Assignment - Ceylon

by Edward S. Aarons

“And who did he defect to?”

  Skoll said, “Cajun, my comrade, you puzzle me. Either you are very good at lying, which of course you are, or you are in a very disastrous situation. I was hoping you could lead me to Kubischev—and thence to Sanderson and the group that seems to be stealing the best minds and best men in the intelligence business. The KGB is not alone in its loss. The Polish, British, even the Peking Black House, have men who vanished, who are working for someone else. I should have known better.” Skoll’s rumbling voice was rueful. “I should have known you are not a man who can be bought.”

  Durell said, “My boss in Washington ought to know that too. You’ve been sent after Kubischev. I have a man on my trail too, a former mercenary, a black named Wells.” The Russian nodded. “I have heard of him. You have a problem.”

  Skoll got up from the thronelike chair, picked up his gun, and put it away, looking at Aspara with some curiosity. The Sinhala woman had not said a word. Now her large, liquid eyes swung from Durell to the Russian and back again.

  “Dear Sam, have I misjudged you?”

  “No matter.”

  “You are both trained killers, are you not? That is your function?”

  “Only incidentally. Our primary job is to get data, facts. The world in its rivalry depends on it.”

  “True,” Skoll grumbled.

  “And all this takes place in my country?”

  Durell said, “We’ll find the reason for it.”

  “Ho,” said Skoll. “You assume we are comrades now?” Durell said, “You know the usual terms, Cesar.”

  “Yes. Yes I know you, Cajun. We worked together before, against that Madame Hung’s private organization. That dreadful, evil woman. And then, in Malta, you cheated me of all the fruits of that labor. Did you know that Hung is active again? Did you?”

  Durell stared. “She’s dead. We were both there when she was killed. She’s dead.”

  “No.”

  “Dead,” Durell repeated. He felt suddenly chilly, as if something that was much colder than the mountain wind had blown through the filigreed windows of the walauwa. Based in Singapore, and with a network like a dozen spider webs throughout the world, the Hung outfit had peddled information to the highest bidder, some of it false, some tainted—fishing in the troubled waters of a difficult world, often creating crises to suit its purpose. He had no wish to think of the woman, Madame Hung, ever.

  Skoll said, “Yes, dead. I agree. But her people and her work still live, my Cajun.”

  “We smashed her outfit.”

  “Not all of it. And someone is picking up the pieces. Buying men. The best men, because Kubischev was one of my best, and you are one of the best too. Buying data, using computers, with a headquarters somewhere—” Skoll waved his paw—somewhere near here.”

  Aspara’s breath made a whispering sound. “I find it difficult to accept the things you men talk about. If you are enemies—rivals—you do not behave as such. You speak of troublemakers in this world, of a private spy network? I cannot accept it.”

  Skoll grinned. “Dear lady, read the newspapers. Are the hijackings, the ransom demands, the senseless massacres unbelievable? Yes. What is so difficult to accept that a man—or woman—with money and a desire to manipulate world events out of megalomania, perhaps—cannot do what we discuss?”

  Durell said, “Do you know his name?”

  “I think I know it.” Scholl belched again. “I have always believed that English whiskey is abominable. But I feel a need for something, and in the absence of vodka—” Skoll’s heavy brows went up, pretending surprise. “You still hold your gun, Comrade Cajun? Please, Put it away. In the presence of your lady, there will be no difficulties between us.”

  Aspara started out of the big, moonlit room, then moved quietly to the table littered with Sanderson’s archeological finds. Her slim fingers touched this piece and that, returned to a small sculptured head, gently traced the eroded stone. She frowned. Her figure was limned in the pale light that came through the tall, narrow windows. Her face was bathed in shadow.

  “These are new,” she said. “Entirely new.”

  “Or entirely old,” Skoll rumbled.

  Durell simply watched her.

  “I do not know where these could have come from,” she said. “Through Ira, I learned some rather little-known facts about my own country and the Kandyan kingdoms. I know about our new hydroelectric dam at Maskeliya, about the finds near Laxapana Falls, about the nature preserves, the new highways, the development of railroads. These are new, these things here. Very old, I mean. Older than the remains that go back to the fourteenth century at Gangasiripura, which is now called Gampola. In the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese tried to penetrate these mountains of my blessed Lanka, this city of Kande Uda Nuwara became the capital city of Wimala Dharma Suriya I. We have enough remains from all that. But these are pre-Dravidian things, I think. From far back before the Princess Nayakar from South India. Far, far back.” She spoke softly, as if to herself. “These things are not mentioned in the Mahavamsa, our Buddhist Chronicle. Where did Ira find them?”

  “Can you guess?” Durell asked.

  He went to the table. He did not allow Skoll to slip from his sight. There were scattered scraps of paper, scrawled notes, held down by stones and pieces of relics. The writing was an illegible scribble.

  “Can you read any of these notes?” he said.

  She was reluctant, fingering several scraps. She held them up to the moonlight and shook her head. “It is not possible. There were very few finds out in this place he has indicated.”

  “Where?” Durell asked.

  “Beyond Matale. Due north of here, past Rattota. A district called Naradara. A very old name. It is a rather wild and undeveloped place. It was once the kingdom of a Tamil named Kirtilaka. Long, long ago, there was a Buddhist princess, Naradara Sinha, a Sinhalese ruler. It is mostly legendary. It has not been thoroughly explored, archeologically. But maybe Ira was looking for things up there. It is small wonder he was kidnapped by the PFM. There was fighting in those mountains, some time ago. The government troops stumbled on a PFM base camp, all sorts of bunkers and caves. They sent planes to bomb them out. One of the old tanks—reservoirs—was destroyed, I remember; the dike burst, and the valley flooded.”

  She stopped talking suddenly. Then she said quietly, “Ira and I went our separate ways after the divorce. I never thought he was very talented in his hobby. But he has found something. Yes, yes, something very nice, very interesting, something—I do not know what.”

  “The Buddha Stone?’ Durell suggested.

  She turned angrily, her dark eyes flashing, first to him, then to the big Russian who watched and listened.

  “There is no such thing. The Sacred Tooth relic, yes. The legend that Buddha actually visited Lanka, yes. But that there is a stone on which he wrote words of marvel, no. No, no. One must not believe such a thing. It would be—" She paused, dismissed the relics on the table with a wave of her slim hand. “These are merely very old. Come Mr. Skoll. Or is it Colonel? Whichever you prefer. I thini I can find your whiskey.”

  “I think I am not as interested in whiskey as I was,’’ said Skoll. “Have you heard of Dr. K.V. Mouqueram Sinn?”

  Her head came up. “More nonsense. There is no suet man.”

  “The Naga—the Cobra’s Bow—takes orders from him. He in truth rules the PFM.”

  “Nonsense,” she said again.

  But Durell was not so sure.

  Someone was moving down on the lower floor of the walauwa.

  eleven

  “Stay here,” Durell said to Aspara.

  “No. Let me see what you are, once more.”

  “You may be hurt.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  Skoll caught his eye, nodded, took out his gun, moved with him out of the big room, paused, waved a hand upward. Durell came forward and slid sidewise toward the head of the broad staircase. Shafts of moonlight fell around him like jav
elins hurled through the broken roof tiles. Skoll moved with surprising speed, slipping to the other side of the stairs. Shadows dappled his flat Siberian face. His eyes gleamed. Durell heard Aspara behind him, put his hand backward, held her against the wall.

  There came another soft footfall from below, the thin screak of a door being opened. Durell moved his head downward, and he and Skoll went leaping down the steps, two and three at a time. He wondered if it was Major Dhapura down there; but he didn’t think the Sinhalese cop would be so careless.

  Skoll held out an arm like a log barrier.

  “There.” The word was hardly a sound. The Russian nodded to a door in the rear. “The kitchen. English whiskey.”

  “You first,” Durell said.

  “You do not trust me, Comrade Cajun?”

  “Not now. Not ever.”

  “Perhaps I should go around the back?”

  “You first. Where I can see you.”

  “You are a hard man.”

  Skoll moved fast on the far side of the wide hall toward the door, hit the paneling with massive force, burst inside. Durell was close beside him. Something moved, fl?shing toward an outside door that stood open against the night. The white of a ragged turban gleamed in the darkness; a slim brown torso, white trousers sawed off at the knees, the slap of bare feet on the stone floor. Something crashed, spilled onto the tiling. A long knife like a machete slashed the air. Skoll grunted, caught the man’s arm, twisted. The turbaned man slashed again, wriggling like an eel, broke free, and Durell hit him, hit him again, drove the frantic man to his knees across the outer door sill.

  Skoll sighed. “Thank you, Cajun.”

  “Did he cut you?”

  “A little.”

  “Anyone else around?”

  “I think not.”

  Durell stepped over the man and walked a few paces outside. The overgrown garden made an impenetrable wall ahead. There was nothing to be seen. He turned back. Skoll had flipped the man over so that his face was upward. It was a brown, flat face, the dark eyes resentful and sullen.

  “He is a PFM,” Skoll muttered.

  “Paid by your people?” Durell asked.

  “Not by me. Perhaps Peking. Perhaps—Dr. Sinn.” “What about Dr. Sinn?”

  The man’s eyes flickered as he heard Durell repeat the name. He tried to spit up into Skoll’s face. The Russian slapped him, knocked his head aside, and said, “You. Tell us what you are doing here.”

  The response was a blank look, as if the man did not understand English. Skoll tried Russian, then clumsy Sinhalese. The man suddenly spoke in English, after all. "I was sent—to tell you—the Cobra’s Bow will see you. Very soon. You must be prepared. It is your only hope, Durell.”

  Skoll said, “I am not Durell. This man is. Why does your Naga wish to see him? Come, you understand me. Don pretend. Tell us why.”

  “I—cannot.”

  “Then we will kill you,” Skoll said calmly.

  The man was not afraid. He tried to get up, and Skoll pushed him back with his foot. The man said again, "I was sent—to tell you—the Cobra’s Bow will see you. Very soon. You must—”

  “He’s repeating it from memory,” Durell said.

  “Perhaps. Then he can tell us nothing more. What shall we do w:th him, Comrade Cajun?”

  “Let him go,” Durell said. “He can’t hurt us.”

  As he spoke, Durell suddenly felt as if something had punched him lightly in the shoulder. Even before the burning pain seared his skin, he heard the low, muffled crack of a high-powered rifle with a muzzle silencer. He fell away, bumped backward against the kitchen table, crunched through the glass the PFM had broken. Skoll rumbled something, and the PFM scrambled on all fours and scuttled like a giant spider out the door, tumbling to the weedy ground. Skoll shouted, and Dure!l fell against the wall, straightened, came up beside the doorway. The PFM man was gone. Moonlight showed the wall of brush, the slope of the hill rising from the road that had led them to the walauwa.

  “Sam?” It was Aspara, calling to him.

  “Stay back!”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  Skoll said, “Who winged you?”

  “It has to be Wells. He’s out there somewhere. He must have stayed on my trail through Kandy. He’ll never give up.”

  In the dim light, Skoll’s grin was a death mask. “It is only a passing thought, but I could endear myself to your K Section by turning you in, nyet?”

  “You could try it.”

  “And perhaps receive a bonus, also, from my own people in Moscow, am I right?”

  “I’m sure of it.” Durell kept watching the door and the hillside out there. Nothing moved. He couldn’t spot the sniper.

  Skoll said, “And still, I believe you. You did not sell out to Mouquerana Sinn, did you?”

  “I never heard his name before.”

  “But my man, Andrei Kubischev, did. He helped to frame you, yes?”

  “Da,” Durell said grimly.

  “I hate to see an old friend like you in such trouble, Comrade Cajun.”

  “Shut up and look for him,” Durell said.

  “I already see him. Over there. Coming down the hill. He has courage, that black man. Very determined, eh'/ He knows he hit you. Is it bad?”

  “Only a scratch. Where?”

  “There. The moon on his rifle. See?”

  Durell caught the glint of light on the long barrel. It was like a spark of liquid silver, flickering through the trees beyond the weedy walauwa garden. Wells was coming down fast, but very carefully, moving from cover to cover, bounding, sliding, vanishing and then reappearing for a split second.

  Skoll grunted. “Shall we finish him?”

  “No.”

  “But he will kill you, if he can.”

  “He’s operating under mistaken orders. I didn’t sell out to anybody, but he doesn’t know that. It’s not his fault. I’m not being generous—just practical. Wells is a very good man.”

  “How can you, stop him?”

  Durell moved out of the doorway and ducked into the deep shadow of the brush surrounding the house. His .38 was relatively impotent against the sniper’s rifle at this distance. He looked to the right and left. Behind him, Skoll hid in the doorway, watching. The stone driveway, weedy

  and gullied by rain, swept around this side of the house, presumably to a former service entrance. But the Rolls was around in the front, in plain sight, perhaps sixty feet beyond the terraced corner of the house. V ells had vanished. He searched the hillside, heard Skoll whistle softly. “What is it?”

  “Madame Aspara says she will get the car.”

  “No. It’s too risky.”

  “She says she will try it.”

  “You do it, Cesar.”

  “You need me to cover you.”

  “I’m all right. Go ahead.”

  He felt better now, better than in Colombo, when he had been completely in the dark. He had several threads now—if he could keep alive to follow them. Again he wondered about Dhapura. He did nof think the Sinhalese cop had lost him; but he was holding back, and he did not know why. Perhaps it was just as well. He didn’t want official interference here.

  He turned his head. Skoll was gone from the doorway. When he looked back, he saw Wells, a dark shape in the shadows of the trees above, standing spread-legged, the rifle up. He heard the shot and threw himself sidewise, heard the bullet spatter on the stone wall, heard a second and third shot, then scrambled forward to the brush, lay flit, breathing quietly. Wells was smart enough not to offer himself as a target. He felt as if he were handcuffed, not wanting to kill the man uselessly, not wanting to die himself either.

  He heard the throb of the Rolls engine, quickly quieting after it started. A cricket shrilled under him as he crouched in the brush across the driveway. When the Rolls nosed around the corner of the walauwa, outlined in silver in the moonlight, he lifted himself and scrambled up the brushy hillside away from the house.
He heard Skoll’s muffled curse, then he put all his energy into the swift climb, circling high above the spot where he had last seen Wells in the moonlight.

  You can’t run forever, he thought. He had to put a stop to it now, if possible:

  He moved silently, carried back for a moment to his boyhood days in Bayou Peche Rouge, in Louisiana, where he’d hunted so often with his old Grandpa Jonathan. When he felt he had circled higher than Wells, he turned and looked back. The Rolls was stopped before the service door of the manor. Nothing moved there. He could not see Aspara or Skoll. He wondered briefly if he could trust the Russian. They had worked together at other times in a mutually advantageous truce. Maybe this would be another such occasion. He did not know. He kept his gun ready and began his descent.

  Halfway down, he spotted his quarry.

  Wells was crouched in the deep shadow of a tall, feathery tree, laced with night-blooming vines, in a small clearing dappled by moonlight. The black man held the rifle in his left hand, and Durell could see its powerful scope, the long, specialized scope, a variation created by the gimmick boys of K Section’s l"b down in the basement at No. 20 Annapolis Street in Washington. It was a deadly assassin’s tool. The man’s face was turned toward the driveway and the parked Rolls.

  Then Aspara came out of the back door of the walauwa, and Wells straightened smoothly, shifted the rifle to his right hand as Skoll came out too, his bald head bent toward the graceful figure of the woman.

  Durell came down the hill swiftly, silently, rushing from shadow to shadow. Wells was alone. There was nothing to indicate he had any assistants.

  At the last moment, Wells heard him, spinning like a lithe panther, his teeth flashing in a taut grin. Durell hit him hard, tumbled him backward, slammed the muzzle of his .38 hard under the other’s jaw, snapping his head back painfully.

  “Hold it. Keep quiet.”

  For an instant Wells struggled, his powerful body heaving under Durell. Then he suddenly went slack as he looked into Durell’s eyes and dropped the rifle into the tall grass.

  “All right, Sam.”

  “Take it easy or your head gets blown off.”

  “Yes. You’d do it too.” Wells’ grin was taut, stretching his mouth. “You might as well kill me now, Cajun. I won’t give up.”