The Ninth Buddha (49 page)

“So, you see, Zamyatm can’t just turn up in Urga, with or without some incarnation.
 
Von Ungern Sternberg isn’t the sort of man to make a deal with the Bolsheviks.
 
And Mongolia is turning into the sort of place sensible people steer clear of.
 
If Zamyatin has any sense, he’ll go somewhere else.
 
What do you think?
 
Has he got any sense?”

Christopher leaned across the table.

“For God’s sake, this isn’t a game of chess!
 
Zamyatin thinks he can conquer Asia with this child.
 
Don’t you see?
 
Sense doesn’t enter into any of it.
 
The stakes are too high.”

“Then he’ll go to Urga.
 
In that case, he’ll have to be bloody careful.
 
Ungern’s busy killing everyone in sight: Russians, Jews, runaway Chinese.
 
And now any White armies that are left in Siberia are moving south to join him.
 
Kazagrandi is in Uliassutai;

Kazantzev has taken Kobdo; Kaigorodov has been reported in Altai; and in the West Bakitch has joined up with Dutov and Annenkov.
 
It’s a madhouse, Christopher.
 
Ungern Sternberg believes he’s a reincarnation of the Mongolian god of war.
 
He’s convinced half the population of the country of that fact.
 
That means he’s answerable to no-one.”

Winterpole paused to take a cigarette-box from his coat pocket.

He opened it and offered a cigarette to Christopher.

“No thank you.”

Winterpole took one for himself and lit it.

“So, you see,” he continued, ‘that with Ungern in control of Urga, neither Zamyatin nor Udinskii can risk heading there directly.
 
So I think they’ll make for somewhere outside the city to dump the motor and Udinskii.
 
That’ll leave Zamyatin free to do the rest of the journey with just the two boys for company.”

Christopher felt a chill go through him.
 
Wouldn’t it be even more convenient for the Russian to dump William as well?

“Why are you here, Winterpole?”

“To keep an eye on you, of course.”

“That’s very touching.
 
And I suppose you intend keeping an eye on Zamyatin as well, while you’re at it.”

Winterpole blew out a thin jet of smoke.

“Yes, of course.
 
He has to be stopped.
 
And you, I imagine, would still like to find your son.
 
You’ve done very well so far, but it’s time to get a move on.
 
I want to get to Urga before Zamyatin does.”

“And exactly how do you propose to do that?”

“The same way as Zamyatin.
 
By motor car.
 
I have one waiting at the Dao T’ai’s.
 
I bought it from some Danes in Kalgan.
 
It’s a Fiat, specially built for country like this.
 
We can do the journey to Urga faster than Udinskii and his truck.”

“And when we get there?
 
What then?”

“We sit tight and wait for Zamyatin to make his move.
 
Ungern will co-operate with us.
 
Zamyatin in exchange for your son.
 
And the Tibetan boy, of course.
 
Ungern’s position is precarious: a promise of British help isn’t something he can turn down.
 
I’ll send him an official telegraph tomorrow, through the normal diplomatic channels.
 
He’ll be told to expect us, to offer us protection.

Zamyatin’s been outfoxed, Christopher.
 
He’s walking straight into a trap.”

Christopher looked at Winterpole as though he were far, far away.
 
His dress, his cigarettes, his self-importance were all products of another world.
 
He was a schemer, but he knew precious little of the world his schemes were made for.

“I wouldn’t bank on it,” said Christopher.

True to his word, Winterpole sent a telegram early the next morning. It was a complicated procedure the message had to be routed to Peking through Lanchow, then forwarded to Urga, where it would be received at Ungern Sternberg’s splendid new telegraph office.
 
Even at the best of times, there were unavoidable delays, errors in transmission, and, as often as not, cut lines.
 
And these were not the best of times not in China, not in Mongolia.

If Winterpole had waited another day, he would have been told that the telegraph lines between Yenan and Peking had been cut by rebel troops and that his message would be delayed ‘indefinitely’.
 
But less than an hour after dispatching the telegram, he was back with Christopher, urging that they be up and going.

They sat in the downstairs room of the rest-house as before.

“I’m not certain that I want to come with you,” said Christopher.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust you.
 
Zamyatin doesn’t interest you.
 
As you say, he’s walking into a trap.
 
All you had to do was send your telegram to this man Ungern Sternberg and go home.
 
But you want to go to Urga in person.
 
You want the boy for yourself.
 
You want to turn him to your advantage.”

Winterpole took a white linen handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose carefully.
 
With equal care, he folded the handkerchief as before and replaced it in his pocket.

“To our advantage, Christopher.”

“Not to mine.”

“You want to find your son, don’t you?
 
You want to take him home?”

Christopher said nothing.

“Yes, of course you do.
 
Then come to Urga with me.
 
And bring the Tibetan girl.
 
You can’t leave her here.”

Christopher guessed what Winterpole had in mind.
 
With Chindamani on

his side, he could hope to exert the necessary influence

over Samdup.
 
But he was right, of course.
 
Christopher was not going to give UP his last chance to save William.

“Who is von Ungern Sternberg?”
 
Christopher asked.

Winterpole shrugged.

“That’s not an easy question to answer I’ve had men working on him for over a year now, and all I get are conflicting reports in triplicate.
 
One for me, one for “C”, and one for some nameless clerk in archives who makes fifty more of them for half the files in Whitehall.
 
But we still know next to nothing about him.”

He halted, thinking, his expression serious.

“What we do know, however .. .”
 
He paused “Well, let’s just say it’s far from pleasant.
 
Von Ungern Sternberg is what I believe the psychologists call a psychopath.
 
He appears to have no notion of right and wrong.

“But .. .”
 
He paused again.

“He is the man of the moment.
 
The right man in the right place.
 
God knows, we don’t always choose our friends well.
 
But as often as not we have no choice.

“Ungern is the sort of man who could only rise to the top at a time like this.
 
He was bred for it; it’s in his blood and bad enough blood it is.
 
His family are one of the four leading clans on the Baltic coast the Uxkulls, the Tiesenhausens, the Rosens, and the Ungern Sternbergs: “The Four of the Fist.”

“The Ungerns are descended from an old line of Otsei knights who went on some sort of crusade against the Russians in the twelfth century.

They made Riga their stronghold.
 
A rough lot:

always picking a fight with someone, always coming home with their pockets stuffed with loot.
 
Bullies, pirates, raiders, robber barons: they made toughness into an art.
 
And now the last of the line a madman who thinks he’s the Mongolian god of war and acts accordingly.”

“How old a man is he?”
 
asked Christopher.

“About your age.
 
He was born in 1887 He started out in the Russian

navy graduated from the naval cadet school at St.
 
Petersburg.
 
But he

doesn’t seem to have liked naval life a lot, in spite of having pirates

for ancestors.
 
Either that or the navy didn’t like him.
 
Anyway, he

resigned his commission, went east, and ended up with the Argun

Cossacks in Transbaikalia.
 
Had a great time, so they say falconing,

duelling, hunting.
 
But in the end,

even the Cossacks chucked him out: too many brawls, too much insubordination.

“After that he became a bandit for a while.
 
Then the war broke out and he saw his chance for some action.
 
He wrote to the Tzar personally, asking to be allowed to re-enlist.
 
Back came the go ahead and off he went to join up with the Nerchinsk Cossacks under Wrangel.
 
He wasn’t popular, though.
 
By all accounts his fellow officers kept their distance.
 
Still, Ungern could fight, there was never any question of that.
 
He got all the decorations going, all the way up to the St.
 
George’s Cross.
 
He was so heavily decorated, they had to make him a major-general.
 
Then the revolution broke out.”

Winterpole paused and licked his lips.
 
His fingers played idly with ivory mahjong tiles that had been left on the table, arranging them in little groups of two and three.
 
They made tiny clicking sounds, faintly irritating.

“As soon as Ungern saw which way the wind was blowing, he cleared off from the German front and made his way to Transbaikalia, where he joined up under Ataman Semenov.
 
It wasn’t long before he was made a full general and put in charge of the region round Dauria.”

Winterpole’s eyes had grown deeply serious.
 
The small movements of his fingers ceased.
 
The tiles sat untouched on the table.

“I visited Dauria once,” he said.

“Did you know that?”

Christopher shook his head.
 
Just a fraction.

“It was in the winter of early 1920.
 
Our troops had pulled out of Siberia.
 
The White generals were finished.
 
Kolchak, Wrangel, Kornilov: all dead or in exile.
 
Only the Japanese had stayed behind, in Vladivostock.
 
They were backing Semenov, sending him ar.-is and money and sweet promises of political recognition.

“I was sent to visit him at his headquarters in Chita, to see if I could discover just where his loyalties lay.
 
That was the easiest mission of my life.
 
It took me no time at all to discover that Semenov was loyal to Semenov.
 
And Semenov’s men were loyal to themselves.

“I’ve never seen men more brutalized.
 
Perhaps they thought they were already dead and had no more care to be human, I don’t know.
 
They who red and gambled and drank not the way soldiers do on leave or before a battle, but constantly, feverishly.
 
And the officers were worse than the men.
 
More vicious, in the true sense.

They didn’t just stick to beer or spirits.
 
Most of the time, it was morphine or cocaine or opium.
 
And they couldn’t stop killing.
 
I think the drugs drove them to it.
 
It had become a habit with them.

No-one stopped them, no-one invoked penalties.
 
They had become a law to themselves.
 
They killed anyone they liked, it didn’t matter.

As long as they didn’t kill one of their own kind, no-one would interfere.”

He paused once more, and the fingers of one hand began again to play with a tile.
 
His eyes seemed haunted by memories still not remote enough in time to have lost their shadows.

“As you’re aware, the International Express from Siberia to Manchuria runs through Transbaikalia.
 
I was taken for a journey along the railway, to see how Semenov was keeping communications open in the region under his control.
 
The whole country along the Transbaikalian sector was dotted with what Semenov called his “Killing Stations”.
 
People would be plucked off trains Jews, suspected Bolsheviks, commissars, rich merchants.
 
They were taken straight to one of these stations.
 
None of them ever returned to finish their journeys.
 
If ever an enquiry were made, the official answer would always be:

“Missing en route.”
 
And in those days, who asked such questions anyway?”

He hesitated briefly, then began again.

“Once .. .”
 
and here his eyes grew large with memory “Once I saw the strangest, most awful thing on the horizon.
 
It seemed to go on forever: an endless line of trains, all jammed together.
 
Miles of them, miles and miles of carriages and locomotives, all joined together like a giant serpent.
 
A sea monster, but long enough to swallow a navy.

“The first locomotive had run out of fuel and water and then frozen to the tracks.
 
The metal had been soldered together by the cold.
 
Then a second train had come up behind and tried to push the first, but without success.
 
And it had frozen too.
 
And all this time, no-one was getting word through about what was going on, so they kept on sending trains.
 
Train after train.