Assignment - Sulu Sea (18 page)

A loft in the back of the mat hut was stuffed with straw and
rice stalks, above coops of chickens and rabbits. A bamboo ladder led up to it,
and Willi started climbing as a shout came, shockingly loud, halfway across the
clearing. Durell gave the girl an unceremonious boost and fell, panting, into
the straw of the loft beside her. He clamped a firm hand over her mouth,
demanding silence, as men burst through the door below.

Willie’s long body shivered beside him.

From their vantage point, he watched the door burst inward
and a man in a military uniform, carrying a Russian automatic rifle slung
from a shoulder strap, stepped warily into the gloom within. He was Chinese. He
wore a baseball cap with a long visor, rather like a Block Island
fisherman’s cap, with a Chinese ideograph stenciled on it. Some half-dozen
others crowded in after him. The jeep splashed across the paddy. The farmer
that Durell had clobbered ran after them, shouting and weeping. The man in the
cap turned angrily and impatiently slashed at the farmer’s head with his gun
butt. The coolie pitched forward on his face, not badly hurt, but crying and
weeping his complaints.

“Oh, God!” Willi whispered. “It’s Fong!”

“Do you know the farmer?”

“I didn’t see him clearly before. He helps me find
shells in the lagoon. He doesn’t work for Ch’ing, but now—”

“Impatience in the enemy,” he said through stiff lips, “is a
virtue for our side. That’s not a saying of Confucius. It's an old Durell
axiom."

She was silent. Her body felt hot and sweat-slippery beside
him in the tickling straw of the loft. He put it out of his mind and tightened
his grip on the machete. Below, a methodical, spiteful wrecking look place
among the farmer Fong’s few possessions. The man with the gun blasted sleeping
mat and chest, and the shattering uproar made the chickens squawk and the
rabbits hop about in fear in their cages. Durell pulled back a little deeper in
the straw. It was dark and hot and shadowed up here, close under the thatched
roof and the pegged teak rafters, Something began to crawl along his leg, but
he did not dare look to see what it might be. Tiny
clawlets
tickled and scratched at his thigh and began to explore his groin. His sweat
turned cold. He did not move. Two of the armed men below were staring fixedly
at the loft, talking in Cantonese. One of them lit a cigarette and called to
the leader, who came and ordered them to ascend, gesturing to the bamboo
ladder.

But the cigarette smoker tossed away his lighted match and,
astonishingly, a quick crackle of flame came from a pile of straw at the
foot of the ladder. There were shouts of surprise, alarm, curses. The
exploration of the loft was forgotten. The armed leader called a retreat, his
grin cruel. Willi stirred beside Durell and again he clamped a warning hand
over her mouth.

For a long moment they lay absolutely still, while the flames
leaped and took a firm hold on the hut. The Chinese patrol tumbled out,
shouting and laughing.

Willi’s lips moved and, shockingly, kissed his palm over her
mouth. Smoke coiled between them. Her eyes were enormous, luminous,
filled with an expectation of death.

The fire exploded under them. Durell reached back with
his free hand and killed the insect that was happily making itself at home
between his legs. The girl’s eyes were red from the smoke. He rose to his knees
as sparks filled the air. A few bits of straw nearby suddenly
flamed. Durell beat them out, gaining a few seconds’ respite.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

He moved to the back of the loft. The mat walls were hot,
ready to ignite like a bomb in a few seconds. He had to risk it that there were
no armed men on this side of the farmer’s hut. He kicked at the wall, felt the
woven pandanus yield and bounce back. He kicked again, and part of it gave way.
Willi was coughing, with great racking sounds of suffocation. He tore at the
wall and saw daylight.

But the fresh air that poured in provided oxygen for the flames
inside. There was a great roar, and he picked Willi up and threw her bodily
outside. It was ten feet to the mucky ground below. He jumped after her, rolled
over twice, caught her arm, and hauled her to her feet.

The jeep was driving away, crowded with its armed Hakkas led
by the man in the Block island cap. Luckily, none of them looked back. Durell
led the girl, coughing and gasping, into an irrigation channel of the rice
paddy behind the hut. They fell into the tepid, muddy water, heedless of their
scratches, burns and bruises, and did not move until the jeep was gone.

The hut went up with one grand explosion that sent sparks
sky-larking above the jungle. A black mushroom cloud followed. Then the
structure collapsed in a heap of smoking embers.

Fong, the Chinese owner of the hut, had been taken away in
the jeep. For the moment they were safe, Durell decided.

Willi said gloomily: “I must look awful.” Then she laughed
softly. “So do you, Samuel. Mud, salt, soot, from head to foot. But we’re
alive, anyway—and I’m grateful." Her great eyes sobered and she touched a
finger to his lips. “The old gentlemen were right, you know. Our esteemed
grandfathers said we belonged together, and I begin to think we do.”

“You’re forgetting about Malachy,” he said bluntly.

“He’s on the boat. You and I are here. Do you really think
we’ll escape? They know we‘re ashore now, and they’ll come back after us.”

“We’ll go to them, instead,” Durell decided. “I came here to
look over Ch’ing’s operation, and that’s what we‘ll do.”

“That tactic worked in Dendang, Samuel, but it’s a long way
around by the beaches. Crossing inland means going through the rain forest, and
nobody ever goes there.”

“Then that’s the route we‘ll take.”

She shuddered slightly. “You don’t know what the rain forest
is like. It's dangerous in ways that might make Ch‘ing’s boys seem the lesser
of two evils. Fong could have helped us. He hates Prince Ch’ing, and he’s been
useful before, when I came to the beach for specimens. He’s one of the few
rebellious souls permitted to stay on Bangka—mainly because he’s a sort of
hermit-philosopher, I guess. I hope they don’t hurt him.” The girl paused.
“Samuel, just don’t try to leave me somewhere while we’re here. I don’t want to
be safe. I want to be right beside you, whatever you plan to do.”

He smiled and stood up and held out his hand to her.

They walked west to the beach. There was no sign of the
Tarakuta
. A dozen islands loomed
offshore, making a shallow channel that insinuated itself tortuously between
the clumps of green land on the stagnant surface of the sea. He knew this
passage paralleled the main shipping lane to Pandakan. Probably it looked the
same, in width and length, as the one the regular freighters used. If he were
Ch’ing, and wanted to discourage visitors, it would be a simple matter to shift
about navigational buoys to ward off all boats except his own in these waters.

He was silent, while the birds called and the sea thundered on
the wide beach. When they came to a curve in the shore where a fishing
kampang
blocked
their way, and a road showed traffic in the form of trucks crammed with coolie workmen,
Durell halted. It would soon be dark but the enormous heat was persistent. He
could not see the swollen sun through the high trees, and the faint wind from
the sea did not touch them.

He drew Willi down behind a tangle of vines, out of sight of
the villagers.

“How much farther to the deep-water port?"

“Perhaps four miles. I didn’t think we’d get this far."
She was frowning. “Something is different. I’ve been here twice before, on the
beach, before Ch’ing closed this area to outsiders.”

He watched her carefully. She lifted a hand to point to the
curving shore ahead, then dropped it, frowning with uncertainty. She looked
beautiful whether she smiled or was troubled, and this disturbed Durell,
because he could not afford to lose his detachment. Yet he could not ignore the
essential femaleness of her body in the brief smock as she clung to him. He
could have wished her safely aboard the Tarakuta, and he knew he was guilty of
deliberately manipulating the situation so he could use her knowledge of this
isolated island. It wasn’t quite fair. She was not a professional and she did
not know the risks of his business. He did not doubt she would willingly accept
them, if he told her what might come; yet the fact remained that he was here
because it was his job to be here, and she was, in a sense, only an innocent,
but very useful bystander. You used any tool, any weapon that came to hand, in
Durell’s business. He knew this, and yet he could not completely rid himself of
the overburden of guilt and responsibility for the girl, He watched her bite
her lip and sigh.

“What is it?” he asked again.

“I’m not sure. I Wish I knew where the Tarakuta was. Poor Joseph
forgets his age and thinks he’s still a young man, sometimes, with your
grandfather—”

“I thought the
kampong
disturbed you.”

“Yes. It looked different for a moment. But I can't tell what
it is. Maybe I’m just worried about Joseph.”

“Aren‘t you at all concerned about Malachy?”

She was silent, her eyes brooding, “I’m all mixed up, aren’t
I? . . . How long do we stay here?”

“Until dark, Half an hour, perhaps. Then we can get around
that fishing village and see what’s up the coast.”

“I wish I had some more clothes. I feel kind of funny running
around like this with you.”

He grinned. “I haven’t complained.”

Her smile was slow to come, but it grew like a secret blossom,
unsuspected, entirely different from any other expression he had seen before.
She sat with her back against the horizontal bole of a fallen sago palm, and
her long hair half hid the smile and made it something more mysterious than
before, He felt as if she had come to a decision about him.

They waited for darkness.

Some quirk of the wind kept the insects from them in their
hiding place near the fishing village. There was a last howling tumult in
the sky, where a final sweep was made by three jets of the Seventh Fleet.
One plane peeled off and made a low pass over the island and vanished. The land
seemed to shake with the impact of its power, and then it was gone, and with it
the sunlight, as if a curtain had been dropped over the green of the Celebes
Sea.

“Sam?” Willi whispered.

“Yes?”

“Aren’t you thinking of ways to get off this island?”

“Not yet. Not until I’ve found what I came to find.”

“How can the submarine be here?”

“It’s here," he said. “It must be.”

“That jet fighter--it had a message for me, you know.”
Her voice was quiet, sad. The evening darkness hid her face, except for the
wide luminosity of her eyes. “It seemed to speak of the end of one time and the
beginning of another, like the cycle of life the Buddhists believe in, where
everything changes and yet is the same. Poor old Joseph, though—for him the
change will be permanent. The Indonesians are going to move in, and these
people will live different lives. The simple ways of fishing and farming
and growing rice and coconut palm oil will be gone. The Malays won’t be able to
live their bright, happy-go-lucky patterns any more, will they? And the
Tarakuta
will be replaced by fast,
shallow-draft diesel vessels to do the trading. There won’t be a place in this
world any more for poor old Joseph—or for me.”

“It may not end that way.”

She went on: “It will come with pain, like every new thing
born, but the pain will go and there will be a new life in its place.”

“But not necessarily a better life, is that it?”

“Who can say?” She turned suddenly to him. “How much time do
we have before we move on?”

“Half an hour."

Her eyes were enormous in the tropic gloom. “Haven’t you
thought how strange it all is, after all these years, when you were just a
bloody name I hated, because you were held up as the embodiment of all the
ideal virtues I should emulate, how we’ve met? And you hated me, too, because those
two dear old men thought we should get together, somehow.”

“I don’t hate or resent you now, Willi."

“I know you don’t. I could tell when you changed. But you
haven’t tried to kiss me or make love to me, either."

“You belong to Malachy McLeod,” he said harshly.

“Not yet.”

“But you will. You’ll marry him.”

“Maybe. But for now . . . we may never get away from here
alive, isn’t that true?” she whispered.

He hesitated, then nodded. “It’s possible.”

“Doesn’t it trouble you, Samuel?”

“Of course.” He was about to say that he had lived in close
proximity with death and danger longer than he cared to think about. He was not
accustomed to it. If you grew used to it, then you were no longer of much value
in the business. “What troubles me more, Willi, is that you’re in danger here,
too, and the job is mine, not yours.”

“I don’t mind sharing the risk, since it’s important.”

He nodded. She touched the palm of her hand to his face and
looked deeply into his dark blue eyes. “How many times have I wondered what you
looked like, Sam! How many times did I dream what manner of man you might be!”

“I did the same about you,“ he admitted. “But that was when
I was younger, by a good bit.”

“Must we always lose our dreams when we grow up?”

“It’s usually best, these days.”

“But you’re not disappointed in me, are you?”

“Not at all. You’re very beautiful and desirable, Willi. Perhaps
too beautiful, too desirable.”

She kissed him. Her long hair came undone with a shake of
her head, and its honeyed fragrance brushed his face and served as a curtain to
hide them from the swooping darkness in their jungle lair. If you believed in
the immutability of man’s fate, he thought, then this was all predestined,
written long ago in the shining stars over the Pacific. She was an idyll
of his youth. But long ago he had put dreams aside, when he agreed to live
apart from other men in his world of shadow war. He wondered if he had gone too
far down that road to find his way back. He was aware of the promise and
sliding warmth of her body. The sea thundered on the reef like his pulse beat.
The sigh and movement of the night air was an electrical anguish, a reflection
of the storm just over the horizon, absorbing them totally. . . .