Nesbit had made no attempt at presenting a coherent narrative of Kimball O’Hara’s life and work; he’d merely copied specific documents pertaining to the man’s last year or two of active field service in the Survey, before he had vanished from the Simla road. The ongoing problem of independent border kingdoms had been O’Hara’s main concern, as indeed it had been the concern of his superiors since the days of the East India Company: One minor king who defied British rule and surreptitiously opened his state to the enemy could spell disaster for British India. And in the past, hereditary rulers of the native states had not all demonstrated an unswerving sense of loyalty when it came to bribes and blandishments. Moslem nawabs and Hindu rajas, squelched into their borders first by the Company and later the Crown, had spent their entire lives with nothing to do but squabble over rank and invent ways to spend their money. The idea of an hereditary prince joining sides with the Communists was, of course, absurd on the surface, but that by no means ruled out the possibility, no more than it had for that American aristocrat, Thomas Goodheart.

O’Hara’s last report, three tightly written pages reproduced in photograph that we might recognise the handwriting if we happened upon it again, concerned a number of apparently unrelated but nonetheless provocative events and overheard statements concerning two of the principalities along the northern border. A seller of horses commenting on the sudden interest in his wares by the raja of Singhal’s men; an itinerant fakir bemoaning the treatment he had received in Khanpur’s main city, where before his begging had been welcomed; a huge order for raw cotton, enough to clothe all of Khanpur’s subjects in one go; and a dozen other incidents.

Cotton, I reflected idly, was also an essential element in the manufacture of high explosives.

When I had absorbed the contents of the letter, I turned to the writing itself. The distinctive running script was indeed similar to that of his copyist, Nesbit, although whether or not the printed numerals of the parcel reflected the same school’s training I was not prepared to say. In either case, behind the anonymous precision of the script could be seen evidence of a remarkably self-contained and self-assured hand. There was a touch of egotism in his capital Es and obstinacy in his lowercase Bs, but those were balanced by the humour in his Ss and Is and the simplicity of his capitals in general. All in all, the hand that had written this document was ruled by precision, toughness, and a high degree of imagination, and I found myself thinking that, if “Kim” had indeed sided against the British government, he might well have had good reason.