‘Major Mayne has been attached to the river column,’ Earle said, peering at Buller over pince-nez spectacles as the other man sat heavily back down. ‘He’s been surveying the riverbanks, carrying out forward reconnaissance ahead of the boats.’
‘Just like old times in Canada, eh?’ Buller said, slapping his hand on the table. ‘And you’ve got the Mohawks with you too!’
Mayne turned to Wolseley. ‘I’ve brought along Charrière, as you requested. He’s waiting outside.’
‘Best damned hunter I’ve ever seen,’ Buller rumbled, shaking his head. ‘Took me with him into the forest back in ’70 above the Winnipeg river. Never seen a man fell a deer before with a throwing knife. He still got that squaw? She was damned good too, could have led the expedition.’
‘His wife and child died in a cholera outbreak two years ago,’ Mayne said.
‘Ah. Sorry to hear it.’ Buller paused for a moment, then turned to Wolseley. ‘Had Stephenson in for a few drinks last night, your old quartermaster-general. Told me about your pension arrangement for the voyageurs after the Red River expedition. Damned decent of you, if you ask me.’
Wolseley looked briefly discomfited, then tapped his pencil on the map. ‘It was the least I could do. They gave their services to an expedition which achieved its goal without a single life being lost. I treated them as I would have done British soldiers, for services to Queen and Empire.’
‘Especially generous to Charrière, I gather,’ Buller said.
‘He was my chief reconnaissance scout. He risked his life more than the others.’
‘Never knew when you might need to call on his services again, eh?’ Buller said, eyeing Wolseley and slapping the table. ‘In the Sudan, of all places.’
Mayne knew that the voyageurs were being paid handsomely for their work on the Nile, so it was hardly as if they were here solely out of loyalty to a patron. But it was typical of Wolseley, the type of act that drew men to him. He could be prickly, sometimes snobbish, an infuriating stickler for detail that was probably the undoing of this expedition, but he could also be generous to those under him in a way that seemed to go beyond expediency. Even though he looked something of an aesthete beside larger-than-life characters like Buller and Burnaby, he was also a ruthless soldier who bore the scars of front-line fighting from his first action as a subaltern in the Crimea thirty years before.
Buller peered at Mayne. ‘So, you’ve been surveying the Nile, eh? Too many damned engineers on this expedition, if you ask me. Mapping, planning, building. Old Charlie Gordon’s a sapper, and General Graham at Suakin on the Red Sea, and those two in the corner,’ he said, jerking his head towards the figures hunched over the desk. ‘If you want my opinion, we’re overengineered.’
Mayne saw the twinkle in Buller’s eye. He was right, as usual, but not necessarily in the way he meant. Sapper officers were trained to seek solutions to engineering problems, not to create them. In many ways this was an engineers’ war: a war of survey, of intelligence, of logistics. And Buller knew perfectly well that the problem with overengineering lay with Wolseley, whose fastidious attention to detail and obsession with repeating his renowned river expedition had prevented the dash across the desert that could have seen a British force at the gates of Khartoum weeks ago. But Buller owed his career to Wolseley, and he was astute enough to couch his criticism in elliptical terms. In any case, they all knew it was too late for any change of strategy now.
The taller and younger of the two men who had been working in the corner of the tent came over to Wolseley, holding a map. He had chiselled, handsome features, and a waxed handlebar moustache over a beard; a keffiyeh cloth was wound loosely around his neck, and with his sun-bronzed features he could have passed himself off as an Arab. He stared at Mayne, the cast in his right eye making it impossible to return his gaze comfortably. Wolseley glanced up at him. ‘Major Kitchener has just traversed the Bayuda desert and come within two miles of Khartoum. He’s my Deputy Assistant Adjutant General for Intelligence, though sometimes he thinks he runs the show.’
Mayne nodded at Kitchener, knowing there would be no handshake. Kitchener was an individualist who did not take orders easily; he was not one of Wolseley’s Ashanti Ring, and had come perilously close on several occasions to overstepping the mark. He was saved by his indispensability as an intelligence officer and by the sheer force of his presence. He had become the eyes and ears of the expedition, a fluent Arabic speaker who had developed his own intelligence network as far as Khartoum and rallied loyal tribesmen around him, and who was the last man present in the tent to have spoken with Gordon. Mayne had encountered him three weeks earlier in the Bayuda desert, when Kitchener had swept down upon them like one of the Madhi’s emirs, swathed in Arab dress and surrounded by a bodyguard of tribesmen.
Mayne looked into Kitchener’s disarming eyes. ‘Congratulations on the survey of Palestine. I saw the first of your volumes at the Royal United Service Institute library in London before I came out here. It’s a prodigious achievement, more than most survey officers would hope to achieve in a lifetime. It puts the study of biblical geography truly on the map.’
Kitchener kept staring. ‘Palestine interests you? You were not part of the biblical archaeology society at Chatham.’
Mayne held the steely gaze. He remembered the group of evangelical officers who believed that the scientific survey of biblical lands was their true calling, the most noble use of the skills they were learning as engineers. Charles Gordon, an individualist who professed allegiance to no church or movement, was not among them, but they revered him for his morality, and because he seemed to live his life to the utmost by Christian principles: a man who would now seem poised for the ultimate Christian act, willing to sacrifice himself for those in Khartoum who depended on him.
Mayne shook his head. ‘My interest is purely professional. Before coming out to the Sudan, Lord Wolseley asked me to discover everything I could about Gordon, his possible motivations for being here, his recent state of mind. I read the book he wrote about his time in Jerusalem in 1883. He seemed to retreat into himself in much the same way he has done in Khartoum, and as he did in China twenty years ago before leading his army to victory there. But he also carried out some useful survey work. He used your maps and notes to identify to his satisfaction a number of New Testament sites. Together your work provides a most valuable basis for intelligence on Palestine should we ever come to confront the Ottomans there.’
‘My opinion, decidedly,’ said Kitchener, his stare unwavering.
Wolseley gestured towards the other man at the desk. ‘In which case you will also be familiar with the work of Kitchener’s superior and my Deputy Adjutant General for Intelligence, Colonel Sir Charles Wilson.’
Mayne looked over, seeing a slight man of about Wolseley’s age who also wore the lapel badges of the Royal Engineers. Wilson put up a hand in acknowledgement while continuing to write in his notebook. It made sense that Wilson should have been appointed to the expedition. He had recently been military adviser to Sir Evelyn Baring, British agent in Egypt, and had even been considered for Gordon’s role as saviour of Khartoum. He and Gordon knew each other well and Wilson shared his passion for the Holy Land. Like Kitchener, Wilson was not one of Wolseley’s Ashanti Ring, yet Mayne sensed no palpable tension between the two men. They were united by an overwhelming common purpose, the relief of Khartoum, and Wilson’s personal friendship with Gordon as well as his expertise on the Sudan meant that he could be at the centre of Wolseley’s operations with no questions being asked.