The Cassandra Sanction Read Free Page B

to reveal to a stranger how he’d been wanderingaimlessly through Europe for the last couple of months, never lingering long in one place, staying in cheap hotels to preserve his savings, travelling by public transport wherever whim or random choice took him.
    ‘I wanted to see the castle,’ he said.
    Which, as far as it went, was true, although Ben hadn’t been aware of the existence of the ancient Moorish fortress – whose ruins toppedthe hill overlooking Frigiliana – until he’d happened to pick up a discarded magazine on the bus from Sevilla, just for something to read. Then, just for something to do, when he’d got off the bus he’d made the long, hot, dusty hike up the hill to visit the lonely ruins that marked the site of the battle of El Peñon de Frigiliana, where in 1569 some six thousand Christian soldiers had stormed thelast stronghold of the Moorish empire and spelled the final end of Muslim rule in Spain.
    Once he’d got to the top, Ben had wondered why he’d bothered. He’d seen all the battlefields he ever wanted to see in his life, both ancient and modern. The remains of the fortress didn’t look much different from crusader ruins he’d observed in the Middle East or the smoking rubble of killing zones inAfghanistan, from back in the day. It was a sad old place, haunted by the same ancient ghosts as all such places inevitably were.
    Ben had perched on a crumbled wall and smoked a few cigarettes while looking out over the valley below, then got thirsty and come wandering back down the hill into Frigiliana to find a cool drink. The rest of the story, Raul didn’t need telling.
    ‘Well, I’m gladyou showed up when you did,’ Raul said after another grateful slurp of coffee. It seemed to be reviving him a little already. ‘I can’t believe the way you went through those idiots. You must be some kind of seventh-dan Aikido master or something.’
    ‘It’s just a few simple tricks,’ Ben said.
    ‘Tricks.’ Raul considered that for a moment. ‘Well, whatever, you saved my ass from a serious beatingback there. Probably saved my job, too. Respectable schoolteachers aren’t supposed to get into drunken fights and turn up at school all bruised up.’
    ‘You teach English?’ Ben said, glancing in the direction of the degree certificate.
    Raul nodded. ‘In a secondary school, just a few kilometres from here.’
    ‘It’s the middle of the week. Is there a holiday?’
    Raul said quietly, ‘No, I… I’m taking time off.’
    Ben didn’t ask why. ‘Respectable schoolteachers don’t generally have such a useful right jab, in my experience.’
    Raul gave a sour laugh. ‘I was an amateur boxing champion in my teens. It’s been years since I so much as threw a punch. Stupid.’ He sat hunched over with his elbows on his knees, toying with his cup and frowning. ‘I shouldn’t have gone in there in thefirst place. As if I hadn’t already got enough booze in this place to drink myself into a hole in the ground. Maybe I was looking for a fight. Maybe I wanted it to happen.’
    ‘Whatever it was about,’ Ben said, ‘it’s none of my business. I’m going to finish up my coffee and get out of here. Do us both a favour and try not to get yourself killed with a repeat performance, okay? A broken heart’snot worth getting beaten to death over. No matter how pretty she is.’ Ben pointed back with his thumb at the picture over the desk.
    Raul hung his head down so low that it almost touched his knees. He whispered, ‘Was. And she was more than that. She was a lot more.’
    Ben said nothing.
    ‘See, everything anyone says about her now has to be in the past tense. Even I catch myself doing it.As if she really had gone, as if she were no longer a part of the world. That’s what the police would have everyone believe.’
    Ben still said nothing.
    ‘And now Klein says it too,’ Raul murmured. ‘I thought maybe he’d see it differently, but he’s just like the others. Nobody but me can see