Assignment Unicorn Page 4

  “It was good of you to be so prompt, Mr. Durell.

  You won’t mind the cold inside?”

  “No."

  “We shall not be long.”

  “Am I supposed to identify Donaldson’s body?”

  “No, no, that is not necessary. Come, please.”

  Colonel Ko unlatched the huge refrigerator doors and swung them wide open, pulled another switch, made some other tubular lighting fixtures wink, blink, and cast their cold, unnatural light on their faces. There was a body under a coarse canvas sheet on a narrow table.

  “We are really quite modern in our police methods here in Palingpon, Mr. Durell—thanks in part, of course, to your country‘s generosity. We have identified the body, the blood type, hair, fingernail scrapings, etcetera, and matched up similar scrapings and hair taken from the nails and hands of the one man we were fortunate enough to capture. There is no doubt that the man we have in custody helped tear poor Donaldson apart. With bare hands. You can see the results.”

  Colonel Ko twitched the sheet aside.

  Durell’s face did not change. He might have been examining a rice-paper fragment of calligraphy from the Han dynasty, as he looked at what was left of Hugh Donaldson.

  The man’s neck had been broken. His eyes had been gouged out. One ear was bitten or torn off. His back was broken. All his limbs were there, but one arm and one leg had been torn out of their sockets. The face was not recognizable. There were scars, gouges, rips and tears all along the twisted torso. The genitals had been crushed, as if by a dozen boots. Very little was recognizable. The icy cold of the refrigerator room touched the back of Durell’s neck.

  “Enough?” Colonel Ko said softly.

  “Quite,” Durell said. “There were no weapons used of any kind?”

  “Only hands, fingers. Madmen, Mr. Durell.”

  “Drugged?”

  “We do not know.”

  “May we leave?” Durell asked.

  “Do you feel ill, sir?”

  “Just cold.”

  “But this room is safe, Mr. Durell. You can be assured there are no—ah, bugs, listening devices or recording mechanisms to overhear us in this place.”

  “I see.”

  A clock in the larger outer room whirred and rang the hour. It was five minutes slow, which wasn’t bad for Palingpon, where almost everything was usually late.

  Colonel Ko spoke softly, gently, his dark eyes sad. “There is the matter of the money, Mr. Durell.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know about it, of course?”

  “Yes.”

  “A sum most necessary for the continuance of our security work here, as well as—ah—our continued friendship and cooperation.”

  “I understand,” Durell said.

  “A sum that Mr. Donaldson, poor fellow, was to have turned into my office the very day he was so cruelly murdered, along with Premier Shang.”

  “You’ll get the money,” Durell said.

  Colonel Ko said promptly, “When?”

  “Arrangements have to be made to replace it.”

  “Premier Shang’s death brings troubled times to Palingpon. Who knows what plots are already afoot, without our beloved leader at the helm? Plots to destroy our democratic people’s form of government, so admiring of your own constitutional way of life. We have been so ready to be advised by you who are older and wiser in the ways of true freedom and democracy.”

  Durell looked down at the small uniformed man.

  “That’s a lot of shit, Colonel.”

  He did not know how Ko might react. But the man smiled and then laughed softly. “Ah, yes. Very good. Ah, very good. We are pragmatic men, then. We understand each other.”

  “Only too well,” Durell said.

  “The money, then?”

  “In two weeks. I’ll arrange it.”

  Colonel Ko said, “You wish to remain here in Palingpon for two weeks, Mr. Durell?”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow,” Durell said.

  “That may not be possible. We would like to be assured that the aid in funds will be forthcoming. I am sorry, I understand your position, you are an honored guest here, a most trusted man in the employ of your General McFee—”

  “Colonel Ko, I doubt that McFee would be too concerned if I were fed to the water crocodiles today, tomorrow, or two weeks from now. I wish you and others like you would understand that. What you should understand, without question, however, is that it I do not have your permission to leave tomorrow, you will never see the aid money, two weeks from now or ever. Is that understood?”

  Colonel Ko was silent for a minute. “You take extraordinary liberties, Mr. Durell. Desperate chances.”

  “It’s your choice,” Durell said.

  “Ah, yes. Well, perhaps you have seen enough of poor Donaldson?”

  “Quite enough.”

  “Then come with me. I am sure you would also like to see one of his assassins,” said Colonel Ko.

  10

  “WHAT PUZZLES me, Mr. Durell,” said Ko, “is that there is truly no motive for the murders of Premier Shang or your Mr. Hugh Donaldson. We are a small island, sir, of scarcely any significance. Indonesia, Malaya, even the Philippines consider us too unimportant to press their territorial claims here. We have no mineral wealth—our tin mines are depleted and certainly no oil. We are not at any strategic crossroads of commercial traffic. We are at peace domestically. There are no real dissident parties who could have had political ambitions to drive them to assassination. You have seen Palingpon for yourself. There are no mobs raging in the streets today, no banners, no riots or bombings. No one has made a move to seize power.”

  “Except you, perhaps,” Durell said gently.

  Colonel Ko smiled. “No, no. I am quite content with what I am. The question then arises, sir, why was Premier Shang killed? And Donaldson? If Donaldson was the true target—I am sure the thought must have occurred to you —it would have to be terribly important to take Premier Shang with him. Then—why?”

  “I don’t know yet," Durell said.

  “Nothing suggests itself to you?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “May I have your thoughts on the matter?”

  “No,"

  “You are a blunt man.”

  “Perhaps it was simply a warm-up for the major leagues,” Durell said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “For bigger game in the future.”

  "Ah."

  The prison was located in a Portuguese fort to the north of the city, another martello tower of red brick, with mossy crenellated walls and empty gun embrasures now partially bricked up or guarded with iron bars. The colonials had made a mistake in building the fort here; the casualties from malaria must have been enormous among the unfortunate garrison. The atmosphere on this side of the river was miasmic. Mangrove swamps surrounded the place. The road to the old fort was barred and chained, with a sentry box and two armed soldiers on duty there. Colonel Ko was waved through without formalities. The road followed a causeway through the mangroves and the dark, gleaming waters of the flooded river banks. It was the only approach to the red brick structure. Two old six-pounder cannon had been left as ornaments to guard the high entrance gate. The cannon were rusted and useless, of course. A more modern lightly armored tank was far more in keeping, parked in the shade under a huge old banyan nee. Two more soldiers lolled here, smoking and watching a group of yellow-robed bald priests who clashed cymbals and banged drums and chanted incomprehensible prayers in the dust of the road outside the gate.

  Colonel Ko got out of his Army jeep and the two soldiers came to attention, surreptitiously hiding their cigarettes. There were a few brief words while Ko gestured toward the Buddhist priests. He came back to the jeep looking angry.

  “Protesters, Colonel?” Durell asked mildly.

  “One of their brothers is a prisoner here.”

  “May I ask on what charges?”

  Colonel Ko said, “No, you may not as
k, Mr. Durell.”

  “I thought you said there was no political unrest in Palingpon.”

  “It is of no importance. Come, please.”

  Durell followed the small man around the ring of chanting Buddhists. The sound of their cymbals and drums drifted after them when they moved inside the prison.

  The cell was cool and damp. The brick walls had been painted white, but most of the paint had peeled off, leaving scabrous blotches. The prisoner lay on a cot against the wall in a tar corner, where a shaft of sunlight came through the barred window and blinded the man’s eyes.

  The prisoner had been washed and bathed and wore a white smock-like garment that reached down to his ankles. He looked sightless. His hair was a dark brown, straight and somewhat lanky, and the roots were still stained with black dye. His face was just a face, although battered and bruised. An ordinary face, hardly that of the ravening beasts who had scaled the Palace walls and tom Donaldson and the premier apart. There were other bruises and welts on the man’s body, as Durell could see when Colonel Ko went to him and stripped back the cotton smock, unbuttoned at the back, exposing the whole torso. The prisoner’s breathing was very light, very shallow. He did not turn his head when the guard admitted them. There was an oscilloscope hooked up to an electrocardiograph machine with wires attached to the man’s chest, wrists and ankles. The rise and fall of the electronic blip on the screen looked weak and erratic. An Indian doctor with a neat white turban and a starched white jacket rose from a stool in the corner. He had been reading a tattered copy of Playboy.

  “Sir!” the doctor said, in a manner that reflected British military training.

  “Any change in the patient?” Colonel Ko asked.

  “He is very ill, sir.”

  “Has he said anything yet?”

  “Not a word, sir.”

  “You have tried to get him to speak to you?”

  “I have tried, sir. I do not believe he intends to talk.”

  Colonel Ko said sharply, “He must be made to.”

  “I am doing what I can, sir.”

  Colonel Ko turned bleak black eyes toward Durell. “You do not seem surprised?”

  “That the prisoner is a white man? No."

  “We have to assume that all of them, all those who engaged in the attack on Premier Shang and your Mr. Donaldson, were white Europeans or Americans. We don’t know.”

  The dapper colonel swung on his small booted feet back to the doctor. The cell stank of stale urine, antiseptic, the swamp outside. Ko said again, “A white man. With stained skin and dyed hair, in native costume, dressed like a Malay. What do you make of it, Mr. Durell?”

  “I don’t know,” Durell said.

  “Surely you must have a theory. What country would you say this man came from?"

  “If he were black-haired and short, I would say he was from a Mediterranean race. But there are short, black-haired Scandinavians, too. His nose tells me nothing. I am not an anthropologist, Colonel Ko.”

  “But your impression?”

  "I'm not sure at all. He could be Greek, Italian, Czech, Norwegian.”

  Colonel Ko said, “I wish we could induce him to speak.”

  “Impossible,” said the doctor promptly.

  Durell walked over to the cot and stared down at the prisoner. The man’s eyes did not blink, although the slant of sun that came through the barred window was directly in his eyes. Durell lifted the man’s upper lip and looked at the teeth. There were gold fillings, not steel caps, on those that had dental work. Not Russian, he supposed. The man looked to be about thirty. His build was athletic—solid biceps and strong pectorals, stocky legs, also well-muscled, a flat stomach that lifted and tell almost invisibly with his shallow breathing.

  “Hello,” Durell said.

  Nothing.

  “Bonjour. Guten Abend. Buenas tardes.”

  Nothing.

  Even with such musculature, no one could have leaped up and scaled the twelve-foot wall and torn two living men apart with his bare hands.

  The oscilloscope, which had been making small, irregular beeping sounds, was suddenly silent. The Indian doctor whirled around. Then the heartbeat was resumed. It seemed a bit weaker, however.

  “What is the matter with him, Doctor?” Durell asked.

  “Exhaustion.”

  “Unusual?”

  “Extraordinary. Total depletion of body vitality and functional resources. He has not urinated or defecated since he was brought here.”

  “Ever seen anything like this before?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Never?”

  “Perhaps once. A Palingponese fisherman whose boat capsized and threw him into the sea. He could not swim very well, but he stayed afloat tor forty-nine hours through sheer will power, fighting to stay up and keep the sharks away. He died shortly after he was rescued and brought ashore.”

  “The prisoner reminds you of that?”

  “Somewhat,” said the doctor.

  “Have you taken blood samples? Looked for drugs? Amphetamine types?”

  “We have done everything. The state laboratory is very efficient. Very good technicians there, sir. We thought the same thing. But we can find no traces of adrenalin-based excitatives, certainly no heroin or opium-derived substances.”

  Colonel Ko said, “But he must be made to talk.”

  The doctor merely shrugged his shoulders.

  “Could he be hypnotized?” Durell asked. “Perhaps in a trance?”

  “Farfetched, sir.”

  “But not impossible?”

  The Indian shrugged.

  Durell said, “Do you think he can understand us?”

  “I cannot tell,” said the doctor. “There has been no reaction to any stimulus.”

  Durell looked down into the prisoner’s face again. The features were blank. The open eyes were blank. The irises of the eyes were very dark, the pupils dilated. He cocked the prisoner’s head to one side; there was no muscular resistance. Then he held the man’s face with his left hand under the jaw, wet the tip of his little finger, and lightly touched the cornea of the prisoner’s left eye, withdrew his finger, and came up with a tiny contact lens. The eye was now gray. At no time had there been the slightest reflex in the patient‘s face.

  “Ah. Gray eyes.” Colonel Ko was pleased. “Very good, Mr. Durell.”

  “It proves little,” Durell said. “He’s a member of a team of assassins, not merely Malays running amok. These were men from abroad, who sneaked into Palingpon with one object: the killing of Premier Shang or Hugh Donaldson, or both.”

  The Indian doctor was listening with some interest.

  Durell went on. “A gang that was either hypnotized in some way, given posthypnotic suggestions—it is well known that a man in a trance can have extraordinary physical powers—or perhaps drugged, given some stimulant—”

  The doctor said, “There is no such stimulant known to the medical profession.”

  Colonel Ko’s boots squeaked as he turned. “Not known to you, perhaps, Doctor.”

  Durell bent over the prisoner again. He touched the man’s lower left bicep. “Doctor, come here, please. Is this a mosquito bite? An insect sting?”

  There was a small red mark on the man’s pale washed skin. The white-jacketed doctor bent forward, holding his stethoscope in his pocket. “Very difficult to tell.”

  “You can’t tell the difference between a hypodermic and an insect sting?”

  “Sir, an insect’s sting is a hypodermic. Like a needle, precisely. This one is small. Very small. It is not possible to differentiate between them. It is also several days old, of course. You can see how this tiny puncture has already healed. There is no sign, however, that the sting was an irritant. You can see, on the skin around it, no sign that the prisoner scratched or rubbed at it.”

  Durell looked down into the prisoner’s staring eyes.

  “I’d like to have this man transferred to the state hospital for exhaustive tests, Colonel Ko.”r />
  “Impossible.”

  Durell raised his head. “Why?”

  “He must be executed.”

  “That’s foolish,” Durell said.

  “It has been decided.”

  “Who decided on killing him?”

  “I did,” said Colonel Ko.

  “When do you propose to do this?”

  “In Palingpon, considering the internal security measures that must be taken since Premier Shang’s death, it must he demonstrated that justice will be swift and merciless. The prisoner will be executed directly we are finished here.”

  “Even if he doesn’t talk?” Durell asked.

  “He cannot talk,” said the doctor.

  “He will not talk,” said Colonel Ko.

  Durell looked into the prisoner’s face and eyes.

  “All right,” he said. “Kill him.”

  11

  A HUGE old sapodilla tree, a heap of old lumber and scrap metal, and heavy, fleshy-leafed vines made the prison courtyard even gloomier than the interior. Durell followed the little procession out along a brick path to a stake thrust into a small mound in the center of the yard. Arched, barred windows surrounded them, and in most of the windows a face appeared, hands gripping the bars, watching. Colonel Ko’s boots were silent on the moss-grown bricks. There was not a breath of air within the courtyard. The stench of the swamp and the sewage floating in the Palingpon klongs attacked Durell’s nostrils. He tried to breath lightly. No one else in the procession seemed to notice.

  The prisoner had to be supported by two armed soldiers of the firing squad. Everything about him sagged and flopped bonelessly. His head lolled on his shoulders. His arms dangled. His legs and feet dragged behind him. He had to be tied to the stake with secure lashings to keep him upright.

  Colonel Ko said quietly, “You will not forget the—ah—subsidy?”

  “No, I will not forget. Don’t worry about it, Colonel. I will keep my word. The funds will be replaced.”

  “What do you suppose was the main objective of the attack on Donaldson’s plantation? The safe? Seventy thousand dollars is a lot of money. You can adjust your books so its replacement will be explained?”