Assignment - Cong Hai Kill (3 page)

“You can trust me in my
own room, please. Just ten minutes.”

“No,” he said. “We talk
this out first.”

“But I won’t run away
again, I promise you.”

“It’s not that. We
didn’t know how deeply you felt about Orris Lantern. You didn’t tell
Deirdre, and you were supposed to tell her everything.”

“Did she come here only
to learn my secrets?” Anna-Marie snapped.

“She’s your friend. She
came here to help you.”

“But she works for you.
So I cannot trust her, either, now.”

He didn’t argue about
it. If you live long enough in a world of shadows, a World of suspicion and
plot and counterplot, a silent war in which there are no bugles and often only
a quick wit or trained reflex saves you from sudden and ugly death, you must
inevitably reflect some of that lack of trust to others whom you wish to
believe in you. He often wished that he could do something about this, that he
weren’t set quite so far apart from the lives of ordinary men and women. But he
had been in the business too long to change; he had chosen a lonely road, and
he had no real regrets about it. He was dedicated to his job, and he had long
ago passed the point where his survival factor meant anything hopeful. Tonight
had been a bad sign, and his nearness to death at the hands of what he must
call an amateur shook his confidence for a moment.

He entered his room
ahead of the girl, using all the normal techniques of precaution. The manager
of the Palace—a Chinese of slender and graceful manners—had promised, with many
a high 
wei
-the traditional greeting of folded hands before the
chest or face—to have the hotel’s power generator working by nightfall. But of
course the room was dark, except for an oil lamp on a teakwood table next to
the Bombay chair that faced the balcony. Durell disliked rooms with balconies,
but the Palace boasted of one for every room that faced the sea. He drew the
girl inside and closed the door silently behind them. He breathed slowly. He
was not sure that he smelled anything alien or not. But there was a sense of
intrusion, of someone having been here during his brief absence when he’d
chased after Anna-Marie along the 
klongs
. It was difficult to tell.
His old Grandpa Jonathan, with whom he had spent his boyhood in the green
Louisiana bayous, taught that a hunter should be able to locate an enemy
literally by smell. The converse was true, of course; a hunted man, in danger,
should have doubly keen senses.

It seemed to Durell that
there was the smell of someone here in his room that had not been there before,
a compound of sweat that reflected fish and rice in the diet, and of a sticky
sweet smoke, not unlike opium. When Durell moved into the big room, silently
pacing the shining tiles, moving with a lithe ease for his size, he found
nothing behind the drapery or in the wardrobe closet or in the huge bathroom
area. The connecting door was locked, the key at the same angle he had left it.

He went out on the
balcony and looked down at the square with its dark flower beds and pedicabs and
the beautiful Thai women walking beside the sea, and he thought of his earlier
image of death and danger coming into paradise. He was annoyed when he looked
back at Anna-Marie Danat.

She was an unexpected
complication now, instead of a dependable ally. Back in Washington, General
McFee had been very explicit about her.

“You can trust Miss Danat,
Cajun. She’ll turn Orris Lantern over to you—provided you’re with
Deirdre. She trusts Deirdre, so she’ll trust you, too.”

“And if she doesn’t?”
Durell had asked.

“Cajun, I know how you
feel about people like Orris Lantern. One bad apple spoils the
barrel. But Orris Lantern trusts this girl and he’s turning himself
back to us voluntarily. We need him, Sam. We need him desperately."

“I don’t want to do
business with a traitor.”

“He’s changed his coat,
Cajun. He’s coming home.”

Durell’s voice was raw.
“With the usual guarantee of amnesty? I can’t touch him?”

“You put a finger on
him,” the general warned, “and your neck goes in a noose. I’m not fooling.
You’ll spend the rest of your life looking at the walls of Leavenworth.”

“I’d like to kill him,”
Durell said simply.

“Exactly. So you coddle
him and nurse him and bring him back without a scratch on him. Understand?”

“Send someone else,”
Durell said.

“There is no one else.
I'm sending you. It’s simple. I don’t care if Orris Lantern spits in
your face, Sam. And from his dossier, he might just do that. He knows he’s
valuable and he’ll know you’re restricted in how to handle him. Whatever he
does, you don’t lay a finger on him.”

It had been a hot
September day in Washington, three days ago. Durell, who was a field sub-chief
for K Section of the Central Intelligence Agency, had hoped for a better
release from the desk job he’d held down in Analysis for the past six months.
But you can’t write your own ticket in the business. After his last assignment,
he’d been lucky not to draw down a stiffer penalty for going across
Czechoslovakia on his own, against every order from Geneva Central. But he’d
still hoped for something better when McFee sent for him in his office at No.
20 Annapolis Street, that anonymous graystone house in Washington’s
Northwest that served as cover HQ for Durell’s trouble-shooting K Section of
the Agency.

Dickinson McFee reported
daily to Joint Chiefs and NSA and the White House, in addition to briefings at
the Pentagon twice weekly. Durell often accompanied him through these ordeals.
McFee was a small, gray man whose impact was felt the moment he stepped into
the room. Durell didn’t know if McFee still drew down a two-star’s pay or it McFee’s status
was that of retirement and his capacity in K Section’s rough-and-tumble unit
solely that of a civilian. No one knew much about Dickinson McFee. He worried
about you, and cared for yon, and would send you to your death without the
slightest change in his glacial gray eyes, if he thought your death might be
useful to some important project hatched in his fertile mind.

Thinking of his
interview with McFee as he stood in his hotel room halfway around the world,
Durell reflected that the electronic air-conditioning in McFee’s office
had failed that day, and the Washington heat then, ironically, was as humid and
suffocating as that in the Palace Hotel. Durell had asked for permission to
smoke one of his rare cigarettes, and permission had been bluntly denied.

“Read these dossiers,”
McFee had said, pushing folders across his desk. “I got on my knees to pry them
out of the cellar files at NSA. They’ll tell you all about Orris Augustus
Lantern of Hemmington, Kentucky. Read ’em and weep, Cajun. And remember
that there, but for the grace of God, and so forth.” McFee paused. “Don’t judge
him too quickly. Whatever you feel about men like Lantern, remember this:
you’re going into the Chaines des Cardamomes, in Thai or
Cambodian territory, legally or illegally, and bring him back here—alive and
talking. In three weeks, Cajun, you have him sitting in that chair across from
this desk.”

“What does he have
that's worth so much?”

“Orris reneged out
of our S.F. units in Vietnam after his outfit was zapped, and they took him to
Hanoi. He made himself indispensable, and they took him to the Grass Basket, in
Peiping. Then they put him to work with the Cong Hai—brothers-in-arms in
sabotage and treason to the V.C. over in Vietnam. He has a gift for guerrilla
warfare. The best man they have. He's led them in burning, ravaging,
murders-—through his Cong Hai infiltrators. He’s started a small war
on our flank that We must eliminate. And he’s been clever enough so the Thais
blame the Cambodes and the Cambodes raise
hell  about the Thai border. He’s developed some fortress areas in
the highlands near the Cardarnomes, just as the Viet Minh and Viet Cong
built up ‘safe areas’ in Saigon territory. He knows where all the caches of
rice, weapons, and money are. He’s worked with the outlaw Kuomintang army
people who were stranded in northern Thailand and he’s developed a big
opium-running racket that finances his jungle empire. As a matter of fact, we
first got onto it through the dope angle. Interpol and our own Narcotics Bureau
sent it over to us.”

“And you turn it over to
me,” Durell said dryly.

“To you and Deirdre
Padgett. Her new job for us.”

Durell’s face betrayed
neither shock nor dismay. He sat quietly, wishing for a cigarette, aware of the
heat and the window facing a blank wall behind McFee and the guards and
security devices on every elevator, door, and corridor in this inner sanctum of
K Section. If McFee pressed a button, he would never get out alive. . . .

Deirdre
,
he thought.

“You’re breaking all the
rules, General,” he said.

“I am aware of the
rules. I make them, myself. Deirdre loves you, Cajun. You’ve known many women,
but you always return to her. She’s too damned good for you, of course. We have
no rule against married men, but it’s easier on bachelors in this business, and
we prefer men who don’t have their minds on wives and families back home.
You’ve always agreed with this, I know.”

You take a moment off to
daydream, Durell thought, and it could be the last moment and the last dream
you ever enjoyed. He shifted in his seat.

“General, you know how I
feel about Deirdre. You’ve been a good friend to both of us. You also know I’ve
done all I could to keep her from signing into the Agency. I don’t want to work
with her. It wouldn’t be successful.”

“You mean, if she were
hurt, or killed?” McFee’s manner was unchanged. He might have been
discussing the weather. But putting it into words was like twisting a knife.
Durell did not like to think of himself as being vulnerable anywhere. But when
Deirdre was concerned . . .

He had seen her only
last night, having dinner with her at her rose-brick Colonial home at Prince
John, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. She had given nothing away, not by word,
gesture, or flick of a beautiful eyelash, and this troubled him because it
meant she could be competent enough to handle the job, and he didn’t want her
in the business, no matter how good she might be at it. She had smiled into the
candlelight, her mouth soft, her gray eyes serene, filled with love, reflecting
the autumnal beauty of the mirror-like Chesapeake beyond the terrace where she
had served the dinner. McFee had known he would be there, of course; McFee knew
everything. She had already been briefed for this job, too. But her oval face,
her raven hair, her fine body and poised, controlled hands, hadn’t given him a
hint of what Went on behind her serene brow. She had been a fashion editor for a
Washington daily, and he often had rendezvoused with her in Rome or Geneva or
Paris. But to work with her as a team, on a job in Southeast Asia under Bangkok
Central’s control . . .

He mentally shook
himself.

“Why Deirdre,
especially, sir?” he asked McFee.

“She broke the whole
thing to me. It came to her first.” McFee spoke flatly, gray eyes bleak. “It
seems she went to finishing school with a little French girl named Anna-Marie Danat,
the daughter of a French tea planter in the South Thai highlands who weathered
and even prospered after the French exodus from Indochina. In any case, Orris Lantern,
who until now has been a wraith and a devil, organizing the Cong Hai in
that district for future subversive warfare, got to know Anna-Marie Danat.
We don’t know if she influenced his thinking and made him homesick, or what.
That motivation worked with some defectors from Korea, you’ll remember. You
might pin it down, or leave it to the psychiatric department when you bring him
back. In any case, Orris Lantern asked this little French girl on her
papa’s tea plantation to get m touch with an influential American back home and

make a deal for him.
Amnesty for a traitor in exchange for information.”

“I Wouldn’t buy it,”
Durell said.

“Joint Chiefs think the
price is right. So you don’t lay a finger on him. Not even if he spits in your
teeth.” McFee sighed slightly. “By good fortune, Anna-Marie Danat wrote
to Deirdre, her old school chum, and Deirdre turned it over to us. Anna-Marie
insists on dealing with your girl, Cajun. It’s a tricky business, and I’d
rather not send her, but she has to go. And you go with her. The meet has been
arranged and Orris will surrender to you in Anna-Marie’s presence.
Bangkok Central has been signaled. You’ll work with Major T.M.K. Muong, of
Thai Security. We think he’s all right, but you never know. There’s a lot of
money involved; we might stick our thumbs into a big pie of opium-smuggling
money that finances the Cong Hai, and that might complicate your job.
Where there’s that much money, there’s a knife sharpened for your back, eh?”

Durell picked up the
dossiers on Orris Lantern. “When do we go?”

“Tomorrow morning.
Deirdre is all packed and waiting. In your apartment.”

                                               
 
4

“SAM?”

He ignored her.

“Sam, darling, please
don’t be angry.”