The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (72 page)

On nearing the top they were surprised to find the gates of the fortress wide open. For a moment it seemed as though it was unoccupied. But this was merely an old Hunza trick. As Younghusband and his two Gurkhas cautiously approached the gates, these were suddenly slammed shut from within. In a split-second, Younghusband wrote, ‘the whole wall was lined with the wildest-looking men, shouting loudly and pointing their matchlocks at us from only fifty feet above.’ For a moment he feared that they were about to be mown down. However, although the clamour continued, the men on the wall held their fire. Trying to make himself heard above the uproar, Younghusband shouted back: ‘
Bi Adam
!’
Bi Adam
!’ – ‘One man! One man!’ He held aloft one finger, indicating to those inside that they should send out a man to parley with him.

After an interval the gates opened and two men emerged and made their way over to where Younghusband and his men were waiting. He explained to them that he was on his way to Hunza to see their ruler. The two men returned to the fort to report to their chiefs, and shortly afterwards Younghusband and his companions were invited inside. It was almost the last thing the British officer ever did, for as he rode through the gateway a man suddenly stepped forward and seized his bridle. It looked like treachery, and the Gurkhas, although greatly outnumbered, raised their rifles, ready to sell their lives dearly. Their commanding officer, Younghusband learned later, had told them that if they allowed any harm to befall him they need not bother to return, as the honour of the regiment was at stake. Fortunately, however, it turned out to be a somewhat bizarre joke, albeit an extremely perilous one. The man who had grabbed his bridle began to shake with laughter, and soon everyone, including Younghusband, was joining in. They had merely wanted to test the Englishman’s courage, and see how he would react. It transpired, moreover, that they had been expecting him all along, but had no very precise orders as to how to receive him. The ice had now been broken, though, and after this the two sides got on famously, sitting round a huge fire which the raiders had built inside the fort. ‘And when the little Gurkhas produced some tobacco,’ Younghusband recalled afterwards, ‘and with their customary grins offered it to their hosts, they were completely won.’

Younghusband had begun to suspect that the raiders were in fact not there entirely of their own choice, but were acting on the orders of the ruler. ‘They had all the risks and danger,’ he wrote, ‘while their chief kept all the profits to himself. They raided because they were ordered to raid, and would have been killed if they refused.’ He explained to them therefore that his government was angry that the traders, who included some of its own subjects carrying goods from India, were being robbed, murdered or sold into slavery. He had been sent to discuss with their ruler how the raiding could be brought to an end. The men listened intently to all he had to say, but told him nervously that the question of raiding was not one they could discuss, which appeared to confirm Younghusband’s suspicions.

The next day, escorted by seven of their new Hunza friends, Younghusband and his Gurkhas set off up the pass, whose secrets Calcutta was so anxious to have explored and mapped. They had proceeded only about eight miles when they were met by an emissary sent by the ruler, Safdar Ali. He bore a letter welcoming Younghusband to Hunza, and informing him that he was free to travel anywhere he wished in the kingdom. When he had seen everything he wanted, the ruler hoped that Younghusband would visit the capital as his official guest. Younghusband gave the emissary gifts, including a fine Kashmir shawl, to take back to his master, together with a note thanking him for his generous offer of hospitality. The latter, Younghusband added, he would be delighted to accept shortly, when he had seen a little more of his renowned kingdom. For not only did Younghusband wish to explore the Shimshal Pass, but he also needed to discover whether there were any other passes in the region through which Russian troops or agents might enter Hunza.

Not long afterwards a second messenger arrived, this time bearing mail which had been carried by a runner all the way from India. It included an urgent note from Younghusband’s chiefs in Simla warning him that the Russian agent Gromchevsky was back in the area, making his way southwards towards Ladakh. Younghusband was instructed to keep a close eye on the Russian’s movements. This was followed a few days later by a third messenger, this time bearing a letter from Captain Gromchevsky himself. The Russian, who had somehow learned of his presence in the region, cordially invited his English rival to dine with him in his camp. Younghusband needed no urging, and the next morning set out for where the Russian had pitched his tents.

‘As I rode up,’ he wrote later, ‘a tall, fine-looking bearded man in Russian uniform came out to meet me.’ Gromchevsky, who had an escort of seven Cossacks, greeted his guest warmly, and that night, after the British officer had pitched his own camp nearby, the two men dined together. ‘The dinner was a very substantial meal,’ Younghusband reported, ‘and the Russian plied me generously with vodka.’ As the latter flowed freely, and the meal progressed, Gromchevsky talked more and more frankly about the rivalry between their two nations in Asia. He told Younghusband that the Russian army, both officers and men, thought of little else but the coming invasion of India. To make his point, he called his Cossacks over to the tent and asked them whether they would like to march against India. They answered him with a rousing cheer, swearing that there was nothing they would like more. It was much what Burnaby, Curzon and others had reported after returning from the Tsar’s Central Asian domains.

Younghusband could not help noticing that on Gromchevsky’s map the worrying Pamir ‘gap’ was picked out in red. There could be no hiding the fact that the Russians were aware of the existence of this stretch of no-man’s-land where Russia, China, Afghanistan and British India met. The British, Gromchevsky insisted, had invited Russian hostility towards themselves in Asia because they persisted in meddling in the Black Sea and Balkan region, and in trying to thwart what St Petersburg believed to be its legitimate interests there. When Russia did attack India – and Gromchevsky thought it only a question of time – then it would not involve a small force, as British strategists seemed to think, but one anything up to 400,000 strong. Younghusband was aware that British experts, including MacGregor, judged 100,000 to be the maximum number of men who could be deployed in this type of terrain. How, he asked Gromchevsky, were they proposing to transport and supply so vast an army once they had left the railway behind and found themselves crossing the great mountain barriers which protected northern India? His host replied that the Russian soldier was a stoical individual who went where he was told, and did not trouble his head too much about transport and supplies. He looked upon his commander as a child did its father, and if at the end of a gruelling day’s march or fighting he found neither water nor food he simply did without, carrying on cheerfully until he dropped.

The debate next turned to the question of Afghanistan, the linchpin of India’s defence, and whose side it would take if there was a war over India. The British, Gromchevsky declared, should long ago have annexed it for their own protection, together with the other, lesser kingdoms of the region. Their preferred use of subsidies and treaties, he argued, offered no safeguard against treachery. The Emir Abdur Rahman, he claimed, was no real friend of Britain’s. In the event of war the promise of a share of India’s riches would prove too much for him, and he would throw in his lot with the Russians, among whom he had lived for so long before coming to the throne. Furthermore, India’s native population would rise against its British oppressors if help seemed at hand. But that argument, Younghusband pointed out, was double-edged, for what was there to prevent the British from unleashing the Afghans and others against Russia’s Central Asian territories, with the legendary treasures of Bokhara and Samarkand as the prizes? The Tsar’s vast possessions to the east of the Caspian were highly vulnerable. While India’s weakest points were strongly fortified, Russia’s were not. And so the argument continued over the vodka and blinis until far into the night. It was conducted with more bombast perhaps than science, but nonetheless with much good humour. What made it memorable, however, was the fact that this was the first time that rival players had met face to face on the frontier while actively engaged in the Great Game. It would not be the last time.

Two days later, after sharing Younghusband’s remaining bottle of brandy, the two men prepared to go their own ways. Before parting, the Gurkhas saluted the Russian officer by presenting arms. The latter, Younghusband reported ‘was quite taken aback’ by the precision of their drill, for his own Cossacks, sturdy as they were, were irregulars. On being congratulated by the Russian, the Gurkha havildar, or sergeant, whispered anxiously to Younghusband that he should inform the towering Gromchevsky that they were unusually small and that most Gurkhas were even taller than he was. The Russian was immensely amused when Younghusband told him of this ingenuous attempt to deceive him. After ordering his Cossacks to ‘carry swords’, their equivalent of presenting arms, Gromchevsky bade Younghusband a cordial farewell, saying he hoped that one day they would meet again – in peace at St Petersburg, or in war on the frontier. He added, Younghusband recalled, ‘that in either case I might be sure of a warm welcome’.

While his British rival continued his exploration of the region prior to his meeting with the ruler of Hunza, Gromchevsky and his Cossacks set off southwards towards Ladakh and Kashmir. He hoped to obtain permission to spend the coming winter there from the British Resident, who had effective control over such matters. Younghusband had already warned him that the British would never allow a uniformed Russian officer and a party of seven armed Cossacks to enter Ladakh. Although he did not say as much, this was even more unlikely in the case of an officer known to be heavily engaged in the political game. However, this did not discourage Gromchevsky, a man used to getting his own way. While waiting at Shahidula for an answer from the British, the Russian decided to make good use of the time by heading eastwards and exploring the remote Ladakh-Tibetan border region. He failed, though, to foresee the severity of the winter at this altitude, and the reconnaissance was to prove catastrophic. His party lost all its ponies and baggage, while the Cossacks, stricken by frostbite and hunger, were finally too weak even to carry their own rifles. They were lucky to get back to Shahidula alive, and months later Gromchevsky was said still to be on crutches.

Although Gromchevsky himself blamed the British for his misfortunes by denying him permission to enter Ladakh, a certain amount of mystery surrounds the incident. Indeed, it appears that Younghusband may well have been partially responsible for the near-tragedy. In a confidential note written at the time he reported that he had conspired with his newly acquired friends at Shahidula to steer the Russians out of harm’s way by encouraging them to embark on this perilous journey. Perhaps he had not fully realised its dangers, although he frankly admitted that he aimed to ‘cause extreme hardship and loss to the party’. In his several subsequent accounts of his meeting with Gromchevsky, he significantly makes no mention of this. It goes to show, however, that the Great Game was not always the gentlemanly affair it is sometimes portrayed as being.

Many years later, after the Russian Revolution, Younghusband was surprised to receive from out of the blue a letter from his old rival. Accompanying it was a book he had written about his Central Asian adventures. Under the old regime, he told Younghusband, he had risen to the rank of Lieutenant-General and received numerous honours and high appointments. But in 1917 the Bolsheviks had seized all his property and thrown him into prison in Siberia. Thanks to the Japanese he had managed to escape and flee to Poland, from where his family had originally come. The contrast between the two men’s situations could hardly have been more stark. Younghusband, then at the height of his renown, had been knighted by his sovereign, was President of the Royal Geographical Society, and was laden with awards and honours. The unfortunate Gromchevsky was now destitute, alone in the world, and so ill that he could not leave his bed. Not long afterwards Younghusband learned that the man who had once struck fear into the hearts of India’s defence chiefs was dead. However, at the time which concerns us here, Gromchevsky still loomed large on the frontier.

After leaving his Russian rival, and completing his own exploration of the region, Younghusband crossed the mountains into Hunza for his meeting with Safdar Ali, the ruler. It was an unusually tricky and responsible task for a junior officer to be entrusted with, but he was held in exceptional esteem by his superiors in Calcutta and Simla. On his approach to the village of Gulmit, where the ruler awaited him, a thirteen-gun salute was fired (a court official having first been sent ahead to warn him not to be frightened), followed by the deafening beating of ceremonial drums. In the middle of the village, through which the tourist buses now race on their way up the Karakoram Highway to Kashgar, a large marquee had been erected. It was, in fact, an earlier gift from the British government. As Younghusband, who had changed into his scarlet, full-dress Dragoon Guards uniform, approached it, Safdar Ali emerged to meet him. This was the man, Younghusband knew, who in order to secure the throne had murdered both his father and mother, and tossed two of his brothers over a precipice. It was he who was responsible for the murderous attacks on the caravans. And now – the ultimate sin in Calcutta’s eyes – he had begun to intrigue with the Russians on India’s very doorstep.