For Kingdom and Country Read Online Free Page A

Calm.
    For the third time in what seemed as many hours, Lock opened his eyes. He was in a private room, clinical and white, lying on a bed,shrouded in starched cotton sheets. They were pulled up to his chest. His arms were free, stretched out either side of him with his palms facing down. Soft cotton pyjamas had replaced his uniform, but his head felt tight, encased, as if he still wore his slouch hat. Opposite the bed, daylight was streaming through a high window and Lock could make out the gnarly branches of a tree swaying in the breeze outside. He cautiously, should any sudden movement give him a relapse of nausea, turned his head. To his right was a door; to his left a small bedside cabinet. On top were a jug and a glass of clear water.
    Lock licked his lips. They were chapped and sore. His throat was dry. He tried to reach for the glass. Sweat broke out on his brow. He could feel it prickling his skin. His heart started to race in his chest. A dull ache was building in his temple. His arm was trembling. It was barely off the bed. He stopped trying and felt the weight of his whole body sink back into the mattress.
    A flurry of movement caught his attention. He moved his eyes. Three white-speckled bulbuls had landed on the nearest branch to the window. Lock could hear their loud chattering now, as if they were in disagreement about something. He frowned at the scene for a moment and tried to recall where he had been before, before the bed and the white room. He lost his focus and the birdsong melded into the voices of men talking.
    Lock groaned in confusion. The voices were familiar, yet they sounded alien to his ear. He couldn’t make out what they were saying.
    ‘Speak up,’ he said.
    The voices ignored him and continued with their chatter. One said ‘ Kahve ’.
    Lock grunted and relaxed. Kahve was Turkish for ‘coffee’. Coffee would be nice. He’d like a cup, strong and bitter. Perhaps with a little sugar. He nodded.
    ‘Yes, good idea,’ he said.
    Movement rocked the bed. Lock opened his eyes.
    But he was no longer lying in bed, in the white room. He was sat upright, fully dressed in his old, brown corduroy suit, perched on the back of the ox cart he knew so well; the ox cart he had used for weeks at a time to lug telegraph poles and cables around the lonely roadways of eastern Anatolia. That was his job initially, and then his cover, putting up telephone lines for the Sultan. He recognised the man moving about next to him, rocking the cart. It was Bedros, the Armenian, a wiry fellow with pockmarked skin, who was always dressed in a worn, ragged blazer. He was part of the work detail Lock had assigned to him; one Armenian and eight Kurds.
    ‘ I make coffee, effendim? ’ Bedros said in Turkish, beaming a smile of broken, blackened teeth.
    Lock nodded and noted that his head no longer throbbed with pain. ‘ Yes, good idea ,’ he said in the same tongue, understanding perfectly.
    He turned his attention to the main work detail a little way ahead.
    The Kurds, despite being strong labourers, with rough hands and rougher manners, were struggling to lift a pole into a freshly excavated hole. Two of them had even stopped working and were shading their eyes, staring off beyond the cart, into the distance.
    Lock raised himself up and turned around.
    Stretched out before him was a flat, grassy landscape dusted with snow. It ran all the way to the foot of the distant white peaks of three mountains to the north: Soli, Davutaga and Isik Dagi. To the right was the eastern shore of Lake Erçek, its azure waters sparkling in the afternoon sunshine. A road, little more than a dirt track, followed the length of the shore before hitting a crossroads, and it was here that Lock could see a large dust cloud rising up in the distance.
    ‘ Strange. Nothing heavier than farm traffic usually passes along this stretch ,’ Lock said.
    ‘ Not farm traffic, effendim ,’ Bedros said. ‘ They are … horsemen? ’
    Lock turned back