Toll for the Brave. Jack Higgins

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ considerable period, which wasn’t surprising in view of what I had been through and awakened slowly to the same utter darkness as before.

      I wanted to relieve myself badly, tried hammering on the door with no effect whatsoever and was finally compelled to use one of the corners which was hardly calculated to make things any more pleasant.

      How long had it been? Five hours or ten? I sat there listening intently, straining my ears for a sound that would not come and suddenly it was three-thirty in the morning again and it was waiting for me over there in the darkness, some nameless horror that would end all things.

      I felt like screaming. Instead, I started to fight back. First of all I tried poetry, reciting it out loud, but that didn’t work too well because my voice seemed to belong to someone else which made me feel more alarmed than ever. Next, I tried working my way through books I’d read. Good, solid items that took plenty of time. I did a fair job on Oliver Twist and could recite The Great Gatsby almost word-for-word anyway, but I lost out on David Copperfield half-way through.

      It was about then that I found myself thinking about St Claire for he was already a kind of mythical hero figure as far as the American Airborne forces were concerned. St Claire and his history were as much a part of recruit training as practising P.L.F.s or learning how to take an M16 to pieces and putting it together again blindfold.

      Brigadier-General James Maxwell St Claire, himself alone from the word go. Son of a Negro millionaire who’d made his first million out of insurance and had never looked back. No silver spoon, just eighteen carat gold. Harvard – only the best – and then he’d simply walked out and joined the paratroops as a recruit back in nineteen forty-one.

      Captured in Italy in forty-three, as a sergeant, he’d escaped to fight with Italian partisans in the Po marshes, ending up in command of a force of four hundred that fought a German infantry division to a standstill in three days. That earned him a field commission and within a year he was captain and dropping into Brittany a week before D-day with units of the British Special Air Service.

      He’d earned his Medal of Honour in Korea in nineteen fifty-two. When a unit of Assault Engineers had failed to blow a bridge the enemy were about to cross in strength, St Claire had gone down and blown it up by hand, himself along with it. By then no one in the entire American Army was particularly surprised when he was fished out of the water alive.

      And his appetite for life was so extraordinary. Women, liquor and food in that order, but looking back on it all now, I see that above all, it was action that his soul craved for and a big stage to act on.

      God, but I was cold and shaking all over, my limbs trembling uncontrollably. I wrapped my arms around myself and hung on tight, not that that was going to do me much good. I think it was then that I remembered what St Claire had said, recalled even a line or two of some Taoist poem he had quoted. In motion, be like water, at rest like the mirror.

      I had nothing to lose, that was for certain, so I sat crosslegged and concentrated on recalling every step of the breathing exercises he had described to me. His method of developing this mysterious ch’i he had talked about.

      I tried to relax as much as possible, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. I closed my eyes, not that it made much difference, and covered my right ear with my left hand. I varied this after five minutes by covering my left ear with my right hand. After a further five minutes, I covered both ears, arms crossed.

      It was foolishness of the worst kind, even if it was a technique a couple of thousand years old according to St Claire, but at least my limbs had stopped shaking and the sound of the breathing was strangely peaceful. I was no longer conscious of the stone floor or of the cold, simply floated there in the cool darkness, listening to my breathing.

      It was like the sea upon the shore, a whisper through leaves in a forest at evening, a dying fall. Nothing.

      They had me in there for eight days during which time I grew progressively weaker. Using St Claire’s technique, I slid into a self-induced trance almost at will, coming out of it, as far as I could judge afterwards, at fifteen or twenty hour intervals.

      During the whole period no one appeared, no one spoke. I never again saw the small trap in the door open although I did discover several more containers of water, presumably pushed through while I was in a trance. There was never any food.

      Towards the end, conditions were appalling. The place stank like a sewer for obvious reasons and I was very weak indeed – very light-headed. And I was never conscious of dreaming, of thinking of anything at all, except at the very end of things when I experienced one of the most vivid and disturbing dreams of my life.

      I was lying naked on a small bed and it was not dark. I was no longer in the Box for I could see again, a pale, diffused golden glow to things that was extraordinarily pleasant. It was warm. I was cocooned in warmth which was hardly surprising for the room was full of steam.

      A voice called, slightly distorted, like an echo from far away. ‘Ellis? Are you there, Ellis?’

      I raised my head and saw Madame Ny standing no more than a yard away from me. She was wearing her uniform skirt and the leather boots, but had taken off her tunic. Underneath, she was wearing a simple white cotton blouse.

      The blouse was soaking up the steam like blotting paper and as I watched, a nipple blossomed on the tip of each breast and then the breasts themselves materialised as if by magic as the thin material became saturated.

      It was one of the most erotic things I have ever seen in my life, electrifying in its effect and my body could not help but respond. She came over beside the bed, leaned down and put a hand on me.

      I tried to push her away and she smiled gently and said, still in that distorted, remote voice, ‘But there’s nothing to be ashamed of, Ellis. Nothing to fear.’

      She unfastened the zip at the side of her uniform skirt and slipped out of it. Underneath she was wearing a pair of cotton pants as damp with steam as the blouse. She took them off with a complete lack of concern, then sat on the edge of the bed and unbuttoned the blouse.

      Her breasts were round and full, wet with moisture from the steam, incredibly beautiful. I was shaking like a leaf in a storm as she reached out and pulled my face against them.

      ‘Poor Ellis.’ The voice echoed into the mist. ‘Poor little Ellis Jackson. Nobody loves him. Nobody.’ And then she pushed me away so that she could look into my face and said, ‘But I do. I love you, Ellis.’

      And then she rolled on to her back, the thighs spreading to receive me and her mouth was all the sweetness in life, the fire of my climax such a burning ecstasy that it had me screaming out loud.

      I came awake to that scream in the darkness of the Box again, the stench of the place in my nostrils and for some reason found myself standing up straight and screaming out loud again, a blank defiance at the forces ranged against me.

      There was a rattle of bolts and a moment later, the door opened and a great shaft of yellow light flooded in.

      They were all there, the young officer and his men and Colonel Chen-Kuen, Madame Ny at his shoulder, very correct in full uniform including a regulation peaked cap with a red star in the front. She looked white and shocked. No, more than that – distressed, but not Chen-Kuen. He was simply interested in how well I’d stood up to things, the complete scientist.

      I stood swaying from side-to-side while they busied themselves with a door next to mine. When it swung СКАЧАТЬ