Assignment - Bangkok Read online

  Durell thought he heard a sound of weeping. He looked at James D. James, who sat impassively at the transceiver. Miss Ku was a delicate shadow behind him.

  “. . . is Brooklyn Omega. For God’s sake, help me! Are you receiving? I can’t—”

  James said curtly, “Talk to him.”

  Durell shook his head. He still was not certain.

  The surf sounds and other voices whispering in distant tongues, a repeat of the woman’s taped exhortation to kill, maim, and bomb, filled his ears. The radio was an open gate to madness. It was Mike Slocum’s voice. It was not. Two weeks in there could change a man. Two weeks in the cages, two days of joint-cracking torture, could make a man into something he was not.

  The sea roared out. There was dim crackling. Then: “When is Red Fish coming? I need some Delta Four . . .” Durell said to James, “It’s Mike. I’m ‘Red Fish.’ From Bayou Peche Rouge, where I was raised. What does he need explosives for?”

  James D. James shrugged. Durell picked up the microphone. He said calmly, “Hello, Brooklyn. I’m out of the net.”

  There was an abrupt silence. James cautiously adjusted the dials, leaning forward. The Lilac Point cat named Phan came into the room, leaped to the top of the radio, and sat above James, staring down with electric blue eyes.

  “Red Fish? Is that really you?”

  Mike’s voice was suddenly loud and clear.

  “Hello, Brooklyn,” Durell said.

  “Thank God. I was beginning to think—I didn’t know what to think. Listen, I have to get out. Things are bad here. Sam, you said you’d get me out.”

  “Will do,” Durell said.

  “When, Sam? I’ve got what we need. The whole can of worms. But there’s a project here—anyway, when, Sam?” “Like tomorrow,” Durell said.

  “Is it all laid on?”

  “I’m coming in after you,” Durell said, and flicked off his microphone.

  James lifted his head and stared. His pale eyes were angry. Miss Ku reached out for Phan, and held him in her arms, stroking the triangular, masked head. The Siamese kept staring at Durell.

  James said, “He had more to tell us.”

  “It will keep until I get there,” Durell said.

  “You assume too much. Perhaps he had a gun at the back of his neck. He may be in a cage in an insurgent camp or with the Yunnan Chinese. Or he may be happily inviting you to your death. I’ve read your survival factors in your dossier back home, Sam. On the actuarial tables, you’re dead.”

  “Then I haven’t anything to lose, have I?” Durell knew that what James said was true. He watched the man take a cigarette from his pocket. Miss Ku was there immediately with a slim gold lighter. Phan shifted uneasily in her arms.

  James bit his lip. “I’ve got it set up. The Air Force can fly you in a Phantom up to Chiengrai, and we’ve got some intelligence people who can get you into the hills. The Third Thai Army people will be available—”

  “No, thanks,” Durell said. “I’ll go in my way.” “Nonsense, old man. Don’t you trust anyone?”

  “Sir, the answer is no,” Durell said. “Not even you.” He looked at Miss Ku Tu Thiet, who smiled and made him a wai. “Sawadee," she whispered. “Goodbye.”

  8

  Alone, he found a taxi and got off on a shopping street some distance from the Rajprasong area and walked past the store windows crowded with copies of Buddha in the Sukhothai style and primitive, up-country garudas and kinnaris carved in teak. Hanging from wires in the shop window was a miniature naga, the undulating sacred serpent of the Khmers. Passersby paid no attention to him.

  He walked on to a quiet Thai restaurant. The hostess, in a glittering gown, ushered him to a small niche piled high with bright cushions. He sat on the floor. He ordered nam pla, a spicy sauce on shrimp, and haem, a pork dish from the north. Along with it came bowls of rice and crisp vegetables. He ate hungrily, watching the door. The place was quiet, unlike the bustling eateries in the center of the city. The other patrons, all Thais, murmured gently to each other. Seated, he followed the Thai custom and was careful not to point his feet at anyone. He drank his hot, green tea carefully.

  There was a small pipet band, mostly percussion, that played traditional melodies while small chings, cymbals, kept time. A costumed Thai girl played the saw sam sai, a triangular coconut fiddle with three silk strings. He ordered more tea. A small group of affluent Thais came in, wearing Western clothes. Durell ate and thought about James D. James.

  No one handed out medals for the work in his business. In the dark struggle against subversion, terrorism, and growing violence, the men who fought were anonymous and unnoticed. Durell was not ashamed of his patriotism. He held no brief for those who leaped to cry calamity, who heaped self-criticism on the West, and who indulged Moscow and Peking. The world, half slave and half free, seemed always to totter farther toward self-destruction. Men like Mike Slocum did their jobs, not so much as mercenaries for pay, but because they felt it was a man’s proper and honorable course of action.

  He did not like to think that Mike Slocum might be a traitor.

  After he ate, he took a pedicab across the Chao Phraya River to Thonburi, the industrial suburb of rice and teak mills, and got out a mile up Rama Sriva Road at a busy intersection in Sampeng, crowded with restaurants, cinemas, dance halls, and tourist shops. A poster advertised Thai dancers in traditional, steepled head-dresses, announcing the ballet that presented familiar episodes of the Ramakien, the Thai epic of the legendary King Rama and his brother, Lakshama.

  Durell made certain that no one was behind him when he went on to keep his appointment with Benjie Slocum.

  The teak mill was a sprawling compound of native thatching mixed with tin corrugated siding and roofs, a complex of big and small buildings interjoined in haphazard fashion along the klong that brought the huge logs down from their long journey that began in the teak forests of Chiengmai, in the north. Normally, the mill would be a roaring, racketing, screeching place, even at this hour. Now there was a peculiar silence, and only a few dim lights shone. The steel gate was closed and padlocked. Great rafts of teak logs gleamed on the dark waters of the canal. No cat-footed lumbermen were out there, no floodlights shone.

  Durell paused. A dirt road led down to the water’s edge. Geckos chanted in the dark canopy of trees overhead. He walked to a smaller gate, where a jeep was parked. The gate was not locked. He stepped through and walked toward the low, slant-roofed building ahead, where a single light gleamed over the wooden doorway. He did not like to step into that pool of light. There was another door for forklifts on a ramp from the canal, and he went that way, following a path through brittle weeds and tall bamboo that grew alongside the oily, slack water of the klong. Inside, he smelled the pungent aromas of teak sawdust, sweat, stale curry. But there were no sawyers here.

  A light moved, gleaming in the darkness ahead.

  “Benjie?” he called softly.

  “Is that you, Sam?”

  “Right.”

  “Thank goodness. Come on up.” The flashlight waved, showed him a short flight of wooden stairs, and he climbed to a small balcony and saw her tall form in the shadows. He followed her down a narrow corridor to an open office door, and glimpsed beyond it wide windows that overlooked the sawmill.

  Benjamina Slocum hadn’t changed since his last visit. She had never been very feminine, preferring work clothes and slacks to lipsticks and creams. Her manner was informal and direct, her handshake firm. He noted calluses on the palm of her hand. She wore stained, shapeless denim slacks and a man’s lavender shirt with thin yellow stripes, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her angular shoulders were wide; he could see no contours of her body through the oversize shirt and slacks. Her long, yellow-streaked hair was tied up in a knot atop her fine head, and wild wisps of it went everywhere. Her large gray eyes regarded him evenly from under perfectly arched natural brows that even her efforts could not destroy.

  “How is your leg, Sam?”

/>   “Better. Everybody knows about it, it seems.”

  “Well, Bangkok is the end, as far as rumor mills go.” “Speaking of mills, where’s all your help?”

  She spread her strong hands. “Walked off the job right after I phoned you. The whole damned night shift, and I’ve got two more rafts of logs waiting up-river for the saws.”

  “Do you rim this place alone?”

  “Usually, whether Mike’s in town or not.” A shadow moved in her fine eyes. “Sit down, Sam. Want a drink?” “No, thanks. It seems lonely, here.”

  She shrugged. “I do Mike’s work, most of the time. He spends his nights at the Playboy, the Red Arrow, the French Club. He was never meant to run an industrial empire, if you can call it that. But I’ve got the rubber, the rice, the logging camps—and the Thai Star Airline still staggers along.”

  She led him into a rough, businesslike office lit by tin-shaded lamps on two wooden desks. There were battered green files, two chairs, cotton shades over the big windows that looked over the sawmill compound. Durell pulled the shades all the way down, and Benjie’s mouth moved. “Always the spook, Sam?”

  “Who runs your labor force? You’ve had to cope with Chuk’s so-called union, I suppose.”

  “ ‘Cope’ isn’t the right word. Mike used to handle it, but when he did less and less, I took over or it would all have gone down the drain. It’s like guerrilla warfare. Look at this place! Dead as a doornail, in two minutes. The saws were going fine, even after the accident I told you about, and then all of a sudden—nothing.”

  “It happened after you phoned me?”

  “Yes. They just walked out, silent as ghosts. I couldn’t even learn what their complaint was. How do you know about Chuk, that fat, wily son of a bitch?”

  “We’ve met. You look tired, Benjie.”

  “I haven’t really slept since Mike took off on his spook trip for you. We have a tea plantation near Xo Dong— bought it from a disgusted Frenchman for a song. It made a profit for a while, but now the Chinese have come across Laos from Yunnan and the rebels are busting up everything. It’s been two weeks, Sam. I’m fond of Mike, even if he isn’t much help.”

  “I know. I’ve come to get him out.” Durell watched the tall girl brace a foot against the edge of her desk. Her wide mouth drooped, and she looked suddenly disinterested.

  She lit a cigarette and offered him one, but he shook his head. “The problem is wheels within wheels, Benjie. Mike is suspect.”

  She sat up abruptly. “Of what?”

  “And I have to go in alone. No transport. But you’ve got the planes. You know the way to Xo Dong, on the border. I’m going to do this on my own, Benjie.”

  “What is Mike suspected of?” she repeated.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “I’ll wait and see.”

  She was angry. “Oh, you’re a—” She paused. “Look, you don’t owe Mike anything. He wanted to go in. He’s still living in his crop-dusting, charter-flight days. He’s never grown up, Sam. Is it bad?”

  “Pretty bad.”

  “Sam, I’ve made some money that’s safely deposited in New York, out of ten years’ work in this country. Thailand has treated us good. But Mike doesn’t want any of it.” Her smile was strained, slow, and wry. “He’s not a desk man, Sam, any more than you are. I don’t even try to pretend to understand either of you. Mike lives for kicks, for the spook jobs you’ve given him. He went off howling like a banshee with joy, on an up-trip. Mike really wouldn’t do anything bad, Sam.”

  “I don’t know,” Durell said.

  “He’s given me nothing but heartaches, since we were kids.” Benjie Slocum couldn’t have been much more than twenty-nine. “But I’ve protected him so far, I guess I’m in the habit of doing so forever. I’m sorry, Sam. Whatever it is, it wouldn’t be for money. How bad is it, truly?”

  “I may have to kill him for it,” Durell said.

  Her gray eyes lost some of their clarity. She stood up, almost as tall as he. It was hot in the office, and there were dark patches of sweat under her arms. Her gesture was hard as she thrust her hands into her denim slacks. Pacing for a moment, she did not look at him. He could see why she put Mike off, even as a sister. Mike went for dainty Thai types, elegant Chinese girls, or the occasional immaculate, well-bred, blond American girls who showed up in Bangkok as tourists.

  Benjie said thoughtfully, “Mike has paid less and less attention to what we were trying to build together—”

  “To what you were trying to build,” Durell said.

  “Jesus, you can hurt. But you may be right.”

  He waited.

  He could hear the tree lizards along the canal, the dull, flat bumps of floating teak logs, and the dim clink of the chains that held the logs together. Wooden beams croaked in the heat of the night. He moved the window shade slightly. The sawmill yard was dark and empty. Farther up the canal were the drying yards, where stacks of rough-hewn timber made black rectangular shapes in the night.

  “Sam, listen to me,” Benjie said abruptly. “I want to go with you. You couldn’t make it without me. For some reason, Mike got static from the local military when he went in. But I’ve got an old Piper Apache up at our forest camp near Chiengmai. It’s got extra tanks, enough fuel capacity to get to Xo Dong. We can get to the teak camp on our Thai Star logging flight, which is routine, not thoroughly checked.”

  “I’m not so sure I ought to take you in, Benjie.”

  “I don’t care what Mike’s done, I’m not going to stay here and let you kill him.”

  “He may not have done anything.”

  “Then I can help you get him out of there, can’t I?” “Yes, Benjie.”

  He heard the sliding movement of feet outside the office door.

  9

  Durell held his hand out, palm down, to keep Benjie from moving. Her face was blank. He slid his gun free and took two silent steps toward the door. There was nothing more to hear. Turning, he saw that Benjie had taken an old Colt .45 revolver from her battered desk. There was a photo of Mike Slocum on the green steel files next to the closed door. Straw hair awry, a grin on his freckled face, he looked amused and careless. Durell looked at Benjie again; then he yanked open the door.

  There was a squawk of alarm from the three men out there on the crowded stair platform above the loading dock. He glimpsed brown faces, heavy iron peaveys in their hands for controlling the logs in the canal. Two of them wore reddish sweatbands around their heads, from which their black hair stood up in thick shocks. The third man was a squat, muscular Chinese in a white Western suit; he wore horn-rimmed glasses.

  Durell came out of the doorway fast, asking no questions. The nearest man with the iron peavey tried to raise it for a thrust into his belly with the barb. Durell kicked him low down and drove him back against the railing, which cracked apart, and the man fell through to the concrete floor below. The second armed man jabbed ineffectually with his peavey and screamed in a high, ululating voice, meaning to paralyze him. Durell smashed his gun across the other’s face. Blood spurted, a broken tooth flipped out.

  Behind Durell, a gun roared. It was Benjie. She held it as if she meant business.

  “Wait! Wait!” said the Chinese wearing glasses.

  The man who had fallen from the landing was a dim lump of sprawled limbs on the concrete. The second man had dropped his peavey and was on his hands and knees, shaking his head. The Chinese said, “You ask no questions, you attack first—like the sneak imperialist exploiter of the people that you are!” He had backed a few steps down the stairs and held his hands out to show he was unarmed. He paid no attention to the two injured laborers. “Please, you must be reasonable!”

  “Who sent you?” Durell asked. “Was it Mr. Chuk?”

  “Ah, sir, Mr. Chuk is trying to help the oppressed working classes here, and he—”

  “What do you want?”

  “We came only to discuss with Miss Slocum the terms
on which the men in the sawmill will go back to work. A hundred percent wage increase, fringe benefits for hospitalization, a pension to the wives of injured men—like Tan Yui Phan, who lost an arm tonight—and paid vacations, permission to allow the men to listen to political lectures on company time—”

  “To hell with you,” Benjie said coldly. “Go back to Chuk and tell him I’ll close the place down before I let myself be blackmailed by terrorists.”

  “You may not have to close it down, Miss Slocum. You have much dry timber here. The men smoke a great deal. A careless cigarette, a spark in the sawdust—”

  Benjie’s voice was flat and deep. “Get out! Get out, before I ventilate you.”

  “Of course, Miss Slocum. But the Board of Trade and Labor Relations will hear of your unwarranted attack on the poor workmen, your heartless treatment of the people . . .”

  Benjie cursed like a man. In the dim light, she stood spread-legged, her big revolver against her thigh. She looked tough, competent, totally unfeminine. “You tell Chuk—”

  “No,” said the Chinese sharply. His glasses glinted as he lifted his head. “I shall tell you, Miss Slocum. There are notes held by the Aw San Fu Commercial and Mercantile Bank, where you—or your brother—owe a matter of one hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars. It is Mr. Chuk who holds the controlling interest in that bank, and your notes—”

  “Sam!” Benjie shouted.

  Durell was a split-second late for the warning. He felt a blow across his back with an iron peavey. The man with the broken mouth had picked himself up and swung hard. Pain was an explosion all across his shoulder-blades. He lost his footing, stumbled, went down, slammed into the Chinese, grabbed at the rail, and fell the rest of the way down the wooden staircase. The man with the peavey screamed and jumped down after him. Durell rolled, got one leg up, and caught the flying attacker in the belly. Pain burned through his left knee. He stepped back, the leg buckling momentarily; then it held him. The iron barb lay a few feet away. He caught it up, rammed it hard into his opponent’s body, and heard the bellowing roar of Benjie’s big gun. The stocky Chinese tumbled down the stairs in a tight ball. The man with the sweatband groaned and went down, holding his gut.