“That’s what I felt when I thought you’d got it, too.”
“Ever since then,” she said slowly, looking at the wall and the door and everywhere but at his questioning face, “I’ve had this crazy impulse to make love to you, Si.”
“What?”
“I know. I’ve turned you down often enough.”
“Merri—”
“Shut up," she said. “Don’t you want me to do it?”
He grinned crazily. “Well, I’m slightly handicapped, but—”
“Do you really love me, Si?”
“Yes. Yes, you know I do.”
“Put your arm around me. Like this,” she said. She helped him. “Hold me close. As tight as you can. But don’t hurt yourself,” she added in afterthought. “I think you and I have wasted a lot of time, and it’s all my fault.”
“Listen, your financial interest in BAT—”
“I don’t care about that. I’m never going back to New York. I know that now. Neither of us will go, and we both know it. When we get back to Rangoon, if we’re lucky at all, you can make an honest woman out of me, if you want to. Only—” She began to shiver violently again. “Only help me right now. Take this feeling of dying away from me, will you, Si? Please. I can’t help it. I was so scared, and then so relieved when I saw you weren’t killed—”
“That’s enough,” he said gently. “It’s your turn to be quiet.”
She left him long enough to wriggle out of her clothes, and then she helped him with his. His eyes never left her, watching every small movement of her body. The room was hot and still. The town was quiet. She knew that her figure was smooth and delicately made, curved with astonishing voluptuousness when free of her clothes. She had never let Simon do more than make a casual pass at her, and for a moment her decision wavered. Then, when he reached up to touch her thigh, her terror came back and she wanted only to be in his arms, to be making love, to affirm the fact that she was alive and he loved her and there were years ahead of them in which to work out the problems that had kept them apart until now.
When he touched her again, drawing her down to him on the bed, she stopped thinking and went to him willingly and gladly, and presently she laughed softly when he swore at the awkwardness caused by his wound.
“Let me do it,” she said.
Ten
The basha of Pra Ingkok was on an inner street, close to the edge of the jungle. Durell walked quickly ahead of the two guards, past several primitive stores and shops, a cinder-block building where the flag of the Union of Burma flew on a tall bamboo pole, and then turned a comer past a grain storage shed. A jeep with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on it was parked in front of the big, thatched-roof house. The last light of day had turned the sky into a patchwork of orange and mauve colors that streamed up over the jungle from the west. Two men in helmets, carrying Tommy guns gave way as Durell ran up the veranda steps.
Pra Ingkok came out to meet him.
“I am happy to find you and your friends are safe,” the Burmese said at once. “Have you found Mrs. Hartford? I understand she is. not at the Circuit House.”
“Isn’t she here?”
“I have not seen her. If she were anywhere in Nambum Ga, I would have heard about it by now, Mr. Durell.” “You’re sure she hasn’t been seen by anyone?”
“Why would she vanish this way? She must have gone willingly, or not at all, to disappear this way.” Pra Ingkok looked different, and carried himself a little straighter. His normally quiet voice was laced with a vigor that had not been there before. “All Mrs. Hartford had to do, if she were in trouble, was to cry out for help, and she would have been safe.”
“All right, then,” Durell said grimly. “Then she must have agreed to go away with someone—after Paul Hartford.”
“How could she know where to find him in the hills?”
“I thought you might be able to suggest an answer to that. Things have changed around here in the last few hours.”
Ingkok nodded and considered his hands for a moment. A sudden evening breeze rattled the banana trees beside the veranda steps.
“Come in,” he said abruptly. “My daughter has returned.”
Durell stepped into the basha, into a comfortable room furnished with wicker chairs, a huge table, an antique Victorian lamp shade over a kerosene vapor lantern. There were Indian rugs on the floor and a collection of stone statuettes on teak bases, intricately worked brass plates on a cupboard, and an overall sense of neatness and cleanliness.
Erena and the Dutch river captain, Piet Van der Peet, got up from where they sat on a low couch. Durell shook hands with the Dutchman and considered the slender, brown-skinned girl, noting the bruises on her face and the look of fear that still lingered in her eyes.
Ingkok’s voice was quiet and firm.
“My daughter had a difficult time with the Lahpet Hao. I will not say what was done to her. She refuses to speak of it. But she is not the same child who went this morning to where Paul Hartford was kept, on my orders, and tried to set him free.”
“Tried?”
“The Lahpet Hao caught her—and she met Major Mong. They took Paul Hartford with them. After a time—they let Erena go.”
Durell looked at the Burmese. “So violence finally touched something close and dear to you.”
“Yes,” Ingkok said grimly.
“That explains why your men are under orders to push back the Lahpet Hao pickets around the town. You finally see what they mean to do to your people.”
Ingkok looked resigned. “I have made many mistakes in my life. I have been a weak man, perhaps, by the rules of conduct as practiced in the West. My religion prohibits violence. I did not want to fight. But when I saw Erena and guessed what has been done to her—” He paused and looked at the Dutchman and then at the silent girl. “I decided there are some things that must be fought for, or a man is no more than a blade of grass, to be crushed under foot by whoever passes by. I do not think a man is less than a blade of grass. I am willing to do as you suggested earlier.”
“I want to find Paul and Eva Hartford,” Durell said.
Van der Peet spoke for the first time. “I think I should tell you that I will have no part of this, Mr. Durell. I am pulling out with my boat and heading downstream at once. Erena will come with me.” He spoke with a harsh anger. “I married Erena an hour ago. She is willing to share my life on the boat with me. I will not risk having her caught again in this town if the Lahpet Hao come in and take over.”
Durell said, “But your boat is the only way we can hope to get out—whether we win or lose with the Lahpet Hao. Can’t you wait just a few hours?”
“I would rather not.”
Erena said gently, “We could wait until midnight, Piet.”
“But I thought you wanted—”
“It is not proper to run away before anything has been decided here. I think we should give Mr. Durell some time.”
Van der Peet hesitated, then nodded his round blond head. “Very well, then. Until midnight. But if the Lahpet Hao break into the town, we leave at once. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” Durell said. “And thank you.” He turned back to Pra Ingkok. “About Eva Hartford. You think she must have had a guide who took her into the hills?”
“I am sure of it. Only if she found someone to lead her, could she have known where to look for her husband. If someone came for her—” Ingkok paused, then suddenly spoke to one of the guards in Kachin dialect. The man, wearing a brightly patterned head cloth, answered briefly. Ingkok frowned and returned to Durell. “It may have been Tagashi. It is most unusual. I have explained to you that this Japanese has been a hermit in the hills for many years. No one ever molested him. But in all the time he has been in the area, he never came into Nambum Ga.
His woman came here to buy whatever he needed. He was only tolerated, you understand, because of Yan Gon, who spoke in his behalf and pleaded tolerance for him.” Ingkok gestured to the guard in the doorway
. “But this man says that Tagashi was seen in Nambum Ga this afternoon, shortly before you went to Luang-shi’s. It was so unusual that he was noticed.”
“Was Tagashi alone?”
“At the time he was seen, yes.”
Durell drew a deep breath. “I’d better talk with him.” “It will soon be dark,” Ingkok objected. “The Lahpet Hao will then begin their attack.”
“Why wait for them?” Durell said. “If you attack first, they may be thrown off-balance. They expected an easy victory here. They must be badly shaken by the fine defense your men put up near the river just now. If you go over to the offensive and drive into the hills, it will keep them busy enough so that I may get around them to wherever Tagashi took Eva Hartford.”
Ingkok hesitated. “It will be very dangerous for you, alone in the hills. I cannot spare anyone to go with you.”
“I’d rather go alone,” Durell said, “and take my chances. Tell me where to find Tagashi, and I’ll go there.”
It was dusk when Durell finally paused on the jungle trail. He stood alone for a moment, listening to the sounds of night in the dark foliage that closed around him. A bird screamed, twittered and was silent. Something made a crackling noise in the bamboo to his right. Ahead, the trail dipped down toward a clearing, a level space backed up by a rocky outcropping that formed a vine-grown cliff. A crude basha on wooden pilings stood at the opposite end of the rice paddy clearing. Two naked children played in the dust in front of the house, and a woman worked a clumsy mortar and pestle on the sagging veranda. Durell could not see any sign of the man he sought. He wondered if Tagashi was still with the Lahpet Hao.
He waited and watched, wary of a trap. But there was nothing suspicious in the primitive scene before him. He looked back along the trail he had used. Far below in the valley, if Ingkok was carrying out his plan, every outpost of the Lahpet Hao was, at this moment, being surrounded by the armed villagers from Nambum Ga. Everything depended on Ingkok’s cooperation and determination. But he could not be sure of the outcome of his plan.
He drew a deep breath and stepped into the clearing. The children saw him first, pointed to him and cried out. The woman looked his way and snatched up the children, dragging them out of sight into the basha as he walked around the paddy toward them. In a moment, the place looked totally deserted. Then the bent figure of a Japanese leading a water buffalo came around the comer of the basha and met him.
Tagashi halted, spoke quietly through the doorway to the woman in the house, then bowed to Durell.
“You are welcome here,” he said in English. “You are the first stranger to visit my house in many years.”
“I don’t know how welcome I’ll be,” Durell said. “I’m looking for the American woman, Eva Hartford.”
“Yes. It is expected.”
“You know where she is?”
“I did what I had to do to save myself.” Tagashi’s aged face was without expression. Only his eyes revealed a momentary uncertainty. “And I can do nothing to save you, Mr. Durell.”
‘You know my name?”
“Major Mong knows it. He knows you are in Nambum Ga. His informers ran quickly to tell him about you. He will kill you when he finds you.”
“He won’t have any trouble finding me if you take me to him That’s where you took Mrs. Hartford, isn’t it? You came into town after her; you were seen there.”
‘Yes. I took Mong’s sister to him,” Tagashi said. He looked at Durell. “You do not know who Major Mong really is?”
Durell drew a deep breath. “I know now. Mong is Emmett Claye.”
Tagashi nodded. “Yes.”
In the dusk of evening, the grizzled Japanese waited in patience. From inside the basha came the squawk of a parrot, giggles from the children who now peeped from the doorway, a sharp warning word from the woman. Durell looked across the clearing where the waning light cast lilac shadows on the water of the rice paddy. Nothing suspicious here. But when he looked back again at Tagashi, he saw that the man's face was closed to him.
He felt a lurch of disaster at this verification of what Eva had told him when she had spoken of Emmett’s letter to her. Somehow Durell was not surprised; the thought had been in the back of his mind from the start, perhaps because he was trained to be suspicious in his business. It was not a new problem to Durell. But each time his work took him into such dark byways he hated it more.
“I need help,” he said. “From you, Tagashi. Only you can help me now. Did Major Mong—or Emmett Claye, whoever he is—send you to get Eva Hartford and bring her to him?”
“I cannot tell you more about it. I must protect my woman and my children.”
“If the Lahpet Hao take over here, do you think they will let you live, anyway?”
“I can only hope they will be merciful.”
“It’s an idle hope and you know it,” Durell said sharply. “But if you help me to find Emmett Claye—”
“The evil men cannot be stopped,” Tagashi said helplessly. He spread his gnarled hands to the dim green horizons of the night. “They are like the stormy sea, a great tide, flowing down from the north.”
“Or like some beast, prowling for blood,” Durell said. “But if we cut off its head, it will die.”
“It can grow other heads.”
“But it will give us time to prepare again, in the future.” Tagashi drew a deep breath. “I have thought about everything. I have made terrible mistakes in my lifetime, and because of one, today has finally come and demands payment that must be made. The ways of the world are not for me. I am a man of peace. I wish only to be left alone on my farm, to be part of no man’s ambition or destiny.”
“You thought you found this ideal sanctuary many years ago,” Durell said. “But the world has found you out. after all.”
“Yes. It is so.”
“You can tell me one thing, anyway. Is Paul Hartford still alive.”
“Yes.”
“He’s with the Lahpet Hao?”
“Yes.”
"And you took Eva Hartford to him?”
“I did what I had to do to save myself.”
“You don’t have to take part in this,” Durell said. “Just tell me where this place is where you took Eva Hartford and how I can get there.”
The Japanese stared at him. “You mean to go there alone?”
“If I must, yes.”
“But Mong will kill you.”
“I’ll have to risk that.”
“You cannot hope to do anything alone.” Tagashi shook his gray head and sighed. He slapped the flanks of the patient bullock beside him, and the huge gray beast ambled away, behind the basha. “But you make your own destiny. I will not argue the wisest course for you. If I am to be killed for what I say, then perhaps it is just and proper, after all. You must go to the monastery of Yan Gon on that hill there.” Tagashi pointed to a looming, shadowed height over Durell’s shoulder. “You will find Mrs. Hartford there with her husband. You may find death there, too. Nothing is sacred to Major Mong. I know this now.”
“Will you come with me?” Durell asked.
“No. But I will point out the way,” Tagashi said.
It was almost dark when Durell sighted the ruined outlines of the pagoda on the hilltop overlooking the valley. The river was only a pale serpent gleaming in the fold of the mountain, and a thin mist moved on the high ridges, blown by a rising wind from the north.
For the past twenty minutes since leaving Yugi Tagashi, he heard the distant thudding of grenades, the sharp crackle of rifle fire, the heavier sound of machine guns. Pra Ingkok had gone into acdon against the Lahpet Hao’s outposts according to plan. The sounds of battle came from several points around the town, but he could only guess if the surprise attack was succeeding—if, indeed, it was making any progress at all.
Durell turned to stare at the monastery. Two dim oil lanterns made feeble pools of light against the gathering dusk on the mountain top; but he saw no movement or signs of life anywhere.
His gun was in his hand when he moved from the shad-
ows of the jungle trail to the clearing below the ruins. He saw that the trail was not often used, and the monastery itself, except for the flickering lights, seemed deserted. He followed the shadows of a tumbled wall, overgrown with vines and wild orchids that winked like pale stars in the gloom overhead. There was the usual enormous stone platform, almost overgrown by weeds, with a few trees that had grown up between the cut blocks and spread the stones apart to make room for their swelling trunks. Now he saw that the whole hillside was one vast ruin, tumbling in a maze of overgrown walls, fallen roofs, and sculpture that blended with the encroaching jungle growth.
He went up twenty steps between a row of chinthes whose human heads and Hon bodies seemed eternal in their complacent view of the cycles of time and forgotten history.
No one challenged him.
Then he saw the ashes of a campfire, an abandoned canteen, some empty cartridge shells, a web pelt. The Lahpet Hao had been here.
But where was the enemy now?
He went on into the pagoda, overtowered by vast images of the Buddha in gilded tiers that reached into high, vaulted shadows. A few votary candles flickered before the largest image. He felt a sense of oppression and emptiness and awe at the work that had once been done here, at the command of a long dead and forgotten warrior king.
Dimly, carried on the mountain wind, was a sudden increased sound of firing down in the valley. It seemed closer to the town, and this was not a good omen. He drew a breath and went farther into the ruins, and came to the tiled roof area where the ancient cells of Buddhist monks overlooked the ruined temples on the steep hillside below.
He saw at once that some kind of headquarters had been here, judging by the field desk, the Russian-made radio in one comer of the first cell, the cot and a machine pistol that had been tossed carelessly on it.
The place had been abandoned in a hurry.
Was it when the fighting first started, half an hour ago? He could not tell. He decided to risk discovery by calling out.
Assignment Burma Girl Page 14