Assignment - Sulu Sea

by Edward S. Aarons

  A smell of burning refuse, of charred buildings. Drifted across the dark water. Smoke hid the schooner’s lights. When his eyes adjusted to the dimness inside the house, he made out comfortable furniture in a pleasant mélange of Western and Chinese styles, with straw mats on the polished teak floor. There were three rooms, with a narrow balcony overlooking the harbor side. Durell moved through them quickly, and in the second room he paused before a fine amateur radio transmitting outfit.

  “Is this new?" he asked the girl.

  She drew in a small breath. “I have not seen it before.”

  “Tommy was a radio ham. And he visited here regularly?”

  “Yes, he was devoted to his uncle and aunt—"

  “He was communications officer at the consulate; he had a radio there. What did he use this one for?”

  “I don‘t know!" The girl’s round face seemed to crumple in dismay. “Oh, I’m sorry I trusted you! I thought Tommy was only in a little trouble, but now—it seems so much worse. when you look at it and speak of it—”

  "Keep it down.” he warned. “We have company outside, remember?" He started into the next room and checked the girl in the doorway. He said softly: “I don’t think we need Tommy for one thing anymore, Yoko. We’ve found Simon.”

  "Simon? Is he—?"

  “Yes,” Durell said. “What did you expect? He’s very dead.”

  chapter nine

  WHATEVER Simon's injuries and the damage done by his abduction from a hospital bed, he had put up a good fight before he was killed. He was stark naked, his hospital gown ripped off, and his powerful torso glistened with blood and sweat. He lay on his back, big teeth shining in the rictus of death. The bed, chairs, a smashed mirror, a huge rip in the woven mat walls, all testified to his last struggle. Durell said softly:

  “Just for the record, is this Simon Smith, first mate of the Tarakuta, who was your patient at the hospital?"

  Yoko nodded. “A very nice man. Very strong. And very gentle."

  This was not an age of survival for those who were too gentle in spirit, Durell thought. Simon obviously had been killed in a search by someone for information. As a simple sailor, he could not know anything special about the conditions of terror and blackmail in Dendang. There was only Simon’s participation, with Willi Panapura, in an accidental meeting with Pete Holcomb on an island beach, and whatever Simon may have heard of Holcomb’s babbled tale of horror.

  He watched the dark harbor, the blinking navigation lights, the smoky red flare of a fire burning in the hills. The schooner was well inside the breakwater now, swinging toward the promontory. He did not like the thought that Simon’s knowledge had merited death. If death was ordained for the Papuan, it would also be ordered for Willi.

  He would have liked to join Willi and Malachy at once; but there was Simon’s body, and the problem of the disappearance of Tommy Lee, the consulate’s communications officer. Yoko was talking softly, half to herself, half to the darkness.

  “Tommy was frightened by the same terror that visited here. In Dendang, the terror is something you can smell and touch. It came as softly as a tiger walking through the jungle, and it touched this one and that one, and everything changed here. But none of the Europeans in Pandakan suspected anything.”

  “Tommy was blackmailed as part of this terror, right?“ he asked. “Because of his old uncle and aunt? He’d have been fired from the consulate and his citizenship questioned, if it were known his real parents were still living in China?"

  “Yes, I think so. He was forced to use this radio, too; I must admit it; he told me so. But nothing was the same between us. He Was nervous and afraid, and I could not understand him, I love him, Mr. Durell, and I want to help him, even if it must hurt him. Can you believe that? I suppose I resented, at first, the amount of time he spent here, instead of with me. We quarreled, but then I realized he could not help himself. The tiger had him in his claws. He became Prince Ch’ing’s creature.”

  “I’d like to meet this prince, this pretender to the throne of the Manchus."

  “Oh, but he sees no Western people. He is well-known for this.”

  "He’ll see me,“ Durell said. He took from his pocket the red tissue gambling chit. “Where would I get another one of these bits of paper, Yoko?”

  “Oh, I am told they are gambling notes one receives at the tables in the House of a Thousand Pleasures."

  “Sounds intriguing. What is it?”

  “It is a gambling place, of course—and there are rooms for opium smokers-and many girls —”

  “Did Tommy go there?”

  “Yes. To gamble. It began his troubles.”

  “Is it far from here?"

  “No, it is in Dendang."

  “Does Prince Ch’ing ever spend time there?”

  “Yes, it is his establishment. He is there whenever he is in Pandakan.”

  Once you step into the jungle in pursuit of a tiger, Durell thought, you cannot turn back. He could not be at all sure that Ch’ing was involved in what had happened to the Jackson. But it made a certain pattern that pointed in such a direction Tommy Lee’s disappearance, his indebtedness to the Manchu prince, the terror the girl spoke of, here in the local Chinatown—it could not be ignored, however anxious he was to see to it that Willi was safe, and not subject to what had happened to Simon.

  He glanced through the window at the harbor lights again, and thought the newly arrived schooner had swung this way now. Bur over half a mile of water separated him from the vessel. He turned to the girl.

  “Yoko, don’t worry about Tommy. I think he’s taken care of himself and his uncle and aunt, too. l don’t want to frighten you, but with those men following us, the only safe way out of here is to swim. Think you can do it?”

  “I will try,” she whispered.

  “Then let’s go, before those bandits outside get nervous and try to barge in on us.”

  It was almost too late. Heavy feet thudded on the plank walk, halted, and then a fist pounded on the door, shaking the mat walls of the house. The girl’s eyes widened with quick terror, and at Durell’s nod, she kicked off her shoes and poised for a moment, obviously reluctant to commit herself to the noisome canal. Then she dived, cleanly and neatly. The hammering on the door grew violent. Durell watched until he was sure that Yoko had surfaced, and then shrugged off his coat, pocketed his gun in his trousers, and jumped after her.

  The water was tepid and filled with flotsam he did not care to identify. For a moment he was confused by the maze of tangled pilings braced and cross-braced by generations of dwellers in this waterfront community of house and sampan. Then the girl called softly from the shadows and he started swimming toward her. From the house where Simon lay dead came a final crash as the door yielded and then three men appeared in a rush on the open balcony behind them. A soft phat! and a flash of flame indicated a silenced shot sent after him. The slug splashed uncomfortably close in the mucky water. Durell dived, and swam for a dozen feet toward the girl.

  When he surfaced, he was under another house. The tide lapped around the pilings with soft sucking sounds. On the floor hoard above him he heard the quick slap of a bare foot and a spate of angry Chinese. A woman replied. Then there was silence.

  He turned his head, looking for Yoko Hanamutra. But he could not find her.

  “Yoko?” he called softly.

  There was no answer.

  “Yoko?” he called again.

  Something brushed against him and he glimpsed a pale white jelly-like substance that made him recoil instinctively. He did not know if it was a live thing or not, and he did not care to find out. He swam again toward the place where he had last seen the girl. He thought he heard her swimming ahead, and followed with quick, long strokes, moving always under the plank walks and under houses, listening to the constant sounds of teeming humanity above in the world of light, the peddlers of rice and chicken, the drinkers of tea, the lovers, those who were eating and conversing and playing mah-jongg. Down h
ere he felt as if he had entered some kind of dark, dank netherworld. And he could not find the girl.

  There were no other shots. The men in the Lee house could not possibly spot him in this labyrinth of twisted pilings, boards, sampans and fishing boats tangled in shadows thick with the effluvium of waste and unpredictable sea things. He tried not to think about it, and swam on.

  He had to assume that Yoko had lost him and gone off to swim to safety on her own. He could not worry about her now. He had his own strategy to think about.

  Strategy was something that Grandpa Jonathan, back in Bayou Peche Rouge, had often lectured to him about in his boyhood, regarding the psychology of hunting and being hunted. Those days in the bayous, under the dim green shadows of the gum trees hung with Spanish moss, seemed a lifetime ago, in another world. But old Jonathan was still there, and his dry comments on the ways of men and women and the world had made a lasting impression on Durell when he was a boy.

  “The trouble with being hunted, Samuel,” the old man would say, “is that you start running and keep right on in a straight line, and let panic ride you like the old man on Sindbad’s shoulders. You go on and on and try to make good on strength alone, forgetting you'd never be hunted in the first place if the other fellow wasn’t stronger and faster than you. And with sharper teeth, so to speak. So don’t ever try to outrun the enemy. You got to shake the weight of panic off your back and be smart. The race ain‘t to the swift, it‘s to the clever.”

  “And what do the clever ones do, Grandpa?” he’d asked.

  “The same as the fox, maybe. Double back. Do the unexpected, mainly.” The old man’s eyes twinkled cannily. “But is that enough for you, Samuel?"

  “I think not. It’s not enough just to run and escape.”

  “Right, son. If you want to win for good, you can’t make it by pumping your legs and getting out of breath and duckin’ down some dark hole and hidin’ like a rabbit or a fox. You've got to hit back. So you double on him and get on the other feller’s trail and While he’s looking for you in one direction, you hit him from the other. If that sounds like unfair play, just remember it’s one of the rules of survival. The feller who wins is the one who says which law is right and which is wrong.”

  There was some doubt in Durell’s mind about the validity of the old man’s philosophy today, but he could not question the fact that old Jonathan had been a fine tactician then, one of the shrewdest hunters of animals and men in the delta bayou country. He could double back, however, and hit ‘em while they were looking the other way. While Prince Ch‘ing’s men hunted for him along canals and houses, he would drop in to pay a call on the Manchu pretender himself, at the House of a Thousand Pleasures.

  He did not doubt that the visit would be interesting.

  He swam quietly through the dark, tangled shadows, avoiding the open canals and klongs where crowded sampans, junks and brightly painted outrigger fishing boats were moored in a miasma of charcoal smoke, cooking odors, the smells of fish and crowded unwashed humanity. Eventually he came to a clear area, a sort of open, watery square he had not seen on the route he had taken with Yoko Hanamutra. From the safe obscurity between two thick piers, he could see across the expanse of water in the long-fingered yellow light of a hundred lanterns to a brilliantly outlined entrance of what could only be an enormous dance hall or teahouse. This could be nothing less than the prince’s House of a Thousand Pleasures, the main milking station, so to speak, for picking up the thousands of coins from the impoverished and Quietly desperate inhabitants of Dendang. As he watched, immersed to his neck in the tepid, oily water, he saw two big Chinese make their way along the plank walk to the entrance. Pie was quite sure they were the ones who had followed him, and the first was definitely one of those from the hospital. He was relieved to note that they did not have Yoko Hanamutra with them.

  Quickly, he found a ladder and climbed to a small dark boardwalk behind some shanty tin houses. The slimy feel of the canals clung to him, but nothing short of a long soak in a tub could fix that. Luck, however, touched him when he spotted a line of flapping clothes behind the nearest tin shack. There was a coolie’s jacket, newly washed and dried, together with worn dungarees, The jacket was large in the middle and tight in the shoulders, but he was happy to exchange it for his muddy shirt. His wet gun troubled him, and he took a few moments to dry it as well as he could, standing in the darkness to face the open square of water and Prince Ch’ing’s establishment. He decided he would have to gamble or pray it would fire if needed.

  Fortunately, he was not the only white man who sought the favors of Prince Ch’ing’s enticements. A gleaming mahogany launch was moored before the big pavilion, and several of Pandakan’s European merchants were going in, either to enjoy the gambling or the women that the prince made available to his more select clientele. Durell walked quickly through the crowded stalls that sold spiced meats, tiny broiled shrimp, cookies and ices. No one paid much attention to him in this part of Fishtown. He could have been a sailor, a beachcomber, anything, in his coolie jacket and the straw sandals that had come from the same source as his dry clothes. Most of the local patrons used an entrance other than the one where the launch was tied up, and he headed for the smaller and less pretentious way in.

  The smells of incense, cooking, human sweat and tension struck him like a tangible blow as he went inside the House of a Thousand Pleasures. The place was an immense, sprawling complex that surely covered several acres built out over the harbor water. But it Prince Ch’ing were here, squatting like a fat spider in the center of his web, he would find his quarry.

  He was leaning more on instinct than logic to hunt here for an answer to the riddle of the missing submarine. But considering the factors that had formed a pattern in his mind, once he’d learned of Tommy Lee’s troubles, he did not consider it unreasonable.

  “You English stranger here? You American?”

  The voice was a soft, birdlike singsong, spoken by a young Chinese girl in a blue silk quilted jacket and black silk trousers, who smiled at him from behind the bars of a huge birdcage of bamboo. The bars, Durell noted, were reinforced with steel rods, and the gate in the birdcage, which was duplicated by another behind the girl, was also of steel and merely painted to look like bamboo. Thus there was a double barrier to this entrance to Prince Ch’ing’s pleasure house.

  “I’m both an American and a stranger, too,” Durell said, smiling. “Is that so terrible?”

  “All men are welcome here. You come from ship?“ the Chinese girl asked. Her eyes smiled, but her young smile was nervous. Beyond her cage, he saw a row of garish electric bulbs lighting a wide corridor to a big dance hall, from which a weird concoction of Orientalized twist music emanated.

  “You know no ships have stopped at Pandakan for a week, honey,” he said. “I‘m off the beach, is all. It’s been a long trip and I‘m hot, tired, thirsty and lonely.”

  “We can take care of all your needs,” the girl piped, “provided you have money. We want no trouble with Americans here.”

  “I’ve got money—all I need for this place.”

  He made his voice rough, and showed her the clip of loose bills he had removed, along with his gun, from his wet clothes behind the shack. The money was wet, but he hoped she wouldn’t notice, and it didn’t seem as if she did. Her smile grew Wider, showing small white teeth.

  “Oh, you very rich American gentleman, indeed! Please to enter and be made welcome."

  He did not see her touch anything, but the birdcage door slid aside on noiseless tracks. Obviously someone else, observing him from somewhere, had passed him on. He noted, however, that the opposite door in the cage did not open at the same time. It could be a trap. It could be that Prince Ch’ing had even anticipated his doubling back to attack him here. But there was no help for it. If he retreated now, he would gain nothing and probably lose everything.

  He stepped into the birdcage with the little Chinese girl, and the gate slid silently shut behind him.r />
  “What pleasures you like?” she Whispered. “You like gamble, special foods, you like to buy dreams, maybe? We have everything, all pleasures, for all men. You like a girl, you tell me what kind, what color and shape. You like more than one? You look very strong man, sir. What you like first?”

  “A little food and a little gambling, maybe. I feel lucky, tonight.”

  “Yes, sir. Then you take the stairs to the right.”

  The back gate of the bamboo birdcage with the steel doors slid silently open and admitted him to the House of a Thousand Pleasures.

  chapter ten

  HIS IMMEDIATE objective was to lose himself in the crowded public areas of Prince Ch’ing’s Wide-open emporium of vice, lust, pleasure and greed. There might be dedicated terrorists operating elsewhere in Pandakan, men who schemed and plotted for this ideology or that, or disillusioned colonists who saw four generations of labor and property seized, burned or abandoned. But here in Ch’ing’s establishment, nothing was changed from the days of old, and vice operated at its normal lucrative pace.

  It was difficult to believe that this vast, glittery, tawdry palace of pleasure was built on piers over the slow tidal rise and fall of the harbor, in the center of the tangled squalor of Dendang. The gambling rooms were decorated with streamers and lanterns and mirrors that reflected distorted views of the roulette and fan-tan tables. From the top of the wide stairway Durell stepped down onto a balcony that went around all four walls above the gambling pit. There was even a cockfighting arena at one end, patronized mostly by small brown Malays. Another section was devoted to mah-jongg players, dice, and the spinning wheels of fortune common to any county carnival. Slot machines added to the clatter, and the air was filled with the bright murmur of a dozen languages, as brilliant as the varied batik clothing on men and Women alike—white Indian dhotis, Malay sarongs and bajus, Chinese slacks and jackets for the men, with Malay kabaya, Chinese samfoo and cheongsam and Indian saris for the women. Here and there, too, were youngsters in Western-style blue jeans and shirttails. The hubbub of voices ranged from Mandarin and Cantonese to Madurese and Bahasa.