Assignmnt - Ceylon (12 page)

“You must go on,” Durell told her. “Come.”

The path was devious, filled with small stones, marking the recent footpaths the PFM had trodden amid the litter of the ages. A solemn silence filed the air. A bird hooted, lonely and high on the mountain above. Durell paused at the sound and looked and listened. Skoll, huge and powerful at his side, took out his gun and faced and searched the other way. His voice rumbled softly. “It is nothing.”

“Perhaps.”

"Da. Perhaps. I do not like this place. I agree with Madame Aspara.”

Durell said, “You smell a trap?”

“I smell something, yes.”

The tank had been a large one, quite deep, filling the length of the valley beneath them. Durell climbed down slowly toward the dried mud bottom of the old reservoir. Now and then they passed crumbled cut stones that marked forgotten structures. He kept his eyes on the cave mouths. Most were on the opposite side of the emptied tank. He led the way across the high dike, noting that more sculptured stones had been used to form its base. This place had been old when the reservoir was first built. The bulwark was broken on the far side, by the bombs recently. The little mountain stream just trickled through. He held Aspara’s hand as they climbed down in the gap, then up again.

The bird hooted once more.

Durell could see nothing on the hills or in the valley. He lifted his gun, then lowered it. With less than three hours to dawn, the night was darkest now. The starlight helped him pick out the remains of a main path that twisted up from the dried mud banks of the emptied tank. The girl breathed quickly and lightly in the high mountain air. Now and then she adjusted the saree she wore, to help her with the climb.

The old bunkers of the PFM were still visible on the mountainside, scarred and littered with broken shell casings. The remains of old cook fires, a torn blanket, a canteen, some rags hanging from a tree limb, testified to the surprise battle here. Durell studied the shattered bunkers and moved across a clearing to where a new nylon ten stood out against the wreckage.

“Ira’s?” he asked Aspara.

She nodded, her eyes alert and aware, covering an almost primitive fear in her mind. Durell knew her fear came from reluctance to have her faith shaken and uprooted by any new findings here, perhaps a new doctrine in the hands of unscrupulous foreigners, as she would think of it.

“Don’t worry,” he said.

“I can’t help it.”

A new path had been cut down the dried mud sides ol the old reservoir. He pointed to it. “Did Ira have a crew ol workmen with him?”

“It is possible. But he often liked to dig alone. He was an amateur, after all.” She smiled faintly. “With the luck that so often comes to amateurs, I think.”

He led the way down the new path. It took him along a line of cave mouths, small openings in the mud wall framed with stone plinths from which ancient carvings had long been eroded by the water. A larger opening farther on drew him to it. In some places, the path cut into the cracked earth was still wet and slippery. Footprints, some booted, some barefooted, still showed in the yielding soil. The bottom of the tank was only ten feet below the path cut into its newly exposed sides. Durell halted. Something lay there, sprawled in obvious death, arms and legs at awkward, unnatural angles. Aspara sucked in her breath.

“It’s not Ira,” Durell said quickly. “Perhaps one of his assistants.”

“Yes, he wears only a loincloth. Thin and half-starved.” Aspara’s voice was touched with bitterness. “One of my poor countrymen.”

Skoll said, “He was shot through the head. Like an execution, eh?”

Durell had brought the torch from the Rolls, and now he took it and held it in his left hand, his gun in his right, and approached the largest of the caves that had been exposed by the lowered water. His boots squelched in soft mud as he stepped just inside.

“You and Skoll stay here. Skoll, be careful.”

“I shall be,” the Siberian grumbled. “But I should like to go in with you.”

“There may be more than a bird watching us.”

Durell stepped farther into the dark hole. He smelled centuries-old rot, the decay of mud, noisome odors he could not define, and did not wish to. He touched the stone wall with his left hand that held the torch, but he did not use the lamp. The mud sucked at his shoes. There was an almost immediate lift to the floor of the cave, and he slipped a little, making a small sound. He paused and waited. The stone walls of the cave had once been carved, but again the action of water in the reservoir had smoothed it out. He took a few more steps from the cave entrance and then felt a turn to the right and followed it for a dozen paces. He looked back. The entrance was now cut off from sight, and he snapped the button on the torch, pointing it ahead.

The light leaped dazzlingly before him, and a grotesque masked face seemed to jump back at him. His nerves screamed briefly; then he realized it was only an eroded statue of a Hindu guard deity. Above it was coiled the form of a Naga, the Cobra’s Bow, very old, almost unrecognizable now.

He went on, wondering if the place was a trap, but prepared to present himself as bait to spring it.

He was above the old water level now, and although the air in this cave temple was still humid and clammy, the way underfoot was dry. A ramp reached upward before him, the steps worn very smooth. He wondered how many pilgrims had walked or crawled up here in ages gone by. Now that he was in the upper area, into the slope of the mountain, he noted the remains of peeling frescoes on the walls. Great chunks of the plaster had long crumbled and fallen into dust, but the colors of gods and goddesses in complicated sexual attitudes were still vivid enough to identify. He dried his palm on his thigh. It was cold in the cave-temple. He paused to study a particularly active god, with an enormous phallus, being attended by three maidens in jeweled diadems and nothing else. His glance caught on a new piece of timber, a rough two-by-four, and a scaffold of sorts that had been erected nearby. Ira Sanderson’s work, he guessed. Glass glittered underfoot. Spent flashbulbs, crumpled wax paper was evidence of a sandwich lunch, eaten less than a week ago. A crate filled with excelsior stood open, ready to be packed with treasures.

He stepped through the third doorway.

A hidden world of treasures greeted him, flashing and flickering back in the red of rubies and blues and yellows of countless other gems encrusting the large pedestal that stood in solitary, remote splendor in the center of the sanctum.

His pause was a pure reflex.

And disastrous.

His first impression of the jeweled pedestal was that it was empty. Whatever had once been placed there was gone.

His torch was unnecessary. A small electric lamp illuminated the big, echoing chamber, set on the base of what had once been the life-size image of some god. The comers of the room were webbed in shadows. But the man who sat casually on one hip upon a comer of the central pedestal was plain enough to see.

“Ah. Mr. Durell, of K Section.”

He was big, with a strong face carved in flat, muscular planes, with thick black hair and dark blue eyes and heavy shoulders. He wore a khaki shirt and a knitted sweater-vest and heavy corduroy slacks with a wide belt. He seemed to be unarmed. When he stood up, smiling, a steel tooth flashed in his mouth. He was as tall as Durell, the same height, the same general conformation of body and face.

Durell said, “I owe you something, Kubischev.”

“Ah. Ah. You know of me, then. You have worked very quickly to get here so soon.”

“Not quick enough, I think.” Durell listened to the man’s precise English, with its flat mechanical perfection, and recognized the teaching methods of the KGB in Moscow. He said, “I suppose you have been waiting for me.”

“Naturally. Ah—your gun, Mr. Durell. It is quite useless. You are covered, of course, from there—-” The tall man pointed gently toward an opening in the rear of the garbhaya, and then to another “—and there. Moreover, our people have taken your Madame Aspara and my—ah— former superior, Colonel Cesar Skoll, by now.”

Durell saw the shadowy shapes of other men in the rear entrances to the cave-temple. Kubischev slid his hip off the jeweled pedestal and came forward, his hand extended.

“I regret the inconvenience I caused you, Mr. Durell. You are a sensible man, however, and know the necessities of our profession. It was I, of course, who went to Geneva and deposited the incriminating funds in your name in the Swiss bank. It was quite simple. We are an efficient organization. You will understand that. Papers, documents, are most easily executed. We will have long talks, you and I. You will see that everything will turn out for the best.”

There were sounds behind Durell, the scuffling of feet, a sudden roar of outrage from Skoll’s deep voice.

Aspara screamed.

Durell turned his head. He did not think that Kubischev could move that fast. He was still aware of the man’s smile, his outstretched hand, when he was hit.

Pain burst behind his eyes, spread down one shoulder, made his right hand numb. He dimly heard his gun hit the floor. He tried to turn, and another blow smashed him to his knees. He wondered dimly why he had come here, after all, only to find this; but he had invited it; he could not complain.

Then a foot kicked him, and he went over; and something else hit his head again, and he fell through reality into an appalling, echoing place of darkness.

“My dear Durell,” someone said. “How can I express my regrets over our Andrei’s enthusiastic behavior?”

He kept his eyes closed. He made his breathing sound slow and shallow.

“You do not fool me,” said the voice. “You are quite awake. Open your eyes, sir.”

Durell lay still. He allowed sensory awareness to slide back into his muscles and nerves. Light shone through his closed lids. There was a rope over his ankles and wrists, which were stretched high overhead. He heard the sound of thick, asthmatic breathing. The soft shuffle of feet.

“Durell, do not try my patience.” The soft, heavy voice tightened a bit. “In this world, all things are measured by the great arbiter of time. Time is precious, it is a friend, it is an enemy. It is our greatest gift. It is your gift, for the moment. It can be removed. In two hours, you will be useless to me. So come. Do not pretend. Speak.”

“To hell with you,” Durell said.

His head ached. The light through his eyelids sent pain through his temples. When he breathed, he felt the deep bruise along his ribs where he had been kicked.

“Open your eyes when you speak to Dr. Sinn.” That was Kubischev’s voice. The words were followed by a stinging slap that knocked Durell’s head aside. “Show respect to your new boss, eh?”

Durell opened his eyes to blinding light. He winced, and someone murmured and a hand appeared and swung the lamp away. He lay on something hard and cold, not a bed, something that felt like polished stone. One of the pedestals in the garbhaya. He could not see the owner of the unctuous voice. The man sat beyond his head, where he could not be glimpsed. But he heard the steady, heavy, asthmatic breathing.

“All things,” said the voice, “are subject to time. The life of Ira Sanderson hangs on it. So does the life of your woman, Aspara.”

“Is she safe?” Durell asked.

“No. 'Are you interested?”

“I’d like to know.”

“Her safety depends on you.”

“And Skoll?”

“Why should you be concerned about your rival?” “Did you kill my rival?”

“Not yet. He is an unexpected surprise. Perhaps he too can be recruited. Poor Andrei does not approve of this. He says he knows Colonel Skoll too well to believe he would ever desert the KGB and Mother Russia. Skoll is a patriot. I think otherwise. All men have their price.”

“What happens in two hours?” Durell asked.

“The time limit, sir, runs out on the delivery of the ransom money and the plane for Mr. Sanderson. I would hate to execute the fool. But perhaps I must, if merely to illustrate that I mean what I say, in future deals I mean to have with your government in Washington.”

“Let me sit up,” Durell said.

“Yes. Riches and power can be yours, if you are reasonable. Andrei?”

He felt a knife slice through his bonds. It was a relief to lower his arms. His head still throbbed. He sat up carefully, resisting the sudden nausea that cramped his stomach.

It passed. He turned slowly on the slab of stone and looked at the source of the voice directed at him.

The room was not the cave-temple after all. It was a painted chamber, the walls covered with more erotic postures of dancing girls long dead and tumescent men, the colors faded but still vigorous after all the ages gone by. A rich carpet had been spread on the stone floor. The b! ck of stone on which he rested was carved with intricate, devilish beasts, but none of the satanic faces on the car mgs could match that of the stout man who sat, knees apart, a turban on his head, a silk robe like a tent around his gross body, smiling at him.

He had once thought of his enemy, Madame Hung, as the epitome of evil.

But this man was possessed by it.

It was an essence, a fluid, an aura of darkness that surrounded the round face, the small head on grotesque shoulders, the swollen, slippered feet, the jeweled hands folded complacently over a bulging paunch. Durell could not tell the color of the eyes. The entire eye seemed dark, so that the iris was not clearly defined, and over them were heavy arched brows that seemed firmly fixed in satanic arrogance.