The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller Page 9

  ‘After about a week, we reached a town called Kompong Thom. There, a woman I had known in Phnom Penh identified me as a military driver. I said she was lying, but they took me away and made me join a work party of what they called liberated soldiers. We worked until we dropped, every day from first light until well after dark, building a dam. If anyone stopped for a rest he was shot. So for as long as we could stand we worked without stopping.

  ‘Sometimes they gave us a day off and told us we were invited to a merit festival. But those turned out to be long hours of indoctrination. We had to sit and listen to endless communist slogans blasted out from loudspeakers. The only good thing about the merit festivals was that I had the chance to be with my family again, if only for a few hours.

  ‘Then one day we were told there was to be a big freedom celebration for all the newly liberated who had arrived from Phnom Penh. We were to wear our best clothes for the occasion, and were taken in buses to a Buddhist temple on the mountain. There were about two hundred of us gathered there. Former soldiers, officers, doctors, nurses, teachers. Everyone was very frightened when they locked us in. But the guards would not answer our questions, telling us only that everything would become clear to us at the meeting that night.

  ‘It was raining and dark when they started to call us out, one family at a time. I think I knew then that we were to be killed. Everyone did, but no one said it. It was nearly three hours before they called my name, and Key and myself went out carrying our boys. A soldier told us to follow him and took us down a path through the woods. Another group of soldiers was waiting at a clearing. They were sheltering from the rain under the trees and smoking. When we came they got up and tied our hands. But I held my arms taut so that the knot was not tight and I could loosen it. They asked me again what my work was. A taxi driver, I told them. You’re lying, they said. You drove for the military. Then they asked my wife, what did your husband do? She was in tears and could lie no longer. He drove for the military, she said. And I knew that we had no hope.

  ‘They took the baby from her arms and she pleaded to let them die together. She screamed when they blindfolded her and then bayoneted the child. Then they bayoneted my oldest boy. They had not blindfolded me. I was to watch as they stripped my wife and stuck their bayonets into her. I turned and ran into the woods, trying to free my hands as I went. They fired after me, dozens of rounds, but I was more frightened of the bayonets than the bullets. Then I fell down a steep slope and into a dry stream bed, and rolled under some ferns that hid me. A grenade went off and I was showered with damp earth. But in the dark they could not find me and finally they gave up. I think, maybe, I was the only person in the temple that night to escape with his life.

  ‘Early next morning I started to walk, heading north until daylight. Always I walked at night and slept in the day. It did not take me long to reach Siem Reap. But there were many soldiers there, so I circled the town and went by Angkor Wat. I had never before seen the temples and I wept at the sight of them.’

  He paused for a few moments and brushed a fly carelessly from his lips. ‘There is not much more to tell. I kept myself alive foraging for food in the forest, walking, walking, always north and then west. I saw many patrols, and once or twice I was nearly caught. But I was lucky. Eventually I reached the border with Thailand.’ He dropped his head a little then looked directly at Elliot. ‘I cannot say I am free. I cannot say I am alive. I wish I had died by the bayonet with my wife, so that our blood should have run together in the soil of my country.’ There was no emotion in his voice, or his eyes, and Elliot understood what he had meant when he said he was not alive.

  ‘You finished?’ Ferguson asked. The man nodded.

  Elliot turned to McCue. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Outside they blinked in the sunlight, flies in their hair, on their clothes, in their faces. Ferguson went off shouting at a group of children. ‘I never had a reason for killing before,’ McCue said quietly.

  Elliot looked at him. ‘The only reason you need is the money that’s going to buy your boy a better life.’ There was an edge to his voice that made McCue turn his head. Elliot stared back with cold, hard, blue eyes. McCue held the look for some moments then shrugged and walked away towards the hut where Slattery was still drinking beer with Van Saren.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I

  Lotus sat repairing a shirt by the light of an oil lamp. It saved electricity. Old habits died hard. Billy had gone out the night before without telling her where. He had returned late and left early again in the morning. He had said nothing of the men who came two nights ago and talked with him for several hours. She had not needed to ask who they were. She knew. She knew by their eyes, for she’d seen that look in Billy’s eyes, too. In the early days, when he had first come from Vietnam.

  In the back room the baby gave a little cry. She turned her head and listened. The child shifted restlessly for some moments and then was silent. Asleep still. Dreaming. She wondered what he dreamed. His dreams would not be like hers. She dreamt very little now. Her waking dreams had long since faded. Dreams of America, of an escape from poverty and squalor, from endless nights in darkened bars where every groping GI made promises of freedom, promises that were never fulfilled. Sex had been mechanical, a living earned with a false smile and a soft caress, rewarded by money and brutality, void of emotion, empty of hope.

  Billy had been different, quiet and gentle. At first he bought her things, took her places during the day. They never spoke much, just sat in cafés, walked by the river. But, bit by bit, she had told him everything about herself: her family in the north, the paddy fields and the poverty. The brothers and sisters her father could not feed. She had been only fifteen when they sent her to the city to sit behind a mirrored screen, a number pinned to her blouse, alongside eighty or a hundred other girls all with the same story to tell. The doctor came to examine them once a week, like a butcher checking the freshness of the meat.

  Billy had told her nothing about himself. Then one day he had said that he no longer wanted her to work the bars. She had protested. How was she to live? She needed to work. For a while he had said no more about it. He had been morose and cold. Then nothing. He just disappeared. Two weeks, maybe three, and she had thought she would never see him again. It happened. A man took a fancy to you, lavished you with money and gifts, told you he loved you and wanted to take you away from it all. Then he would be sent back home and know that he could not take you with him. A brief illusion. A candle that burned too bright to be real. Then Billy turned up at the club one night, took her by the hand and pulled her out into the street.

  ‘You’re quitting. Now,’ he said. She had pulled herself free and told him he was mad, and he’d said quite simply, ‘I want to marry you.’

  He had looked her straight in the eye, and she knew that he meant it. He had never told her he loved her, or promised her anything, but it was all there in his dark tragic eyes. She had wondered what America would be like. Reality, she knew, could never be like the dream. But she was never to know. He had bought them a house on the klongs. He was never going home, he said.

  But it had been an escape of a sorts. She had not loved him, not then, had not known what love was. But they had found peace together, a kind of happiness she had not experienced since childhood. He had never told her where the money came from, though sometimes he had been away for weeks on end. But they had never wanted for anything and so she never asked.

  She had found herself returning to the ways of her mother, and her mother before her. All the values she had rejected, the heritage she had wished to trade for the dream that had been America. She was Thai, and she was happy in the knowledge of who she was.

  But Billy had changed since their child was born. The inner peace they had found together was gone, like the still surface of a pond broken by the monsoon rains. And the trouble in his heart was reflected in his eyes, like mirr
ors of his soul.

  She finished with the shirt, and was padding through to check the mosquito net around the baby’s sleeping mat when she heard the bump of a small boat against the landing stage and Billy’s step on the stairs. Something had happened, she knew. It was in those eyes that spoke to her more eloquently than the words he used so seldom and so sparingly.

  ‘When will you be going?’ she asked.

  He shrugged, avoiding her eyes. ‘A week.’

  ‘And when will you be back?’ She felt the tension in him.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘when I get back we’re going home.’

  ‘This is my home. I thought it was your home too.’

  He glanced through to the room where the baby slept. ‘There’s more chance for him in America.’ She squatted on the floor and examined the shirt she had mended. He lit a cigarette. He had been smoking more these past two days. ‘If – if I don’t come back . . .’ She looked up. ‘If I don’t come back, I want you to take him anyway. There’ll be plenty of money and my folks’ll look after you.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t want money, or America. I want a husband, and a father for my child.’

  He stood for a moment, then turned and went out on to the terrace. She heard the creak of his old rocking chair. After some minutes she rose slowly from the floor and went out beside him. The sky was thick with stars, like the eyes of Heaven gazing down upon the affairs of men. She didn’t even look at him. ‘Don’t go, Billy,’ she said. ‘I love you.’

  He looked up and felt the sting of tears in his eyes. She had never told him that before. No one had.

  II

  ‘There’s a gentleman been waiting to see you,’ the receptionist told Elliot when he got back to the hotel. She nodded towards a man sitting on one of the large sofas dotted around the reception lounge. Elliot and Slattery turned to look.

  ‘It’s Ang,’ Elliot said. ‘I’ll catch you later.’

  Slattery disappeared towards the lifts. Ang rose and held out his hand as Elliot approached. Elliot sat down without taking it. Ang’s smile of greeting faded and he resumed his seat. ‘Do you have the stuff I asked for?’ Elliot said.

  ‘Yes.’ Ang lifted a large buff envelope from the seat beside him. ‘The daily routine and layout of the commune near Siem Reap. It was not easy to come by, Mistah Elliot.’

  ‘Is it accurate?’

  ‘As accurate as the recollection of half-starved refugees can be.’ Ang paused. ‘The money has been lodged and credited to the account number you gave me.’

  ‘I know,’ Elliot said. ‘I checked.’

  ‘The second payment will be released just as soon as my wife and family are delivered safely to me here in Thailand.’

  Elliot looked at Ang with ill-concealed contempt. He remembered the story Chan Cheong had told him in that stinking hut in Mak Moun. He remembered the dead look in the eyes of the refugee. Eyes that had watched his wife and children bayoneted to death. I cannot say I am free. I cannot say I am alive, he had said. And here was a man who had left his wife and family to their fate. Here was a man who was free, who was alive, who had the money to buy off his conscience and the memory of his betrayal.

  ‘Will there be penalties?’ Elliot said. ‘If I don’t come back with a full complement.’

  ‘I don’t think I understand, Mistah Elliot.’

  ‘I mean, are you paying by the head? A third each for your wife, your daughter and your son? After all, we’re not even sure where your son is.’

  Ang faced out Elliot’s contempt impassively. ‘They paid you by the head in Vietnam, did they not?’

  Elliot was momentarily taken aback. Ang had done his homework. The little Cambodian pressed home his advantage. ‘I’m paying you to try, Mistah Elliot.’ And a moment of pain flitted across his face. ‘If you succeeded in bringing only one . . .’ But he shied away from the thought.

  Elliot said, ‘I wouldn’t raise your hopes, Mr Ang. It’ll be a miracle if you see any of them alive again.’

  III

  Slattery lay back in the darkness of his room and felt the pain spreading from below his ribs. He imagined the cancer inside like a giant crab gnawing away at him, growing fat as he grew thin. He had taken some painkillers and knew it would pass. But he knew, too, that it would return, again and again, with ever-increasing frequency, stealing the life away from him. The worst part was that he didn’t want to die. He looked back with a bitter irony over all the years he’d thought he hadn’t cared, the risks he’d taken, the life he had laid on the line time and again. But then, death had never been a certainty as it was now. Death was what happened to the other guy.

  He screwed his eyes tight shut and knew he was only feeling sorry for himself. And he despised self-pity. It could turn a man, change him, make him afraid. He’d never been afraid of anything or anyone in his life. And he didn’t want to start now. Didn’t want to become a man he would not recognize. It was too late to start trying to come to terms with a new self. He’d had enough trouble with the old one. His only regret was that he’d never had children. Then, perhaps, some part of him might have lived on. After all, that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Procreation. Go forth and multiply, said the Lord.

  He smiled wryly to himself. Well, it hadn’t been for want of trying. And he felt better knowing that in the midst of all his self-pity he could still smile. The old Mike Slattery was still there somewhere. Shit! He wasn’t going to let this bastard cancer beat him without a fight.

  A soft knock at his door startled him. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It’s Elliot.’

  ‘Come on in, chief.’ Slattery sat up on the bed self-consciously, as though Elliot might have been listening in on his thoughts, like a conversation overheard in the dark. He turned on the bedside light as Elliot entered. ‘What’s the score?’

  Elliot looked at him curiously, and Slattery felt uncomfortable. ‘You mind if we talk?’

  Slattery knew he wasn’t being asked. ‘Grab yourself a chair.’

  Elliot pulled a seat out from the dresser and sat down. ‘Got a cigarette?’

  ‘Sure.’ Slattery tossed him one and lit another for himself. He knew Elliot only smoked when he felt stressed.

  Elliot lit his cigarette and watched the smoke rise gently in the stillness. ‘It’s hot in here. Air conditioning broken down?’

  Slattery shook his head. ‘Naw. Can’t sleep with it on, chief. Dries me out.’ He paused. ‘Something on your mind?’ Why did he feel that Elliot knew exactly what was going on in his?

  ‘Been worrying about you, Mike,’ Elliot said at length.

  Slattery smiled unconvincingly. ‘No need to worry about me, chief. You know that.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Well, I mean, why would you?’

  ‘You’ve lost weight. You’ve been behaving – oddly.’ Slattery said nothing. ‘I made a couple of phone calls last night, Mike. Mutual acquaintances Down Under.’

  The skin tightened across Slattery’s scalp. ‘You know, then.’

  Elliot nodded. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Would you have taken me with you if I had?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s why I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘I don’t like being lied to, Mike. Especially by a friend.’

  ‘I never lied to you, chief.’

  ‘By omission. It comes to the same thing.’

  Slattery looked away. ‘I couldn’t face dying in a beach house somewhere. Just wasting away. Not me, chief. Not after what I been through.’

  They were both silent for a long time. Then Elliot said, ‘I didn’t take you on so you could go and get yourself killed. I need you, Mike.’

  ‘I won’t let you down, chief. Honest I won’t. I’d just rather take the chance of dying like I’ve lived, you know? Rather than the other way.’ He looked di
rectly at Elliot. ‘You’re still taking me with you, chief, aren’t you?’

  Elliot seemed to look right through him. He drew slowly on his cigarette, then said, ‘Sure I am, Mike.’ He paused. ‘But I’m bringing you back, too.’

  Slattery nodded. ‘You want a beer?’

  Elliot smiled and drew a half-bottle of whisky from his back pocket. ‘The real MacKay,’ he said. ‘I thought we might get pissed.’

  Slattery grinned.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Ny lay awake on the hard wooden floor with dread and hate in her heart, listening for the footfall of the young cadre on the steps of the hut. Perhaps tonight he would not come. The pain and discomfort of her period had been a merciful release from his nightly visits, and she had told him it was still on her for several days after it had passed. He would know it must be over by now, so she expected he would come. All the other women, her mother as well, were asleep. Escape for a few brief hours from this living death. At the far end of the hut one of the women moaned in her shallow slumber. Perhaps she was dreaming of how life used to be. Or perhaps her dreams were of soldiers in black pyjamas and red-chequered scarves, and Angkar, and fear and death. Perhaps, for some, even sleep was no escape.

  She heard a creak on the wooden steps and tensed. He had come for her, and from somewhere she must summon the strength and courage to face again the shame of his sexual gratification. But she wondered how much longer it would be possible. She had known others to take their own lives, but she did not think she had the courage for that.

  The silhouette of the cadre appeared in the open doorway as she sat up. He seemed smaller, was wearing a scarf round his head. ‘Ny,’ he whispered. He had never called her by her name before, yet the whisper of it was familiar. She rose and moved quietly to the doorway and found herself looking into the dark face of a young boy. A face she knew from somewhere in her past. But still it took her a moment to recognize it.

  ‘Hau!’ Her brother’s name slipped involuntarily from her lips, and though whispered, seemed loud in the quiet of the night.