Read Online A Loyal Spy by Simon Conway - Free Book Online Page A

was on his feet, swaying and snorting like an enraged bear. He spat the lump of gristle in his mouth on to the ground. Things leapt in and out of focus. He looked from right to left: Nor was squatting, very still, on the balls of his feet; one man was hunched over the stump; another was spreadeagled on his back; a third man, the one in the Tupac T-shirt, was stumbling in the direction of the treeline and the bogeyman was on his knees crawling after him. The killing was not done. With his bound hands Jonah tugged the machete out of the man’s head. He took five steps, sloshing through the mud. He counted them, one after the other. Focus came and went. The bogeyman rolled into a ball, like a frightened millipede. Jonah thought
you’re dead.
He brought up the blade and swung it down and brought it up and swung it down.
    ‘
Stop!
’ A shout.
    He staggered backwards, staring wildly.
    There was a loud
crack
and he wondered for a moment whether he’d been shot. Missed. Nor would not miss again. He closed his eyes, giving himself to the coming bullet. Nothing. He opened his eyes. Nor was standing with the stock of the Kalashnikov fitted to his shoulder, his eyes narrow as slits and his tongue thrust deep into his cheek; his finger tightening on the trigger for a second time.
Crack.
He shot the remaining fighter just a couple of steps short of the treeline. Then he turned to Jonah, pointing the rifle at him.
    ‘I’ll shoot you dead.’
    Jonah exhaled, staggering back and forth. His head was thumping like a hammer. He sank to his knees. ‘I don’t have it in me to take you on.’
    Nor acknowledged Jonah’s response with a quick nod of the head and walked among the wounded, dispatching them, one at a time, with the barrel pressed to each forehead before gently squeezing the trigger.
    Then he turned to Jonah, pointing the rifle at him again. ‘Tell Monteith to beware the sky.’
    A moment’s pause.
The sky?
‘Why?’
    ‘A whirlwind is coming, Jonah,’ Nor said softly. ‘When it has passed nothing will ever be the same.’ Then he ejected the cartridge, cleared the breech and threw the rifle to the ground. ‘You’d better run for your life.’
    Jonah staggered into the jungle. Soon afterwards he heard the hammering of automatic-weapons fire.
    A storm came. He couldn’t see more than a couple of steps ahead. In the darkness, there was no boundary between land and sky. Rain poured down from the canopy and rushed along the forest floor. He was stumbling along a path that had become a torrent of water. There were crashing sounds all around that he was convinced were trees falling. He kept moving forward. Leaves and vines whipped him. Thorns ripped at his face and clothes. The ground gave way and abruptly he was tumbling in a mudslide. He slammed into a tree. He folded around it. He was numb and cold; only the cuts on his face felt real.
    A family of charcoal burners found him in the wake of the storm. He was unconscious and still clinging to the tree, his fingers gripping the bark. They had to prise them off, one by one, before cutting off the plastic cuffs. He was too large to carry, so they made a sled from fertiliser bags and dragged him through the forest to their camp.
    When he woke up he was on the sandy floor of a tent, lying wrapped in blankets. There was a fire burning beside him. The logs were crackling, sparks falling on the ground.
    One of the charcoal burners was leaning over him. ‘Who are you?’
    He almost laughed. It was such a great excuse to be an am­nesiac, to be reborn. Unfortunately, he remembered everything.
    ‘The cat’s out of the bag,’ he said.
    ‘You have a fever,’ the man said.
    And a splitting headache.
    With Nor dead there had been some hope of keeping the assassination of Kiernan a secret and avoiding a vengeful American response; with Nor alive there was no such hope. They would always live with the fear that Nor would talk. And he would talk, Jonah was sure of that. The only possible