Assault on Kolchak - A Cabot Cain Thriller (Book 1) by Alan Caillou

Author:Alan Caillou [Caillou, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Caliber Books
Published: 2024-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

The little town was even prettier close up than it had appeared from the top of the distant tree. The streets were clean and tidy, with neat green verges of chamomile that gave out a pleasant scent; they were still wet with dew, and the sun was just coming over the top of the whitewashed church spire. There were colorful tropical gardens everywhere, well-tended, well-watered, cool and delightful.

I sat for a while on a green-painted bench, watching the passers-by. At first there were very few, but they all stared at me curiously, as though it were a very unusual thing for anyone to be taking his ease on a park bench at this hour of the morning, And then there were more people, walking or bicycling to work, and an occasional car went by; and except for the constant stares, to which I’m pretty well inured, no one seemed more than casually aware of my presence.

But the particular character of the place, in spite of its charm, was slowly printing itself quite indelibly on my consciousness. A dozen Indians went to work in the gardens across the road, with rakes and shovels and hedge-clippers; they wore rags, and the well-dressed European with them was carrying a whip. A guard took up his position nearby, squatting casually on a stone bench with a rifle over his shoulder while he munched on a piece of hard cheese.

Some more Indians passed me by, bowed under heavy loads, like animals, and three of them were dragging a heavy barrow that was loaded down with watermelons; a European was driving them too, and he also carried a long whip. There was a sharp division of population here, a cruel and wicked division. I saw a half-caste stumble across the path of a sauntering policeman, and the policeman lashed out with his foot and sent the old man sprawling in the gutter.

There were more cars now, and almost no trucks, and I noticed that nearly all of the cars were the good ones; there were no little Volkswagens or Austins or Renaults; there were plenty of the luxury European cars, and I wondered how much it must have cost to fly them in here.

Here, the rich man drove a Mercedes, or a Rolls, or a Ferrari; the forlorn delights of fine cars, with only ten or twenty miles of road to drive them on. The poor man went on foot and was whipped for his pains; and in between these two extremes, there was nothing, nothing at all.

I was an intruder, sitting there alone and absorbing all that there was to be absorbed. Sooner or later, I’d be in trouble, but for all their vaunted security I was right in among them, past the first line of their defenses. There was an enemy in their midst, and they didn’t even know it; yet.

A small and pleasant looking café across the road was just opening up, and a mestizo was swilling away any dust that might have been on the pavement with a long black rubber hose.

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