Читать книгу Armageddon - Dale Brown - Страница 13

Sahurah Niu’s feet trembled as he got off the motorcycle in front of the gate. The bike roared away and Sahurah was left alone. He tried to take a deep breath but the air caught in his throat and instead he began to cough.

As he recovered, a soldier walked up to him, gun drawn.

‘Who are you?’ demanded the soldier, pointing the pistol at him.

‘I was sent,’ said Sahurah. The gun comforted him for a reason he couldn’t have explained.

‘What is your name?’

Sahurah gave the name he had been told to use – Mat Salleh, a historical figure who had led an ill-fated uprising against the British on Borneo in the nineteenth century.

The soldier frowned and gestured that he should hold his hands out at his sides to be searched.

If I were carrying a bomb, Sahurah thought to himself, I would detonate it now and be in Paradise.

But he was not carrying a bomb, nor any weapon, and the search went quickly.

‘This way,’ said the guard, pointing to the gate. ‘The captain is waiting. You have a long journey ahead.’

Sahurah nodded, and followed along inside.

Flush with his victory at sea, Dazhou met the Muslim fanatic in his office.

‘Have a drink,’ he said to him, putting down a bottle on his desk. He laughed at the expression of horror on the man’s face. ‘It’s juice,’ he told him, ‘but you needn’t drink it anyway.’

He looked at him more closely. ‘You’re the messenger?’

The fanatic nodded. There was no possibility of mistake – no rebel would show up here on his own. Unlike many of the rebels in the movement, Sahurah appeared to be a native of Borneo, very possibly of Malaysian extraction, though with thirty-one different ethnic groups on the large island there were many who could claim to be native here. Dazhou’s own family had been on Borneo for centuries.

‘You know who I am?’ Dazhou asked.

The young man – he was surely in his late twenties, though his face showed the pain of someone much older – shook his head.

‘That is just as well,’ said Dazhou. ‘There is a bathroom there, if you need it. We will leave in five minutes. Once we start, we will not stop.’