Divinity Road

Martin Pevsner

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Signal Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781904955887
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page


DIVINITY ROAD


By

Martin Pevsner


Dedication

To Jean-Louis, Munia, Nicky, Joe, Ella, Patrick, Awat, Kate, Mike, Milan, Tom, Inge, Ataullah Khan, Jim and everyone else who helped in one way or another. And of course to you, Elaine. Thank you, thank you, thank you.


Publisher Information

First published in 2011 by
Signal Books Limited
36 Minster Road
Oxford
OX4 1LY
www.signalbooks.co.uk

Digital Edition converted by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

© Martin Pevsner, 2011

All rights reserved. The whole of this work, including all text and illustrations, is protected by copyright. No parts of this work may be loaded, stored, manipulated, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information, storage and retrieval system without prior written permission from the publisher, on behalf of the copyright owner.

Quotations in this novel are taken from the following: The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an (Tenth Edition), Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Amana Publications, Beltsville, Maryland, USA, 1999 The Holy Bible, Collins, London, 1952

Production: Jennifer Krebs Cover Design: Brianna Corbett Cover Images: javarman3/istockphoto; Brianna Corbett Printed in India by Imprint Digital




Prologue

So this is how it will be.
I will arrive at the airport by taxi. I will be dressed in a charcoal suit, white shirt, blue tie, black leather shoes. They bought the outfit yesterday morning and I put it on for them when they got back. They examined me carefully, made me walk up and down the room, finally nodded their approval. The shoes pinch but I did not tell them.
I will pay the taxi-driver with two one-hundred rand notes, pocket the change. I have a third note if the taxi driver tries to overcharge me. Apart from the money and the mobile phone, I will carry nothing on my person except the locker key.
From the taxi rank, I will head straight into the airport, turn left and head for the left-luggage lockers. I will find locker number three-four-three, open it with the key, take out the briefcase.
I will follow the departure signs, check in at the desk. I will hand over my ticket and passport while they confirm my booking. The airport will be air-conditioned. The counter staff will be cool, indifferent.
Once I have checked in, I will wait exactly thirty-five minutes before going through immigration. To kill time I will visit the airport boutiques and drink a cup of espresso. Then I will brace myself and pass through the gates.
I will place the shiny maroon booklet on the counter of the cubicle. The immigration officer will take the document, flick through to the page with the photo, scan it through some computer system, look up briefly to match face with picture. He will give me a fleeting but professional glance, then slap the passport back on the counter. The passport will be clean, its owner seemingly composed, showing none of the tell-tale signs of suspicion that the officer will have been trained to spot. As I bend to pick up the briefcase, the officer will already be looking beyond me to the next in line.
After immigration, the next hurdle will be security. I will pick up my briefcase with my left hand, the passport with my right, walk straight ahead following the line of travellers. If all has gone to plan, there should be three security checkpoints, each manned by a pair of officers. I will go for the checkpoint on the left. The officer I’ll deal with will be expecting me. I will know it is him because he will have something wrong with his mouth, a cleft lip or similar deformity that has been operated on, half-repaired. I have seen a photo of him. He will be mixed race, greasy-skinned, cool in white short-sleeved shirt and navy slacks, his ID badge hanging from a thick, black lanyard.
His job will be to ensure the safe passage of myself and the briefcase. That is all I know about him. It is all I need to know.
After that, it will be plain sailing. Through to the departure lounge, wait for the flight to be called, make sure I have the boarding card ready. The flight attendant will smile at me and I will smile back.
And then we will be gone.
The end of my pain.
The end of my story.
This is how it will be.


Greg 1

Woosh! Like a deep sea diver breaking water, ripping through from the shadowy depths, the relief of the familiar, the escape from the unfathomable, he surfaces into a kind of semi consciousness. He knows he’s returned from an uneasy place, but he can’t remember what or why, only that his apprehension is justified.
He’s still only aware of physical sensation in the loosest sense, a feeling of wholesale trauma to his entire body so cataclysmic that it has resulted in neurological shut-down.
One part of his brain registers a vague sense of anxiety, a knowledge that something has happened that is so awful that there may be no pieces left to pick up.
But the shock to his system has numbed the pain and the blow to his head scrambled his thoughts and so he’s able to shelve his doubts, surrender to this foggy upheaval with calm resignation. It is an acquiescence made easier by a hazy belief that what he is undergoing is not shared by any significant loved ones.
Yes, there are loved ones, he knows that with absolute certainty, they exist in some other place, though he can’t for the moment think who or where they are.
So his overriding feeling is one of submission. Physically he’s temporarily out of order, circuits broken, wiring fried. Mentally he’s drugged on brain chemicals, befuddled by trauma to the head. There are no coherent questions flashing through his mind, no Am I dead or alive? no Is so-and-so OK? no What should I do next? He floats on a wave of passive acceptance until...
Woosh! He slips back into the murky twilight of oblivion.

***

Again the cavernous obscurity, the bursting into light. This time he’s more receptive, the shock-induced, pain-killing adrenaline has long-since receded. He’s lying down, that much is clear. On a hard surface, an uneven surface. His eyes are closed and he doesn’t yet feel disposed to open them. All in good time.
He has no idea how many minutes or hours have passed since he last dipped into consciousness, or indeed since whatever devastating event occurred to bring about his current predicament. As he lies there on the rutted, unyielding surface, the journey from the comfort of ignorant stupor to the burden of wakefulness nearly complete, he can feel each bodily sensation returning, the nerve endings switching on like an electrical circuit – click, click, click – the pain receptors powering up after a period of inactivity.
The change is sudden and brutal, from dulled anaesthesia, through angry discomfort to the present sensation of jagged, furious, all-consuming pain.
He has a sudden bad feeling about what he has woken up to, makes a half-hearted effort to will himself back into his soothing coma, but the hurting is too great.
He becomes aware of a sound, a low sporadic groaning. It’s chilling and pitiful, and he is about to force open his eyes to investigate the cause of this suffering when he realises that the moans are coming from his own mouth.
The pain is like a wild-eyed, whip-wielding dervish, howling and slashing mercilessly. He tries to isolate the different sources, running a mental ruler down his body. There’s a throbbing in his lower abdomen, just above his groin, as if someone has given him a tremendous kicking. The left side of his face from cheekbone to temple feels as if it has caved in. He wonders idly what could have caused such trauma – a hammer blow? a roof-top fall? a car accident? – but as yet has neither the strength nor inclination to investigate further. He pictures a crumpled skull, tufts of bloodied hair glued to flaps of shredded skin, oozing brain matter. He’s too frightened to reach up and touch himself.
His head is throbbing viciously, the principal refrain in an all-encompassing symphony of the aching, the sore, the tender. As yet he’s done little more than shift his body in microscopic movements, but it’s enough to know that it has taken a massive battering.
He becomes aware of a particular source of discomfort, a sharp stabbing from behind his right knee. For the first time, he makes a proper movement. He discovers that his right arm is hanging by his side and he sends it down to investigate the hurt. He pictures ruptured ligaments, crushed cartilage, but discovers that the source of the discomfort is external, that his knee is pressing down on a sharp stone. He shifts off the stone and the stabbing gradually recedes.
Time to open his eyes. Another effort, but in so doing, he registers two more facts about his circumstances that have so far eluded him. Firstly that he is outside. It is not so much the rocky soil he’s lying on that gives it away, but more the outdoor smells – the scent of dust and heat and unknown herbs – and an almost imperceptible breeze. Secondly that the temperature is fairly high, that he’s somewhere warm.
And so he opens his eyes and these two truths are confirmed. He looks up at a cloudless sky. His vision is at first blurred and shifting, the result, he suspects, of whatever damage has been done to his head. But it soon settles down and for a few minutes he makes no effort to look around, is content to gaze upwards at the heavens. A realisation that he is still alive, that he has survived something ruinous, brings relief.
He tilts his head slightly and sees that lower down towards the horizon the sky turns from azure to a deep savannah orange, licks of golden flame h