Assignment - White Rajah Read online

  1

  DURELL ran and fell and picked himself up and ran again.

  He had been running for a lifetime, perhaps half an hour, and he did not want to stop and kill them. It was better to try to escape. There had been enough killing here.

  In the darkness of the jungle, inland from the beach, he did not know if it was night or day. He did not raise his head to look at the treetops. They might be there, in the branches, waiting to pick him off, but he couldn't do anything about that.

  The jungle steamed. Vines, creepers, and obscene green things picked and clawed at him, tripped him and slashed at him. He splashed through ankle-deep water, then waded knee-deep, feeling the muck underfoot, ignoring it. He pushed on. Now and then he heard them, hurrying after him.

  He judged he was no more than five hundred yards from the river, but it was invisible, of course, and he wasn't sure now if he hadn't circled completely. Perhaps the river was to his right and perhaps it was to his left.

  He ran on.

  He had been on the beach, an idyll of white sand and emerald water, leaning coconut palms and chattering monkeys. The tanker in the bay was anchored well offshore, away from the riots that smoked in the city. He had simply been waiting for the time to meet Chiang Gi when they came at him, silently and swiftly, mad-eyed, their knives gleaming in the setting sun.

  The worst of it was that there was nothing personal in their lust to kill him. It was part of the insanity that had erupted in the city, pulling out mobs of screaming Malays and angry Chinese, bursting into fires that took parts of the Chungsu section of the city, leaving behind bodies and overturned vehicles, pedicabs and buses, smashed and looted shops. The riots smoldered and leaked blood, gasoline, and oil in the fine, palm-lined avenues.

  It had been going on for two days. Durell had arrived in the middle of it.

  And now, somewhere above the thudding of his heart, he heard sudden, rolling thunder, and with the abrupt habit of tropical climates, it began to rain.

  He suddenly knew he could run no farther.

  He came out on a path, turned right, and slowed to a walk. Then he drew out his gun and held it loosely in his hand, his right arm dangling, his left hand pushing aside a vine that had grown almost overnight across the path. A great banyan tree loomed ahead, and although he heard the patter and drive of the rain on the treetops above, it hadn't yet penetrated down through the leafy green levels to the ground.

  It was almost dark.

  Durell stopped and put his back against one of the vast roots of the banyan and looked down the path.

  They were coming.

  He felt no hatred toward them. They certainly did not know him. They merely wanted to kill, as they had been killing for two days now.

  The consulate windows had all been smashed. The library was burned. The compound walls had been daubed with paint and oil and blood. One of the Malay girls who worked as a typist had been caught in the street and torn apart into bloody pieces of flesh. A Chinese secretary, a mild-mannered young man, had been beheaded at the consulate gates. David Condon, the consul, had ordered Durell out of the city and out of the province. Durell couldn't go, of course. His orders were very explicit about that.

  He drew a deep breath, leaned harder against the banyan root, and watched the path. A minute went by The shadows were very black now; it was almost night. The rain pattered lower down through the leaves, and he felt the heavy, warm drops on his head, his face, his shoulders.

  Two men appeared suddenly in the path, not very far from him.

  They looked at him with surprise.

  "American?" one called.

  "Yes," Durell said.

  "What you do here?"

  "I go to see Pala Mir."

  "Ha ha."

  "It is the truth."

  "Pala Mir sees no one."

  "She will see me."

  The second man said, "It is dangerous here for strangers."

  "Yes, I know."

  "You are sure you are American?

  "Yes, I'm sure."

  They were Malays, and in ordinary times, before the racial madness struck the city, they would have been selling vegetables or working their rice paddies and laughing. The two men still hefted their long parangs with indecision. The rain came down harder now wet the blades, and made little shining rivulets along the cutting edges.

  "You have a gun," the first Malay said. "Why do you run from us?"

  "I thought you wanted to kill me," Durell said.

  "We were mistaken."

  "I have no quarrel with you," Durell said.

  "Do you have a quarrel with Pala Mir?"

  "No."

  "She will not see you."

  "Then I will return to the city."

  "It is dangerous," said the Malay.

  "All of life is dangerous."

  "That is true. Many people have died lately. Very well, American, you may go."

  "Which way is the river?" Durell asked.

  "You were going the right way. Keep on."

  "Thank you," Durell said.

  They nodded, put away their knives, and abruptly melted into the jungle, gone as suddenly as they had appeared. For several minutes Durell did not move from his safe vantage point at the banyan tree. He knew there had been more of them, more than just those two. Durell was trained to be careful. It was a cardinal rule for survival in his business.

  When ten minutes had gone by and there was no further sign of the men who had pursued him, he left the shelter of the banyan tree and walked on up the path to the river.

  2

  The river channel was not the main channel that came down to the coast at Pasangara and poured sluggishly into this last green reach of the South China Sea. This was delta country, and a hundred river beds divided and met and divided again, forming swampy islands, jungles, deadfalls of broken trees and rotting vegetation alive with insects, reptiles, and animal life. Only from the top of the new, towering, white government building in Pasangara itself, provincial capital of this semiautonomous state, could the dim mountains be seen, folding and refolding along the spine of the Malay Peninsula.

  Durell found the hut in the waning tropical daylight. The rain thundered, hissed, and banged on the tin roof, rattling like an old Gatling gun, pouring and chuckling down the sides of the hut and onto the wooden pier where Chiang Gi should have been waiting with his boat.

  Chiang Gi was not here. He was ten minutes late.

  Durell looked up and down the river, walked out on the rickety dock, and looked under the slatted boards. Then he went back to the hut to get out of the rain.

  The old man should have been here.

  He felt chilly now in his linen suit that was much the worse for wear after his run through the jungle. He would not have worn it except for a warning from the young, earnest consul, David Condon, that he would have to impress Pala Mir if he wanted to get anywhere with her. He decided ruefully that he could hardly impress anyone at the moment.

  Durell had put away the snub-nosed .38 S & W under his linen suit; it was a weapon not quite approved by General Dickinson McFee. Durell could use his hands, fingers, anything that came into his grip, if needed, but McFee had said there would be few problems. His stay was really an R & R after his recent trip to Peking. Durell had his doubts about it.

  The hut stood on stilts above the water, and from under it through the creaking floorboards came the smells of primeval mud and rotting things and, oddly, a scent of charcoal smoke. Equally at odds with these surroundings, he heard the dim iron pealing of convent bells, like a faraway, dream-like echo drifting down the placid, muddy river. Chiang Gi had assured him, crossing himself— he had been converted by an earnest Dominican sixty years ago—that
no one ever came to this hut, and his presence here would not be noticed.

  Durell doubted this, too.

  It was his business to be skeptical. It was the best way to stay alive.

  Chiang Gi was now fifteen minutes late.

  The river was utterly dark. There was no moon. Durell took a pencil flash from his rain-soaked coat and considered the hut. There were no lamps, no furniture except a broken-legged table and two stools. There had once been a fire in the hut, and part of the plaited reed wall had burned away. He was thinking about this when he heard Chiang Gi tie up at the lopsided dock.

  "Mr. Durell?"

  The old Malay's voice boomed like a foghorn.

  "Speak softly, my friend," Durell said.

  Chiang Gi grunted. "I am not a superstitious man, sir, but I like to speak louder than the ghosts."

  "Is this place haunted?"

  "All, you feel their presence?"

  "I feel something," Durell said.

  "The black of the tomb, the bite of the sea. No one living can hear us." Chiang Gi's stained old teeth shone in the gloom. "Everyone in this area is afraid of the place. Did I forget to tell you?"

  "I don't think you forgot."

  "Ah, well. The Holy Mother protects us. I am a devout man ever since Father Donaldson instructed me. Old ghosts cannot frighten me—much. Long ago, some fishermen and a boy used this house; the boy was their cook and stayed here while the men went to sea. One day, they picked up a body, a drowned man. They brought him back, left the corpse in their boat, and teased the boy, telling him they had an extra mouth to feed and to go kick the man awake who was lying in the boat. The boy did so, being obedient, and came back to set another place at that table, saying the stranger was coming. And then the fishermen heard the wet footsteps come up from the river, where my boat is now tied up, and the dead man walked in here and sat at the table, where the rice was ready and hot. He was all green and swollen with water and half-eaten by sharks. The fishermen were struck dead with fright, and only the boy was left alive to row to Pasangara and tell the tale. Ever since, no one comes here."

  "When did this happen?"

  "Five, six years ago. So we are safe here."

  "Are we safe from Pala Mir?"

  "Ah, that is another tale," Chiang Gi said.

  "Can we see her this evening?"

  "Everything is upset. The riots. Martial law. A curfew has been declared, did you know?"

  "No," Durell said.

  "The killing is senseless. And I, who am half-Chinese and half-Malay, what am I to do? Everyone is my enemy tonight."

  "Not I," said Durell.

  "I hope not," said the boatman. "As for the young ranee, although, of course, no one really uses that title for her any more, or for her brother, or for the old grandfather, who was the White Rajah in the bad old days of oppression and colonialist, imperialist occupation and exploitation—"

  "Cut the nonsense," Durell said. He was listening to something else—a small sound, high in the sky, far to the northeast over the sea.

  "I apologize. You Americans are so sensitive."

  "You work for us, don't you?"

  Chiang Gi shrugged. "The money is good. The work is very easy. Yes, I work for you. But as for Pala Mir, she is young and beautiful and unpredictable. An evil woman, some say. A witch, some think. She may have changed her mind."

  "But she is expecting me," Durell objected. He was still listening. The small sound was larger now.

  "Pala Mir and her brother and her grandfather are allowed to live here only on sufferance of our new democracy," Chiang Gi said. He shrugged his slender shoulders. He was a fisherman of Pasangara. His thick hair was pure white, and his brown face reflected the best of his mixed ancestry. He smelled of spices and rice, and Durell liked him and felt secure with him.

  Durell said suddenly, "Do you have my bag?"

  "In the boat, tuan."

  Durell started running. He ran out onto the rickety dock and almost broke an ankle when a rotten plank gave way under him. After he was in the boat with its new, gleaming outboard motor, he tore the zipper open and took out the radio transceiver, a powerful, miniaturized device that the lab boys had built in the basement at No. 20 Annapolis Street in Washington, which was the headquarters for K Section.

  He flicked the switch and put the tiny earphone to his ear and tuned it as best he could, using the pencil flash from his pocket. Something splashed violently in the water nearby. The rain had stopped, and there was a hot humid wind blowing in from the sea, across the delta, and up the river.

  The sound in the sky was a growing roar, a massive thunder, and he could spot them both, two navigation lights twinkling high up in the sky, but not too high. They were lowering, as if for a descent.

  He marked their direction with a pocket compass: south by southwest. He knew the sound of the jet engines, those enormous propulsion units of unique design. He had studied them for hours before his flight here.

  The jets were Thrashers, TDY-4's.

  They did not belong here. They belonged aboard a certain aircraft hundreds of miles north and east, beyond Saigon, where a war was going on.

  "Chiang Gi, did you ever hear or see planes like that before?"

  "No, sir. Is the government sending them down because of the rioting in Pasangara?"

  "I doubt it."

  They were U. S. Navy planes, and they were lost, and heading farther and farther away from the aircraft carrier they called home. They had no business here. They were violating neutral territory.

  He heard a crackling in his tiny earphone.

  "How much longer, Four-Ten? I'm about out. Over."

  "Roger. Forty-two seconds. Maintain silence."

  "Where in hell are we?"

  "Coming home, buddy, coming home. Shut up."

  The voices were as American as apple pie. But Durell knew that one of the voices was an impostor.

  The two planes thundered overhead and faded away, maintaining course, speed, and altitude. The air shook for a moment, then grew quieter, and the parrots and monkeys began shrieking curses at the sky for disturbing them. Durell snapped down the antenna, repacked the receiver, and put it back in the boat. Chiang Gi stared at the southwest.

  Durell said, "Let's go."

  He wished General McFee had told him more about this job.

  3

  The American consul to Pasangara, David Condon, had met Durell at the airport reluctantly, thirty-six hours earlier. Condon was an earnest young man with hair a bit too long, distinct sunglasses, and a shirt worn outside his fine Brooks Brothers slacks. He also wore sandals, no socks, and his ankles were dirty with the red dust of the delta soil.

  "I really can't see why you are here. It's a bad time, you know. Really dreadful. They started rioting just this morning, killing each other, burning shops, looting. The consulate is under rather heavy guard, and there's word out that Premier Kuang may call for a curfew."

  "Very distressing," Durell said.

  "May I ask if Washington sent you here because of the riots?"

  "No, you may not ask."

  "Well, really, I am the American consul here, and I must object—"

  "Object to Washington. Do you have an employee, a second secretary named Hammond, George Hammond?"

  "Well, yes, but—"

  "I'm here to consult with him," Durell said.

  "Hammond? Poor old George? But I can't see—"

  "You don't have to," Durell said.

  The Cadillac was air-conditioned, and so was the consulate, new and modem, pristine white in immaculate green lawns and shrubbery. Pasangara, however, had gone mad. Smoke boiled up from the Chungsu area, near the docks, where most of the Chinese lived. Someone threw a rock through the rear window of Condon's lovely Cadillac, and the air-conditioning became useless. When they arrived at the consulate after pushing through mobs of screaming, violent Malays, they found that the consulate's air-conditioning was also useless because the rioters had managed to demolish the v
ast expanses of glass in the building's facade. An employee with a pale face and trembling lips let Condon and Durell in and quickly barred the gate again. The place was in a state of siege.

  Half an hour later the local garrison was called out, and a company of soldiers, small and alert and armed with American weapons, rushed around the consulate to form a cordon against the mobs. They fired twice into the air and then into the crowd, the soldiers being almost engulfed by the screaming hordes that turned the boulevard into a nightmare. When two sprawled bodies testified that they meant business and the crowd still did not retreat, two minitanks rumbled up and down, threatening to smash a few more frenzied men into the hot asphalt. Only then did the rioters move elsewhere to find easier pickings among the frightened Chinese who lived in Chungsu.

  Meanwhile, Durell had consulted with George Hammond.

  Hammond had been with K Section, the trouble-shooting branch of the Central Intelligence Agency, for over twenty years, but like most of General McFee's long-term employees, he had not been permitted to retire. Looking at Hammond, Durell wondered if he saw his own future in the man.

  At one time, Hammond had been top controller for K Section agents dealing with NATO, then had been based in Rome and, for a time, Beirut. A lean, taciturn man, it was once thought by those who were poorly informed that Hammond, hoping for eventual command of K Section, was merely playing Cassius to McFee's Caesar. It had never worked out like that. A mistake in East Germany had seen Hammond return with broken legs, a shattered hip, a concussion, a ruptured kidney, a blinded left eye, and psychic scars that reduced him to a wreck, a ghost of the man he had once been.

  It happened sometimes to the best of them, Durell thought.

  Because Hammond, like Durell, had been red-tabbed in the MVD files at No. 2 Dzherzinsky Square in Moscow and in Peking's Black House records, too, retirement and a return to normal civilian life were out of the question. He had spent two years being debriefed until every possible operation on which he might have had relevant data was ended. Even then, he was not permitted a normal life. He had been shunted to jobs as security officer in various embassies; then as he approached his sixties, he was gradually passed into quiet backwaters and consulates such as Pasangara.