The Call of the Thunder Dragon (52 page)

Guwahati Railway Station, Assam

Donald alighted from the train,
somewhat battered and shaken. Not a good state to be in, every
ounce of his reserve was required to stand the culture shock of yet
another district of India, in this case, Assam where he now found
himself.

His intelligence review had taken
him from Delhi to Bangladesh. That work now abandoned, he’d been
reassigned to investigate the incident in Myitkyina. The rushed
journey to get to Guwahati had left him fatigued and hungry.

Women with trays were selling
breakfast to the passengers: peeled Paw-paws, sliced oranges, fried
cakes and bananas.

Donald wafted the flies from his
face as he walked past the hawkers, fanning with his natural straw
Panama in hand. He came away from a hawker with two palm-leaf
parcels of dark car-grilled meat, hanging onto a skewer. He
gingerly ate one, then as he took a bite of the second he saw the
tiny burnt-out eyes of what he hoped was a bird of some kind, it
could just as easily be a rat. He gave the rest away tossing it to
one the street urchins following him.

What he desired now was to see a
familiar face, any white face to talk to. The solitude of
travelling as a lone Englishman in a continent of brown faces was
made more awkward by the signage and notices written in English
everywhere. They didn’t help, in fact, he didn’t really know where
he was going, nor could he read the expressions of the crowd
swirling around him.

The Assam men around him had a
certain aggressive surliness, showing overtly, a subtle hot-blooded
temperament as they hurried towards the station or from it towards
the rickshaws. Donald noticed with some shame that women were doing
the doing the heavy, humble work of mules. Carrying goods or even
stones to be laid in the road.

“Commander Quittenton...
Godfrey!” A bedraggled, thin looking figure waved from across the
muddy forecourt of the station, where trucks and wooden carriages
passed by, creaking and groaning under the weight of their heavy
loads and their drivers with wide-brimmed hats flicking their whips
at the poor straining ponies.

Donald looked across the
forecourt through the raising dust at the newcomer who was lost
from his sight momentarily as the noise of a steam engine shunting
out of the station drowned the voice calling to him through the
chaos, with a shrill scream.

The figure reappeared out of the
dust and multitudes around him.

“Sorry, I thought I might miss
you!” The stranger offered his hand. “It is you isn’t it!
Donald?”

Donald nodded and found himself
smiling, seized with the uncontrollable desire to talk. “Ah! A
friendly face! Gad, I hope you know this town better than I do! I
just spent my last Rupee on spit roasted sparrow?”

They pumped each other’s hands
full of enthusiasm.

“Name’s Morgans, I’m with the
colonial office, just another touring politico I’m afraid, no one
special! Got a message while I was visiting the Rani.”

“A message?” Donald was immedatly
focused, attentive, eager to talk but could not ignore the gnawing
in his stomach. “Is there any where we can eat?”

“I spend most of my time around
the Lakhimpur District. There’s only me in these parts. I think
there’s a decent place to eat down near the Paltan Bazar.”

Morgans proved to be an excellent
source of information; although his role as a political officer was
more about understanding or discovering the ideology of local
tribes or cultural groups, gathering intelligence or monitoring
whatever subversive elements were evident.

Sitting down to morning tea in
the cool dark interior of the hostelry; fans mixing the dry, cool
air overhead. The tables were full of off-duty policemen and
travellers waiting out the day over a pot of tea and a plate of
cucumber sandwiches.

Donald and Morgans fell to
talking, overrun by the chance to talk to familiar looking face.
Once they both started, they continued on and on. It was such a
comfort to have another English man to speak to.

Morgans: “There’s concern amongst
the Burmese at the moment of Bengals Hindu dominance, they are
coming in and taking the largest share of administration jobs,
maybe because of a bias towards by the British administration.”

Donald: “This fresh Assam tea is
marvellous! Such an intense, full-bodied tea, has a slight 'malty'
flavour, what was it ‘Golden Tips’ you say?”

Morgans: “Yes, I did say, Rani -
Queen Lakshmipriya took up her administration in ‘37 when her
husband died. A marvellous woman, worth listening to, in fact, it
is a fundamental component of my work and relationship between
tribal populations in the region and the Rani herself. It is very
frustrating, I report, even make suggestions on policy, then they
just ignore me and the whole administration is relocated and then
we get a damn new Governor who doesn’t know his Bengali from his
blasted Bodo
⁵⁸
!

Donald: “This gazpacho soup is so
refreshing! Those cucumbers are so fresh and crisp. Excellent
choice old fellow! Ah! Here come the scones. I say look at the
choice: cream, jam, éclairs, fruit tarts! I swear I’ll sleep all
the way to Jorhat at this rate? I’ll have to; to sleep this lot
off!”

Morgans: “Inspectors like me
would normally stay local. All the travel I do is so intense, I
never get a bit of rest! Moreover, every single area toured, I am
required to report and give my opinion on the sphere of interest,
the big-wigs and so on! It’s the only way the Governor, at some
point... might construct a perception of the state! Damn, it’s a
lonely life, the life of a Political Officer!”

Donald and Morgans chatted
through the morning until Donald having listened sympathetically
for as long as he could before he decided to put an end to the
gush. Morgans now driving Donald frantic, he beseeched him with
vehemence to shut up.

“Morgans! Great Scott! Keep that
load old Cambronne to yourself just one moment! Suck you thumb as
they say in Singapore!”

“Blimey, sorry old chap!” Morgans
sat back and reached for a sandwich, stuffing into his mouth.

“What’s the message old boy? If
you tell me, perhaps we can walk back to the station I’ve another
train to catch you know! Be quick now!” Donald said with explicit
authority, the voice of the Royal Navy commander coming out.

“Well, I understand you are on
your way to Myitkyina. However, business has been concluded, and my
message said Falstaff has now flown on to Jorhat, where another
incident occurred? Luckily, this time, they caught somebody! You
are to go to Jorhat and interrogate the prisoner while waiting for
an escort. Here, I’ve got the telegraph...” Morgans handed over the
thin, yellow, crumpled paper.

Donald studied it carefully. “I
see, says here they are sending a Captain Webster with six Marines
for an escort, all the way from Rangoon? What on earth has Falstaff
got into this time?”

Koladuwar Lake, Assam

The next morning they awoke to
the sounds of many water birds passing overhead, heading out into
the lake. After a quick breakfast of coffee and fried eggs, they
set off again flying up from the lake sneaking back into the
sky.

The returned to the riverside and
followed the great Asian river westward. The Brahmaputra River
wound its way growing ever wider as it passed the foot of the many
mountains; more tributaries joined it, swelling it to up to eight
miles in width.

Falstaff flew low, at a few
thousand feet unless to avoid flocks of birds, from that height
they could see the river start to narrow and the waters begin to
churn as its flow increased. There were no boats on the river at
this point if so they would have to be of sturdy construction.
Narrowing to a mile across the water churned black with mud.
Falstaff swerved off towards the Southern bank, not even tempted to
fly over the tossing rapids. The river slowly widened and slowly
its pace eased as the Caproni droned towards the horizon.

Guwahati came into view just
after Eleven. Falstaff circled; a few large transport ships and
passenger ferries plied their way along the river. The Assam Bengal
Railway branch line to Guwahati was busy, many railway sidings led
to warehouses and rolling stockyards. Coal and lumber, waited by
the side of the track, being delivered or waiting for collection.
Cranes lifted barrels of oil in nets off the ships. Trucks full of
stacked gasoline cans motored out of the railway station, crates
and other material waited for collection or consumption in the
smog-ridden town below.

The waterfront was packed with
the scum and filth left by the river going ships, plying the waters
delivering and collecting more industrial goods. The dockside was
full of bales of cotton, wool, more lumber and other agricultural
products. So tightly packed along the dock were the bales and
lumber that they had been squeezed aside and now bobbed about in
the water with the refuge between the ships and boats.

As cars and trucks jostled with
Elephants in the streets below, Falstaff banked around slowly, the
grey houses below sometimes surrounded with red muddy flood water.
He circled back towards the centre, to pick up the rail track
again.

“It looks busy down there!”
Falstaff shouted to Zam, “I can’t find this river junction Alistair
recommended it, Gibbs said we’d find it no trouble! This is the
part we’ve got the best maps for!”

Guwahati was a fast growing city
of commerce and an industrial centre drawing on the resources of
the entire North-Eastern region of India. Guwahati was now the
capital of Assam. An important transportation junction for the
region as a whole. Where goods were collected for transport on to
Chittagong.

“If that’s the river, it’s been
redirected, there’s an enormous levee along the Eastern side, looks
more like a canal now?” Falstaff pointed into the rising smoke at
the dead straight river branch.

He took the Caproni down lower;
the strip of orange-brown water was narrow, streets running close
by it or turning to bridge it frequently. Many houses were built
along the banks on stilts.

Turning westward within minutes,
they were flying over green fields again. Fields full of crops,
lanes turning left and right through the fields. Lines of workers
trudged with baskets, trucks and tractors rumbled along collecting
harvests of spinach, radishes, potatoes, rice and much more. Twenty
minutes later Falstaff pulled up sharply as they reached the edge
of the fields.

A long wide strip of well-used
grass running northwest/southeast was raised over the surrounding
land for the mile length of its course.

“Hullo, an airstrip! By Gad!
That’s new!” He sang out thankfully. “Hang on tight!”

The windsocks were pointing
south, as they flew over the northerly end of the strip and turned
into a counter-clockwise circuit. There were four or five aircraft
on the field, behind him someone was already taxiing out to take
off towards the north.

“Well, this is Guwahati I suppose
it’s a shock after the green fields of Jorhat?” Falstaff pulled up
his goggles to rub his eyes. “Can you see where the pan is? No,
sorry don’t answer that.”

After a smooth, three point
landing, he taxied down the grass strip and around to the right,
where the aircraft he had seen from the air were collected around a
number of small wooden shacks.

“Looks like a real airport,
bigger than anything you’ll see besides an RAF base in England!”
Falstaff pointed out, impressed by the layout. “It’s Twelve thirty!
Just in time for a spot of late lunch?”

As he dropped down to the ground,
an Indian shot across the flat grass riding a rickety bicycle, from
the direction of the most decent looking of the ramshackle
buildings.

“Who are you are, sir?” He waved
as if shooing. “Who are you, sir?”

“Odd welcome I’ll say!” Falstaff
said as he helped Zam down. “He does, at least, look like the
business!”

“Welcome to Kahi Kuchi, number
one airstrip of Assam, Sahib! Miss! Now, who are you are sir?” The
Indian repeated taking a pencil from under his Rajput turban. “We
were not expecting you, no sir! You did not radio before you came
to land, do you understand Sahib?”

“Captain John Falstaff Wild,
lately of the Chinese Air Force, under General Chiang Kai-Shek. My
I present Princess Karma Zam of Paro, Bhutan, daughter of his
Lordship daughter of Lord Lang Druk of Dzongkhag!”

If he was impressed, the Indian
didn’t show it. “Sorry sir, not expecting you! Have you got your
passport and papers?”

Falstaff delved into his coats
and eventually found his passport inside his leather jacket
pocket.

“You are Flight Officer Falstaff
Wild RAF, retired? Where is captain? You said, captain?”

“Here my travel papers from China
signed by General Chiang Kai-Shek, see Captain Chinese Nationalist
Army written in English and Chinese.”

The Indian mumbled and murmured
to himself, ignoring the papers. He turned to Zam.

“Okay has the Missy any papers,
please?”

“The Miss is with me!” Falstaff’s
voice rose starting to take ire.

Zam produced her smart looking
scroll holder and unrolled the document inside.

“It is written in Bhutan, Chinese
and English giving me permission to travel from my home
Bhutan.”

“Oh, thank my lady you are most
helpful!” The Indian beamed.

“Now sir, have your papers for
this…” He pointed his pencil at the Caproni. “Everything up to date
is it?”

Guwahati, Assam

Donald waved to Morgans as the
train pulled out of Guwahati station. It was over ten hours on the
train to Jorhat. He had with him two bottles of soda and a parcel
of sandwiches, carrot with coriander chutney.