The Cassandra Sanction Read Online Free PDF Page A

back. So with nothing much else to pass the time with, he gazed idly out of the window while waiting for the bus to depart.
    And that was when he saw her walking down the street. Shewas with a group of friends, all around the same age, late teens or early twenties. She was blonde and blue-eyed, wearing jeans and a light denim top, her hair most likely dyed and cropped short, a little spiky, a little punkish, giving her an elfin or pixie kind of look that wasn’t at all typical for a region where most of the girls were of the classic southern raven-haired, dark-eyed variety likethe rest of her friends. She stood out, and for Ben she stood out especially. She could almost have been—
    The sight of her brought a powerful surge of memories and thoughts into his mind, some of them many years old, some of them very recent. Some of the memories she evoked were the most painful of his life, worse than the terror of war, worse than getting shot, worse than torture and beatingsor the hell on earth that was SAS selection training.
    He watched her keenly through the glass until she disappeared behind the NO FUMAR sticker and then out of sight altogether, and he felt his compass needle waver, droop and then slew around in a hundred-and-eighty-degree arc.
    ‘Fuck it,’ he muttered under his breath.
    That was when he knew he couldn’t stay on this bus any longer.
    He grabbed his bag and strode back down the aisle to the door before the driver pulled away.
    ‘You just paid for a ticket,’ the driver said.
    ‘I changed my mind,’ Ben replied in Spanish.
    ‘You want a refund?’
    ‘Keep it.’
    The driver shrugged. He stabbed a button on his dash and the door slapped open and Ben stepped out into the evening coolness. He hitched his bag over his shoulderand started walking.
    ‘It’s you,’ Raul Fuentes said when he opened the door and saw Ben standing there on the step. He was clutching a fresh mug of coffee and looking a good bit more sober. ‘Why did you come back?’
    ‘Like I said, I don’t have anywhere else to be,’ Ben replied. ‘And because of what you told me. I know what it’s like to lose a sister. I’ve known it a long time.’

Chapter Four
    Morocco
    A long time ago
    It is the spring of ’85 and he has never been to such a place before. Through the shimmering heat and the glare and the insane buzz of dusty cars and motorcycles, they enter the Medina of Marrakech, the ancient walled city within a city. A thousand years old, and at its labyrinthine heart lies the souk.
    The street market is like nothing the young Ben has ever seen or imagined, with its dazzling arrays of meats and fish and fruits and exotic spices heaped in baskets; hanging displays of tapestries and rugs and ornate clothing and shoes and scarves and carvings and glittering lamps that seem to go on and on forever. The air is filled with the jabber of vendors and customers haggling and bargaining in a language he does not yet understand; he can have no way of knowing that one day he will speak it fluently. The merchants of the souk are the sharpest salesmen on earth, but the intricacies of buying and selling are concepts that the boy has yet to encounter in his overprotected middle-class life. Men who look like characters from the Bible walk the narrow street, yelling, ‘Balak! Balak!’ as a warning to get out of their way as they lead their overladen donkeys through the crowd, the animals’ flanks swaying with everything from garbage to goods for sale in the souk. All around him Ben sees veiled women in kaftans, bearded men wearing long, embroidered robes and skullcaps.
    He will never forget the smell of this place. The garden at home smells of fresh-mown grass and apple blossom. This is another planet, rich with the pungent scents alien to a young boy’s nose, intermingled with the heat and dust, the sweat of men and animals.
    As well as a new smell that he will soon experience for the very first time in his life. The feral raw-blood smell