Assignment- Tiger Devil

by Will B Aarons

  Durell hoped the ASW T-3A Orions out of Guantanamo Bay were lucky enough to get a fix on the sub and identify its nationality, but the block of ocean contained within his coordinates was large, and he doubted any success.

  "Southern Cross brand" had tagged the search with urgent priority and asked for a report at Durell's next time window.

  As he unscrewed the lightbulb, his telephone rang.

  He ignored it, carefully replaced the microphone, bulb, stationery and reading glasses in the suitcase. When he was satisfied, he picked up the receiver.

  "Sam?" The voice was Ana's.

  "Did you speak with Eisler?"

  "Yes, but "

  "What did he say?"

  "He said to stay away. He was angry with me for . even asking."

  Durell said nothing.

  "Sam—what happened when you left the Toucan Patio? I heard you run down the stairs. I couldn't catch up."

  "Someone eavesdropped on us. He got away."

  It was Ana's turn to be silent. Then she said: "They know I'm trying to help you?"

  "Maybe. Don't be frightened."

  "You might as well make it oflBcial."

  "What?"

  "That I'm working for you. I don't mean really oflBcial, of course. Just between us."

  "No," Durell said.

  "You got me into this."

  "You got yourself in. Ana."

  "I'm coming up, Sam. I'm staying with you."

  "Ana ...!" Durell wiped his brow, weighed alternatives. "Are you in the lobby?" he said.

  "Yes."

  "And you still want to stick your neck out?"

  "I'll do anything you ask, Sam."

  "Take the elevator to the second floor. I'll meet you there."

  No one moved in the second-floor corridor at this time of night. No one made a sound that Durell could hear, where he stood in the entrance to the back stairs and watched the elevator doors. When Ana stepped out, long-legged, face golden and eyes glowing with excitement in the low light, Durell beckoned from the stairs. She hurried to him, and he turned his back and started down. A moment later, he heard her close behind.

  "Where are you taking me?" she asked.

  "There's somewhere I want to go, and you^re going to take me."

  It was only two blocks from the Berbice Hotel to the ferry stelling and Stabroek Market, which kept the former Dutch name of the town. Beneath its red-capped clock tower and cast-iron roof were hundreds of shops patronized by thousands of people a day. You could buy almost anything there, from straw hats and native diamonds cut by imported Hollanders to Amerindian baskets and diyaSf small earthen lamps used in celebration of Deepavali, the Hindu festival of lights.

  Durell and Ana were on foot. They appeared to be free of surveillance.

  "This way," Ana said, and they turned left, keeping to the star shade across from the market's macadam parking lot. A row of yellow public transit buses had been stored there for the night, otherwise it was empty. The wind hummed in the telephone wires.

  Durell kept Ana moving at a normal pace, judging that a strolling couple aroused little suspicion and hoping that Ana's company would throw off-balance anyone who might be on the alert for him alone.

  Half a block northward they came to a long arcade beneath a balcony that was screened-in and roofed with slanting metal sheets.

  It's in there," Ana said. Come on," Durell replied.

  Even this far away Stabroek Market smelled of molasses, squashed oranges, poultry. The chuffing of a switching engine came from the docks a few hundred yards away. As they entered the arcade, passing beneath a big breadfruit tree, something thrashed above them, a coati, perhaps, or a Idnkajou after birds.

  Durell counted the shops they strolled past.

  "That's the one," Ana said. She nodded toward the fourth door. "Guyana Exports. Aquarium Fish. Supplies," a sign over the door read.

  They went between buildings, treading through rank grass and cricket sounds, then felt their way along the dark rear wall. Durell glanced back. Ana's face was hidden in the night. He did not know her thoughts, but she did not act afraid. He counted the doors. A white van was parked at the fourth one, the one that would lead into the rear area of Calvin Eisler's shop.

  The van was locked, so Durell shone his pencil flash through the rear window, into the cargo compartment, and saw a couple of empty plastic buckets, a scooplike net. He looked through the driver's window and saw, between the seats, a neat bundle of shipping tags imprinted with "Air Freight" and "Timehri International Airport."

  When he turned around. Ana was smoking one of her silver-tipped cigarettes. Durell snatched it and ground it into the earth. She drew back a step. "I just wanted something to calm my nerves," she said.

  "Have you ever been in here?" he asked, as he hefted a heavy padlock on the shop's rear door. He withdrew a leather case from his inside jacket pocket.

  "I didn't know you were going to break into the place."

  "Does that bother you?"

  "Not particularly. You didn't have to snatch my cigarette away."

  Durell examined the picks in the leather case and chose one under the brief flare of his pen flash. "Answer my question," he said, bending to the lock.

  "Yes, I've been in there. It's just a shop."

  "Layout?"

  "Large storage room in the rear. The rest is retail space, except for a counter at the front."

  A few twists of the pick and the lock sprung loose. Durell put his hand across the small of Ana's back, urging her inside, cast his eyes briefly up and down the alley, then followed her and closed the door.

  They groped through an unlighted storage area into the main space of the shop, and Durell let out a slow breath. There were scores of aquariums, large and small. A few were illuminated, the only source of light here. They contained a dazzling variety of tropical fish, many indigenous to Guyana: glowlight tetras, beacon fish, four-eyes, leaf fish, hatchet fish. Their glass-walled habitats were stacked against walls, on tables, on the floor. The room had a fresh, watery scent, and aerators gurgled, tiny pumps whizzed.

  On one side of the room was zi large tank that contained a score or more of piranhas. Durell thought of the dead frogman. "Popular item?" he asked.

  "Not ordinarily," Ana said. "They are for sale more as curiosities than anything." She followed his eyes to a plank table beside the tank. It held a bloody aluminum tray and a small pile of broom straws. "Sometimes he allows people the fun of feeding them," she said. "You stick a piece of liver on the end of a straw and dip it into the tank, and zipf —all you draw out is half a straw." Her small mouth smiled at him.

  "Where's the phone?"

  She pointed. "Over there, behind the counter."

  Durell stepped behind the old brass cash register, racks of pamphlets, fish food. He could see onto the street from a window here, and he kept to the shadows, watching outside, as the other end of the line made a 3urring sound. When an answer came, he said: "May [ speak with Mr. Eisler, please?"

  There was only distant courtesy in the reply: "Mr. Eisler is not taking calls. Mr. Eisler has retired."

  "Tell him Fm calling on behalf of Inspector James."

  A clanking sound came over the line as the phone vas laid on a table. Durell's gaze roamed over the wisting fish, the attentive oval of Ana's face, then back mtside. His eyes were dark and brooding in his sun-browned face.

  "Calvin Eisler speaking."

  "This is Sam Durell."

  "Oh. Please hang up and go back into the woodwork." The line did not go dead.

  "I'm at your shop. Meet me here in fifteen minutes," Durell said.

  "Preposterous! I'll have you arrested."

  "Ana's here. They'll have to arrest her, too."

  Eisler's voice, with a notable pretension to a British accent, was condescending. "I believe I can obtain her release without difficulty," he said. Then, with ominous gravity: "But I most certainly will press charges against you."

  "I don't think so.
I'll clarify for you, Cal. We've already been bruised down here. Pretty badly. Our image is shot anyhow, for the time being. It won't harm us that much more if we lose you, too."

  There was a hesitation. Then Eisler said, "Is that some kind of threat?"

  "Just the opposite. The other side knows I want to talk with you—one of them overheard Ana and me discussing it tonight. We can give you sanctuary in our embassy until this matter is concluded. No one need know you were ever there. Of course, the offer stands only if you cooperate—otherwise, they can have you."

  Eisler's voice was a sneer. "I don't need your protection, Durell."

  "You will—after I give Dick's file on you to Otelo Antunes."

  "You—you wouldn't."

  "Just expediency, Cal. I've tried to be nice."

  The aquariums bubbled and fizzed. Ana stood close, and Durell's nostrils detected the fragrance of her imported perfume.

  "Fifteen minutes?" Eisler said.

  "Sooner, if possible."

  "Don't let anybody see you in my shop, you bastard."

  Durell hung up, rolled his lips under, looked out the window, then back at Ana. She gave him a thin smile and moved the supple length of her body around the counter and sat down on a wooden stool next to him.

  "Nothing to do now but wait," Durell said.

  They waited.

  Chapter Eleven

  The leaves of the breadfruit, flat black cutouts against the night, danced with sudden snips of light, and Durell saw a Jaguar sedan ease around a comer and roll into the parking area in front of the shop. The headlamps did not go out when it stopped.

  "That's his car," Ana said.

  "Stay out of the light," Durell said.

  Tension coiled tighter as the seconds stretched out. Durell kept his face out of sight. The headlamps dazzled through the window with a fluttering of thin, gray insect shadows.

  Ana spoke impatiently. "Why doesn't he come in?"

  Durell shook his head.

  She reached for the door.

  "Stay back," he commanded, his fingers squeezed around her upper arm.

  "Durell? We'll talk in my car." The voice from beyond the door was blandly pleasing, slightly British.

  Durell cut his eyes to Ana.

  "It really is Calvin," she said.

  "Let him come to us—don't give him an advantage," Durell said.

  The headlamps made vision to the outside impossible; they wove veils of reflection and counterreflection back and forth across the room. Motes of dust sparkled in the air. The idling of the Jaguar's engine was a dimly heard thrumming.

  "Durell! Come, now. Really."

  There was a low muttering of voices.

  "How many do you judge he has with him?" Durell asked quietly.

  "A chauffeur; two, maybe three bodyguards. They often accompany him."

  Durell remained flattened against the wall, smelling the dankness from within it, the varnish of its veneer paneling. "Check the alley. Don't be obvious about it," he said.

  As Ana walked to the back of the shop, he yelled: "Come in here, Eisler. Just you."

  "What's the matter? Don't you trust me?"

  Durell thought he heard low, sinister laughter. Maybe Eisler just liked to have muscle around him—^but there was the possibility that he intended harm. Durell did not even consider the idea of meeting him among his men.

  Ana came back through the shimmering dusk, hair afire with reflected radiance of the headlamps, some strain evident now in the forward thrust of shoulders and head. She said, "A car just turned into the alley. I closed the door."

  "Good girl. The damned thing can't be locked from the inside, can it?"

  "Nope." Her mouth showed a helpless grin.

  Durell began sweating.

  It was clear now that the lengthening silence indicated a waiting game, while some of Eisler's men tried to take them from the rear. He moved away from the window and told Ana: "Call me if they try to force the front door."

  "Yo, Cajun," she said.

  He smiled at her unaccustomed use of a word common to the vocabulary of K Section men. It jarred against her sleek and pampered appearance.

  Her eyes read his, and she said: "I could have been as good at this as you, you know. Sometimes I wish Fd tried it."

  He moved rapidly into the further dimness, through the blubbering of aquariums, until he was in the storeroom. To the untrained eye, it was a black void, formless and featureless. He watched the rear wall from the sides of his pupils, calculated his distance from the door, balanced his stance. His ears picked up the scuflSng of shoes on gravel

  Then the door opened a cautious inch, three inches, eight ...

  The sky was a silver lam6 of stars seen through the crack. A cool breath of air crept inside with the murmur of distant traffic, the slumberous sighing of the city. There was no soimd of voices.

  A heavy man entered sideways, an arm stretched out before him, a liquid gleam of metal at its end.

  Durell held back until the man's shoulders pressed fully through the threshold, then he yanked him off balance, threw a savage chop at the back of his neck. The man's knees drove into the floor, and he crashed headlong onto his face. Durell swept up the fallen pistol, a Browning semiautomatic to judge by the heft and feel of it, and concentrated on the slab of glowing night that was the crack of the doorway.

  "Jimmy?"

  The voice was bewildered, neither alarmed nor angry yet.

  "You fall over something, man?"

  Durell wondered how many were out there. It hardly mattered. There was no turning back. Thoughts of Ana, alone at the front of the store, and of Eisler, waiting outside, crossed his mind.

  A large, round darkness came into view. It wore a straw hat. The whisper was harsh: "Hey! Jimmy!"

  As Durell watched, the hat moved forward, the eyes beneath its brim unseeing in here.

  Abruptly there came a hissing intake of breath, and the hat swiveled urgently from side to side. The man had stumbled over his pal, and his weapon was swinging up blindly. Durell's Browning crunched against his head. There was a ripe thunk! and a grunt of pain as the man's hat and pistol went spinning away. This one had an iron skull. He bulled into the darkness, massive arms groping for his tormentor. A bucket-sized hand raked across Durell's chest, and Durell slid smoothly aside as the man bellowed and grabbed again.

  This time Durell swimg harder, felt the impact of steel against bone up to his elbows. The man's eyes rolled white, and he reeled into a stand of shelves and pulled them down on top of him with the clatter of a rock slide.

  Surprise was a thing of the past, as Durell leveled the heavy Browning at the door, his breathing light, his ears sharp.

  He counted slowly. Ten came and went, then twenty.

  He leaned carefully to the opening.

  A Ford shone coldly in the starshine. No one else was out there. He was free to take Ana and run for it, but that would not get him Eisler. He stared at the weapon in his hand, his sense of frustration mounting.

  Abruptly he raised the gun and fired three rapid shots at the stars.

  Someone yelled from the living space above the shops. Durell ran back to Ana, found her standing stiffly, hands clamped together, eyes wide. He grabbed her arm, pushed her toward the front door.

  "The shots . . . ?" she said.

  "A diversion."

  He unlocked the latch, darted the v^idth of the sidewalk through a blaze of headlamps. As he had expected, the men who were with Eisler here had run to the back alley. Eisler stood alone, and Durell threw him roughly against the side of the Jaguar and ground the Browning's muzzle into the tall, slender man's muscular belly.

  "Don't ... !" Eisler averted his aristocratic face, crossed his hands.

  "Get in the car; fasten the seat belt and shoulder harness and keep your hands on the dash." He shoved the man inside and slipped under the wheel. As Ana jumped in a rear door, he threw the short floor shift into reverse. They hurtled back, stopped, the engine gunned and th
ey lurched into the street on screaming tires.

  Eisler's flesh was pasty under his suntan. His jaw muscles trembled. His face was lean and clean of form, molded around a prominent, angular nose. His eyes were blue and critical above a stubborn mouth. For all his lineage and superficial culture, he looked as dangerous and unforgiving as the jungle that had filled and hardened is physique. He wore a watery green shirt-jac of silk nd immaculate white trousers.

  Durell cut his eyes across the rearview mirror, saw the Ford spin away from the shop in pursuit. The men decoyed to the alley had wasted no time in recovering. Then the mirror showed Ana's eyes, expectant, surprisingly amused. She was having a good time.

  Eisler swallowed heavily, and said: "If you've killed anybody ..."

  "Just knots and bruises." Durell laid the Browning in his lap and whipped the car around a turn, its tires wailing, then slowed to within the speed limit. He didn't want to attract the police. "You shouldn't have brought those goons with you," he said.

  "I have a right to that file you mentioned. I brougjit them with me to make sure I got it."

  "You didn't think I had it with me, did you?"

  "You'd have been happy enough to retrieve it, wherever it is, after my men finished with you."

  "You have a very poor attitude for a paid agent, Cal."

  Eisler snorted and crossed his arms and sulked.

  "Put your hands back on the dash," Durell said in a low, even voice.

  Eisler leaned against the dash. "What's Ana doing here?" he demanded.

  "I made her come."

  Eisler twisted his head toward Ana. "Has he harmed you?"

  "He wouldn't do that, would you, Sam?"

  Durell said: "Tell me what Dick was onto when he was killed."

  Eisler's chuckle was grim. "What makes you think I would know?"

  "According to his station log, you were the last man he talked with in Georgetown."

  "So?"

  "The topic was the Warakabra Tiger," Durell said.

  "There is no Warakabra Tiger," Ana said. "There have been tales of such animals since the first explorers—it's just another abominable snowman, a superstition."

  "Maybe," Durell agreed. "Dick thought it might be otherwise. He asked Eisler to check on it, but there is no log entry to show that his instructions were carried out."