Assignment - Cong Hai Kill

by Edward S. Aarons

  Durell replaced the news articles with a deepening frown. It was no crime to read enemy propaganda. You had to know the enemy’s face before you could fight him successfully. Yet he had questions about Muong that these articles only deepened.

  The last item was a simple baggage tag attached to the straw suitcase. It was wired to the handle and read, D.S. Dagan, Hoi Surisa, 22.

  There was a street by that name. Durell straightened, looked at his watch, rubbed his jaw, mid decided there was time enough.

  The police clerk jumped up and bowed as he left. He took the stairs down to the lobby that, since French occupancy, had acquired that universal scent of urine, sweat, and terror that marked police stations everywhere in the world. The heat outdoors oppressed the heart and lungs, and a quiet had come over the stagnant port. Sun shutters were closed, shops were locked, and the shoals of bicycles had thinned. Hummingbirds flashed in hibiscus shrubs as scarlet as blood. A few samlors were lined up near the river-bank, and Durell chose the second one, operated by a thin, middle-aged coolie, and gave the address. It seemed to mean nothing special to the peddleman, who nodded and started off.

  Hoi Surisa turned out to be a narrow alley of older houses standing on stilts along a small lagoon at the junction of several canals. The thatched roofs, traced with waterfalls of blue convolvulus flowers and festoons of bougainvillea, looked pale lemon in the harsh sunlight. A dog barked. The lagoon smelled rancid. Along it, there was a strip of sand pocked by small red crabs that moved with a dry, crackling sound. Straw awnings had been unrolled over the decks of the nearby sampans, and men, women, and children sprawled in sleep to pass away the insufferably hot mid-afternoon.

  Durell felt sweat trickle down his chest, belly, and groin as he paid off the samlor driver in front of a shop that displayed rows of snakeskins and cases of butterflies and moths pinned to faded velvet. He walked on and considered No. 22, which had been Doko Dagan’s address. It was better than its neighbors, set apart in a weedy area and built out over the stagnant water. It was a half-caste house, semi-European in style, with a wooden veranda laden with flowering vines that hung like limp banners in the sultry air. There was a tall hedge of bamboo, with dark gaps like tunnels in it. A giant, brilliant butterfly flew an erotic dance around Durell’s head as he mounted the veranda. Voices came from the neighboring canal—the whimper of a child, a high-pitched quarrel in Hindi. The warped sun shutters were closed. Near the bamboo hedge he could see mosquitoes rising in affectionate, smothering clouds. The alley between this house and the next was a dark slot between the wide, overhanging eaves. Nobody seemed to be watching him. No one had followed him.

  He opened the shutter door and went in.

  He did not know precisely what he was looking for. Dagan was dead, and if Dagan had been an opium runner for criminal exiles from the old Kuomintang Anny, growing old in wretched outlawry, the man had not prospered that much. The interior of the house looked dusty and disused.

  There was a wide plank floor, rattan chairs, Japanese tatami mats. In another room, shadowed by the closed shutters, were furnishings in ugly, flowered upholstery that showed decay in this tropical environment. Perhaps, he thought, it reflected Dagan’s criteria of elegance.

  The third room in the house overlooked the canal and contained charcoal kitchen stoves. Enough to cook rice for twenty people, Durell thought. But where were they? He breathed out softly and loosened his gun in his jacket.

  In the room with the sleeping mats there were paperback books in Chinese, tall stacks of them in a corner. The publisher’s imprint was neither Hong Kong nor Taipeh. Durell’s Chinese was strictly scratch, and he could not read much. of these, but he would have wagered they came from Peiping University.

  There seemed to be nothing else, until he found the loose floorboard. It creaked as he backed away from the books, and when he tested it, he saw it could be pried loose with little effort.

  Kneeling, he looked into the dusty cavity beneath.

  He knew at once he had stumbled on an arms cache of importance, and he knew, too, it was meant for the Cong Hai.

  There were grenades, heavy Russian PP SH burp guns—poluaftomatichesky pistolet Shpagina—some 7X57 Mausers, Schmeisers, two 7.62mrn Mosin Nagents, old Russian Anny rifles, and boxes of official 7.62 NATO cartridges and 12.7mm Russian machine-gun clips.

  Durell straightened, tall and dark in the deepening shadows of the room. Through a break in one of the sun shutters he could see giant ferns near the side of the house. A rooster crowed, although the sun was beginning to set. The air felt like a steam towel, and his shirt clung like warm, wet moss. He felt a sudden urge to return and ask Major Muong a number of pointed questions. He was also oppressed by a feeling of danger, although children had begun to play on the nearby sampans and temple bells tolled lightly in the shimmering air.

  He turned and walked out of the room.

  As he did so, an arm whipped across his throat and a hard knee smashed into his kidneys. The arm strangled him, the knee tried to rupture his spine. Something smashed against his head and a, wild carillon rang in his ears. He felt himself falling into a red pit, and he tried to shout, but the thick forearm cut off all air in his throat.

  He smelled sweat and the sharp, rancid odor of curry and fish. He tried to drop and fall out of the other‘s grip, but there was a flash and something hit his shoulder. He heaved up and felt as if his head were twisted off his neck and thrown across the room. He rested on hands and knees on the floor. When he shook himself, blood spattered on the planks like water snapped from wet fingers. A boot kicked him in the ribs. Nothing broke. He was grateful to get air into his lungs before the boot knocked it out again. Then the man made the mistake of jumping exuberantly onto his back. He moved aside just in time.

  There was a bone-crushing thump, a thin curse. The smell of fish and curry ran wild as he rolled over across the floor with his opponent. The man wore a Western shirt and a ragged dhoti and the snakeskin headband of the Cong Hai. Durell was dismayed that he hadn’t heard him enter the house, and shocked that he had been taken by surprise.

  He glimpsed a gray distorted face and a savage palisade of snaggly teeth. He smashed at the face with his fist, but he had no leverage; he struck again, and the palisade broke, turning to rose and then to a bloody red.

  The Cong tried to knee him again, then scrambled for something across the floor. There was an element of panic in the gesture. Durell swung on his hip and kicked with his right leg, not rising from the floor, and his hard heel hammered into the Cong’s jaw.

  It was very satisfactory.

  There was a cracking noise and a thin scream and the face Went out of shape, teeth hanging from only one hinge in the jaw.

  He felt better. But satisfaction came too soon. There were reinforcements for the man with the curry breath.

  A sudden swarm of men brazenly wearing the dreaded snakeskin emblem of the Cong Hai.

  Something bounced off the back of his head and he rolled away down an incline into sudden, appalling silence and darkness. He waited in despair for it to become permanent.

  But they did not kill him.

  They should have; but they did not.

  He heard dim shouts of alarm and a gabble of thin, angry voices and then the quick padding of feet that ran away. A door slammed. Temple bells called out for peace and serenity and contemplation.

  Still, he did not feel as if he were alone.

  Outside, the rooster crowed, to celebrate sunset. It was a topsy-turvy world.

  He opened his eyes and looked into the muzzle of a gun held by Major Muong, who stood over him with the bland, slightly supercilious face of a brown Buddha.

  12

  TEN SECONDS that could have been ten years oozed by. He was on hands and knees, trying for the summit, and frozen there by a blast of icy wind. The Congs who jumped him were running away. Far, far away. He couldn’t go after them. If he moved, he’d find himself running down that black tunnel of a gun barrel, with no known en
d in that direction.

  Major Muong had smooth brown lips that stretched in a meaningless smile as he spoke with only mild interest. “And what happened to you, Mr. Durell?”

  “I stumbled over the rug,” Durell said.

  “Who else was in this house?”

  “Some no-friends.”

  “I do not understand. Did someone else help you search my office and then this place?”

  “Oh, no. I did that all by my little self. The people who tried to zap me here were Cong Hai jokers.”

  “I am quite surprised, sir,” said Muong.

  He did not seem at all surprised.

  Durell said: “If they were really Congs, then you came at a fortunate moment, Major. But I wonder if they were for real, or just clowns trying to make me think they were Congs. In the back room you’ll find a little nest of goodies under the floor-—some Mausers, Mosin Nagents, PP SH burp guns. They may have come back for the iron, after hearing that Doko Dagan was dead, and found me in the way.” He looked upward at the Thai. “Can I get up? Or do you shoot me into the floor now?”

  “I am sorry. Please rise.”

  “Hands over my head?”

  “I am not your enemy, believe me. If I seem annoyed, and hold my gun, it is because you have betrayed my trust by searching my rooms. However, perhaps it can be explained. You are good at explanations, Mr. Durell?”

  “Not tonight.” Durell got to his feet. He clung to the edge of an abyss that reeled away, came back, and yawned in his face. Major T.M.K. Muong did not touch him. He Went into the other room While Durell rested, and came back with a NATO grenade. He examined it thoughtfully and then put it aside with care. There was a gleam in the rice-white teeth, the cool brown tiger’s eyes. He meticulously lit a thin and pungent cigar.

  “Obviously, Dagan’s friends came back here for these weapons, Mr. Durell. You were lucky to intercept them. And also fortunate that I intervened. But you did not come here looking for illegal Cong Hai arms. Just What were you looking for, Mr. Durell?”

  “A way off the cleft fork. You and I are after the same game, but how we skin it is different. I wish I could let you have Orris Lantern when we bag him. But I have to take him to Washington with me. Not Bangkok—Washington. But we’ll decide that after we get him. Let's finish this part of the damned game here and now.” Durell felt a bit steadier. “What were you doing with all of Papa Mao Tse-tung’s hate literature in your bedroom, Major?”

  “It is not illegal to read the enemy’s intent, sir.”

  “If that were all. But what were you doing earlier in my hotel room? You bugged it, and Deirdre’s, too. And you bug me. Why the gun pointed at me now? Pourquoi?”

  “We seem to be mutually suspicious, sir.”

  “I’m only a vanguard, with a password. But I’m not alone. Other people wonder about you, too.”

  “Such talk could be dangerous.”

  “I live a dangerous life, Major. Full of high adventure.

  A mouthful of slime from the canal, a mouthful of splinters from this floor. Very romantic.”

  “Do you feel all right, Mr. Durell? Perhaps I should call a doctor for you.”

  “Do that. And tell him what a pity it is that your Sergeant Lao shot so well and killed such a pleasant little gentleman as Doko Dagan before I could ask him a few pertinent questions.” Durell walked to the door. The floor undulated under him. He wondered if Muong would shoot him. But the major stood quietly, exhaling thin smoke from his Dutch cigar. Then Muong said:

  “Do you know the real significance of the leaflets in Dagan’s suitcase? You saw them in my room.”

  Durell was angry. “Did your lab test a sample?”

  “Ah.”

  “Are you surprised that I know? It’s a simple method of running dope through the borders. We’ve met up with it in Syria, Egypt, and Albania—anywhere the Chicoms establish their so-called ‘trade missions.’ Have you a sample of Doko’s propaganda literature on you?”

  Muong nodded and held out one of the pulp-paper hate sheets from the straw suitcase in his wardrobe closet. This one was printed entirely in Chinese, except for a cartoon that depicted Uncle Sam as a fat ogre gobbling up little Asians from a banquet table. He took the leaflet between thumb and forefinger. It was quiet now in the house, growing shadowed with dusk. He wondered if Muong had other men watching in the bamboo hedge or in one of the sampans in the lagoon.

  “If you run this paper through routine lab tests,” Durell said, “you’ll find it’s impregnated with opium crystals in the fiber. Hate sheets, textbooks, any printed matter—they’re used to illustrate the fact that one man’s poison can be another man’s meat, right? You boil these leaflets and let the paper disintegrate. Then you skim off the crystalline residue, dry it out, and in Doko Dagan’s single suitcase, you have maybe a million dollars’ worth of dope, tight?”

  Muong nodded. “Such is my estimate, too.”

  “Enough to buy enough support for the Cong Hal up in the highlands, right?”

  “There are some who can be bought, yes.”

  I “You knew what Dagan was. Were your people keeping him under surveillance?”

  “Yes,” Muong said.

  “Was he at the Danat tea plantation before he boarded the river steamer with Uncle Chang?”

  “Yes. You are very clever.”

  “Then you know what .our next move is, Major Muong?”

  “You are in command.”

  “Thank you.” Durell’s tone was dry. “So we shall go looking for Yellow Torch and the Cong Hai at the Pierre Danat tea farm, if you have no objections.”

  “M’sieu Danat is above suspicion.”

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t.”

  “His daughter is a personal friend—”

  “—of Orris Lantern’s. And he’s the man we’d both like to kill. The man we must work together to wrap in cotton wool and bring home to Big Daddy.”

  “I do not understand all that you say, Mr. Durell, but I understand enough. You do not trust me. I do not entirely trust you. But this is my country, and what happens to it concerns me more immediately than it concerns you. Your help is appreciated. The Cong Hal must be stopped. They are like sparks in a dry forest, like deadly snakes coming up out of the dark. If the head of the snake is offered, I shall cut it off.”

  “When we find him,” Durell said.

  Major Muong nodded, bowed, and made him a wei of respect.

  “We shall go upriver tomorrow into the highlands, and we shall find Orris Lantern.”

  13

  DEIRDRE said: “Honestly, I did the best I could, Sam, but he knew you were on to something. He has a wife and nine children! I tried to chat charmingly about American folkways and so forth, but he never really listened. He’s a little like you, darling. He’s a bit scary.”

  “Just how am I like Muong?”

  “Dedicated. Monomaniacal about the job at hand. Concentrated. His eyes looked through me for a million miles.”

  Durell winced as Deirdre applied antiseptic to the cut on his scalp. “I wish I could see through you, honey.”

  “The allure of the feminine is a mystique we always cultivate,” she said, and smiled down at him. He put his arm around her and drew her down to his lap. She did not resist. He said: “You did the best you could. I didn’t find many answers, but I got some.”

  “And almost got killed, too.”

  “That’s part of the business.”

  Her gray eyes glistened in the shadows of his hotel room. “Sam, darling, I hate this thing you call business.”

  “Then why did you squirm your way into it?"

  “Because I want to be with you.”

  “And I want you at home. Safe at home.”

  “And if you’re not safe? You can understand that, but you don’t accept it. You like this work, don’t you?”

  “Somebody has to do it, Dee.”

  “I know, but you’ve been in it so long, and you’ve already done your share—”

>   “Who is to measure one’s share? It’s my job and I do it. I don’t ask for more than my salary and an annual contract renewal. Don’t blow bugles for me, Dee.”

  “I won’t. Not out loud, anyway. But I feel—”

  He kissed her. She seemed willing enough. She had been worried about him, and when he returned, her alarm wiped out the cool facade she had tried to maintain. He felt he had won a major skirmish in their private war, and the ache in the back of his head was almost worth it. He felt stirred by her, as always, familiar with her and her excitation that for him was unique among all the women he had ever known. Her perfume was alluring. He felt the warm pressure of her body, and wanted her with an overwhelming, sudden desire that she recognized and apparently was ready to surrender to.

  “Sam——“

  “We’re a long way from home, Dee.”

  “No, Sam. That’s the whole point. Home is where we’re together. Like this. And like this.”

  A small sound came from the connecting room, shared by Deirdre and Anna-Marie. The French girl had slept out her sedative, Deirdre had said, and was in her own bed. But now, as he held Deirdre to him, Durell heard restless sounds through the door that was slightly ajar, and he immediately alerted himself. “She’s awake again.”

  “Yes, she wanted to talk to you, earlier.” Deirdre’s dark hair screened his eyes as she bent over him. “But she can wait a few more minutes, darling,” she whispered. “She Wants to see you alone. Very privately. But so do I. Should I be jealous, Sam?”