Assignment White Rajah Page 6

  She lay still, her breathing fast and light, a little smile on her full lips. Her eyes were locked with his in challenge without dismay or apology for her attack.

  "You're pretty good, Lily Fan."

  "I will have you deported," she said quietly. "My father rules this province. Perhaps I will ask him to throw you into jail. The jail in Pasangara is not a nice place. It would be doing George a favor, since you do not like George, it seems. Please, you are hurting me."

  "Then behave."

  Kneeling over her on the bed, her nylon nightie up over her waist, he turned his head at a sound and saw George Hammond standing in the doorway.

  10

  He looked tall and cadaverous in the moonlight, leaning a little to the left to favor his old injuries. His thick gray hair was unkempt, and his seersucker suit looked as if he had slept in it. His eyes were sunk into deep hollows, gleaming with a feral light as he took in the scene. But he had been in the business too long to jump to premature conclusions. His voice was dry.

  "Having fun, Cajun? Get up out of there, Lily."

  "Oh, George—it's not—he tried—"

  "Be quiet. Stand up, Cajun. I have a gun on you."

  "That doesn't surprise me."

  "I mean it. You don't belong here."

  "I think I do. You didn't give me much in the way of directives on this assignment."

  Hammond didn't move from the doorway. His voice was quiet, but there was a tremor in it that revealed the rage that must be storming in him.

  "I'm your control in Pasangara, Cajun. You take orders from me. I give you as much data as I think you need, no more, no less, to function properly. What I teU you or do not tell you is always up to my own discretion."

  "Yes, and you do your homework, George, although not always according to procedure."

  Hammond's gleaming eyes flickered to the girl. She walked quickly into the bathroom and closed the door, as if he had given her a spoken order. "You don't have to worry about Lily Fan."

  "I worry about everything in Pasangara."

  "Yes, you have good reason to. Colonel Tileong is looking for you. Your usefulness here is at an end, Cajun. I'm already filing a report to that effect. Taiwan is sending a plane down for you tomorrow, at my request, if the airfield is functioning. Dispatches have gone to Kuala Limi-pur about you. You're blown sky-high."

  "And who talked about me, George?" Durell was quiet but equally angry. "Pala Mir knew me, her brother Imew me, I'm the victim of a murder attempt in the jvmgle, I'm confined to the hotel—and my cover as a legal secretary at the consulate is a joke to everyone in authority here. I've been on many jobs, George, but I've never run into a situation run as carelessly as this. A man could get killed this way."

  "That's right," Hammond said gently.

  The sound of running water came from the bathroom. Hammond cocked his head, as if listening to the noises made by the CHiinese girl there, then shrugged and took his hand out of his pocket. Durell felt a little easier. Everything Hammond had said about being his control was true. He had violated procedures himself by breaking into Hammond's safe house here and invading the files. K controls were always in conmiand. He felt sorry for Hammond because Hammond was trying to do a job here without adequate resources; he was out of touch with new procedures and rusty on his technique, perhaps too old and too tired to be trusted. A cardmal rule was that you took no unnecessary chances first with your assignment, then with your life. On the one hand, you didn't violate upper levels of security on your own initiative. Hammond represented such an upper level. He had every authority to remove Durell from Pasangara. On the other hand, there was Lily Fan.

  "Do you trust her?" Durell asked quietly, nodding at the bathroom door.

  "Of course. We're going to be married."

  "And Premier Kuang approves?"

  "Why not?"

  "You're older than she. You're not from a fine overseas Chinese family. You have no money except for your salary and K Section funding. How old is Lily Fan? Twenty?"

  "Twenty-two."

  "And politically aware?"

  "Apolitical."

  "How can you be sure? Young people are concerned about the world in a way that you and I never were at their age. And with overseas Chinese, you can never be certain."

  Hammond hesitated. "I've checked her out. She went to the University of Tokyo. And Berkeley in California. Precocious intellectually. And yet—^like a child, you know?" He smiled wanly. "Look, Cajun, we have to work together. I admit it looked like hell seeing you with her like that, but let's not argue about it. We have the Thrashers to think about."

  "That's why I'm here," Durell said. "But you seem to have other things on your mind."

  "You think I'm an old fool?"

  "You're almost forty years her senior. If you want her in bed with you, and she's willing—fine. But what's all the talk about marrying her?"

  "She wants to marry me."

  "How much does she know about you?"

  "Nothing," Hammond insisted.

  "Can she get into your files?"

  "No."

  "Has she tried?"

  "She exhibits no curiosity about my work. Oh, she knows I'm engaged in some security investigations for the consulate, but that's all. It means nothing to her."

  There was a small pause between them, and in it

  Durell heard a small murmuring sound from across the city, coming from the waterfront. Evidently Colonel Tile-ong's curfew was not fully operative. He went to the window and looked down the alley at the sampans tied up at the bridge, but all was dark and silent down there. Behind him, Hammond coughed.

  "I'm sorry, Sam, IVe said things I didn't really mean. But you can understand, I come in here and see you on the bed with Lily—"

  Durell said nothing. There was much between them that would always have to remain unspoken. He felt impatient with himself, precisely because he knew George Hammond's anguish and desperation. Emotion was a dangerous ingredient in this game.

  In Taipei when he was briefed by Dickinson McFee, the general had said, "George is your nominal control, of course, but you are on your own in Pasangara, Samuel. Hammond has been in a backwater too long; he's both physically and mentally debilitated. It's too bad, but he's there, and you will have to cope with him, somehow, without bumping him too hard."

  "Hammond once taught me a great deal," Durell had said.

  "He was one of the best. But he made a mistake—^just once."

  "How bad is he?"

  McFee said quietly, "Don't let him get in your way, but try not to let him know it, just the same. He was a fine man and a good friend."

  "Is he safe?"

  McFee's answer was short. "No."

  Durell listened to more water splashing in the bathroom where Lily Fan still lingered. Hammond sighed and took out one of his long, thin cigars, bit off the end and lit it, the match making a tiny bomb flare of light that temporarily washed out the brilliance of the Malayan moon. His face was all hollows and agonies in the glow of the cigar. When he sat down, he put his left leg straight out before him.

  "Did you get into the safe, Cajun?"

  "Yes."

  "Who briefed you on this place?"

  "General McFee."

  "I thought nobody knew about it. It wasn't in any of my reports. It's that httle pip-squeak Condon. He's snooping, of course. He did a tour of duty in the Navy, and he's ONI, I'm sure. Naturally, Navy Intelligence wants to know about their Thrashers, but they've no idea where the planes went, and they simply alerted Condon to nose around. It's a question of too many agencies proliferating aroimd one job. We hug our secrets to ourselves, and the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing."

  "Are you sure about the consul?"

  "Oh, yes," Hammond said. "He's the one who has been reading me out. He's from the new school, though. Who can you trust these days? His politics are unreUable, I'd say. No record of open campus radicalism, but he's one of them, eager to build a new world of love
-ins and pantheistic rites but wanting to drive there in a shiny little bug of a sports car that Daddy's hard-working cash bought for him. It's only because of his family that he's in the Foreign Service at all. What these long-haired pip-squeaks don't seem to think about is who is going to produce the things mankind needs to survive while they're gamboling about asexually in the meadows?"

  "What did Condon do in the Navy?" Durell asked.

  Hammond's grin was skeletal. "He was a pilot, old buddy. He never flew Thrashers—they're new—but he could certainly handle one if he had to. Interesting?"

  "Could be. We have a Judas among us."

  "And then you have our Colonel Tileong," Hammond said. He drew deeply on the cigar and rubbed his left thigh, as if it ached. It probably did. "Tileong was educated in England—a military education. Air Force, too. Checked out in jets, too. He could fly a Thrasher as easily as he handles a rubber hose in that security fort of his.

  And he's often absent from town. I've tried to correlate his disappearances from Pasangara with the times the Thrashers were taken but haven't had much luck in that direction yet. Neither good nor bad reports. He's a tough little fellow—fanatically devoted to his country and its freedom."

  "Why not?" Durell said. "Did you ever get me a dossier on Paul Merrydale?"

  "No chance yet. Kuala Lumpur hasn't answered my inquiry. The lines are down, or maybe they're just closed by Tileong to suit his convenience. Paul is in business here, though; it would seem that he'd be anxious to stay in right with Kuang's premiership and the regime. Especially in view of the old man, the former White Rajah, Paul Merrydale and Condon make a pair, all right. Drinking buddies, they are. Chiang Gi says he heard them talk about flying one night. Paul seemed to be knowledgeable about jets, and Fve heard that he did a trick of military service, too, but there's a blank spot in his career. He was gone from Pasangara for two years, something like Pala Mir's society tour of Europe. But Pala Mir blazed a wide trail from the Riviera to Peking, while Paul's two years are still a closed book."

  The noise from the waterfront was growing louder and more distinct. It was a mob sound, mindless and dangerous. It seemed to be coming this way.

  "Who owns this herbalist's shop?" Durell asked.

  Hammond grinned. "It belongs to Chiang Gi's brother. He's off on a visit to other relatives in Hong Kong."

  "You lean on Chiang Gi a lot, it seems."

  "He's invaluable."

  "But many of these overseas Chinese here and in Southeast Asia have families and home ties back on the mainland," said Durell.

  "Well, that's true, and no doubt many have a deep loyalty to the motherland and even to the Peking regime, for all we know. But I'd stake my life on Chiang Gi's loyalty to me."

  "You may have to," Durell said shortly.

  The sound of water in the bath ended abruptly.

  Hammond sighed and looked at the closed door.

  "Am I a fool, Cajun?" he asked quietly.

  "Perhaps."

  "I love Lily. I tell you, I love her."

  "December and May," Durell said.

  "Is that so wrong?"

  "It's wrong."

  "She's a fine, sweet, wonderful girl."

  "She's a child."

  "No," Hammond said. "She's a woman."

  "You could be her grandfather."

  "But I'm not, am I? Do you know what it's been like for me ever since East Germany? For a long time I woke up with nightmares, sweating and shaking all over. I lost my nerve, I admit it. Any man would after getting their special treatment. I used to think I was tough enough to take anything. But I'm not. Neither are you. I hope to God you never find that out about yourself. It's a rotten, miserable, cruel business. Afterward, I wanted out; I wanted to be like everyone else. Don't you ever feel like that, Cajun?"

  "Yes. Often."

  "But it's too late for you, just as it's too late for me. I thought for a while that our own people were going to kill me. I was just deadwood, a total loss. Oh, I could see it in their eyes. The agency had no further use for me. I was a physical and mental wreck after East Germany, and in the agency's eyes, I was a dangerous one."

  "You did fine," Durell said. "You recovered."

  Hammond shook his gaunt head. A loop of thick gray hair fell over his eyes, and he brushed it away. His hand was shaking.

  "But you know, nobody spoke honestly to me after that. I was given every kind of treatment. The psychiatrists had a field day, debriefing me for over two years. They wiped out part of my memory, part of my life. Maybe it helped; maybe it didn't. I'm not the same as I was; that's all I know. But I want to go back there."

  "Where?"

  "To where I was before it happened, before they got me in East Germany." He paused. "They just use the same Gestapo techniques, but now it's for the cause of sociahsm."

  "The agency took care of you," Durell said. "They didn't arrange for a phony suicide or an accident or have a doctor stick a needle in you to put you to sleep for good, did they? You were given good jobs."

  "Useless jobs," Hammond said bitterly. "Like this one in Pasangara. I was no good as a civilian and no good to the agency." He paused again. "You son of a bitch, are you patronizing me?"

  "No. I can see myself in you, George."

  "No, you can't. You don't believe it can happen to you. But it will. It always does. To all of us." Hammond's cigar had gone out. He struck another match, and the tiny flare illuminated the deep crevasses in his cadaverous face. His eyes under his heavy brows and bony ridges were dark and inscrutable. "This is my chance to get back into the middle of things, Cajun. Maybe you have orders to supersede me, I don't know. I haven't had any directives about you, but in any case, Fm not going to let you get in my way. I'm on to, something about the Thrashers, and I'm going to make it back this time. I have to prove something to myself."

  "Or to Lily Fan," Durell said.

  "Yes. Maybe. I love her," he said again.

  The bathroom door opened and the Chinese girl came out.

  She had changed back to her street dress, and in the moonlight that now flooded the room, there was a childlike innocence about her appearance. She had brushed her glossy black hair and renewed the doll-like straight bangs across her forehead. She walked at once to Hammond, who remained in the chair smoking his cigar, and put her hand possessively on his shoulder. "Is it all right, George?"

  "No need to worry, Lily. The Cajun understands."

  "I had better go home, then."

  "I'll take you," Hammond said. His thick brows lifted in irony. "That is, if Durell has no objections."

  Durell said, "You may have to wait awhile."

  Like a sudden tidal wave of noise and crashing violence, the mob, carrying torches, had crossed the bridge and erupted among the moored sampans there. Durell went to the window and looked down. He thought he heard a girl scream, and there were shouts of men and another scream—and then he saw the girl, running, fleet as a doe, from the bridge and down the alley toward the apothecary's place.

  All at once, he knew the girl was heading for him. But she would never make the house. The mob came on like a flood tide, spreading out in long, dark tentacles, no longer composed of individuals but a destructive entity with all its energy aimed on the capture and annihilation of that single, fleet figure of a girl.

  Then she turned her head, and for a brief moment, Durell glimpsed her tormented, terrified face, lighted by the red glare of the torches.

  It was Pala Mir, running for her life.

  11

  Durell went down the back stairs three at a time, came out in the dark little area that was fenced off from the alley, and stepped through the gate. He had his Walther P-38 in his hand. The roar of the angry mob filled the hot, midnight air like the savage pounding of an angry surf. The narrow walkway between the tenements was dark and deserted. He drifted quietly to the left and came to the entrance of the Chinese apothecary's shop. In the glare of the mob's torches, he saw the jars of snake oil, dried toads, an
d hanging strings of herbs and roots behind the dusty glass. It was only a few steps across the narrow, dusty street to the embankment of the klong. Someone had thrown a torch into one of the sampans, and the straw-plaited cabin had gone up like a bomb, lighting the area at one end of the bridge. There were screams and splashings as the Chinese fishermen dived for safety into the black water.

  He couldn't see the girl.

  The crowd had been momentarily distracted by the burning sampan and the prospective victims who poured from the little boats around it. There were a few moments of time. He crossed the narrow street quickly and stood in the shadows of a flame tree that grew at a tormented angle over the water.

  He called softly. "Pala? Pala Mir?"

  But there was no chance that he could be heard above the murderous shouts and screams from the bridge. He searched the rank grass and brush that grew along the edge of the klong. The girl had vanished completely. The mob hadn't gotten her yet. He eased down to the water's edge and saw a ripple on the surface of the canal, and then her hand came up, wet and dripping, and caught his.

  "Wait. Stay there," he said.

  "Durell? Is it really you?"

  "Take it easy."

  Her long black hair clung to her face and shoulders. Her dress had been torn, and there was a bad scratch on her left cheek and blood on one hand. Her eyes were wide and blind with terror, her head moved from side to side waiting for the mob to come on. Durell looked back and decided the apothecary's shop was no place to take her now. It had to be kept out of the public eye, at all costs. He knelt by the water's edge.

  "Can you swim a little more?"