

The final item out of the bag was a slim gold finger ring with a single cheap-looking stone set into it.

‘It should fit the little finger,’ Mike said.

Amrit tried it on. It fitted perfectly. ‘Not the kind of thing I would have chosen,’ he said.

‘Yes, it’s pretty tacky. But it’ll find you if we ever lose visual contact.’

‘A tracer?’

‘The stone is the beacon,’ Mike said. ‘Wear it in health.’

Mike crumpled the empty bag and put it in the trash basket. ‘So tell me,’ he said, ‘what makes you so anxious to get under way?’

‘They’re recruiting again,’ Amrit said. ‘It happens in waves. Moving around the city every day, you’re aware of a pattern of faces, people you barely look at but you know they’re there, working in the markets or running errands or just hanging around street corners. Then all of a sudden two or three of them are gone, and you know they’ve been pulled into the mule game.’

‘So you want to get on to the streets while there’s a chance of being spotted.’

‘That’s it, Mr Graham.’

‘Call me Mike. Listen, I’ll tell Lenny Trent what you just told me, and we’ll line up one last rehearsal session for later today.’

‘If you think it’s necessary.’

‘I know you’re impatient, but please give the rehearsal all you’ve got.’

‘Of course I will.’ Amrit paused. ‘Mike.’

Old Aziz had given Sabrina tea in gratitude for the lift home, and as they sat on his ramshackle veranda and talked, he had turned out to be a gold mine. After several minutes of polite inconsequential chat, he stood up and pointed to all the places on the lower slopes of the mountains where he regularly saw bandit convoys.

‘Who knows what they carry,’ he said. ‘I know it is not always contraband. Often they are moving their dwellings, their entire communities, every stick, from one place to another. That way they avoid conflict with the authorities, and with each other. Much of the time, though, they carry illegal merchandise.’

Then Aziz had fetched an ancient pair of British Army binoculars, which had been given to him by a soldier in 1944. He handed them to Sabrina and showed her how to point them, until she saw an area of mountainside Aziz called the bronze pass.

‘A fanciful title,’ he said, ‘but you will see, in the late sunlight, how the path glows a rich bronze. It is a combination of colours in the rock stratum and the sandy earth at that level.’

Sabrina saw it, like a long, undulating red-brown strand along the side of the mountain.

‘That is where the truly bad men travel,’ Aziz said. ‘Once every week, at dusk, they pass within the reach of my binoculars. They carry heavy loads, and they eliminate whatever is in their path. Twice they have killed men whose curiosity has taken them up there to take a closer look. Twice, also, they have come down to this village and demanded water for their horses and food for themselves. They did not treat people cruelly, as some might, but they were strangers to sympathy and compassion, nevertheless.’

‘How often do they appear?’ Sabrina said.

‘Twice a week. They will pass that way tonight.’

Sabrina tried to blank any sign of excitement. She swallowed what was left in her cup, then got up to go. She thanked Aziz for the tea and for the information. He shook her hand as she left and wished her well on her journey through Kashmir.

Twenty minutes later she was parked in a shadowed cleft in the foothills, elbows braced on the bonnet of the car as she pointed the EVC12A up at the mountainside. Dead in the centre of the viewfinder she had a convoy of twelve heavily-laden horses, moving obliquely towards her, the faces of the riders visible in the late golden sunlight.

She took twelve pictures before the convoy moved along out of sight. Then she got back in the car, pulled up the rubber mat at the driver’s side and snapped open a metal flap in the floor. She took out a modified cellular phone, set to call one number only. She went outside again, the phone in one hand, the camera in the other. She pulled up the phone’s antenna with her teeth, thumbed the green button and put the phone to her ear.

‘Secure Communications,’ a woman’s voice said.

‘I have a P-I-G transmission,’ Sabrina said. The initials stood for Peripheral Information Gathering.

‘What hardware are you using?’

‘The EVC12A. I have twelve shots total.’

‘Raise the antenna on the camera and set it to send.’

Sabrina put the camera on the car bonnet, pulled up the titanium antenna, and pushed the SEND button.

‘We are homing on the equipment,’ the woman said. ‘Please confirm when the contact signal shows.’

Sabrina watched the camera, holding her breath. A tiny green lamp winked.

‘Contact,’ she said.

There was a long pause, then the woman said, ‘Twelve pictures received. Closing communication.’

The phone went dead. Sabrina dropped it in her pocket. She pushed down the camera’s antenna and put the whole unit into her shoulder bag. As she got back in the car the telephone in her pocket rang.

She shut the door, fished out the phone. ‘Yes?’

‘Sabrina!’ Philpott said. ‘What a good girl you are! I was in Secure Comms when your pictures came through. Magnificent quality, my dear. Who are those people, exactly?’

‘I don’t know, sir, beyond the fact they’re bandits with a pretty bad reputation among people who live near the foothills.’

‘Can you get the location co-ordinates, at all?’

‘Well I’m still there. Will I use the phone?’

‘By all means.’

Sabrina wound down the window, held the phone out through the gap and pressed her thumb firmly on a blue button on the side. Ten seconds later the phone beeped and she pulled it in again.

‘Got it,’ Philpott said. ‘I gather from this that you’re quite close to Srinagar.’

‘I’ll be there tomorrow, with luck.’

‘And I’m sure that Mike and the others will be glad to see you. In the meantime I’ll send them printouts of the pictures, along with the co-ordinates. Good work, Sabrina.’

‘Thank you sir.’

‘Keep in touch.’

As Philpott came out of the Secure Communications Suite he saw Whitlock, who immediately waved a folder at him.

‘And what would that be?’

‘My notes on the life and later career of Arno Skuttnik. I just picked up another snippet.’

They went into Philpott’s office. Whitlock pointed at the coffee machine. ‘May I?’

‘Pour me one, too.’

Philpott sat down to wait. Whitlock poured two black coffees and brought them to the desk.

‘This whole thing,’ he said, opening the folder, ‘makes me wonder how much buried history gets overlooked in any investigation.’

‘It depends who’s digging,’ Philpott said.

‘And how desperate they are to find something , anything. We set out with zilch on Skuttnik. He was a nobody immigrant with a history hardly worth the name. Now his story’s fattening into the material of a pretty good mini series.’