Assignment Burma Girl Read online

  “Oh, God,” he wept. “Won’t anybody help me?”

  Three

  Durell flew from Hong Kong to Bangkok, and from the Thai capital went on northwest via Pan Am jet liner to Rangoon. The flight from Bangkok to Rangoon took less than two hours across the dark green hills, misty gorges, and then the vast rice paddies and flat fields of the Irrawaddy Delta. In April, there was still a little time before the monsoon season, although there were towering cumulus clouds all around the horizon, and the rain that occasionally fell made the atmosphere steam. There was a half-hour’s delay in Bangkok, but he did not leave the airport, and he was not impatient. He had learned long ago that being impatient was a quick way to get yourself killed in his business.

  The plane touched down at Rangoon’s airport at four o’clock in the afternoon. There were a few American tourists, some Indonesians, Poles, engineers from Malaya headed for India, a group of UNESCO people, and half a dozen Chinese who kept to themselves.

  Rangoon, the City of the Peacock, was hot and humid. He had not been here for some years, and to get along, had to depend upon the almost universal knowledge of English in the city since his rudimentary acquaintance with Kachin dialects was of no use. Durell changed into a white linen suit, and moved with quiet purpose through the usual confusion of customs and the airport rituals of collecting his single piece of baggage.

  There was a delay when he declared his gun and the box of ammunition with it. Several telephone calls were made, and the polite, uniformed Burmese asked him to wait. While he waited he smoked two cigarettes and watched the Burmese, Sikhs, Chinese and Indians swarming through the airport restaurant. Over and above everything in the city was the towering golden spire of the Shwe-dagon Pagoda, with its solid gold umbrella crown at the top. The city had been badly bombed by the Japanese during the war, but there was no evidence of it now, in the broad tree-lined avenues left by the British, or in the bustling activities of the port area, glimpsed from the plane, where sawmills and teak-loading wharves competed for space among the oil loading docks and rice storage sheds on the Hliang River.

  He watched a strolling group of Pwe players performing for a knot of tourists, and then the customs man returned.

  “Mr. Durell? Your weapon, sir. It is acceptable. But you are to report to Boh Suravani at the Justice Ministry at your earliest convenience.”

  “I understand. Thank you.”

  “You have been in Rangoon before, Mr. Durell?”

  “Not for some time.”

  “You must register at the Foreigners’ Registration Office at 53 Barr Street and present three photographs of yourself, if you please. And any bank will change your currency to kyats.”

  “Thank you.”

  The Burmese nodded. He was very official and precise with his English. “I hope you have a pleasant stay in Rangoon, sir.”

  Durell took a jeep taxi from the airport into the city, giving the Strand Hotel as his destination, but asked for a quick circuit of Dalhousie Park, the Royal Lake, the zoo, and the better residential area around Lake Victoria. Traffic was heavy now that the worst heat of the day had ended. The broad avenues with their large public buildings were jammed with green-shuttered gharries, trishaws, buses, and bug-like French cars. Every sidewalk showed the dark stains of betel nut juice to which the public was addicted. The color was riotous in clothing and business signs. When Durell had his bearings, he tapped the driver’s shoulder and told him to proceed to the Strand Hotel in the center of the city.

  His room faced the river on the comer of Strand Road and Lewis Street. The wooden fan in the ceiling did not work, but there was an attached bath and shower. He stripped off his travel clothes, washed the grit from himself and put on a fresh linen suit. While he was showering, the telephone rang. He let it ring, and after a minute or two it went silent.

  As a matter of routine, Durell searched the hotel room. Outside, a light shower began to fall, but the humidity and heat scarcely abated. The incessant sounds of traffic, of gharries and taxis, buses and bicycles and trishaws, made a rising and falling rhythm that accompanied his habitual search.

  It is always better to be certain, he thought. Espionage was a business that took long and arduous professional training. The trouble was budget and personnel problems occasionally required the recruiting of an amateur like Paul Hartford, who had grown too accustomed to the ease, security, and apparent solidity of routine life to accept the dangers involved in the dark world where Durell worked.

  He found the microphone bug in less than five minutes’ search. The telephone rang again. He started to answer it, then flicked on the switch to activate the ventilating fan in the ceiling. It was a big wooden fan hanging from a steel rod in the high ceiling, where several geckos stood immobile in the fading afternoon light. The fan did not work. While the phone kept ringing, he looked at the fan, then stood up on a chair and found the small microphone wired to it. Tracing the wire up to the ceiling, he found it went into a hole in the cornice molding, presumably into the next room.

  Someone was there, listening.

  The telephone still was ringing. He picked it up and answered it.

  “Durell?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Chet Lowbridge.” It was a professional greeter’s voice, warm and friendly, with a heartiness that came from long practice, marked with a Midwestern flatness. “Welcome to Rangoon.”

  “Thank you. Who advised you about me?”

  “I had a cable from Washington, of course. From a certain elderly gentleman and a Senator.”

  “Don’t talk too much,” Durell said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m bugged.”

  “What? Oh. That will be. Colonel Savarati. Boh Savarati. He’s with us.”

  “Is that the reason he planted a mike in here? They’re listening now.”

  Lowbridge still sounded warm and apologetic. “Well, you know how it is out here. What with the Lahpet Hao on the move up north, and those states being practically autonomous and adjacent to the Communist-run provinces in Laos—”

  “Don’t talk too much,” Durell said.

  “Well, look, I simply phoned to set up an appointment with you for Mrs. Eva Hartford. She specifically asked to meet you.” Lowbridge’s voice had suddenly cooled about twenty degrees. “I’m supposed to work with you, you know.”

  “You set up Paul Hartford with Savarati, too, didn’t you?”

  “Naturally, but—”

  “At whose request?”

  There was a long silence on the telephone. Durell heard a dim chattering of Burmese on the line, and he stared at the motionless ceiling fan and at the two geckos in the corner of his room and at the mosquito netting over the huge bed. Trishaw bells rang out on Strand Road and he heard the dim, discordant music of another strolling band of Pwe players on the street, entertaining the tourists.

  “I’m coming over to the hotel in half an hour, Durell,” Lowbridge said decisively. “We can clear up any misunderstanding then. I’ll bring Mrs. Hartford.”

  “Do that,” Durell said, and hung up.

  He went downstairs to the bar and ordered bourbon and soda. He was hungry, and asked the barman where he could get dinner, and was told to try the Nam Sin, on Prome Road. The lobby was crowded. There were tall Sikhs, gaunt Englishmen, a chattering French couple, several Americans in ivy league suits and the uniform crew cut, looking well-fed and enjoying life. A beautiful Chinese woman, wearing an exquisitely embroidered, high-necked, slit-skirted chamsung, with several bearers carrying mounds of luggage, swept into the lobby. In the bar, there were signs advertising motion pictures in the theaters on Bogyoke Street and Sule Pagoda Road, films of Indian, American, English and Burmese origin. There was also a rather battered sign on the wall advertising BAT— Burma Air Transport—with an exaggerated, glorified photo of a DC-3 and the legend offering to transport merchandise of any kind, as well as passenger service to Mandalay, Pegu, Myitkyina and points north.

&nbs
p; The barman was a Cockney, quick and efficient, who followed Durell’s nod to the poster. “What’s the best way to contact Simon Locke?” Durell asked.

  “The Batman?” the Cockney grinned. “ ’E’ll be in ’ere by ten tonight, sir. Regular as a clock, that one, when 'e's in town.”

  “Does he live in the hotel?”

  “No, sir. Got a place out on Goh Win Road. Regular palace, they say, in the middle of the slums. It’s best you phone him. ’E’s a hard man to pin down.

  “If you see him, pass the word that I’m looking for a business transaction, will you?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Durell gave him a five-dollar bill.

  “If you can get in touch with him soon for me, I’d appreciate it.”

  “You can phone his offices from your room, sir.”

  “I don’t have to pay five dollars for that,” Durell said.

  The Cockney nodded and winked. “Right. Got it, sir.”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “I’ll start ringing around town this minute.”

  The bourbon Durell drank was only passable.

  Ten minutes later the girl came in.

  She was small and dark-haired and wore the traditional angyis of Burmese women—a short, sheer blouse of silk embroidered in green and gold and crimson—and a native skirt. But her high Western heels clicked sharply on the tiled floor of the bar as she turned decisively toward Durell, and everything in her manner except her dress stamped her as aggressively American.

  “Sam Durell?”

  “Yes,” he said, smiling.

  She had a crisp efficiency in the way she stood and moved, but it was belied by a sensuous mouth and dark eyes that considered him in direct appraisal. Apparently she approved of his lean, dark height, and she answered his smile with a brief one of her own.

  “I got your message,” she said.

  “I’m afraid I didn’t send you any. I wish I had, however, Miss—”

  “Merriweather Tarrant. Merri, to you. I’m Simon Locke’s business partner.”

  “I didn’t know he had one.”

  “And that’s all it is. Strictly business.”'

  They shook hands. She ordered a martini, and Durell looked beyond her, considering the other patrons in the crowded hotel, and out beyond the doors to the wide avenue and the traffic. He did not see anything disturbing. The girl who called herself Merri Tarrant had a small snub nose and tendrils of glossy black hair curled around small, delicate ears. In her Burmese costume, she looked as small and delicate as the chattering, laughing women of Rangoon. Only her crisp efficiency contradicted the look of a woman dedicated to femininity.

  “What is it, Mr. Durell?” she asked. “You’re staring.” “You’re something to stare at,” he smiled. “I didn’t expect such a quick response.”

  “Well, when there’s trouble, it ought to be nipped in the bud at once, shouldn’t it?”

  “Trouble?”

  “Simon told me all about you.’*

  “Then Simon talks too much.”

  “I suppose he does, but that’s all right. He still plays Hyboy over the Ledo Road in those rattletrap Dakotas. If he didn’t have me as a business agent, he’d be killing himself on one of those mountain ranges up north, or getting mixed up in some stupid gun-running deal for the Lahpet Hao. Oh, don’t worry,” she added quickly. “Simon is all clean. I see to that. That’s what he pays me for.”

  “It’s rather unusual—

  “To find someone like me in business out here? That’s what all the tourist gentlemen say.”

  “Do you see many tourists?”

  “Only those who want transportation.” She finished her martini quickly and stood up. “Those like Paul Hartford. And now Eva Hartford, chasing after her dear, romantic husband. Shall we go?”

  “To Simon?” he asked.

  “To Simon.”

  “Let’s,” he said.

  She drove a small Dauphine as if she were charging through traffic at Madison and Fifty-Seventh. She came from New York, she said, and was determined not to leave Southeast Asia until she had it made. Her goal was a country house in Connecticut, a husband who did not commute, and five children.

  Durell didn’t believe a word of it.

  “I told you, I’m not Simon’s girl; if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “Slow down a little.”

  “Are you worried about that black Mercedes?” she asked.

  “Did you notice it, too?”

  “It belongs to Colonel Savarati’s boys. They’ve checked up on you. They asked Simon about you.”

  “And bugged my room.”

  “Probably.” She seemed undisturbed. ‘You’re a little different from what I expected. Simon talked a lot about you, but you know how it is. His friends here aren’t like you. He didn’t talk enough. I like you.”

  “Well, you’re direct, anyway.”

  “The trouble with people out here is that they’ve gotten lost in their Hinayana Buddhism and feel a serenity that just doesn’t exist in this world. I don’t mind their cheerful dispositions and their mañana attitude. But the world today just won’t admit that sort of thing. You’ve got to be tough—tougher than the next fellow.”

  “Was Paul Hartford tough?”

  She swept the little Dauphine between two green-shuttered gharries and a trishaw. “He was scared witless.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Ask Simon. We advised him against going up into the Lahpet Hao country. Things are breaking pretty rough up there now. But he had this romantic idea of retracing the old Marauder marching trails. A lot of hooey. What he was after was something Colonel Savarati put him up to.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Paul talked too much—another sign He was afraid. Like me.” She grinned and looked at him sideways. “I’ll shut up and let you enjoy the scenery.”

  They were entering the Chinese quarter of the city above the low rows of wharves, teak sawmills and refinery tanks. Leaving the broad British avenues with their mathematically planted trees and reasonably efficient traffic was like plunging backward into another world. The houses were of woven bamboo, with thatched roofs and upturned eaves. In the narrow streets on almost every comer Chinese soup shops, redolent of simmering rice, curry, garlic, cinnamon, strips of bullock beef, did their business through all the hours of the day. Squatting on stools or haunches, the customers, if Chinese, ate quickly out of their rice bowls with chopsticks; if Burmese, they used the usual large brass plates and their fingers. Everywhere, the quick-moving, laughing Burmese women in their bright longyis and massed jewelry darted and chatted. The low, hot afternoon sun slanted down between the houses, making a moving pattern of dazzling light and sinister shadow. On an empty lot, a group of screaming boys played chinlon, a Burmese game, with a cane ball.

  “Here we are,” Merri Tarrant said.

  The house was impressive for this quarter, partly hidden behind a compound wall that sheltered a garden full of banana trees, palms, hibiscus and bougainvillea. A gatekeeper opened massive portals and Merri drove her little car inside on a stone driveway.

  There were travelers’ palms and oleanders and stone paths leading to a broad veranda under the wide, thatched roofs. Abruptly, the noise and smells of the city were shut out.

  “Like it?” Merri asked.

  Durell got out of the car. “Simon’s business must be flourishing.”

  “Thanks to me. I’ve no false modesty, you see.”

  “Why did he pick this place? It can’t be very fashionable.”

  “He doesn’t like to be gossiped about. And the way Simon lives would give the European and American colony plenty to wag their tongues over.”

  “Women?”

  “Dozens.”

  “Is that why you and Simon—?”

  “I told you, this is purely a business arrangement. When I pick a man, it won’t be a drifter like Simon Locke.” They went inside. Two bearers in wh
ite mess jackets bowed them in and then someone called out in French from the shadows of a huge living room furnished with rattan chairs, sofas, a massive combination radio and hi-fi set. A miniature gold Buddha sat in contemplation in one comer of the room and serenely watched all that went on.

  “Merri, ma cherie,” the Frenchman said. “I was just about to make Simon’s coffee. That impossible Phnuti cannot make coffee as you Americans like it. And if you know Simon,” he said to Durell, “he lives on coffee. Among other things.”

  “This is Jackie Houphet,” Merri said. “One of Simon’s best pilots. Sam Durell.”

  They shook hands. The Frenchman was small and wiry, with a look of malaria fever about him. His grip was extraordinarily strong.

  “Jackie flew Paul Hartford partly to Myitkyina,” Merri explained.

  “Ah, yes. One moment, please. I will see to the coffee.” The slim little man in seersucker vanished through a beaded curtain. Durell lit a cigarette and sat down, watching the girl. Everything about her was out of key with this somnolent, easy-going area of the world. She could not sit still.

  “I thought Simon was already here,” Durell suggested quietly.

  “Oh, he’ll be along.”

  “When?”

  “Well, if you know Simon, when it pleases him.”

  “My business with him is urgent.”

  “I know. Take it easy, Mr. Durell.”

  “You should take some of that advice yourself.”

  She grinned tightly. “I’m all strings and wires, eh? That’s what Simon says. I make him nervous. But I also make him a pot of money.” She got up and switched on the radio. Immediately there was a news report about troop movements among the Lahpet Hao in the northern states, and a protest by the Burmese government to both China and Laos about border violations. The girl walked up and down, and Durell considered her trim body and hips and taut nerves and wondered about her and about Simon Locke. A parrot screamed in the garden outside, and there came a chattering and giggling from somewhere among the servants.