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

cracks and potholes in the road. The Cambodian gazed out at the ruins of his city. The desolation of what he saw was reflected in his heart. Pol Pot and the others had left ahead of him, no doubt in futile resistance to the invader, but still the Chinese adhered to their ally, insisted on providing his safe passage out of the country. He was after all, as the legitimate ruler of his beloved Cambodia, their last vestige of international credibility, as he had been since the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975. He himself had been powerless, clinging despondently to the hope that the madness must end sometime, and that he could play a part in the rebuilding. But now he knew that for him it was over.

His thoughts drifted back to the past, how it had all once been – in his mind an enchanted, happy time; court dancers performing to the music he himself had written, extravagant royal banquets, the gatherings of joyous, colourful crowds on the river to witness the Fêtes des Eaux. And he frowned as he recalled the tide of events, his attempts to keep his country out of the war that raged between America and Vietnam. And then the bombs and the coup, conspiracy and betrayal feeding the cause of the Khmer Rouge. And finally the murder of his people, and now his own enforced exile. He wondered what the future could possibly hold for him.

As they sped past the Phnom Penh High School he shuddered inwardly. He had built it to educate. The Khmer Rouge had used it to re-educate. Such an innocent word to describe the torture and murder that raged inside S.21, the Tuol Sleng extermination centre. All in the name of a people who had been brutalized just as savagely. The madness, he knew, had no parallel. Even Hitler had not enslaved and destroyed his own people.

At the top of the street, the car turned north towards the airport where they would catch the last flight out to Peking. A movement caught the Cambodian’s eye, and he turned with amazement to see the naked figure of a small boy pushing a bicycle and running away down a side street. Their driver braked hard, slamming the car to a halt with a squeal of tyres.

‘What are you doing!’ Prince Sihanouk demanded.

‘Deserter!’ spat the driver, and swung himself out of the car. He drew his pistol, steadied it at arm’s length on the roof, and levelled it at the back of the running boy.

‘Leave it!’ snapped one of the Chinese. ‘There is no time!’

The driver cursed. The boy was out of range anyway. He holstered his pistol and jumped back into the driver’s seat, his lips curled in annoyance.

‘Go,’ said the Chinese. ‘We are already late.’

As the car screeched away with spinning tyres, Sihanouk saw the naked boy turn safely out of view to be swallowed up by the doomed city. It was to be the Prince’s last sight, he knew, of his beloved Phnom Penh. And it filled him with a deep despair.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Serey and Ny squatted on facing bunks by the light of a small oil lamp, gorging on large bowls of steaming rice. Outside, the rumble of thunder sounded ominously in the black night sky, and warm rain battered on the deck above. Ny glanced nervously at her mother. They had not spoken in the hours since the shooting on the boat. The initial tears had dried up. The warmth of their embrace, as Serey clung to her daughter in the moments after the shooting, had turned cold, and that brief vulnerability had dissipated, leaving her brittle and aloof. Ny’s burden of guilt seemed greater now than ever.

She looked at the frail, shrunken figure in peasant pyjamas and longed simply to hold her. Through all the silent years, when family loyalties and affections had been dangerous, banished by the higher demands of Angkar, they had grown apart. Confidences had become almost as rare as conversation. Increasingly, all that had tied them was the umbilical cord of the past, memories, how they had once been. Mother and daughter. They were like strangers now, embarrassed by the knowledge of what each had done, what each had become. They had no secrets. Whatever Hau had done or become, only he knew. And he knew nothing of their shame. Perhaps Hau would be their only salvation. I have done things. They made me do things, he had told her that night beneath the hut at the commune. She hadn’t wanted to know then, didn’t now. She wanted never to know. She remembered his small, boyish face with its old eyes, and the tears that had run down his cheeks as he left. I will go to our home in Phnom Penh. If our country is freed tell my mother to look for me there.

‘Do you think Hau will be in Phnom Penh?’ she asked suddenly.

Her mother’s sad eyes flickered slowly up to meet hers. ‘There is no point in asking questions that cannot be answered.’

It was like a slap in the face, and the old woman turned back to the last of her rice, unaware of the tears that filled her daughter’s eyes, blinking hard to hide her own.

Directly above them, in the cabin, Elliot was slumped in a fixed swivel seat by the wheel watching the rain run down the windows. His cigarette glowed in the dark as he sucked deeply at the hot burning tobacco. Along with the sacks of rice in the galley, they had found other provisions: tinned foods, cartons of cigarettes, a crate of beer. They had eaten their fill, then taken a course south across the deserted wastes of the Great Lake. As the sun set, they had reached the southern end of the lake and navigated slowly through numerous waterways before debouching into the wide, chocolate-brown waters of the slow-moving Mekong. These had been tense moments, exposed as they were to attack from either bank.