The Reluctant Hero by Michael Dobbs

Author:Michael Dobbs
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction & Literature
ISBN: 1847372864
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The streets of Ashkek were dark and almost deserted as they headed for the suburbs. The crumbling monumental extravagance of the city centre soon gave way to more blatant poverty. Decaying houses were interspersed with hovels, the landscape held together with little more than corrugated iron and stray sheets of wooden panelling. Nothing was meant to last. Only dogs prowled the broken streets.

Eventually they turned off the highway and drove into the parking area of a truck-repair shop, out of sight of the road. An empty taxi was waiting. With only a fleeting farewell to the faithful Aibeck they started off again, with Bektour driving, until they approached a complex of tall buildings that stood out against the night sky like the trees of a dead forest. These were apartment blocks, towering above everything else that stood around. In Soviet times these had been Moscow’s answer to the housing shortage, a micro-city, for worker ants. It had been built to a blueprint devised almost two thousand miles away in the Soviet capital that had handed down inflexible prescriptions for the most elementary details of the design, every leaking tap, every loose door knob, every faltering light switch, every corner of crumbling concrete. By order. Nothing seemed to have escaped the imagination of the bureaucrats, except how people could live in these conditions. Those who slept here were almost grateful for the work that required them to be elsewhere six days of every week. As the taxi drove past the dilapidated store sheds and garages that cowered in the shadow of these behemoths, plumes of rubbish leapt up behind them, dancing in the air before giving up the struggle and falling back to the frozen earth. Dogs barked at the disturbance. The taxi heaved as it fell down yet another pot hole. That’s where Bektour stopped.

They had drawn up outside Block 11-C. If that sounded like a factory complex, the comparison was not misplaced. The entrance door was dimly lit, its glass fractured. The stairwell that led from it was dampand smelled of cabbage. There was no lift, and as they climbed to the second floor, they found Bektour’s mother was waiting for them at an open door. She offered no word of greeting, nothing but a scowl, stepping back with a show of unblemished reluctance to allow them inside. Her apartment was no more than a single main room, with the barest of kitchens in one corner, bookshelves against one wall, a sofa bed against another and one solitary window that stared out into the darkness beyond. As they helped Zac inside, Benazir grew more distressed, as if at any moment she expected armed men to come charging up the stairs. She began an argument with Bektour, one they had clearly rehearsed before, and he brought it to a rapid end. She bit her tongue and stepped away, her face set and sullen.

They stripped Zac. Then Bektour and Mourat helped him into the miserable bathroom and attacked him with a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.