The Mercenaries by John Harris

with a low blunt prow, wider at the high stem so that it looked like a hansom cab without the horse. Ira and Kowalski sat on a strip of rush matting and swayed as the boat rocked to the strokes of the wizened boatman standing above them with a single, pivoted oar. As they moved off, the old man began to sing softly, in the same monotonous tone as the coolies along the bund.
    Kowalski went on talking. ‘I fixed it for the other machines to be at a field we’ve hired at Linchu,’ he said. ‘You’ll be able to assemble ‘em there, I guess. Gasoline’s already waiting. When you’re ready, you’ll fly ‘em to Kailin, near Hwai-Yang. Hwai-Yang’s Tsu’s headquarters, two hundred fifty miles from Nanking. You’ll recognise it by the Tien An-Men steps on the river. He’s collected his machines there under his chief of air staff, Captain Yang, and training’ll commence as soon as you arrive.’
    They disembarked among a floating, creaking, bumping mat of sampans and junks, and a small boy immediately approached Ira with shrill offers of entertainment.
    ‘My sister schoolteacher,’ he said. ‘Give nice time. Very filthy.’
    Kowalski pushed him aside as though he’d never even seen him and threaded his way through the beggars displaying their leprosy, their paralysed limbs, their twisted bones and their wounds. The stench was staggering.
    ‘On the Chinese side of the river,’ Kowalski explained with a grin, ‘things aren’t quite so grand as on the European side.’
    An elderly Vauxhall with the hood up was waiting for them alongside an old solid-tyred Thorneycroft lorry. A Chinese held the door open and they sped through the teeming streets, honking their way in and out of mule trains, oxcarts, Peking carts, ancient broughams and trotting ponies, and barrows weighed down with fruit and vegetables. There were sedan chairs, bicycles, and a multitude of rickshaws, and all the drivers, bearers and runners were shouting abuse or greetings at each other, while all the time watermen flung ladles of water under their feet to lay the choking dust. There were no Sikh policemen on this side of the river to marshal the traffic and there seemed no order or sense in its movement.
    All round them there was the sound of hammering, from coppersmiths, iron workers, blacksmiths and silversmiths; and the high-pitched voices from tea-houses and shops mingled with it in a curiously Chinese melody.
    Eventually they left the town behind them and began to rattle along a road through a plain set with rice and maize, and broken with paddies smelling strongly of human manure. Here and there wooden pump wheels were rotated by blindfolded donkeys or sinewy coolies on treadmills, and from time to time, Ira saw tombs among the pines and small poverty-stricken farms.
    The day was still heavy and the sky now contained great thunderheads of cloud along the horizon, so that the afternoon was full of steamy heat that made his starched collar wilt.
    ‘The rainy season’ll be over soon,’ Kowalski explained. ‘In Hwai-Yang they have a short spring with a lot of rain, and then a dry summer with nothing but dust storms. Tsu’s keen to have everything ready for the dry season when the campaigning starts.’
    As the car rattled over a raised knoll, they saw the flying field ahead of them, a wide stretch of bleak marshy ground covered with sparse grass, with a single small hut about as big as a woodshed, two foreign-looking tents of thin canvas with high sides, and a lopsided lorry whose springs appeared to be in a sorry state of repair.
    ‘Is this it?’ Ira’s jaw dropped. There seemed to be nothing but the flat treeless plain with a glint of water in the distance. ‘What about fitting shops? Rigging sheds? Motor transport? Stores? Some sort of office?’
    Kowalski shrugged, his face solemn and amused ait Ira’s bewilderment. ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘you’re in China now.’ Alongside the solitary hut were two aircraft, still tarpaulined and