Assignment - Cong Hai Kill (18 page)

She wore shorts and a
bandanna in place of a bra, and there was grease on her hands and in her blonde
hair. But there was also a radiance in her eyes that died quickly as she saw
the gun Durell carried and recognized anger on his face.

“What. is it? What’s the
matter?”

“Where is Orris?”

The familiar, insolent
drawl came from behind the boilers. “Right here, Cajun.”

“Get out of there,”
Durell snapped.

“I’m workin’, old
buddy.”

“We’re not buddies. Come
out. And hands up.”

Lantern crawled out of
the narrow slot behind the boiler. He carried a heavy spanner in a greasy fist.
His eyes were baleful, like a cat's, belying his easy smile.

“You gonna shoot me now,
Cajun?”

“Drop the wrench.”

“I’m workin’ with
it.”

“Drop it.”

The heavy tool clattered
to the steel deck. “You know what, Cajun? The way you hate my guts is makin’
you blind.”

“You were supposed to
stay out of sight. How long do you think it will be before some rat in the
village runs off to tell the Cong Hai about you?”

“Won’t make no
difference nohow, if they come to kill me and we’re still here. Our only
chance is to get t’hell out, and fast.” The bearded man moved‘
Anna-Marie gently aside. “You stay out of the way, sweetheart. This is between
him and me, and I got a feelin’ one of us ain’t gonna make it home.”

“You may be right,”
Durell said.

“You know the trouble
with you, CIA man? You used to be real people, down in the bayous; but then you
went to Yale and got cultured up and become a lawyer and all, and then you got
this big job for the government and you forgot how us ordinary garage mechanics
live.” Orris laughed harshly. “Yeah, I’m a mechanic. Or I was, back
home in the hills. I can take this ol’ engine apart and put it together
blindfolded, see?”

“I don’t want your
help,” Durell said grimly.

“Well, you’re gonna need
it. You need a new camshaft that helps drive the port paddlewheel. That’s all
that’s wrong with this little ol’ tub. The shaft snapped in two, from
metal stress and rust. We need a new one before we move this boat under its own
power.”

Durell felt his anger
ebb and change to dismay. He didn’t trust Lantern. He couldn’t afford to. But
he saw where the man had wrenched his wounded shoulder and started the blood
oozing through the new bandages Anna-Marie had applied. Pain and fever shone in
Lantern’s yellow eyes, but his grin was still as defiant and insolent as ever.
He told himself not to let the renegade rub him the wrong way. Lantern was
playing his own game, and his goal was still not clear.

But when he examined the
damage Lantern had been working on, behind the rusted boilers, his chagrin
deepened. Lantern was right. The engine was a Fairley-Smith, a two-cylinder
affair with a six-foot stroke. Durell was familiar with its workings. The rusted
boilers alone presented a dangerous problem. Fired up with the wood the
villagers were stacking on deck, and brought to proper pressure, they might all
be blown sky-high. Even if that worked, the paddles might quietly come apart at
the first revolution, even though the heavy teak blades and struts were more
durable than iron in this climate. But the worst of it was the damage Orris had
described. Nothing less than a new linking drive shaft would ever get the 
Dong
Xo Lady
 to move again.

In the darkened pit of
the engine room, he saw Lantern wince with pain when Anna-Marie touched him.
But the moment he saw he was watched, the man’s face became mocking and defiant
again.

“I’m right, huh?”
Lantern said softly.

“Yes.” Durell was short
with him. “All that work topside is for nothing.”

“Maybe not. Maybe I can
fix it.”

“Can you get another
shaft?”

“I might. Or I might
make one.”

“Where?”

“You wouldn’t trust me
to go after it.”

“I’ll get it myself.
Where is it?”

Lantern looked at him
with bitter eyes. “Go to hell, Cajun,” he said. “I’d just as soon stay here and
wait for the Cong Hai to come for me.”

Ten minutes later,
Durell went hunting for Papa Danat. If anyone knew where there were
machine parts in Dong Xo, the tea planter would know. He left Lantern in his
prison cabin, under guard of two of Muong’s troopers, and strode
through the heat, dust, buffalo carts, and noise of the village street in
search of the fat Frenchman.

He went to Giralda’s house
first and found the woman there, feeding a brilliant macaw in a bamboo cage.
She wore a Western skirt and had her thick, wiry hair piled in a high knot atop
her head. Her eyes turned unfriendly and stubborn when he’ asked for Danat.
She had been a beautiful woman, once; and he could easily find reasons for Danat’s affair
with her. It must have been lonely for the Frenchman in this isolated place,
and Giralda, with her obvious attractions, had made herself available and
had catered to his weaknesses for food and an occasional opium pipe. There
might be more to it, Durell reflected, but he had no time to explore it now.

“He is not here,” Giralda said
in French. “I have not seen him since you took him from me last night.”

“I can smell his pipe.”

“I smoke one myself, now
and then.”

“Tell him to come out
here.”

“I told you, he is not
with me.” Giralda shrugged smooth and shapely shoulders. “You may
look for yourself.”

It was true. Danat was
not in the house.

He returned to the
lagoon then, to find Deirdre, thinking she might have had occasion to see the
Frenchman. But Deirdre was not with the women cutting the vines away from the
boat. Neither was she in the government house. He found Major Muong on
the river front, checking his patrols. Muong had not seen Deirdre,
either.

It was now an hour past
noon, and unease became a stabbing worry as he asked Muong to search
the godowns for machine parts. Muong said quietly: “But you think
Lantern knows where to find this engine piece we need?”

“He may be bluffing.”

“He can be made to talk.
It would be my pleasure to ask him.”

“You can have him, if
everything else fails.”

“Good.”

An hour later, Durell
was convinced that Deirdre was nowhere in the village.

She had disappeared.

                                  20

LAO watched a chameleon
move over the face of the temple carving and considered the patience of the
reptile in its pursuit of a fly. It was cool and shadowed in the ruins. He
heard the water rub against the stone embankment. The eroded ceilings of the
temple wept moss and vines that reached knobby-knuckled fingers into the stone
crevices. He was alone except for the green chameleon; it had a yellow tail and
a blood-red crest; and now it waited near his foot. The gloom had the eerie
half-light of underwater green. The young Chinese could be as patient as the
reptile, as dedicated to his own ends as the creature’s pursuit of food. Soon
this desperate dance would end as the world turned and changed. He thought of
the Old Man, with his wispy beard and fragile body and the immense power of his
concepts for Asia. The dragon had slept for long, the Old Man said, but time
was with the East. Once, an impudent student had asked Ho Chi Minh if it was
not merely another form of imperialism, and the tool had been removed, as
quietly and completely as . . .

Sergeant Lao stepped
with his bare foot on the yellow-tailed lizard chasing its fly. The body
crushed and crackled under his stone-hard sole.

As completely as that,
he thought.

And now for the American
woman.

He walked through the
temple shadows, watching the quiet movement of liquid light that reflected from
the lagoon where the villagers were working.

“Miss Deirdre,” he said.
His manner was polite, even obsequious. “Miss Deirdre, will you please come
with me?”

Deirdre had been
surprised. She had thought she was alone in this quiet place of mined glory.
Watching the work from within the shadowed entrance, she knew she had been only
a burden to Durell since her part of the work was done. She had gained
Anna-Marie’s confidence and made contact with Orris Lantern, and then
she could do no more. She had first been confident of her ability to help and
equal Durell’s work. But now she did not know, and now she felt unsure of
herself, seeking some way to prove her worth. If she could only think of
something! But it all seemed so hopeless.

“Miss Deirdre?”

She looked up with
surprise at Sergeant Lao and got quickly to her feet. “What is it?” she asked.

“You seem so troubled,
Miss Deirdre. It is a thing to fear, being a woman, and being trapped in Dong
Xo. I have been watching you.”

“Indeed.” She kept her
voice calm. “And what have you decided, Lao?”

“I can help you with
your problem.”

“Do I have a problem?”

“It is one that perhaps
you alone can solve. Your—Mr. Durell—trusts no one. But Major Muong confides
in me, Miss Deirdre. He has agreed to my plan.”

“What plan?”

“If you would come with
me —”

“Where?” .

“Major. Muong will
explain about the arms.”

“What arms?” .

“At the Danat plantation.
There are many weapons there. If we could arm the villagers, the major thinks
we would all be safer—perhaps, indeed, be strong enough to defeat any attack
the Cong Hai may mount against us tonight.”

“You want 
me
 to
go to Major Muong?”

“It is really urgent.
The day passes, and there is not much time left.”

Looking at the open
Chinese face that Lao turned to her, Deirdre felt a sudden lift of hope.
Perhaps there was something she could do, after all, to show Durell that she
was not just a useless female imposed on him here. It was worth the chance. It
was true, as Lao said, that Durell trusted no one. It might be a fault, and
because of it, he might pass up an honest offer of help. . . .

“Will you come with me,
please, Miss Deirdre?”

“To Major Muong?
Certainly,” she said.

She started forward,
toward the entrance that faced the lagoon. He checked her with a respectful
touch on her arm.

“This way, Miss
Deirdre.”

“All right.”

She followed him through
the dark, echoing rooms of the ruins, for only a short way, until they came to
where the wall had crumbled and sunlight shone on a green enclosure defined by
a long line of toppled, eroded stone demons. Lao slid beyond her and stepped
out first, and he was out of her sight for a moment as she walked into the hot
sunshine.

It seemed to Deirdre
that she felt, rather than heard, a kind of soundless explosion. It was
enormous, filling the universe, darkening the day. She wanted to call out to
Sergeant Lao, in that instant but then a deeper darkness came swooping at her
from the corners of the sky and engulfed her as it in the giant wings of some
great bird of prey.

She knew and felt
nothing afterward.

Twenty minutes later,
Sergeant Lao walked down the alley to the waterfront and climbed the ladder to
the veranda of Giralda’s house. He moved with the efficiency of a
fine machine, without a wasted motion, and was as soundless as the huge
butterflies that winked along the river’s edge. The woman, Giralda, was
inside. She did not hear him come in. Her back was to him, and she was combing
her thick black hair as he crossed the room behind her. He caught her by the
wrist and flung her across the teak plank floor with such force that she went
stumbling and sliding with her long hair swinging in a dark screen across her
astonished face. She started to make a sound of terror that was half plea and
half apology, but Lao flung himself upon her long, womanly form and clapped a
hand across her mouth, grinning down at her, enjoying her cushiony curves under
his hard body.

“You will be quiet,” he
whispered. “All women are stupid and fools.”

Her eyes were round with
shock and terror.

“When our time comes,”
Lao said softly, “you will know that you are truly inferior. Moreover, you
disobey and you are greedy. Have you come to admire your soft and wretched old
Frenchman? Who knows? When one tastes treachery in one bowl, another may seem
equally tempting later. I shall beat you, Giralda. I shall impress
discipline upon you. And if you make a sound, I shall kill you.”

Lao knew many ways to
thoroughly degrade and scar a woman’s soul, so that she would always remember
his face with a shudder of fear. But he was careful not to leave any marks on
her that the villagers might see. He was careful about blood, too. He wrapped
bandages about his fists and worked over Giralda’s magnificent body,
inflicting pain where he knew she was most sensitive. She did not whimper or
scream, although her mouth was open all the time. Neither did he explain what
he was doing or why, or ask anything of her as yet. When she rolled away from
him at last, naked and gasping, convulsed with the tremendous effort simply to
breathe and exist with what he had done to her, Lao halted and stood up. He had
stripped to his loincloth, and his thin, muscular figure was erect, covered
with a sheen of sweat. Nothing had changed in him except for the excited gleam
in his almond eyes. He watched Giralda try to cover her nakedness
with the tattered remnants of her Western skirt, and he contemptuously threw
her a bright 
panung
 from a wooden chest in a corner of the
room.