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

these people when they had saved his life. He remembered how Ny had washed out his wounds with her own urine, how she had lain with him to give him her body warmth when his fever had left him shivering. He remembered that it was Serey who had got them all safely out of Phnom Penh, that it was Hau who, along with McCue, had dragged him, bleeding, halfway across the city. He had come to rescue them, and it was they who had rescued him.

He turned and walked back across the sand and climbed the steps to the hotel. He found the American, Calvin, sitting in the lounge, smoking a cigar and reading a copy of the International Herald Tribune. Calvin turned and smiled as he approached. ‘I hear they’re letting you stay, Mr Elliot.’

‘That’s right. I wonder if you’d do me a favour?’

‘Sure.’ He folded up his paper. ‘How can I help you?’

*

The last of the refugees clambered aboard the launch, helped by the Malay policemen. The anchor was retrieved and the driver started the motor. The relief of only a few hours before at safely reaching land had turned now to confusion and uncertainty. A warm breeze blew from the land as the sun dipped low in a sky glowing pink in the west.

The driver gunned the motor, and was about to slip the engine into gear when one of his fellow officers tapped him on the shoulder and pointed towards the shore. A single figure was wading towards the launch. The driver released the throttle and let the engine drop back to an idle. Elliot reached the boat and, with the help of outstretched arms, pulled himself aboard. The officers looked at him uncertainly. Elliot waved a hand dismissively. ‘Don’t let me hold you back.’

Serey pushed past the others and stared up at him. ‘What are you doing?’

Elliot shrugged. ‘I guess I’m going with you.’

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Bidong Island was a lump of rock that rose three hundred metres out of the sea, its steep flanks choked by jungle sweeping down to narrow coral sand beaches fringed with coconut palms. The light was fading as the Malay police launch chugged past the French ship, Isle de Lumière, which lay anchored in the bay and served as a floating hospital. As they drew closer they could see that the whole of one side of the hill had been stripped of all vegetation. A tropical island slum of three-storey shanties climbed its slopes. The frames of the wretched dwellings had been constructed from the timbers of the trees felled to make way for them. Walls were made of tin and cardboard and bark, roofs from blue plastic sheeting, or bone-coloured waterproof sacks. The smoke of countless fires drifted up in the dusk, like mist.

As the launch drew in at the jetty, they were met by the stink of human excrement and the smell of woodsmoke. A large crowd of several hundred refugees was gathered on the beach among rotting piles of refuse to watch the new arrivals. At the other end, near the jetty, an incinerator was nearing completion, paid for no doubt by meagre sums of money provided to salve the collective Western conscience. Beyond it, on an outcrop of rocks, figures crouched in silhouette, defecating into the sea near the wreck of a twenty-metre boat lying in the shallows.

They were met on the jetty by members of the camp’s administration committee, refugees like themselves, overseen by a group of armed militiamen who stood around smoking. There was a headcount and an arbitrary division of the newcomers into groups of six or eight. A cadaverous young Vietnamese in shorts, a singlet and Ho Chi Minh sandals approached Elliot carrying a clipboard. ‘You with relief agency?’ he asked.

Elliot shook his head. ‘No. I’m with them.’

‘Refugee?’ the Vietnamese asked with incredulity.

‘That’s right. This woman, her daughter and her son are Cambodian. We’re together.’

He looked at them, each in turn, then gave a tiny shrug. On Bidong Island nothing came as much of a surprise any more. ‘I am Duong Van Minh, interpreter for the camp committee. I have been here five months. There are worse places. I need your names, then tomorrow you come to administration centre and register. Tonight I fix you up, temporary accommodation. You follow me, please.’

As darkness fell, he led them through the crowded administrative heart of the camp, just beyond the beach. Here, the buildings were of a superior quality. Yellow-lit faces peered at them from windows illuminated by electric bulbs powered by car batteries. The narrow street opened out into a sort of market square, where all manner of goods were sold from stalls lit by oil lamps and candles: everything from nails and wire and fishing tackle, to curry powder, cigarettes and sewing machines. Craftsmen squatted by campfires peddling their wares or services – watch repairers, woodcutters, artists, acupuncturists. They passed a tailor’s shop, a barber’s, even a pawnbroker’s.

‘We have thriving black market,’ Minh said. ‘Illegal, but necessary. Police look other way. We have restaurant, too, and coffee house. Even library. We are well organized.’ They passed a crowd gathered round a noticeboard. ‘Most important noticeboard on island,’ he said. ‘List arriving mail and departing refugee. Find out if you stay or go.’

‘Do many go?’ Elliot asked.

‘Not many.’ Minh was philosophical. ‘Depend on who you are, if you got money or education, or relative in West. Then maybe some country take you.’

‘What about you?’

‘Oh, I am alright. I leave soon. I have uncle in United States. And I am trained computer programmer.’ He shrugged. ‘But I am lucky, Mistah Elliot. Nearly fifty thousand people come to Bidong since first people arrive a year ago. Only ten thousand leave in that time. Even for lucky ones like me, it take time. Some people maybe never leave.’ Despite the heat and humidity, Elliot felt a chill run through him.

At an intersection of mean ill-lit alleyways, Minh turned up the hill, leading them into the packed