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

by Peter May

  Slattery awoke to the smell of meat cooking. ‘Jeez,’ he said. ‘I had this dream. I was at this big medieval banquet. They was just about the serve up the pig when I woke up. Christ, I can still smell it!’ He looked at Elliot and McCue crouched around the embers of the fire. ‘Hey, what you guys doing? Shit, am I still dreaming?’

  ‘It’s no dream, Mike,’ Elliot said. ‘It may not be a banquet, but the pork’s just about ready.’

  *

  It was dark when they set off again to cross the paddy fields in the valley below. The moon was not yet up, and it was fully twenty minutes before their eyes adjusted to the pale light cast over the land by the stars. Picking their way along the narrow paths that ran between the lines of irrigation ditches on either side of the paddies, it took them another half-hour before they reached the spot where the soldiers had dumped the bodies earlier in the day. The corpses, some still semi-clothed in torn black rags, others naked, were already being claimed by the mud. Men and women, some young, some old. Most had been stabbed, probably with bayonets. One or two had been shot in the head. Single bullets. The need to conserve ammunition. Slattery crossed himself. An instinct from a long-forgotten past. But neither he nor the others spoke, and they moved on in silence.

  They were almost two-thirds of the way across when Slattery slipped, the soft earth of the path falling away under his feet, and tumbled into the mud below the film of brackish water. He cursed under his breath and spat out a mouthful of sludge. Elliot and McCue reached out hands to pull him out. But something had snagged on his backpack. He turned to shake himself free and saw a half-decayed hand clutching his shoulder. He let out an involuntary yell and thrashed about to try and get away, bumping into arms and legs and bloated heads, decaying skulls grinning in the mud.

  ‘Get me outa here for Chrissake!’

  The others grabbed him and pulled him free. He scrambled to his feet on the path, shaking, eyes wide, jaw chattering almost uncontrollably. It was not cold that made him shiver. It was naked fear.

  ‘Jesus,’ he panted. ‘Jesus, did you see that!’

  Elliot’s voice was calm. ‘We’d better move.’

  But Slattery couldn’t bring himself to put one foot in front of the other. ‘Jesus Christ, this whole fucking place is one mass grave! There must be hundreds of them in there. All around us. Jesus, I wanna wash!’

  McCue’s face moved close to his, hot breath on his skin. ‘If you don’t move, Slattery, I’ll cut your throat and chuck you in there with them.’

  Slattery stared at him, the words slowly filtering through the film of fear that fogged his mind. Then he blinked several times and glanced at Elliot. Fear gave way to shame. He said, ‘Sure, sure. Let’s get the hell out of here.’ And they moved on quickly, but careful not to risk another fall.

  A sense of horror had gripped them all, turning the hot night cold, fear closing like icy fingers around their hearts. Fear of what? Elliot wondered. The dead? The dead couldn’t hurt you. But they filled your mind, touching your soul, a reminder that you too were only flesh and blood and would one day return to the earth. Dust to dust.

  It was with relief that they reached the dark safety of the trees and followed the ground upwards again over a ridge. For nearly two hours they hacked their way through tangled undergrowth, compelled by the urge to put as much distance as possible between them and the paddy fields.

  Sweating and breathless, Elliot finally called a halt and they dumped their backpacks and slumped to the ground, leaning back against the trees. They sat, recovering breath, each with his own thoughts, not a word passing between them for fifteen minutes or more. The mud on Slattery’s face and outer clothing had dried and caked. He checked and cleaned his pistol and automatic and looked grimly at the others, giving voice for the first time to their unspoken thoughts. They had not come across a living soul or sign of life in more than three hours.

  ‘Jeez,’ he said. ‘Is there anyone left alive in this goddam country?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The truck bumped and rattled through the night over the shell-pitted road from the airport to the city. No one had bothered to repair the road after the fierce fighting for the airport and the capital four years earlier.

  Hau sat in the back of the truck with a dozen other boy soldiers and their commanding officer, Ksor Koh, a small, ugly man of about thirty who enforced a sadistic discipline. Though it remained unspoken, the boys both feared and hated him. He worked them long hard hours and saw to it that they received only minimum rations. Tears, or the least display of childhood vulnerability, were mercilessly ridiculed.

  There was one exception. Yos Oan, a burly, sullen boy, older than the others. Ksor’s lieutenant, he saw to it that they followed their commanding officer’s instructions to the letter. He carried a short, stinging cane with which he beat the others without pity if they so much as looked at him the wrong way. They had all suffered at his hand, and often watched with hate in their eyes and dark thoughts in their hearts as he wolfed down almost double their rations. Though he too had been brutally beaten by Ksor on many occasions, he had accepted his fate with the philosophical forbearance of one who knows that there is always a price to be paid.

  Since being trucked into the airfield at Pochentong, they had been worked from first light until well after dark, digging and repairing defences around the perimeter. Bone-weary, hungry and aching for sleep, they had been told by Yos that they were being taken south. And within an hour they had been herded into a truck and were heading for Phnom Penh. The rumour had spread quickly, in whispers among the boys, that from there they were to be sent south to Takeo to join in the fighting to repel the Vietnamese invader. There was fear in all their hearts, for they had heard rumours that the Kampuchean armed forces were suffering heavy defeats and that the Vietnamese army was making steady progress north. Why else would they have been building defences around the airfield?

  Hau had been waiting and watching for a chance to escape. But not a single opportunity had presented itself. They were watched at all times. And now, as they approached the city of his birth, he knew that time was running out for him. He had told no one of his plan to run away, keeping his silence and his secret safe in a heart still with fear. He saw that Yos was staring at him – a long penetrating stare – and for a moment he wondered if it was possible that his heart had spoken aloud and that Yos had been listening. Or perhaps it could be read in his face. A surge of hatred welled up inside him, even greater than the fear that gripped him, and he turned away to look out the back of the truck where a canvas flap was whipping in the slipstream.

  Not a light shone anywhere as they rumbled through the deserted, broken-down suburbs in the ghostly moonlight. Past the wrecks of armoured vehicles, a legacy of Lon Nol’s defeated army, rusting cars lying abandoned at the roadside, refuse tumbling across the road in their wake. Not a sign of anything living, of any human existence, just the wreckage of another life, another time.

  None of the boys possessed guns, except for Yos, who rested his AK-47 across his knees, a symbol of his privilege, carried with a careless arrogance. Ksor’s automatic was slung over his shoulder, a pistol holstered on his belt. He sat with his eyes closed, swaying with the motion of the truck. Hau knew he would have to get the rifle from Yos, that he would probably have to kill to be free. But they had made him kill before. He owed them nothing but death. And yet he was still only a child, twelve years old. Old enough to take life, but not old enough to live with it. The nightmares were almost unbearable. He thought of his sister and his mother, the years of separation, the nights of secret, silent tears, the longing for the warmth of his mother’s breast, his sister’s lips, the fear of sleep.

  He shook himself free of such thoughts. They would only make him weak, and he had to be strong.

  The city centre, too, was deserted, apart from the occasional army truck or jeep that would rattle past. There was an eerie,
haunted quality about the empty streets, the years of neglect, the absence of people or life where once they had thrived. Hau’s fear was beginning to yield to despair. He knew that once aboard the truck south his chances of escape would rapidly diminish. And where would he go? He was not equipped to survive on his own in the jungle. The city was his natural habitat. It had to be here. Panic was planting irrational thoughts in his head. Of snatching the weapon from Yos and leaping out the back. But the road ran fast beneath them. He would surely be killed or badly hurt. He glanced desperately around the other faces. They were without expression, each boy silent, guarding his own thoughts. How many of them could he trust? Trust! It was a word he barely remembered – an act of free will that was little more than a distant memory.

  Suddenly the truck lurched violently to one side, tyres screeching, a smell of burning rubber as it mounted the pavement and smashed into a derelict shop front. The shock flung them all from their seats, and in the confusion Hau heard Ksor shouting, demanding to know what had happened. He caught a glimpse in the moonlight of the driver’s face as he turned, blood streaming from a gash in his forehead.

  ‘A puncture!’

  Ksor cursed and kicked his way through the confusion of bodies to the back of the truck and jumped down into the road. Hau saw Yos’s AK-47 on the floor where it had fallen. He looked up and Yos’s black eyes met his. Yos was on his knees, clutching his arm where he had hurt it in the fall. From the pain he knew it was broken. The two boys grabbed together for the gun, but Hau was faster. He swung it up and pushed the barrel into Yos’s chest. Yos went rigid, his face taut.

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ he hissed.

  The other boys, too, had frozen, chilled to the bone by the drama unfolding in front of them. Outside they heard the voices of Ksor and the driver. Yos relaxed with Hau’s hesitation, knowing that he would not dare. A slow smile spread across his face as Hau squeezed the trigger and a burst of fire flashed in the dark, sending the older boy thudding backwards, his smile replaced for an instant by disbelief, and then, for eternity, by death. Hau was wet, and wondered for a crazy moment if it was raining. Then he realized it was blood. Yos’s blood. It was everywhere. Spattered across the clothes and faces of all the boys.

  A shout, and feet running on the pavement, pulled him back from the horror, and he spun round to see Ksor’s dark outline rising up at the back of the truck. He fired again and Ksor fell backwards without a sound. The bloodied face of the driver appeared briefly at the opening before he turned and sprinted away into the darkness.

  The silence that followed was deafening. Small boys all with their eyes on Hau. He looked round the frightened faces.

  ‘I’m not going to fight the Vietnamese,’ he said. But no one spoke. He pushed through to the back of the truck and jumped down on to the road. Ksor lay on his back, eyes staring, dark blood pooling on the tarmac. Hau scanned the street. There was not a sound to be heard or a light to be seen. He knelt down and gingerly removed Ksor’s pistol and picked up his automatic. He tucked the pistol in his belt, slung a rifle over each shoulder and started running, back they way they had come, long loping strides. When he reached the end of the street, he looked back and saw the dark shapes of small boys spilling out from the back of the truck and running off into the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Lisa was not prepared for the sticky heat of the Bangkok night, with its noise and babble of Thai voices and lazily swinging ceiling fans. She was still dressed for the English winter she had left behind. Jeans and boots, a cotton blouse under a thick woollen jumper and quilted anorak. She had known it would be hot during the day, but thought the nights might be cool.

  She queued uncomfortably, anorak over her arm, at immigration, and was disconcerted by the unsmiling scrutiny of the immigration officer. He slapped her passport on the desk and waved her through. Baggage reclaim and customs was another trial, encumbered as she was by a large suitcase, her shoulder bag, her anorak and the jumper the heat had compelled her to remove. Flushed and perspiring, exhausted by the journey and the heat, she faced a bewildering confusion of signs and people in the terminal building. Seedy and crowded like some oriental bazaar, it was not at all as she had imagined it. Quite unlike the clinical, ordered efficiency of Heathrow.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she inquired of anyone in the crowd who would listen. ‘Can someone tell me where I can get a taxi?’ But no one paid any attention, bumping and pushing past, Thai faces flashing occasional curious glances. She was fair-skinned, fair-haired and alone. A curiosity here.

  She felt eyes upon her as she struggled through the crowd, but they were eyes that wanted only to help themselves. She felt a panic rising in her breast. She was stumbling at the first hurdle and felt vulnerable and very much alone. Then, to her great relief, she saw a TAXI sign and hurried towards it. Through a doorway to find herself outside. Here, if anything, the night was even hotter and more airless. There was a line of taxis parked at the kerbside. A tout approached and tried to take her case.

  ‘You want taxi, Miss. I get you taxi.’

  She clung grimly to the case and pushed on towards the first in the line of cars. ‘No thank you, I’ll get one myself.’

  A wizened old face leered at her from the driver’s side. ‘Bangkok?’

  ‘The Narai Hotel,’ she said with relief.

  The driver pulled a lever inside the car, the boot swung open and she realized she was expected to put the luggage in herself. Trickles of sweat ran into her eyes as she lugged her case round to the back of the car and heaved it into the boot, slamming it shut as a small gesture of annoyance. No tip for you, she thought.

  ‘You sit in front,’ the driver said, patting the front seat beside him.

  ‘I’ll sit in the back, thank you.’ She slipped in, sinking into the soft, worn leather of the back seat, leaning back and closing her eyes. God, she thought, on my way at last.

  The taxi took off with a jerk and she clung tightly to the door handle. With her free hand she took out a handkerchief to dry her face, careful not to smear her eye make-up, and breathed deeply in a vain attempt to find more oxygen. She watched the city grow up darkly around her as they drove from the airport. Modern blocks of squalid flats, temples, shops and offices, curious ramshackle vehicles among the traffic that belched its black fumes out into the night. Sights and sounds unfamiliar and strange and slightly frightening.

  They had been driving almost fifteen minutes when she noticed that there was no reading on the meter. She tapped the driver on the shoulder.

  ‘You forgot to set the meter.’

  His grin revealed a set of crooked brown teeth. ‘Not working. I give you good price.’

  She sighed and sat back in the seat. She didn’t suppose there was any point in arguing about it. She would just have to pay whatever he asked. She closed her eyes again and felt a wave of fatigue sweep over her. For a moment she was back home on the rug in front of the fire, warm and slightly drunk, David there, hot hands on her breasts, his soft whisper at her neck, It’ll be alright, Lisa. It’ll be alright. And then she was jerked back to the present as the taxi drew in abruptly at the doors of the Narai, the driver grinning at her from the front.

  ‘Four hundred baht.’ She did not bother to work out the exchange equivalent, but handed him the notes in the certain knowledge that she was being fleeced. Definitely no tip, she thought. He pulled the lever to release the boot as she got out.

  She heaved her case out along with the rest of her bits and pieces and was damned if she was going to close the lid. She turned on the steps as the taxi pulled sharply away, and the lid swung down and snapped shut on its own.

  Air conditioning, she decided, when she had passed through the sliding glass doors, was the best thing ever invented. She put down her case and stood for a moment, drinking in the cool sweet air, almost chill after the heat outside. It’s strange, she thought, how when you are hot you cann
ot believe you could ever be cold again. As when you are cold, being warm is hard to imagine. She smiled to herself, feeling better. She’d got here, hadn’t she? And she picked up her case and walked past the curious, faintly hostile stares of the girls in the Don Juan bar, to the reception desk.

  ‘Lisa Elliot. I have a reservation.’ The girl pushed her a form to fill out and asked to see her passport. ‘Can you tell me what room Mr Jack or John Elliot is staying in?’

  The girl checked through her files and shook her head. ‘I am sorry, Mr Elliot checked out two nights ago.’

  *

  Lisa lay back in her room numb with disappointment. To have come halfway across the world and miss him by only forty-eight hours! The sergeant had not told her exactly what her father was doing here, though she suspected that she might not want to know. But she had expected him to be here for some time. She took a piece of paper from her shoulder bag and unfolded it. Tuk Than. Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok. She would call in the morning.

  She washed and undressed ready for bed, and out of idle curiosity switched on the television set. The previous occupant of the room had left it on the video channel and the late movie was a soft porn one. God, she thought. Sex! The world was obsessed with it. She pressed the top button on the set and caught an old episode of Rawhide dubbed into Thai. The dialogue bore no relation to the lip movements, and it seemed incongruous to see a young Clint Eastwood squawking in a guttural alien tongue. She lay down on the bed, head propped against a pillow, and watched with amusement, eyes growing heavy as she drifted in a state that was neither sleep nor wakefulness. From somewhere deep in the memory of the Lisa she had been, she seemed to recall having seen a rerun of this episode as a child. She tried to remember how it went, but it was as elusive as her father, not quite tangible and always just out of reach.

  She woke at eight to the hiss of the television, the screen a shifting mass of white dots. She dragged herself wearily out of bed and wondered if she had slept at all. She still felt just as tired as the night before. A coffee and croissant in the pizzeria downstairs helped to revive her, though she became uncomfortably aware of the many eyes that watched her here in the hotel lobby. Men and women seemed equally curious, though there was an intent in the dark eyes of some men that frightened her. She supposed it was unusual for a young Western girl to be on her own in a place like this.