The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (electronic book reader .TXT) 📗

‘It was raining and dark when they started to call us out, one family at a time. I think I knew then that we were to be killed. Everyone did, but no one said it. It was nearly three hours before they called my name, and Key and myself went out carrying our boys. A soldier told us to follow him and took us down a path through the woods. Another group of soldiers was waiting at a clearing. They were sheltering from the rain under the trees and smoking. When we came they got up and tied our hands. But I held my arms taut so that the knot was not tight and I could loosen it. They asked me again what my work was. A taxi driver, I told them. You’re lying, they said. You drove for the military. Then they asked my wife, what did your husband do? She was in tears and could lie no longer. He drove for the military, she said. And I knew that we had no hope.

‘They took the baby from her arms and she pleaded to let them die together. She screamed when they blindfolded her and then bayoneted the child. Then they bayoneted my oldest boy. They had not blindfolded me. I was to watch as they stripped my wife and stuck their bayonets into her. I turned and ran into the woods, trying to free my hands as I went. They fired after me, dozens of rounds, but I was more frightened of the bayonets than the bullets. Then I fell down a steep slope and into a dry stream bed, and rolled under some ferns that hid me. A grenade went off and I was showered with damp earth. But in the dark they could not find me and finally they gave up. I think, maybe, I was the only person in the temple that night to escape with his life.

‘Early next morning I started to walk, heading north until daylight. Always I walked at night and slept in the day. It did not take me long to reach Siem Reap. But there were many soldiers there, so I circled the town and went by Angkor Wat. I had never before seen the temples and I wept at the sight of them.’

He paused for a few moments and brushed a fly carelessly from his lips. ‘There is not much more to tell. I kept myself alive foraging for food in the forest, walking, walking, always north and then west. I saw many patrols, and once or twice I was nearly caught. But I was lucky. Eventually I reached the border with Thailand.’ He dropped his head a little then looked directly at Elliot. ‘I cannot say I am free. I cannot say I am alive. I wish I had died by the bayonet with my wife, so that our blood should have run together in the soil of my country.’ There was no emotion in his voice, or his eyes, and Elliot understood what he had meant when he said he was not alive.

‘You finished?’ Ferguson asked. The man nodded.

Elliot turned to McCue. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Outside they blinked in the sunlight, flies in their hair, on their clothes, in their faces. Ferguson went off shouting at a group of children. ‘I never had a reason for killing before,’ McCue said quietly.

Elliot looked at him. ‘The only reason you need is the money that’s going to buy your boy a better life.’ There was an edge to his voice that made McCue turn his head. Elliot stared back with cold, hard, blue eyes. McCue held the look for some moments then shrugged and walked away towards the hut where Slattery was still drinking beer with Van Saren.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I

Lotus sat repairing a shirt by the light of an oil lamp. It saved electricity. Old habits died hard. Billy had gone out the night before without telling her where. He had returned late and left early again in the morning. He had said nothing of the men who came two nights ago and talked with him for several hours. She had not needed to ask who they were. She knew. She knew by their eyes, for she’d seen that look in Billy’s eyes, too. In the early days, when he had first come from Vietnam.

In the back room the baby gave a little cry. She turned her head and listened. The child shifted restlessly for some moments and then was silent. Asleep still. Dreaming. She wondered what he dreamed. His dreams would not be like hers. She dreamt very little now. Her waking dreams had long since faded. Dreams of America, of an escape from poverty and squalor, from endless nights in darkened bars where every groping GI made promises of freedom, promises that were never fulfilled. Sex had been mechanical, a living earned with a false smile and a soft caress, rewarded by money and brutality, void of emotion, empty of hope.

Billy had been different, quiet and gentle. At first he bought her things, took her places during the day. They never spoke much, just sat in cafés, walked by the river. But, bit by bit, she had told him everything about herself: her family in the north, the paddy fields and the poverty. The brothers and sisters her father could not feed. She had been only fifteen when they sent her to the city to sit behind a mirrored screen, a number pinned to her blouse, alongside eighty or a hundred other girls all with the same story to tell. The doctor came to examine them once a week, like a butcher checking the freshness of the meat.

Billy had told her nothing about himself. Then one day he had said that he no longer wanted her to work the bars. She had protested. How was she to live? She needed to work. For a while he had said no more about it. He