Assignment - Sulu Sea (10 page)

“He was a patient of mine five years ago, and he never
forgets. A very nice old man. He sells opium for a living—but it is controlled,
and not against the law here. On my birthday, he always sends me
tea-cakes."

Durell made a mental map of the twists and turns they took
through the maze of alleys, bridges and broadwalks. The route was intricate,
and he Wondered if the girl was deliberately trying to mislead him. She would
have to do better, even in this nightmarish community, to succeed. Other men might
have been quickly lost here; but his training in mnemonics made the route
routine. He noted a line of wash here, a peculiarly twisted pole there, a
bridge with a carved Chinese lion’s head in gnarled wood, a teahouse with
yellow banners hanging over the roof.

“Do the police ever venture in here?” he asked.

The girl smiled ironically. “Hardly ever. The Chinese are very
law-abiding, though. They run their own affairs pretty much as they please.”

“Or as Prince Ch’ing pleases?” he suggested.

She bit her soft lip. “I suppose so. This way now.”

There came a faraway explosion from the European quarter of
the city. Nobody here in Dendang paid attention to it. Yoko paused and called
familiarly to a family settled around a charcoal cookfire on their
sampan, leaning over a bamboo bridge rail to see them. A man in blue denims and
tattered shirt pointed down the canal. His eyes touched Durell’s in the dim
light of oil lamps, and there was momentary hostility in his gaze. Durell
touched Yoko’s arm.

“Let’s go. I gather we’re almost there."

Another bridge brought them to a cluster of larger thatched
houses. Through the maze of byways he glimpsed the harbor again. Still no sign
of Willi and her schooner, the Tarakuta. He hoped it showed up soon. Somewhere
a gong reverberated softly. A radio erupted passionate propaganda from
Djakarta, directed against Malaysia. The vituperative tone was clear, if the words
were not. Then Miss Hanamutra halted.

“The house is dark. It was never so before.”

Durell pointed ahead. “That one? Rather elegant, for this neighborhood.”

“You must know that Tommy’s American salary permitted his
uncle and aunt to live like—like millionaires, here.”

“Did they pay tribute to your local Mafia, too?”

She smiled tightly. “To Prince Ch‘ing? I don’t know. The man
in the sampan said they were here, that many people had been here, and now it
is too silent, too dark, do you understand?”

He felt the danger, too. The house stood apart from its neighbors,
built of woven reed siding behind a low palisade of bamboo. The sluggish
equatorial tide made a dim chuckling against the pilings that supported the
structure. A lantern swung gently on a long pole over the open gate. No one was
in sight.

The girl shivered beside Durell. “I don’t like it. Perhaps
it was a mistake to look for Tommy here.”

“I think not. You admitted that Tommy knew about the snatch
plan for Simon. And we can’t go back now, in any case. Look behind you, honey,
but take it easy.”

She turned too quickly. Durell had been aware of the dogged
footsteps behind them. Yoko drew in a soft hissing breath.

“Don’t look again,” he warned. “Do you know them?”

“One, I saw’-took Simon from the hospital.”

“Good.” He was pleased. Whoever took Simon didn’t want him
found, and was adamant enough to have Durell and the nurse openly tailed. He
said: “Let’s call on your Tommy’s phony parents.”

He urged her through the bamboo gate. A paper fish
totem for fertility blessings hung from a bobbing pole on the roof. The plank
door was open. There was no light inside.

The girl halted. “I am afraid—" She looked back a
second time. “They must be Ch’ing’s men. We can’t go that way. And there is no
other way out of here, unless we swim.”

Durell said grimly: “We may do that, yet, before this delightful
evening is over. Since there is no retreat, let‘s go inside."

He led the way. As he stepped over the threshold, he turned
slightly to look back down the alley without seeming to watch for the men
behind them. Shadows moved briefly on the plank walk between the
neighboring houses. As the girl moved by, he caught the fresh scent of her
perfume. The persistence of Ch‘ing, the local boss, in the picture ever since his
arrival in Pandakan was intriguing. He followed the girl into the house.

He felt the emptiness at once. He could see nothing at first,
but then, through the small windows facing the harbor —Mr. Tommy Lee‘s
“parents” had a remarkable view of all the shipping in Pandakan—he saw the
navigation lights and blinking channel buoys and the red winks atop the distant
radio tower. A boat was moving in slowly past the breakwater; there were two
masthead lights, the dim shape of a schooner. He hoped it was Willi and Malachy
McLeod, obeying his radioed instructions to stand by in the harbor.

A smell of burning refuse, of charred buildings. Drifted across
the dark water. Smoke hid the schooner’s lights. When his eyes adjusted to the
dimness inside the house, he made out comfortable furniture in a pleasant
mélange of Western and Chinese styles, with straw mats on the polished teak
floor. There were three rooms, with a narrow balcony overlooking the
harbor side. Durell moved through them quickly, and in the second room he
paused before a fine amateur radio transmitting outfit.

“Is this new?" he asked the girl.

She drew in a small breath. “I have not seen it before.”

“Tommy was a radio ham. And he visited here regularly?”

“Yes, he was devoted to his uncle and aunt—"

“He was communications officer at the consulate; he
had a radio there. What did he use this one for?”

“I don‘t know!" The girl’s round face seemed to crumple
in dismay. “Oh, I’m sorry I trusted you! I thought Tommy was only in a little
trouble, but now—it seems so much worse. when you look at it and speak of it—”

"Keep it down.” he warned. “We have company outside, remember?"
He started into the next room and checked the girl in the doorway. He said
softly: “I don’t think we need Tommy for one thing anymore, Yoko. We’ve found
Simon.”

"Simon? Is he—?"

“Yes,” Durell said. “What did you expect? He’s very dead.”

                                                                                               
chapter nine

WHATEVER Simon's injuries and the damage done by his abduction
from a hospital bed, he had put up a good fight before he was killed. He
was stark naked, his hospital gown ripped off, and his powerful torso glistened
with blood and sweat. He lay on his back, big teeth shining in the rictus of death.
The bed, chairs, a smashed mirror, a huge rip in the woven mat walls, all
testified to his last struggle. Durell said softly:

“Just for the record, is this Simon Smith, first mate
of the
Tarakuta
, who was your patient
at the hospital?"

Yoko nodded. “A very nice man. Very strong. And very gentle."

This was not an age of survival for those who were too gentle
in spirit, Durell thought. Simon obviously had been killed in a search by
someone for information. As a simple sailor, he could not know anything special
about the conditions of terror and blackmail in Dendang. There was only Simon’s
participation, with Willi Panapura, in an accidental meeting with Pete Holcomb
on an island beach, and whatever Simon may have heard of Holcomb’s babbled tale
of horror.

He watched the dark harbor, the blinking navigation lights,
the smoky red flare of a fire burning in the hills. The schooner was well
inside the breakwater now, swinging toward the promontory. He did not like the
thought that Simon’s knowledge had merited death. If death was ordained for the
Papuan, it would also be ordered for Willi.

He would have liked to join Willi and Malachy at once; but
there was Simon’s body, and the problem of the disappearance of Tommy Lee, the
consulate’s communications officer. Yoko was talking softly, half to
herself, half to the darkness.

“Tommy was frightened by the same terror that visited here.
In Dendang, the terror is something you can smell and touch. It came as softly
as a tiger walking through the jungle, and it touched this one and that one,
and everything changed here. But none of the Europeans in Pandakan suspected
anything.”

“Tommy was blackmailed as part of this terror, right?“ he
asked. “Because of his old uncle and aunt? He’d have been fired from the
consulate and his citizenship questioned, if it were known his real parents
were still living in China?"

“Yes, I think so. He was forced to use this radio, too; I must
admit it; he told me so. But nothing was the same between us. He Was nervous
and afraid, and I could not understand him, I love him, Mr. Durell, and I want
to help him, even if it must hurt him. Can you believe that? I suppose I resented,
at first, the amount of time he spent here, instead of with me. We
quarreled, but then I realized he could not help himself. The tiger had him in
his claws. He became Prince Ch’ing’s creature.”

“I’d like to meet this prince, this pretender to the throne of
the Manchus."

“Oh, but he sees no Western people. He is well-known for
this.”

"He’ll see me,“ Durell said. He took from his pocket
the red tissue gambling chit. “Where would I get another one of these bits of
paper, Yoko?”

“Oh, I am told they are gambling notes one receives at the tables
in the House of a Thousand Pleasures."

“Sounds intriguing. What is it?”

“It is a gambling place, of course—and there are rooms for
opium smokers-and many girls —”

“Did Tommy go there?”

“Yes. To gamble. It began his troubles.”

“Is it far from here?"

“No, it is in Dendang."

“Does Prince Ch’ing ever spend time there?”

“Yes, it is his establishment. He is there whenever he is in
Pandakan.”

Once you step into the jungle in pursuit of a tiger, Durell thought,
you cannot turn back. He could not be at all sure that Ch’ing was involved in
what had happened to the
Jackson
. But
it made a certain pattern that pointed in such a direction Tommy Lee’s
disappearance, his indebtedness to the Manchu prince, the terror the girl spoke
of, here in the local Chinatown—it could not be ignored, however anxious he was
to see to it that Willi was safe, and not subject to what had happened to
Simon.

He glanced through the window at the harbor lights again, and
thought the newly arrived schooner had swung this way now. Bur over half a mile
of water separated him from the vessel. He turned to the girl.

“Yoko, don’t worry about Tommy. I think he’s taken care of
himself and his uncle and aunt, too. l don’t want to frighten you, but with
those men following us, the only safe way out of here is to swim. Think you can
do it?”

“I will try,” she whispered.

“Then let’s go, before those bandits outside get nervous and
try to barge in on us.”

It was almost too late. Heavy feet thudded on the plank walk,
halted, and then a fist pounded on the door, shaking the mat walls of the
house. The girl’s eyes widened with quick terror, and at Durell’s nod, she
kicked off her shoes and poised for a moment, obviously reluctant to commit herself
to the noisome canal. Then she dived, cleanly and neatly. The hammering on the
door grew violent. Durell watched until he was sure that Yoko had surfaced, and
then shrugged off his coat, pocketed his gun in his trousers, and jumped after
her.

The water was tepid and filled with flotsam he
did not care to identify. For a moment he was confused by the maze of tangled
pilings braced and cross-braced by generations of dwellers in this waterfront
community of house and sampan. Then the girl called softly from the shadows and
he started swimming toward her. From the house where Simon lay dead came a
final crash as the door yielded and then three men appeared in a rush on
the open balcony behind them. A soft
phat
!
and a
flash of flame indicated a silenced shot sent after him. The slug
splashed uncomfortably close in the mucky water. Durell dived, and swam for a
dozen feet toward the girl.

When he surfaced, he was under another house. The tide lapped
around the pilings with soft sucking sounds. On the floor hoard above him
he heard the quick slap of a bare foot and a spate of angry Chinese. A woman
replied. Then there was silence.

He turned his head, looking for Yoko Hanamutra. But he could
not find her.

“Yoko?” he called softly.

There was no answer.

“Yoko?” he called again.

Something brushed against him and he glimpsed a pale white
jelly-like substance that made him recoil instinctively. He did not know if it
was a live thing or not, and he did not care to find out. He swam again
toward the place where he had last seen the girl. He thought he heard her
swimming ahead, and followed with quick, long strokes, moving always under the
plank walks and under houses, listening to the constant sounds of teeming
humanity above in the world of light, the peddlers of rice and chicken, the
drinkers of tea, the lovers, those who were eating and conversing and playing
mah-jongg. Down here he felt as if he had entered some kind of dark, dank
netherworld. And he could not find the girl.

There were no other shots. The men in the Lee house could
not possibly spot him in this labyrinth of twisted pilings, boards, sampans and
fishing boats tangled in shadows thick with the effluvium of waste and
unpredictable sea things. He tried not to think about it, and swam on.

He had to assume that Yoko had lost him and gone off to swim
to safety on her own. He could not worry about her now. He had his own strategy
to think about.

Strategy was something that Grandpa Jonathan, back in Bayou
Peche Rouge, had often lectured to him about in his boyhood, regarding the
psychology of hunting and being hunted. Those days in the bayous, under the dim
green shadows of the gum trees hung with Spanish moss, seemed a lifetime ago,
in another world. But old Jonathan was still there, and his dry comments on the
ways of men and women and the world had made a lasting impression on Durell
when he was a boy.