Yellow Rain (A Soldier of Fortune Adventure #4) by Peter McCurtin

Author:Peter McCurtin [McCurtin, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: action adventure, action hero, andy mcnab, Mercenaries, Piccadilly Publishing, soldiers of fortune, strike back
Publisher: Piccadilly
Published: 2022-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

I DIDN’T HAVE to go far.

We were in some sort of warehouse. Down a hallway, through another door, was a vast storeroom stacked high with second-hand clothing. Hundreds of World War II army overcoats, Eisenhower jackets, baggy 1950’s double-breasted suits with wide lapels, pea coats, mackinaws, ski sweaters. One enormous pile was made up of doorman and bellhop uniforms; a card on top identified the famous New York hotel they had come from. The big room smelled musty.

Razik saw me looking. “Old clothes from America is big business here,” he said. “America sends us old clothes and stale ideas.”

We went around a mountain of old shoes. Razik unlocked a door and there was another door beyond that. He knocked and it was opened by a young Afghan with a Russian machine pistol in his hand. He was hot-eyed and suspicious when he saw me.

“How is he?” Razik said in Pashto.

“Sleeping,” the guard answered.

Goldman, gaunt and bearded, lay on an iron cot with a dirty blanket pulled up to his throat. A snuffling sound came from his nose. The room had an air vent, no windows; a kerosene heater made it stuffy. Beside the cot was a table with books and magazines on it. One book was a mildewed book club edition of Forever Amber. An old copy of Scientific American lay on the cement floor beside the bed.

“He sleeps too much,” Razik said. “He has read the books and magazines many times. It doesn’t seem to bore him. Sometimes he is hard to wake.”

But Goldman opened his eyes before Razik touched him. He wore an Afghan shirt of loose weave, GI pants, slippers. His pale blue eyes were childlike, slightly dazed. “My glasses,” he said, putting an “R” into the word, the way they do in Boston, so it came out as “glars-ses.”

“I can’t see without my glasses.”

They were on the table; Razik got them. “How are you today?” he asked.

“Tired,” Goldman said. The glasses were wire-rimmed, very 1960’s Vietnam War protestor. I could see him marching on Washington with the Berrigan brothers, choking with pot smoke and righteous indignation. A pacifist. A lover of truth and justice, but there wasn’t much of that where he was now.

His eyes moved to me and Razik said, “This is Jim Rainey, a fellow American, and he’s come to take you back.”

Goldman’s eyes clouded with suspicion. “He doesn’t look like an American.”

“He’s an American,” Razik said. “Hired by your publisher.”

“Good old Stonewall Jackson Dunaway. Got a picture of Lincoln Steffens on his wall.” The cot shook with Goldman’s silent laughter. “Old Jackson would like to be a champion skier, but he’s too heavy for it. You ever ski, Abdul?”

“No, Charles,” Razik answered.

Goldman smiled, ignoring me. “All these snowy mountains and you haven’t skied. Is this man with the CIA? I don’t like the CIA. If he is, I’m not going to budge from this bed.”

Razik said, “Rainey is a mercenary and works for money. He has nothing to do with the CIA.”

“That’s what he says,” Goldman said.

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