Assignment - Manchurian Doll

by Edward S. Aarons

  A stabbing beam of light stabbed toward them and Durell looked beyond the glare to the sleek hunting shape of a coastal patrol cutter. A signal light blinked and winked. One of Tagashi’s men replied, using Omaru’s code book. Above the sound of the sea and the wind came the growl of the patrol boat as it came closer. The signals blinked again. Again the Okiku replied. Rain blotted out the shape of the other boat.

  They could not see the land, but they could feel the pressure of its mass through the stormy night. They went on, probingly, and the patrol boat fell astern and disappeared. Now a few land lights appeared through the tattered curtains of rain, some steady, some winking and uncertain. There was a mine field at the mouth of the river where the village of Ospesko huddled between sea and mountain. For long minutes they sweated over the charts taken from Omaru. The mines might or might not have been there. None were sighted.

  The rain came and went. Now the village lights were bright and distinct, pinpoints through the dark night, and the loom of the land was a blacker cloud on the night horizon. Durell stood with Nadja beside the little rubber boat. He thought he heard the growl of the patrol boat following in their wake toward the harbor, but the wind made all sounds uncertain.

  The weather favored them, he thought, by obscuring them, and at the same time exposed them to more intent scrutiny in any radar screens that might have picked them up, since few small boats would venture out in the face of the storm warnings. They were all the more conspicuous for it.

  Tagashi chose a sudden squall that struck at them from the south in which to change course and head for the beach Nadja had described. The squall would obscure the radar-scopes that might have picked them up and perhaps permit them to lose themselves entirely under the height of the land.

  The deck heaved and pitched underfoot, and seas began to break over the prow. The rubber boat was lowered in absolute darkness, held by a line in Tagashi’s taut hand. Nadja hesitated at the rail beside Durell, then dropped over the side into the rubber dinghy at his nod. He followed a moment afterward.

  Rain slashed at his face as he looked up at the trawler’s hull. Tagashi and the other crew-members were dim blurs above them. The rubber boat heaved and bounced in the unruly water. Tagashi made a signal and Durell shoved away with the oar and they were free, swinging and bobbing toward the blackness of the shore.

  It was not completely black. Between the momentary deluges of warm rain, he could see the dim shape of the river mouth, a low slash in the high ridge of barren mountains running north and south along the coast. The lights of Ospesko glittered fitfully in that direction. He dug the paddle in hard, fighting the pull of uncertain tides and currents. In less than a minute, the Okiku was blotted from sight.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Rain fell from the night sky in a warm trickle as Durell hauled the rubber boat up on the beach. The waters of the little cove were calm, but surf thundered at each rocky arm that sheltered it. He had paddled for half an hour, fighting unfamiliar tides and the current of the river. For part of the time he had been able to guide himself by the village lights on the river bank. Then a further light to the south served as a beacon for him. Nadja had taken the paddle a few times, to adjust their course. Behind them, the Okiku was almost immediately blotted from sight.

  There were tumbled boulders on the beach, and Durell dragged the rubber dinghy behind one and paused to rest. There was little to be seen in the darkness. Towering cliffs loomed ahead, and they seemed to be at the bottom of a deep pit scooped out of the shore. The wind thrashed against the scrubby brush that grew at the inland edge of the sand.

  But he did not feel as if they were alone.

  Nadja stood beside him, alert and watchful.

  “It smells familiar,” she murmured.

  “Is this where you used to swim?”

  “I think so. But it is too dark to be certain. Yet it must be the same place. Papa and I used to fish in the river—” she gestured northward—“where there are marshes and salt ponds. It’s the same smell, even here.”

  “We’re only a mile or so from the river mouth,” Durell said.

  The girl shivered. “It feels lonely.”

  “Not lonely enough, I’m afraid,” he said grimly.

  She turned her head, and her face was a pale oval, questioning him. “What is it?”

  “We must assume we’re being watched,” he said.

  “Do you think Omaru—?”

  “We must assume the worst.” He shrugged. “We’ll go on as if we think we’re safe and unexpected.”

  “I don’t like that.”

  “Neither do I,” he said, and grinned.

  She led the way. There was a path that twisted up the cliffside above the beach. The path was in good condition, packed hard and buttressed by sunken logs to prevent washouts. Nadja held his hand as they climbed upward. In a matter of minutes, they stood on a flat, wooded area where the path became a wagon track, the deep ruts cutting across a stubbly field toward a woods. Nadja did not hesitate. She followed the wagon tracks and presently he saw a coolie farmer’s hut at the edge of the trees. A dim oil lamp inside seemed very bright in the window, in contrast to the rainy night.

  “Be careful,” Nadja whispered. “There used to be dogs.” Durell had a knife as well as his gun. He took the blade out and held it ready as they passed the small hut. But no dogs came yelping after them to arouse the night. They followed the path for several hurried, anxious moments. “Wait,” Durell said.

  The girl stopped immediately. Barbed wire glinted across their path, strung along the shoulders of a military road that paralleled the shore. There was a gateway of wire barring the wagon road where it joined the asphalt highway, and beyond it stretched long, glinting rice paddies. The wind made dark ripples on the watered fields. The rain stopped at that moment, lifting the visibility.

  “There was no fence here before,” Nadja whispered. “Of course, it was ten years ago, and the fields are bigger. It’s changed. The town is to our right. You can see the glow of lights. Papa and I came here in the truck, from the other way. I’d forgotten how it was. But seeing it again is bringing it back. We always came from the south, though.”

  “How long a trip was it from the mission?”

  “Not long. Fifteen minutes, perhaps.”

  “Is it too far to walk?”

  “I think not.”

  The fence was not electrified, and he held the barbed strands apart as she slipped through, and then she did the same for him. Her movements were quick and silent. She was well trained, he thought, but he sensed an unnatural tension in her that might prove calamitous if it built up much more.

  They were in the middle of the road when the truck came around the bend.

  The wind covered the sound of its engine until the last moment, and Durell’s first warning was the sudden, lifting glare of its headlights. Afterward, he wondered if the vehicle had been coasting silently down the slight grade, and if the lights had just been snapped on. But there was no time to think about it. He shoved Nadja hard, and dived for the ditch on the opposite side of the road. The roar of the truck engine shook the air, but it was not going fast. It seemed to slow down as it passed the gateway in the barbed wire fence. The headlights flooded the rice paddies with their glare. He heard the sound of singing, and glimpsed the packed figures of uniformed Chinese troops in the open, stake-bodied vehicle. There were at least twenty of them, all armed with automatic rifles. Durell hugged the wet, rank earth. Nadja huddled beside him in the irrigation ditch, which fortunately contained little water at the moment.

  The truck passed.

  Durell stood up. The girl moved more slowly.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go on.”

  They followed the military road on an upgrade for thirty minutes. Twice they had to dive for the ditches as other military vehicles roared by. One was a motorcycle, another an armored car. Durell could not shake off the feeling they were be
ing carefully watched. Yet he could not pinpoint anything specific. In the darkness, he did not think they could be seen. Both he and Nadja wore dark clothing, and kept well to the shadows. By ten o’clock, they came in sight of the ruins.

  First there was a small cluster of farmers’ huts, most of them dark. Dogs barked at them, but none came near— apparently there was enough military traffic on the road to dull their alarm at passersby. They circled the tiny hamlet by crossing the rice paddies on the dikes, and then followed an old stone wall that was higher than Durell’s head, climbing uphill to the summit where the ruins brooded. There were terraced orchards here, thick with fallen, wet leaves. The rain did not start again, but the warm wind blew harder.

  Durell halted.

  “Is that the place?”

  Nadja was silent.

  “Is it?” he asked.

  “It seems so different, in the night—after so long—”

  “What was it like when you lived here?”

  Her voice sounded faint. “There was the mission church, of course. And the hospital. One of the richer villagers had donated a house for the clinic, with much ceremony, you know—a parade and firecrackers and an announcement by a crier specifying how much money the man had given and how generous he was. It’s the custom not to hide one’s light under a bushel in charitable works here. The hospital was there, on the hilltop. But I don’t see it now.”

  “There are only ruins. You said it was all burned.”

  “Yes.”

  “But this is not the place where you were kept a prisoner by the old Chinese, afterward.”

  “N-no.”

  “Can you remember any more about it now? How far he took you after your parents were killed? And after they left you for dead, too?”

  She shuddered. “I cannot remember anything now.” “Nadja, you must!”

  “I cannot! I do not want to go on.”

  “You’ve got to. It’s no use, coming this far.”

  “I know,” she said wearily. “I had hoped it would come back to me—how it was, and just what happened to me. But I cannot remember anything, after they shot me.” She paused. “All I can think of is that filthy little hut, where that old man kept me locked in for weeks, for months—Pere Jacques—and what he did to me, day after day—”

  Her voice lifted. He tried to stop her, but it was too late. Someone came walking toward them, calling out in a thin, querulous tone.

  It was an old woman.

  There was no chance to run or hide. They stood in the lane that twisted up the hillside and waited for the old woman to approach. She carried a lantern, and she wore baggy coolie trousers and a blue shirt and dirty sneakers. Her face looked centimes old, canny and cruel in the rays of the lamp.

  Durell said quickly to Nadja: “Did everyone here know the old man as Pere Jacques?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Ask her about him, then.”

  “But—”

  “Ask her.”

  Nadja spoke to the old woman in quick Manchurian dialect. Her voice was shaky, and the old woman lifted her lantern to inspect them. Her face closed abruptly when she saw they were not Chinese. She started to cry out, and Nadja caught her arm and said something very quickly and harshly, and the woman lowered the lantern and looked at them sullenly. She did not reply to Nadja’s questions. Her eyes kept sliding away, as if she wanted to escape. She had been carrying a small hamper on a pole over her shoulder, and she finally put it down and said something angrily and pointed downhill toward the farm hamlet they had just circled.

  Nadja shook her head and pointed upward toward the ruined mission compound. The peasant woman spoke in an offensive tone and started away. Durell blocked her path. She glared at him with fear in her eyes.

  Nadja said: “I told her we were Russians. There have been some Russian military inspection teams here. She does not believe me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we are not in uniform. All Russians are in uniform, she says.”

  “She does not remember you?”

  “I think she does. It has been ten years, but—I think so. Perhaps that is why she is suspicious.”

  “Is the military activity in the neighborhood normal? Ask her that,” Durell suggested.

  Nadja spoke again to the old woman. She shook her head sullenly. Then she asked another question, and the old woman laughed. Nadja looked pale.

  “What is it?” Durell asked.

  “I wanted to know if the old Chinaman, the crazy one they called Pere Jacques, was still alive around here. She says yes, he is.”

  “Does she know the way to his house?”

  Nadja shivered. “She says it is not far.”

  The old woman jabbered and pointed up the hill. Durell was curious about her hamper, and reached down and opened it. Instantly the crone swung to him in shrill anger.

  “Tell her to be quiet,” he said flatly.

  Nadja spoke, and the old woman stood in huddled, anxious defiance. The hamper contained only two bottles of rice wine, nothing else.

  Nadja said: “This old woman says everything is normal. There are always patrols, she says. But no one has been to the mission ruins for years. She says only ghosts live there now. The white imperialist-devils, she calls them. None of the farmers ever go there now. As for Pere Jacques, she says he lives only with the wind. But she won’t explain it. Maybe she does not know any more. She simply says he lives with the wind.”

  She paused abruptly. The sound of crunching footsteps on the lane suddenly came to them. Durell turned and saw the wavering shape of a man climbing the hill toward them. The man carried a lantern, too, and the rays of light gleamed on brass buttons. He wore a military uniform, with a sergeant’s insignia on his sleeve. His rifle was carried in the crook of his left arm. As he walked, he muttered to himself and sang bits of song and rolled drunkenly.

  It was too late to move on or try to hide. In any case, the old woman began to scream shrilly, crying out and pointing to Durell and Nadja. The Chinese sergeant stopped and looked at them from under thick, lowering brows. He was sweating, with dark stains under his armpits. He paused with his booted feet spread firmly apart, and glowered at them.

  Nadja spoke to the old woman, who jabbered something and tried to snatch back her wine bottles. It was just the diversion needed for the sergeant.

  He lurched forward and shoved the old woman brutally aside, and grinned as he plucked the two bottles from the hamper and waved them high in one hand, his fingers looped around the glass necks. His rifle muzzle sagged from the crook of his arm.

  Durell spoke in authoritative Russian.

  “Sergeant, can you understand me?”

  The man grinned and nodded. He was big, tough and muscular, approaching middle age. “Yes, comrade. A little. You have trouble with this old witch?”

  “You may have her wine. A brace soldier deserves such a gift.”

  “Thank you, comrade. It is proper. The soldiers of the People’s Republic of China salute the technicians of the Soviet Union, eh?”

  The man broke the neck of one of the bottles on a stone at his feet and tilted it up to let the contents gush into his wide, gaping mouth. Most of the wine splashed down his chin and sweaty throat.

  The old woman began to wail calamity.

  The sergeant belched. “Are you lost, comrades?”

  “We are looking for someone who lives near this village. He may be an imperialist spy, but we are not sure. He is a crazy old man who thinks he is a priest of the Western church.”

  “What’s his name? I’ll have him shot,” the sergeant said obligingly.

  “We only wish to question him,” Durell said. “You know there is an alert along this part of the coast tonight?”

  The big Chinaman winked. “It is so. But your people are taking care of it. Our orders are not to interfere.”

  “But there is a lot of activity from your camp.”

  Again the man winked. “One shoots off firecrackers to appease
the devil dragons.” Then he looked stubborn. “It’s your headache, not ours.”

  “This is the attitude of your superiors?”

  The man looked worried for a moment, lest he had said too much to a Russian. But Durell had learned something he had wanted to know. It was obvious that the Chinese troops were only making motions toward cooperation, for reasons of their own. It meant that his major danger came only from Omaru. He had counted on a certain amount of truculent jealousy from the two allies here.

  But then the sergeant dropped his bottle and abruptly unslung his rifle. He waved the gun at Nadja. “What is the matter with her? She is shivering.”

  “She is cold.”

  “The wind is warm.”

  “About this old man we wish to find—” Durell began. But it was too late. The sergeant’s drunken cheerfulness changed to sudden suspicion. Perhaps he feared he had talked too much about his superior’s orders. His thick brows made a dark brush across his squinting eyes. The old Woman babbled something and pointed to Nadja. The girl shrank away. Durell, unable to grasp the quick Manchurian dialect, saw the sergeant’s rifle lift and point at the girl.

  “You are under arrest,” the soldier said in Russian. He laughed. “We were not supposed to interfere, but since you walk into my arms, I must hold you.”

  Then the trooper shouted for the guard, and an answering yell came from down the walled lane, followed by the sound of trotting feet lower on the dark hill. There was no help for it, Durell decided. He knocked the gun muzzle up and wrenched the weapon aside.

  Fortunately, the gun didn’t go off. The Chinese was big and powerful, but his reflexes were slowed by liquor. He grunted and staggered and started to yell again, and Durell hit him in the mouth and drove him against the stone wall beside the lane. The old woman screamed. She smothered the sound at once as Durell twisted the rifle free and slammed it across the sergeant’s head. The man would not fall. Desperate, Durell struck again, aware of querulous calls from the hamlet below. The Chinese swung a massive fist that caught Durell on the side of the head. The rifle clattered to the stones between them. The man grinned, drooling spittle and blood from his broken mouth. He glanced down at the rifle—and Durell jumped him, took him to the ground, and rolled over and over down the lane with him.