The man looks unhappy, nods, then leans down and whispers something to the boy.
“You three go with him,” Corbyn says, “and take Price. Arm yourselves, and if you don’t like the way something looks, shoot this bastard and come straight back. I’ll stay here with the boy.”
For a moment no one moves. Corbyn looks at them steadily.
“Four equal shares and a tithe each for Price,” he says. “And what the prize agents don’t ever learn about can’t hurt them.”
*
They leave the field hospital and enter the city proper through the smoking wreckage of the Cashmere Gate. They clamber over hillocks of shattered masonry, past piles of smoldering corpses being sniffed at and nibbled by pariah dogs. Above them, tatter-winged vultures flap and complain, mortars fizzle and thump. There is a stench of cordite and scorched flesh, a distant sound of musketry. They wend their way through narrow, blasted streets clogged with broken furniture, eviscerated animals, and abandoned weaponry. Sumner imagines behind every barricade and loophole a crouching sepoy ready to shoot. He thinks that the risk they are taking is too great and that the treasure itself is probably a lie, but he knows it would be foolish to refuse a man like Corbyn. The British army is built on influence, and if a man wishes to rise he must be careful who he knows. Corbyn has friends on the Army Medical Board, and his brother-in-law is an inspector of hospitals. The man himself is boastful and dull, to be sure, but to be connected to him by this shared secret, this pile of illegal loot, would not be a bad thing for Sumner at all. It might even, he thinks, be his path out of the Sixty-First Foot and into a more respectable regiment. But only, of course, if the loot is real.
They turn a corner and come across a gun emplacement and a gaggle of drunken infantrymen. One of them is playing the squeeze-box, another has his britches down and is evacuating into a wooden bucket; empty brandy bottles are scattered around.
“Who goes there?” one of them shouts.
“Surgeons,” Wilkie says. “Does any man here require treatment?”
The soldiers look at one another and laugh.
“Cotteslow over there needs his fucking head examined,” one of them says.
“Where are your officers?”
The same man gets to his feet and, squinting, walks unsteadily towards them. He stops a foot or two away and spits. His uniform is ragged and stained with blood and gun smoke. He smells of vomit, piss, and beer.
“All dead,” he says. “Every single one.”
Wilkie nods slowly and looks off down the street past the gun emplacement.
“And where is the enemy?” he says. “Is he close by?”
“Oh, he’s close enough,” the man says. “If you look over yonder he may even blow you a wee kiss.”
The other men laugh again. Wilkie ignores them and turns back to confer with the others.
“This is a fucking disgrace,” he says. “These men should be hanged for dereliction of duty.”
“This is as far as we can get,” O’Dowd says. “This is the limit of the advance.”
“We are very close now,” Hamid says. “Two minutes more.”
“Too dangerous,” O’Dowd says.
Wilkie rubs his chin and spits.
“We’ll send Price,” he says. “He can go on ahead and report back. If it looks safe, the rest of us will follow.”
They all turn to Price.
“Not for a fucking tithe,” he says.
“What say we double it?” Wilkie suggests. He looks at the other two, and the other two nod in agreement.
Price, who has been squatting, stands up slowly, shoulders his rifle, and walks across to Hamid.
“Lead on,” he says.
The others sit down where they are and wait. The drunken soldiers ignore them. Sumner lights his pipe.
“He’s an avaricious little shit,” O’Dowd says, “that Price.”
“If he gets killed, we’ll have to make up some tale,” Wilkie says. “Corbyn won’t be happy.”
“Corbyn,” O’Dowd says. “Always fucking Corbyn.”
“Is it his brother or his brother-in-law?” Sumner asks. “I can never remember.”
O’Dowd shrugs and shakes his head.
“Brother-in-law,” Wilkie says. “Sir Barnabas Gordon. I saw him lecture in chemistry at Edinburgh.”
“You’ll get nothing out of Corbyn,” O’Dowd says to Sumner, “don’t think you will. He’s an ex-Guardsman and his wife’s a baroness.”
“After this he’ll feel obliged,” Sumner says.
“A man like Corbyn doesn’t care to feel obliged. We’ll get our share of the loot if the loot exists, but believe me, that will be it.”
Sumner nods at this and thinks for a minute.
“Have you tried him already?”
Wilkie smiles at this, but O’Dowd says nothing.
Ten minutes later, Price comes back and reports that they have found the house, and the route to it appears safe enough.
“Did you sight the treasure?” O’Dowd asks him.
“He says it is buried in the courtyard inside the house. He showed me where and I started him digging.”
They follow Price through a complication of narrow alleyways, then out onto a wider street where the shops have been ransacked and the houses are shuttered and silent. There is no one else about, but Sumner is sure these buildings must contain people nonetheless—terrified families crouching in the tepid darkness, jihadis and ghazis licking their wounds, making quiet preparation. They hear noises of carousing from nearby and, from farther off, the sound of cannon fire. The sun is beginning to set, but the heat is steady and unforgiving. They cross the road, picking their way amongst the smoking piles of bones, rags, and broken furniture, then walk another hundred yards until Price halts in front of an open doorway and nods.
The courtyard is small and square, the whitewashed walls are smeared and grubby, and there are patches of exposed mud brick where the plasterwork has failed. Each wall has two archways let into it, and above the archways runs a ragged wooden balcony. Hamid is squatting down at the center. He has moved one of the flagstones and is scraping away at the loose dirt beneath it.
“Help me please,” he says. “We must be quick now.”
Price kneels down next to him and begins to dig with his hands.
“I see a box,” he says, after a moment. “Look, there.”
The others gather round. Price and Hamid tug the box out of the earth, and O’Dowd smashes it open with his rifle butt. The box contains four or five gray canvas sacks.
Wilkie picks up one, looks inside it, and begins to laugh. “Jesus Christ,” he says.
“Is it treasure?” Price asks.
Wilkie shows the sack to O’Dowd and O’Dowd smiles, then laughs and slaps Wilkie on the back.
Price pulls the other three sacks out of the box and opens them. Two are filled with coins, and the third contains an assortment of bracelets, rings, and jewels.
“Oh, fuck me,” Price whispers softly to himself.
“Let me see those darlings,” Wilkie says. Price passes him the smallest bag and Wilkie tips its contents out onto the dusty flagstones. On their knees now, the three assistant surgeons gather round the glistering pile like schoolboys at a game of marbles.
“We prize out all the stones and melt down the gold,” O’Dowd says. “Keep it simple.”
“We must go back now,” Hamid says again. “For my son.”
Still gripped by the treasure, they ignore him completely. Sumner leans forwards and picks out one of the rings.
“What are these stones?” he says. “Are they diamonds?” He turns to Hamid. “Are these diamonds?” he asks, showing him the ring. “Is this real?”
Hamid doesn’t answer.
“He’s thinking of that boy,” O’Dowd says.
“The boy’s dead,” Wilkie says, not looking up. “The boy was always fucking dead.”
Sumner looks at Hamid, who still doesn’t speak. His eyes are wide with fear.
“What is it?” Sumner asks.
He shakes his head as if the answer is much too complicated, as if the time for explanations has gone and they are occupying, whether they realize it or not, a darker and more consequential phase.
“We go now,” he says. “Please.”
Hamid takes Price by the sleeve and tries to tug him streetwards. Price snatches his arm away and pulls back a fist.