Assignment - Sulu Sea

by Edward S. Aarons

  Tommy Lee reached the car, and the propaganda from the Djakarta radio proved useful, after all. It covered the soft movement Durell made as he came around the car and placed the edge of his machete against the Chinese diplomat’s throat.

  “Hold still, Tommy,” Durell whispered.

  Lee froze with his hand on the car door. He wore a pale sharkskin suit and a white shirt and a dark tie, and he must have been sweltering in the heavy humidity that flowed like an invisible blanket from the storm gathering over the sea. He was sensible enough not to turn his head. But his breath hissed in surprise and he could not prevent a lurch and tremor of his body.

  “Who—what is it?”

  “Sam Durell. Surprised?”

  “Durell? But how—what are you doing here—?”

  “Looking for you, in a way--and for your boss."

  ‘I don’t understand. Please, remove the knife.”

  “Get in the car.”

  “Surely. But force is unnecessary. I’m an American citizen, I can explain what I am doing here—”

  “I’m sure you can. I’ll listen with interest. Get in the car and back it up about a hundred yards and then stop. Leave the headlights on, but blink them twice, understand? And don’t do anything foolish.”

  “As you say, sir.”

  Durell looked at the nearest Malay house on its stilts above the beach. There were some limp clothes hanging from a line strung from two poles. Voices came from inside, and the smell of charcoal and fish. But it was dark and shadowed where the clothing hung. Durell said: “Hold it, Tommy. We need to repair our wardrobe first."

  He urged the young Chinese to the clothes line and pulled down a pair of dungarees and a woman’s batik dress and found some straw sandals of various sizes. In the blue flicker of sheet-lightning, Lee’s face shone with sweat and fright. Durell frisked him briefly, found no weapons, and urged him back to the car.

  “All right. Back up a hundred yards, as I said.”

  Willi was looking for the signal. She came running on silent feet as the car halted just inside the line of jungle. There had been no alarm from the village. Out in the shallow channel, the fishermen were beginning their night’s work with harpoon and flare and net. The heat was stifling. But there was not the slightest stir of wind to relieve the oppression. It Was as if all the forces of nature were astir.

  Tommy Lee was tough and frightened. He thought he saw his chance when Willi ran up out of the steamy darkness, and he moved fast, dropping his left shoulder, his head still turned as if watching Willi’s approach, his right hand on the car door. At the same time his right foot came up to smash at the blade in Durell’s grip, intending to gain a running start for the dark jungle growth beside the road.

  He was good, but not that good; he was tough, but not that tough.

  Durell caught his ankle with a quick, twisting grip that would have heaved most men from their feet. But Lee’s grip on the car door saved him from that disaster. Lee staggered, missed his stroke at the machete, and terror froze on his broad yellow face. He opened his mouth to cry an alarm and Durell hit him with the hilt of the knife high on the cheekbone. Lee’s fingers were torn from the car door, and he went down to one knee in the dark path.

  “I owe you something," Durell said quietly. “It’s for Simon and some good men off the Jackson who are dead.”

  “But I couldn’t help—”

  “It’s time to collect, Tommy. I owe you something for your girl-friend, too, who tried to keep you straight.”

  “Yoko Hanamutra?”

  “Stand up.”

  But Lee had not given up hope yet. Enough dim light came from the flickering torches of the fishermen to see Durell’s implacable face. Terror spasmed and twisted Lee’s mouth, but it was a controlled fear, giving him speed and strength to try for escape. His chunky shoulder came up and smashed at Durell’s belly and the driving force of his tough, sturdy legs carried him up and over as Durell fell back. Durell rarely permitted himself the luxury of hate or a desire for revenge. His work was too demanding for that. But traitors were an exception. It was difficult enough to walk knowingly into the threats from the other side, to maneuver with all the power of a team of skilled and loyal operatives beside you. To have to face the added hazard of the double agent, the weakling who yielded up lives for money or through fear, was beyond his tolerance. He worked on Tommy Lee with brutal efficiency.

  It was not easy. His opponent was young and trained in the ways of killing with bare hands. And he was desperate. Durell’s main concern was to raise no alarm in the nearby kampong. Silence and speed were imperative.

  He achieved both. The loudest sound was a strangled cough from his antagonist when Durell chopped the side of his throat. He did not strike to kill. As Lee staggered and tried to kick again, Durell threw him with a thud, and as the man, coughing, made an effort to escape, Durell hauled him to the feet by his shirt front and slapped him again and again until Lee’s eyes glazed and his weight sagged down.

  Willi looked shocked. “Sam, don’t ., .. . he can’t defend himself. . . .”

  “Lucky for us,” Durell breathed harshly. “I may not kill him. It depends on what he has to say. Do you hear me, Tommy?"

  Willi subsided. He glimpsed her face, and her beauty was carved of stone. He could not read the expression in her eyes. He slammed Tommy Lee against the side of the car, picked up the machete, and held its razor-sharp edge against the bubbling throat of the Chinese.

  “Which will it be, Tommy? Talk—or die?"

  "I—I’m afraid! I couldn’t help myself—”

  “You could, but you got greedy, didn’t you? Did Prince Ch’ing pay you much?”

  “No, no, he paid nothing!” Lee’: voice rasped in pain with each Word forced through his injured throat. He coughed and said: “I’ll tell you what I can. But if they find out—”

  “Are any of Ch’ing’s men around?”

  “Four, in the village. I brought them, for patrol work. It pleases Ch’ing to make me an errand boy. They will come along soon, and the car should be moved.”

  Plainly, Lee’s fear of Ch’ing equaled his fear of Durell. Durell shoved him into the car. He asked Willi to drive, and handed her the sarong and sandals he had stolen from behind the fisherman’s hut. Doffing the smock, she wrapped herself deftly in the garment, and with the graceful movement it seemed as if she transformed herself into an island woman, tall, proud, ineffably beautiful, and no longer Western. Her alien magnificence settled on her with the Malay dress. She looked pagan. He could tell nothing from her face as she slid behind the wheel and started the car.

  “Is Prince Ch’ing on the island?” Durell asked Lee.

  “Yes, but you can‘t drive on the beaches. They are all patrolled. You couldn’t reach him alive this way.”

  Durell drew a deep breath. “Tommy, have you seen the submarine, the Andrew Jackson?”

  Lee shivered and was silent.

  “All right,” Durell said. “I’ll find her myself.”

  At that moment a sound came to them, as if something giant and primeval were rushing at them from out of the dark night.

  chapter seventeen

  IT WAS a wind. It blew across the Celebes Sea and the Macassar Strait with a peculiar, rancid odor, a smell of brine and stagnation. The gust came suddenly, leaping upon the palms and jungle growth to make a great rattling of dust and dark sand and spray that rode inland like a curtain before a charging host of invisible horsemen.

  Then it died, and the night was hot and black again. An overcast hid the glittery stars. A hush fell over the beach. From the sea came a long groaning, a rush of water going out and then coming in. The land shook under the impact of one giant comber that smashed out of the pelagic darkness. The flares of the octopus hunters lifted wildly up and then down, along with the screams of terrified men. The water rushed, seething, to carry the debris of vegetation and animal and sea life with it, far into the jungle. Then it went back and everything was almost as it had
been before.

  “What was that?” Tommy Lee whispered, shaken.

  “A storm is coming.” Willi’s calm was the same calm that had followed the first raging breath from out of the dark night. “I think it will be very bad.”

  Durell thought of his plans. “How much time do we have?”

  She spoke coldly. “An hour, perhaps. Or two.”

  “Are you worried about the schooner?”

  “The boat is my affair."

  She was changed, remote and alien, like the sarong she wore, and he knew he had changed her. But it was not the time to consider it. He needed all his attention for Tommy Lee.

  The road had turned into a solid macadam highway that cut through the coastal jungle. Lights glowed from a. settlement farther up the coast, and a radio tower on the mountainous spine of the island winked with red, yellow and green lights. The jungle was thicker here, and Durell heard the swift rush of a stream tumbling from the upper heights. He ‘told Willi to stop the car and pull off the road and signed to Tommy Lee to get out. The Chinese did so, dabbing at a trickle of blood from a corner of his mouth. In the dim light, his round face looked anxious, and his voice reflected an eagerness to be rid of his guilt.

  Mr. Durell, I know I can’t escape my punishment for what I’ve done. But you must believe me that it seemed harmless enough, at first. It was all for my uncle and aunt, in Dendang.”

  Durell said grimly: ‘They were gone when I called.”

  “Yes, they are hiding now. But I saw my whole life destroyed, my citizenship, my job—I have always worked hard at the consulate. Someday there might be an investigation, but I thought I was safe. I never intended to be a spy, you see. The consul trusted me, I hoped someday I could establish myself honestly, but my parents were in Wei-pei, near Shanghai—my true parents, I mean—and Ch’ing learned about them, as he made it his business to get blackmail evidence on all Chinese in Dendang. I was one of the biggest fish caught in his net.”

  “Does Prince Ch‘ing work for Red China?”

  “There can be no question of this, although he believes in personal free enterprise, as your visit to Dendang must have shown you.” Lee smiled wryly, timidly. “He had orders recently to put pressure on all the Hakka people here and in Dendang.”

  “Was it to vote a certain way in the plebiscite next week?”

  Durell asked sharply.

  “Yes, but I do not know whether it was to be for Indonesia or Malaysia. Mr. Durell, I am trained in the old Chinese virtues. I honor my parents and my duty to them must come first. Perhaps by your standards this is wrong, and I struggled with it long and hard myself. Yoko tried to help, but I could not tell her the truth. You do not know how terrifying Ch’ing can be. He smells of evil like something rotting in the sun.”

  It was an old Communist trick, Durell thought, to pick up agents, create turncoats and traitors, by the pressure of blackmail. He spoke harshly.

  “Ch’ing wanted to know about the Andrew Jackson, right? You had cables about her passage through the Bandjang Channel and the time she was to sail past Pandakan. You knew her passage was nonpolitical, and Mr. Kiehle, at the SEATO meeting now, gave you orders to keep her presence secret until after the plebiscite, right? Otherwise, the enemy propaganda would have a field day, charging American imperialist interference and all the usual nonsense that helps persuade the innocent and fatten the greedy."

  “Yes,” Lee whispered. “Ch‘ing Wanted to know about the submarine—her course, her estimated time of passage.”

  Durell said flatly: “And you gave it to him.”

  Lee nodded. “He threatened terrible things to my parents in Wei-pei. He said Peiping would execute them.”

  "All right. One more thing. You actually saw that Jackson here, didn’t you? The sub must be here. Otherwise, there can he no reason for his acts. Is it near the tin-loading docks?”

  Lee was startled. “But how do you know?”

  “It had to be captured, for Holcomb to be found ashore here. It must be on this island that he was first kept prisoner. The only place, according to the charts, where a. boat the size of a Polaris sub could be hidden is in Ch’ing’s private little port. I know it hasn’t been spotted by the search planes, but the answer to that is easy, too. It’s been camouflaged, hasn’t it? It’s at dock under big nettings?”

  Again Lee nodded and swallowed noisily. “Everything you say is true.”

  “What about the sub’s people?”

  “Some are dead,” Lee whispered.

  “And the others are still prisoners?” Durell paused. His mind leaped ahead, putting the pieces of the puzzle together with trained accuracy. “Of course, Ch’ing had to keep some of the Jackson’s people alive. They‘d know how to dismantle her."

  Lee was startled. “Dismantle—?”

  “Peiping couldn’t hope to get a crew capable of running her north, through the Seventh Fleet. The only way to get her to the Chinese mainland would he to take her apart and load the parts, especially the nuclear warheads and the A-3 missiles, on the fake ore-carrying freighter in Ch’ing’s port.”

  “Believe me,” Lee whispered, “I did not dream, when I made my first error and yielded to fear, it would lead to such a monstrous thing. But what I gave to Ch’ing was merely pilot information. How could the sub be captured?”

  ”I don't know," Durell said, “but I mean to see it with my own eyes.”

  The road curved sharply inward and swung through the single dusty streets of two Malay kampongs, where the oil lanterns shone first on a crowd of Malay men, with their high cheekbones and short noses and round eyes, short and compact, surrounding a cockfight pit. In the second village, the main attraction was a shadow play. Beyond, there was a Hakka labor compound for the tin mines, and a new clearing of rice paddles hacked out of the lowland growth. In the glare of the car’s headlights, orchids glistened, shrouding trees and vines, and now and then the bright, eerie eyes of small animals shone back at them. Willi drove the car with care. Tommy Lee told Durell how he had come to Bangka from Pandakan in a fast launch.

  “It was strange,” he added. “Some very fast boats went by us, like your PT types, but they flew no flag. They were headed this way, but did not bother us. I don’t think they even saw us. But I’m sure they were not American Navy boats.”

  "Have you heard of any guerilla raids, any 'freedom fighter' maneuvers, designed for Bangka?” Durell asked.

  “Everything is possible. The islands are like tinder, waiting for a spark. You saw how it was in Pandakan, with the terrorist bombings. On the other islands, they raid the kampongs and try to terrorize the people into voting one way or another. . .. , We can go no further, Mr. Durell, on this road.”

  They had come to a fork, and to the right the jeep trail turned downstream, back toward the coast, following the little river that appeared before them. To the left, the trail was little more than a trace between high, vine-twisted trees. No guards were in sight.

  Tommy Lee explained the dilemma. The road to the right went back to the coast to circle the island to Bangka’s port and Prince Ch’ing’s stronghold. The submarine was there. But the road was guarded, mined, patrolled. It was impossible to hope they could get through. Durell looked at Willi Panapura, who nodded and moistened her pale mouth.

  “It’s true, Sam. They’ll be on guard that way.”

  “And the other road?”

  “It goes across the mountain, through the rain forest.”

  “Then we’ll take it.”

  “But you don’t know the rain forest, Sam—the swamps, snakes, heat and mud. No one goes there, ever.”

  “But you said old Joseph practically lived there when he was a coast watcher against the Japanese, long ago. You learned how to walk through it yourself, from listening to his stories. If it’s the only way to get to Ch’ing and see if the sub is hidden there, as I think it is, then we go through it.”

  She was silent and pale. “I’ve never been in the rain forest here myself. I couldn�
�t be sure. If We failed, it would be my fault, and I couldn’t bear that.”

  Tommy Lee coughed. “I know I can expect nothing from you, Mr. Durell, but even if you got through, what can you hope to do against Ch’ing’s private army? How could you get to the submarine? Ch’ing lives in a fortress—literally. You’ve Seen the old Portuguese castle in Pandakan Harbor? This one on Bangka is like it, built on the deep-water lagoon. I don’t know if the sub is there, but I know there is a barbed wire compound nearby, and armed guards. It is useless—”

  “Shut up,” Durell said. He watched the girl. “Willi?”

  “All right, Sam. We’ll try it,” she whispered.

  The trail worsened at once. The little river ran between high banks of red soil that glowed with sandy, gristly reflections in the headlights. The sound of the river was a steady muttering as it fell to the sea, compounded with the ever-present, distant booming of the surf that seemed audible everywhere on the island. The car bounced and skidded treacherously. The heat was unbelievable, and the small stir of air made by their movement was like the slow waving of a branding iron before their faces. Durell looked at the sky. One part was clear, and the Magellanic Clouds and Southern Triangle had a. wild, unnatural, blue-white brilliance. Beyond, like a dark shadow creeping to devour the world, was a black emptiness that was not empty at all, but filled with the whirling torrents and threshing power of lightning, rain and incredible winds. He felt the fine hairs on his forearms lift with the electric tension.

  “We cannot go much farther,” Lee muttered. “The road ends at a footbridge. There was once a teak lumbering operation here, but it no longer exists. . . .”

  As he predicted, the thread of trail rapidly gave out. The car jolted dangerously. Then the road lifted at a forty-degree angle that made the wheels spin helplessly in the soft jungle debris, tilting them in one place. The headlights shone at a crazy angle into the high, leafy tops of umbrella trees, wakening a wild storm of huge moths that came fluttering softly toward them on darting, iridescent wings.