Assignment - Sulu Sea

by Edward S. Aarons

  “You Americans are so direct! Ah, you spoil the pleasures of bargaining. Obviously, Simon knew something of interest and of use to me.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Alas, he did not live to tell me.”

  “Why so anxious to question him at all?”

  “Mr. Durell, you are an enigma here. I know who you are, you see. But I am not quite sure why you are here. Let us he frank with each other. My enterprises are imperiled by the quarrel for sovereignty over the Tarakuta Islands. I am rich and powerful, and although you may not approve of my means or my source of wealth. this has been accomplished and is of no further importance. We have embarked upon perilous times, and the typhoon threatens us. I bragged a moment ago, when I spoke of the timelessness of Tarakuta and Pandakan. I may be in personal peril, you see. But it is not the kind of peril that threatens you at this very moment.”

  Ch’ing smiled at Durell’s gun, and spoke very softly. “What would happen if it became known that an important agent of the American CIA had arrived here in Pandakan at this critical time? The news would echo around the world like a thunderclap and bring charges of interference. Such charges have been made before, and may be made again, eh? This time, however, you may lose all the trust and respect you may have won in this part of the globe. Do you understand me?”

  “You know a great deal about me.”

  “I have my sources of information,” Ch’ing said.

  “Is Tommy Lee one of them?”

  “Yes, but only one.” The grotesque, shaven head bobbed back and forth briefly. “And it is well known that units of your famous Seventh Fleet are venturing quite close to our island waters. It makes the United Nations commissioners uneasy. It makes those who claim hegemony over these islands even more uneasy. Now you are here. If you should be found in incriminating circumstances, seeking to agitate for one side or another, it would create quite an international scandal, one would think.”

  “As you well know," Durell said, “I am not here for any political purposes.”

  “I know nothing,” Ch’ing smiled. “I do not know if you are a fool or a brave man, to come here.”

  “Must I be one or the other?”

  “I think so. How many of your associates are within call, Mr. Durell? Do you intend a raid upon my establishment as your prohibition agents once raided speakeasies in your country? Surely you did not come here alone, so brashly, to ask about a Papuan sailor who owed me something

  for gambling debts and needed to be exposed as an example to others who fail to pay up.”

  “Simon did not gamble here,” Durell ventured.

  “Did you know him?"

  “I know that isn’t the reason you snatched him."

  “Can you suggest any other reason, sir?”

  Durell said coldly: “That's why I am here. I also want to know how you managed to kill Commander Holcomb, off the Andrew Jackson.”

  He let the names drop into a silence so vast, so vibrant, so filled with venom as to seem like a pit of snakes. He knew he breached security to mention either Holcomb or the submarine. But the risk proved worth it.

  Durell had never subscribed to the myth of Oriental inscrutability. Chinese betrayed shock, surprise, pain or alarm the same as anyone else. Prince Ch’ing had an advantage in the thick folds, pads and layers of fat that enveloped his carcass. But the stillness with which he looked at Durell was eloquent enough. He knew he had managed to slice through the suet to something vital.

  The plump, bejeweled hand that absently caressed the black silken hair of Paradise as she knelt at his feet was abruptly still. Then the fat fingers coiled and twisted thickly in the girl’s coiffure. She made a quick whimpering sound of pain and the huge fat man kicked at her and sent her rolling over and over across the floor.

  “Clumsy child!” he screamed. “Out of my sight!”

  “B-but sir, I did nothing—”

  “Get out!”

  Paradise went white with terror and regret. Durell wondered in passing what punishment Ch’ing usually meted out to the victims of his temper. But he did not take his eyes from that vast moon face and the two raisin eyes in the suety flesh. Light slid along the bald, glistening scalp. The massive shoulders shrugged under the thick brocaded silk robe.

  “Your pardon, Mr. Durell. You have bewildered me, and I am not accustomed to it. Perhaps you may elaborate. It would be most appreciated.”

  A voice spoke from nowhere, seemingly, in swift Mandarin that was incomprehensible to Durell. The words had an electronic timbre that indicated a modern intercom wired under Prince Ch’ing’s trappings of incense. bronze Buddhas and silken mysteries. The speaker, he decided, was behind a glass case across the room that held a collection of old Chinese porcelains, jades, and Javanese woodcarvings of sawo, teak and jackwood, against a background of silk scrolls. Prince Ch’ing’s head was cocked to one side, his shaggy caterpillar brows lifting as his mouth drooped and he drew in a long, slow, decisive breath. Ch’ing barked a single word at the end of the report. The girl, Paradise, cowered in a corner with a hand to her mouth.

  Prince Ch’ing looked slowly at Durell. “Sir, you placed your hands on my mother, it is said.”

  “If the old lady downstairs is your mother, yes, I did.”

  “You treated her with rudeness and discourtesy.”

  “Well, she runs the women‘s end of this establishment.“

  Durell laughed with deliberate insolence. “And it seems quite fitting.”

  “What is fitting, Mr. Durell, is that you will now die, whatever the consequences.”

  “Tell me about Holcomb, first," Durell said easily.

  But Prince Ch’ing had changed. Somewhere a raw nerve had been exposed and hung, quivering and crawling, twisting the fat man’s face. He stood up with remarkable speed and spoke aloud to the hidden intercom system. The lights flicked out.

  Durell found himself in sudden, complete darkness.

  Paradise screamed.

  He could not tell if her scream was one of pain or simple surprise. But he was aware of swift movement ahead and to his right. He jumped for Prince Ch’ing, knowing his only safety lay in being close to this massive man. But where Ch’ing had stood, there was nothing. He swung left, toward Paradise. He could see nothing in the absolute blackness, Something hissed through the air and thudded into a pillow. It had to be a knife. Which meant that Ch‘ing was already gone, out of danger, and he was trapped here, like a mouse in a bottle, with no way out and no hope of eluding the attack. In another moment the lights would come on and his situation would be hopeless.

  He slammed into Paradise, knowing instantly it was she from the silken contact of her body. She stifled a scream. He hauled her aside in the darkness and a knife thudded into the teak paneling. The girl writhed frantically in his grip.

  “Paradise, you’ve heard too much, he’ll kill you, too, don‘t you see? You’ve got to help me!”

  She trembled in his arms. He could see nothing of her. A voice echoed like a rolling wave through the dark room.

  “Durell!” It was Prince Ch’ing, on the intercom. “Give it up and answer my questions, and you may live. Otherwise —”

  The girl breathed: “He lies. This way.”

  She pulled him to the right. He stumbled over a fat pillow, and the girl also fell. A shot exploded, the muzzle flame splitting their inky, luxurious prison with a brief glimpse of the room. Shadows jumped and slid around them. Durell fired at the other muzzle flare. But the hammer clicked uselessly; his gun was still wet from his swim in the canals.

  “Hurry!” Paradise whimpered.

  But then she halted and he bumped into her yielding body. A panel slid aside and a gleam of light shone briefly. It was the stairs to the lower level. A blind shot screamed after them. Curtains hissed as Paradise pulled him through the archway.

  He started down the stairs, but from below came the solemn boom of a gong, and a rush of sandals coming up toward them. He halted with the girl before the
elevator pit. The cage was above them, since they had descended one level. The barrier gate was of ornate, but flimsy, bamboo. Obviously, they couldn't get out by way of the stairs. Nor could they use the elevator. But—

  “We can swim, or take our chances with Ch’ing,” he decided, watching the girl. “Ch’ing Will kill you, too, because he forgot you were in the room, Paradise.” He looked over the bamboo elevator gate into the deep pit. “So we have to jump.

  Far down the shaft, he saw the murky harbor water, on which these houses and entire complex palace had been built. The elevator cables were motionless. It would be tricky to avoid their loops in the jump. He tore the bamboo gate loose. From below came shouts, above the repeated reverberations of the gong. The girl drew back from the shaft in pale fright.

  “Do you know how deep the water is?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. It is so far down. . . .”

  “Well, we can’t stay here. Jump, Paradise.”

  She looked at him dubiously, trustingly, then leaped feet first down the dark shaft. He watched her silken clothing balloon up above her head, glimpsed her legs bared by the rush of wind in her fall, saw her graze one of the cables for a heart-stopping instant. Then there was a small, forlorn splash as she hit the water four levels below.

  He waited and watched.

  She did not come up.

  A man shouted. A dozen of Ch’ing‘s tong hatchet men stumbled up the landing. There was no time to wait or ponder.

  Durell went through the bamboo gate and jumped as the girl had done, feet first, down to the black, glimmering water far below.

  chapter twelve

  HE HAD known few moments in his life when he was so sure of impending death. In the seconds of his fall, he counted his chances and felt that every fraction of his survival factor had abruptly swung to zero. He could be impaled hideously on hidden pilings just under the water's surface. He could strike one of the elevator cables and be snared and hung up, with an arm or leg wrenched from its socket, or, if lucky, have his neck broken instantly. The water might be clear, but too shallow; he could plummet so deeply into the ooze of the bottom that he might stick there, like a fly caught on gooey paper, with no time to free himself before his lungs burst for lack of air.

  Yet there was also in that moment of death a sense of clarity, of freezing calm, that had helped him on other occasions. He could not explain the sensation. It had come to him before, when he gambled, or found himself in an impossible corner. It was a feeling that a cold assessment of his survival factors would show him a way out. And it usually did.

  He smashed through the oily surface of black water cleanly, without a flaw. There was no shock, for the harbor water was warm, scarcely less so than the air. He went down and down and felt something snatch at his shoulder and tear at the fabric of the coolie jacket he wore. Barnacles, perhaps, on the stilts that supported Prince Ch’ing’s pleasure palaces. The instant his feet struck the yielding ooze of bottom mud, he struggled sidewise, careful that in his momentum he didn‘t smash his brains out against a pier. For a panicky moment he felt something pluck and seize at his trouser leg; it was a piece of flotsam, as sharp and smooth as a spear point. He doubled over and tore the trouser leg open, underwater. His leg was bleeding. It did not matter. He was only concerned with the bursting in his chest as his lungs began to scream for air.

  He surfaced in the unreal, familiar gloom below the stilts and pilings of Dendang, a gloom streaked yellow with distant light glimmers, lapping softly about him, filled with the odors of decay and soft white growing things he did not identify. Close overhead was a tangle of timbers cross-hatched and strutted to support a solid floor from which streamed many long, mossy growths, like the beards of ten thousand Taoist monks, some of which reached into the oily water. He heard a distant, echoing splash. Light came and went. A dull pounding shook the air briefly. He turned and twisted, treading water.

  “Paradise?” he called softly.

  There was no reply.

  Neither was there any pursuit. He saw the square of light glimmering on the water where the elevator shaft Ended a bit to his left, and a coil of the cable was moving as if the cage were being used. Prince Ch’ing, no doubt. A clattering of Cantonese reached him curiously garbled, echoing.

  “Paradise?” he called again.

  Something splashed behind a barricade of pilings. He swam carefully toward it, pulling himself along by cross-struts stints between the piers, sometimes swimming across brief open areas. Light glimmered from a klong ahead, crowded with sampans, and the familiar odor of charcoal cooking and rice pots touched him. Water suddenly gurgled and splashed heavily nearby. Something flopped and gasped like a pale fish on the planks that formed a walk under the floor of the buildings overhead.

  “Paradise?” he called softly.

  “I am here, Mr. Durell."

  ‘He reached her with several swift strokes and hauled himself out upon the plank beside her. The yellow lantern light from the canal filtered in with long, irregular fingers to touch her wet body, the clinging strands of green moss wound between her breasts and thighs. She was struggling to free herself from these unnatural bonds, her face ghostly in the pale light.

  “I’m glad you’re safe,” he whispered.

  She shrugged, her smile bland. “Oh, I hated Prince Ch’ing. All his girls hate him. He would have killed me, for amusement, for strange moment of pleasure to self.” Her round, flower face was concerned. “But you bleed from your leg—”

  It’s just a scratch. I grant you, this looks like a poisonous world down here. I’ll attend to it after we get out of here.”

  But I cannot help, she said. “We call this the land of evil tigers. Many people live down there—those who have no house, no sleeping mat on a sampan, or who hide from the police. Such people live here under the houses and they are like wild animals, who kill for a bite of food or a copper coin.”

  She shuddered, leaning wetly against him. He said: “What will you do, though, if we escape from here?”

  “Oh, I have relatives who will send me to Manila, out of Ch’ing‘s reach. It will be all right. You owe me nothing.”

  Her eyes looked luminous, with a childlike innocence. There was a phosphorescence in the water that created eerie illusions, he saw. The girl clung to him for a moment, shivering, then drew back and said: “You must lead us out of this evil place. The thought of the white tigers frightens me as much as Prince Ch’ing.”

  It was not easy to orient himself. Voices called, echoing with subtle distortions in this world of half water, half air, roofed with a sky of scabrous moss and barnacled under-floors. Among the people who lived and ate and slept and made love down here, nothing could be normal. The shouting came nearer, preceded by a bobbing lamp that approached with appalling speed. This whole area was webbed with plank walks almost submerged at the water level under the sea village. Whether the men approaching were Ch’ing’s men or not, they would be ready to rob and kill.

  Durell took the girl’s hand and they ran along the slippery planks, ducking their heads to clear the supporting timbers above, clambering over struts and props, stumbling and sometimes losing the direct way to find themselves in sudden cul-de-sacs. The pursuit was relentless, led by a growing number of bobbing flares, with a vanguard of threatening shouts and ululating cries. The girl slid and fell from the slimy walk with a cry of distress, splashing into the water. Durell hauled her out swiftly. She trembled with fatigue, and obviously could not go on much longer. Equally

  obvious, their pursuers knew their way through this watery, ghoulish labyrinth so expertly that in another few moments they would be surrounded by gleaming, murderous faces above equally gleaming, murderous knives.

  His only hope was to locate and reach the Tarakuta, out in the harbor somewhere. Which meant they had to come to the surface, to the crowded world of canals, walks and houses, whatever the risk from Ch‘ing‘s men.

  “Just a little longer, Paradise,” he promised.
<
br />   He half carried her toward an area of saffron light that filtered down between the buildings ahead. If they could mingle with the crowds in the canals, in the marketplaces and teahouses and street stalls, until he reached the harbor edge and perhaps signaled to the schooner—

  He found a ladder, and beyond it an open canal, and at once he knew his sense of direction had not failed him. No boats were visible except a modern dinghy with an outboard motor on it. There was no name on the dinghy, but the little boat gave him both hope and suspicion. They had reached the outskirts of Fishtown to face the open harbor. He felt a quick satisfaction in viewing the darkness beyond, the distant flicker and flare of colored boat lights. One of them was the Tarakuta, which he had sent for, offering help and safety.

  If he could reach it in time.

  He spared a hasty moment to search the dinghy and came up with a three-cell flashlight from under the stem thwart. The air felt clean and fresh here. He helped Paradise up the crude ladder of bamboo slats and followed quickly. Their pursuers were close behind—too close for comfort. He scrambled up hastily, searching beyond a rickety platform above the dinghy for a sign of the schooner which must, by now, be moored somewhere nearby.

  He spotted it after a moment, her sleek white hull a few hundred yards to the south of the canal end where he stood with the girl. He squeezed the flashlight button rapidly in a Morse signal for Malachy McLeod or Willi, praying one or both might still be aboard.

  There was no reply.

  He wondered if his beam could be seen easily, and in his haste to move farther along the rickety platform, he ignored his habitual caution and did not pause before turning the proverbial corner.

  It was a moment of dismay and disaster.

  He heard Paradise scream, a quick, shrill yip of fear, and he heard the quick step behind him and then the whistle of a sap descending on the back of his head. Pain was expertly detonated behind his red ear, and red flares filled the universe and then faded to soft darkness as he pitched forward into emptiness.