Assignment Golden Girl Read online

  "How many times have you made this trip, Harvey?"

  "Couldn't count 'em. I know the track like the palm of my hand."

  "How long does the trip normally take?"

  "Two days, two nights."

  "What about water stations?"

  "No problem. Plenty of rivers."

  "Suppose you get a hot box?"

  "I can fix it," Harvey said.

  "All right. Can you find a ballast car to hook up in front of the engine?"

  "A ballast car? Oh. Maybe. There's an old ore hopper up in shed three. Steel sides."

  "That would be fine. Better get it. In case of mines or an attack."

  "Right."

  Durell considered the middle-aged man. "Do you honestly think we can make it, Harvey?"

  "Honestly? Well, I don't know. People are starting to get in my way. The project should have been kept secret, of course, but all this work can't be done quietly. Too

  much native help is needed, and too many people in town can't be trusted since they sympathize with the Neighbors —or rather, they don't care too much for Prince Atim-boku. He's been giving a lot of orders that tend to foul things up, by the way. I wish you'd speak to him. He's got a little clique of hangers-on that he wants to take out of the country with him.'*

  "So I've heard."

  Harvey's face changed. "Have you seen Gloria?"

  "She's fine."

  "Look, will you keep an eye on her?"

  "I'll do that."

  "We don't have much left, Gloria and me, but stiU— well, you know how it is."

  "Take it easy, Harvey. Stick to Old 79."

  "Yes, but—"

  "Can you work around the clock?"

  Harvey flapped his greasy hands. "We'll have to."

  Thunder rumbled to the north, but it was not thunder. From the railroad yard Durell saw bursts of smoke in the hills at the far end of the valley where some of Colonel Abdundi's troops were replying to the guerrilla mortars. Pakuruville beyond the yards had gone quiet in the afternoon heat. The streets had emptied as if on some mysterious signal that had reached every native hovel and shack around. The bicycles had vanished from the modern boulevards, and there were no loungers under the traveler palms that lined the wide, sun-struck paving. The only movement or sound was the crumping of mortar shells still miles away, and the occasional racket of an Army truck rushing more men to the head of the valley.

  Prince Atimboku had found a new costume befitting his claim to be a royal personage. For all of his towering size, he had worn a look of youth and even betrayal on his face. He had taken off his leopard-skin outfit and now wore his oxtail cape and red touraco feathers. His yellowish eyes were bloodshot and suspicious when Durell walked into his quarters in the building at the other end of the rail terminal.

  "Is it going all right?" Atimboku asked abruptly.

  "The best we can hope for," Durell said. "Harvey is doing fine, but he has a handicap."

  "Well, fix it, Cajun."

  "He's worried about Gloria. That's why I'm here. He can't concentrate on the job while his mind is on her."

  "He's one of your people, isn't he?"

  "I don't know what that means."

  "He's one of your spy pigs, isn't he?" Atimboku's voice was a savage lashing of the air. "If you hire incompetent, love-sick old men, that's your lookout, not mine."

  "Just remember, Tim, that Gloria is his wife."

  "His wife?" Atimboku laughed. "Jesus, she's the one with the hot pants, not me. You should have seen her a while ago when she was here. A man isn't safe where she can reach for him, Durell."

  "Well, just leave her alone,"' Durell said.

  Atimboku's manner changed. "Are you giving me an order?"

  "Let's get this straight right at the beginning. If you want help from me, then you take orders from me—starting right now."

  The Pakuru's eyes dropped; his mouth was angry. "You forget, I'm prince of this country. I run it, I run—"

  "You don't run anything," Durell interrupted. "By morning, if you're caught here, you'll be sliced into little pieces and thrown to the crocodiles. Not too many Pakurus would cry over that either. You know it, I know it. If you want to play ball, fine. If not, to hell with you."

  A thin bead of saliva dripped from a comer of Atimboku's quivering mouth. His fury was enormous. He lurched up again to his full height, his big fist raised.

  "Once a pig, always a pig, huh?"

  "I'm not a cop," said Durell, "and you're not playing schoolboy games around here."

  "Man, you take some wild chances with me."

  "We've got a tough road ahead of us. Either we run the train together with just one of us in charge, or we forget it here and now." Durell did not look as if he were bluflfing. His gambler's face was hard and imcompromising. "I know you can have me shot right now. But if you do, you'll never get out of Pakuru alive."

  "The Neighbors—and Colonel Yi—would like to get their hands on you too, man."

  "That's right."

  "They want you as much as they want me."

  "It's possible."

  "And you still insist on giving the orders?"

  "I do."

  Atimboku sat down slowly and regarded Durell from imder heavily lowered Uds. A look of true paranoiac rage crossed his handsome brown face. His huge chest lifted and fell as he fought to control himself. Durell waited. Then all at once the Pakuru began to laugh softly, almost without meaning as he glared at Durell.

  "Okay, pig. But later we'll settle up. You've got me now. Between you and Harvey, I can't get you out unless you help. But we'll wait for that later. I've got friends in your State Department who will be interested in my report to them on your attitudes."

  "Say anything you want. Report the worst. Just leave Gloria alone."

  Atimboku spread his hands. "Yes, sir."

  "One other thing," said Durell.

  "I'm listening, man."

  "This Sally Hukkim. Who is she? More important, what is she?"

  This time Atimboku's face became a bland, inquiring, innocent mask—the sort of expression he might have practiced back in New Haven when taken in a police car after smashing a few windows or throwing steel spikes at the police. His voice went up to match his innocence.

  "Sally Hukkim? I don't know her."

  "She's a relative of yours, I think," said Durell.

  "Oh, man, you're really reaching."

  "Is she?"

  "I've got dozens—a couple of hundred relatives. Old King Natawana IV—my papa—liked two things: pushti, our local beer, and all his wives. He used both in good

  health, so I've got half brothers, half sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces that I can't even count."

  "And all of them want the royal stool?"

  Atimboku said, "That's right. But I'm the first, shumba." He used the native term for pig again. DurelFs face showed no reaction. "Are you finished with your ultimatimis?"

  "You haven't answered the question."

  "About Sally Hukkim?"

  "That's right."

  Prince Tim said, "You tell Sally that if I see her, I kill her. That's all. Simple. I thought you knew your business. Don't you really know who she is? She's a spy, man. For the Man on the other side. For Colonel Yi, your special friend from Peking. She's got some Chinese blood in her—^Papa Ngatawanna IV had a taste for variety in his wives. That magazine she writes for— Toward Sunshine —ought to be labeled 'The East Is Red.' It's a front for that Peking outfit you mentioned—^the Peacock Branch, Black House. Now go away and think about that some, Bwana Durell."

  Ten

  HE DID not feel particularly heart-broken about the ruins of the Pakuru River Hotel. When the Neighbor killers had wakened him that morning with their fire bombing, almost everything he had brought with him to Pakuruville had gone up in the flames. Almost everything. Wisps of smoke still curled from the blackened timbers of the room where he and Sally had slept. The heat along the riverbank was oppressive,
and the river looked brown and sullen. The constabulary no longer guarded the road. Nobody was in sight. Nobody waved a tonga knife at him or jabbed a Kalashnikov rifle in the air when he stopped his borrowed jeep and stepped carefully into the acrid-smelling, ruined lobby.

  The signs in Chinese erected by the Peking railway engineers before Prince Tim ousted them still creaked from the limbs of the eucalyptus trees along the river. A new portrait of Prince Atimboku Mari Mak Mujilikaka hung askew across the desk that had been used by old Implana, the owner of the hotel. Somebody had slashed it with a knife, but the strong, idealistic countenance still looked fiercely out over the smoke-blackened ruins under the motto in Banda, "I shall lead my nation across the dismal swamps to a safe and peaceful haven."

  "Implana?" Durell called.

  There were two doors behind the lobby desk. One was burned and charred and looked unsafe to enter. The other to the right had been spared by the capricious flames. Someone coughed back there, coughed again, and moved. A timber came crashing down. The sound was enormous in the smoky silence.

  "Come on out, Implana."

  "Yes, sir."

  The old Pakuru gentleman appeared in the doorway. His ancient, weathered face, that might have served as a model for the local wood sculptors who lived on tourist money, was creased and blackened even deeper than his natural pigment by the smoke. He clutched two ledgers close to his skinny chest.

  "Ah, Mr. Durell." His rheumy black eyes moved this way and that, not really settling on Durell at all. "I am alone here. Everyone has gone."

  "So I see."

  "I must send a cable to London, you know. To Lloyds. I'm insured, you see. To the hilt, as you say. Do not mourn for my loss today."

  "I'm glad, Implana."

  "Everything was insured. I shall be rich. I intend to leave Pakuruville if I can, as soon as the check comes. It will be for $316,220 in American money. I shall go to the Riviera and find a new wife."

  "About my package, Implana."

  "It is safe, sir."

  "Then let's get it."

  "I saved my books, you see. The proof that Lloyd of London will require to make good on my loss." The old eyes were shrewd. "I have made up an afiidavit that will require a witness' signature to the effect that the fire was a total accident and not the result of civil disturbance, riot, arson, or war."

  "That's cheating, Implana."

  "Ah, sir, the world today is full of cheats." The old man bobbed his long head at Prince Tim's portrait over the desk. "That one may be the biggest cheat of all. Will you sign my aflSdavit, Mr. Durell?"

  "And my package?"

  "It is safe. Down by the river. I shall get it promptly when my papers are completed."

  "Sounds like blackmail. You make make me a party to a conspiracy to defraud," Durell said mildly.

  "Insurance companies, I believe personally, are in a conspiracy to defraud their poor subscribers. It aU comes out even in the end."

  "With a villa on the Riviera?"

  Implana smiled. He was toothless. "And a new wife. A young one, of course. I am still a healthy, very virile man."

  "Give me the affidavit," Durell said.

  The JCT-Mk9 radio transceiver was in an innocent looking canvas pack made up to look like a piece of luggage. Old Implana had hidden it under a dugout drawn up in the reeds along the bank of the muddy river. Durell checked the lock. It was intact. Implana, hugging his ledgers and the signed affidavit, trudged away. Insects whined and sang in the thick foliage. The river murmured. Mortars thumped in the far distance. Durell snapped the catches open and tested the batteries. The instrument hummed happily, a successful product of K Section's laboratory men with bits and components swiped from NASA's technologists.

  The long whip of the antenna leaped up incredibly high above the reeds where he crouched when he touched the appropriate button. In a moment he began to transmit.

  "Redwing, Redwing, from Cajun. Shawnee come in."

  He switched over and waited for a reply. It was almost a thousand miles to Cape Town, and K Section's Central there, run by Johnny Redwing who had helped him on his way here into Pakuruville, should be waiting. The JCT-Mk9 was supposed to have double that range. The lean, casual, and ultraproud Shawnee Indian, Johnny Redwing, had promised to keep a twenty-four-hour monitor on Durell's frequency.

  He signaled again.

  He heard the machine hum, the insects whine, the river murmur. A hot wind suddenly blew across the brown water, rippling it toward him, making the reeds bend over his head.

  He signaled a third time.

  The voice that returned was an easy drawl. "Yo, Cajun. Stay classified, huh?"

  "Trouble?"

  "Big diplomatic hoo-hah. You're walking on coals."

  "I know. I can't get out."

  "What about Woodchopper?"

  "Doing his best. We have the firewood."

  "Is he flammable?"

  "A few knots in his belly. My wings are clipped, Shawnee. We're using our own iron horse."

  "Understand the road is blocked," said Redwing.

  "I'm busting out anyway."

  "Be careful with our sachem. The ranch is putting heat on me. Get him out safest, soonest."

  "Can you send wings?"

  "Impossible."

  "Why not?"

  "Diplomatic block."

  "No way aroimd it?"

  "No way, Cajun. Or I'm out of buffalo range." Johnny Redwing meant that his own position at Cape Town had become almost untenable. The flight in here with Hank Sansom had been illegal in the first place. There had probably been repercussions from the South African authorities, who were not particularly concerned with the safety of Prince Atimboku's skin. There was a note of anxiety detectable in the Shawnee's electronic voice. Durell said: "There are more complications."

  "The Great White Father won't like that."

  "Can't be helped. We may have a better candidate."

  "What?"

  "Female."

  "Listen, Cajun, don't put me on—"

  "Legitimate."

  "Hell."

  "True. There have been some purges—"

  "We've heard rumors," Redwing interrupted.

  "—but this one escaped so far."

  "Good for her. Beautiful maiden?"

  "A princess. I'm bringing her out, too."

  "What for?"

  "Let them fight it out for the stool."

  "That will be against the big lodge's policy. You know our sachem is the favorite."

  "I'm still bringing her out," Durell said.

  "Look, I'll get instructions—"

  "No matter. I'm the judge."

  "You'll really walk on coals if you—"

  "It^s my decision."

  Over the miles of jungle and desert, mountain range and veld came Johnny Redwing's long sigh. "I think you'll hang, Cajun."

  Durell shook his head, looked over his shoulder, and said, "I think I'm facing a worse fate right now, Shawnee. Good luck."

  Standing above Durell as he crouched in the reeds beside the river were three enormously tall, seven-foot warriors dressed in formal tribal costume. They were armed with equally enormous, long spears tufted with red feathers, and the three sharp points were each aimed directly at Durell's heart.

  The tallest of the trio reached over and picked up the JCT-Mk9 transceiver and casually tossed the thirty-pound weight into the river. It carried Johnny Redwing's last protest with it as it splashed and sank out of sight.

  Eleven

  "YOU come," said the tallest warrior in Banda.

  "Where?"

  "You come," said the man. "Now."

  "You threw away a ten-thousand dollar instrument, you idiot," Durell said in English.

  "Friend, you want a shiv in your gizzard?" came the reply also in English.

  Durell laughed. "Where did you learn the language?"

  "UN. Harlem. Let's go."

  "Where?" Durell asked again.

  "The Queen Elephant wants to see
you."

  "Old Ngatawana IV's chief widow?"

  "Who else?"

  Durell looked at the other two warriors. They wore feather anklets and feather headdresses and had cruel tribal scars on their black cheeks. He stood up slowly and very carefully, aware of the sunlight glinting on the sharp spears. He didn't think he could get to his gun before they could get to his gizzard.

  "All right," he said.

  "The procedure," said the first man, "is to enter the royal kraal backward. In the palace you drop to hands and knees and put your forehead to the ground. You do not look up until you are spoken to by the Queen Elephant."

  "How did she ever hear of me?"

  "She knows all."

  "What does she want of me?"

  "Her Highness did not say."

  Durell wished he could have had a few more words with the Shawnee in Cape Town. Walking back to the road in front of Implana's hotel, he heard more mortar fire from the head of the valley. It sounded sharply closer. He wondered how Harvey was getting on with Old 79. His plan was beginning to seem like an impossible nightmare.

  Sunlight filtered through the leafy, pungent eucalyptus trees. The ruined Pakuru River Hotel still sent Up wisps of smoke from its charred timbers. Black paint had been smeared over the Red Chinese signs nailed to the trees. The thoughts of Mao were now illegible. A heap of rags lay in the middle of the road. The shaft of a spear stuck up from the middle of the pile. The rags consisted of the mortal remains of old Implana, the hotel owner.

  Durell stopped walking. "What happened to him?"

  "He has been punished."

  "Rather severely, I'd say," Durell said.

  "Yes. Did you not know he was a spy for the Neighbors? He was most friendly with the Communist Chinese engineers. It is time to count friends and enemies now."

  "Who gave the orders?" Durell asked, looking down at the old, dead hotel keeper.

  "The Queen Elephant. Do you wish to lie down beside Mr. Implana?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Then keep walking."

  Durell stepped over the ledgers that had ben spilled in the dust of the road. He wished he could have retrieved the affidavit he had signed, but thought it best not to stop. Old Implana's face, wrinkled and worn, looked surprised and a wee bit disappointed.