Assignment White Rajah Read online

  "Why?" Durell asked again, insistent.

  "It seems that someone—Tileong thinks it was George Hammond—says you are responsible for Chiang Gi's death. Anonymous tip. I don't know anything more about it. I want to see you at once before Tileong takes you again and we build a nasty incident out of it."

  "Don't clutch," Durell said.

  "Well, it looks as if Hammond, for some reason, wants you on ice for a while. I've run a nice quiet ship here, and, thanks to that, the authorities have been willing to cooperate with me." Condon's voice was young and self-important again. "Just the same, I'd rather see you out of Pasangara as soon as possible."

  "I'm on my way," Durell said.

  He hung up.

  Merrydale had been listening, but Durell did not think

  he could have made too much out of the one-sided conversation he'd heard. Durell ignored him and walked over to the White Rajah on his dilapidated, mildewed throne. He shook the old man's left hand; the Rajah's right hand still groped childishly in his mouth. He bowed to Pala Mir, looked at Paul Merrydale, and said, "You will have to excuse me. A diplomatic conference with Premier Kuang, I'm afraid. Do you have any objections if I leave?"

  Merrydale's eyes glittered with a moment's passing rage, "Anandara, show him out."

  The Hindu woman nodded and glided silently to the huge double doors, her sari floating like a cloud around her body. Durell followed her down the stairs and along the moldy corridor that led to the front gates of the palace. He thought he heard a distant siren whine, but he wasn't sure.

  The Indian woman looked at him with liquid eyes

  "Be at the Chungsu Bridge at dawn this morning. At five o'clock," she said quietly.

  "Thank you."

  "I thank you for being kind to my young mistress."

  "How did she get the message to you?"

  Anandara merely smiled as she showed him out.

  19

  He walked alone along the waterfront. The night was suddenly very dark, very empty. The humidity was a burden with every breath he took. The stars reeled overhead. He was aware of a bone-deep tiredness and wanted nothing more than to return to the Kuan Diop Hotel to sleep. But that would mean disaster. No place was safe in this tense, silent city. Wondering where Hammond might be, he searched the shadows automatically, feeling a deep sorrow for Chiang Gi whose body lay in the warehouse, and then dismissed the emotion as dangerous and distracting.

  Every dark corner held a potential enemy.

  He saw a launch approach the dock where the Chinese freighter was tied up and thought he recognized Tileong's dapper little figure in the bow. He walked on. Not even Pala Mir's Land Rover was safe, at the moment. He turned into an alley, walked past some thatch-roofed warehouses, came to a row of tiny Indian shops, turned another corner, and came back to the waterfront esplanade behind the Rover. It was only a darker bulk against the bulk of the shed where he had parked it.

  He saw no movement there.

  He waited a minute, another minute, gave it five. He did not move. The vehicle looked innocent enough. Nobody seemed to be waiting in ambush there. He heard a siren. Then a local Army car rolled by, but he did not stir and was not seen.

  He thought he smelled cigar smoke above the pungent, aromatic waterfront smells.

  He waited.

  There was a glint of reflection from the side of the Land Rover, a fleck of starlight on the windshield. It moved slightly, winked out, then shone again.

  He smelled the cigar smoke once more.

  He looked behind him, suddenly expecting to be bushwhacked. Colonel Tileong and his men had hurried into the palace; Durell kept his attention on the car.

  At last he could clearly define the shadow of the man who waited there for him.

  He had no intention of keeping a date with death.

  Turning, he walked quietly away.

  He slept for three hours in a shed not too distant from the palace, open to the waterfront There were huge piles of sisal bags that were redolent of spices and urine. A bicycle leaned against one wall of the shed, carelessly chained to a post. Durell made himself comfortable in a black comer where he could see the harbor, and after about twenty minutes, he heard the motor of the Rover start up about a hundred yards away from him. It moved slowly, searchingly, down the wide street facing the wharves, and then the sound of its engine faded. After that, he went to sleep.

  At ten minutes before five he awoke, aware of stiffness all through his body, with aches in particular areas that Lieutenant Parepa had favored. The bridge of his nose was tender, and he could still feel Parepa's knuckles on it. His left eye was slightly swollen. On the whole, however, he felt better.

  He borrowed the loose bicycle in the shed and peddled slowly down the wide street toward the Chungsu bridge. Pasangara was quiet. For a change, there were no red fires glowing in the sky from the Chinese quarter.

  Dawn was only fifteen minutes away. There was already a faint lightening over the horizon of the South China Sea. A light winked green and then red at the end of the harbor breakwater. He heard the throb of marine engines, then saw the Chinese freighter slowly make its way toward the open sea.

  Coming out of alleys and byways, other bicycles made their appearance on the streets, the men and women in wide, conical straw hats, the women like birds in their bright sarongs and occasional European skirts. The men wore white or black. A traffic policeman stood on a pedestal at one end of the Chungsu bridge and yawned at the colors in the eastern sky. Durell noted some food stalls opening along the side streets; his hunger was aroused. Then he passed a European-style cafe whose Chinese proprietor was just taking down the shutters. Several whites—Dutchmen, he gathered from the low scatter of their voices as he peddled by—were taking tables on the sidewalk. A few pedicabs made their appearance.

  Pasangara seemed ready to return to normal.

  The sign over the cafe read "Segun Maj" and the smell of cotfee increased his hunger. From the sidewalk he could watch the Chungsu bridge well enough, and he turned the bicycle in the growing traffic, aware of a fresh, cool breeze blowing from over the reaches of the river mouth.

  Nobody paid attention to him as he chose a table and ordered a European breakfast of coffee, rolls, and eggs. The overseas Chinese proprietor was adept at catering to Western tastes. One of the Dutchmen nearby, lifting his round head, stared at Durell and made a tentative gesture with his hand, but Durell got up and bought a packet of Indian cigarettes, so the man turned back to his companions. A small boy delivered a paper-wrapped box, put it on the zinc counter just inside the doorway, then peddled away.

  Ten minutes later Durell saw the Land Rover.

  Pala Mir was driving. Her grandfather sat regally beside her on the front seat.

  He got up and ignored his bicycle in the rack and crossed the street. Pala Mir saw him and waved.

  Then something struck him in the back. He staggered forward, feeling a gush of heat, and then heard the ear-splitting roar of an explosion behind him.

  He saw Pala Mir's face, white and shocked, and then he threw himself flat in the street as debris from the shattered cafe slapped and crashed down around him.

  Smoke and flame gushed from the cafe entrance. Where the Dutchmen had been sitting at their breakfast, there was only an insane tangle of wreckage and scattered blobs of flesh, a torn limb twitching by itself. He remembered the delivery boy on the bicycle and the packet left in the cafe entrance under the sign that read "Segun Maj." The sign was gone, the chairs blown to bits, the tables strewn in the street around him.

  Pala Mir waved him on anxiously.

  Durell got up and walked quickly to her car, while the other pedestrians and pedicabs in the dawn-lighted street stood in shocked disbelief, looking at the terrorist disaster.

  20

  No one paid attention to them or tried to stop them as they drove through the tide of running people on the Chungsu Bridge. The sound of a woman's screams and the wail of a siren touched them briefly. At the e
nd of the bridge Pa^a Mir raced the Land Rover down the riverside road.

  "Go slow," Durell warned. "Otherwise, they'll think we did it."

  She slowed to a normal speed in the city streets, turned off the esplanade, and took a long detour around the Kuan Diop Hptel. The river steamer was gone from its dock.

  Durell turned to look at the Rajah. All traces of the old man's brief spasm of senility, when Paul had confronted him last night, were erased. His eyes were clear and even twinkling with amusement.

  "Good morning, sir," the Rajah said.

  He wore a bush jacket with huge pockets and a heavy revolver in a belt around his waist. His legs were encased in strong, polished boots. He said, "I have some appropriate clothing for you, too, Mr. Durell."

  "Are we going to your mountain palace?"

  "Isn't that where you wished to go?"

  "Yes. Doesn't Paul object?"

  "Paul knows nothing about it. I am a loyal citizen of Pasangara, my dear sir, and the past is the past. Pasan-gara belongs to the future, and I will not be idle while that future is destroyed. I have the feeling that your duties in Pasangara coincide with the best interests of the state."

  "It does, I assure you," Durell said.

  Wearing a khaki shirt, riding pants, and boots, Pala Mir looked freshly groomed in the morning light. She, too, was armed. She drove competently, and in a few minutes they came out on a graveled riverside road that soon became a tunnel through the jungle. It was growing hot.

  "Did the police find Chiang Gi?" Durell asked.

  "Yes. They were tipped off, so they knew exactly where to look. Paul was in a fury. He was questioned by Tileong, but you're the principal suspect." Her eyes twinkled. "You seem to have spent an uncomfortable night."

  "Not bad. Have the Pao Thets been active in terrorist bombings like this morning?"

  "It's their boldest effort yet," she said.

  Now and then through the jungle, they noticed the sluggish, serpentine reaches of the Pasangara River. The heat built up rapidly. They stopped once for Durell to change into a bush shirt and boots that the Rajah provided. There were Thermos bottles of water, a kit of food, boxes of ammunition, and two Uzi automatic rifles made in Israel, the Uzi being one of the handiest weapons recently developed. Durell kept one on his lap as Pala Mir continued to drive.

  By the river bank they passed two villages on stilts, and their passage attracted little interest. Among the rice paddies of the countryside things seemed normal.

  Pala Mir spoke calmly about her brother and about her growing suspicion that the mountain palace and plantation were being used as a base by the Pao Thets to disturb the peace of the countryside. The Rajah dozed in his seat, although the road became primitive beyond the second village, thus causing the Land Rover to jounce painfully. Durell watched the jungle. The sun was well up, and the air was like the breath of a hot oven. Parrots, monkeys, and once a small cheetah-like cat appeared in the trees. They came to a sharp bend and then a pontoon bridge over the river, and when Pala Mir started to cross, Durell checked her.

  "Wait. Stop the car."

  She did as he asked. "What is it?"

  "Back up into the shadow, please."

  "I don't see anything."

  He pointed to the muddy river bank where the road ran down out of the jungle to the plank bridge. Several sets of new tire tracks looked freshly printed in the mud.

  "Did you see Tileong before you left the palace this morning?"

  "No, he was long gone, by then."

  "And your brother?"

  The Rajah said, "Paul went to his apartment, quite angry with me for tolerating my dear Pala Mir."

  Durell shut off the motor. "Let's wait a bit."

  "But it's a long way, possibly a night of travel, to get to the plantation," Pala Mir objected.

  The old Rajah chuckled. "Listen to Mr. Durell, child. When I said he was a mercenary and a man to be feared, I was sincere. Do you see them, Mr. Durell?"

  Durell nodded. Across the width of the river, which should have been dotted with Malay fishing boats, the opposite bank looked green, empty, forbidding. Beyond it was the distant loom of the interior hills, vague in the jungle's heat haze. There was a small village of thatched huts on poles to the left of the bridge on the far side, but not a soul was in sight

  "Look to the left," Durell said. "Near the village. Two degrees off the south end of the bridge."

  Something glinted there. A ribbon of pale color suddenly moved against the dense green. Then another glint.

  The Rajah chuckled again. "Rifles, Mr. Durell?"

  "Yes. But who are they?"

  "Pao Thets, perhaps."

  "Or Tileong's militia, waiting for us."

  "Perhaps."

  "Is there another road we can use?"

  "No." Pala Mir looked distressed. "If we can't cross here, we're stopped before we've hardly started."

  "Not at all, child," said the Rajah. "There is another road, quite old, perhaps forgotten. Back up, Durell, as if we are turning back. It may deceive those people."

  Durell took the wheel from the girl and retreated a quarter of a mile down the river to where a narrow jungle trail forked to the left. It soon became a fairly well-defined route through the jungle vines.

  "This is an old hunting trail cut originally by my father," said the old man. "It can take us a bit farther. There is a shallow ford about fifteen miles southwest of here. The main channel divides before that, so the river steamer can reach the old plantation station at Trang Bhatu. The town fell on bad times during the old Red warfare in the '50s—destroyed the rubber farms. But I think the way will be safe."

  Durell did not agree but he kept silent.

  No one had used this road before them. The vines that had overgrown the trail were intact, and their progress was slow and tedious. Durell had to get out again and again to chop away the creepers that blocked the way. It was hot, savage work. The old man offered to help with a machete, but his vitality ebbed as the jungle heat built up. Their progress almost came to a halt. The river was lost to sight. At eleven o'clock they stopped to drink cold tea and eat the sandwiches Pala Mir had prepared.

  "I have enough food for three days," she said quietly. "Enough to get us there and back."

  "Does Paul ever go to the plantation?"

  "Now and then he flies up there. He has his own plane. A Beechcraft."

  "There's an airstrip up in the hills?"

  "Oh, yes. Paul built it long ago."

  There had been no airstrip marked on the charts Durell had studied. At noon they saw the river again.

  The road improved, joining another that followed the river bank. The stream was still deep enough for the steamer from Pasangara. The jungle was silent, the river empty of boats. A telephone line that presumably went down to the capital was cut, the wires hanging limply from canted poles. The first straggling houses of the town were empty. A few chickens pecked at the dust. A pig squealed; dogs barked and howled. A naked child playing in the middle of the road looked at them with bewildered eyes.

  "Where is everyone?" Pala Mir asked.

  They found the first dead man in the middle of the road to the steamer dock. He was a Malay, wearing a cloth headband and a colorful skirt that was too wet and too red. His throat was cut and he had been mutilated. He had not been dead for very long.

  There was a smell of charred wood, smoke, and death. A government inn stood on the waterfront with the door blown in and half the wall crumbled by a grenade or mortar shell. Durell stopped the Land Rover in the shade of a tree beside the inn and surveyed the small town square on the river's edge.

  There was only the blinding sun, the silence, and the smell of destruction. Trang Bhatu, despite its gloss of modem improvements, still reflected the age of the Golden Peninsula known to Vasco da Gama, Sir Francis Drake, and the early Portuguese and Dutch explorers. Malacca, he reflected, was once the rich land of rubber and tin, a crucible of race and culture from all of Southeast Asia. Ancient
Cathay and Hindu had blended with the old Malay pomp, warmth, and pageantry. Once a languorous village, Trang Bhatu had grown with the river and road trafl&c, but there were still Arab shops, a few die-hard Dutch and Javanese left by the high tide of centuries-old piracy, plunder, and trade.

  Durell took his Uzi and walked past a shop that exhibited Chinese magazines, Malay bajus, white Indian cotton dhotis, and salwa-kamiz. He paused at the blown-in entrance to the inn. There was an old photograph of the

  Tengku, of the Kedah royal family, in one window. Japanese transistor radios sat side by side with beautifully carved ivory and teak bowls. There had been no looting.

  He paused again. The government flag had been torn from its staff. There were crates and bales on the dock, waiting for the steamer that had never gotten here today. Across the little park on the river's edge was a small Mosque, cheek by jowl with a Buddhist temple. Religion was no problem in Malaya. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Taoism earned the respect and tolerance of their neighbors.

  But there had been little tolerance of human life in Trang Bhatu this morning.

  He kept the Uzi ready.

  Pala Mir started out of the Rover, and he waved her back to safety. Dust moved in a hot wind that blew across the river. He flattened against the wall beside the shattered door of the inn and heard only the scratching of a chicken in the dust. Several bicycles lay on their sides in the square under a massive banyan tree. Sunlight twinkled through the leaves. The chicken walked into the doorway, clucking slightly.

  Durell moved in fast, the Uzi cocked. The shadows inside were thick with dust and a smell of sweat. A Malay clerk was at the desk to his right, head resting on his folded forearm; he had been shot in the back of the neck.

  Squatting on the floor in a comer, a thin woman in a torn sarong rocked back and forth, staring at him with imseeing eyes. She was the first living human being he had come upon.

  A scrap of paper was pinned to her breast.

  Durell stared at her across the hot shadows and she stared back. He listened to the chicken moving around in the back room. After a moment he walked over to the woman and read the note: "// you've gotten to this place, Cajun, you've come too far."