The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (53 page)

Montgomerie first trained his men, through exhaustive practice, to take a pace of known length which would remain constant whether they walked uphill, downhill or on the level. Next he taught them ways of keeping a precise but discreet count of the number of such paces taken during a day’s march. This enabled them to measure immense distances with remarkable accuracy and without arousing suspicion. Often they travelled as Buddhist pilgrims, many of whom regularly crossed the passes to visit the holy sites of the ancient Silk Road. Every Buddhist carried a rosary of 108 beads on which to count his prayers, and also a small wood and metal prayer-wheel which he spun as he walked. Both of these Montgomerie turned to his advantage. From the former he removed eight beads, not enough to be noticed, but leaving a mathematically convenient 100. At every hundredth pace the Pundit would automatically slip one bead. Each complete circuit of the rosary thus represented 10,000 paces.

The total for the day’s march, together with any other discreet observations, had somehow to be logged somewhere safe from prying eyes. It was here that the prayer-wheel, with its copper cylinder, proved invaluable. For concealed in this, in place of the usual hand-written scroll of prayers, was a roll of blank paper. This served as a log-book, which could easily be got at by removing the top of the cylinder, and some of which are still preserved in the Indian State Archives. Then there was the problem of a compass, for the Pundit was required to take regular bearings as he journeyed. Montgomerie decided to conceal this in the lid of the prayer-wheel. Thermometers, which were needed for calculating altitudes, were hidden in the tops of pilgrims’ staves. Mercury, essential for setting an artificial horizon when taking sextant readings, was hidden in cowrie shells and poured out into a pilgrim’s begging bowl when required. Concealed pockets were added to the Pundits’ clothing, and false bottoms, in which sextants could be hidden, were built into the chests which most native travellers carried. All this work was carried out in the Survey of India’s workshops at Dehra Dun under Montgomerie’s supervision.

The Pundits were also thoroughly trained in the art of disguise and in the use of cover stories. For in the lawless lands beyond the frontier their safety would depend on just how convincingly they could play the part of holy-man, pilgrim or Himalayan trader. Their disguise and cover had to stand the test of months of travelling, often in the closest intimacy with genuine pilgrims and traders. Some were away for years. One became the first Asiatic to be awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s gold medal, having contributed ‘a greater amount of positive knowledge to the map of Asia than any other individual of our time’. At least two never returned, while a third was sold into slavery, although he eventually escaped. In all, their clandestine journeys were to provide a wealth of geographical intelligence over some twenty years which Montgomerie and his fellow cartographers at Dehra Dun used to fill in many of the no-go areas on the British maps of Central Asia.

Just what drove men like Mirza Shuja to face such hardships and extreme dangers for their imperial masters has never been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps it was the inspirational leadership of Montgomerie, who took such a pride in their individual achievements, and who looked upon them as his sons. Or possibly it was the knowledge that they belonged to an elite, for each was aware that he had been hand-picked for this great task. Or maybe Montgomerie had managed to imbue them with his own patriotic determination to fill in the blanks on the Great Game map before the Russians did. In an earlier book,
Trespassers on the Roof of the World,
I have described some of the Pundits’ more prodigious feats of exploration, which I shall not attempt to retell here. Sadly, very little is known of these men as individuals, for none of them left memoirs of any kind. However, it is in Kipling’s masterpiece
Kim,
whose characters so clearly come from the shadowy world of Captain Montgomerie, that they have their just memorial.

In Kashgar, in the spring of 1869, neither Shaw nor Hayward had any idea of this. Mirza, the mysterious Indian, they learned, had been arrested and chained to a heavy log. More ominously for Shaw, Yakub Beg had been enquiring whether he and the Indian had been in communication, and whether he still had in his possession the two watches with which he was known to have arrived. Both he and Hayward were becoming increasingly perturbed as they received no further word from Yakub Beg, for it was now nearly three months since Shaw’s audience with the ruler. Although both men were well treated, enquiries put to court officials produced no satisfactory explanation for this long silence. In fact, if they did but know it, there was a very good reason for Yakub Beg’s procrastination – the Russians.

Having fought against them in the past, Yakub Beg was aware that his mighty northern neighbour represented an infinitely greater threat to his throne than the Chinese, whom he had defeated without much difficulty. He also knew that their troops were poised on the frontier, not many days’ march from Kashgar. Altogether they represented a more immediate priority than his two British visitors, who could quite happily be kept on ice for the time being. For its part, St Petersburg was in something of a quandary over Yakub Beg. Not only was it worried by the prospect of Kashgar becoming a rallying-point for anti-Russian feeling in Central Asia, but with British help and encouragement the Muslim adventurer might even try to launch a crusade aimed at driving the Russians out of their newly acquired territories. The hawks were impatient to invade Kashgaria and place it under permanent Russian rule, while time was still on their side. Anxious not to allow this promising new market to slip from its grasp, St Petersburg was sorely tempted. But in the event, as always, the Tsar and his ministers were guided by what they felt they could get away with. For the Russians to march into Kashgaria would be bound to enrage and alarm both the British and the Chinese (the latter regarding it still as part of their empire, albeit momentarily lost). With the disaster of the Crimean War still fresh in Russian minds, Tsar Alexander did not yet feel confident enough to risk it. Instead of an army, therefore, an envoy had been sent to Kashgar to try to find another solution.

What St Petersburg most wanted from Yakub Beg was his recognition of the treaty rights, especially the trading concessions, which Ignatiev had obtained from the Chinese. It was particularly anxious to prevent these from going to the British. For his part, Yakub Beg was eager for Russian recognition of his rule, and a guarantee that his frontiers would be secure against invasion. However, St Petersburg was unwilling to grant his regime formal recognition, since this would permanently damage its relations with Peking. He, at least, was mortal. The Chinese would be around for a long time. Although Shaw did not realise it, these negotiations had still been in progress when he first arrived in Kashgar. Indeed, a Russian envoy had left for home shortly before, taking with him Yakub Beg’s nephew as an emissary to St Petersburg. But Alexander had refused to receive him, fearing that this might be seen by both Peking and Yakub Beg himself as implying recognition. Yakub Beg was incensed. Realising that the Russians had no intention of recognising his authority, he decided to show his displeasure in a way calculated to cause them the maximum alarm and annoyance. He turned to those whom he knew by now to be their principal rivals in Central Asia – the British.

The first that Robert Shaw knew of this, although he had ho idea what lay behind it, was when, to his great relief, he found himself summoned to an audience with Yakub Beg. ‘Today,’ he noted in his diary on April 5, ‘I have some news to write. I have had my long expected second interview with the King.’ Although he made no attempt to explain the long delay, Yakub Beg proved even more amiable than at their first meeting. Brushing aside Shaw’s reminder that he did not represent the British government, but had travelled to Kashgar of his own accord, Yakub Beg told him: ‘I consider you my brother. Whatever course you advise, I will take.’ Other extravagant compliments followed. ‘The Queen of England is like the sun, which warms everything it shines upon,’ he declared. ‘I am in the cold, and desire that some of its rays should fall upon me.’ Shaw, he said, was the first Englishman he had ever met, although he had heard much of their power and truthfulness from others. ‘It is a great honour for me that you have come. I count upon you to help me in your country.’

The compliments over, Yakub Beg now got down to business. ‘I am thinking’, he told Shaw, ‘of sending an envoy to your country.’ What did his visitor think? Shaw said he thought it was an excellent idea. In that case, Yakub Beg declared, he would dispatch a special emissary bearing a note to the ‘Lord Sahib’, as he called the Viceroy. Welcoming this, Shaw offered to brief the individual chosen, promising to smooth his path in every way possible. After a further exchange of compliments, Shaw withdrew, hardly daring to believe that he might soon be free to leave for home. Aware, though, of Yakub Beg’s reputation for every kind of double-dealing, he knew that he would feel much happier once he was safely across the frontier.

But there remained one last problem – Hayward. Nothing had been said about him during Shaw’s audience with Yakub Beg. In view of the latter’s evident eagerness to woo the British, Shaw had assumed that Hayward would be free to return home too, although perhaps not via the Pamirs, which was what his sponsors, the Royal Geographical Society, had hoped. Then one of Shaw’s servants brought him ‘an ugly rumour . . . that I should be sent back to India with an envoy . . . and that Hayward would be kept as a hostage for his safe return.’ At the same time he received an anxious note from Hayward himself. In this he said that he had learned that Yakub Beg was proposing to hold on to him. Much as Shaw disliked Hayward – ‘the thorn in my flesh’, he calls him in his diary – he knew he could not simply abandon him to the whims of an oriental despot with an unsavoury reputation for cruelty and treachery. Still confined to his own quarters, he at once sent a note to one of Yakub Beg’s senior officials, a man with whom he was on excellent terms. In this he warned that it would be a waste of time and effort for Yakub Beg to send an envoy to India seeking Britain’s friendship, ‘so long as an Englishman is kept here against his will’. It was a risky thing to do, he knew, but it worked. The following day he was informed that not only Hayward, but also the mysterious Mirza, whom Yakub Beg seemed to associate with them, would be free to return home. The envoy would follow later.

Shaw and Hayward got back to a hero’s welcome, having been given up for dead by some. Despite their close confinement, they had managed, albeit quite independently, to bring back with them an immense amount of intelligence – political, commercial, military and geographical. The latter was to win for both men that ultimate prize among explorers, the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. For his part, however, Mirza Shuja was to receive no such reward or acclaim. Although it was due to his determined efforts that the Survey of India was able to produce its first, if somewhat rough, map of northern Afghanistan and the Pamirs, his activities had to be kept secret still. Only when a Pundit had made his final journey could his identity be disclosed. Sadly, Mirza would not live to enjoy this, for he was destined to be murdered in his sleep while on another mission to Central Asia, this time to Bokhara.

Both Shaw and Hayward, who saw eye to eye on very little else, returned to India convinced that the Russians were proposing to march into Kashgaria, overthrow Yakub Beg, and add his kingdom to their own Central Asian empire. After that it would only be a question of time before they continued southwards into northern India via the very passes by which the two British travellers had entered Kashgaria, and across which Shaw was hoping to send his tea caravans. Until then the great mountain systems to the north of India had been regarded by strategists in Calcutta and London as impenetrable to a modern army weighed down with artillery and other heavy equipment, and requiring regular supplies of food and ammunition. Shaw and Hayward, having crossed those mountains both ways, now questioned this, arguing that one pass in particular – the Chang Lung, lying north-east of Leh – offered an invader a back-door route into Ladakh, and thence into northern India. Although this rose to over 18,000 feet, both Shaw and Hayward (the latter a former army officer) believed that artillery could be dragged over it.