Toll for the Brave. Jack Higgins

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СКАЧАТЬ in an enclosed booth with headphones and a tape recorder.’

      I made the obvious point. ‘If what you’re saying is true, why have they put me in with you?’

      ‘Search me.’ He shrugged. ‘First I knew was when Chen-Kuen called me in, told me every last damn thing about you there was to know and said you’d be joining me.’

      ‘But there must be a purpose?’

      ‘You can bet your sweet life there is. Could be he just wants to observe our reactions. Two rats in a cage. That’s all we are to him.’

      I kicked a chair out of the way, walked to one of the tiny windows and stared out into the rain.

      St Claire said softly, ‘You’re too up-tight, son. You’ll need to cool it if you’re going to survive round here. The state you’re in now, you’d crack at the first turn of the screw.’

      ‘But not you,’ I said. ‘Not Black Max.’

      He was off the bed and I was nailed to the wall. The face was devoid of all expression, carved from stone, the face of a man who would kill without the slightest qualm, had done so more times than he could probably remember.

      He said very slowly in a voice like a cut-throat razor, ‘They have a room down below here they call the Box. I could tell you what it’s like, but you wouldn’t begin to understand. They locked the door on me for three weeks and I walked out. Three weeks of being back in the womb and I walked out.’

      He released me and spun around like a kid, arms outstretched, smiling like the sun breaking through after rain.

      ‘Jesus, boy, but you should have seen their faces.’

      ‘How?’ I said. ‘How did you do it?’

      He tossed me another cigarette. ‘You’ve got to be like the Rock of Gibraltar. So sure of yourself that nothing can touch you.’

      ‘And how do you get like that?’

      He lay back, head pillowed on one arm. ‘I did a little judo at Harvard when I was a student. After the war, when I was posted to Japan with the occupation army, I took it further, mainly for something to do. First I discovered karate, then a lethal little item called aikido. I’m black belt in both.’

      It was said casually, a statement of fact, no particular pride in the voice at all.

      ‘And then a funny thing happened,’ he continued. ‘I was taken to meet an old Zen priest, eighty or ninety years old and all of seven stone. The guy who took me was a judo black belt. In the demonstration that followed, the old man remained seated and he attacked him from the rear.’

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘The old man threw him time and time again. He told me afterwards that his power came from the seat of reflex control, what they call the tanden or second brain. Usually developed by long periods of meditation and special breathing exercises. It’s all just a Japanese development of the ancient Chinese art of Shaolin Temple Boxing and even that was imported from India with Zen Buddhism.’

      He was beginning to lose me. ‘Just how far did you go with all this stuff yourself?’

      ‘Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism. I’ve boned up on them all. Studied Chinese Boxing in every minute of my spare time for nearly four years at a Zen monastery about forty miles out of Tokyo in the mountains. I thought I knew it all when I started and found I knew nothing.’

      ‘And what’s it all come down to?’

      ‘Ever read the Daw-Der-Jung by Lao Tzu, the Old Master?’ He shrugged. ‘No, I guess you wouldn’t. He says, amongst other things, that when one wishes to expand one must first contract. When one wishes to rise, one must first fall. When one wishes to take, one must first give. Meekness can overcome hardness and weakness can overcome strength.’

      ‘And what in the hell is all that supposed to add up to?’

      ‘You’ve got to be able to relax completely, just like a cat. That way you develop ch’i. It’s a kind of intrinsic energy. When it’s accumulated in the tan t’ien, a point just below the navel, it has an elemental force greater than any physical strength can hope to be. There are various breathing exercises which can help you along the way. A kind of self-hypnotism.’

      He proceeded to explain one in detail and the whole thing seemed so ridiculous that for the first time it occurred to me that his imprisonment might have affected him for the worst.

      I suppose it must have shown on my face for he laughed out loud. ‘You think I’m crazy, don’t you? Well, not yet, boy. Not by a mile and a half. You listen to me and maybe you stand a ten percent chance of getting through this place in one piece. And now I’d get some sleep if I were you while you’ve got the chance.’

      He dismissed me by picking up a book, a paperback edition of The Thoughts of Mao Tse-tung. By then, I was past caring about anything. Even the short walk to my bed was an effort.

      But the straw mattress seemed softer than anything I had ever known, the sensation of easing aching limbs almost masochistic in the pleasure it gave. I closed my eyes, poised on the brink of sleep and started to slither into darkness, all tension draining out of me. A bell started to jangle somewhere inside my head, a hideous frightening clamour that touched the raw nerve endings like a series of electric shocks.

      I was aware of St Claire’s warning cry and the door burst open and the young officer who had delivered me re-appeared, a dozen soldiers at his back and three of them with bayonets fixed to their AKs. They pinned St Claire to the wall, roaring like a caged tiger. The others were armed only with truncheons.

      ‘Remember what I told you, boy,’ St Claire called and then I was taken out through the door on the run and helped on the way by the young officer’s boot.

      I was kicked and beaten all the way along the passage and down four flights of stone stairs, ending up in a corner against a wall, cowering like an animal, arms wrapped around my head as some protection against those flailing truncheons.

      I was dragged to my feet, half-unconscious, the clothes stripped from my body. There was a confusion of voices then an iron door clanged shut and I was alone.

      It was like those odd occasions when you awaken to utter darkness at half-past three in the morning and turn back fearfully to the warmth of the blankets, filled with a sense of dreadful unease, of some horror beyond the understanding crouched there on the other side of the room.

      Only this was for always, or so it seemed. There were no blankets to turn into. Three weeks St Claire had survived in here. Three weeks. Eternity could not seem longer.

      I took a hesitant step forward and blundered into a stone wall. I took two paces back, hand outstretched and touched the other side. Three cautious paces brought me to the rear wall. From there to the iron-plated door was four more.

      A stone womb. And cold. Unbelievably cold. A trap at the bottom of the door opened, yellow light flooding in. Some sort of metal pan was pushed through and the trap closed again.

      It was water, fresh and cold. I drank a little, then crouched there beside the door and waited.

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