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

them in appeared at the French windows and he uttered some clipped instruction. ‘I insist that you join me in a drink.’

‘I won’t say no to that,’ Slattery grinned.

The girl brought three amber-coloured drinks in tall glasses, ice ringing coolly against the glass. ‘A Mekong-based cocktail, mixed with various fruit juices,’ Tuk said. Slattery eyed the girl as she retreated towards the house. Tuk followed his eyes and smiled. He inclined his head and raised his glass. ‘Here’s to your success.’ They sipped the bitter-sweet cocktail and Tuk dabbed his brow with a small white handkerchief. ‘You realize, of course, that the Thai authorities would not approve of your little venture into Democratic Kampuchea.’

‘I didn’t think your people were on the best of terms with Pol Pot and his pals,’ Slattery said.

‘They are not, Mr Slattery, but they wish to avoid a war at all costs. There is a large army presence along the border. It is well patrolled. Naturally, if the police or the army were to discover your intentions you would most certainly be arrested. They would not like to provoke an incident with the Khmer Rouge. The risk, therefore, to myself in supplying you is increased.’

‘Like the price, no doubt.’

Tuk smiled at the irony in Elliot’s voice. ‘It goes without saying. The greater the risk, the greater the recompense. I imagine you would not be undertaking this – adventure – if the rewards were not very great.’

‘A calculated risk,’ Elliot conceded.

‘And your calculations will doubtless include the knowledge that the area east of the north-west sector is thick with Khmer Rouge units.’

‘It’s our only possible crossing point,’ Elliot said. ‘I’ve looked at all the other possibilities. There’s the Dangrek mountains to the north, and the Phnom Malai mountain range, thickly wooded as I understand it, to the south.’

‘Which is precisely why there is such a heavy concentration of troops in the north-west. It is from there that any Cambodian invasion of Thailand will come. Conversely, it is this area that the Khmers see the need to defend against any imagined threat from the west. And, of course, it is through this area that most of the refugees have come. The forests are mined and booby-trapped, and well patrolled by the Khmer Rouge.’

Elliot had done his homework. He already knew much of what Tuk was telling them. ‘I’m banking on a decreased presence because of the continuing border confrontations with the Vietnamese in the south,’ he said.

‘Then you are banking on a fantasy,’ Tuk replied. ‘You must realize, Mr Elliot, that the regime of Pol Pot is neither rational nor sane. I myself heard the famous broadcast from Radio Phnom Penh last year, which claimed that one Kampuchean soldier was capable of killing thirty Vietnamese, and that, therefore, only two million Kampuchean troops would be required to wipe out the entire population of Vietnam.’ There was contempt in his smile. ‘They are sacrificing thousands of yotheas – child soldiers – in the border war with Vietnam. Children of ten and twelve years, Mr Elliot. And if they refuse to fight they are shot in the back by their own people. As I understand it, Phnom Penh has committed only thirty to forty thousand troops in the south, while the Vietnamese have massed around a hundred and twenty thousand along the border.’

Slattery glanced at Elliot. ‘Tougher than you thought, then, chief?’

Elliot seemed unfazed. ‘I need more first-hand intelligence on the ground we’ll be covering. It makes it all the more important for us to talk to refugees who have recently come through the north-west sector.’

There was hardly a breath of air in the sheltered silence of Tuk’s garden. The late morning heat was intense, the humidity rising. Slattery finished his drink with regret and felt the now familiar tightening across his chest, a dull pain growing acidly from somewhere deep inside his solar plexus. His concentration wandered as Tuk sat back languidly in his chair, dabbing his forehead, clearly in a mood to talk. ‘What do you know of Democratic Kampuchea, Mr Elliot?’ he said.

‘Only what I’ve read in the newspapers,’ Elliot said. ‘There isn’t much information coming out of the country.’

‘Enough to know that there has been genocide on a massive scale.’ Tuk sipped at his drink. ‘Stone-Age communism, the Vietnamese call it. Even the Chinese, who have backed Pol Pot from the start, are embarrassed by what has been happening since he took power. The Khmer Rouge are giving communism a bad name. They have been trying to build what they see as a classless society, based on an agrarian economy. They have emptied the cities, wiped out their intelligentsia. Anyone who could read or write, or speak another language. If you wore glasses you were shot as an intellectual – even if you had been no more than a simple fisherman. They are fanatical, almost beyond belief. Even Stalin would have been shocked.’

He leaned back reflectively, enjoying what he knew, savouring it from the security of his villa in Sukhumvit Road, passing it on to lesser mortals with a careless generosity.

‘The strange thing is that it is a peculiarly Cambodian phenomenon. These are Cambodians destroying fellow Cambodians. Incestuous genocide. You must speak to a Cambodian friend of mind about it.’ He glanced at his gold wristwatch. ‘If you care to have another drink while you wait, she will be here very shortly.’

‘Wouldn’t do no harm, chief,’ Slattery said eagerly.

Elliot shrugged. ‘We’ve nothing better to do.’

The drinks came and Tuk spoke for some time of Thailand, of the Prime Minister, General Kriangsak Chamanan, a moderate military figure, he said, who had cut back Thai support for the Khmer Serei – the Free Khmer – guerrillas who were based along the border and dedicated to the downfall of the Khmer Rouge. Elliot seemed to Slattery to be listening with interest, but Slattery himself had no interest in any of it. He looked around the garden, reflecting on how good life could have been. Not that he had been