Assignment - Sulu Sea

by Edward S. Aarons

  Thin, frightened cries came from other patients on the floor, and from below came the pounding of angry feet. He turned back to the room where Simon had been a patient, remembering the three executioner’s shots he’d heard. The hospital cot was empty, but sprawled at the foot of the bed was a white-coated Indonesian intern, his young brown face fixed in perpetual astonishment at death. Durell felt a cool warning prickle on the nape of his neck. Whoever had planned the careful misdirection of attention away from the hospital by bombing the cafe--whoever had executed the split-second kidnapping of a Papuan sailor who should have been of no importance to anyone—was an adversary to be respected. There was a cold-blooded efficiency about it that checked his anger, and he started to back out of the shattered room.

  A whimper and a moan halted him.

  His impulse was to continue his retreat. He could guess at the reasons for Simon Smith’s kidnapping, and he could do nothing more here. In a moment, the corridor would be filled with angry hospital personnel, and perhaps Colonel Mayubashur. He had no intention of spending his time in the old Portuguese dungeons on the harbor front, listening to questions he could not answer.

  The moan was repeated, thin and high and feminine. He located it behind the metal door of a closet in the patient’s room. Durell stepped over the intern’s body and looked in side. The girl in the closet was a nurse, but her white nylon uniform was blood-spattered and her straight, short black hair in Chinese style was awry, like the shape of her terrified mouth and the glow of fear in her almond-shaped eyes. Her pink mouth opened and closed and opened again.

  “Please . . “ she whispered in English. “Dr. Jaiga—”

  “The doctor is dead. They shot him. They took your patient, Simon Smith, away with them.”

  He watched her swallow, a small choking sound in her throat. There was a dark bruise on her broad cheekbone. She started to slip past him, but he touched her arm and she halted at once, afraid of his gun. She was short, somewhat plump under her nurse’s uniform, with a mixture of Asian races somewhere between Malay and Chinese, but with Chinese predominating. She had lost one of her white shoes and stood with her hip askew, staring in dumb astonishment at the bloody shambles of the room. From outside came sounds of alarm, of running feet, of someone weeping. He wondered if she had been part of the plot.

  “How come they let you go?” he asked harshly.

  “Dr. Jaiga shoved me—-into the closet—when we heard them coming. He seemed to know—what would happen—”

  “Didn’t you?"

  She was silent. Her skin was tinged with a delicate, pink bloom, and her eyes were in contrast with the full-lipped carved shape of her Malay mouth. The name-pin on her uniform breast read Yoko Hanamutra. So there was some Hindu blood in her, too, but the mixture in this girl was a combination of all the best of her polyglot ancestry. She regarded him for a moment‘s silence and then visibly pulled herself together.

  “Please, Mr. Durell, it is dangerous here for you. The police will come, and you must not be found, or delayed.”

  He stared at her. “How do you know my name?”

  “Tommy Lee told me. He said you would be here today.”

  "And how did young Mr. Lee know that?"

  “It was on one of the stateside messages to the consulate. He spoke of it at lunch today and said he was meeting you at the airport and that you undoubtedly would visit the hospital. You are Mr. Durell, are you not?”

  “Yes. And how well do you know Mr. Tommy Lee?”

  “We are to be married,” the nurse said quietly.

  A shouting in the corridor reminded him he had only moments to spare if he expected to stay out of Colonel Mayubashur’s hands. He caught the nurse’s arm and said, “Lead the way, and hurry,” and opened the hall door. He was pleased to see that everything was in confusion, with a crowd of doctors. nurses and patients gathered around the Chinese whom Durell had shot, and others who stared in awe at the chipped plaster where the gunman’s bullets had smashed all about the corridor.

  “This way," said Yoko Hanamutra. “Quickly.”

  “Your uniform is bloody.”

  “I’ll change it. I must talk with you. I wanted to see you, anyway, but not like this, of course. And poor Dr. Jaiga-”

  Durell said harshly: “The world is full of innocent bystanders. Let’s go.”

  She led him quickly through the crowd in the corridor. Two uniformed police were pushing through the excited patients. and the girl’s fingers tightened convulsively on his wrist Durell wondered why she was afraid of the cops. On the lower floor they again had to buck a tide of excited visitors and bomb victims. The girl finally ducked into what served as a linen closet. She slammed the door behind her and turned on a very dim, ten-watt saffron bulb. The closet was small and the quarters were crowded. The girl’s dark slanted eyes glowed luminously in the dimness.

  “I must get out of this damaged uniform,“ she whispered.

  “My street clothes are hanging here. Do you mind? I will change, and then we must find Tommy. You will help me, won‘t you?”

  “Is Tommy Lee mixed up in the bombing?”

  “I don’t know. Everything has been like a nightmare. Please be patient with me, Mr. Durell.”

  “Tommy has a big mouth, telling you about consulate business,” he said quietly.

  “I coaxed it out of him, because he’s been in such an odd state of mind lately. With the consul gone to the SEATO meeting and Dr. McLeod spending so much time on Tarakuta, it all fell on Tommy’s shoulders, as first secretary. At first I thought it was wonderful for him, but he—I don‘t know, I just feel he is in terrible trouble, and I know you will help him. Please turn around.”

  “I can't,” he said. “There isn’t room."

  "All right.”

  She stripped out of the bloody nylon uniform with swift, slithering sounds. Her dark hair, cut like a China doll’s, was perfumed, and she was not as plump as he had thought, when he glimpsed a flash of her narrow waist and flaring hips. She struggled into a Palembang sarong of rare, dark blue silk with silver embroidery, rather than a Chinese chamseong. She lost her balance and toppled against him as he stood squeezed against the linen shelves, and he caught her and held her up.

  “I’m sorry. Please don’t think—”

  “Thinking is my only privilege at the moment.”

  “How can you joke at a time when bombs are killing—”

  “I'm not joking. Are you ready?”

  She shrugged the blue sarong in place, tossed back her thick, straight black hair, and the change was remarkable. The anonymous and efficient nurse was gone, replaced by an unusual flowerlike beauty. She leaned on his arm as she stepped into high-heeled shoes. “We can go now. I don't think we will be noticed like this.”

  “Why are you so anxious to avoid the police, Yoko?”

  She stared at him. “But aren’t you?”

  “I simply don’t want to be delayed. But you were a witness to murder and kidnapping—”

  “Yes, and they may ask me things about Tommy Lee that I don’t want to tell anyone except you.”

  She held her head high, walking with firm, quick steps as they left the tiny closet and crossed the hospital lobby a moment later. The local Pandakan militia had taken over the plaza, and a line of steel-helmeted soldiers was posted in front of the Hotel des Indes. On the sparkling green near the gingerbread, Victorian bandstand, a T-35 Russian Tank had clawed up the lawn and waited with its long cannon tilted upward, pointed at the evening sky. There was no one to fight, no visible enemy about. The terrorists had gotten safely away into the tangle of alleys and canals of the island city. A semblance of normalcy had even come back to the big square. A few of the shops had opened their iron shutters and were ready for business again, and the sidewalk sellers of ices and watermelon were back to hawk their wares. A boy was hosing clown the blood-stained sidewalk in front of the bombed-out cafe.

  “My car is in the hospital lot,” the girl said.

 
A siren wailed not far away. Durell wondered how soon Colonel Mayubashur would start hunting for him. A number of people had seen him in the hospital outside Simon Smith’s room, and the colonel would have lots of time and many questions to put to him. Durell wished he had the answers himself. But at the moment, he lacked both the time and the information.

  Yoko Hanamutra’s car was an expensive blue Renault Floride, a rarity in this island corner of the world. She slid familiarly behind the wheel, the silk of her blue sarong slipping smoothly across her hips and thighs. He got in beside her.

  “Is this your car?"

  “Yes. But I could not afford it on my nurse’s salary.

  Tommy bought it for me, as an engagement gift.”

  “On his salary as first secretary?”

  “Please, I don‘t know how much he earns.”

  “That’s not very practical, Yoko, for a girl with her mind on matrimony.”

  She bit her lip. “I doubt if he will ever marry me now.”

  She eased the little French sports car smoothly into the steam of bicycle and trishaw and bus traffic. The life of had hem diverted only momentarily by the terrorist growing dark now, but the tropical heat had not anything, the humidity was even worse, but the momentum of the car as the girl drove along the Peninsular Heights was pleasant.

  He let her take him where she pleased.

  chapter seven

  THE American consulate occupied a select site on the promontory above Pandakan. Unlike the European residencies, which dated back to the previous century in Georgian and Victorian design, the United States had recently built——with foreign-aid blocked funds-—a sparkling modern cube behind a high concrete wall and a severe, diamond-patterned steel gate opening onto the main drive. The marine guard knew the girl and nodded a good evening and opened the gate with only a casual glance at Durell. The sweeping drive brought the bright blue car to a quick, dusty halt in front of the vaultlike entrance.

  The westward sky over the sea was a spray of surrealist colors, making sharp, deep shadows on the consulate lawn among the massed oleander, frangipani and palms that failed to offset the severity of the modern building. A boy in a green Malay head-cloth was taking down the hag from its high pole on the lawn. No ceremony attended its lowering.

  Miss Hanamutra led the way with familiar, clicking high heels across the circular lobby, and an Indian clerk in a seersucker suit jumped to his feet as they passed an office doorway.

  “Oh, Miss Hanamutra, a message for you, please!”

  She halted. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Thomas Lee asked that if you come here, you are to wait for him. He had a most urgent message to run.”

  Durell said: “Do you know where Mr. Lee went?”

  “You are Mr. Durell? But of course. We were advised of your arrival. No other American national is reported visiting Pandakan in these troubled times. We have discouraged tourists and managed to evacuate all except a few stubborn businessmen. So—” The Hindu smiled and bowed. “You are a new face and I deduce you are Mr. Samuel Durell, the oil technician from New Orleans mentioned in our advisory cables.”

  The consulate was air-conditioned to a point where it felt chilly in contrast to the torpid heat outside. Durell asked:

  “Where is Mr. Lee’s office, please?”

  “The last down the corridor, sir. Mr. Kiehle’s suite is locked, and Dr. McLeod uses Mr. Lee’s office when he is here.”

  “Which isn‘t often, is it?”

  "That is not for me to comment upon, sir.”

  The girl hesitated, and Durell guided her firmly down the

  hall. He had the feeling that, not having found her fiancé, she was regretting the impulse that had led her to bring him here. But he did not mean to release her easily.

  The office was lighted, and Durell went directly to the corner windows and closed the Wooden inner shutters against the black shrubbery of the lawn outside. The girl stood uneasily, biting her full underlip, and he asked quietly:

  “Do you know where Tommy Lee might have gone?“

  “No, I don’t. Perhaps I was too hasty. The bombing, and all—he might he at the Hotel des Indes, looking for you.”

  “Or perhaps he's looking for Simon Smith’s kidnappers?”

  “Why should he do that?” she asked defensively.

  “I thought you might be able to answer that one.”

  “No, it’s nothing so tangible—nothing I can put my finger on so easily, Mr. Durell. I’m sorry, I am afraid of you, I think. You are not what I expected. Mr. Kiehle is rather kind and bumbling, and Dr. McLeod is rather erratic, and not a diplomat, by any means.”

  “But I’m different?”

  Frightening, I should say."

  You have no reason to be afraid,” he said, “as long as “you make an even swap—my help for yours."

  But I don’t want Tommy hurt, you see.”

  “If he’s in trouble, he’s already been hurt, and if you back out now, Miss Hanamutra, it‘s possible he might be hurt worse than Simon Smith.” He watched her with dark, hard eyes. A muscle twitched at the comer of her mouth and she looked away. He said: “You’ve been in this office many times before, right?”

  ‘Yes, but there was never any problem of security—"

  ‘Then tell me about Tommy and your plans to marry him and Why you think he’s in trouble and what it has to do with Simon’s abduction from the hospital where you work. While you talk, I'm going to look around, so don’t mind my movements."

  “What will you look for?”

  “I'll know it.” he said, “if I find it."

  He put on more lamps, which shed a soft but efficient light over the shining desk used by Thomas C. Lee. There Was a polished brass name-plate on the desk, and Yoko Hanamutra offered the information that she had given it to her fiancé on his last birthday. Durell nodded and went through the desk files. Several native consulate employees came curiously to the door, and Durell went to the Indian clerk outside and showed his I.D. card to dispel them and went on with his work.

  He could find nothing incriminating in the desk until he came across a small slip of red tissue notepaper with Chinese ideographs on it, tucked between the pages of a Day Book which itemized the comings and goings of the absent Mr. Kiehle and the wandering Dr. Malachy McLeod, Durell held the bit of red paper up between his fingers. “What is this, Yoko?”

  She considered it with round eyes. “A gambling chit, I think. But Tommy doesn’t gamble."

  “According to his initials here, he owes somebody some money, doesn’t he? About eight hundred dollars, American?”

  She walked quickly toward the desk. She had a nice walk, nice hips and nice legs, and very black, dangerous eyes.

  I asked you for help, Mr. Durell, and I aided you to escape embarrassing questions by police, did I not? But you only suspect my Tommy, in exchange!” She snatched the scrap of red paper from his fingers. “Yes, it is a promissory note, a gambling chit, to Prince Ch’ing.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Durell said drily.

  “He’s the boss—in Dendang, anyway. Maybe through all the islands. The plebiscite will tell the truth, but he owns tin mines as well as gambling dens and some say he owns the opium trade and palaces in Fishtown and even some houses of women.” She paused and flushed. “I am not very well advised of these things. All I know is that people say Prince Ch’ing is very rich, very powerful, and a terrible man.”

  “You‘ve never met him yourself?”

  “Oh, no. Very few people have ever seen him.”

  “Has Tommy Lee?”

  “I don’t know. He never said so.”

  “But your Tommy owes him eight hundred dollars and is missing tonight. Does that make sense to you?”

  She looked tearful. “No more sense than other things happening in Pandakan lately. Tommy is changed—everyone has changed. It is a madness that seized us all at once, and it is not just the plebiscite. Most of the people don’t care about politics. They just want to be le
ft alone. ”

  "If it isn't the vote, what’s bugging everybody?”

  “They are afraid,” she whispered.

  “Of what?”

  “Something has changed,” she repeated. There are whispers and fear in the air, but no one talks about it.”

  “But your friend, Tommy Lee, is involved in it?”

  “Tommy is a loyal American, Mr. Durell!"

  “You protest too much,” Durell guessed. “How do you suppose a security check on his family might work out?”

  She stared with eyes suddenly white with terror, then looked down, her dark lashes fanning her apricot cheeks. But she could not hide the fact that he had hit something vulnerable.

  “Do you know his family, Yoko?” he asked gently,

  “Yes, they live here in Pandakan.”

  “Both parents?”

  She was silent.

  “Both?”

  She drew a deep, shaken breath. “Mr. Durell, I am both glad and frightened that you are here. It has not been easy to help and be cheerful when the one you love refuses such help and is in despair. I warned Tommy that someone like you would come here some day and find his secret and make trouble for him. I begged him to tell the truth on his records. But he was afraid. He is a naturalized American, Mr. Durell, and loyal, as I said. But the air is poisoned with suspicion these days, and he was sure he would lose his job.”

  “Because of his parents here in Pandakan?”

  She bit her lip, shook her head, said nothing.

  Durell said: “You can’t back away now, Yoko. You'll have to trust me. I’ll help Tommy, if I can. If it isn’t too late.” He paused. “What’s wrong with Tommy’s family?”

  “You will find out now,” she whispered. “Oh, I am a fool! Tommy Warned me to stay away from here. But I begged him to free himself of whatever it is that—that frightens and worries him so. You see, the people Tommy calls his parents are not his true father and mother. They are his uncle and aunt. His real parents live in a commune, near Shanghai, in Red China.”