The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (learn to read books .TXT) 📕

‘We’ve already been through immigration.’

‘Passports!’ The security man held out his hand. Blair nodded and took the passports from his inside pocket. The security man took his time, browsing through each of them, checking their faces against the photographs. Finally his gaze rested on Lisa. He reached out and took away her dark glasses. Misted blue eyes squinted at him from the slits that separated the black, bruised swellings above and below. Something like shock registered on his face. ‘What happened?’

‘She was involved in a motor accident.’ Blair watched keenly for a reaction. He could detect none, and added, ‘We’re going to Hong Kong to see a specialist.’

For several seconds the Thai continued to stare at her, then he thrust Lisa’s glasses towards Blair. ‘You wait here.’ He turned away.

Blair protested, ‘But they’re boarding our flight.’

The Thai stopped and emphasized with a sharp, chopping movement of his hand, ‘Wait!’ He crossed the hall and disappeared through a door.

Blair felt sick. He glanced each way along the hall, and saw a second security guard watching from a distance, his hand resting on the black leather of his holster. There was no way forward, no way back. He could do nothing but stand and wait.

A clatter in the doorway jerked his head round to see the guard returning, pushing a wheelchair ahead of him. ‘Is a long way to walk,’ he said, with real concern.

It wasn’t until the wheelchair had been folded up and taken off the aircraft, and the steward had pulled the door closed, that Blair felt able to relax. The smiling Chinese face of the stewardess loomed over him. ‘Is there anything we can do for her?’

‘I’ll let you know.’

He watched through the window as the plane taxied away from the terminal building to sit, on hold, at the end of the runway for several minutes, before revving its powerful jet engines and sprinting down the tarmac to swoop up into the pale blue sky. As they climbed steeply, swinging north-east towards Hong Kong and safety, he glanced at Lisa and saw that she was unconscious.

PART THREE

CHAPTER FORTY

For three days Elliot hovered between life and death, sometimes consumed by the fire of his fever, sometimes shivering uncontrollably. In flashes of lucidity, between bouts of delirium, he was aware of a young face fluttering over his, a small feminine hand wiping his brow with a cool, damp cloth. He had the impression of being surrounded by countless tiny diamonds of light, a gently curving universe that shone with the fire of a million stars. He floated here, adrift between light and darkness, and dreamt that he heard the slap of water, the dull chug of a small motor, and, once, that he lay in the arms of a naked girl, her soft brown skin burning where it touched his.

The pain in his chest and shoulder pulsed like a heartbeat. At times it appeared to envelop him, smothering all other awareness so that nothing else existed; a relentless, endless pounding of his brain.

When, finally, his fever burned itself out, consciousness came like a waking dream. He lay on wooden boards covered with coarse rush mats, swaddled in blankets and bundles of cloth. He gazed up at the familiar diamonds of light. But even as he focused they seemed to fade. The light was dying around him, and yet the air still glowed. For some moments his sense of disorientation flooded his mind with panic. He attempted to raise himself on one elbow, but fell back with the pain that forked through his chest, while the boards beneath him rocked gently from side to side. The slap of water on wood increased his confusion with the realization that he was on a boat. It came to him then, as he gazed upwards, that he lay beneath a canopy of rush matting arched across him. Tiny chinks of fading light shone through the gaps in the woven pattern. This vessel could be no bigger than a sampan.

He tried again to pull himself up, this time gritting his teeth against the pain, and pressed his face to a slit in the matting to see the sun dipping behind dark, scattered clouds. As it set across a wide expanse of water, its liquid gold seemed to spill out towards him. He fell back on to the mat, breathless and sweating.

A ragged cloth partition at his feet was suddenly drawn aside, and in the dusk he saw the light of concern in Ny’s young eyes. ‘You hungry, Mistah Elliot?’

‘Thirsty.’ His voice creaked in his throat, like a rusty gate.

‘How you feel?’

‘Dried up. Like a raisin.’

She disappeared behind the curtain and returned with a cup of water. ‘Mamma boil it. It good.’ She helped raise his head, lifting the rim of the cup to dry, cracked lips. His mouth soaked up the water like a sponge. It caught in his throat and he choked, spilling it to cling in droplets to the thick growth on his chin.

‘You been very sick, Mistah Elliot.’

‘I guess. How long?’

‘Three day.’

‘Three days!’ He felt as though a slice of his life had been excised by a surgeon’s scalpel. What had happened in all that time? ‘Where are we?’

‘South.’

‘South where?’

‘Kampuchea. On river Mekong. We tied up till it dark.’ She gave him more water and he felt it track cold down to his stomach. The effort of raising his head exhausted him, and he let it fall back on the bundle of cloth that served as a pillow, confused, uncertain as to whether this was another delirium.

‘How?’ he asked. ‘How did we get here?’

‘Mamma,’ Ny said. ‘She bring us.’ She paused. ‘Mistah McCue, he go to shoot you, but I tell him ’bout your friend, ’bout his cancer.’

She leaned over him and dabbed his forehead lightly with a cool cloth. He rolled his head to one side and looked at the bandage on his shoulder. ‘Who did this?’

‘Me and Mistah McCue. It good. Clean