Assignment White Rajah

by Edward S. Aarons

  "I—I don't know. I've been—running so long. I was going to see my grandfather, and they came out of nowhere. I don't think—they don't know who I am—"

  "Here they come again," said Durell quietly.

  He slid into the warm, turgid water of the canal beside her. But it was too late. Someone, a tall, half-naked man waving a blood-stained parang gave a shout, spotting them. Racing toward them, the mob roared and surged along the embankment of the klong.

  Durell held the girl's hand and dived. Twisting, she went under the surface with him. Weeds and reeds and all sorts of rotting vegetation and trash littered the canal bottom. His clothing bubbled and sucked him backward, but he managed to thrust the gun into his waistband with his free hand and stay underwater, striking out for the opposite bank that was hidden in shadows. Something overhead struck the surface of the water. He thought it was a rock, thrown by one of the mob. He felt Pala Mir's body writhe spasmodically and knew he had to surface to give her air. He held her tighter, let her come up briefly, and in the one moment when they both gulped gratefully and filled their lungs, he heard the single report of a gun and saw the bullet splash the surface of the canal only a few feet from their heads.

  But the trajectory was not from the direction of the pursuing crowd.

  He dived again, dragging the exhausted girl with him underwater, fighting against the sluggish current that came in from the tidal reach of the river. The girl's arms came frantically around his neck, dragging him down. His shoulder struck something underwater, and he saw it was a heavy stake, driven into the mud bottom as a navigation guide. He came to the surface behind it in its narrow shadow and pulled Pala Mir up with him.

  "I can't—" she gasped. "My arm—"

  "Hang on. Don't choke me."

  For a moment the maddened people had lost them. They had gone on down the embankment past the spot where he had found Pala Mir. From a comer of his eye he thought he saw shadows move in the darkness of the opposite bank. He and Pala Mir had gone only halfway across the klong. There were taller, better houses on the far side, but they were all tightly shuttered against the violence that raged in the city. He looked back again, and at the same moment a second bullet hit the pole that sheltered them and sent splinters flying into the water. The slug screamed over the canal beyond them.

  He couldn't see the rifleman beyond the glare of the torches. He thought of George Hammond with Lily Fan in the upper window above the herbalist's shop.

  "Come on," he muttered.

  Pala Mir's extraordinary eyes shone dully; she was in the last stage of exhaustion. Her mouth was open, and her teeth gleamed between her full lips. He saw that her left arm had been cut and was still bleeding. He spoke to her again, and when she didn't reply but remained clinging to the pole in the canal, he slapped her face lightly. When that had no effect, he kissed her.

  "Pala Mir."

  A flicker of reason overcame her terror. "All right . . . Where can we go?"

  "The crowd is doubling back. They're after you, specifically. Why?"

  "I don't know. The White Rajah—my grandfather—"

  "I thought he was tolerated by the people here."

  "I'm not so sure, now."

  It was a hundred yards down to the canal where it debouched into the Pasangara River among warehouses and shanties. The mob had flowed all the way down there and was now coming back. A few of the angry, half-naked men were searching the banks with their torches, while others darted in and out of the alleys that bordered the klong. Durell started to swim toward the open river, keeping Pala Mir's head above the surface. Their progress was slow. He managed to maneuver her closer to the opposite bank away from the crowd, where the houses cast deep shadows over the water. It was here that he spotted movement again.

  It was a sampan, cautiously moving toward them.

  The man in the stern lifted his pole with care, and the little boat moved slowly, keeping to the shadows.

  "Tuan? Mr. Durell?"

  The whisper was barely audible above the distant shouting. Durell measured the water between himself and the slowly drifting craft. Pala Mir could not make it. And now the men with torches were running along the canal bank directly opposite them, shouting to each other.

  "Tuan? Quickly!"

  He struck out, trying to keep from making a splash in the water. He had his fingers coiled in Pala Mir's hair, and she turned sinuously, floating on her back, giving herself up to him completely. The sampan drew closer. There was a deeper area of shadow, then a shaft of moonlight struck down between the nearby houses. From far away came the roaring of Army trucks, a military whistle, and he wondered which danger was greater—from the Malays, searching frenziedly for a victim, or from Colonel Tileong and his lieutenant, Parepa.

  "Here, tuan."

  The face and voice were familiar. It was Chiang Gi. The old fisherman grunted as he caught Durell's forearm and hauled him upward out of the water.

  "The girl first, Chiang."

  "Yes, certainly, tuan."

  The white-haired Malay pulled Pala Mir up out of the canal with one strong heave of his powerful shoulders. The girl gasped and fell over the gunwale. The sampan rocked and splashed dangerously; then she tumbled inward and Durell followed, grateful to get out of the murky canal water. Chiang Gi fought for a moment to keep the boat steady, poling it into the deep shadows of a nearby house on the klong. Long, rippling red reflections from the torches of the mob followed them into the blackness.

  "Tuan?"

  "I'm all right."

  "Miss Pala Mir is bleeding badly."

  Durell looked across the canal. The people there were still searching for them, for their rescue by the sampan had gone undetected. They were spreading back toward the bridge in long running waves of angry men, and the shouting now reflected their frustration. They felt cheated. At the same time, an armored car appeared at the opposite end of the bridge, and the dull thump of a three-inch cannon shook the night air. There were screams and curses and a backward surge of people. The cannon-fire was directed into the air. A machine gun rattled, and this came lower over the heads of the mob. Uniformed militia ran across the bridge with bayonets fixed. The mob hesitated, faced up to the armed men for a moment, and then, suddenly yielding to panic, exploded in every direction as its components became individuals again, intent on saving their own skins.

  "They are late, as usual," Chiang Gi observed.

  "I'm still grateful," Durell said. "Can you hide us, Chiang?"

  "You can stay aboard the sampan until sunrise. It would be best. The militia is angry now, and they wiU shoot anyone they see breaking the curfew. My son-in-law, who is a friend of Colonel Tileong's secretary, says that more blood will flow unless the looting and the murders stop."

  Durell nodded and turned to Pala Mir, as Chiang Gi poled the sampan down the klong. The girl sat with her back against the tiny, plaited cabin wall amidships in the little boat. Her breathing was almost regular now, less of an exercise against imminent death. He knelt beside her and pushed her wet hair from her eyes. Her head remained bowed. One breast was bare, exposed through her torn dress, and he took the wet material and covered it. She shuddered from head to foot and folded her hands in her lap. Otherwise, she did not seem to be aware of him or her surroundings.

  "Pala Mir?"

  "Yes."

  "This is Durell. Can you understand me?"

  "My arm hurts," she whispered.

  "I'll fix it."

  "Why did they want to kill me?" she asked, her voice like that of a puzzled child.

  "I don't know. They wanted to kill anyone. A mob like that is like a mindless animal."

  "They wanted to kill me!" she insisted in a louder voice. "I was only going to see my grandfather. I had to. I have no place to stay. I had to run through the jungle because they came up the river after me and burned my house and killed Tatzi—"

  "Your dog?"

  "Yes. Tatzi. They cut off his head and put it on a pole. Then they burned the ho
use. I was alone in it. I jumped out of a window. I wanted to get to the convent, where the Sisters are, but I couldn't. I was afraid. I ran through the jungle to the beach, and they followed me. They shouted and cursed my name and called me a witch, a wicked woman. Tm not, Sam, I'm not! It is all lies. Paul knows they are lies, but he does not deny them. Oh, how my arm hurts!"

  She spoke like a child in short, breathy sentences, her eyes blank, staring at something beyond him that no one but her could visualize.

  "Did you recognize anyone in the mob, Pala Mir?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Did you see anyone there who might have had zmy reason for turning the mob against you?"

  "Who would do such a thing in Pasangara?" she asked puzzledly.

  "Someone did it."

  "Who?" she repeated.

  He silently turned to her wounded arm. A knife had laid the flesh open, but it looked worse than it was. She would need some antibiotics to prevent infection, he thought. Perhaps a few stitches. He did the best he could, tearing his wet shirt off at the hem, making a rough bandage that pulled the lips of the wound together, then tying it securely. He wet his handkerchief in the water of the klong and washed her bloody hand, arm, and face. She sat unresisting, empty of all thought for the moment. But then she smiled.

  "You are kind, Sam Durell."

  "Nonsense."

  "They told me that you were a terrible man, a very dangerous man."

  "Who told you that?"

  "My dear brother. And Colonel Tileong. I was ordered not to see you, but I—"

  "Why did you try to find me?"

  "I couldn't get to the Rajah. I was lost in the city, and the mob found me again and chased me."

  "You know of Hammond's apartment?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "How did you know?"

  "Paul once mentioned it," she said flatly.

  "You're sure of that? Paul knows of the place?"

  "He laughed about it. He said poor old Hammond was making a fool of himself with Lily Fan. He said Lily Fan was just making use of poor old Hammond."

  "I see."

  He remembered the rifle shots that had been aimed at him when he was swimming in the canal. No one in the mob was armed with a rifle. He remembered standing in the apartment window above the Chinese shop and having a clear view of the bridge, the sampans, and the surface of the canal.

  Chiang Gi brought the boat to a halt.

  12

  They were tied up in a little cove among the docks and warehouses of the waterfront. Everything was dark and silent. Durell told Pala Mir to go into the cabin, and then he jumped ashore and walked with Chiang Gi along the dock. A small freighter was moored in the fairway, its lights blinking. He wasn't sure if it was Japanese or Russian; its lines were clean, streamlined, and modem. The lights made colored ripples on the surface of the river. Some of the fires had burned out in Chungsu, close at hand, but there were still constant sounds of people fighting the flames, a low restless murmuring like a disturbed colony of bees or wasps.

  The dock led him between two long sheds and then to a street littered with waterfront debris, broken crates, a parked truck, a padlocked rack of bicycles. The moon was gone now and only the starlight gave illumination. The smells of the harbor were accented by the windless, humid night. Durell sweated. He paused beside Chiang Gi and heard an engine running; then an Army truck came down the street, dropping off patrols in two's and three's.

  Chiang Gi made a clucking sound. "They are tightening the curfew. You must stay here."

  "And you?" Durell asked.

  "I will be all right. I have friends everywhere. I am neither Malay nor Chinese, remember, but Colonel Tileong is hunting especially for you, tuan. And perhaps for the girl, Pala Mir. By morning when the curfew is lifted, it may be safe for you to leave, but you should remain on the boat for tonight with the young woman."

  Before Durell could stop him, the old fisherman stepped out into the street. From the shadows, Durell watched the nearest patrol whirl and descend on Chiang Gi, barking angry questions, prodding him with their bayonets. Chiang Gi replied in a whining, humble manner, but they kicked him and sent him stumbling. He fell on all fours, and the patrol laughed, picked him up, and shoved him on down the street toward Chungsu, shouting warnings after him.

  In a moment the old man was out of sight.

  The sampan was tied to a bollard at the end of the waterfront pier. In the reflections cast by the moored freighter in the middle of the river, Durell found a wooden ladder, climbed down the slats, looked under the wharf, and found enough headroom there in the darkness. It would be hot and stifling under there but safe enough. He untied the sampan and shoved it under the stringer, jumped into it on the forward end and used the pole to securely drive the little boat out of sight under the pier. Having tied it up again, he climbed back up the ladder to study the long pier for several moments. One of the patrols had settled down for its night's watch at the far end, where the pier joined the street. The warehouses all seemed securely locked. There was no choice. He went back down into the sampan and joined Pala Mir in the darkness of the little cabin.

  "Sam?"

  "It's all right. We have to stay here."

  "For how long?"

  "Until dawn."

  She was silent. He could see little of her, except for the dim light that came across the river from the freighter and penetrated the loosely woven bamboo plaiting of the cabin walls. There was a smell of charcoal, rice, incense, and sweat in the cabin. Pala Mir smelled of lemons when he brushed her shoulder. There were two straw pallets, an iron charcoal cooker, some nets in the forward comer. Pala Mir sat with her knees drawn up to her chin, hugging her legs. Her eyes shone intermittently in the rays of light that came from the ship in the channel. She watched his every move.

  "Get out of your wet clothes," Durell suggested. "I'm going to do the same. I have to dry my gun, too."

  "Will it work?"

  "I hope I won't need it."

  "Would you use it if you have to?"

  "Yes," he said quietly.

  He stripped off his torn, wet shirt, his trousers, his sodden shoes, and placed them in the after cockpit of the sampan to dry. In the darkness he took apart the P-38 while sitting outside the little cabin, his head ducked to keep from bumping against the joists and stringers of the pier which sheltered them. It was like a warm, humid cave with only the lapping of the water and an occasional rocking of the sampan to let them know where they really were. He found a coolie's jacket and used it to dry the components of the Walther; then he put the gun together again by his sense of touch. It took more than fifteen minutes before he was finished. No sounds had come from the cabin behind him.

  "Are you hungry?" he asked.

  She sighed a little. "It seems ridiculous—but, yes, I am."

  "There's a little cold rice. I think Chiang Gi must have left it for us."

  They sat side by side in the tiny cabin and ate the rice. There was a bottle of wine, too. He remembered a picnic in the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut when he was at Yale; he could not remember the girl's face. It had been in the summer, and he had flown up from the heat of the Louisiana delta, where he had visited his Grandpa Jonathan. The cool green of the Connecticut hills made him feel as if the whole sky were air-conditioned. This picnic here was a bit different.

  "Sam, I'm cold," Pala Mir whispered.

  It was stifling in the cabin. "It's just the shock," he said quietly. "Your wound and those people who chased you—"

  "Yes, perhaps. But I'm shivering."

  He put his arm around her. It was true. She had taken off her torn, wet clothing, and her skin slid along his side like cool silk.

  After a moment she said, "You frighten me."

  "I didn't think that was really possible. You're a very brave girl."

  "What you mean is that I've 'been around.' It's all on the record, isn't it? I'm such a bad girl, they say."

  "I don't believe it," he told her. />
  "Why shouldn't you? All the newspaper stories about me—but perhaps you didn't- read them all, since they were in the European newspapers." She sighed. "The Peking authorities, when I was chosen to represent the women of Pasangara at that silly propaganda convention there, remarked on my 'decadent, bourgeois, irresponsible past.'"

  "You had two unfortunate marriages," he said.

  "Oh, yes. Not unfortunate, though. Stupid. But you don't want to hear about them, do you?"

  "No," he said.

  "I tried so hard. Grandpapa was anxious to get some money to make the Merrydale name respectable again. And I only succeeded in dirtying it, they say. But I—" She paused. "If only Paul would let it all drop, instead of always reminding the poor old man about it."

  "Does your grandfather still caU himself the White Rajah?"

  "Oh, yes. It's a question of pride. He lives in the past. Most people think he's—odd. Senile. Paul insists he should be put away because the Rajah's pretensions to royalty might irk the local people and turn them against him, and Paul is very anxious to become a solid part of Pasangara. Paul is a very solid citizen," she said bitterly.

  "I thought twins always got along very well."

  "Paul hates me," she said.

  "And you?"

  "I don't know how I feel about him. If he keeps on hurting Grandpapa, though, I—"

  She was silent again. They lay side by side on the straw pallets. Her skin was still cold but she no longer shivered. She gave a little sigh and turned on her hip toward him. The ribbon of light across the river outlined the full curves of her body.

  "I would have been dead now but for you," she whispered. "Those people would have killed me. I couldn't have run any farther—"

  "Don't think about it."

  "You are a strange man, Sam Durell."

  "Why?"

  "Don't you want me? Here we are, alone, naked—"

  "Yes."

  "Yes, what?"

  "I want you."

  She laughed. "But you think I would be better off if I slept and rested? I almost slept forever an hour ago I was almost killed but I'm still alive. Do you think I am young and beautiful?"

  "Yes."

  "But a 'bad girl'?"