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

fall and slumped back into the cabin. Shame prevented him from raising his eyes to meet the boy’s. Elliot lay back and screwed his eyes closed. Anger and frustration welled up like vomit inside him. There was nothing to be done.

Gradually, after the soldiers had gone, normality returned to the floating community around them; the sounds of voices, hushed at first, gained in confidence; transistor radios scratched the hot surface of the night; the smell of woodsmoke and cooking rose above the stench of sewage. Oil lamps were lit, their yellow reflections flickering across the gently undulating surface of the river. At one point Elliot thought he heard a girl’s voice raised in a cry, coming from somewhere beyond the landing stage. But he could not be certain he had not imagined it.

It was almost an hour before they heard Ny’s soft step returning across the boats. McCue drew the curtain aside as she stooped to enter the outer cabin. Her face showed nothing, but he saw, as she squatted silently beside her mother, that her hands were trembling, and there was the hint of bruising around her lower lip. Hau pushed past the American and went out to join them. McCue let the curtain fall, and studied the dirt that drew black lines under his fingernails. Elliot stared at the rush matting overhead for a long time, before he closed his stinging eyes and gave himself up again to the strange dreams that haunted his hours of shallow sleep.

A vast expanse of desert stretched before him, the sand rising and falling in great dunes. The sky was black and starless, and a large yellow crescent moon, lying on its back, rose slowly out of the horizon. He shivered, realizing that he was cold and wet. When he looked up again the horizon was see-sawing up and down and the sand had turned to water, the dunes transformed into great black white-topped waves looming overhead. Above the roar of the water he now heard the baying of a dog, or was it a wolf? Desolate howls in the night. He opened his eyes and heard Ny sobbing on the other side of the curtain. Outside, a heavy downpour dropped rain the size of marbles on to their awning. A fine wet spray showered through the matting. Everything was soaked. McCue still sat by the curtain, his hand cupped around a cigarette.

Elliot forced himself up into a seated position, and pulled the curtain slightly to one side. He could make out Serey’s silhouette, squatting still by the stove, cradling her daughter’s head in her lap, muttering words of comfort like some religious incantation. He looked at McCue. ‘How long’s she been like that?’

McCue shrugged. ‘Difficult to say. Feels like a lifetime.’ He raised his head slowly towards the heavens. ‘I guess even the gods are weeping for her.’

‘Shhhh! What’s that?’ Elliot raised his hand, suddenly, straining to hear above the roar of the rain.

McCue listened. ‘I don’t hear anything.’

‘I’m sure I heard . . . There it is again!’

This time McCue heard it, too. A voice calling softly in the dark from beyond the awning. ‘Mistah Billee . . . Mistah Billee.’ McCue grabbed his automatic and scrambled through the cabin, past Serey and Ny and Hau, towards the back of the sampan. A small, frightened figure crouched there in the dark. McCue recognized Heng’s young nephew, Lac. Ny had stopped sobbing now and was sitting upright, clinging to her mother’s arm. Hau moved forward, Kalashnikov primed for use. McCue raised a warning hand to stop him.

‘What is it, Lac?’

‘You come, Mistah Billee. Come now. We leave for Rach Gia tonight.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

I

The five-ton truck rattled and bumped through the narrow streets of the sleeping port towards the harbour. Beneath its canvas awning huddled more than thirty ethnic Chinese – men, women and children – three Cambodian refugees, an American and an Englishman. The curious stares drawn at first by the two white faces had dulled to indifference during the three-hour drive from Long Xuyen.

Elliot and McCue sat at the back by the pull-down flap, Elliot propped uncomfortably against the side of the truck, his left arm held in a makeshift sling to relieve his shoulder. His face was drained of colour, a grey mask of pain. He felt sick and weak. Heng sat with them, chattering with nervous animation, drawing power and prestige from his association with the round-eyes and their formidable array of weaponry.

Twice, on the main highway, they had been stopped at roadblocks, and fear had crouched with them under the canvas as they listened above the idling of the motor to the voices of their driver and the security police. There had been long exchanges on each occasion, before money changed hands and they were waved on their way.

*

The lights of the harbour reflecting on still waters opened into view as the truck lurched past the towering shadows of boat sheds and warehouses. Thousands of small craft lay moored here, hundreds of larger fishing boats and trawlers dotted about at anchor in the bay. Here and there navigation lights winked in the dark. McCue peered through a rent in the awning. The docks lay silent and deserted, making the truck’s engine seem unnaturally loud. The driver pulled into the shadow of a tall warehouse and cut the motor. Frightened faces, about to adopt the personae of boat people and refugees, spilled out on to the cobbles. McCue half-lifted Elliot to the ground. He turned and caught Heng’s arm. ‘What about patrols?’

Heng grinned nervously. ‘We pay plenty, Billee. They look other way.’ He moved off, whispering cryptic instructions in the dark, urging the group to follow him along the quayside.

McCue swung a pack over his shoulder and nodded to Serey and Ny.

‘Go.’

Hau lifted the other pack, and his Kalashnikov, and trotted after them.

They hurried past the silent hulks of sleeping trawlers, avoiding the ropes that moored them to great, rusted metal rings set in concrete. The stink of rotten