The Reluctant Hero Read Online Free Page A

sighed, producing a brilliant white handkerchief and polishing his rimless spectacles with meticulous care.
    ‘Zac, he . . . sort of went AWOL. Hid himself away. I lost track,’ Harry mumbled, partly in explanation but also in apology. He should have kept tabs on him, but it had all been so long ago, in another life. Even P.J. had upped and left him. ‘He always was a bit of an awkward bugger.’
    ‘Which is why it seems no one wants to help him.Not his government, certainly not his business associates.’
    ‘But what the hell’s he done?’
    ‘I only pick up –’ the Frenchman waved his glasses in a vague circular motion – ‘whispers. Rumours. But he seems to have upset someone. Someone very important. His associates don’t expect to see him again. It happens, you know, in a primitive place like Ta’argistan. Get yourself in trouble with the government there and – poof! – you disappear. I only mention it because I seem to remember that you were a friend of his, once.’ He delayed delivering the final word, as though it made the matter of no importance.
    Harry stared into the mirror. The antiseptic lighting seemed to have bleached all the colour from his face, yet at the same time highlighted the creases. How could it do both? he wondered in confusion. From beyond the door, at the outer limits of his storm-tossed senses, he could hear the crowd had grown suddenly still, and a clock was beginning to chime.
    ‘We should go and join them, Harry,’ d’Arbois said, and before Harry knew it he was gone. Through the part-open door there swept a tide of cheering as the clock struck midnight. He pushed a few stray strands of his hair into place and followed the Frenchman, but the other man had already disappeared, lost in the throng of celebration. As Harry scanned the room, he spotted Bernice. She was in the arms of a commercial counsellor from the Spanish Embassy. The energy oftheir enthusiasms suggested something more intense than an exchange of diplomatic courtesies. So, she was a survivor, nothing wrong with that. His fault, anyway. And she wouldn’t be needing a lift home. Harry stumbled for the door.
    In his mind he was walking through a meadow. He was panting, filling his chest with barrels of cool mountain air that seared his lungs; he’d been racing with his elder brother, Chingiz. He’d won, his first time. He was growing, getting quicker, had taken Chingiz by surprise, a shortcut through a thicket of lucerne. The sharp blades had cut his bare feet, which now stung furiously, but it had been worth it to beat his brother. They had run from their home to the river that was gorged with spring melt water and which thundered down the valley, dragging brilliant pebbles and even large boulders with it. A profusion of flowers clogged the banks, forming a blanket beneath the blossoming rosewillows, whose branches bent towards the cascade of tumbling water. At last, winter had surrendered.
    As he turned, in the distance he saw his grandmother, bearing a pitcher of sour milk and a headscarf bulging with bread. She had been the one who raised him, while his mother spent her days in the fields. Now she was drawing closer, beckoning to him.
    He held it all together, kept his thoughts and fears from running amuck, even when they bound his hands behind him and kicked him up the rough wooden stepsof the scaffold, right up to the moment they began mocking him. He heard them wagering money on whether he would be a ‘stiff-dick’ – one of those poor wretches who, at the bottom of the rope, somehow got an erection. As he heard their laughter he stumbled, fell, overwhelmed by disgust. How could they? They wouldn’t put a dog down like this!
    He picked himself up and looked towards his destination at the top of the stairs. His eyes came to rest on the noose. It held him like a cobra’s eye. It seemed remarkably heavy to him. Rough twisted hemp. Almost an inch thick. With a double-tied knot. Allah O Akbar! God is