Assignment- Silver Scorpion

by Edward S. Aarons

  The walls of the medina came almost to the water's edge, but there was a wide landing at the base, built of cut slabs of stone. It had probably been constructed by the Portuguese over two hundred years ago. The riverside landing was littered with the broken debris of battle. Yutigaffa ran ahead through the shadowed junk like a broken-field football runner and then suddenly vanished over the side of the stone docking area. Durell shoved the girl ahead, behind Kantijji. The wall loomed menacingly over them. He thought he heard someone shout, but the noise of the burning armored truck behind them and the screams of the wounded men who had tumbled out of it drowned out any nearby sounds. The stone platform was slippery with rotted vegetation, hemp, trash and garbage thrown over the wall by the besieged Teleks inside. Finch was panting when Durell shoved her down again. She lay flat beside him, her hip hard against his, and tried to pin her hair back in place. Durell, beside Kantijji, looked over the edge of the stone embarkation wharf. There was a float down below; moving slightly with the tug of the sluggish black current. Farther out in the stream, something pale bobbed on the surface of the river. All he could see of Captain Yutigaffa was a flash of white eyes. He heard a whisper.

  "Down here, sir."

  "You first, Finch," Durell said.

  She shivered a little. "Listen, I'm afraid-"

  "Get down there. Don't wait. We've been lucky-"

  Their luck seemed to run out then, as the clatter of a machinegun suddenly burst from behind and above them on top of the wall. Kantijji grunted. Bullets chocked into the stone deck of the pier. Kantijji made another odd sound and suddenly slid over the string piece. His body splashed into the water with a noise that was overridden by the rattling of the machinegun. Durell urged Finch over the side. Her tall body felt tight and muscular, resisting him. She went quickly down suddenly, on a slatted ladder, and half fell into Yutigaffa's arms. Durell followed hard behind her.

  "Kantijji?" he called.

  "I am safe."

  The sergeant crawled up onto the small float, shaking his head like a wet dog. His teeth flashed briefly in the gloom as he grinned. "I am sorry I was so clumsy."

  The machinegun stopped firing. For some moments Durell kept them crouching on the float, and there was only the sound of the burning armored car, the dim shouts of approaching rescuers, then the sudden crunch of a bursting grenade. The river made lapping, purling sounds against the stone embankment. Farther out on the black, ruffled surface of the water, something splashed and splashed again and then flicked away. It could have been a large fish, a night hawk, a croc. Durell touched Captain Yutigaffa's shoulder.

  "How far to the outfall from the jute mill?"

  "Around that point there. Perhaps two hundred meters." The FKP man gestured toward a sharp, rectilinear jutting of high black stone that blocked the end of the wharf, an abutment to the District's walls. The raked mast of a local fishing boat, not unlike a Nile felucca, made a

  dim pattern against the stars. The mortars stopped their monotonous hammering on the other side of the besieged town. The feeble crack of return rifle fire from the Telek walls pattered out like the last of falling October leaves. "We must swim in the water," Yutigaffa whispered. "Unless--Sergeant?"

  "Yes?" said Kantijji.

  "Do you see that canoe-off the forteleza?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Swim for it. Bring it back here. Quietly!"

  "Yes, sir."

  The stockier of the two Bogandans slid into the scummy black water. In a moment he had vanished completely from sight. Durell felt Georgette move beside him on the float, against the shelter of the stone embankment wall. She was still shivering a bit, although the night was now hot and breathless and sultry. Her face was a pale amorphous outline, close to his.

  "Finch, do you know the Getoba?" he murmured.

  "I used to work in it when I was in the Peace Corps."

  "Do you know this jute mill?"

  "I've seen it. It's not so hotsy-totsy. A sweatshop operation run by a couple of old Chinese gentlemen."

  Durell said, "Spare me the socio-economic-ecological implications. Do you know the building?"

  She shook her head. "I've never been in it, no."

  "Then we have to trust Yutigaffa here?"

  The girl looked at the tall, scarred Bogandan watching the surface of the river where Kantijji had swum away. She said to Durell, "You're pretty blunt about your worries, talking about Yutigaffa as if he wasn't right here at your elbow."

  "Honesty is the best policy," Durell said.

  "Hot dog," she said. "An arrayed word of wisdom."

  There came a dim splash from out in the sullen darkness of the river. Durell watched the medina wall, his gun in hand. Nothing stirred up there now, but he couldn't be certain they were not under observation. He had the feeling that eyes watched them. Then Kantijji came swimming, back, towing a long, dugout-type canoe. There was a small five-horse outboard engine on the port quarter, but they wouldn't be able to use it. Georgette got in with a certain expertise, apparently being familiar with the native craft. Yutigaffa followed. Kantijji pulled himself, dripping, out of the water and into the boat; he muttered something to the captain and then reached out to hand Durell a pole.

  "The river is deep here, mtamba, because of the ferry and other river boats that tie up to this dock when times are normal. We must go around the fort-that high tower on the wall ahead of us. Then we will see the Strang mill."

  "And how do we find the outfall?"

  "I believe I mentioned a buoy that marks the end of the conduit. There is a small creek that comes out into the river through the same waste pipe. The pipe itself is quite wide, easily big enough to accommodate a swimming man. You can see the disturbance in the surface current where the water comes out. And there is air inside the conduit at all times-more just now than normally, because this is the dry season."

  Durell, standing on the float below the wall of the wharf, held up a hand. "Hold it a moment, Captain."

  "Sir? Is something-"

  "I'm not sure."

  He turned and faced back the way they had come. The littered surface of the stone embankment held no movement under the starlight. The fire from the burnt-out armor car, some distance behind them and around the corner of the medina wall, had died out. The red embers that were left cast a ruddy glow on the walls and heaps of wreckage along the waterfront. Something moved there, a flickering shape, a blot of pallor, a flutter of clothing. Yutigaffa came and watched, standing beside Durell.

  "It is one of the troopers from the armored car. He is wounded, perhaps."

  "No, I don't think so," Durell said. "It's a woman."

  Finch turned. "A woman? Here?"

  Durell looked at her and cut off an obvious reply. The figure, running through the shadows, was again outlined against the red glow of ashes beyond. He was right. It was a woman. He glimpsed a strand of pale hair, like a Medusa's tendril, flying behind the intent thrust of the head and face.

  "It's Irene," be said.

  Yutigaffa sucked air. "The Ragihi?"

  "Yes. She's spotted us."

  Durell climbed the ladder to the surface of the stone wharf again. Irene swerved, running through the shadows, her mouth open in an anguished face. He waved an arm briefly, swearing softly to himself, and checked the top of the Telek walls. He didn't see any sentries stirring there. But there could easily be a rifle following the woman's erratic, hip-weaving progress as she saw Durell and came toward him.

  "Get down," he called softly. "Do you want to get killed?"

  She came toward him, sank to her knees, put her arms out as if in supplication. He felt astonishment, then decided there was nothing here to be surprised about.

  He helped her over the edge of the wharf, keeping an eye on the wall. Something moved up there briefly. He pulled her down behind the shelter of the massive, cut; stones and onto the float where the others waited.

  "Irene Ragihi, what are, you doing here?"

  "I'm going with you
," she gasped. "Oh, Lordie, I thought I'd never make it, indeed."

  "Are you alone?"

  "Course I'm alone. Caught you just in time, didn't I? I ain't about to let me sister get chopped up here in the Getoba. I wormed it all out of the Raga, you see. He doesn't, know I've followed you, naturally. But here I am."

  "You can't come along," Durell said.

  "Can't I?" Her small face changed from a gamin's grin to the strong and stubborn grimace of a dockside girl. "You think not? You take me with you, however you plan to get in, or I'll scream me bloody head off. And what do you think will happen when they hear us over that wall?"

  Chapter 10

  THEY POLED and paddled forward, hugging the deep shadow cast by the stone wharf. The river stretched out in smooth blackness as far to the left as they could see, it?s current like slippery dark glass. Durell wondered why the Teleks didn't have pickets out along the shore. Or why General Watsube had not covered this point from the river. Perhaps it was because the Teleks were river people, and most of the available boats were tied up just beyond the looming tower up ahead, known as the Portuguese Fort. And the Teleks probably commanded a good line of fire from atop their ancient wall.

  Kantijji was in the bow of the long, unstable canoe, while Captain Yutigaffa loomed like a carved wooden idol in the stem, handling a steering paddle with easy familiarity. Ahead of Yutigaffa was Georgette, using both hands on the smooth, worn gunwales of the canoe to balance herself. Durell sat amidships, with Irene's blond head swiveling to look at everything around them. She was still breathing fast from her long run after them, but there was an air of excitement and anticipation in the way she sat, in the straight line of her back and slight forward-bending from her hips, that made Durell uneasy.

  "Irene," he said softly. "May I call the Ragihi by her familiar name?"

  "Oh, sure." She turned her head and grinned at him. Her great eyes looked enormous in the starlight reflected from the river's surface. The water made a purling sound at the canoe's bows, the paddles handled by the FKP dripped quietly. The bank of the river, with the low wall of, the Getoba District, slid slowly by, as if they were standing still and the land was moving. Irene said, "I told you, I'm worried about Mickey. So I called her."

  "You telephoned to her?"

  "Oh, sure. The lines are still working. Funny, huh?" Irene pointed at the looming mass of the Portuguese Fort on the riverbank. They were almost opposite the low, gray bulk. "Mickey is in there, all right. She's fine. At least, she hasn't been hurt yet. So I told her I was coming in."

  "Why?"

  "What do you mean, why? She's me sister, isn't she?"

  "If you could reach her on the telephone, then Mickey can't be too badly off," Durell said.

  "Oh, you'll see. You'll find out all about it, when we gettin? there."

  "Are they expecting us then? Is that why there haven't been any shots at us so far?"

  She pouted. "Well; no. Mickey told me to stay out of it all. She said I ought to stay nice and safe with the President. But I was always one for a bit of fun and excitement, you might say. I'm afraid I got her quite angry with me when I said I was coming in, anyway."

  "How angry?"

  "Well, when I said I'd try to catch up with you, she said she'd kill you."

  Durell's face did not change in the gloom. "You told her about me?"

  "Why, sure. Why not?" Her big blue eyes grinned back, at him from the center of the canoe. The starlight played on the planes of her face. Behind her eyes, he saw something suddenly cruel and feline and not at all naive. "I told. Mickey all about you, Mr. Durell. Mr. Cajun. That's your code name, isn't it? You're a spy, aren't you? Didn't the President ask for you, to help him out about the missing money? He had a whole dossier on you, Sam, me boy. I've got a good memory, though you might not think it, the way I babble on. So I told Mickey all about you. Anything wrong in that?"

  "Maybe nothing," Durell said. "Maybe everything."

  The siege had been going on for eight days now, since the first day when the initial coup attempt, which included an armed rush for the Presidential palace and the police barracks, had failed. The rebellion, according to Durell's briefing, had been one of resentment against the domination by Natanga people in the government of President Inurate Motuku. The Teleks had always been the traders and businessmen in Boganda; they were a composite of interbred black tribal Moslems, the East Indians with their shops and home industries, and the offspring of Portuguese colonial clerks who considered themselves much superior by virtue of their partial European blood. The Natangas, by sheer force of numbers, if not ability, had dominated the Unity, taking the prize administrative jobs and passing restrictive legislation against the Teleks in the People's Unity Congress. It was small wonder that the Teleks finally rebelled. Africa had not traveled that far along the way from the simple brutality of tribal passions to permit any reaction other than violence.

  Durell looked both ways along the crowded canoe. Nothing had gone right since he had arrived in Boganda. He had always preferred to go his way alone; it would have been dangerous enough to get into the besieged Getoba District that way. Now he had two women on his hands, with their own diverse and emotionalized patterns of behavior. Not to mention the two FKP men, whose competence he did not doubt for a moment, but whose loyalties were a big question mark in his mind.

  Durell had survived this long in the business by taking nothing for granted. As a boy in the Louisiana bayous at Peche Rouge, he had been taught how to hunt and depend on only himself, following the patient tutoring of his old Grandpa Jonathan. Now he slowly turned his head to consider the smooth black surface of the river, the towering gloom of the old Portuguese Martello fortress, seen against an evanescent starlight in the African sky. There was a mist against the river's horizon to the north, where the opposite bank was hidden over a mile away. He touched the gun tucked into his left belt. There was a smell of corruption, of smoke and decay, that drifted on the faint, hot night wind from the besieged wall town it stank of death.

  They had just rounded the fortress tower that loomed as a feudal anachronism against the riverbank's palms and banyans when the machinegun and the spotlights found them.

  There was no warning. The shaft of light hit them like the sudden thrust of a lance, bright and dazzling and lethal. The machinegun began to hammer at them only a moment later.

  Yutigaffa, in the stern, yelled and fell sidewise. Durell did not know if he had been hit or not. The canoe wobbled dangerously, threatening to overturn. Irene made a little choking sound and started to stand up in the delicate craft. There was no hope after that.

  "Jump!" Durell shouted.

  He shoved Georgette, and they both hit the water while bullets screamed and kicked up fountains of spray from the surface of the river. The canoe turned completely over. He went down, holding the girl, and felt Irene's hands on him, clinging desperately, pulling him still farther under the river's surface. The Telek surprise attack was complete. He went down and down, feeling the sluggish push of the Natanga's current. Irene's grip on him was desperate and frantic. Georgette did not struggle. Durell twisted, let Finch go her own way, and turned on Irene, pulling her fingers free of his shoulder, and grabbed her waist. Her thighs and breasts pushed tight against him. He punched her chin, lightly, kicked and thrust upward with his legs, seeking air.

  When he broke the surface of the water, the spotlight-was still on the overturned canoe, floating some yards, away. He saw Irene's wet, frantic face bob up, her carefully pampered hair plastered to her scalp in total disarray.

  "The bitch!" she gasped. "Oh, the nasty, selfish little bitch!"

  "Let go," Durell said. "Can you swim?"

  The woman's eyes were wild. "She knew I was coming, see. She had to know it was me!"

  "Keep quiet." He turned in the water. "Finch?"

  "Here."

  "Yutigaffa?"

  "Here too, mtamba."

  "I thought you were hit."

  "No, sir. Ka
ntijji is safe with me too."

  Someone on the walls lobbed a grenade into the river. Durell felt the concussion even at this distance, as he swam upstream. The spotlight left the sinking canoe and began to sweep the black surface of the water in an irregular pattern, closer to the shore. He turned again in a complete circle, treading water. Irene was gulping and spitting out river water that sloshed into her mouth. Something loomed on the surface of the river not more than fifty feet away. It was a massive buoy, painted with red and white stripes that reflected the glare of the floodlight playing on the water nearby. The automatic fire suddenly stopped. He heard a faint shout from the high stone walls that loomed over the riverbank, and then he saw what he wanted.

  "This way, Finch. Irene, follow us."