Assignment White Rajah Page 10

  A pause. "Yes."

  "Did you watch me?"

  "For a moment."

  "Two moments, George. You watched for two moments."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Two rifle shots were fired at me while I was swimming in the canal."

  "Listen, Cajun." Hammond's voice trembled a little. "From this minute on, you're on your own."

  "Then you'd better practice up on your marksmanship," Durell said.

  He hung up.

  16

  There were many stories told about George Hammond among the field staff who worked out of K Section's headquarters at No. 20 Annapolis Street in Washington, DC.

  When he had been K control for Bulgaria with a front office in Sofia as a minor party official, there was an incident involving a Turk who had obtained data on the Soviet Black Sea fleet which electronic equipment had not been able to pick up. At that time, which was some years ago, Hammond had already become a deadly legend. He used a hammer-and-tongs method to achieve his goals. He had lost one agent, and another was missing somewhere down toward the Greek border, where a rendezvous had been arranged with the Turkish gentleman who had the information Hammond wanted.

  The missing agent was a Levantine who had been employed occasionally by K Section on minor missions. It was soon clear to Hammond that his precarious cover had been blown by the Lebanese, that the opponent's security forces were after him, and that the Turk was in danger of falling into enemy hands.

  Hammond did not waste time. He kidnapped the head of enemy security, found the traitorous Levantine, killed him, took a rubber raft into the Black Sea with the Turk, and drifted about the marshy mouths of the Danube River for two weeks, eating roots and berries, while being hunted as if he were a mad dog.

  No one knew the casualties he inflicted on his opposite numbers during those two weeks. He was given top priority for execution. But somehow he turned up in Istanbul, forty pounds less, with a terrified Turk whose sense of shock had required psychiatric treatment, after a priority flight to Washington, before he could speak. When the Turk saw Hammond again, he screamed in fear. But he gave his information eventually, and Hammond, after a week in the hospital, demanded field service again.

  Another story dealt with his flight to contact dissident Kurds in northeast Syria, whose government was carrying out a policy of "final solution" by exterminating the Kurdish villages through a process of denationalization, appropriation of farmlands, and population transports to desert lands. Hammond and a Kurdish chief thereupon started a small war.

  Hammond's feats as a soldier of fortune were legendary. He spoke Kurdish, Arabic, and half a dozen other Middle Eastern languages, including Ivrit. His bravery was uncontested. The warlike Kurds made him a chief in his own right. He smuggled Russian-built tanks, armored cars, and infantry weapons—even two MIG-17's—from Syrian army depots in a wild escapade that helped the Kurdish tribe over the border into neighboring Iraq where, although the Iraqi government was hardly less friendly to the Kurds, they found refuge. In the course of this small war Hammond achieved a reputation similar to that of the fabled Lawrence of Arabia.

  He was not a man to be taken lightly.

  When Durell hung up the telephone after speaking to Hammond, he knew he had a problem.

  Whatever Hammond's motives, the man was not quite rational now. His ambition to get back into the centers of agency power could not be ignored. He would tackle any obstacle in his way with cunning, trickery, and a savage knowledge of method and procedure that surpassed even Durell's own experience.

  If he stood in Hammond's way, Hammond would move to eliminate him. Swiftly. Ruthlessly. With no more feeling than he had exhibited in his past work.

  Durell checked out his room with extra care. He took his time about it. He turned out the Hght again, tapped the walls, checked the locks, and searched the bath, the toilet box, the drain pipes—anything that could be easily plugged with explosives. He walked the length of the veranda from one corner of the hotel to the other. Most of the other rooms were dark. From one he heard a radio with a taped speech of Premier Kuang's, exhorting the populace to remain calm and obey the curfew. Kuang's voice was measured and reasonable. Through another window he saw a man and a woman in their bed, a contortion of limbs and torsos that defied imagination. He passed by quietly, looked over the railing, and decided that anyone with a little agility could climb up the convenient Victorian scrollwork that fretted this entire facade.

  He went back to his room and quietly unpacked his bag. From a false bottom in the suitcase, built in K Section's laboratories by the gimmick boys who delighted in elaborate and usually unworkable gadgets, he took out a small rebuilt Beretta .32, a knife, a small Thermit bomb, and a set of picklocks. His face ached, and his bruises seemed aflame from Lieutenant Parepa's recent attentions.

  He had just finished when someone else knocked.

  He stood still in the darkness, thinking that his biggest problem was that Hammoud was equally adept in all the tricks, programs, and procedures of K Section and probably had invented a few methods of his own beyond the training program at the "Farm."

  The knock was repeated lightly.

  "Sam?"

  Holding the Beretta ready in his right hand, he stood to one side of the door and opened it with his left.

  Pala Mir slipped inside.

  Durell threw the bolt behind her, crossed to close the veranda doors, and turned on the wooden ceiling fans. They created an illusion of cooler air. In the dim light he saw that Pala Mir was dressed in a dark Chinese jumper and trousers and was wearing black sneakers. A small pin glittered on her left breast. Her dark hair was pulled back into a severe bun at the nape of her neck.

  "Oh, Sam, I'm glad to find you here," she said.

  "No thanks to you," he said. "Where did you go while I was asleep on the sampan?"

  "I couldn't help it. I thought I heard a noise, so I climbed up on the dock, but some soldiers were walking down toward the end where we were hidden. It was almost dawn." She paused. Her face, a perfect blend of all that was lovely in the East and West, was tilted up to his with concern. "Are you all right?"

  "A few minor bruises, that's all."

  "Was Tileong so terrible to you?"

  "We were not exactly friendly. You haven't told me why you took my gun when you left me on the sampan."

  She shrugged. "Oh, you are a strange man. So suspicious. I was worried about the soldiers, that is all. Sam those few hours together were so beautiful."

  "Then why did you leave?"

  "I had to hide in one of the warehouses. When the soldiers got between me and the sampan, I found a door that wasn't locked, and I couldn't return. It was almost dawn then, anyway. So I slipped away."

  "Do you have my gun with you?"

  "I left it at Grandpapa's house. The so-called palace of the White Rajah." She smiled ruefully. "I went there to hide and remained all day. He wants to see you."

  "The White Rajah?"

  "He's very concerned about you."

  "What does he know about me?"

  "Only what I told him. It's all right, Sam. He's a wonderful old man. You'll like him. And I think he'll help you, too." She paused. "Are you very angry with me?"

  "No."

  "You are. I can tell. Do you believe all the bad things they say about me?"

  "No."

  "You do. But that doesn't matter. You can believe one thing, however. I am your only friend in all of Pasan-gara."

  "I'll buy that," Durell said.

  It was midnight when they left the Kuan Diop Hotel. She had parked a Land Rover in a driveway near the service entrance by the dark shrubbery of the park, and he studied every shadow as they slipped out the back door of the hotel. She showed him a pass that allowed her to ignore the curfew. It was signed by Colonel Tileong.

  The Land Rover was rigged like a safari-hunter's African bush wagon. There were two rifles in slings on each side of the interior, canteens of water, and extra fuel cans
lashed to the back. Directly over the driver's seat in a fixed leather holster was a regulation Colt .45, easily reached by whoever held the wheel.

  "I'll drive," said Durell.

  The back area of the hotel was dark, but he was sure that eyes watched their departure. There were no troops on the boulevard tonight, and the city seemed quieter. He thought it was too quiet. The heat of the night and the lack of wind bred an ominous calm, like that before a thunderstorm. Watching the empty streets, Pala Mir sat far over on her side of the seat, her face impassive. Now and then she gave him directions to turn right or left.

  Chungsu was on the north bank of the river. When they crossed a steel girder bridge, they met the first military checkpoint. Pala Mir showed the corporal her pass; the soldier stared hard at Durell, then waved them on.

  The old Chinese settlement on the north bank of the Pasangara was quite different from the more modern city on the opposite side of the river. The streets were narrow and twisting, the houses higher and hedged in shoulder-to-shoulder. Devious little alleys, too small for anything but a pedicab or bicycle, led away into dark cul-de-sacs. The evidence of the riots was more plainly to be seen here.

  "Go to the end of the street, then to the waterfront," Pala Mir said distantly. "That is, if you trust me."

  "I suppose I must," Durell said.

  "I thought that you and I—after last night—" She paused and laughed, her manner brittle. "Well, Fve had two husbands, and I shouldn't talk like a schoolgirl, should I?"

  "Do you feel like one?" he asked.

  She hesitated. "Somehow, yes. With you."

  "Why does the Rajah want to see me?"

  "He'll tell you about it. You mustn't be at all surprised at how he looks and lives. The past is his hobby, practically an obsession. That's why Paul claims he is senile or losing his wits." Her voice grew bitter. "But it isn't so, Sam. He's a dear old man who's making a great effort to keep up with the times, with the new democracy. He's very loyal to the regime—and worried about it."

  "No secret ambition to become a rajah again?"

  "You can make up your own mind about that."

  As he drove the vehicle slowly among the potholes and debris that still littered the streets of Chungsu, he told her about his own Grandfather Jonathan, that fine old gentleman who lived in Bayou Peche Rouge in Louisiana aboard the hulk of his river steamboat. Pala Mir listened with greater interest than he had expected.

  "And you love the old man?" she asked.

  "Of course. He taught me most of what I know."

  "I'm glad," she said simply. "Perhaps that will make it easier."

  He turned as she directed, and they came out on a broad waterfront road of docks and wharves facing the open harbor. The oil tanker was still moored out there. A small freighter showed its lights a few hundred yards down the way, and he wondered if it were the same he had seen in the river last night. The moon silvered the horizon of the sea.

  "There," said Pala Mir. "That's the old palace. It's really a fort and warehouse that the first Anthony Merry-dale, the original White Rajah, built when he landed here."

  Stark and ominous against the pattern of moonlight, the place was built of dark stone with a crenelated tower and narrow windows, silhouetted on a slender point of land thrust into the harbor. The long esplanade facing the sea was empty. One of the nearby warehouses had been burned to the ground, and the smell of rank, charred stuff was still strong in the midnight air. Being on the waterfront brought no relief from the stifling, silent heat.

  Durell stopped the Land Rover in the shadows of the burned building. He reached up over the driver's wheel and took the Colt .45 from its holster fixed to the roof.

  "We'll walk from here," he said. "I think it will be safer."

  The freighter that was moored under the walls of the Rajah's crumbling palace flew a five-starred flag that he recognized. It came from the People's Republic of China.

  17

  As they walked through the shadows, Durell heard the whine of winches, the chuffing of a donkey engine, and then the shout of a foreman, yelling in Cantonese to the laborers. The freighter, which wasn't more than 3000 tons, was off-loading crates and boxes in a sling, and the stuff was being piled up on a stone bulkhead to the rear of the Rajah's palace. Durell did not see anyone but the Chinese foreman in charge, but the man was anxious that none of the crates be given the slightest jar as they were being slung over the side and down on the dock.

  "Does this go on often?" he asked softly.

  Pala Mir shrugged. "It's just Paul's import-export business. Are you alarmed because the cargo comes from Red China? There is no restriction on trade with Peking here in Pasangara."

  "What does your brother import?"

  "I don't know. Gadgets. Consumer goods. Some radios, washing machines, things like that."

  A stone pier intervened between the parked Land Rover and the palace. A tug was tied up to it but it rode without lights. Still, there could be a watchman on board, he decided. Beyond the moored tug was a crane, a black steel webbing against the sky, and then a row of sheds, some with thatched roofs and open on three sides, others with corrugated tin roofs and shut up tight. The shadows were very black between them.

  Beyond the sheds was an open square planted with oleander shrubs that had grown up to giant size, a row of palms somewhat the worse for wear, and a drive that curved through the park to a monument that Durell saw was dimly carved in the royal shape of a turbaned man holding a staff of some sort in his left hand, while his right rested on the stone head of a Malay tiger.

  "Anthony Merrydale?" he whispered to Pala Mir.

  "The original," she said shortly.

  "Are there watchmen?"

  "There used to be a royal guard in the barracks over there. It's Paul's warehouse now."

  He looked at the stone building against the Victorian fortress-palace. It was dark, some hundred yards from the dark where the Chinese ship was being unloaded.

  He wondered what Hammond was doing at this moment.

  "Come along," he said.

  "I don't see why we have to arrive like thieves in the night. After all, the Rajah is expecting us. He sent for you, as I said."

  He made no reply but moved quickly past the sheds, waiting for a moment to study the tug and the big waterfront crane. Then he stepped into the little park that adorned the facade of the stone palace. The old barracks were to the right, between him and the dock. He could hear the freighter's donkey engine and the winches, and they served to cover any noise he might make. The floodlights from the ship also cast a reflected glow behind the black bulk of the warehouse to let him see where he was going.

  "The gate is the other way," Pala Mir said. "I know. I'd like to look inside—unofficially." The main doors facing what would be a truck lot were securely locked, but there were windows and a loading platform to the left, and from here he could see down the dock to the freighter tied up under the palace walls. He jumped up on the loading platform, flattened against the wall, and tried the door carefully. It was barred, but the hinges were loose, and he rocked them in and out for a moment, then shoved with his shoulder. It snapped open enough for him to squeeze through. Pala Mir was close on his heels.

  He stopped short in the dusty darkness.

  "Stand behind me," he told Pala Mir.

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know yet."

  The warehouse door that had offered such easy access had already been forced by someone else. There were fresh splinters around the bar. Someone had left it that way, almost as if inviting him inside.

  He took out his pencil flash and carefully examined the door and the floor around it, looking for trip wires and alarms, a booby trap of any kind. Everything looked normal except for the broken lock.

  "What is it?" the girl asked again.

  "We're a bit late."

  The converted stone barracks was a cavernous place of dust and shadows, smelling of sisal, sawdust, and mildew. Part of it was built on pile
s over the water, and he heard an occasional splash of the tide under the teak floors.

  Crates and cartons were piled up to the left and along the center of the floor, leaving two aisles on either side. He could not see over the stacked boxes.

  He stood still and listened for a long time.

  The shouts of the dockmen and the chuffing of the donkey engine wiped out all chance of hearing slight sounds. But it worked both ways, and he ventured to step away from the double doors after a moment. Pala Mir kept a light touch on his shoulder.

  The labeling on most of the crates was Canadian or American—a dozen refrigerators, some air-conditioning units, a score of cartons containing cheap transistor radios. A new American car, a station wagon, gleamed in one comer. He was halfway down the first aisle, moving toward a dim glow of light that came through a window facing the dock when he stopped again.

  He felt as if he were being lured into a trap.

  Several of the radio boxes had been broken open to display their contents. The transistor sets inside looked innocent enough. He walked on a bit and then saw the man's legs protruding from between the two larger wooden boxes near the end of the aisle.

  "Stay here, Pala Mir."

  Her slight gasp betrayed the fact that she had seen it, too.

  "Who is it?"

  Durell shone the little flashlight into the crevice between the boxed merchandise. He saw Chiang Gi's white hair and brown face, the mouth open in surprise, the eyes blindly reflecting the light like black marbles.

  The old fisherman's neck had been broken, neatly and expertly.

  Durell pushed Pala Mir behind him and listened quietly for another long moment. He did not touch the dead man. He did not let himself think too much about it. He smelled the dust and oil in the warehouse, he heard the inner quietude under the muted noises from the dock, he felt sweat plaster his shirt to his back and shoulders.

  "Oh, Sam "

  "Somebody killed the old man. The killer may still be here."

  "But who would want—he was such a dear man—"

  He didn't reply. He moved quickly around the end of the stacked boxes to the opposite aisle. There was enough light here to do without his flashlight. It shone in from the floodlamps on the Chinese freighter nearby.