eager enthusiasts to the area, and the buses and trams held their share of holiday-seekers, burdened with their paraphernalia, chattering about their schools or jobs or girls or boys or politics. Durell heard nothing about Hatashima. No one on the crowded train was interested in disaster.
The trip seemed endless, until Yoko finally signaled for them to get off. As far as Durell could determine, they had lost their pursuers and themselves in the surging crowds of travelers in the mountains. But he was not certain. They had spent extra time in doubling back, waiting for the second bus and trains, and then the third bus had broken down on the rough Tohoku roads and there had been another delay of almost an hour.
Yoko refused to tell them their destination. Durell had tried all his persuasion, but the small Japanese girl had shaken her head stubbornly, regarding both him and Skoll with open distrust.
“You will see when we get there,” she said quietly. “If Bill is there, then perhaps we can come to an agreement.” “But people are ill, and you can help them—”
The girl’s eyes slid away from his, and she bit her lip. “I am sorry.”
“Yoko, it’s only humane to cooperate with us.”
“I cannot trust you. Nothing is in the newspapers or on the radio. I have only your word for the situation. What am I to believe? You present me with a nightmare as bad as those I’ve had since the fever. How can I tell what is real and what is a lie?”
She looked at Cesar Skoll, who was trudging behind them up the main street of the snow-clad mountain village, where the train had paused for fifteen minutes. “You and that man, the Russian—how can you joke with him?”
“There is no real joking between us,” said Durell.
“You are rivals?”
“Yes.”
“Enemies?”
“Sometimes. Not now, I think. I’m not sure.”
She said, “You are both alike.”
“I hope not,” Durell returned wryly.
“Yes, alike,” she insisted. “Something in your eyes, both of you. In your manner, your habits. Like—like tigers.” She smiled diffidently. “It sounds melodramatic. But it is the simile that comes to mind. Predators, hunters. Very dangerous animals.”
“You’re safe with me, Yoko,” he assured her.
“I cannot be certain of that.”
The night sky over the high mountains was burnished, swept clean after the premature snowfall. The snow would not last long at this season, of course; but for the moment the atmosphere was one of a winter holiday, with an inch or two of fine powder on the curving eaves of the Japanese roofs. The locomotive hooted, the sound echoing in the sharp air. A laughing gaggle of Japanese schoolgirls, muffled in ski clothes, hurried back to the train. They were like tumbling little cubs, Durell thought. He looked for more dangerous figures in the crowd on the platform, but it seemed as if they had shaken off Po Ping Tao and his strong-arm men.
“Let’s get back on the train, Yoko.”
“No, we stay here.”
“Here?” He was surprised. “Is this the place?”
“Almost. We take the cog railway.”
He hadn’t seen it in the darkness. The village lights were dim, although the snow cast back a sparkling glow. At the end of the main street there was a small secondary station, and he saw the dark line of tracks going up the mountain through the snow. Skoll trudged back, his shoes squeaking on the ice. His massive body looked impatient. “Well, comrades? The train leaves us.” He looked sharply at Yoko. “Do we take the cog railway?”
“Part of the way, to the second station,” she said.
“It does not run,” Skoll said glumly. “This snow was not expected. And the ski lodge up there, they say, was not prepared for this weather, and everything is empty up there by the lake.”
Yoko looked dismayed. “But how—?”
“We are stuck here.” Skoll did not look unhappy now. “Miss Kamuru, it is the end of the line. We have humored you this far and lost much valuable time.” He waved a hand at the empty main street. “All this is the—the boondocks, eh, Comrade Cajun? Your Bill Churchill is not likely to be here, Miss Kamuru. It has been a wild-goose chase. Far better if you listen to us and come to Tokyo, where we can get down to business. After all, there is just Durell and myself, and while I am not given to modesty, good as I am at my trade, and expert also that the Cajun is, we have forces against us that might be too much for us to save you, my dear little girl. We are vulnerable here. I do not like it. It worries me. It even frightens me a little.”
Yoko shook her head. “No, I must find Bill first.”
“How do you know he’s here?” Durell asked.
“We discussed it long ago. An accident, or something happening in his work with you.” She looked accusingly at Durell. “Bill said that if anything happened and he had to hide, or if he needed me, he would come here and we would discuss what to do.”
Skoll shrugged. “Well, then we must go on up. Is there food at this place we go to? I am hungry.”
“Later,” Durell said. “We’ve lost too much time, already.”
The train with its noisy holiday people was gone, and the village seemed to pull in its facade. The street was empty, and none of the shops were open. Most of the houses along the track were dark. A cold wind blew down from the loom of the mountain, and Yoko shivered in her thin clothes.
“A car, then,” she said stubbornly. “There is a taxi.”
But the driver was not to be found. The taxi was kept in a shed that Yoko knew from past visits, but the place was empty, dark, and locked. Durell looked at the tire tracks in the thin snow. There were footprints on the concrete apron where the cab was usually parked. He saw Skoll frown and pull on his lower lip; then Skoll clicked his tongue. “Late?” he asked.
“I hope not.”
“What is it?” Yoko asked.
“I’d better make a phone call,” Durell said.
He telephoned to K Section’s office in Tokyo from the phone booth at the station. Perhaps Shinjo had come back; he might have some hard information about Bill Churchill. From where Durell stood in the cramped booth, he saw Skoll and Yoko seated on a nearby bench, and the Russian was patting the girl and talking earnestly to her. They made no attempt to move while he was in the booth.
The phone was picked up on the second ring.
“Great Nippon Import Company,” said a woman’s voice, in English.
Durell was silent for a long minute.
“Hello?” asked the woman.
He said carefully, “Deirdre? Is that you?”
This time there was a pause on the other end of the line. Then: “Sam? Oh, Sam . . .”
“What are you doing in Tokyo?”
“Dickinson McFee sent me over. I arrived two hours ago. I haven’t even unpacked. Oh, Sam, where are you? Are you well? Dr. Freeling briefed me. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
He had not seen Deirdre Padgett for some months, nor had they written or spoken to each other in that time. He could see her in his mind, with her raven hair, her eyes like copper, her oval face serene, her mouth rich with love. In his mind, too, was her home, the pink brick Colonial on the Chesapeake, where he spent much of his free time when in Washington. You go along absorbed in the job, owned by the business, canceling personal relationships, living like a wolf in the cold and snowy forest of the world. Friends had to be few and could rarely be trusted. You were alone, and always lonely; except for a few brief hours snatched only too rarely with someone like Deirdre.
It had been too long, he thought. Much too long.
And with the thought came fear, because he remembered what had happened to Liz Pruett.
“Dee?”
“I’m here, Sam. Isn’t it awful?”
“I need you here, Dee.”
“But I was told to hold down the office. Isn’t Liz Pruett helping you?”
“She’s dead,” he said bluntly.
“Oh, God . . .”
“I have Yoko. I need Bill Churchill. And you. I’m going up to Lake Ichii Akakura, in the mountains. Tell Dr. Freeling. And come up here with him.”
“As fast as I can, Sam. And, Sam—?”
“I love you, Dee,” he said. “I’m tired and I need you.” Then he hung up.
It was an hour before they found someone to take them up to the lake. The boy who came whistling down the deserted village street was surprised by their appearance. Durell explained that they had expected the cog railway to be running.
“No, no, only the bus, the Saibu Company, very fine, air-conditioned. It goes up there, but no more today.” The boy was clean-cut, in his late teens, polite, and dressed in winter clothing. “Snow comes as surprise, eh? We may speak English, please? I need the practice.” He looked curiously at Yoko, then at Durell’s height and Skoll’s massive figure, and said to Yoko in Japanese, “What are you doing here with these foreigners?”
“Let’s stick to English,” Skoll growled. “We understand you very well. We want transportation, and we’ll pay for it.”
“But everything is closed up there.” The boy waved at the towering mountain, then looked at his watch. “No roads have been plowed. It will be a dangerous drive. But I have a three-wheeler that might make it. I have a date, though.”
“We’ll pay you,” Durell said.
“My girl will be upset if I’m late.”
“Where is your truck?” Skoll grumbled.
The boy made up his mind. “I’ll get it. One must show hospitality to foreigners, no matter how crazily they behave.” He laughed and led them down a narrow, dark lane to where his mini-truck was parked.
The lake had a thin skin of ice over it, reflecting the polished stars. The larch and birches on the shore were more heavily laden with snow than in the village below. There was a crescent moon, which made the mountains seem to float above the icy mist that moved through the woods.
Durell walked back to where the boy idled his racketing motor. The three-wheeler was stopped just short of the deserted ryokan on the lake shore. Skoll and the girl stood on the small dock in front of the empty inn. Again, the Russian was talking earnestly to Yoko in a low, rumbling voice.
“What is your name?” Durell asked the boy. “I need some more help, and I’ll pay you well for it.”
“I’m called Teru.” The young man smiled and revved up his engine. “But I have a date.”
“I’ll make it worth your while. One hundred now, one hundred when you deliver.”
The young Japanese was uncertain. “Dollars?”
“Right.”
“You must be very rich.”
“It’s very important. I just want you to come back here and wait for me until nine thirty. Just out of sight, down the road a bit.”
“And then?”
“If I’m not here to meet you then, precisely, go to the police and tell them to contact Major Yamatoya in Tokyo. Major Yamatoya. Can you remember?”
“Of course. I’m not stupid.”
“Then, will you do it?”
The young man said, “It’s nothing criminal, is it? I don’t want to get involved in any funny business. It’s queer enough, the three of you coming up here tonight, when everything is still closed down. It’s a lot of money, but—”
“It can’t be criminal, if you’re to call Major Yamatoya of the Tokyo police, if I don’t come back. Right?”
“I suppose so.”
Durell handed over the last of the currency that Liz Pruett had taken with her from Tokyo. The Japanese looked uncertainly at Skoll and Yoko on the dock, then nodded his trim, dark head. “As you say.”
The sound of the mini-truck’s motor echoed away down the mountain road, and Durell returned to the deserted ryokan. Some boats had been upturned on what had been a summer lawn, and from the shore Durell could see a small shrine on the opposite side of the lake. The ice was too thin to walk on. From the inn the dark cut of a ski lift slashed through the woods toward the upper slopes.
Skoll came toward him with the girl.
“It is too quiet,” the Russian muttered. “I do not like it.”
Everything was closed. The tiny cog railway station was boarded up, and the Japanese inn was deserted in appearance. Durell blew out a deep breath. It made a thin plume of frost on the air.
“The place where Bill and I usually stay is this way,” Yoko offered. She was eager now, walking across the crusty snow around the empty inn. Durell did not like the look of the place. It had the smell of a trap, a snare that could finish everything for them. There were several separate cottages above the main building, and they crossed a path made of rock ledges where the wind had swept the ground clear of the powdery snow. Skoll ranged off alone into the dark shadows behind the buildings. No other cars, no trace of human visits, were evident. But Durell knew they were not the first to come to this place tonight.
“There,” Yoko said.
She pointed through the woods to a cottage that stood a little apart from the others. It was small, in Japanese style, with windows overlooking the frozen lake and the glittering little temple on the opposite shore. Yoko shivered and said, “Oh, I don’t think Bill is here . . .”
It was impossible to detect any footprints that might have been made, since the wind had swept the snow away. Skoll came lumbering up, scowling.
“Very clever, Cajun.”
“Anything?”
“Po is very careful.”
“Do you think he’s here?”
“I do not know. I should think we must be very, very careful, going in there.” He waved his slab of a hand toward the cottage. All the windows were dark. “I will do it if you like, Cajun.”
“No, it’s my job.”
“You are reckless, my friend.”
“Just cover me,” Durell said.
“Do you trust me with your back toward me?”
Durell looked at the Russian’s round face. “I must.”
He went on up.
When he came closer, he saw a dim, red glow, not visible from below, in one of the windows. He tried to make no sound, but a twig snapped under his heel on the hard ground, and the tiny noise seemed explosive in the cold air. He stood very still for several minutes, then went on and looked through the window. The red glow came from a charcoal heater that had been lit in the center of the room.
So someone had been here.
Perhaps someone was still here.
He was filled with fear for Bill Churchill.
Going in, he used all the I.D.E. methods for illegal, dangerous entry. It had to be done fast, with all the elements of explosive surprise for anyone still inside. The front door was not locked. He went in like a thunderbolt, his gun ready, his body crouched and swinging to the right, then to the left, and then he jumped all the way across the room to end up with his back to the opposite wall and facing the door.
It swung, creaking, back and forth.
Nothing else happened.
The single room was empty. No booby traps. No sudden shots. No hurtling bodies. Only the charcoal fire in the iron burner testified to the fact that the cottage had not been empty for very long.
Durell drew a deep breath and very slowly lowered his gun. There was a bed in one comer of the room, some comfortable chairs, some of Yoko’s scroll paintings on the walls—reprints from the fashionable art galleries in Tokyo. Then he heard a click, and he started, turning to the window. A tape recorder stood on a low table there, glinting dimly in the reflections from the charcoal fire. It had turned itself on from a timer, and now the spools began rotating with a grave and ponderous regularity. The machine hummed.
Skoll came in with Yoko.
“What has happened? You did very well, Cajun—”
“Listen,” Durell said.
In the empty cottage the sounds of music began to fill the air—Oriental music, Chinese, atonal and scratchy, and filled with unfamiliar fifths and quarter notes with none of the rhythm attributed to Western styles. T
he sound swelled, and filled the room with mocking noises. “Do you know what that is?” Skoll rumbled softly.
Durell nodded. “ ‘Tung Fang Hung.’ ”
Yoko said, “Would you please explain—”
“The music is called, ‘The East Is Red.’ It’s practically Red China’s national anthem,” Durell said.
“But who would—?”
“Po got here ahead of us—again.”
“But if Bill was waiting—”
Durell checked her. The music ended. There was a long hissing noise, then a man chuckled. It was a deep and somehow alien sound, and Skoll and Durell exchanged glances.
“Po?” Skoll asked.
Durell nodded. The voice that came from the tape, following the rendition of “Tung Fang Hung,” was soft and mellifluous, filled with an urgent charm and persuasion; the voice of an intelligent man that lacked—what? Durell wondered. Soul was a word that had recently come back into fashion, but it did not mean what it had once meant. Something human was missing from the words he heard.
“My dear Mr. Durell: I was so sure you would arrive soon—but not soon enough. Rest assured that your good friend, William Churchill, who came here to meet his little fiancee, who is so precious to us all, is in good hand—my hands. And my dear young lady, Yoko Kamuru, your lover was here. If you wish to see him alive again, you will come to the Shobu-en, the Iris Gardens, at precisely ten o’clock. Without fail, and with no mistakes. I shall wait no longer.” There was a short laugh, deprecating, mildly unhappy. “I deplore adding to your difficulties, little Yoko, but I have bad news. Your young Mr. Churchill is seriously ill. He has a fever. It seems he contracted the Hatashima plague from his visit to the Ohnaya Inn. Only you, I believe, can save his life. The choice is yours. Be there at ten o’clock.” There was another short laugh, suddenly hard and brittle. “And Durell must come with you.”
The tape recorder clicked off.
25
"NO," Skoll rumbled. "Nyet. Never."
Assignment Tokyo Page 15