David Gibbins - Pharaoh

Gordon looked at him piercingly. ‘At Semna, you say? Below the third cataract?’

‘A temple to the crocodile god, Sobek.’

Gordon glanced at his desk. ‘I must check my notes,’ he murmured. ‘My recollection is that Kitchener mentioned nothing unusual at Semna, other than the remains of pharaonic fortifications on either side of the river.’

‘Kitchener was intrigued when I told him, and intended to visit for himself.’

‘You’ve seen Kitchener? How is he?’

‘Champing at the bit. He wished it had been he who had been sent to make contact with you, but his face is too well known among the tribesmen, and he would have been at risk. He was with the desert column, but was sent back from the wells at Jakdul.’

‘Kitchener is a first-rate surveyor and archaeologist, and a most loyal supporter of mine,’ Gordon said. ‘Though I own he would be a handful for any general to manage, and I feel some sympathy for Wolseley on that front.’

Mayne paused, waiting, then offered his hand. ‘Major Edward Mayne, sir. You know from my badge that I’m a fellow sapper. Attached to the river column of the relief expedition.’

‘A relief expedition that has given me no relief at all,’ Gordon said with a tired smile. He shook Mayne’s hand strongly, and peered at his mud-spattered clothes. ‘You look as if you’ve been through the wars.’

‘A fair description, sir.’

Gordon put a hand on his own immaculate red tunic. ‘I apologise if you feel discomfited, but I dress to keep up appearances. I am sensible to the fact that I am still governor general of the Sudan, even though the territory over which I exert jurisdiction has shrunk from an area the size of France to these city walls, like Constantinople at the end of the Byzantine empire. At any rate, I still dress for dinner, though I dine alone, and apart from lime juice to fend off the scurvy and some carefully rationed bully beef, I eat the same as those poor people for whom I am responsible, that is to say biscuit and unleavened bread and water from the one remaining well in the city that has not become tainted.’ He paused, then picked up a decanter from a side table. ‘But I do have my small indulgences. They keep my mind from the hunger. Can I offer you a drink? I have brandy, Greek I’m afraid, so like firewater, though perfectly palatable after one’s throat has become numbed to it.’

‘No thanks.’

Gordon poured himself half a glass, then put it on the table. He peered at Mayne closely. ‘I know the name, but we haven’t met, have we?’

‘No, sir. My speciality is survey, and I’m in the field much of the time. But I took a refresher course at the School of Military Engineering while you were posted at Chatham, and I attended your lectures on the Sudan.’

‘Have you been out here long?’

‘Since July. With General Earle’s staff.’

‘Dragging whaleboats up the Nile? A scheme that would make Sisyphus in Hades glad of his own torment. And before that?’

‘I first came to Egypt in 1882, after our invasion.’

‘Correction,’ said Gordon, picking up a cigarette from a box on his desk and lighting it, sucking in deep and blowing out smoke. ‘Not invasion, but intervention . An intervention to prop up the Ottoman regime in Cairo, against the wishes of the Egyptian army and the Egyptian people, in order to secure our controlling interest in the Suez Canal and keep the investors happy.’ He tapped his cigarette. ‘Have you much desert experience?’

‘I carried out forward reconnaissance for the river column.’

‘Ah. You mean you are an intelligence officer. To whom do you answer?’

‘Lord Wolseley, sir.’

‘Not Baring, in Cairo? Or Colonel Sir Charles Wilson?’

Mayne was taken aback momentarily, too tired to keep up his guard. ‘They both have an interest, inasmuch as they have read my reports.’

‘Wilson is an old friend, though I have found him distant in recent years, but Burnaby works for him and keeps me abreast of affairs.’ He looked at Mayne shrewdly. ‘Apparently there’s a secret complex of rooms under Whitehall. There are operations afoot that even Burnaby is not privy to, and that Wilson only reports to the highest authority. But doubtless you know that.’

Mayne had recovered his poise. ‘Colonel Wilson at this moment is with the steamers that are heading upriver from Metemma towards Khartoum. My mission is to persuade you to leave so that they may take you off to safety when they arrive.’

Gordon leaned his head back, exhaled a deep lungful of smoke towards the ceiling and then looked back at Mayne, a smile on his face. ‘Correction. Your mission is to provide me with agreeable companionship on this night. I have my Sudanese soldiers, whom I love dearly, but there is little conversation to be had. Ever since Colonel Stewart left, I have been starved of friendship. I still weep at the thought of his vile murder when the steamer Abbas was wrecked, for which I hold myself responsible. I have missed his counsel dreadfully.’

‘Kitchener has seen you since then.’

‘Only once, when he came in disguise like you. But he had little time, and our conversation had a very particular course, as I shall tell you shortly.’

‘You know he holds you in the highest regard.’

‘Too high, in my opinion. His desire for revenge may lead him to murderous courses of action that will muddy the waters even further.’

‘Or lead him to glory. There is talk of him as a future sirdar of the Egyptian army, as the one who may lead a force big enough to crush the Mahdi.’

Gordon exhaled again. ‘Glory is nine tenths twaddle, wouldn’t you say?’

Mayne remembered Burnaby’s final moments. ‘For those who seek it, sir, yes. For those upon whom it falls, perhaps it constitutes that remaining one tenth and is a worthy thing.’

‘I believe, then, that Gordon of Khartoum is nine tenths twaddle and one tenth glory.’

Gordon grinned, then took a deep draw on his cigarette, holding the smoke in and exhaling it out of the window. He looked at his cigarette. ‘I do apologise. I’ve spent too much time alone, and have forgotten how to be civil. I should have offered you one of these. I smoke them to overcome the terrible smell of decay from outside.’ He offered Mayne the box from the table. ‘And they help further to suppress my appetite; that is, what taste is left after ingesting the stench outside. Would you care for one?’

Mayne declined, and Gordon put the box back on the table. ‘Perhaps you don’t enjoy the peculiar smell. It’s cherry tobacco, from Morocco. They were given to me as a birthday present by Burnaby, and I’ve become addicted.’

‘I fear I have some bad news for you, sir. The worst. A week ago, near the wells of Abu Klea, there was a fight between the dervishes and the desert column.’

‘I know of it. My Sudanese spies were there. A hell of a fight, by all accounts.’ Gordon paused, suddenly looking crestfallen. ‘They talk of a great bear of a man, fighting with the strength of twenty, finally being brought down by a dervish spear.’ He sat down dejectedly, letting his cigarette burn between his fingers. ‘Fred Burnaby?’

‘Your account tallies, sir. I saw him myself. He died as a soldier.’

‘You mean he died in great pain, with fearful wounds. I’ve been around glorious deaths in battle all my life. I know what it’s like.’

‘Before we left Korti, he passed on his best wishes to you. As did General Buller. They all did.’

‘Burnaby’s I accept, with sad pleasure. The others’ are hollow words. How many more men must die in this futile campaign? It is a campaign for the satisfaction of those who are running it, not for the purpose of relieving Khartoum. That is the sad lesson of war, one that we learn through bitter experience. The game of war has become as self-perpetuating for us as it has become for the army of the jihad, fuelled by the bloodlust of the warrior, where the fight and the holy crusade becomes an end in itself.’