Assignment- Death Ship

by Will B Aarons

  His hope was that the Russians didn’t know Plettner was in Calcutta, that they still were sidetracked onto Muncie. If the KGB got Plettner behind the Iron Curtain, he’d never be heard from again—but his mind would be enslaved to the purposes of world communism.

  He was torn between the urge to hurry and the sensible necessity of giving Muncie time to rest. He eyed her still form impatiently. She lay on her back, hips twisted to the side, legs curled. A little-girlish strand of hair fluttered over her parted lips as she breathed.

  He didn’t know how long he’d sat there waiting, when he was startled by a knock on the door.

  “Who’s there?” He heard the bed and looked around as Muncie stirred, pulling her skirt down primly over her knees. Her eyes were drowsy.

  “It’s me, sahib, Gobi of the kangali." The voice was a boy’s. The street orphans had been known to do almost anything for pay, and it crossed Durell’s mind that this could be a setup.

  “What do you want?”

  “Let me in.” The child lowered his tone. “What I have for you is worth pahntach rupees.”

  “Five rupees?” Durell removed the chair and reached for the latch.

  “Every boy in the street knows you will pay five rupees for taking to sisters,” Gobi announced. He was a smiling, skinny kid with a street-wise swagger.

  Durell told Muncie to get her shoes on.

  “Five rupees, please?” The boy held out a grubby hand. He might have been ten, but his eyes said forty.

  “Not so fast, Gobi. Take me to the sisters first—then I’ll give you the money.”

  The boy shrugged. “Atcha. Come, then.”

  There was the problem of Russian surveillance to deal with. For that Durell sent Gobi to recruit a gang of his peers to surround and obstruct the KGB spies as he left the building.

  It worked, and Gobi met them a block away, laughing at the mischief he’d created. “This way,” he. said, skipping ahead.

  They went past the old East India Company Writers Building to Strand Road and Howrah Bridge. Ungainly and immense, the structure spanned the turbulent Hooghly above masts and funnels from all over the world. Its shadow fell on stone ghats where women beat their washing and the faithful drank and bathed. The bridge roadway was jammed with traffic and the walkways were packed with pedestrians.

  Across the river, Howrah had roughly a million inhabitants and no public sewers. India’s biggest train station was over there, where passengers camped and cooked and the less fortunate scavenged and often died.

  It would be a good hunting ground for such as the Little Sisters of Mercy, Durell thought.

  His thoughts were yanked back by a shout from Gobi, who’d gone a few feet ahead of him in the throng.

  The boy was calling for help. Now Durell saw that he was struggling with a man.

  “Do something!” Muncie cried.

  Durell was already elbowing his way through the crowd. A thug in a green shirt had gotten hold of the raggedy child and seemed intent on dragging him across the roadway. Gobi’s frightened eyes caught sight of Durell. “Help, sahib! Help Gobi!” he screamed.

  All Durell could think of were the child snatchers for which the city was notorious, men who mutilated children and enslaved them as beggars or sold them into prostitution and the pornography industry.

  He reached out and grabbed the assailant by the collar, jerking him back, and the man bared a knife, snarling. The crowd shrank back with cries of alarm. Gobi darted to Durell’s side, dancing with excitement. Durell feinted, lunged for the man, and dodged as the bright blade whirred past him in a backhanded stroke. For the instant that Durell was off balance, the Indian turned and darted like a weasel through the mob of people.

  “You okay?” Durell asked Gobi.

  “Sure, sahib, sir.”

  “Where’s Muncie?” Dread shot through him like electricity: She was nowhere to be seen. Now it struck him that the snatching of Gobi had been a diversion—someone had grabbed her while he was busy saving the boy.

  He took off after the man in the green shirt, aware that Gobi was at his heels but caring only for Muncie’s safety. The only way to find her was to catch Gobi’s assailant and force him to talk.

  The crowd was a great current that he had to battle, pushing and battering against them, as sweat ran down his face and his breast burned for breath.

  Then he was off the bridge. He got a glimpse of the green shirt crossing traffic and heading upriver along the bank.

  Durell dodged trucks and buses with bleating horns, got across, and saw the Indian bound past a billboard for Gold Flake cigarettes and turn into an alley. Following, he found himself in a fetid passageway, feet slapping in black muck. He came out behind Howrah Station, the enormous structures of a major railyard on one side, the river on the other.

  He didn’t know what had happened to Gobi, but he didn’t worry about him for the moment. The danger to him was over, and the boy could seek him out again at his hotel.

  But Muncie . . .

  He might never see her again.

  He was running through a flyblown tent town. Dogs and crows picked at heaps of garbage. Broken pots lay scattered like pieces of skulls among rusting rails. People watched him run past without interest. In the haze beyond stood multi-storied buildings.

  He was gaining on the man in the green shirt.

  There was another sudden turn and he faced the black shadow of a doorway.

  He ran through and was struck by the stench of rancid meat and other hot, foul odors that came from large vats. Grinding machines clattered amid piles of bones that were stacked to ' the ceiling, and the concrete floor was slippery with grease.

  It was fat from stewed bones.

  He was in a fertilizer factory, where gaunt workers sweated in incredible heat and filth. Flies swarmed in the steamy light, blotting the windows.

  Something hit him as he came out the door. There was a paralyzing blow to the side of his head, and he went down rolling. Nothing stopped him from going over a stone embankment and splashing into the stinking bog of a Hooghly beach.

  He reeled onto his feet, wiping mud from his face, and looked up to see the green shirt and half a dozen other thugs jeering him.

  Then they started throwing the bricks.

  He was too out of it to dodge, even if he could have moved fast enough in the slime. Instinct had him reach inside his jacket for his revolver, but one of the bricks numbed his shoulder before he found the gun.

  Another one came at his face like a cannonball.

  It silenced everything. . . .

  Hammers pounded in his head.

  His first emotional response was despair.

  Even in the confusion of regaining consciousness, he was aware of failure. He’d lost Muncie . . . he’d lost Gobi . . . Plettner seemed as unattainable as a mirage.

  Hands touched his face ... he didn’t want to bother opening his eyes, but they wouldn’t leave him alone. As he came more fully awake he smelled the foul river mud, heard boat horns, distant traffic—all the sounds of the vast oriental city.

  He remembered the bricks, heard himself groan.

  Cobwebs befuddled his vision.

  He forced himself to comprehend and saw a twilight sky where the last instant of day drained into a pool of bloody fire. Fort William was a squat black shape on the enormous park across the river.

  It was night. Lights shone on boats and ships; fires winked where people cooked on the ghats and in back streets. Reflections rippled on the river.

  Someone was bending over him, wiping the mud away. Her voice was surprised. “You are a white man!”

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  Chapter 20

  “Sister Teresa, thank you. Of the Little Sisters of Mercy.”

  They went as fast as Durell could get the nun and her Indian helpers to go. He didn’t tell her he’d come for Dr. Plettner.

  “You are most fortunate I found you when I did,” Sister Teresa told him. She had a pretty, as
cetic face and spoke with a French accent. “Thieves and brigands of all sorts roam the river at night; they’d as soon slit your throat as pluck a chicken. It’s our calling to venture out and find the fallen— and we find so many, every day. But not westerners, not Americans!”

  Durell saw no reason to go into detail. “I don’t know exactly what happened. Somebody, must have hit me over the head.”

  “We’ll have a look at it when we reach the shelter. Better see if you still have your wallet, m’sieur.”

  “I have it,” he said, taking it out and looking inside. “And your money?”

  “Yes. All of it.”

  “Most strange.”

  “It’s a strange world, sister.”

  They had arrived at a high wattle fence where an Indian girl opened a gate for them. “Just a minute,” Durell told them. Across the street, in the hazy radiance of a street lamp, stood Sri Gupta.

  “Durellji. You are late,” Gupta said as Durell came to him.

  “And you, my friend, are patient: How did you find it?”

  “I know many people,” Gupta said. “I ask until I find. Your head . . . ?”

  “It’ll be all right. The opposition got Mrs. Plettner.”

  “I’m sorry—if I’d been there . . . but my taxi got separated in the traffic. . . .”

  Durell sighed. “Not your fault,” he said. “Nothing to do but pick up and go on. You know what to do?”

  Gupta nodded, and Durell returned to Sister Teresa. They went through the gate and into an old godown that probably had served the tea clippers. “We have so much room now,” she told him. “Our previous quarters were quite cramped.”

  Row upon row of emaciated patients—most of them men, because men came from the hinterlands to work in Calcutta— lay on low cots waiting to die. Little could be done for most of them, considering the primitive conditions and scarce supplies. “At least we can give their final hours some dignity,” Sister Teresa said.

  Nuns in white linen habits moved among the sick, feeding, doctoring, cleaning.

  “We find them on the street. No one cares but us,” Sister Teresa told him.

  Looking back, he saw Gupta slip inside, keeping his distance in the gloom.

  He said: “I’d like to see your mother superior.”

  “Mother Mary? She isn’t receiving at this hour, m’sieur.”

  “Wouldn’t she, if it were to accept a contribution? I’m very favorably impressed with your work, sister.” Durell looked about and felt a wave of nausea as an attendant picked dead flesh from a gangrenous leg. Around him, collapsed bodies showed the ravages of starvation, dysentery, cholera, tuberculosis. . . .

  “M’sieur! A donation?” The pretty little nun clasped her hands, her face glowing. “Come this way.”

  Crossing the warehouse, Durell had a moment to wonder if Mother Mary would tell him where to go to find her brother. If she wouldn’t, how could he force her to? After all, Biner had been a go-between for Plettner and Muncie, because Plettner hoped to avoid being located. Did Mother Mary know that?

  He chewed his lip worriedly as they approached an office cubicle. He was consoled by one thought: surely if she knew the truth. . . .

  “Here we are, m’sieur.” Sister Teresa knocked discreetly.

  “Come in.” The voice was cool but firm.

  He entered and found a frail woman who showed the ravages of poor diet and exhaustion in her sunken cheeks and trembling handshake. She obviously took almost nothing for herself. Great dark eyes that stared at him unblinkingly expressed an implacable will and faith. He saw in them no hint of selfishness or cunning, and he knew suddenly, with intense satisfaction, that she would sacrifice her brother to the greater good as readily as she had sacrificed herself.

  On being introduced, he wasted no time. “I didn’t come in here to give your order money, Reverend Mother. . . .”

  “Then Sister Teresa has made a mistake—”

  “I misled her deliberately.”

  “Oh? Are you playing games with us, after she may have saved your life? Please excuse me; my time is limited.” She turned back to a letter she had been writing.

  “I came to Calcutta to find your brother,” Durell told her. It was just luck that Sister Teresa brought me here; I would have come on my own soon enough.”

  Mother Mary gave him a scolding glare. “So you found out he’s here—”

  “Here? In this building?”

  “I suppose you’re a journalist?”

  “No, I’m an agent of the U.S. government.” He waited to see her reaction and was surprised by its mildness.

  “Then it must be important,” she said.

  “Please, don’t try to keep me from him.”

  “Why on earth would I do that?” She turned to the other nun. “Sister Teresa, be so kind as to take Mr. Durell to my brother.”

  He walked out of the office stunned by the ease of it and not quite able to believe it. Thoughts raced through his mind: Was it possible there had been a switch of identities? That the man he was about to meet would be someone other than Muncie’s husband? Could Biner have conspired to misdirect him with his last breath?

  Sister Teresa led him down the long floor, between aisles of patients and busy nuns, toward the river end of the go-down that extended out over the water. There she stopped where the building had been partitioned. With a wave of her hand, she invited him to proceed without her.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to enter,” she said.

  His pulse quickened with anticipation as he advanced toward a door, then the sign leapt out at him. In English and other languages, it read:

  WARNING

  LEPROSY

  DO NOT ENTER!

  Chapter 21

  Durell stared at the sign, then looked back at Sister Teresa.

  “You may go in,” she said gently—as if that were the question.

  He didn’t bother to express his reservations.

  Of course, if a man wanted to hide, there couldn’t be a better place to do it. It challenged Durell’s last reserves of determination to grasp the doorknob and turn it.

  Lanterns cast a smoky light over a horrible picture of despair. The loathsome disease flaunted its work in the bloody stumps of fingers, arms, legs, running sores, and disfigured faces. Two nuns worked here, one elderly and wizened, the other young and intense. And there was a man. . . .

  The man stooped over the misshapen form of a child already scarred beyond recognition. He saw Durell’s shoes. Not raising his eyes, he said, “They brought this one in this evening. Abandoned some time ago, by the look of him. Another night and the dogs or jackals would have carried him off.” The man’s voice was tired and woeful.

  “Mightn’t it have been better if they had?” Durell asked. He found himself holding his breath against the stench.

  “It’s not for me to decide,” the man replied. “It’s a life, and I’m here to save lives.”

  Durell’s reply stuck in his throat as the man looked up at him. He’d been about to ask whether that was true, and if so, why he’d conspired to kill so many others. But when Durell saw the face, his combativeness left him. The face crushed his doubts, for it was illuminated by the fires of sacred commitment and the humility to die for it.

  In that moment Durell was forced to recognize that he’d found Dr. Peter Plettner . . . and to admit that he must have been pursuing the wrong man, after all.

  He’d thought he was on the verge of ending the X. coli threat, but now, standing in the repugnant miasma of sickness and death, he was overcome by hopelessness.

  Surely the madmen who’d eluded him would release their plague before he could find a new trail.

  He’d done his best. With that thought, he sought to buy a moment’s peace of mind—but it didn’t come.

  Quitting went against his training and everything he stood for.

  Instead of peace, he felt anger and then resentment. X. coli had originated in Plettner’s lab, and if it hadn’t be
en for Plettner’s experiments, over a thousand people would still be alive.

  Suddenly furious, he yanked Plettner up and threw him against the wall. The nuns yelled and pulled at Durell’s jacket; he brushed them away and pushed his face close to the other man’s. Plettner looked astonished, frightened. “Who are you? What are you doing?” he pleaded.

  “More important, I know who you are—no saint! And I know what you were up to in your lab.” Durell’s irises had turned from blue to a terrible, stormy black.

  “What do you mean?” Plettner asked.

  “I mean the stuff you brewed that was used for mass murder—that someone is using now to extort the government of the United States.”

  “M-murder?” Plettner’s face paled to a sallow yellow. He seemed afraid to struggle against Durell. His eyes lit with comprehension. “You found out about the bacteria! It’s why I left—believe me! I don’t know what’s happened since. . ."

  Durell twisted the man’s collar tighter, watching his eyes panic. “Tell me about it,” he growled.

  Plettner clawed the wall, sucking for breath. Durell loosened up a bit. “Please . . . I didn’t want to develop the bacteria. Caske forced me to.”

  “Caske?” Durell hesitated. “He knew what kind of thing you had?”

  Plettner nodded. “He kept after me, pressuring me. It was the only way to save the company—to save my reputation as well as his. . .

  “What was?”

  Plettner’s face crumpled in woe. “A biological weapon— for germ warfare. He said nobody need know—as long as we looked prosperous they wouldn’t ask. He said he could find buyers. . . .” The scientist read the hatred in Durell’s face. “I didn’t intend to do it—and the discovery was an accident . . . but once Caske found out about it. . . !”

  “Of course, you kept it on hand, had to experiment with it, see what it could do, didn’t you? That wasn’t Caske’s fault, was it!”

  Plettner’s hand covered his eyes. “No. I could have destroyed it, but I didn’t, God help me. Instead, when it seemed that Caske really might find a buyer, I was so appalled by what I’d done, I ran away. Maybe my nerves broke . . . maybe I went crazy. But I had to prove to myself that I couldn’t have done what Bernhard Caske—and I—had contemplated—that I wouldn’t have had any part in plunging the world into the nightmare of biological warfare.” He took a breath, struggling with his emotions. “So I came here, trying to make amends. Doing good. And I brought the key to my work with me—here.” He tapped his head. “So that no one could ever reproduce what I’d done.”