Silence Is Golden (Storm and Silence 3)

/> For a moment, I was frozen. Incredible, right? I mean, it was hot enough in the jungle to melt an iceberg. But where ice crystals failed, the muzzle of a gun seemed to be wonderfully effective. I felt a chill go down my spine - and I was not as grateful for the relief from the heat as I probably should have been.

How did this happen? How did they catch up to us?

The question answered itself almost as soon as it was posed. Of course, they didn’t catch up! They must have been able to decipher enough of the manuscript to figure out it led into these mountains. And then, they had simply moved on the swiftest path, and lain in wait for us. No wonder we had taken longer, with all the roundabout paths we had taken to avoid detection.

‘Well?’ Colonel Silveira raised an eyebrow. ‘Surrender!’

Mr Ambrose? Surrender?

Yes, of course! And elephants could walk on water.

Mr Ambrose, Karim and Chandresh shared a brief look. One of those ‘We’re men! We can do this!’ looks that only the most infuriating, chauvinistic males on this earth have mastered to perfection.

‘Go, Sahib!’ Karim called out, whipping a rifle off his back and aiming in a blink. ‘Get out of the line of fire! We’ll take care of this!’

I wanted to growl: ‘Not bloody likely!’ No way in hell was I leaving someone else to fight my battles for me. But Mr Ambrose apparently had a more practical, less heroic approach to matters. Grabbing me by the arm, he pulled me behind a rock and off up the mountain as the bullets started flying.

‘Let go!’ I demanded, struggling against his hold. ‘They need our help!’

‘They’re doing their job,’ he told me coolly. His grip did not relax, and neither did his stride slow down for an instant. ‘We’re doing ours. Where is the treasure, Mr Linton?’

‘Who cares about the stupid treasure?’

‘I do. And since I pay your wages, mine is the only opinion that matters.’ He spoke perfectly calmly, as if the barrage of gunfire behind us wasn’t hammering on our ears, deafeningly loud. ‘Now, and I am not going to ask this again, where is the treasure?’

Grinding my teeth, I pointed up one of the paths ahead.

‘Adequate.’

He made a slight course correction, and started pulling me up that way.

‘You really are a ruthless son of a bachelor, aren’t you?’ Without the slightest intention on my part, the words came out sounding almost admiring.

‘Eloquently put, Mr Linton. And correctly.’

‘What if Karim dies?’

His grip on my arm twitched. ‘Then I will have difficulties finding an adequate replacement.’

‘Is that all?’

His fingers twitched again. ‘Yes.’

Liar!

But I didn’t say it out loud. If there was one thing I had learned from Mr Ambrose it was that, sometimes, silence was golden. Especially when there were bullets flying and you had to run.

Running wasn’t easy. The path was rocky, every step a dangerous experiment. But no matter how tough it was, Mr Ambrose never let go of my arm. Eventually, the ground became smoother. The path opened up in front of us and, a moment later, we were standing on the edge of a cliff, staring at a gorge spanned only by a single, rickety rope bridge.

We dashed forward, but had hardly reached the bridge when footsteps came thudding up the path behind us. Mr Ambrose whirled around, shoving me behind him with an air of masculine superiority which I deeply resented. I probably would have resented it even more if the people behind us hadn’t had guns.

‘Stay behind me!’ In a flash, Mr Ambrose had his revolver drawn and cocked. His hand was as steady as a rock as he took aim at the opening of the path.

Shrugging, I slid my hand into my pocket and pulled out my own gun. He had said to stay behind him. He had mentioned nothing about not shooting the sons of bitches that were after us!

But when the first figure burst out from between the rocks, it wasn’t Colonel Silveira or one of his men. It was a mountainous man with a big beard and a turban on his head.

Karim looked even grimmer than usual. He was bleeding out of a gash on his forehead, and there was more blood scattered over his clothes which I guessed probably wasn’t his. Mr Ambrose lowered his firearm a few inches as the Mohammedan came hurtling towards us.