“That’s the first nice thing you’ve said to me in years,” Benjie told him.
“Maybe I never appreciated you before. Or saw you like this.”
“Have I changed? I haven’t changed,” she said.
“I think you have. And so have I.”
Ken coughed softly. The bhikkhu looked more bedraggled than ever, but his black eyes were shy. “Sam, we have been talking. Major Luk will report to his station, at the military security post near here. I know there is a place in the plane for me, and for Mike, too. But I do not wish to go back with you to Bangkok. Have I fulfilled my end of our bargain, the one we made so long ago?”
“I think so.”
“Then I am free of my promise?”
“If you wish,” Durell said. “Washington would like to keep you with us, though.”
The monk shook his shaven head and smiled. “I have made much merit for my soul these two days with you. I am free again. My vows are completed. And I would make more merit for my spirit’s future, by staying here.”
Durell guessed what Kem had in mind. “With your eight old men? You said they were ready to choose another for this year.”
“That is correct. I would like to stay with them, if I may, and meditate and pray with them.”
“If that’s what you want, Fliwer.”
“My name is Kem Pas ah Borovit, of the Sangha.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“Then,” said the monk quietly, “I will help you roll out the plane and see you off safely for Bangkok.”
26
The tub was long and wide, built of imported Italian marble; the water was hot and steamy and fragrant with scented oil that the hotel attendant had sprinkled in it. Durell had had several bourbons on the rocks sent up from the bar, had eaten a dinner of spiced and curried Indonesian rijstaffel, and the hotel doctor had daubed ointments and antiseptic on the various nicks and bruises he had suffered all over his body. He had been shaved by the barber sent up from the lobby, while he sipped the cold bourbon and thought about the rest of the matters he had to attend to in Bangkok.
He had a plane ticket back to Washington in the morning. It was now eight o’clock in the evening, and he felt there was no hurry about anything. She would come to him. She had to come to him. He had chosen the new hotel in the heart of the city, and then gone to the Embassy and showed his card and had been taken to the communications room where he spent half an hour encoding his report to General Dickinson McFee, the boss of K Section.
He remembered her eyes, the soft and feminine texture of her face, the slim, lithe body, the way she moved and spoke. She would be here. He had left the hotel door unlocked. There was nothing to do but wait. It was something he had to do, and this time he didn’t mind the waiting.
He was a little worried about Jimmy James. He had telephoned the K Section Control man’s house, remembering the plush appointments of his home, and his elegant manner of living. There had been no answer. He had tried several times, listening to the telephone ring, and the hotel had cooperated by sending around a messenger with a note. The messenger reported the door locked and the windows dark and the cats in their cages. But no one was in the house. He had left Durell’s note tacked to the front door, as instructed.
In the tub, feeling the balm of the hot water soak into his bruised ribs, sensing the warmth of the bourbon in his belly, Durell did not worry too much about the elegant James D. James. Benjie and Mike Slocum had left him in a taxi at the hotel and gone to their house on the riverfront that Benjie had built some years ago. Durell had never seen it. Their parting had been brief, hurried by weariness after the flight down from Xo Dong, a bit strained by the let-down of the task being done and over with, the thing now relegated to the past, to the dossiers and the files. Mike had blathered on a bit about another job for K Section, but his eyes admitted to Durell that he was finished with such work for Durell, and he would have to look elsewhere for the risks and excitement he seemed to need. He was more than a little drunk when they had landed, having hit another of his bottles of Mekong whiskey pretty hard, all during the flight back.
She had to come soon, Durell told himself.
But maybe she wouldn’t.
Maybe she was too smart for it.
Still, she had to know. She couldn’t just let it end this way. She would come and ask and do what she could, questioning and trying to pry him open to satisfy herself, to make herself feel secure again.
He had made his trail plain enough. The switch from his
old hotel was open and obvious. His brief journey to the Embassy had not been secret. He had left an obvious trail for anyone to follow.
He did not feel tired now. He was anxious to get it over with. He wanted to go home.
Then she was there.
“Miss Ku.”
“Hello, Cajun.”
“I’ve been expecting you.”
“I thought you would be.”
“Come in, if you like.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Would you get me the towel?”
“No need for the towel.”
Smiling, she stood in the bathroom doorway, small, beautiful, and exquisite in a shocking pink silk cheongsam, an ivory comb in her high-piled, jet-black hair, her smooth thigh showing through the slit dress. Her mouth was full and fresh and ripe and inviting. He had not heard her come in through the door. He had left it unlocked while he waited, soaking in the tub, and he was a little troubled that she could have come in so silently, almost, but not quite, surprising him. He worried for a moment that he might be getting a bit slower, losing the snap and alertness that was needed in his business, if you wanted to stay alive. Then he shrugged off the momentary unease and enjoyed the beautiful, infinitely alluring image she made as she paused in the doorway. .Timmy James had, without a doubt, excellent taste.
“Are you alone?” she asked.
“Quite alone.”
She bit her ripe underlip. “I thought Jimmy might be here with you. Reports, and all that.”
“I don’t know where Jimmy is,” Durell said. “He seems to have disappeared.”
She smiled. “Ah, yes.”
“You don’t know where he is?” “No. May I pour you another drink, Cajun?”
“Please.”
“Stay where you are,” she said. “You poor man. You must be exhausted. Jimmy never envied you field agents. Too strenuous and dangerous a life for him, he said. He loved the desk work, the codes and the planning and all the fine little arrangements to be made, before a man like you went off on the—the hunt, as he put it.”
“You talk of Jimmy as if he were dead and gone.”
“Poor Jimmy,” she said.
“Is he dead?”
“Did you know he was almost impotent?”
“No. Is he dead?”
“He’s disappeared.”
“Truly?”
“I do not know where he is.”
“Doesn’t that bother you, Miss Ku?”
“Oh, I know you would come back. I was not worried.” “I should think you’d be worried, though,” he said. “About what?”
“I thought you’d like to know about General Uva Savag,” he said. “Your very close and intimate—and not so impotent—friend.”
She wasn’t as good as she would have liked to be. For a moment her great black eyes showed puzzlement, and her lips slowly parted and he could hear the small sound of her breath between her tiny white teeth. Her arched brows slowly went up in inquiry. She took a tentative step through the bathroom doorway from where she had been standing. Durell chose that moment to lean forward in the tub and open the drain and then he stood up, reaching for the towel.
She said, “My good friend, Uva Savag?”
“I saw you with him in Chiengmai.”
She looked prettily puzzled as she shook her head. “Oh, no. Impossible. You must have been mistaken. No, no. I see what the trouble is. I sensed the moment I came here that you are angry
with me. Is that it? But you simply made a silly mistake. I was—I was Jimmy’s, as much as he could demand of me. Which wasn’t very much, poor man. He put on such airs, Jimmy did. He liked to exhibit me, as if I were his personal possession. It was very difficult for me, you understand. I am a normal young woman. When I saw you—when I see you now—” She faltered and blushed.
Durell faced her at the other end of the large bathroom, toweling himself. His eyes never left the girl’s lovely face. She flushed deeper. Maybe it was sincere, he thought. On the other hand, she knew what she was doing.
“Uva Savag was a pretty old man, too, for a girl like you,” he said.
“Uva isn’t—” She paused and laughed. “I don’t know what you are talking about, Cajun.”
“I’m saying that maybe Jimmy James and General Uva Savag were working it together. Using you, perhaps, poor Miss Ku, while they raked in fabulous profits from the drug syndicate, from the caravans, from the village heroin refineries up in the Golden Triangle. Using military transport to get the heroin into the pipelines going to’ American forces and American ports for distribution throughout the U.S., killing youngsters, making them soft and weak so that, one day, one month, one year, America will be easy pickings for your Peking leaders. I saw one of Savag’s checkpoints, or collection points—an abandoned barracks off the military highway north of Bangkok.”
“You confuse me,” she whispered. She had turned a bit pale now. “Are you talking about Jimmy and Uva, or me?”
“Maybe all of you.”
“Not I,” she said. She looked at him, weighing his naked body as a prospective purchaser might consider a prize stud animal. There was a note of wonder and perplexity in her voice. “I do not excite you, Cajun?”
“No.”
“Could I? I would like—you and I. . .”
“Maybe. Do you think I’m right? Was James in with Savag? Was James the dragon head of the syndicate? It makes sense, you see. He used you, Ku, for his messages. Didn’t you realize what it all added up to?”
“No, I did not.” She showed some excitement and eagerness when she spoke now. She came all the way into the bathroom and picked up his towel and began helping him towel away the water on his body, making little sounds of sympathy over the scars and bruises that she found. The water went out of the tub with a final gurgle. “You are right. You are so clever! Why did I not see before how I was being used? Of course, it all makes sense now. I—I was afraid to admit it, even to myself—about running errands for Jimmy to General Savag. Sometimes I thought it was strange—carrying money, carrying packages. But your business is a strange one, anyway, is it not? All secrecy and no explanations unless absolutely essential —and then, Jimmy’s explanations never quite held the ring of truth in them. And how did he live so extravagantly? You have no idea how much it cost him to live in the style he demanded. Of course, he was getting paid off, helping to protect and run the Muc Tong’s drug caravans. Yes, of course. And you can unmask him now. He knows you have come back safely. And suddenly he has disappeared! He has utterly vanished. But perhaps, one day, you will find him. I am sure you will. I admire you. I think you can do anything.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?” he asked quietly.
She was puzzled. “What should bother me?”
“About Uva Savag. He’s dead.”
“Savag is dead?” She looked blank, rejecting his words. “That’s what I said.”
Her voice was shaken. “You killed him?”
“Not I. Not actually. I caused it, but I didn’t pull the trigger personally. He tried to escape from me. Two Path-et Lao officers who were with him did it. They didn’t want him to talk, I suppose. I guess they thought they still had you for their major contact here in Bangkok, you as their dragon head.”
“Me? You suspect me?”
“You’re not too distressed because Savag is dead,” he said. “You knew it before you walked in here. You’ve had time to adjust to the fact that you don’t have to go on being his mistress any more, haven’t you?”
“Cajun,” she said, “I thought you and I had agreed that it’s Jimmy you want.”
“I didn’t agree to anything.”
“It’s me? You think it’s me?”
“I know it was you. It was the other way around from the diagram you’re trying to draw for me. Not you working for Jimmy. But James working for you—willingly or not, knowingly or not. He would have hated the thought of losing you. You could manipulate him easily enough. You’re a very pretty dragon head, Miss Ku Tu Thiet; but you’re going to jail. You’re going to court. You’re going to be sentenced. I think you’re going to die.”
She stood very close to him, very still, her breathing quick and shallow. Her perfume was delicate, exquisite. He could read nothing in her lovely, large black eyes. Her ripe mouth looked wet; she had her underlip caught between her small white teeth.
“Very well. I will confess,” she whispered. “Yes, I am guilty. I knew about the caravans, the refineries, the dope smuggling. I know all about it. But it was as part of Jimmy’s organization. I am a simple girl. Most of my life I have been alone, and had to struggle and scheme for myself, and my livelihood depended on the job with Jimmy. What was I to do? I was innocent enough. I knew he worked for your K Section, as Bangkok Central, and I learned a bit of this and a bit of that, and I really had no idea, in the beginning, that Jimmy’s work with the Muc Tong was not part of his orders from American intelligence. How could I know otherwise? It is a strange, upside-down world you work in. Jimmy gave me orders, and I obeyed them. He was kind enough to me. I took orders from him, since he knew things about me—about my past. He took me in, and I was very grateful, and I was willing to do anything he asked of me.” She paused suddenly. Her eyes were filled with tears. She looked very beautiful and totally helpless. “Do you believe me, Cajun?”
“Go on,” he said quietly. He could feel her warmth against his body.
“But you must believe me!”
“Not yet.”
“I can prove everything I say!” she cried.
“How?”
“I have the proof. I have the evidence. But you must help me. I am afraid of everything. The Muc Tong, you, Jimmy. I am afraid to go to court or to prison. I come from a family—” She paused and swallowed painfully. Her hands were flat on his chest. “They must not know about me. Please, Cajun. I’ll do anything. Anything, you understand?”
“I understand better than you imagine.”
“I have the proof, Sam. But first—you’re tired, you’ve had a terrible time, and I want to show you—”
She stepped back, and with a quick, smooth gesture that bespoke a certain expertise, she unzipped her cheongsam and stepped out of it. Her body gleamed as flawlessly as a pearl. She smiled suddenly, secretly, her eyes looked up at him as she took his hand. “Come. I have the papers in the other room, in my handbag. I put it down when I came in, in the bedroom.”
He let her go first, wrapping the towel around his waist. Her body was delicate, yet womanly, shimmering before him. He sat down on the edge of the bed, the towel still around him. Ku went to a table near the door, where she had placed a large yellow handbag of rough linen; she rummaged in it for a few moments, took out a fat manila envelope, and turned to face him, holding the papers in both hands close to her breasts. He made no effort to rise from the bed.
“It is all here, Sam. All the proof you need. You will not doubt me, after you read it all.”
“Put it down,” he said.
“Don’t you want to read it now?”
“Later.”
She brought both the handbag and the envelope with her as she came to the bed. Her body moved like warm silk against him. She had the technique of a professional courtesan. Her breath was perfumed. Her mouth was soft and warm and clinging against his.
“Oh, Sam, it has been so long. .
“You’ve had Jimmy.”
“I told you about Jimmy. Something was wrong with him.”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“He’s run away, of course. Do we have to talk about him?”
“He’s part of my job,” Durell said.
“Must you always think of your job—even now?”
“Do you think he’s dead?”
“I do not know.” She was not interested. Her black eyes were veiled as she moved her hands over him. He thought briefly of Benjie; he held an image of her as she swam in the little river at Xo Dong, flickering in the back of his mind. She sensed his detachment and pulled him down upon her with a small sound of impatience.
“Listen . . .” he began.
“Please, Sam.” She kissed his mouth, his eyes, his chest. “Please.”
“Tell me about General Uva Savag.”
“I did tell you. Jimmy used me as a messenger to him, that’s all.”
“How long were you and he lovers?”
She looked at him with wide, startled eyes. “Jimmy and me?”
“Savag and you.”
“But I—it was not that way—”
“Yes, it was. You and Savag. Double dragon heads. You were the brains, really. You organized it. You used Jimmy to run the Muc Tong’s drug caravans. Savag had the military control of the districts and he let the caravans go through safely, while you told him how to do it and when, to avoid the American and Thai government’s security plans to interfere.”
Her body went rigid. “I thought you believed me, Sam. How can you even think of it, at a moment like this?”
“Did you kill Jimmy,” he asked softly, “after you heard I’d come back?”
She didn’t move under him. She took one long breath, and her breasts felt soft under his chest. The only light in the room came from the open door to the bath. It touched her thick hair, spread like a fan on the pillow slip, and ran pale fingers along the contours of her flower-petal face. For a long moment she simply lay there, looking up into his eyes. Her hands slowly slid away from his back.
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