“Hardly, but—"
“Or your masculine instincts? She grew up impatient at the sound of your name. Now she has met you, and she has changed. It worries me. It troubles me, because you will be here only a short time, and then you will go away again, Samuel.”
“Yes, that’s so,” Durell said.
“And will you take Willi with you?"
“No. I couldn’t."
“She belongs here. She is happy here. She is smart and quick at her work. The islands are her home, and I’m old and won’t last forever. She thinks I will, but I won’t. When she is alone, she‘ll have my house and the copra plantation and the boat. And all I could teach her. She’s quite a woman, Samuel.”
“Yes, I can see that.” .
“Malachy loves her and would keep her safe and happy.”
“But does Willi love him?” Durell asked.
“She is confused, now she has met you. I must ask you not to encourage her, Samuel." The old man’s face seemed hewn from darkness. “Once, Jonathan and I dreamed our children might marry, but it didn’t come to pass. Then we dreamed of Willi and you. Now I’ve seen you, I know it was not a foolish dream. You may be worthy of her. But don’t thank me, because you will not have her.”
“I still don’t see—”
“You will not have her.”
Durell let silence end it.
chapter fourteen
THE Tarakuta slipped her sharp, proud bow through pale green waters where palm fronds floated in tideless channels and vegetable debris ran hissing along her painted white sides. At times it seemed she must surely go aground, or tangle her rigging in the ugly, twisted limbs of mangrove swamps that hemmed her in. Then she was in open water for a spell, and Joseph turned the wheel over to his Malay mate. The sun was bright, violent, unnatural. The wind died within half an hour, and the big bleached mainsail was hauled down and the diesel started. Thereafter, the steady thump and thud of the cylinders made a hot rhythm in the emptiness of brazen sky and sea.
Twice more they heard jets screaming over the horizon. One time, traveling faster than the blast of thunder clapping after it, a MIG With the insigne of Indonesia buzzed the Tarakuta. It came like a sudden explosion and screamed away to the south. The calm grew heavier, and seemed more oppressive afterward.
Durell walked to the bow with Malachy, and watched with the red-bearded Irishman as the mountainous spine of Bangka lifted around a bend of small reefs. Malachy had examined Durell’s assorted cuts and bruises with professional interest and expressed some awe at the scars on Durell’s body.
Durell admitted it was time to get some plastic work done. He had too many identifying items, if he were picked up by the wrong people somewhere.
“Such as Colonel Mayubashur?” Malachy asked wryly.
Durell silently and briefly reviewed what he knew of the colonel. It was part of his job to keep a file of mental dossiers on people likely to dominate the world’s trouble spots, and what he knew of Mayubashur reminded him that the colonel was basically just a good cop. It was a matter of debate, back in Washington, whether Mayubashur enjoyed commanding from the old Sultan’s palace in Pandakan. At a policy meeting of K Section’s field chiefs, Durell had maintained, against other arguments, that Mayubashur would seek to stay in power, it being the nature of such men to continue in control, once given possession of political as well as military power. McFee had agreed. But at that time, the matter had not seemed very pressing.
On the other hand, he knew that Mayubashur would pursue a criminal case honestly and clap the villain in the local Portuguese dungeons. The colonel would be walking on eggs now, however, since he might find himself arresting the next premier of Tarakuta, if he guessed wrong.
Durell frowned, annoyed at Malachy’s continued silence. Was McLeod going to carry a chip on his shoulder throughout the operation, because of jealousy over Willi? It was something Durell wished to be spared. The makeshift apparatus already had one potential defector in Tommy Lee. He did not think Dr. McLeod would deliberately betray the mission; but emotion could cloud judgment at a critical moment, bringing about a split-second delay that could make the hairsbreadth difference between success and failure, life and death.
He went on speaking about Colonel Mayubashur.
“The colonel surely knows about every Seventh Fleet jet that’s crossed the periphery of his precious island territory, Malachy. Djakarta and the Malay government in Kuala Lumpur know about them, too, by now. Nobody likes it. And we have reports of guerilla clashes between Indonesian ‘freedom fighters’ and Malay regulars on the outlying islands off Sabah.“ He paused as Malachy nodded briefly, curtly, and added: “Everybody shouts ‘Merdeka!’ and wants freedom, so long as the freedom means that Tarakuta belongs to him. But we’re not concerned with local politics. Our job is to find that submarine.”
“How can something as big as that get lost?” Malachy sucked on an empty brier pipe. His bearded face was burned dark by the tropic sun, which made his pale eyes all the more startling under his bushy red brows. “The Jackson might have taken a tragic dive, Sam, like the Thresher. The currents here are tricky. The sea may seem to be utterly calm, but this whole body of water is actually moving along at four to six knots. No one but old Joseph and poor Simon, for instance, could navigate this channel in order to sneak up on Bangka, over there."
“As far as we know, though, the Jackson used regular shipping lanes,” Durell objected. “She was due in through the Bandjang Passage, and your consulate was notified of that just before Kiehle Went off to his SEATO meeting. Were you there, then?”
Malachy said; “Yes, Tommy Lee decoded the warning of her arrival. I hated to be left in charge just then—I’d planned a field trip with Willi for some rare marine specimens."
Durell watched the horizon. “Do you trust Tommy Lee?”
“Why not? He’s been first secretary for seven years.”
“Ever check out his alleged family in Dendang?”
“His papers were handled routinely. Nobody foresaw pressure on half the local Chinese from Peiping.“
“Why should this pressure have come just now?" Durell wondered. “There must be a connection. They must have snatched the sub, and whatever their method, it worked, or else how did Holcomb wind up raving and dying on the beach?” He turned to study the rake of the Tarakuta’s masts. His boyhood had been spent at sailing, from shrimp boats in the Gulf to racing sleek New York sloops on Long Island Sound while at Yale. He did not like the look of this sky. But then, he didn’t know these waters as a sailor, although his instinct warned him of Weather trouble nearby. He turned back to Malachy. “The Jackson may seem like a big fish to hide in these waters, but she never came out of the Bandjang Passage, Malachy. And no one has heard her radio, or sonar, since the day she vanished. Or was it at night?”
“Night, at 2210 hours, Tuesday, the twelfth,” McLeod said briefly. “It was a routine check, planned when her cruise was first charted. She was to call the Pandakan consulate by code to report her entry into the shipping channel and the ETA off Pandakan Harbor. She wasn’t making port, of course. Officially she was not in these waters, considering the local political crisis. It would have iced the cake for our grabby new colonial powers down here, to announce the arrival of a U.S. nuclear sub.”
Durell studied the sky again. “Was that the night the local terrorists bombed out the Pandakan radio station?”
“Why, yes.”
“Was the Jackson using the station as a homing beacon?”
“I don’t know. Her inertial guidance system—”
“In these waters?" Durell indicated the shallow green channels approaching the shores of Bangka. The horizon was harsh and hot. “Old-fashioned dead reckoning with radar on the bridge would be safer. Maybe the sub‘s captain thought so, anyway. He‘d be running on the surface at night, in these shoals. And it’s odds on he used the Pandakan beacon as a direction-finder—until it was bombed out, by happy coincidence.”
Mala
chy was aggressive. “What are you driving at?”
“I don’t believe in coincidence, that’s all. Was another radio on the air that night? The local terrorists, perhaps?”
“Sure, the clandestine guerilla station began blabbing propaganda the minute the civil radio tower went out.”
“And where is this guerilla station?”
“Anywhere on any one of these three hundred islands. I begin to see what you mean, Cajun.”
“Right. Let’s look at some charts.”
There were U.S. Navy and Royal Admiralty charts in the big cabin amidships of the schooner. As expected, below-decks was maintained with the spit-and-polish of the rigging and gear above. Durell sat on a cushioned bench before a mahogany chart table and shook out a cigarette and unrolled the chart Malachy brought from the rack. Willi came in and sat silently, watching. Her eyes looked abnormally bright in the shadowed cabin. Away from the breeze on deck, the heat was suffocating; the little fans did little to dispel it. Durell found himself sweating in places he had never sweated before, and his waistband rapidly became sodden where the moisture collected at his belt. The deck underfoot vibrated with the thud of the diesel cylinders. Now and then the Malay boy in the bow called out the depth of water in a soft, amused voice, and the schooner began to weave and twist as they entered new and sinuous channels.
The charts only proved what he had seen with his own eyes. He had sailed many waters of the world, from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Sea waters off Holland, but this area of drowned sea and mangrove islet, of coral reef and brackish swamp, presented unfamiliar problems. All the depths on the chart were questionable; the channels had no navigation aids such as buoys or lights. And many of the channels were marked as obsolete or nonexistent or of unknown depth of water and bottom.
There came a hail from above, and a Malay pattered down on bare feet and spoke in rapid dialect to Malachy, who immediately arose and left. “Excuse me, Cajun. I’m wanted above.”
“Is it trouble?"
Willi answered for the red-bearded man, who was gone instantly. “Bangka Island where we buried your friend Holcomb is ten minutes off. We‘re on the shore opposite Ch‘ing’s tin port. But he’s touchy about trespassers—like with guns."
“Ch’ing gets more interesting by the moment.”
“We have digging tools," Willi went on, “and I’ve a face mask, fins and tanks for you. Can you skin-dive?”
“I’ve had a little practice, here and there.”
“But you've never gone ashore on a Pacific island like Bangka. You’ll find it interesting; maybe unnerving.” Her big eyes appraised him. Her flimsy bikini emphasized the long, firm taper of her legs. Sunlight bounced off the water through the cabin ports and made the fine down of hair on her limbs gleam with soft gold. She got up with a free, easy swing of hip and thigh. “Change in the cabin aft. Be ready in five minutes.”
He halted her. “Willi, you're angry about something."
Her smile failed miserably. “It’s old Joseph. He’s never done anything like this to me, before.”
“What’s he done?”
“He spoke to you about me, didn’t he?”
He said carefully: “Yes, and you resent being treated as a child. You‘re not a child, Willi. I can see that.”
Her direct gaze made a cool shiver go down his spine. Her eyes changed color and reflected the lime green of the sea. A man could happily drown in them, he decided. She said:
“Well, let’s not complicate it with silly words. Hurry, get your diving gear and swim suit.”
The cove lay beyond a long coral barrier reef, and past where the mangroves sank their many claw-like roots into clods of mud, there was a long, curving stretch of aching white beach, with an arc of coco palms just above the pelagic litter. It seemed idyllic. He could hear birds and monkeys from the jungle inland. There was a high spine to the island, the cone of a small, old volcano, and a permanent cloud hung motionless there, attached to the dark peak by a thin streamer. He knew the cloud would never change its shape or size as long as the seasonal trade winds blew; it would tower huge and blinding, day after day, and under it would be rain forest, damp and steamy and incredibly hot. One step out of the cloud shadow might move you from its gray inferno into harsh desert.
Again there was a distant bombardment of jets from the cobalt sky. The admiral apparently had set off firecrackers under the search teams’ tails, or Mr. Sukarno was getting bolder. The sun was a venomous, glowing ball of yellow incandescence now, glimmering, overheated, making a haze on the uncertain horizons. The anchor rattled and hooked on the bottom and the Tarakuta swung to a halt, her engine silent. A murky white roil mixed with gassy bubbles came up from the bottom.
Outside the cabin, Willi met him, wearing gear and her vestigial bikini. She moved with soft grace, and with only a curt nod and a wave of her tanned arm, she dropped overboard with scarcely a splash.
“I hate to see her go like this,” Malachy murmured. “I’d go along, except for a punctured eardrum. When you dig up Holcomb, make Willi keep away. The crabs might have worked on him.”
“Does she usually swim instead of using the dinghy?”
“She’s found some nice shell specimens along here. But Ch’ing doesn’t like her prowling and ordered her away twice, and last time he took a potshot at the boat. So Willi swims in now to keep from being spotted. Go on, Cajun. She moves fast.”
Durell nodded and let himself fall overboard.
This pale green mist of wavering shapes, beautiful and terrifying, was Willi Panapura’s world. He swam slowly after her along the coral reef, through clouds of angelfish, groupers, a small squadron of sharks, an eel, lizard fish, threadfish and Moorish idols, flickering like rainbows around his face plate. The pure blues of the water ranged from azure to a smoke-gray. The sea life along the phantasmagorical coral Walls ranged from gorgonians and starfish to sea urchins and crabs, while outside the lagoon he spotted the torpedo greys of barracuda, an albacore, a flick of a wahoo’s tail and, among the coral caves, a rich yield of squid, sea slugs, a giant clam, an army of crabs—all in a delicate natural balance with the streamers of seaweed and algae floating in the pellucid water. Willi swam on, at home among the flashing, savage life about them. It was like a twilight-green Fourth of July fireworks. Once through the opening in the reef to the cove, the bottom shelved rapidly upward to the shore. Sunlight made a smooth blanket of the water surface above them. Willi turned and beckoned him on. Entering the cove was like floating into a secret grotto, a place for love. It was too bad, he thought grimly, they were going to dig up a dead man.
They stood up side by side in brackish salt water that was hip-deep and considered the littered white beach, the long, fuming line of thundering combers, the suggestive curve of the coconut palms. The girl was like a pagan sea goddess, hugged and caressed about the waist by the milky sea. But her eyes were hard and calm and careful. She kicked off her flippers, unslung her oxygen tank, and slung the gear in the crook of her left arm. Durell carried the small folding shovel.
“It was just under that double palm,” the girl said. “We were hasty, burying him. There was Simon to consider, you see; he was so badly hurt by Holcomb, who was really amok with his fear and his own injuries—”
“Don’t think about that,” Durell ordered.
He was struck forcibly by the odors of the beach. It was nothing soft or muted, but a violent clash of sea and jungle, a rich and pungent iodine, the reek of tidal life from rotting vegetation and crabs and palm rats, or the gas from a Portuguese man-o’-war. Woven mercifully through it was the sea’s ozone and the gentle sweetness of copra. Willi seemed reluctant to go on up the beach. He led the way out of the water. The heat was stunning. Beyond the sand, in the fringe of palms, he heard monkeys chattering and the calls of strange birds, all undertoned by the endless, thunderous monotone of the sea. A misty spray enveloped everything in an unreal, steamy haze. There was no sign of humans, except for a single set of jeep tracks that
circled the cove from the east. Durell studied them to see if the jeep had halted near Holcomb’s grave, but it was impossible to tell.
“If this is where you buried him," be told Willi, “stay away a bit, while I dig. I think Holcomb’s body has been moved. But if so, then we’ll know somebody thought it important enough to move his remains, and that will merit consideration.”
She spoke coldly. “How can you be so callous? He was your friend. When he died, he appealed to you for help.”
"It’s a tough world for the losers,” he said flatly. “There’s no room for sentiment in my business, Willi.”
She drew a deep breath. “Are you trying to make me hate you, to believe you are truly cruel?"
Her scanty swim suit emphasized the deep cleavage of her breasts, her narrow waist and flare of soft hips held by a wisp of blue cloth. She looked angry, and stubbornly pinned up her hair, loosened by the swim. She was like a goddess charging him with some ancient, primeval crime.
He began to dig with anger and vehemence. How could he tell this golden girl who belonged to sunlight and the sea what his life was like? His world was dark and shadowy, a place of sudden death and terrible treachery. It demanded infinite patience, loneliness, and a readiness for terror, all to procure a bit of information here, a. statistic there, for the computers and analyzers in Washington to synthesize into a balance of weight and counter-weight in a world tenderly poised on the brink of self-destruction.
Someone had to do the work, but why did he stay with it? No bugles rang for victory, no trumpets blew for battle. There was no sound for victory except the hiss of a knife, or a sigh of relief at danger averted. He had been in this world long enough to know it set him apart from the sun and sea in which this girl lived.
The dream of two old men could never come to pass. This was a century of technical miracles, not victories of the spirit.
His shovel grated on coral. He had been very careful as he dug. The enormous, blinding sun brought out a trembling sweat. He looked up and saw a signal flashing from the Tarakuta, the quick, imperative blink of a mirror reflecting the sunlight. The girl followed his gaze and frowned, drew in an alarmed breath.
Assignment - Sulu Sea Page 12