Fearless ; The Smoke Child by Lee Stone

Author:Lee Stone [Stone, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781692130930
Published: 2020-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

2

Charlie Lockhart was enjoying an ice cold beer in the fierce afternoon sun. He was sitting on an ancient lounger outside a beach bar in Kep. He watched the tourists ebb and flow across the sand, blown in by the wind and blown out just as quickly. They were an endless stream of backpackers and thrill seekers, all of them slowed down by the thick soup of humid air. They were young and wide-eyed and a long way from home. Most of them were in their twenties; gap year students swimming in the unreality of the Far East and trying hard to fall off Cambodia’s beaten path. Lockhart was different. He was a little older than the gap year students, and a little more comfortable in his skin. He watched them for a while, wondered where they came from, occasionally supping his beer. It tasted good. Beyond the sand was the clear blue Gulf of Thailand. He watched it all the way to the horizon where it smudged into a cloudless sky. It was March, and the monsoons were coming. But not yet. Not today.

The beach bar was little more than a grass roof set on thick bamboo struts. It was nestled into the lush green vegetation on the battle line where the land met the sea. An assortment of weather-beaten chairs and loungers spilled out of the place so that half were in the sun and half were in the shade. Lockhart looked over to the girl lounging on a recliner next to him, trying to look relaxed. Beyond her, a sandblasted black board declared that it was happy hour. Lockhart had the feeling that it was always happy hour. At least, in the three days he’d been on the beach, the sign had never moved. It was forty degrees and too hot to be dragging things through the sand. What the hell. The drinks were cold and cheap. Everything was good.

The girl in the recliner sighed and shifted.

‘Charlie?’ she breathed. ‘Shall we stay here forever?’

He looked at her. She was fresh from the sea, her skin all the colors of a fall day, and a white two-piece swim suit clinging to her curves. He thought about the question. But not for too long.

‘I will head along the coast tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘All good things, and all of that.’

She rolled over and looked at him.

‘Shame,’ she said. ‘You’re good company.’

She struck Lockhart as good company too. But Lockhart didn’t have the luxury of staying anywhere forever. Not since the Mykola Evanko died. Evanko was a disgruntled civil servant with a story of corruption that went right to the heart of Ukraine’s government. He was paranoid as hell about what he had uncovered and lived his life like a character from a Le Carré novel. Lockhart had been working on the Times in London when Evanko had first got in touch. They met for furtive conversations in remote and unfashionable tearooms, Evanko always twitchy and secretive convinced his government would catch up with him.

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