Assignment - Cong Hai Kill (8 page)

The clashing of tin pans
and chanting under the market sheds had died away. People were running out of
the open square of sunlight. It was not the first time Durell felt
conspicuously alone in a hostile mob. Hatred flashed from the alien eyes around
him. Dagan had jumped ashore from the sampan, and Durell glimpsed him heading
for an alley where an ancient Renault waited for him.

He swung for Muong’s jeep.
“He’s got a running start,”   he snapped. “Can we stop him?”

“He will not get away,“ Muong promised
grimly.

The jeep driver replied
to Muong’s snapped order and started recklessly through the crowd
between themselves and the Renault. The other car disappeared down the alley
with a roar of sound. Muong’s eyes were white crescents as he leaned
forward to speak to the driver.

“He heads for the Menam Phao bridge,
Lao. Take the Embankment Road and cut him off.”

They worked their way
through the tides of bicycles in the narrow streets and swept around the
Government House, a mirage of green gardens in the shimmering heat. The
waterfront was left behind. People scattered before the two cars, and a
brightly plumaged funeral procession of yellow-robed monks was broken in two as
they gave chase. Muong settled back, his face expressionless.

“We will catch him. He
cannot get away.”

The jeep bucked and
bounced after the Renault, but despite Muong’s confidence, they began
to lose ground.  The town was built around the curve of the long,
shallow bay, then spread in a tangle of thatched houses on stilts along the
riverside. There was no pattern to the narrow streets; but Muong apparently
knew the way well. He gave another brief order to the driver and settled back.

“The steamer captain is
dead. We will never know what he wanted to say. But obviously, he knew of
Chang’s murder. Why the Cong Hai killed the old gentle, man is a most
difficult question--except that he was to escort your Orris Lantern
here, is it not so? So we must face the question that either your American
renegade had a change of heart, to which Chang objected, or he was retaken by
the Cong Hai who refuse to let him go.”

“Have the Cong Hai been
so bold before?”

“Not here along the
coast. Inland, in the high country, it is What you call a witch’s brew.” Muong’s English
was very precise. Sweat shone on his brown face. “We know that the Cong Hai ‘fortress
areas’ are being built in the jungles, financed by opium brought down from the
north where the renegade Kuomintang Army units have settled since the Japanese
occupation. And we suspected Doko Dagan of being one of their prime
distributors.”

“And Orris Lantern?”

“As Yellow Torch, his
name is a sound of terror to the upland villagers. He has built up the Cong Hai to
spread guerrilla warfare along the borders of Vietnam and Cambodia. My
government takes a most serious view of this, naturally. We are anxious to
capture and question him. When we find him, he must come back to Bangkok with
me, you understand.”

“We can decide that when
we capture our game,” Durell said. “Until then, We have, each of us, orders to
cooperate, even if it isn’t a happy alliance.”

“I have no suspicions
about you, Mr. Durell.”

Durell said: “No. Just
enough to bug my room.”

“Routine procedure.” Muong smiled.
“If you are offended, I apologize.”

The fleeing Renault had
vanished, and they were delayed by an overturned vegetable cart and water
buffalo in the lane leading to the Menam Phao bridge. Now the
jeep skidded with screaming tires into the last alley, and bicycles and people
scattered from their path like frightened chickens.

Along the canal banks
were sampans, fishing huts made of 
pluang
 leaves, and raft
houses. In the gardens were tiny Thai temples, like birdhouses. To the right
were Hindu shops and a fish market with glittering, silvery fish laid out on
bamboo tables, covered with palm fronds. Durell glimpsed a wedding ceremony,
frozen into immobility as they screeched by. There was also a Javanese puppet
show, and beyond, the Chinese quarter with noisy tearooms and old men playing
Mah-Jongg under shaded awnings.

Muong‘s
 
white
teeth gleamed as he tapped the driver’s shoulder. “To the right, Lao.”

The bridge was of Wood,
flanked by a temple of incredible age, with a central 
chedi
 of
gold leaf and towering 
prangs
 and a mother-of-pearl door.
Bells tinkled from the eaves. The jeep rocked to a halt Where the bridge
spanned the green water. Dust boiled from their locked brakes. The car ahead
had found the bridge blocked by several carts and a stubborn buffalo with enormous
horns. Two men jumped out of the Renault and ran along the ragged grass before
the temple.

The driver, Lao, said,
“We can go no farther, Major.” He was a young Chinese sergeant, Durell noted,
with a blank, obedient face. Muong got out and shouted to the two
running men to halt. One of them turned his head. He looked like a Thai
tribesman, in a ragged shirt and dungarees and a coolie hat that fell off and
rolled across the dusty green weeds. The other man, Doko Dagan, kept
running.

Muong
 
shouted
again.

Then there came sharp,
methodical gunshots from behind Durell. The driver, Lao, was taking new aim at
the fugitives. The hillman sprinted ahead of Doko Dagan,
who was hampered by the straw suitcase he refused to abandon. The first man
stumbled and fell on his face and slid down the steep canal bank into the
scummy water. Dogs and children scattered from the scene. A woman screamed and
ran into the line of fire.

“Don’t shoot!” Durell
shouted.

He was ignored. Muong had
a Colt .45 out and was shooting, too; the heavy shots slammed and shattered the
sultry, brazen air. The first man, who had driven the Renault, floated face
down in the canal. Doko Dagan put down his straw suitcase and faced
them. He looked confused, as if about to burst into tears.

Muong’s
 
next
shot dropped him as if he had been felled by an axe.

Durell swore and ran
past the bridge. The man in the canal was dead, the back of his head blown off
by Lao’s shot. It was good marksmanship. Perhaps too good.

Doko
 
Dagan
lay on his back, his knees drawn up, his brown face upturned to the cobalt sky.
His chest heaved under his dirty, striped silk shirt. His dark string tie was
twisted under his left ear. Sweat plastered his black hair to his skull and ran
trickling into the dirty creases of his neck. He wore torn sneakers that had
seen better days.

“Dagan?” Durell said
softly.

The man’s eyes were
blind. His breath bubbled. A wide patch of blood stained his belly and his
groin.

Muong
 
and
Sergeant Lao came up. Muong put a thin, fresh cigar between his
teeth. His face might have been one of the carvings on the ancient temple
nearby.

“It is Doko Dagan,
yes,” Muong said. He knelt with meticulous care in the dust and spoke
in English to the wounded man. “Doko, can you hear me?”

The man’s lips moved
without sound.

Muong
 
said:
“Doko, We have been enemies for a long time. What did you do with all the poppy
you were running for Yellow Torch? You knew I was waiting for you here. Why did
you run, eh? You made me sin, to kill you.”

The man murmured
something in Hindi. His eyes were glazed like those of a dying bird. He brought
his flexed knees tightly together, then parted them. His groin was wet.

“Where is Yellow Torch?”
Durell put in quietly. “Who killed Chang? ‘Did you do it for the Cong Hai, Doko?
Did you enjoy cutting him up like that? Or did Yellow Torch do it himself? We
will help you, if we can.”

The man’s head rolled
from side to side in the brittle, yellow grass. He had stopped sweating. His
open mouth was an empty hole in his tormented face. No sound came from it,
except for the uneven surge of his breathing. He stretched his lips in what
might have been a grin of irony and triumph.

Then he died.

                                  10

FAT thunderheads loomed
over the muddy sweep of the harbor and the swampy coastline. The air was heavy
with the smell of the sea, which had taken on the color of pansies, while the
river looked like polished brass, streaked with lettuce green and maroon. The
tides of bicycle riders in mixed Oriental and Western costumes were like
tumbled jewels tossed helter-skelter on a shopkeeper’s velvet pad. The big
freighter was gone from the harbor. Heat shimmered over the waterfront,
insufferably oppressive. Durell thought that paradise might look good from
afar, but close up, it consisted of mud and blood and ooze and slime. Someone
had repaired the power, and the wooden fan in his hotel room ceiling pushed at
the overheated air as if it were taffy candy.

Durell insisted that
Deirdre and Anna-Marie stay in his room for now. The French girl had been
sedated and slept in his bed, her face feverish in her nightmare-ridden sleep.

Deirdre was calm and
remote when Durell returned. “I don’t like being shunted aside, darling. I have
my own job to do, and you didn‘t make it easier by turning Anna-Marie against
us with your opinion of the man she loves. Whatever you think of Orris Lantern,
you should have hidden it better from her. Except for her school years with me,
she’s really a simple child. She’s spent all her life alone on her father’s tea
plantation.”

“She knows the
difference between men and women,” Durell said dryly. He took off his shirt,
ready for a shower.

“She learned the hard,
ugly way, Sam. Her papa likes women—native or European, whatever is available.
He’s lived like a feudal lord ever since he came here as a boy from Dijon, in
France. His boredom led him to indulge himself—”

“And Anna-Marie learned
about his amorality?”

“She’s a fine girl,
Sam.”

“She’s in love with a
renegade killer, a guerrilla murderer and terrorist—”

“Hush.” Deirdre looked
quickly at the sleeping girl.

Deirdre managed to look
cool and serene, as always; but she was still a stranger to Durell, who could
not accommodate himself to the fact that she was Working this mission with him.
“Surely, darling, you’ve been cruel enough to her?”

“Dee, you don’t know the
man we’re dealing with. Muong knows. If what happened this morning is
any hint, Orris Lantern will be shot down like a mad dog, the moment
we get to him. If we get to him.”

“Our job is to bring
Lantern and his information safely to Washington. You may find it disagreeable,
Sam, but those are our orders.”

“But Muong won’t
help, after a certain point.”

“Then you’ll have to
take care of him, somehow,” Deirdre said serenely. “Now take your shower,
darling. You really look a mess.”

“So did Chang,” he said
bluntly.

He ordered lunch brought
up while he cleaned up. He couldn’t help it if Muong’s bug had
recorded their conversation. He and Muong were professionals and had
each other’s measure now.

In the huge bath he
stood under tepid water and then shaved and wrapped himself in a towel and
returned to the bedroom overlooking the embankment. Deirdre sat beside the bed
where Anna-Marie tossed in her feverish nightmare. He opened his suitcase. It
hadn’t been tampered with. The Cong Hai surely knew of him and might
prepare a booby trap to blow him to bloody bits. But there was nothing
suspicious. He took a fresh shirt and linen and drank a bottle of Singha beer
from Bangkok. It washed away some of the bitter dust in his throat. He looked
big and brawny in the hot shadows.

“Sam,” Deirdre said
quietly, “We don’t really have to be like this, do we?” Her eyes were dark.
“Must we quarrel? We’ve never been like this before.”

“We’ve never worked
together before,” he said. “It would be easier if I knew you were in the
Embassy on Wireless Road in Bangkok, on your way home.”

“Is any place safe, in
this world today?”

“Some are better than
others.”

“But 
you’re
 here,
and I want to be with you. Is that a crime?”

“It makes things
tougher.”

“Because you worry about
me? And love me?”

“Yes,” he said flatly.

She smiled sadly. “We’re
like a married couple in their first serious quarrel. But you always refused to
marry me, to avoid the emotional burden of worrying about me. But is it really
so bad? I was trained at the Farm to take care of myself. Why can’t you accept
that?”

“Because you don’t know
what this business is like. You didn’t see what they did to ‘Uncle Chang.’ ”

“Anna-Marie told me. He
was a tine old Chinese gentleman. Chang and his brother Paio often
took care of her when her papa was drunk or with a native woman. Paio is
still at the plantation, you know, working as manager for Pierre Danat,
her father. But Chang was the special one in her life.”