No Comebacks by Frederick Forsyth Read Free Book Online Page B

distinguishable, and a faint undulating darker line down the side of the body. Nocturnal in dry, hot weather, seeking cover during the heat of the day.
    The leaves in the box rustled again and a tiny head appeared.
    Exceptionally dangerous to handle, said the textbook, causing more deaths than even the more famous cobra, largely because of its size which makes it so easy to touch unwittingly with hand or foot. The author of the book had added a foot-note to the effect that the small but lethal snake mentioned by Kipling in his marvellous story ' Rikki-Tikki-Tavy' was almost certainly not the krait, which is about 2 feet long, but more probably the saw-scaled viper. The author was obviously pleased to have caught out the great Kipling in a matter of accuracy.
    In the box, a little black forked tongue flickered towards the two Indians beyond the glass.
    Very alert and irritable, the long-gone English naturalist had concluded his chapter on Echis carinatus. Strikes quickly without warning. The fangs are so small they make a virtually unnoticeable puncture, like two tiny thorns. There is no pain, but death is almost inevitable, usually taking between two and four hours, depending on the body weight of the victim and the level of his physical exertions at the time and afterwards. Cause of death is invariably brain haemorrhage.
    'How much do you want for him?' whispered Ram Lai.
    The old Bengali spread his hands helplessly. 'Such a prime specimen,' he said regretfully, 'and so hard to come by. Five hundred rupees.'
    Ram Lai clinched the deal at 350 rupees and took the snake away in a jar.
    For his journey back to London Ram Lai purchased a box of cigars, which he emptied of their contents and in whose lid he punctured twenty small holes for air. The tiny viper, he knew, would need no food for a week and no water for two or three days. It could breathe on an infinitesimal supply of air, so he wrapped the cigar box, resealed and with the viper inside it among his leaves, in several towels whose thick sponginess would contain enough air even inside a suitcase.
    He had arrived with a handgrip, but he bought a cheap fibre suitcase and packed it with clothes from market stalls, the cigar box going in the centre. It was only minutes before he left his hotel for Bombay airport that he closed and locked the case. For the flight back to London he checked the suitcase into the hold of the Boeing airliner. His hand baggage was searched, but it contained nothing of interest.
    The Air India jet landed at London Heathrow on Friday morning and Ram Lai joined the long queue of Indians trying to get into Britain. He was able to prove he was a medical student and not an immigrant, and was allowed through quite quickly. He even reached the luggage carousel as the first suitcases were tumbling onto it, and saw his own in the first two dozen. He took it to the toilet, where he extracted the cigar box and put it in his handgrip.
    In the Nothing-to-Declare channel he was stopped all the same, but it was his suitcase that was ransacked. The customs officer glanced in his shoulder bag and let him pass. Ram Lai crossed Heathrow by courtesy bus to Number One Building and caught the midday shuttle to Belfast. He was in Bangor by teatime and able at last to examine his import.
    He took a sheet of glass from the bedside table and slipped it carefully between the lid of the cigar box and its deadly contents before opening wide. Through the glass he saw the viper going round and round inside. It paused and stared with angry black eyes back at him. He pulled the lid shut, withdrawing the pane of glass quickly as the box top came down.
    'Sleep, little friend,' he said, 'if your breed ever sleep. In the morning you will do Shakti's bidding for her.'
    Before dark he bought a small screw- top jar of coffee and poured the contents into a china pot in his room. In the morning; using his heavy gloves, he transferred the viper from the box to the jar. The enraged snake bit