Assignment - Cong Hai Kill (23 page)

They had taken no pains
to hide from her where she was. She could even hear the dim murmur of the river
in the gorge far below. But they had not fed her or given her water. For the
moment, she was grateful that they ignored her.

She went back to work on
the rope that bound her wrists behind her. She had found a rough edge of stone
in the wall, where a carved foot of one of the Khmer figures had broken off,
and she used this to laboriously fray the bonds. Her wrists bled where she had
scraped them against the stone. She knew it was nightfall, but beyond that, she
had no idea how much time had passed since Lao had tricked and seized her.

She remembered nothing
past that, or how she had been brought here, but she was beyond remorse or
chagrin now. If she could escape, it might be turned to some advantage.

Her head throbbed from
the blow she had suffered, but she kept her eyes focused on one stone goddess
Whose serene face smiled down at the tumescent stone men who attended her. The
goddess’ smile seemed to encourage her as she worked at her bonds. Through an
arched and columned doorway she could see down a mined arcade into another room
where the Congs were gathered. Some of them were just boys, in ragged
black pajamas and sneakers. The youngsters seemed sullen and frightened. The
few older men, who seemed to be of different tribal origins, were in command.
These would be the hard-core Communists down from North Vietnam, to organize
the impressionable village boys. All were armed with Chinese and Russian
automatic weapons, together with festoons of grenades around their shoulders.

The place was an armed
fort, with deep storage cellars for rice, ammunition, and a small—arms assembly
plant. From the dark corner where she sat, she could see a trestle table, where
charts were piled up, and various guerrillas came to report regularly to the
commander who sat there.

It was Paio Chu.

Paio
 
Chu!
 
she thought bitterly.

This was the man they
had really come for. A man who could callously order the killing of his twin
brother. A man who bore on his conscience the betrayal of his village, his
life-long employer, the murders and obscene tortures of innocent hundreds and
thousands.

Paio
 
Chu!
She only hoped her knowledge hadn’t come too late.

She worried about
Durell, knowing how he must be anxious about her. From scraps of conversation
that drifted within earshot, spoken in Thai dialect, she gathered there was
something about a steamer due downriver at any moment. She could guess that
Durell was aboard. But she had glimpsed the mortars on the temple court facing
the river, and she knew that the steamer, if it came, would never have a
chance.

As she worked on the
ropes, she kept an eye on the charts on the distant table beyond the dark
arcade. Bangkok and Washington would give a lot to have them. With those charts
and Lantern’s information, the threat of the Cong Hai could be
nullified indefinitely, giving the Thai government time to counter the
terrorist movement.

She had to escape.

And she had to get those
charts.

One of the strands on
her wrists suddenly snapped apart under the abrasion of the rough stone. She
sat very still, but her heart thundered so loudly she wondered they could not
hear her in the command post. The goddess on the wall still smiled at her. She
returned to work, careless of the slippery blood that ran from her wrists.
Nothing mattered except that she get free.

She already knew the way
out. There was a side doorway; low and dark, to her prison cell, opening into a
gallery behind the ancient temple. Perhaps it could lead her into the jungle
atop the cliff and she could signal the steamer.

Another strand parted.
She was almost free.

Then there was a
commotion in the command room, a shouted order, and the scrape of a chair being
pushed back.

Paio
 
Chu
appeared in the arcade and walked toward her darkened cell.

He came alone.

The fat, bland Chinese
now wore a gray uniform that transformed him from his former role as a kindly,
efficient plantation manager. His step was firm and brisk, and he no longer
smiled. His eyes were dark as he paused in front of her, and his voice raised
harsh echoes.

“You are hungry now?”

“No,” Deirdre said.

“Or thirsty, my dear?”

“No.”

“And not surprised to
discover it is I, Paio Chu, who is your enemy.”

“No, I’m not surprised,
I—”

He kicked her. The shock
of his contemptuous assault was worse than the explosion of pain. She fell to
one side, and for a moment her vision of her smiling goddess on the wall faded.
Her ears rang with unnatural sound. Then she straightened slowly and looked up
at the guerrilla leader. Paio’s belly was still big and soft from his
long years of service with Papa Danat; but his round face was hard now,
and it seemed to swell and expand with his anger.

“You are a foolish
woman, a tool of the imperialists, soft and complacent and accustomed to
luxury. You are led by equally complacent and pleasure-loving men who feed
soothing pap to your oppressed people. Your nation looks strong, but it is
weak. Weak! You have forgotten the simplicities of life. You depend on machines
that your leaders brag about, but which can fail you and make you helpless when
something goes wrong.”

“Spare me your
propaganda lecture,” Deirdre murmured. “If we make mistakes, they’re not for
the perpetuation of a ruling clique of petty tyrants and traitors like
yourself.”

She thought Paio would
kick her again. But he controlled himself and stepped back. The guttering
candle on the floor threw his enormous shadow on the carved wall. His eyes were
savage and fanatic. She did not understand his immediate anger, and she doubted
if she would survive to learn the answer to it. Strangely, she was not afraid
of dying now. It was important to stay alive, however, to get those charts and
papers to Durell. If she paid with her life for them, it would not be too high
a price. She did not feel heroic. But like Durell, she had accepted her job and
knew she had to do it. If she failed, someone else would be sent in after her.

But she must not fail.

Paio
 
Chu
looked at her again. “Is Lao dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“He must be dead, or he
would be here by now. How much does your Durell know or suspect about me?”

“Everything,” Deirdre
said promptly.

“You lie. But when you
tell the truth, I shall know it. And you will tell the truth. You are new at
all this, aren’t you? We have little information about you. But your chances of
survival are very slim, you see.”

Deirdre was silent. Her
right hand was now free, hidden behind her back. She hitched herself up, as if
to get more comfortable, and picked at the loose rope around her left wrist
behind her.

Paio
 
Chu
spread his feet on the paving. “No man is infallible, but no leader can afford
to make mistakes. One must preserve an illusion, create a legend akin to a new
religion, as the sainted Mao Tse-tung in Peiping has done, in order
to survive. The leader draws strength from the faith of his followers as one
draws life from the air one breathes. But it seems I made an error. One must be
strong to admit it. I am strong. But the error must be corrected.”

“Bully for you,” Deirdre
murmured.

“You will now tell me
everything about the double agent, Orris Lantern.”

“A double agent?”

“We now believe that
Yellow Torch was always employed by what your government euphemistically calls
a ‘Defense Department facility.’ He was cleverly trained. He could sit under a
tamarind tree with a puppet show and tell many tall tales about Djanoko,
the Indonesian god, and he convinced many wise men while he was in the Tsao Lan-tse prison
that he was a true sympathizer of the East. But now we believe he was attached
to your CIA training camp at Atsugi, Japan, where the murderous Chinese
Nationalists are trained for missions over our mainland. He once flew MATS
cargo planes from Seoul to Yokohama as a cover for such missions. All this, and
more, has been learned since he vanished. He will not live, my dear lady. We
cannot allow him to return to your headquarters with what he knows of us. And
so you shall tell us everything 
you
 know about him.”

“But I don’t know
anything,” Deirdre said. All the time Paio Chu had been talking,
she’d worked on the ropes about her wrist. She was now free. But she did not
move as yet.

“Do you want your Durell
to die?” Paio asked softly.

“He’ll defeat you,”
Deirdre promised.

“In ten more minutes,
his foolish little boat will be in range of our mortars. Not only Durell, but
all the refugees with him will be destroyed. Their deaths will be on your
conscience, dear lady. So tell me about Yellow Torch,” Paio Chu
urged. “He can be recaptured without shelling the boat. Otherwise, many people
will die because you are so stupid and stubborn.”

“I don’t know anything,”
Deirdre said again.

Paio’s
 
round
face became swollen with another fit of rage. His breath hissed and he stepped
forward to kick her again. This time she was ready for it. She had been trained
in physical combat at the Farm, and knew that each move had to be made with
precision. It did not necessarily involve strength. . . .

Her free hand shot out
and caught the uplifted boot and yanked and twisted, and at the same time, she
kicked upward with her foot. Paio was caught off balance and smashed
against the carvings on the wall. His mouth opened like a black hole in his
round face. But before he could scream, she was up and upon him, like a female
leopard on her prey. Her left hand chopped at his throat, her right was clapped
over his mouth to strangle his yell. She kneed him again, and his eyes popped
like grapes in his face. He sagged, and she caught at the holstered pistol in
his uniform belt and slammed the muzzle into his fat belly.

“Now be still, you
proletariat mandarin,” she whispered. “You’ve made a big mistake now. Be very
quiet. lf I die, you die with me.”

“You are a she-devil—!”

“Not quite. I might show
you mercy, Paio.”

“My men are close by.
They will kill you —”

“But you get my first
bullet.”

“You would not do it.” Paio was
incredulous. “American women are known to be soft and devoted to comfort—”

“The mistake you made,”
Deirdre whispered, “is to believe your own propaganda. Now stand up straight.”

“I cannot. You hurt me.
. . .”

“Straight, I said.”

She looked beyond him to
the distant table beyond columned arcade. The room was temporarily empty, but
there were sounds of bare feet slapping stone floors beyond, where the temple
ruins gaped over the high bluffs overlooking the river. Deirdre tried to
control her rapid breathing. In a way, she was as surprised as Paio by
her success, and uttered a silent prayer of gratitude to the tough instructors
who had trained her at the Farm.

Paio
 
Chu
squared his shoulders with a grimace of pain. His eyes were malevolent. His
mouth opened, then closed as Deirdre jabbed the gun into his sagging belly.
There was a smell of evil about this man, she thought, so strong that it almost
could be tasted. It was a darkness in his corrupt body.

“I want those papers on
your desk,” she said.

Paio
 
said
quickly: “But they are worthless!”

“We’ll judge that later.
You understand how close you are to death? By the way, are you a general in
this rag-tag army, or what?”

“A colonel.”

“All right, Colonel Paio.
We’ll go to your desk. I’ll walk with you as if you’ve released me. My gun is
at your back. Do you understand?”

“My men will kill you,” Paio hissed.
“They will do unspeakable things to you.”

“You said we have less
than ten minutes. Let’s go. And speak English, only. Not a word of Chinese to
your men.”

Paio
 
began
to tremble. Deirdre stood tall and very straight, and her smile was much like
that of the little carved goddess on the wall—an expression of serenity and
pride in herself as a woman. Paio thought he had never seen anyone
look so deadly. He thought she was mad. But it was a madness that had a cunning
quality he could not cope with.

“Very well. But I am not
responsible if my men sense your treachery.”

He walked with Deirdre a
step behind him. She did not feel as brave as she looked. The Chinese gun was
unfamiliar, hot and hard in her hand. For an instant she wished she could step
back and let someone else take her place. But there was no one else. She could
save Durell, or not. She did not know. She could not even think of what might
happen down on the river in the next few minutes.