Assignment - Sulu Sea (3 page)

She felt one of her rare moments of fear. He looked
dangerous and cruel and implacable, like a furnace whose fire has only
been banked, but you know the glowing, stormy heat is there, needing only a
breath of wind to make it flare and blast everything within reach. She
shivered suddenly. The beach behind her, with the girls on the surfboards and
the beach burns catering to the tourists, the gay sail of the catamaran against
the loom of Makapuu Point, the distant island music from the orchestra in the
nearby Queen’s Lanai restaurant—all of it seemed hollow and stupid and even
frightening, the Way this tall, angry man looked at her face and body and made
up his mind about her. His fingers were hard and cruel, holding her
shoulders.

“You’re hurting me,” she whispered.

“I know that."

“Why do you do it?“

“Because I want the truth. Pete Holcomb can’t be dead. He’s
assigned to one of our latest nuclear attack subs, just now engaged in a
nonstop cruise around the world. How could you have found him on one of your
isolated Celebes beaches?“

“Well, I did, and he almost killed Simon, he was so out of
his head,” Willi snapped. “Now let me go, huh?"

She moved with deceptive skill, an amber slide of silken
skin that hid a quick coordination of nerve and muscle. Durell was not often
surprised; but Willi Panapura managed to do it. His hands were thrust from her
shoulders and one wrist caught and turned to trip him toward his big double
bed, her ankle deftly thrust between his. He caught himself swiftly—much too
quickly for her to accept. Her quick, lopsided grin of triumph told him she
thought she had truly thrown him off balance. But he let her own weight take
her, as she leaped after him with a gleeful, tigerish ferocity, and her long,
lithe body rolled over his shoulder as he caught her upper arm and spun her
golden figure up and over and slammed her down across the bed. She landed
with a thump hard enough to make the Japanese silk screens jump on the walls.
Her arms and legs were splayed and a look of utter dismay was stamped on her
face. Durell caught the thick rope of her honey hair and wound it around her
throat and across her open, startled mouth, effectively gagging and throttling
her at once.

She made desperate, angry noises. She heaved and writhed
under him, and he merely grinned down into her flushed face. Then all at
once a blush of color started on her cheeks and moved down under her denim
shirt. Something like fear moved into her eyes. He spoke quietly, to reassure
her.

“Don’t worry, Willi. Just behave. I’m just as sick of
hearing about your virtues as you must be about mine. But you shouldn’t have
tried to throw me. You could have been killed.”

She made muffled sounds through her hair. He took the thick
braid from her mouth and she said; “Oh, you really are a son of a bitch!” .

“Now, now . . .”

“You’re not a gentleman, and I was told—”

“Willi, I’m in a rough business, and you’re talking about a
man you say is dead. But he can‘t be dead, understand? And even if he were
alive, and you were wrong, it’s just as impossible for him to be on some remote
island beach off Borneo. Now tell me the whole story quietly, and no more fireworks,
please. Or you’ll regret it.”

“Tarakuta isn’t that remote. And it’s independent of
Borneo.” She regarded him for a long, thoughtful moment. “You know, I thought you
really were going to kill me, for a minute.”

He rolled away and stood up, but he was still wary of
another surprise attack from this unpredictable and astonishing girl. “I want
the whole story about Holcomb, Willi. But listen carefully, first: there
are certain people in security who’d crawl up the walls because of what I tell
you. Pete Holcomb sailed out of Pearl Harbor on orders from CINCPAC on the
Polaris submarine
Andrew Jackson
, one
of the latest of our nuclear boats, with sixteen armed missiles aboard her
4-25-foot hull. She’s also got a smaller, newly designed atomic engine that‘s
twenty-two percent more efficient than the others. She’s sailing nonstop around
the world on a speed run, understand? And Commander Holcomb was aboard. Now, if
the man you say called himself Pete Holcomb was found on this island of yours—”

“It’s not my island. But it was in the Tarakuta Group."

“Well, if Holcomb is dead on this island—”

“Not
if
. We buried
him,” she said angrily.

“Then where is the
Jackson
?”

“How should I know?”

“You haven't seen it?”

“Listen, Samuel, from the time I understood the English
language, I was told how smart a Cajun you are. But it seems to me that anybody
could recognize one of those boats if they saw one. I haven’t seen anything
remotely resembling a sub in years. But thirty hours ago, this man with
Holcomb’s identity papers came raving down the beach like a crazy man, and he
died. And don’t worry, I‘ve got his papers, so don”: look at me like that.”

“Where are they?”

“In my souvenir handbag, on your lanai.”

He went out on the porch and picked up her big Luahala bag
made of pandanus leaves with its plastic clasp and stood near the Bombay chair
to open it. The girl rubbed her arm thoughtfully. In the bag was a U.S. passport
in the name of Wilhelmina Panapura, and an envelope with about three hundred
dollars American and a sheaf of Singhalese lakhs totaling about three thousand,
which came to another hundred, and another bundle of Indonesian rupiahs. She
carried a pilot’s license for twin-engine aircraft, a ham radio license, and a
number of other identity cards. He turned the Luahala bag over and dropped her
keys and a wallet into his hand. The wallet was made of crocodile skin,
manufactured in Florence, Italy, and he recognized it at once, remembering it
in Pete Holcomb’s hand when they toured the Bora Bora and Kamaaina bars a few
weeks ago near Waikiki. The wallet was Holcomb’s, without doubt. Yet it
couldn’t be, unless—

He looked at Willi and dropped the handbag to the bed beside
her, and his voice was very quiet.

“Now tell me everything about Holcomb. Don’t lie and don’t
embroider it. Just tell me when and where and how you found him and why he’s
dead.”

“Well.” She rubbed her arm again and told him about the
beach in the Tarakuta Islands. “Grandpa and I and Simon were just scouting
around, looking for specimens. You know."

“No, I don’t know.”

“I got my master‘s in marine biology at Berkeley, in
California, and I did graduate work at Yale-—your alma mater, Samuel. And I
spent a year with the Oceanographic Institute at Woods Hole, on Cape Cod. I’m
an American citizen, even if I am a resident of that certain People’s Republic
that’s grabbing everything from Ceylon to Sabah, in Borneo, in the name of
anti-colonialism, ha-ha. Right now, the Tarakutas are in a kind of never-never
land waiting for a U.N. decision, and it’s like hanging by your thumbs while
Indonesian guerillas raid and chase off the Malaysians. The island people just
want to be left alone, but what with agitators from Right and Left, from
Peiping and Djakarta and even the Philippines, plus old Dutch oil and tin
interests and American CIA pinheads kicking things up, we’re kind of confuddled
down there. By actual count, there are some three hundred and eighty-eight
islands in the Tarakuta Group, in the shallows between the
Celehes
and Sulu Seas, and the main town is Pandakan, but if you tried to pinpoint any
certain one of those blobs of jungle mud—”

“You’re off the track,” Durell said. “Get hack to Pete
Holcomb. Where did you find him?”

“Well, we had the schooner at this cove on Poelau Bangka
—poelau means ‘island’——just north of Poelau Lia.t—which means ‘middle island,’
and about five miles south-southeast of Tandjoeng Petak— ‘tandjoeng’
means ‘cape’. The mean water depth there runs from five feet to forty,
and then shelves off to the south to over two thousand, and it’s pretty tricky
navigating, what with a thousand or so mangrove clumps that come and go each
year. Am I getting through to you in enough detail?”

“You’re doing fine. Can you find this place
again?”

“Sure. Anyway, Holcomb came down the beach like a raving
maniac and clobbered the best schooner man in the islands, Simon, and thought
he’d killed him; and although Simon has a head like a coconut, Doc says it’s
touch and go for him at the Pandakan Hospital. That’s Dr. Malachy McLeod. He
wants to marry me. He’s a big idiot with a beard and he says he loves me to
distraction.”

“I know Malachy McLeod," Durell said.

She was wide of eye. “You do?”

“Go on.”

“There‘s not much more. We found Holcomb dying and buried
him and got away quick, because Simon was hurt so badly. But before Holcomb
died he gave us his name and Gum, and aid he'd seen you here in Hawaii and we
should get you and tell you about it, and that it was very urgent.”

"Tell me about what?”

“He didn’t say. He died too soon.”

Durell contemplated the girl's long golden legs as she sat
on the edge of his bed and went to the telephone. “Stay where you are for a
moment, please.”

“I will. I saw that gun under your coat. It kind of hurt me
when you fell on me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry at all. For a minute, I was worried that
maybe all these years of listening to Grandpa Joseph praise you and relay all
the wonders your grandpappy claimed for you, until I was sick to death of
hearing your name, Samuel, I—well, for a minute I thought maybe I’d been wrong.
All that time when I loathed you, without ever having met you. But I wasn’t
wrong. I don’t like you at all.”

“Good,” he said. “Keep it that way.”

He dialed a number in Honolulu. Downtown, there were offices
devoted ostensibly to publishing a trade journal entitled
Pearl of the Pacific
, which was meant to lure investments in
the natural resources and markets of the Island State. A few copies of the
magazine were actually in evidence in the anteroom, and there was even a wispy
little man with the title of editor. But behind these offices, beyond
double-locked doors, were others equipped with radio transmitters, scrambler
phones with direct wires to Washington, and teletype machines connected across
the Pacific and the continental U.S. to K Section‘s Pacific Island
department at No. 20 Annapolis Street. Durell used the private number at the
magazine office and got a. man named Jones and gave him Peter Holcomb’s
name and asked to be connected on scrambler to General McFee, in Washington.

It took surprisingly little time. He considered Willi
Panapura’s remark about CIA “pinhead capers” in Tarakuta and Pandakan, and reflected
that there was a certain advantage in promoting a world image of a vastly
inept, bungling organization that was more to be berated than applauded. It
might disarm the enemy. Central Intelligence had become a favorite whipping boy
for anything that went Wrong anywhere on the globe, and no official objections
were raised except for mild protests of innocence from RR. men back home. Any
kind of edge, Durell thought, might tip the scale in the right direction. To be
held in contempt by the enemy was a definite advantage—except that his
real enemies had no illusions about K Section or the field men working in
it. Mistakes took a high price in his business. They usually killed you.

If Dickinson McFee, chief of K Section, had not known Durell
as well as he did, he might not have reacted as quickly, although the small
gray man who commanded the troubleshooting activities of Durell’s special
branch was a cold and calculating presence who never once, in the years Durell
had known him, made an error. His voice was crisp and final.

“I’ll check Navy, Cajun. Can you hang on?”

“I’m calling from Luakulani Palms apartment. It’s got a nice
view and a switchboard in the lobby. I’m scrambled only from the drop in
Honolulu.”

“Can’t be helped. Give me ten minutes. Hang up.”

Durell’s apartment was one huge room with a bath and a kitchenette
off it on the north side, and a vast window wall opening on the lanai. Beyond
was a brief lawn with jacaranda and hibiscus, pitching sharply down so you
could see over the top of a ten-foot wall to the beach and the surfers out
there, dark against the Makapuu headland. But the wall was ten feet high and he
had locked his door and there was only a gate in the wall that was also locked;
he could see all that from here.

He turned to regard the girl.

“How did you get into this place, Willi?”

“You’re just looking at it. I climbed the wall.”

“Just like that?”

“I’ve lived all my live on a tramp South Seas schooner,
Samuel. I’m not exactly a Dresden doll."

“No, you’re not, Willi. How did you know where to find
me’! Did Holcomb give you this address?"

“No. But it Wasn’t hard.”

“Hawaii isn't enormous, but it’s big enough to give you a
little trouble. But you don‘t seem to have had any.”

She shrugged and put the end of her thick, braided hair
between her teeth and looked up at him through dark lashes.

“I knew what you looked like,” she said. “Big, brutal,
handsome, and a quiet dresser. Only mistake I made was saying you had a Cajun
accent. You must have lost that at Yale."

He remembered the agonizing language drills at K Section’s
Farm, in Maryland, to shake off his bayou identity.

“Anyway,” the girl added, “I checked into a hotel and got
into some comfortable clothes—”

"I’m glad you brought a dress along. I wondered if you flew
the Pacific in those shorts.”

She smiled. “I just don’t like clothes, Samuel."

“All right. And then?”

“I went to the
Ale
Ale
Kai Room where the rich, lonely gals look for cute
beach boys, and I struck up some conversation and some of them had noticed you.
Then I called the U.S. Navy and a cute lieutenant there kind of recognized Peter
Holcomb’s name, though he didn’t really mean to, and checked some papers and
said yes, he knew Pete’s friend, Mr. Durell, the address was the Luakulani
Palms, and here I am.”