The Magdalena Curse Read Online Free PDF

my boyfriend, also just qualified, to do a stint with the Red Cross. We were sent to Chechnya.’
    ‘Christ.’
    ‘Where, as you know, things escalated. We were at the siege of Grozny. All was chaos and butchery. We could do nothing. My boyfriend was killed by a sniper bullet. They got me out in the end lashed to a pallet aboard a cargo plane. Tonight, in Adam’s room, I listened as his killer bragged about murdering Peter.’
    ‘Only the dead can speak through Adam,’ Hunter said quietly. ‘If that is any consolation.’
    ‘It isn’t.’ She laughed, incredulous at the truth she had witnessed. ‘Your son is possessed.’
    ‘I’d wondered why someone who looks like you do is single.’
    She stared hard at him.
    ‘It’s my training. I was taught to watch out for the unusual, for anomalies. The hours that you work, the absence of a ring on your finger and the fact that you were available to child-mind on a Friday evening are at odds with how you look, Elizabeth. That’s all.’
    ‘What did you do, in Bolivia, to incur the wrath of this black magician?’
    ‘We blundered into something. It was a very confused situation, not something we were prepared for. Not something anyone could be prepared for, I don’t think. But I did something wrong. Not just wrong. I did something bad.’
    ‘And the white witch? She didn’t feel inclined to lift the curse there and then?’
    ‘I’ll tell you about it. I’ll tell you everything. I’ve never spoken of it to anyone in all the years since. But you will have to know.’
    ‘Why did you call me in the first place, Mark, if you thought my skills redundant?’
    He looked at her. ‘I hoped I was wrong. The situation has deteriorated with such awful speed.’
    ‘But it has become clearer. After what I saw tonight, I can explain it in no other way. Something unwelcome and strange has occupied your son, some malevolent force. Adam really is possessed.’
    ‘I know he is, Elizabeth. And it will get much worse than this. And I must find that old woman and persuade her to come back with me and use her power if I’m to have a chance of saving him.’
    ‘You had better tell me about what provoked this,’ she said. ‘You had better tell me and tell me truthfully.’

Chapter Two
    Everything about the deployment in Bolivia was wrong. But before discussing the flawed reasoning behind the mission, Mark thought it important to impress upon Elizabeth just how strange and unknown a place Bolivia had been twelve years ago. It was still exotic now, of course. It was a place of outlandish beliefs and customs. It was high and remote. There was still a primitive poverty in parts of the country that shocked affluent Europeans. But the fact was that those Europeans were there now in increasing tourist numbers to be shocked. Bolivia had become a backpacker destination of choice. The most dangerous road in the world, which Bolivia could rightfully boast, had become the thrill-seekers’ weblog cliché. The prison in La Paz had been forced to end its Newgate Gaol traditions under the scrutiny of a curious world. The place where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had apparently met their bleak deaths was practically a theme park dedicated to the myth of the American outlaws. The shrinking of the world had domesticated aspects and even regions of Bolivia. When Mark had been deployed there as an army captain, not many weeks married, that had yet to become the case.
    Any mission was routinely described as business, in the regiment. The more business there was, the better, was the prevailing philosophy. Business meant survival. The lack of it meant perceived obsolescence and inevitable Whitehall-decreed cutbacks in manpower and hardware. Fears entertained by the senior officers had filtered down
to the non-coms. Peace was a likely prospect in Northern Ireland, where most of their business was done. Trade was lacklustre in the Province, the market almost exhausted. There was a bit going on in the