Assignment - Cong Hai Kill (7 page)

A young Chinese stood in
his way at the market gate. “You buy pet, sir? No danger, very tame, easy to
handle. You surprise folks back home, very exotic pet, sir.”

The youth had wide black
eyes, innocent of all guile. Around his naked, coppery shoulders, wrapping
itself in cold love, was a slithering young boa constrictor.

The symbol of the Cong Hai was
a snake.

“Only two bahts,
sir,” the boy insisted. “Very cheap, special, because business is slow, no
tourists, very rare see Americans here.”

“No, thanks.” Durell
thought the snake’s eyes were as cold as the boy’s. But the young Chinese was
persistent. “I make special bargain today, sir. Only one baht. It is a young
snake, sir, bring best of good luck. Ladies think you very brave man, brave as
a wild bull—”

Was it a brazen warning
from the Cong Hai? Durell didn’t know. “No sale,” he said.

He crossed the
marketplace to the steamer dock. Naked children erupted in a race around the
sheds; the air reverberated with the cackling of cooped fowl, the grunts of
pigs, the thin shouts of Hindu hawkers trying to sell their brassware, the
jingling of 
samlor
 bells, and the brazen gong of a temple bell
as a procession of monks made a serpentine of saffron through the crowd. There
were Arabs burned black by the sun and slender Thai women as exotic as dolls,
and Chinese elders smoking and drinking tea. As usual, the Chinese merchants
had the best booths in the market area.

Durell walked onto the
wharf. Two uniformed police loitered nearby. Muong’s jeep was parked
between two food stalls, and Muong stood in plain sight beside his
driver. The steamer, far out in the channel, screeched for the sampans and
barges to get out of its way.

The air smelled
explosive.

Durell felt like a fly
on a wall. He looked for the boy with the pet snake, but could not locate him
in the crowd. More gongs vibrated in the sultry air. Sampans loaded with
vegetables, chickens, and wooden furniture splashed up and down beyond the
dock. The calls of the Hindu vendors and the clack of ivory counters in the tea
shops made a wave of sound as a surge of people moved to the dockside.

The riverboat bumped its
pilings. The forward deck swarmed with people from the jungle villages
upstream. Lines writhed out and made the steamer fast and there was a mass
movement toward the gangplank. From the port wing of the pilothouse a slender
Thai in immaculate white uniform and the gold braid of the river captain called
down to him. The man’s broad face was knotted with anger. He came sliding down
the ladder, still calling something to Durell, whose size made him obvious in
the crowd.

There was a flash of
steel, a glitter of light, and the chunk of a blade penetrating flesh and bone.

The Thai looked
incredulously at the knife that stuck out of his white uniform. There was time
for horror to dawn in his black eyes before he tumbled down the gangway.

A wave of banging filled
the market sheds. It was as if a thousand tin pans were suddenly clashed
together. The din was enormous. The murder of the riverboat captain seemed to
be a signal for organized confusion, a planned uproar for everyone crowding the
dockside.

Durell checked himself
beside the fallen man. Major Muong materialized silently at his side
and knelt by the man whose eyes were already glazed in death.

“Was the knife meant for
the captain?” Muong asked softly. “Perhaps you were the intended
victim.”

“I’m not sure. Let’s
find Lantern. He should be aboard.”

A scuffling broke out in
the caverns of the market sheds. A single shot broke the rhythmic rattle of
pots and pans. The air rang with the sound, which punctuated the noise,
bringing an abrupt silence.

Durell stepped over the
dead captain and pushed through the crowd of sullen passengers on the deck. He
felt someone tug at his arm. When he turned, he saw it was a frantic and tearful
Anna-Marie Danat, breathless from running after him.

“Please, m’sieu.
Let me come with you.”

“You were to stay at the
hotel with Deirdre.”

“But I 
had
 to
come, don’t you see?” Her voice was agonized. “I must find Orris.”

“All right. Stay close
to my side.”

He had the feeling he
was regarded as an enemy by all the wide, Asiatic eyes that followed him
aboard. Someone among them was an assassin who had tried for him and gotten the
riverboat captain instead. But maybe it hadn’t been a mistake. The Thai had been
angry, as if he wanted to shout something to someone in authority ashore.

“This way,” Anna-Marie
gasped. “I know this boat.”

The crowd on the lower
decks silently opened an aisle for them. Durell took out his gun. It felt hot
and solid in his fingers.

There were only four
private cabins aboard the paddlewheeler. The paint on the upper deck was
peeling from the planks, and the brass-work was green with jungle verdigris. A
Frenchman with a pink and angry face under a dirty visored engineer’s
cap came swinging down from the pilothouse, yelling in Thai. He wore a white
uniform of shorts and singlet which was soot-blackened. He switched to French
when he saw Durell, bitterly demanding to know what he meant to do with his
gun.

“Your captain was just
killed,” Durell returned sharply. “I’m looking for an American aboard named
Lantern.”

“Never heard of him. You
are from the police?”

“Do you have a Chinese
aboard named Chang?”

“Chang Chu? Yes, in
cabin four. But you—" The Frenchman finally saw Anna-Marie and was startled.
“But Mademoiselle Danat, forgive me. I have a message from your father—”

“Later,” Durell said.

He pulled the girl with
him, anxiety knotting in his stomach. A corridor bisected the first-class deck.
There were two cabins on each side. The first doors were open, and a community
lavatory also stood open. beyond. The facilities were primitive. Durell was
aware of the heat that radiated from the wooden bulkheads as he pushed open the
last door.

“M’sieu Durell-Sam—I
am afraid—” Anna-Marie whimpered. “Why is not my Orris aboard?”

“Maybe he is,” Durell
said grimly.

The girl’s elfin face
and enormous eyes made her seem vulnerable. She breathed shallowly as she
looked beyond him into the cabin. It seemed to Durell that there couldn’t be
enough clean air left in the world to keep her alive.

There was another dead
man in the cabin.

She tried to pull back,
but he caught her wrist and held her there. “Who is he?” Durell rasped. “Do you
know him?”

“I think—
oui
—it
must be-”

“The man you call Uncle
Chang?”

“Yes. Yes, it is——it
was-”

Her teeth chattered as
if she were freezing in that oven-like heat. Nothing would ever look pure to
her again.

There was an obscenity
about the old Chinaman’s death that shocked even Durell; and he had seen the
obscene killing methods of desert Arabs, jungle tribesmen, and the
sophisticated Nazis of Germany. “Uncle Chang” had been a stout, bald man,
possibly of a kind and jolly disposition; what was left of his face reminded
Durell of the little carved Buddha old Grandpa Jonathan had given him for his
nook in the cabin of the 
Trois
 
Belles
 back in the
bayous. There was a fat paunch and a prosperous bulge to arms and limbs in the
fine, expensive white linen suit.

The killing had been a
fast and bloody butcher’s job, with nothing professional about it. It was a job
done by a madman, a dancing maniac who had showered the cabin walls with gore.
Chang had been partially stripped and crudely mutilated, and what had been done
with the organs hacked from his torso was nothing for Anna-Marie to see.

But there was one more
thing in the stateroom.

It was the‘ head of a
large snake, severed about ten inches from the open, gaping fangs, and it was
several days old, to judge by the stench of rot that oozed from it. The cold,
dead eyes regarded Durell with deadly malignancy.

The snake’s head had
been placed at the throat of the fat Chinaman’s crumpled body, and it
transformed him into an effigy out of a lunatic’s nightmare, half man and half
serpent—and all dead.

                                               
 
9

FOOTSTEPS slammed down
the ladder from the pilothouse, and there was loud shouting in Thai and French.
A child walled. Woven through these sounds as in an antiphony was the continued
clashing of tin pans and tubs, sticks and gongs from the rioters in the market.
The noise wove a primeval web of violence in the hot, angry air.

Durell forced Anna-Marie
about to avert her hypnotized gaze from the Chinaman. She was like a bird,
frozen by the massive, ugly snake’s head. “Anna-Marie, that’s enough. Stay near
me, but don’t look any more.”

“Poor Chang! He was such
a gentle old man. . . .”

“Did he once live at
your father’s plantation?”

“He was a co-manager
with Uncle Paio, for Papa. But Chang left to go into business here, when I
was quite little. Oh, I cried when he left. He always had little gifts for me.
He never harmed anyone. Why did they kill him?”

“I don’t see Orris Lantern
aboard.”

Her head twisted in
sudden alarm. “But he was supposed to come down with Chang and give himself up
to you.”

“And he didn’t, did he?”
Durell said.

She searched his face.
“Has something happened to Orris? Do you think they—they did the same
things—”

“It’s too soon to guess.
It could be either way.”

She stiffened. “I know
what you really think. You think Orris helped with this awful thing,
for some reason; you think Orris changed his mind and won’t come
back-”

She was near hysteria,
and he gave her a cigarette and made her stand facing the door. She resisted
for a moment, then did as he asked, while he searched the cabin. He knew he
could expect Muong and others here at any moment.

There were two bunks in
the cramped, hot cabin, but only one seemed to have been used on the trip
downriver. The Chinaman’s single piece of luggage was the only pathetic remnant
of the living man. He stepped into the tiny bath and saw that the big, square
window opening onto the passenger deck had been left ajar. He checked the crude
shower stall, the rusty washbasin, the medicine cabinet. Everything had been
cleaned out. So Chang had packed before he was slaughtered. An hour or so ago,
Chang had still been alive.

But he had been alone. Orris Lantern
had not kept his promise to tum himself in and abandon the Cong Hai.

Then why had Chang been
killed?

He examined the steel
Windowsill in the bath. The paint was scratched and showed gleaming metal
underneath. In this climate, a single day would show rust. So the murderer had
fled through this window—and might still be aboard.

Major Muong and
several of his men crowded into the stateroom. The organized uproar on the
docks continued.

“Major, has anyone been
allowed ashore yet?” he asked.

The Thai regarded him
with blank eyes. “No. The gangway has been sealed.”

“Then everyone should be
screened. You might spot a known assassin from the Cong Hai.”

“Precisely. As for
Mademoiselle Danat—”

“I suggest one of your
men escort her back to the hotel and keep her with Miss Deirdre Padgett.”

“It will be done.”

But there were results
even sooner than Durell expected. He heard a slight scuffling below, on the
cargo deck. The passengers from upriver were massed in a noisy tidal wave
against the rail, held back from the dock by a handful of uniformed police
whose round faces reflected a growing fear of losing control. The center of the
scuffle was a dark little East Indian in a shabby seersucker suit. He was
trying to reach the rail, pushing against two saffron—robed Buddhist monks. A
spasm of terror twisted the man’s ratty face when he was pushed back. He turned
his head and looked up at Durell and Major Muong, and the Thai made a
small hissing sound.

“It is Doko Dagan.
You see him, Mr. Durell? He has a record and does not belong here. He comes
from Bangkok and We have a difficult dossier on him as a labor agitator, a dope
runner, and a politically unreliable hoodlum.”

“Let’s pull him in,”
Durell said.

“Precisely. Yes.”

But the man they wanted
had enough warning. He didn’t hesitate. Clutching a cheap straw suitcase, he
jumped overboard into the muddy river and vanished among the sampans and barges
pressed against the steamer’s side.

“Don’t kill him,” Durell
warned quickly. “Maybe he did the job on Uncle Chang.”

He leaned forward over
the rail. The fugitive hadn’t hit the water, after all. He had landed in a
sampan that obviously had maneuvered to receive him, and now the coolies were
poling frantically for shore to get him away. The water presented a milling
pattern of organized confusion. Doko Dagan still held his cheap
suitcase. Durell dropped down the ladder and plunged for the gangplank, with
Major Muong at his heels as they battered through the crowd.