Assignment- Silver Scorpion Page 6

  "Finch?"

  "I'm here."

  "Tell me about Mickey Maitland. And Irene. Two sharp sisters from Liverpool, right? Married the two top men in Boganda."

  "It's occurred to me," Georgette said.

  "What's Mickey like?"

  "Beautiful, I guess. If you like 'em that way. Like ice. She came here six months after Irene nailed the Raga into marriage. Obviously she wanted a piece of the cake too. She didn't worry about the flavor of the icing, so to speak. General Watsube is number two man, so she got him. Not bad work for a couple of slum girls born near the docks."

  "And when did the Teleks get restless?"

  Georgette said flatly, "After Mickey got here."

  "Is there a connection?"

  "It seems to me," Georgette said, "that all of Boganda's recent troubles stepped off the plane in the person of Mathilda Maitland. And earlier with Irene."

  "What do you think they want?" Durell asked.

  "The whole darned country," the girl said. "Are we staying here for the night?"

  "Follow me. Be careful."

  The last room he crossed was at a corner of the hotel corridor, with the hall door opening around the turn, out of view of the guards lounging some distance back, outside his own room. He opened the hall door with care. Finch, standing close behind him was as tall as he was. There was a faint, pleasant scent to her brown hair. He wondered if her shoes pinched.

  "Now just walk quietly with me to the elevator, do you understand?" he said.

  "No panic?" she said.

  "Just smile."

  The soldier in the elevator did not recognize them as prisoners and did not challenge their descent. From the lobby Durell turned left and went through the empty community rooms in the rear, big and cavernous and echoing and desolate. A side door took them out of the airconditioning and back into the dark, humid reality of Boganda's night streets.

  The thump and bang of the mortars surrounding Getoba sounded louder and more implacable at three o'clock in the morning. Durell drove Georgette Finch's battered Land Rover, wondering if it had been a personal gift from her Senator-banker father. Durell credited her with a willingness to work out of a family background of inherited wealth; an acceptance of poverty and disease in a strange and alien land; a determination to keep at her job with K Section, even if her lack of perspective and training made her a liability and a danger to him.

  "How do you expect to get into Getoba?" she asked quietly. Her manner had changed; she was almost meek.

  "There's always a way. It can't be cordoned off too tightly."

  "Some Teleks tried to escape. They were caught and shot. Some Portuguese merchants wanted to get out under a truce flag two days ago. General Watsube drove them back at gunpoint. Nobody in or out, Sam."

  "We'll get in," he said.

  "And will we get out?"

  "You're the one who insists on this job being done. We'll worry about getting out of the trap after we've taken the cheese."

  He turned off the boulevard into a side street. The sky, seemed filled with sheet lightning up ahead, but it was really General Watsube's mortars. Nobody was on the streets. He had a pass, along with one for Finch, and they had been stopped twice and then released reluctantly. Apparently they hadn't yet been missed from their quarters at the hotel. Durell pulled up in the shadow of a tin-sided, corrugated warehouse near the river front. The air smelled hot and fetid. There were native fishing boats on the muddy, reed-grown bank. He looked back at the girl's dim face. There was only the lowering moon and the starlight to outline the night. He twisted farther on the seat. The mortars stopped abruptly, and hanging over the edge of their ugly sound had been the mutter of a car engine behind them.

  "Wait here," he said.

  "No, I want to stay close to you."

  "Wait," he said again.

  He got out of the Rover and walked back down the lane. He decided that if Finch disobeyed and followed him, he would get rid of her, here and now. He couldn't risk an uncertain partner who had no sense of discipline.

  Something scurried out of his way in the dark, sandy alley. He didn't hear a sound out of Finch, and he felt a bit better about it. When he came to the end of the warehouse wall, where he could see the night horizon across the black, sluggish river, he stopped and shook his gun loose into his hand. It felt warm and slippery as he gripped it and reliably heavy. He turned the corner and saw the small, black Fiat with the police insignia on the door.

  "Be careful, please," he said to the two men in the car. They were Captain Abraham Yutigaffa and Sergeant Kantijji. Yutigaffa had a puffed lower lip, a deep cut over his left eye, a piece of white surgical tape across the back of his neck. Kantijji had a bandage of dark cotton print across his temple. Neither man seemed either surprised or displeased that he had doubled back and found them. "Captain," Durell said to Yutigaffa, "you seem a bit the worse for wear."

  "We survived, mtamba. It was a difficult moment at the President's bungalow. There has always been rivalry between General Watsube's elite troops and the FKP. We were fortunate, however. They did not kill us. Killing gets easier every day, it seems."

  "Are you still thinking of busting me?" Durell asked. j

  "No, mtamba. How did you get away from the General?"

  "We walked out. Just as you did."

  "What did he want of you, mtamba?"

  "He put us under arrest, pending deportation tomorrow. We're to fly to Mozambique in the morning. I'm not ready to go yet," Durell said.

  "I am pleased," said Yutigaffa.

  "Don't put me on."

  "No, sir. You have the confidence of the Raga, and therefore you command our respect and our loyalty."

  "But not your trust, is that it?"

  "We trust you, mtamba. We wish to help you."

  "Why doesn't the Raga have confidence in the FKP?"

  "Did he say that, sir?"

  "I'm definitely not to use you for my job, Captain."

  Yutigaffa stared out over the black waters of the river for a long moment. He touched his bruised face with long, sensitive fingers. "It is a pity, Durell. Because you can't possibly succeed without my help. Kantijji and I have talked it over. We are not angry because of the beating; given to us by Watsube's men. As I said, violence grows with each hour it is encouraged. Kantijji and I are willing to help you."

  "Why?" Durell demanded.

  Sergeant Kantijji spoke around his puffed mouth. "Because we love and trust the Raga, sir. Because we do not love what has happened to our country. Our loyalty is to the nation, and the Raga is our nation, so we are loyal to him."

  Yutigaffa put his hands splayed flat on the wheel of his little Fiat. His eyes slid to Durell's gun. "How do you propose to get into the Getoba District, mtamba? With that little weapon?"

  "I don't know yet. I may not go at all, since the job is, already known to the FKP. And I don't trust the FKP."

  "Only Kantijji and I have guessed your assignment, Mr. Durell. Only we can help you. We have maps. We have a knowledge of the area, far better than Miss Finch's. And I know a way through the siege lines."

  Durell said grimly, "Am I supposed to trust you?"

  "You must, mtamba. Otherwise, General Watsube's men will shoot to kill if they see you. Come with me, into this place. We need some light, and we must not show ourselves to any of the patrols. You must trust us, please, sir."

  Durell looked at the wide river and smelled the mud and the garbage clotted along the sandy banks and saw the glow of red flames from new fires in the northern sector of the city. It was very quiet here. No one walked about, no Army patrols came through this area. If his absence from the hotel with Finch had been discovered yet, there was no sign of it. The warehouse had a sliding corrugated metal door. From inside came the smell of jute, mingling oddly with the sharp pungency of tea leaves. The door was open just enough to allow a man to slip through.

  He considered Yutigaffa. "You first, Captain."

  "Of course."

 
"Be very careful."

  "We have a dossier on you, sir. Your code name is Cajun. We understand that you could teach us much in our profession." Yutigaffa paused. "Kantijji, you had best go back and stay with Miss Finch."

  The two FKP men got out of the little Fiat, and the shorter Kantijji, limping a little, drifted away as silent as smoke. They were competent men, Durell decided. He followed Yutigaffa into the warehouse. There came a dim rumbling as the Bogandan rolled the warehouse door shut. Durell drowned in blackness, in the odors of jute and tea. Then a light sliced through the dark, hot air and showed him a partition, a concrete floor covered with scattered straw, a door with a glass window set in the partition. Yutigaffa's eyes gleamed behind the shine of the flashlight.

  "In here, sir, my office. I have a map."

  "Take it out of your pocket slowly."

  "Yes, sir."

  There was a desk in the office, a tattered cloth shade over the glass window in the door, a smell of stale pipe tobacco, of Natanga sweat, a thick mug half-filled with cold tea on the desk. Yutigaffa put a folded map on the desk. He placed a Beretta .32 beside it. His teeth showed briefly, white between his brown lips. He gestured, pointing. On the wall opposite the doorway was thumb tacked a large map of Boganda-the city, Durell noted, not the whole country. The width of the river spilled out over the western half of the chart, and the sinuous banks made a series of sigmoid curves diagonally upward from the lower left corner. The streets and alleys of the city made yellow cross-hatchings. Someone had used grease pencils to demarcate different districts of the capital city, and the extreme area to the northeast, the Getoba District, was outlined irregularly in red. Within the red outline someone had marked a small square with a blue crayon, down near the river's edge. Yutigaffa's long, black finger tapped the blue area.

  "The Thompson-Strang jute mill."

  Durell nodded. "So?"

  "It is the waste pipe, sir. These dotted lines?"

  "They go into the river," Durell commented.

  "Yes. There is no other place to discharge the waste."

  "How big is the conduit?"

  "It is two meters in diameter, sir."

  "And how far out into the river does it go?"

  "About thirty meters, mtamba. The top of the conduit is only a foot or two under the surface, at this season. There is a buoy to mark the end of it. We will need a boat. I can procure one. The pipe slants sharply, however. Perhaps ten meters is completely submerged. It is still a long and very dangerous swim through the pipe to reach the bank."

  "Under water? Filled with slop?"

  "Let me explain," said Yutigaffa. His English was very precise, marked with his effort to make himself clear. "The Getoba District is the old Moslem area of the town. The Teleks built the wall around it, enclosing a kind of medina, as they did when fortifying most of their cities of North Africa. Because of the centuries of rivalry between Teleks and Natangas, the wall was always kept in excellent repair. It is still intact, mtamba. Not even a rat could get through it from the landward side. It is the wall that keeps back the federal troops from ending the rebellion at once."

  "And the approach from the river?"

  "There are landings, certain piers and gates. But General Watsube has already secured most of the landings, and the gates are closed and secured. The Teleks know they have no hope for mercy. They have European and American mercenary leaders, by the way-professional military men, renegades, who know they have no future beyond a firing squad or a beheading. Perhaps they hold out now in the dream of foreign interference. There have been articles in Pravda decrying the massacre in Getoba. There have been protests from Peking. Your own country, as usual, maintains a discreet silence on the unhappy affair. There will probably be no comment from Washington until the issue is resolved-and American public opinion is brought to bear upon the situation too late-as usual."

  Durell ignored the tone of the man's words. He considered the map in the light of Yutigaffa's flashlight. The light made the beaded scars on the FKP man's face stand out against his brown face. The marks of the beating he had taken at the hands of the troopers were puffy and ugly. But the man's dark black eyes were impassive, without expression, waiting.

  "You've done your homework," Durell said. "And not just in the last few minutes either."

  "No, sir. We have been thinking--sergeant Kantijji and I have been thinking-that perhaps an exercise in the penetration of Getoba might eventually be necessary. We thought we should prepare for it. We are ready to obey your orders, Mr. Durell. To secure the funds, of course, that are supposed to be in the Getoba and perhaps to save the Ragihi's sister, if possible."

  "Aren't you taking some rough chances with your superiors?"

  Captain Yutigaffa smiled faintly. His puffed and bruised mouth looked painful. There was a small clot of blood still on his upper lip, and his eyes looked sad. "Sir, I do not know who my superiors are in these confused times. When, do you wish to try to go in there, Mr. Durell?"

  "Right now," Durell said. "It's as dangerous to stay here, where General Watsube might nail me."

  "And Miss Finch?"

  "We take her with us. She knows the combination to the safe."

  Yutigaffa stared at him. "Then we should make the penetration at once."

  Chapter 9

  THE MOON had sunk beneath the western bend of the broad Natanga River, leaving a heavy, brooding darkness over the night that was helped only a little by the stars. It was three o'clock in the morning, and General Watsube's mortars began their grim tolling again. The night was lighted by the explosions, and the air was shaken by the regular, implacable concussions. A smell of smoke and pestilence drifted over the black waters of the river. Durell halted in the shadows of some banyan trees that grew along the water's edge. To his right he could see the ancient crenellated wall of the Getoba District, pock-marked by crumbled blocks that had been blasted from their positions. The thin, anemic crackle of distant rifle fire made a futile reply to the mortars. The rifles sounded like Russian-made Kalashnikovs.

  Kantijji's arm came up, thirty feet ahead of them, at the end of the row of banyan trees. The riverbank had been cleared here, and some fishermen's huts that had been burned to the ground still smelled of smoke and charred wood. The tin-sheathed roofs, made from gasoline drums and tins, formed grotesque traceries on the overgrown shore. Plenty of cover, Durell thought. He heard the distant retching noise made by an armored car's engine being started. The thin, blackout slits of its headlights made cat's eyes in the darkness. A cool wind suddenly blew from the river and died as quickly. The armored car moved along the battered street parallel to the high wall surrounding the Telek district. It made a snarling sound like an angry animal. Sergeant Kantijji signaled again for them all to stay down as the truck rumbled nearer.

  Georgette Finch breathed too quickly. "They're bound to see us, Sam. By golly, they've just about-"

  "Be quiet," Durell whispered.

  "How come you got so generous and let me come with you?"

  "Because I don't trust you. I'd rather have you where I can keep an eye on you, than leave you back there making mistakes that might kill me. Now keep your head down."

  From the safety of the banyan trees and the twisted wreckage along the riverbank, Durell spotted movement on top of the irregular medina wall. A man ran briefly along it, crouching low, then dropped flat. Something small and dark went looping down toward the prowling armored truck. There was a dim shout of warning, but it came too late. The driver gunned the motor and twisted the controls, but his arrogance in approaching so close to the rebels was now paid for. There came a tremendous roar, the blinding flash of explosives, and the armored vehicle was lifted on two wheels and hurled sidewise. Bodies flew from the boxlike body behind the cab. There were screams, the smell of smoke and hot metal, the sudden burst of crackling fire as gasoline exploded and detonated the ammunition.

  Durell felt Captain Yutigaffa's hand touch his shoulder. He did not start. "Now, mtamba," said t
he man.

  They got up and ran under cover of the confusion. Beyond the trees there was an open space under the wall of Getoba, littered by wreckage and only partly cleared. The Teleks on top of the wall, Durell thought, would not differentiate them from General Watsube's men, if they were spotted.

  Georgette stumbled and fell over some twisted tin sheeting. She made a stifled sound of pain. Durell yanked her up without ceremony. "Come on. Keep going!"

  "Listen, I-"

  "You asked for it. Follow Kantijji."