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

He was unprepared, now, for the pain he saw in the look she turned on him. ‘Grace is dead?’ She remembered the velvet touch of her fingers, cool lips on her skin.

‘They shot her as we escaped from the warehouse. There was nothing I could do.’

A shudder seemed to run through Lisa’s body, like the shock waves of an explosion. She closed her eyes and put her fingers to her temple, pressing it as if there were a great pain there. ‘But why? I don’t understand. Why would she want to save me?’

Blair’s mouth was dry. ‘She said – she just said to tell you that she was sorry.’

Lisa sat for what seemed like a very long time before she drew in her lower lip and tears came to her eyes. Then she wept, painfully, like a child, and Blair knew that there was hope for her in her pain.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The sound of raised voices from the quayside filtered through Elliot’s uneasy slumber. He opened his eyes to find McCue crouched beside him, his M16 raised vertically by his side. His face was a mask of sweat and strain.

‘What’s going on?’ Elliot manoeuvred himself on to one elbow and the sampan rocked. He felt giddy, and found it hard to focus in the fading light. The combined effects of his wound, the fever, the unrelenting heat, and more than a week spent lying on his back, had robbed him of his strength.

McCue raised a finger to his lips and whispered, ‘Army. They’re checking papers, looking for draft dodgers.’

Elliot swallowed hard. He felt weak and vulnerable, and fear lay like poison in his belly.

‘What can we do?’

‘Nothing. Just sit tight and hope they don’t search the boat.’

Elliot reached behind him to grope for his holster, and drew out his pistol. He said, ‘I’d almost begun to think we might just make it.’

They had waited five long days, through the heat and rain, virtual prisoners in the sampan, for word from Heng. But none had come. Serey and Ny had made several trips into the town, trading in the still thriving black market for food. But the strain of the interminable waiting in cramped and unsanitary conditions was beginning to tell. In the heat, the stink of human waste hung in the air, and thick clouds of flies swarmed around them, infesting their food, getting in their mouths. Through the endless hours, McCue had been like a caged animal, his patience and his nerve gradually disintegrating. He had growled and snapped at everyone, insisting on sitting out back at the open end of the boat as soon as it got dark, in spite of the risk of being seen. Twice, Elliot had dissuaded him from repeating his perilous trip across town to the Chinese quarter in search of Heng. Now, he crouched in rigid concentration, listening intently to the sound of soldiers searching the sampans around them. Elliot guessed that the American would relish an end – any end – to this prison sentence: even death in a firefight with the Vietnamese.

Elliot wondered why he felt fear, before it struck him that it was not for himself, but for Serey and Ny and the boy. After all they had been through, they didn’t deserve to die like this. But he knew, also, that he had no power over the events that would unfold, and no strength with which to meet them.

The clatter of boots on wooden boards drew nearer. Their sampan rocked, and McCue had to steady himself with his free hand. A shrill male voice reeled off a series of demands, and Elliot recognized the voice that responded as Ny’s – a brave medley of stuttering Vietnamese and Cambodian. He tried to peer through chinks in the matting, but it was already almost dark and he could see only the lights of the harbour across the water. The soldier’s voice grew less shrill in response to Ny, adopting instead a tone of confident superiority. Elliot could almost see the leer on his face.

The curtain was drawn quickly aside and Hau scuttled through, clutching an AK-47. His face was sickly pale with fear. In the seconds before the curtain fell again to obscure the view, Elliot saw, beyond the squatting Serey, Ny’s bare legs framed in the curve of the canopy, and the soldier’s in khaki fatigues tucked into army boots. At first her voice was insistent, argumentative, before finally falling in pitch to adopt a friendlier tone. She talked quickly, with growing confidence, drawing eventually, to Elliot’s consternation, a laugh from the soldier. It was an odious laugh, laced with lust. Elliot watched Hau’s face, hoping to discern something from the boy’s expression, but there was no clue in his studied intensity.

At length, Ny and the soldier left the sampan, stepping out across the other boats. The sound of their voices, and those of other soldiers who had been conducting the search, drifted away into the night. The silence that ensued within their cabin was laden with disquiet. Elliot and McCue exchanged glances, fearing the worst. Hau, head bowed, stared unblinking at his feet. McCue leaned forward to pull back the curtain. Serey sat as before, squatting by the small stove where she cooked their food. Her face had a waxen quality about it, but was otherwise expressionless. She was staring off into the middle distance.

McCue said, ‘What happened?’

She didn’t turn. Her voice was dull, mechanical. ‘She told him that we were refugees and had no papers. He wanted to search. She said that her little brother was very sick and must not be disturbed.’ She paused, and McCue saw a nerve quivering at her temple, like a butterfly trapped beneath the skin. ‘She pointed out that there is an empty sampan beyond the landing stage, and suggested that if they went and searched it together he might find something more interesting than an old woman and a sick boy.’

McCue let the curtain