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

by Peter May

  ‘How are you?’

  She shrugged. ‘Alright.’ She pulled herself up to lean against the headboard.

  He handed her the cup. ‘Do you feel up to a visitor?’

  ‘Who?’

  He sensed her alarm and his face clouded with guilt. ‘I’m sorry, lass. Perhaps I should have waited. I called your boyfriend to let him know you were safe. He insisted on coming.’

  ‘Here?’

  He nodded.

  ‘When?’

  He looked at his watch. ‘About an hour. If you don’t want to see him . . .’

  She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll have to see him sometime.’ She made it sound like a dental appointment.

  Now, as she stared at the stranger in the mirror, she heard a car draw up in the road outside, a door slam shut. She did not know how to be with him. He belonged to another life, as different and remote as a butterfly’s former larval existence. The sound of his feet crunching on the gravel path filled her with dread. But there was a lack of urgency in his step, a secret reluctance, almost as if he too were afraid.

  The murmur of voices in the hall, tones and cadences indistinguishable as words, rose and fell like mumbled prayers. But she detected anger in them. Then footsteps receded towards the back of the house and she felt relief at the postponement of their meeting. A drowning man will grasp at anything to delay the moment of death. And yet, surely, death itself could not be worse than the fear of it? She sat for long minutes of patient anxiety, listening for a footfall in the hall. When, eventually, it came, she felt herself stiffen, a chill spreading through her from an icy core. She turned her head as the door opened and he walked into the small front bedroom.

  He seemed taller than she remembered, his hair redder, his skin paler. Whatever he had prepared himself for, whatever he had expected, he could not disguise his shock. His lips moved, but no words came. He took a moment to regain his composure.

  ‘How are you?’ The banality of his question, the strained politeness in his voice, spared her the burden of having to play a role.

  ‘As you see.’

  He stared at her for a long time. ‘Why didn’t you call?’

  She sighed and turned back to the mirror. His reproach was like the memory of a bad dream. ‘What do you want, David?’

  A gasp of exasperation escaped his lips. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yes, I have! If I hadn’t called Blair . . .’

  ‘What has he told you?’

  ‘Enough.’

  She remembered that he had once wanted to marry her, and tried to imagine what that would be like. A semi-detached existence somewhere in the commuter belt; keeping his house, raising his children, barbecues in the garden with the neighbours on summer evenings. She had no idea, now, what she wanted from life. But it wasn’t that. Perhaps it never had been. She shook her head. ‘Then you know that I’m not who I was.’ She turned to meet his eye but found him staring at a spot on the floor. Perhaps he had already realized that. Perhaps, after what Blair had told him, he was simply going through the motions ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘not to have lived up to your expectations.’

  He darted her a look, and she saw real pain behind his eyes, though she could never have been certain it wasn’t just the pain of failure.

  ‘But thank you for your concern,’ she added cruelly.

  *

  Blair heard the front door closing, and shortly after a car started and drove off down the street. The slow, tick of the clock grew thunderous in the silence that followed. He was surprised at the boy leaving so soon, and wondered if he should go through to her. But he did not stir from his armchair. She would need time and space to recover, if such scars as she must carry inside would ever heal. He let his head fall back on the rest and felt a kind of despair. It seemed that everything in Elliot’s life was destined to be touched by tragedy.

  The room was warm and bright, filled with the reflected light of the sun on the river. He closed his eyes and flirted with sleep, drifting in a netherworld of waking dreams, not quite asleep, not quite awake. A sound came to him from the conscious world and he opened his eyes with a start. Lisa stood by the window, staring out across the river. He had not heard her come in. She turned as he stirred.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

  ‘You didn’t. I just – I’m tired, I guess.’

  She nodded. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘I heard. He didn’t stay long.’

  ‘There wasn’t much point.’

  ‘What happened? What did you say to him?’

  She shrugged. ‘I told him it was over, that’s all.’

  ‘He didn’t strike me as the type to give up so easily.’

  She moved away from the window and eased herself into a chair. ‘What did you tell him – about what happened in Bangkok?’

  ‘Not much. That you’d fallen foul of some unscrupulous individuals who had tried to harm you. He wasn’t very sympathetic, then?’

  ‘David has never sympathized with anything or anyone in his life, except himself. He never really knew or understood me. I took his fancy, an object to be desired and possessed. I think he’d begun to realize, even before I left, that I wasn’t really up for sale. And now that the goods are shop-soiled . . .’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘I didn’t go into detail.’

  ‘You didn’t have to. And, anyway, I don’t think he’d have wanted to know.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. To be honest, I’m relieved. I might have felt in his debt. He was there for me when my mother died and I needed a shoulder to cry on.’

  Blair raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘And now you don’t?’

  ‘I don’t need anyone.’ Her voice was defiant – the defiance, Blair thought, of disillusion. She would recoil from warmth, as a puppy which has been beaten shrinks from the approach of even a friendly hand. She had lost her trust, along with her innocence. And mistrust was always a crude defence against further hurt. It precluded the possibility of love.

  ‘You make me think of your father,’ he said.

  ‘My father’s dead,’ she said dully. She looked up to meet his gaze. ‘Isn’t he?’

  His mouth set in a grim line. It was something he had not admitted, even to himself. ‘Yes. I suppose he is.’ He reached for his pipe and lit it. He did not feel like smoking, but it was something to do. Blue ribbons rose in the still air. The silence lay uneasily between them. Finally he said, ‘I never told you what happened. At the end, when we got you out of that place.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I’d never have found you if it hadn’t been for her. You’d be dead.’

  She frowned. ‘If it hadn’t been for who?’

  ‘Grace.’

  She looked away quickly and he was unprepared for the venom in her voice. ‘I hated her!’

  ‘Maybe you had good reason, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. But she died saving your life.’

  He was unprepared, now, for the pain he saw in the look she turned on him. ‘Grace is dead?’ She remembered the velvet touch of her fingers, cool lips on her skin.

  ‘They shot her as we escaped from the warehouse. There was nothing I could do.’

  A shudder seemed to run through Lisa’s body, like the shock waves of an explosion. She closed her eyes and put her fingers to her temple, pressing it as if there were a great pain there. ‘But why? I don’t understand. Why would she want to save me?’

  Blair’s mouth was dry. ‘She said – she just said to tell you that she was sorry.’

  Lisa sat for what seemed like a very long time before she drew in her lower lip and tears came to her eyes. Then she wept, painfully, like a child, and Blair knew that there was hope for her in her pain.

  CHAPTER FORTY-
THREE

  The sound of raised voices from the quayside filtered through Elliot’s uneasy slumber. He opened his eyes to find McCue crouched beside him, his M16 raised vertically by his side. His face was a mask of sweat and strain.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Elliot manoeuvred himself on to one elbow and the sampan rocked. He felt giddy, and found it hard to focus in the fading light. The combined effects of his wound, the fever, the unrelenting heat, and more than a week spent lying on his back, had robbed him of his strength.

  McCue raised a finger to his lips and whispered, ‘Army. They’re checking papers, looking for draft dodgers.’

  Elliot swallowed hard. He felt weak and vulnerable, and fear lay like poison in his belly.

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Nothing. Just sit tight and hope they don’t search the boat.’

  Elliot reached behind him to grope for his holster, and drew out his pistol. He said, ‘I’d almost begun to think we might just make it.’

  They had waited five long days, through the heat and rain, virtual prisoners in the sampan, for word from Heng. But none had come. Serey and Ny had made several trips into the town, trading in the still thriving black market for food. But the strain of the interminable waiting in cramped and unsanitary conditions was beginning to tell. In the heat, the stink of human waste hung in the air, and thick clouds of flies swarmed around them, infesting their food, getting in their mouths. Through the endless hours, McCue had been like a caged animal, his patience and his nerve gradually disintegrating. He had growled and snapped at everyone, insisting on sitting out back at the open end of the boat as soon as it got dark, in spite of the risk of being seen. Twice, Elliot had dissuaded him from repeating his perilous trip across town to the Chinese quarter in search of Heng. Now, he crouched in rigid concentration, listening intently to the sound of soldiers searching the sampans around them. Elliot guessed that the American would relish an end – any end – to this prison sentence: even death in a firefight with the Vietnamese.

  Elliot wondered why he felt fear, before it struck him that it was not for himself, but for Serey and Ny and the boy. After all they had been through, they didn’t deserve to die like this. But he knew, also, that he had no power over the events that would unfold, and no strength with which to meet them.

  The clatter of boots on wooden boards drew nearer. Their sampan rocked, and McCue had to steady himself with his free hand. A shrill male voice reeled off a series of demands, and Elliot recognized the voice that responded as Ny’s – a brave medley of stuttering Vietnamese and Cambodian. He tried to peer through chinks in the matting, but it was already almost dark and he could see only the lights of the harbour across the water. The soldier’s voice grew less shrill in response to Ny, adopting instead a tone of confident superiority. Elliot could almost see the leer on his face.

  The curtain was drawn quickly aside and Hau scuttled through, clutching an AK-47. His face was sickly pale with fear. In the seconds before the curtain fell again to obscure the view, Elliot saw, beyond the squatting Serey, Ny’s bare legs framed in the curve of the canopy, and the soldier’s in khaki fatigues tucked into army boots. At first her voice was insistent, argumentative, before finally falling in pitch to adopt a friendlier tone. She talked quickly, with growing confidence, drawing eventually, to Elliot’s consternation, a laugh from the soldier. It was an odious laugh, laced with lust. Elliot watched Hau’s face, hoping to discern something from the boy’s expression, but there was no clue in his studied intensity.

  At length, Ny and the soldier left the sampan, stepping out across the other boats. The sound of their voices, and those of other soldiers who had been conducting the search, drifted away into the night. The silence that ensued within their cabin was laden with disquiet. Elliot and McCue exchanged glances, fearing the worst. Hau, head bowed, stared unblinking at his feet. McCue leaned forward to pull back the curtain. Serey sat as before, squatting by the small stove where she cooked their food. Her face had a waxen quality about it, but was otherwise expressionless. She was staring off into the middle distance.

  McCue said, ‘What happened?’

  She didn’t turn. Her voice was dull, mechanical. ‘She told him that we were refugees and had no papers. He wanted to search. She said that her little brother was very sick and must not be disturbed.’ She paused, and McCue saw a nerve quivering at her temple, like a butterfly trapped beneath the skin. ‘She pointed out that there is an empty sampan beyond the landing stage, and suggested that if they went and searched it together he might find something more interesting than an old woman and a sick boy.’

  McCue let the curtain fall and slumped back into the cabin. Shame prevented him from raising his eyes to meet the boy’s. Elliot lay back and screwed his eyes closed. Anger and frustration welled up like vomit inside him. There was nothing to be done.

  Gradually, after the soldiers had gone, normality returned to the floating community around them; the sounds of voices, hushed at first, gained in confidence; transistor radios scratched the hot surface of the night; the smell of woodsmoke and cooking rose above the stench of sewage. Oil lamps were lit, their yellow reflections flickering across the gently undulating surface of the river. At one point Elliot thought he heard a girl’s voice raised in a cry, coming from somewhere beyond the landing stage. But he could not be certain he had not imagined it.

  It was almost an hour before they heard Ny’s soft step returning across the boats. McCue drew the curtain aside as she stooped to enter the outer cabin. Her face showed nothing, but he saw, as she squatted silently beside her mother, that her hands were trembling, and there was the hint of bruising around her lower lip. Hau pushed past the American and went out to join them. McCue let the curtain fall, and studied the dirt that drew black lines under his fingernails. Elliot stared at the rush matting overhead for a long time, before he closed his stinging eyes and gave himself up again to the strange dreams that haunted his hours of shallow sleep.

  A vast expanse of desert stretched before him, the sand rising and falling in great dunes. The sky was black and starless, and a large yellow crescent moon, lying on its back, rose slowly out of the horizon. He shivered, realizing that he was cold and wet. When he looked up again the horizon was see-sawing up and down and the sand had turned to water, the dunes transformed into great black white-topped waves looming overhead. Above the roar of the water he now heard the baying of a dog, or was it a wolf? Desolate howls in the night. He opened his eyes and heard Ny sobbing on the other side of the curtain. Outside, a heavy downpour dropped rain the size of marbles on to their awning. A fine wet spray showered through the matting. Everything was soaked. McCue still sat by the curtain, his hand cupped around a cigarette.

  Elliot forced himself up into a seated position, and pulled the curtain slightly to one side. He could make out Serey’s silhouette, squatting still by the stove, cradling her daughter’s head in her lap, muttering words of comfort like some religious incantation. He looked at McCue. ‘How long’s she been like that?’

  McCue shrugged. ‘Difficult to say. Feels like a lifetime.’ He raised his head slowly towards the heavens. ‘I guess even the gods are weeping for her.’

  ‘Shhhh! What’s that?’ Elliot raised his hand, suddenly, straining to hear above the roar of the rain.

  McCue listened. ‘I don’t hear anything.’

  ‘I’m sure I heard . . . There it is again!’

  This time McCue heard it, too. A voice calling softly in the dark from beyond the awning. ‘Mistah Billee . . . Mistah Billee.’ McCue grabbed his automatic and scrambled through the cabin, past Serey and Ny and Hau, towards the back of the sampan. A small, frightened figure crouched there in the dark. McCue recognized Heng’s young nephew, Lac. Ny had stopped sobbing now and was sitting upright, clinging to her mother’s arm. Hau moved forward, Kalashnikov primed for use. McCue raised a warning hand to stop him.

  ‘What is it
, Lac?’

  ‘You come, Mistah Billee. Come now. We leave for Rach Gia tonight.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  I

  The five-ton truck rattled and bumped through the narrow streets of the sleeping port towards the harbour. Beneath its canvas awning huddled more than thirty ethnic Chinese – men, women and children – three Cambodian refugees, an American and an Englishman. The curious stares drawn at first by the two white faces had dulled to indifference during the three-hour drive from Long Xuyen.

  Elliot and McCue sat at the back by the pull-down flap, Elliot propped uncomfortably against the side of the truck, his left arm held in a makeshift sling to relieve his shoulder. His face was drained of colour, a grey mask of pain. He felt sick and weak. Heng sat with them, chattering with nervous animation, drawing power and prestige from his association with the round-eyes and their formidable array of weaponry.

  Twice, on the main highway, they had been stopped at roadblocks, and fear had crouched with them under the canvas as they listened above the idling of the motor to the voices of their driver and the security police. There had been long exchanges on each occasion, before money changed hands and they were waved on their way.

  *

  The lights of the harbour reflecting on still waters opened into view as the truck lurched past the towering shadows of boat sheds and warehouses. Thousands of small craft lay moored here, hundreds of larger fishing boats and trawlers dotted about at anchor in the bay. Here and there navigation lights winked in the dark. McCue peered through a rent in the awning. The docks lay silent and deserted, making the truck’s engine seem unnaturally loud. The driver pulled into the shadow of a tall warehouse and cut the motor. Frightened faces, about to adopt the personae of boat people and refugees, spilled out on to the cobbles. McCue half-lifted Elliot to the ground. He turned and caught Heng’s arm. ‘What about patrols?’