The White Lie Assignment by Peter Driscoll

Author:Peter Driscoll [Driscoll, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

The boot released its pressure on my back but I couldn’t move. I felt like a jelly that someone had dropped on the floor. One of the troops took me under the armpits and dragged me to my feet and I stood there swaying, transfixed by the light that shone straight into my eyes. I could feel nothing else. I knew nothing but a single fact that rang through my head like the peal of a bell. It’s all over, it’s all over.

Most of the torches had gone off but one disc of light lingered in the doorway. Its beam still played curiously over me. Behind it I could see only the peak of a cap and a broad pair of shoulders. I became aware of another fact chiming it over the first: it’s my fault, I insisted on waiting.

Nikos was standing beside me. There were soldiers all around us, smelling of damp clothing and coarse tobacco and starting to chatter excitedly now that the action was over. Somebody coughed and spat. Somebody else walked across the cleared space between us and Jemel Kish and handed over Nikos’ pistol. Kish covered us with a machine carbine that peeped out between the skirts of a glistening oilskin. He reached out for the pistol, tucked it in the waistband of his trousers and said, ‘Get your hands up. Higher than that.’ His eyes flicked from one to the other of us and there was a hesitant smile on his lips.

My shock had settled into an aching fear as if a hole had been kicked in my stomach. But I hadn’t time to think of the full meaning of what had happened. With a gun pointing at me, I couldn’t think of anything except that the lunatic holding it might let it off. Now the man in the doorway stepped forward into the light.

Beneath the forage cap was a plump, smooth amber face with long Oriental eyes. There was no badges on the damp cotton drill suit but I’d seen the uniform before. He was an officer of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. He stepped aside as two more soldiers came in carrying Aliki.

Nikos tensed up beside me. ‘You did not have to do that,’ he said.

Kish jerked up the muzzle of his carbine. ‘It is for me to decide what I have to do. She ran. I had no inclination to chase her.’

Her clothes were covered in yellow mud from the hillside where she had fallen. The front of her tunic was stained a dirty chocolate colour by the blood that had seeped through afterwards. Damp hair clung to her face, and the eyes were not quite shut so that light was reflected by glistening brown slits. The eyes told me she was dead. The soldiers stopped by one of the narrow beds and rolled her on to it.

‘Now come over here and sit down,’ Kish said. ‘Keep your hands up.’ He used the gun muzzle to indicate the bed opposite the one where Aliki’s body lay.

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