Assignment - Sulu Sea Read online

  “And no Truman shirt. Just plain pima, button-down collar knitted blue necktie, dark business suit. She spoke critically. “My, you look stuffy to me. What kind of business are you in, Sam Durell?”

  “My own. And you?”

  “I’ve come a long way to see you.”

  “How long a way?”

  “Ever hear of Tarakuta?”

  "All my life.” He looked at the golden-skinned girl. “Did you ever hear of Bayou Peche Rouge?”

  “I’m sick to death of the name,” she said.

  She showed no sign of stirring from the Bombay chair, so he ignored her and went through the Luakulani apartment with meticulous care. Durell was a cautious man, both by training, reflex and instinct. He had to be, in order to survive in his business He kept nothing to tie him to K Section here in the apartment, but he knew too well how a bit from here and there could be matched together to form a blueprint of a man or an operation. He checked his suitcase, his clothes, and the Governor Winthrop secretary desk that may have come over to Hawaii with one of the first missionaries to the islands. The girl’s blue eyes watched him with silent amusement while she finished her drink. He was not unaware of her magnificent golden legs, the curve of her thigh and breast, the tilted pride and intelligence of her lovely face. Her hair was piled high on her head in what seemed a haphazard fashion, and then allowed to stream in thick, honeyed waves over her shoulders. She wore a man’s blue denim shirt and a pair of very, very short shorts.

  He knew that when she stood up, she would be only an inch or two under his six feet plus. A lot of woman, he thought, angry with himself for somehow finding her here, wondering if it could be true that she came from Tarakuta, wondering why she was here after all these years. She was the sort of myth you never expected to meet in reality.

  Durell was a big man, heavily muscled, with thick black hair touched with gray at the temples. He had dark blue eyes that could turn as black as a thundercloud when angry. His temperament was quick and volatile, rising from his Cajun ancestors in the bayous of lower Louisiana. It was his one handicap. ‘He. had inherited from his old grandpa Jonathan all the instincts of a Mississippi riverboat gambler, which old Jonathan had been, and some of this was deplored by K Section, and some of it was quietly shelved and obliterated in dossier, because as a field sub-chief for the Central Intelligence Agency, he was not supposed to have any identifiable quirks or. foibles. There were a few, however, that he refused to give up—good bourbon, and chicory-flavored Louisiana coffee, among others.

  The girl had not even touched anything in his rooms, and this somehow irritated him even more, after fanning everything he could think of. Her eyes mocked him.

  “How did you get in?” he asked finally.

  “The bellhop was cooperative.”

  “He isn’t supposed to be.”

  He liked my legs,“ she said. “Do you like them, Sam?”

  He looked at them and approved of them and said: “I can't believe it. Are you really Willi Panapura?”

  “Sho ‘nuff. And you’re Samuel Durell, of Bayou Peche Rouge. My granddaddy, Joseph Panapura, and your granddaddy, old Jonathan Durell, were once the terrors of the Mississippi gambling halls, until old Joseph got homesick for the South Seas and left the good paddle-wheeler Three Belles and shipped out on a tramp steamer for home.”

  "Your grandfather must be in his nineties by now.”

  “He is. And Jonathan?”

  “The same. They were a tough breed.”

  “I’ve been hearing about you,” the girl said. “ever since I’ve been knee-high to a sand crab, and I long ago got sick to death of your name.”

  Durell smiled thinly. “It’s a mutual feeling.”

  “You mean you don’t like my legs?”

  “I like them, all right. But I’m flying to Washington tonight.

  “No, you’re not,” Willi said. “You’re flying to Borneo with me, this afternoon. Well, not Borneo, exactly. It’s Pandakan, capital city of the Tarakuta Group, just off the east shore. I’ve got the tickets ’n all.”

  “You seem pretty sure of all this.”

  “I am. You’ll be aboard, if you’re what your grandpappy told my grandpappy you really are.”

  He asked carefully: “And what is that?”

  “Oh,” she said, “you’re a man from the CIA.”

  Bayou Peche Rouge was a long way back in Durell’s past. The moss-draped old sidewheeler, the Three Belles, safely lodged in the mud of the delta country, had been his home ever since his parents died and old Jonathan took him in. And ever since he could remember, he had heard about the wild and Woolly South Sea Islander, Joseph Panapura, who had worked as a pilot for Jonathan in the heyday of their Mississippi gambling careers. The two old men still kept up a correspondence, a fragile thread across space and lengthening, inexorable time. Old Joseph had a granddaughter, as old Jonathan had a grandson. Durell had heard about the beautiful Willi ever since he had been twelve, when Willi was born.

  She was a myth, a Polynesian legend, an idyll of a day long gone and forgotten. His own work with K Section kept him in a shadow world of danger and eternal suspicion, of sudden crisis and alarm, where men died quietly in a silent war that ranged from the alleys of Bangkok to the utter respectability of London’s West End, from the hovels of an Arab sheikdom on the Indian Ocean to a crib in a coastal town of Panama. He had learned to live with it. He could conceive of no other existence now, after all this time with K Section. Somebody had to fight this battle of darkness, and live in this world of anonymity, of eternal care and infinite suspicion. You never turned a corner casually, you never opened a door without expecting enemies to wait beyond. He had survived. The price he had paid made him unlike other men, and sometimes he wondered if the cost was not too

  high. But he had gone too far, for too many years. There was no way out for him, ever, except one. And he preferred to postpone that ultimate end as long as possible, as far as care and alert reflexes and unending awareness could take him.

  “My,” Willi Panapura said. She considered her empty glass. “You’ve got a terrible look in your eyes, Sam.”

  “Have I?"

  “I'm sorry I’ve come to bring you such bad news.“

  “Is it about your grandfather?”

  “Oh, no. Joseph is fine. He's written airmail to your granddaddy about rny coming here to find you. We’ve laid up the Tarakuta—that’s our trading schooner—until you fly back with me.”

  He sighed. “All right, I can’t guess why you’re here or how you found me. So tell me right out.”

  She laughed softly. “Oh, you do like my legs, all right.

  You like me all over, I think, the way you look at me.”

  “Does that flatter you? Fine. I like you, Willi.”

  “But I’m engaged to be married, you know."

  “Congratulations.”

  “And engagements have been broken before, haven’t they?”

  “Don’t do anything rash on my account,” he said.

  “Oh, I won’t. Not until I know you better, anyway.”

  “Do you think you will?”

  “Yes, on the flight to the Tarakuta Islands, and perhaps later, I’ll get a better chance to size you up."

  He said patiently: “But I’m not going anywhere with you, Willi. I might like to, but it’s impossible.”

  “You’ll come with me. Because a man named Peter Holcomb sent me for you, and Peter Holcomb is dead.”

  chapter three

  NOTHING changed in his face. He knew the girl was watching curiously to see what effect her words had on him. But that did not matter. He took her for what she said she was, since no one else on earth could have known about their grandfathers. He lit one of his rare cigarettes and lit another for her, but she said quietly: “I don’t smoke, Samuel. I don‘t do lots of things. We can get that straight, right off.”

  “Tell me again who sent you to me."

  “You heard me. It was a man who said he was
a lieutenant commander in the Office of U.S. Naval Intelligence, off a Polaris submarine named the Andrew Jackson." She paused and added quietly: “I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was such a good friend of yours.”

  “He wasn’t. We knew each other, that’s all. We’re in the same line of business. I use the present tense, you see, because I don't believe you when you say Pete Holcomb is dead, because it just isn’t possible.”

  “But he is. I was there when he died, all alone and out of his head on the beach, babbling about the boys being shot.”

  “Come here,” Durell said.

  She stood up obediently. Something in his voice was not to be denied. She did not smile when she saw what was in his face. She moved with smooth grace, her white shorts snug on her hips, her heavy hair swinging like thickly braided, honey-colored silk over one shoulder. Durell’s eyes were almost black, and he took her by the shoulders in a grip that hurt. She was not teasing now, not about their grandfathers or the long years of growing up, hearing of each other’s virtues until they were bound to be sick of the other’s name.

  She felt one of her rare moments of fear. He looked dangerous and cruel and implacable, like a furnace whose fire has only been banked, but you know the glowing, stormy heat is there, needing only a breath of wind to make it flare and blast everything within reach. She shivered suddenly. The beach behind her, with the girls on the surfboards and the beach burns catering to the tourists, the gay sail of the catamaran against the loom of Makapuu Point, the distant island music from the orchestra in the nearby Queen’s Lanai restaurant—all of it seemed hollow and stupid and even frightening, the Way this tall, angry man looked at her face and body and made up his mind about her. His fingers were hard and cruel, holding her shoulders.

  “You’re hurting me,” she whispered.

  “I know that."

  “Why do you do it?“

  “Because I want the truth. Pete Holcomb can’t be dead. He’s assigned to one of our latest nuclear attack subs, just now engaged in a nonstop cruise around the world. How could you have found him on one of your isolated Celebes beaches?“

  “Well, I did, and he almost killed Simon, he was so out of his head,” Willi snapped. “Now let me go, huh?"

  She moved with deceptive skill, an amber slide of silken skin that hid a quick coordination of nerve and muscle. Durell was not often surprised; but Willi Panapura managed to do it. His hands were thrust from her shoulders and one wrist caught and turned to trip him toward his big double bed, her ankle deftly thrust between his. He caught himself swiftly—much too quickly for her to accept. Her quick, lopsided grin of triumph told him she thought she had truly thrown him off balance. But he let her own weight take her, as she leaped after him with a gleeful, tigerish ferocity, and her long, lithe body rolled over his shoulder as he caught her upper arm and spun her golden figure up and over and slammed her down across the bed. She landed with a thump hard enough to make the Japanese silk screens jump on the walls. Her arms and legs were splayed and a look of utter dismay was stamped on her face. Durell caught the thick rope of her honey hair and wound it around her throat and across her open, startled mouth, effectively gagging and throttling her at once.

  She made desperate, angry noises. She heaved and writhed under him, and he merely grinned down into her flushed face. Then all at once a blush of color started on her cheeks and moved down under her denim shirt. Something like fear moved into her eyes. He spoke quietly, to reassure her.

  “Don’t worry, Willi. Just behave. I’m just as sick of hearing about your virtues as you must be about mine. But you shouldn’t have tried to throw me. You could have been killed.”

  She made muffled sounds through her hair. He took the thick braid from her mouth and she said; “Oh, you really are a son of a bitch!” .

  “Now, now . . .”

  “You’re not a gentleman, and I was told—”

  “Willi, I’m in a rough business, and you’re talking about a man you say is dead. But he can‘t be dead, understand? And even if he were alive, and you were wrong, it’s just as impossible for him to be on some remote island beach off Borneo. Now tell me the whole story quietly, and no more fireworks, please. Or you’ll regret it.”

  “Tarakuta isn’t that remote. And it’s independent of Borneo.” She regarded him for a long, thoughtful moment. “You know, I thought you really were going to kill me, for a minute.”

  He rolled away and stood up, but he was still wary of another surprise attack from this unpredictable and astonishing girl. “I want the whole story about Holcomb, Willi. But listen carefully, first: there are certain people in security who’d crawl up the walls because of what I tell you. Pete Holcomb sailed out of Pearl Harbor on orders from CINCPAC on the Polaris submarine Andrew Jackson, one of the latest of our nuclear boats, with sixteen armed missiles aboard her 4-25-foot hull. She’s also got a smaller, newly designed atomic engine that‘s twenty-two percent more efficient than the others. She’s sailing nonstop around the world on a speed run, understand? And Commander Holcomb was aboard. Now, if the man you say called himself Pete Holcomb was found on this island of yours—”

  “It’s not my island. But it was in the Tarakuta Group."

  “Well, if Holcomb is dead on this island—”

  “Not if. We buried him,” she said angrily.

  “Then where is the Jackson?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You haven't seen it?”

  “Listen, Samuel, from the time I understood the English language, I was told how smart a Cajun you are. But it seems to me that anybody could recognize one of those boats if they saw one. I haven’t seen anything remotely resembling a sub in years. But thirty hours ago, this man with Holcomb’s identity papers came raving down the beach like a crazy man, and he died. And don’t worry, I‘ve got his papers, so don”: look at me like that.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In my souvenir handbag, on your lanai.”

  He went out on the porch and picked up her big Luahala bag made of pandanus leaves with its plastic clasp and stood near the Bombay chair to open it. The girl rubbed her arm thoughtfully. In the bag was a U.S. passport in the name of Wilhelmina Panapura, and an envelope with about three hundred dollars American and a sheaf of Singhalese lakhs totaling about three thousand, which came to another hundred, and another bundle of Indonesian rupiahs. She carried a pilot’s license for twin-engine aircraft, a ham radio license, and a number of other identity cards. He turned the Luahala bag over and dropped her keys and a wallet into his hand. The wallet was made of crocodile skin, manufactured in Florence, Italy, and he recognized it at once, remembering it in Pete Holcomb’s hand when they toured the Bora Bora and Kamaaina bars a few weeks ago near Waikiki. The wallet was Holcomb’s, without doubt. Yet it couldn’t be, unless—

  He looked at Willi and dropped the handbag to the bed beside her, and his voice was very quiet.

  “Now tell me everything about Holcomb. Don’t lie and don’t embroider it. Just tell me when and where and how you found him and why he’s dead.”

  “Well.” She rubbed her arm again and told him about the beach in the Tarakuta Islands. “Grandpa and I and Simon were just scouting around, looking for specimens. You know."

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “I got my master‘s in marine biology at Berkeley, in California, and I did graduate work at Yale-—your alma mater, Samuel. And I spent a year with the Oceanographic Institute at Woods Hole, on Cape Cod. I’m an American citizen, even if I am a resident of that certain People’s Republic that’s grabbing everything from Ceylon to Sabah, in Borneo, in the name of anti-colonialism, ha-ha. Right now, the Tarakutas are in a kind of never-never land waiting for a U.N. decision, and it’s like hanging by your thumbs while Indonesian guerillas raid and chase off the Malaysians. The island people just want to be left alone, but what with agitators from Right and Left, from Peiping and Djakarta and even the Philippines, plus old Dutch oil and tin interests and American CIA
pinheads kicking things up, we’re kind of confuddled down there. By actual count, there are some three hundred and eighty-eight islands in the Tarakuta Group, in the shallows between the Celehes and Sulu Seas, and the main town is Pandakan, but if you tried to pinpoint any certain one of those blobs of jungle mud—”

  “You’re off the track,” Durell said. “Get hack to Pete Holcomb. Where did you find him?”

  “Well, we had the schooner at this cove on Poelau Bangka —poelau means ‘island’——just north of Poelau Lia.t—which means ‘middle island,’ and about five miles south-southeast of Tandjoeng Petak— ‘tandjoeng’ means ‘cape’. The mean water depth there runs from five feet to forty, and then shelves off to the south to over two thousand, and it’s pretty tricky navigating, what with a thousand or so mangrove clumps that come and go each year. Am I getting through to you in enough detail?”

  “You’re doing fine. Can you find this place again?”

  “Sure. Anyway, Holcomb came down the beach like a raving maniac and clobbered the best schooner man in the islands, Simon, and thought he’d killed him; and although Simon has a head like a coconut, Doc says it’s touch and go for him at the Pandakan Hospital. That’s Dr. Malachy McLeod. He wants to marry me. He’s a big idiot with a beard and he says he loves me to distraction.”

  “I know Malachy McLeod," Durell said.

  She was wide of eye. “You do?”

  “Go on.”

  “There‘s not much more. We found Holcomb dying and buried him and got away quick, because Simon was hurt so badly. But before Holcomb died he gave us his name and Gum, and aid he'd seen you here in Hawaii and we should get you and tell you about it, and that it was very urgent.”

  "Tell me about what?”

  “He didn’t say. He died too soon.”

  Durell contemplated the girl's long golden legs as she sat on the edge of his bed and went to the telephone. “Stay where you are for a moment, please.”

  “I will. I saw that gun under your coat. It kind of hurt me when you fell on me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not sorry at all. For a minute, I was worried that maybe all these years of listening to Grandpa Joseph praise you and relay all the wonders your grandpappy claimed for you, until I was sick to death of hearing your name, Samuel, I—well, for a minute I thought maybe I’d been wrong. All that time when I loathed you, without ever having met you. But I wasn’t wrong. I don’t like you at all.”