Читать книгу Toll for the Brave - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 6

They were beating the Korean to death in the next room, all attempts to break him down having failed completely. He was a stubborn man and, like most of his countrymen, held the Chinese in a kind of contempt and they reacted accordingly. The fact that Republic of Korea troops had the highest kill ratio in Vietnam at that time didn’t exactly help matters.

There were footsteps outside, the door opened and a young Chinese officer appeared. He snapped his fingers and I got up like a good dog and went to heel. A couple of guards were dragging the Korean away by the feet, a blanket wrapped about his head to keep the blood off the floor. The officer paused to light a cigarette, ignoring me completely, then walked along the corridor and I shuffled after him.

We passed the interrogation room, which was something to be thankful for, and stopped outside the camp commandant’s office at the far end. The young officer knocked, pushed me inside and closed the door.

Colonel Chen-Kuen was writing away busily at his desk. He ignored me for quite some time, then put down his pen and got to his feet. He walked to the window and glanced outside.

‘The rains are late this year.’

I couldn’t think of anything to say in answer to that pearl of wisdom, didn’t even know if it was expected. In any event, he didn’t give me a chance to make small talk and carried straight on, still keeping his back to me.

‘I am afraid I have some bad news for you, Ellis. I have finally received instructions from Central Committee in Hanoi. Both you and General St Claire are to be executed this morning.’

He turned, his face grave, concerned and said a whole lot more, though whether or not he was expressing his personal regret, I could not be sure for it was as if I had cut the wires, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly and I didn’t hear a word.

He left me. In fact, it was the last time I ever saw him. When the door opened next I thought it might be the guards come to take me, but it wasn’t. It was Madame Ny.

She was wearing a uniform that looked anything but People’s Republic and had obviously been tailored by someone who knew his business. Leather boots, khaki shirt and a tunic which had been cut to show off those good breasts of hers to the best advantage. The dark eyes were wet with tears, tragic in the white face.

She said, ‘I’m sorry, Ellis.’

Funny, but I almost believed her. Almost, but not quite. I moved in close so that I wouldn’t miss, spat right in her face, opened the door and went out.

The young officer had disappeared, but a couple of guards were waiting for me. They were hardly more than boys, stocky little peasants out of the rice fields who gripped their AK assault rifles too tightly like men who weren’t as used to them as they should be. One of them went ahead, opened the end door and motioned me through.

The compound was deserted, not a prisoner in sight. The gate stood wide, the watch towers floated in the morning mist. Everything waited. And then I heard the sound of marching feet and St Claire came round the corner with the young Chinese officer and two guards.

In spite of the broken jump boots, the tattered green fatigues, he still looked everything a soldier ever could be. He marched with that crisp, purposeful movement that only the regular seems to acquire. Every step meant something. It was as if the Chinese were with him; as if he were leading.

He had the Indian sign on them, there was no doubt of that, which is saying something for the Chinese do not care for the Negro overmuch. But then, he was something special and like no man I have known before or since.

He paused and looked at me searchingly, then smiled that famous St Claire smile that made you feel you were the only damned person that mattered in the wide world. I moved to his side and we set off together. He increased his pace and I had to jump to it to stay level with him. We might have been back at Benning, drill on the square, and the guards had to run to keep up with us.

Colonel Chen-Kuen’s rains came as we went through the gate, in that incredible instant downpour that you only get with the monsoon. It didn’t make the slightest difference to St Claire and he carried on at the same brisk pace so that one of the guards had to run past to get in front of us to lead the way.

In other circumstances it could have been funny, but not now. We plunged through the heavy, drenching downpour into the forest and took a path that led down towards the river a mile or more away.

A couple of hundred yards further on we entered a broad clearing that sloped steeply into the trees. There were mounds of earth all over the place, as nice a little cemetery as you could wish for, but minus the headstones naturally.

The young officer called us to a halt, his voice hard and flat through the rain. We stood and waited while he had a look round. There didn’t seem much room to spare, but he obviously wasn’t going to let a little thing like that worry him. He selected a spot on the far side of the clearing, found us a couple of rusting trenching shovels that looked as if they had seen plenty of service and went and stood in the shelter of the trees with two of the guards and smoked cigarettes, leaving one to watch over us as we set to work.

The soil was pure loam, light and easy to handle because of the rain. It lifted in great spadefuls that had me knee-deep in my own grave before I knew where I was. And St Claire wasn’t exactly helping. He worked at it as if there was a bonus at the end of the job, those great arms of his swinging three spadefuls of dirt into the air for every one of mine.

The rain seemed to increase in a sudden rush that drowned all hope. I was going to die. The thought rose in my throat like bile to choke on and then it happened. The side of the trench next to me collapsed suddenly, probably because of the heavy rain, leaving a hand and part of a forearm protruding from the earth, flesh rotting from the bones.

I turned away blindly, fighting for air, and lost my balance, falling flat on my face. At the same moment the other wall of the trench collapsed across me.

As I struggled for life, I was aware that St Claire had started to laugh, that deep, rich, special sound that seemed to come right up from the roots of his being. It didn’t make any kind of sense at all but I had other things to think of now. The stink of the grave was in my nostrils, my eyes. I opened my mouth to scream and soil poured in choking the life out of me in a great wave of darkness that blotted out all light…