The Ninth Buddha Read Free Page A

companion.   Both men began to run at once.   There was no time to skip or dodge.   Christopher felt himself   bowled over, then the thin man was on top of him, pressing him into the snow, crushing his chest, making it impossible for him to breathe.
    There was a stifled cry.   Twisting his head, Christopher saw the heavy
    man grab William from behind and begin to pull him, struggling, across the snow.   The boy kicked out, trying to escape, but the man was too powerful for him.
    Christopher pressed up, freeing his right arm in an attempt to grab for his assailant’s throat and dislodge him.   But the man twisted away from him, thrust a hand into the wide pocket of his coat, and brought out a large pistol.   Christopher froze as the man raised it and held it against his head.
    “I am ordered not to harm you,” the thin man said.   His voice was soft, the accent foreign yet hard to place.
    “But I do not always obey orders, and I have killed a great many men in my time.   I intend to leave here without interference.   Do you understand?   So please lie still and let us do what we have come here to do.   The boy will not be harmed: I promise you.”
    William cried out, still struggling with his captor.
    “Father!   Help me!   Help me!”
    The thin man cocked the pistol and held it very hard against Christopher’s temple.   Beneath him, he felt the snow cold and precise against him, and a stone that stabbed mercilessly into the small of his back.
    He had forgotten Father Middleton.   The priest, stunned by the suddenness and violence of the attack, had remained standing in the middle of the road, a single arm raised, whether to ward off further attack or to bless his attackers it was not clear.   But at the boy’s cry, like a sleeper awakened, he stirred and began to stumble through the dragging snow.
    Encumbered by the struggling child, the heavy man was finding it hard to make progress.   He almost slipped as William twisted in an effort to throw him off balance.   One arm was round the boy’s throat, while the other desperately tried to pin William’s flailing arms to his side.
    The priest ran up, arms reaching for the boy’s assailant.   He cried out inarticulately, the same voice that had spoken Mass only minutes before, troubled now with fear and a grim rage.   His finger’s tore at the man’s arm, dragging him from the boy.   The two men slipped and slithered on the wet ground, their feet struggling for some sort of purchase.   Suddenly, the heavy man lost his balance and fell, pulling the priest with him.
    “Run, William!”   Father Middleton shouted.
    “Run like hell!”
    William hesitated, then turned and ran back in the direction of
    the town, in search of help.   On the ground, the priest rolled in the snow, fumbling for a grip that would allow him to overpower the kidnapper.   He was a rugby player, but the man beneath him was stronger than him and was starting to recover from his fall.   The priest got his arm across the big man’s windpipe, hoping to crush the air from his lungs, but as he did so the other man succeeded in bringing up his knee hard into his groin.
    Father Middleton grunted and bent with pain.   The heavy man squirmed, pushing him away from him, wriggling out from beneath his body.   But as he started to get to his feet, the priest recovered his breath and lunged at him in a low tackle, bringing him down heavily into a patch of virgin snow.
    Suddenly, something glinted in the lamplight.   As the priest threw himself across to pin him down again, the man lifted a knife and brought it up in a smooth arc.   The knife-blade shimmered in the light, then disappeared as it entered the priest’s chest.   Father Middleton’s body jerked backwards, trying to escape the pain of the blade, but the momentum of his leap kept him moving down on to the hilt.   He fell on to the man, tearing the knife from his grasp, throwing blood across his face.
    “Jesus!”