“Can you get another shaft?”
“I might. Or I might make one.”
“Where?”
“You wouldn’t trust me to go after it.”
“I’ll get it myself. Where is it?”
Lantern looked at him with bitter eyes. “Go to hell, Cajun,” he said. “I’d just as soon stay here and wait for the Cong Hai to come for me.”
Ten minutes later, Durell went hunting for Papa Danat. If anyone knew where there were machine parts in Dong Xo, the tea planter would know. He left Lantern in his prison cabin, under guard of two of Muong’s troopers, and strode through the heat, dust, buffalo carts, and noise of the village street in search of the fat Frenchman.
He went to Giralda’s house first and found the woman there, feeding a brilliant macaw in a bamboo cage. She wore a Western skirt and had her thick, wiry hair piled in a high knot atop her head. Her eyes turned unfriendly and stubborn when he’ asked for Danat. She had been a beautiful woman, once; and he could easily find reasons for Danat’s affair with her. It must have been lonely for the Frenchman in this isolated place, and Giralda, with her obvious attractions, had made herself available and had catered to his weaknesses for food and an occasional opium pipe. There might be more to it, Durell reflected, but he had no time to explore it now.
“He is not here,” Giralda said in French. “I have not seen him since you took him from me last night.”
“I can smell his pipe.”
“I smoke one myself, now and then.”
“Tell him to come out here.”
“I told you, he is not with me.” Giralda shrugged smooth and shapely shoulders. “You may look for yourself.”
It was true. Danat was not in the house.
He returned to the lagoon then, to find Deirdre, thinking she might have had occasion to see the Frenchman. But Deirdre was not with the women cutting the vines away from the boat. Neither was she in the government house. He found Major Muong on the river front, checking his patrols. Muong had not seen Deirdre, either.
It was now an hour past noon, and unease became a stabbing worry as he asked Muong to search the godowns for machine parts. Muong said quietly: “But you think Lantern knows where to find this engine piece we need?”
“He may be bluffing.”
“He can be made to talk. It would be my pleasure to ask him.”
“You can have him, if everything else fails.”
“Good.”
An hour later, Durell was convinced that Deirdre was nowhere in the village.
She had disappeared.
20
LAO watched a chameleon move over the face of the temple carving and considered the patience of the reptile in its pursuit of a fly. It was cool and shadowed in the ruins. He heard the water rub against the stone embankment. The eroded ceilings of the temple wept moss and vines that reached knobby-knuckled fingers into the stone crevices. He was alone except for the green chameleon; it had a yellow tail and a blood-red crest; and now it waited near his foot. The gloom had the eerie half-light of underwater green. The young Chinese could be as patient as the reptile, as dedicated to his own ends as the creature’s pursuit of food. Soon this desperate dance would end as the world turned and changed. He thought of the Old Man, with his wispy beard and fragile body and the immense power of his concepts for Asia. The dragon had slept for long, the Old Man said, but time was with the East. Once, an impudent student had asked Ho Chi Minh if it was not merely another form of imperialism, and the tool had been removed, as quietly and completely as . . .
Sergeant Lao stepped with his bare foot on the yellow-tailed lizard chasing its fly. The body crushed and crackled under his stone-hard sole.
As completely as that, he thought.
And now for the American woman.
He walked through the temple shadows, watching the quiet movement of liquid light that reflected from the lagoon where the villagers were working.
“Miss Deirdre,” he said. His manner was polite, even obsequious. “Miss Deirdre, will you please come with me?”
Deirdre had been surprised. She had thought she was alone in this quiet place of mined glory. Watching the work from within the shadowed entrance, she knew she had been only a burden to Durell since her part of the work was done. She had gained Anna-Marie’s confidence and made contact with Orris Lantern, and then she could do no more. She had first been confident of her ability to help and equal Durell’s work. But now she did not know, and now she felt unsure of herself, seeking some way to prove her worth. If she could only think of something! But it all seemed so hopeless.
“Miss Deirdre?”
She looked up with surprise at Sergeant Lao and got quickly to her feet. “What is it?” she asked.
“You seem so troubled, Miss Deirdre. It is a thing to fear, being a woman, and being trapped in Dong Xo. I have been watching you.”
“Indeed.” She kept her voice calm. “And what have you decided, Lao?”
“I can help you with your problem.”
“Do I have a problem?”
“It is one that perhaps you alone can solve. Your—Mr. Durell—trusts no one. But Major Muong confides in me, Miss Deirdre. He has agreed to my plan.”
“What plan?”
“If you would come with me —”
“Where?” .
“Major. Muong will explain about the arms.”
“What arms?” .
“At the Danat plantation. There are many weapons there. If we could arm the villagers, the major thinks we would all be safer—perhaps, indeed, be strong enough to defeat any attack the Cong Hai may mount against us tonight.”
“You want me to go to Major Muong?”
“It is really urgent. The day passes, and there is not much time left.”
Looking at the open Chinese face that Lao turned to her, Deirdre felt a sudden lift of hope. Perhaps there was something she could do, after all, to show Durell that she was not just a useless female imposed on him here. It was worth the chance. It was true, as Lao said, that Durell trusted no one. It might be a fault, and because of it, he might pass up an honest offer of help. . . .
“Will you come with me, please, Miss Deirdre?”
“To Major Muong? Certainly,” she said.
She started forward, toward the entrance that faced the lagoon. He checked her with a respectful touch on her arm.
“This way, Miss Deirdre.”
“All right.”
She followed him through the dark, echoing rooms of the ruins, for only a short way, until they came to where the wall had crumbled and sunlight shone on a green enclosure defined by a long line of toppled, eroded stone demons. Lao slid beyond her and stepped out first, and he was out of her sight for a moment as she walked into the hot sunshine.
It seemed to Deirdre that she felt, rather than heard, a kind of soundless explosion. It was enormous, filling the universe, darkening the day. She wanted to call out to Sergeant Lao, in that instant but then a deeper darkness came swooping at her from the corners of the sky and engulfed her as it in the giant wings of some great bird of prey.
She knew and felt nothing afterward.
Twenty minutes later, Sergeant Lao walked down the alley to the waterfront and climbed the ladder to the veranda of Giralda’s house. He moved with the efficiency of a fine machine, without a wasted motion, and was as soundless as the huge butterflies that winked along the river’s edge. The woman, Giralda, was inside. She did not hear him come in. Her back was to him, and she was combing her thick black hair as he crossed the room behind her. He caught her by the wrist and flung her across the teak plank floor with such force that she went stumbling and sliding with her long hair swinging in a dark screen across her astonished face. She started to make a sound of terror that was half plea and half apology, but Lao flung himself upon her long, womanly form and clapped a hand across her mouth, grinning down at her, enjoying her cushiony curves under his hard body.
“You will be quiet,” he whispered.
“All women are stupid and fools.”
Her eyes were round with shock and terror.
“When our time comes,” Lao said softly, “you will know that you are truly inferior. Moreover, you disobey and you are greedy. Have you come to admire your soft and wretched old Frenchman? Who knows? When one tastes treachery in one bowl, another may seem equally tempting later. I shall beat you, Giralda. I shall impress discipline upon you. And if you make a sound, I shall kill you.”
Lao knew many ways to thoroughly degrade and scar a woman’s soul, so that she would always remember his face with a shudder of fear. But he was careful not to leave any marks on her that the villagers might see. He was careful about blood, too. He wrapped bandages about his fists and worked over Giralda’s magnificent body, inflicting pain where he knew she was most sensitive. She did not whimper or scream, although her mouth was open all the time. Neither did he explain what he was doing or why, or ask anything of her as yet. When she rolled away from him at last, naked and gasping, convulsed with the tremendous effort simply to breathe and exist with what he had done to her, Lao halted and stood up. He had stripped to his loincloth, and his thin, muscular figure was erect, covered with a sheen of sweat. Nothing had changed in him except for the excited gleam in his almond eyes. He watched Giralda try to cover her nakedness with the tattered remnants of her Western skirt, and he contemptuously threw her a bright panung from a wooden chest in a corner of the room.
He spoke gently.
“Can you be trusted now, Giralda?”
“Yes,” the woman gasped. “I did not deserve—all this. I have been—faithful—and loyal —”
“You are a whore and a slut, and you belong neither to them nor to us. But you will serve me, or this life will end for you now.”
“I will serve you,” she whispered.
“You will go with me to the boat,” Lao said gently. “We will somehow get aboard, although Durell forbids it. It will be difficult, but together we will get past the guards.”
“Yes. That can be done.”
He smiled briefly. He regarded her with care, and decided she had learned her lesson.
“When we are aboard, Giralda, you will find out exactly where the American renegade is kept a prisoner. You must make no mistakes. It is the greatest task ever asked of you. You must be quick and efficient. After that, if you can escape, you will do so.”
“And when you find Yellow Torch?” Giralda asked.
“I will kill him,” Lao said.
21
DURELL Suddenly looked at his watch. He had lost all sense of time for the past two hours, and he was shocked to see it was three in the afternoon. He had searched everywhere in the village, ransacking the peasant houses and the storage cribs on the river front, the rice paddies on the nearest terraces above the town. He had not found Deirdre. He had the feeling she was not in Dong Xo.
His anxiety made his legs feel leaden as he walked back to the lagoon. Muong’s men had helped, but their fear of the jungle made them almost useless. They did not like to separate and look in places where they had to go alone. No one had seen Deirdre or heard anything about her since he had left her that morning.
The sun branded the back of his neck as he crossed the open space near the little steamer. The old men had cleared the channel to the river, and he could see through it as if through a tunnel, to the wide glitter of the stream that carried jungle waste down from the mountains on the frontier. Far up the valley, the loom of the hills made a heavy green pattern against the copper sky. The leaves of the jungle were still; even the crickets and frogs were silent, along with the parrots and monkeys. He caught the scent of forest flowers. His shirt was plastered to his body, sodden with sweat about his waist, and the heat hammered at him without mercy.
The herons were gone from the reeds on the other side of the river.
Durell paused. He told himself that Deirdre knew all the risks they faced, and that she had been adequately trained for the business. If it were anyone else, he would have followed the rules and ignored her absence. The job always came first. There was no room for sentiment if it threatened the success of the mission.
But he knew he was only fooling himself.
He was sick with worry over her.
He believed she knew better than to go off on some project of her own. The only alternative was that she had been taken somewhere by force. But where? And by whom? He knew the village might be riddled with Cong Hal sympathizers, terrorized into obedience by the enemy. But how could he pick them out from among the patient, plodding faces of the men and women working on the boat? It was impossible. He did not know where to begin. And time was running out.
When and if the Dong Xo Lady could be made to move, then his decision would have to be made. He would have to leave with Orris Lantern, whether Deirdre was aboard or not.
He would have to abandon her.
A gangplank had been built over the swampy edge of the lagoon to permit easier access to the steamer’s boiler deck. Firewood was now stacked in adequate amounts, and the last bundles of wood chips were being brought aboard by the plodding line of old men and women. Two of Muong‘s uniformed soldiers stood guard, their eyes uneasily scanning the jungle edge at the far side of the lagoon.
Thinking of Deirdre, he absently watched Sergeant Lao and Giralda walk up the gangplank beside the line of workers. The guards let them by, and for the moment, nothing registered in Durell’s mind. They were already heading for the cabin deck when he realized that Giralda had been forbidden access to the boat.
He started forward, trying to shake off the troubled worry about Deirdre that clouded his mind.
Lao walked with a purposeful stride, straight and arrogant, as he pushed the woman ahead of him. Giralda seemed to be limping. Durell saw her turn for a moment back to the Chinese, and her eyes shone with a quick terror.
Then they vanished through the cabin doorway.
Durell ran.
The line of old people loading wood on the deck got in his way. He wasn’t sure if any of it was deliberate. He drew his gun and shouted to the soldiers, but they turned blank brown faces toward him. Then he saw Papa Danat stagger from the doorway where Lao and the woman had disappeared. The fat man held the side of his head and yelled something, and Durell saw blood streaming down his face.
At the same time, Major Muong came up from the engine hatchway and looked about uncertainly. They almost collided as Durell vaulted the rusty deck rail and started for the cabins where he had imprisoned Orris Lantern.
“What is it?” Muong asked.
“Did you send for Lao, your sergeant?”
“No, he has duties on the perimeter—"
“He just came aboard with Giralda.” Durell ran for the door as Papa Danat staggered in his way. “Who slugged you, Danat? What happened?”
Danat mumbled something and stared vaguely at the blood on his hand. “Giralda—”
“Is Lantern in there?”
“He was in his cabin, yes—”
It was a certainty, now. Cursing, Durell shoved by Danat into the shadowy cabin corridor. There were four steps down into the dusty, rotting salon. He was momentarily blinded by the abrupt change from brilliant sunlight to dark shadow. Muong ran lightly behind him. Across the salon there was a flicker of movement, and then a door opened and sunlight slanted across the narrow corridor. He saw Giralda and Lao. The woman had seized the sergeant’s arm and was struggling with him. Lao held something in his fist. Durell saw it was a grenade. The Chinese screamed furiously and hurled the woman aside as her fingernails raked his arm. And then Lao threw his grenade into Orris Lantern’s cabin.
"Down!” Durell yelled.
The explosion was thunderous.
Flying splinters of wood whined through the air. The cabin wall bulged, and an overhead timber came down with an agonized cracking sound. Smoke filled the salon. Durell heard a sibilant sound from Major Muong.
“I trusted him. I saved his life, two years ago. The Cong
Hai were killing everyone in his village—”
“Shut up,” Durell said.
A whimpering came through the smoke that filled the air. It was Giralda. Then he heard a ululating wail of despair that could only have come from Lao’s throat. Muong started up. His face was bleak, his eyes savage. Durell jumped to hold him back, expecting another grenade, but Muong eluded him and ran into the smoke. Durell followed hard after him.
Giralda was seated on the corridor floor, her hair tumbled before her face. There was blood all over her, but he could not see how seriously she had been hurt.
He heard Lao wail again, but Muong blocked his way and gasped, “He is for me. I trusted him and made him my friend—"
They both saw Lao now. The Chinese had gone into the wrecked, smoke-filled cabin. From outside came shouts of alarm and the thud of running feet. Lao staggered around to face them. His face was distorted with hatred. He had another grenade in his left hand, a knife in his right. As Muong leaped for him, the knife flashed and made a sound like a butcher’s blade chunking into a slab of meat.
Muong fell against Lao. The Chinese tried to avoid him and tripped over Giralda’s legs. Durell jumped him.
There was a furious strength in the assassin’s half-naked body. Durell did not know if the pin had been pulled on Lao’s second grenade or not. He ripped it from Lao’s fingers and threw it away, but it did not roll far down the corridor. Lao sobbed. His face was blackened with smoke. More smoke curled from the shattered cabin. Durell stepped over Muong’s body and chopped at Lao's throat and staggered him backward.
“Kill him!” Giralda shrieked. “Kill him!”
But even then, Durell knew that a dead Lao would be no good to him. Only Lao could answer his questions.
He chopped again at the Chinese and saw the man’s round head snap back, and Lao spun and staggered away. Durell leaped for his back and bore him down and slammed his skull against the solid deck. Lao heaved and tried to knife him, his breath hissing between bared teeth. Durell caught his shoulders, lifted him, slammed his head again on the deck. Lao‘s lean, snakelike body shuddered and was still.
Assignment - Cong Hai Kill Page 13