Алистер Маклин - Borrowed Time

It was cool up there in the rocks, but Sabrina was sweating. She lowered the binoculars and saw the sheen of perspiration on her arms and on the backs of her hands. A couple of times as she climbed to this eyrie, she had slipped and bumped the injured leg; now the wound was too tender to touch.

She could hear her breathing, shallow and tremulous, and when she shifted her position between the rocks a dull pain seized her stomach, like a cramp. In the space of five seconds the pain went from dull to sharp, and became so intense she had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out.

‘Gastric involvement,’ she whispered, past caring now whether she talked to herself or not. ‘Take counter-measures.’

The rucksack was at her feet. She opened it and unzipped the medical pouch. Among the foil-sealed packets she located six tablets of activated dimethicone with aluminium hydroxide. After some fumbling she managed to break the foil around two tablets and push them into her mouth. She sat chewing them, promising herself she would never again delay seeing a doctor when she knew she needed one.

The stomach pain subsided. Sabrina began to feel calm again, though not entirely in control of herself. She looked to the right suddenly as a scarlet bird landed on the rock less than two metres away. It was an amazing creature, long-legged like a wader, with a similar hooked beak, but it was all in miniature, the entire bird standing no higher than a pigeon.

‘Look at all that red …’

The feathers resembled scarlet velvet, and the eyes were like pale amethysts.

‘What are you, birdie?’ she whispered, trying not to disturb it. ‘I never saw anything like you before.’

There was a sound down near the edge of the forest, a faraway click like one stone shifting against another. Sabrina picked up the binoculars and looked. One of the marksmen had lost his footing and had slid a little way down the mountainside. Two others were helping him back up. Sabrina moved the binoculars to look at Mike. Even at that distance she could see how annoyed he was.

She looked at the bird again. Her heart thumped. It was still there, but now it was green. Bright emerald green with orange eyes. Sabrina touched her forehead and felt the wetness. It was as if someone had doused her with warm water. She was aware that she was having selective hallucinations, the kind that inserted themselves into reality. The pain in her stomach was coming back.

‘More dimethi-whatsit,’ she muttered.

She reached for the tablets, noticing the bird had gone, if it was ever there. She took the packet between both hands and shakily tried to burst the foil blister covering one of the tablets. She pressed too hard and the tablet shot out over the edge of the rock. She tried again. This time the pressure was just right. She slipped the tablet into her mouth and began chewing.

‘One more,’ she panted.

As the plastic bubble split, a hand landed on Sabrina’s shoulder. The tablet fell at her feet. She turned her head and looked at the strong brown fingers pressed into the material of her shirt.

This was real, she decided. She was not imagining it.

The operation to get the marksmen in position along the mountain track took more time than Mike had expected; it was already late in the afternoon by the time they were all tucked down out of sight. They were deployed in two groups of four, with a pair of men wielding long-range rifles stationed to the rear of the others in case of a retreat. Mike and Lenny, armed with revolvers, lay in a natural rain trough facing north, a metre down the mountainside from the road and twenty metres from the nearest marksmen.

‘They’ve all been warned not to put a mark on Seaton,’ Mike said.

‘So you can mark him yourself.’

‘So I get to interrogate him straight away. Men lying in hospital get time to set up their defences. I want him picked up off the road and bundled straight into that helicopter, no delay. I want to keep him off balance all the way back to Srinagar and then I want to grill him until he tells me everything. My customary compassion,’ he added, ‘will not be activated on this occasion.’

Lenny was watching the sun. It had sunk visibly in the ten minutes they had lain there. ‘I’m getting a leery feeling they’re on to us,’ he said.

‘What makes you say that?’ Mike snapped irritably. ‘Is that you playing opposites? Say it ain’t going to be so, which is sure to make it happen? Is that what you’re doing?’

Lenny sighed. ‘Ease up, will you? I know you’re anxious to get your hands on Seaton. I’m just saying I have a feeling–’

‘From where?’ Mike was glaring, unwilling to face the possibility that the bandits wouldn’t show. ‘Have you got some special sixth sense? Or a seventh one to back up the sixth? Huh?’

‘I’m going by the time of day,’ Lenny said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It’ll be dark in an hour. Hill bandits are timetable creatures. It’s part superstition, part sticking to what they know works. They’re late. That’s what I’m saying, and on that fact I’m basing my suspicion that they’re not coming.’

‘Let’s just wait and see.’

‘Sure,’ Lenny said. ‘Nothing much else we can do, really.’

Twenty minutes later there was still no sign of bandits. Mike decided to raise Sabrina on the radio. He got no response.

‘It’s not turning out such a swell day,’ Lenny observed.

Mike said nothing.

An hour before dusk, on a hot stretch of road fifteen kilometres from the Kashmir border with China, a man riding a noisy moped jumped off his machine as it stalled and began shouting at it. There were few people around to see him, but those who did were amused. He was a comic-looking figure, white-bearded, dressed in an eccentrically large turban, flowing yellow shirt and blue pantaloons. He was furious, calling his bike an ingrate, a traitor, a worthless assemblage of junk held together with rust.

Then he stopped shouting and wheeled the moped to a patch of rough ground by the roadside. He put the machine on its stand, crouched by the side of it and started pulling off pieces of the engine.

Even at close quarters, nobody would have been able to tell that this was Ram Jarwal, steeped in his latest role, thoroughly enjoying himself as he tore off excess parts of bike engine and peered crazily at each one before he dropped it on the ground.

Several of the bits hitting the ground actually came from a pocket in the folds of Ram’s vast shirt. When he had finally reversed the procedure and put back all the pieces he had pulled off his machine, there was one visible item on the ground that had not been there when he arrived. It was an oval flat stone, like thousands of other littered about the roadside.

At his third attempt to restart the engine it fired and he jumped on. The bike tore off and in less than a minute Ram was out of sight.

It was nearly dark when Amrit Datta came striding along the same stretch of road, his sack dangling from his shoulder. At roughly the spot on the corner where the moped had stopped Amrit began limping.

He stopped and bent down beside an oval stone with a notch chipped cleanly out of its edge. In the gathering darkness he appeared to remove a pebble from his sandal and adjust the strap; in fact he lifted one side of the stone, uncovering a hole in the ground. The hole had been put there by Ram as he fussed with his engine parts and deftly used their natural digging edges – each one time only – to prepare a receptacle in the earth.

It was too dark for Amrit to see what he was taking out of the hole, but he could identify the items easily by touch. There was a replacement amulet for the one he would leave under the stone, and under that was his gun.