Assignmnt - Ceylon (15 page)

“I suppose it shouldn’t. Still, it troubles me a bit, you know. It’s not rational, it’s humiliating, but I’m a little jealous of you, Durell.”

“It’s water under the dam.”

“Not quite. Your relationship still exists.”

Durell said, “What about Colonel Skoll?”

“The Russian? Tied up in the hold, with all the crates or relics I found in the Naradara Sinha devala. A most violent man, Skoll. You and Aspara, please—I must get my mind settled about it.”

“And Kubischev?”

"Andrei is Dr. Sinn’s head man for the moment. I believe Sinn means for you to take his place. So Kubischev is enraged, of course. You must be careful. Did Aspara come with you of her own free will?”

“Yes. You sound as if you want her back.”

“No, no. That would be impossible. But you know her better now than I. She can be saintly, you know. And quite lovely. I’d really forgotten how she was, until I saw her again.” Sanderson turned his head away, his tall body hunched under the low overhead of the cabin. “She is George’s mother, after all. I remember when George was bom, sixteen years ago—”

"George has grown old before his time,” Durell said. “Will you help me, Ira?”

“I couldn’t. I’m not like you. I’m a scholar. The world is sometimes too much for me, you see. That’s why I bury myself in the dead past. That’s why Aspara and I couldn’t get along. She is a woman of today and tomorrow. I live in the yesterdays.”

“You’ve got to help me,” Durell insisted.

“Quite, quite impossible.”

Ira stood up. His bent head scraped the low cabin roof. He poked his glasses up on his nose again.

“Can you get me some water?” Durell asked.

“I’m not permitted. I shouldn’t even be here. I just wanted to talk to you. I don’t understand men like you. I thought I’d be famous, you see, discovering the Buddha Stone. Wined and dined and feted everywhere. But I confess that public appearances frighten me. I’m confused, yes. In any case, it is all academic. Sinn has the Buddha Stone now, for whatever use he plans to make of it.”

“Help me,” Durell asked again.

“No,” Sanderson said firmly.

He slept and dreamed and slept again. He recalled the quiet peace of the bayous during his boyhood in Louisiana. He remembered Yale, and the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut. He remembered girls, simply faces and figures now, without names. He remembered dead men, friends and enemies alike. He dreamed of all the evil in the world, both natural and man-made, the inbred wickedness of some, the compromises made by others. He dreamed of the devil himself and heard Dr. Sinn’s shrill laughter in his skull. Maybe Sinn was right. In all the universe, perhaps only this planet was tom by strife and pain and death, wars and catastrophe.

In his dream, he tried to deny what seemed to be the logic of Sinn’s position. He wanted to live. He cried out, asking the price he was willing to pay for survival.

Only Sinn’s mad laughter answered him.

He told himself he could not belong to any man. Yet the world had cast him out, he was being hunted as a traitor, a defector who men sought only to kill.

If Wells did not succeed, someone else would be sent after him. If he could not somehow get Kubischev to confess about the killings of King and Thompson and about depositing that money in the Geneva bank, he was finished. He dreamed of running down long corridors, turning this way and that, with the hounds of pursuit always at his heels. There was only one end to the way. Gasping, his lungs on fire, his heart pounding, he ran on and on. There was no place to hide, no one to help him. He was doomed to flight until the inevitable end. It would come sooner or later, in some dark alley in London or Buenos Aires, or in some North African village, or perhaps on the Paris Metro. He cried out in his sleep and heard the creaking of the old Chinese trading junk, taking them eastward to the Andaman Sea, to—what? He opened his eyes. The cabin was dark. He drew a shuddering breath and willed his nerves to end their shrieking. He was soaked with sweat. The air in the cabin was stifling. He heard bare feet slap the deck above, heard the shrill of a squeaky block as a line ran through it, felt the ancient boat come about, heaving on the long ground swell that ran up from the Indian Ocean toward Rangoon, the coasts of Southeast Asia. Nobody bothered with the Andaman Islands, once the stopping place for ancient Chinese traders or wandering Arab dhows.

Nothing there but an ugly death, perhaps, or surrender to Sinn. He closed his eyes and tried to rest. He would not submit.

The heat struck the brain and crushed the body as if the very light held a million leeches that sucked the juice of life from every cell. The sea was flat calm, a pale blue mirror that reflected the fury of the brazen sky. Here and there on the wide gulf were small flat islands, as if they, too, did not dare to rise against the crushing temper of the sun.

Durell followed Aspara out on the deck of the junk.

“I asked Sinn to let you out,” she said. “It was too cruel to keep you down there in this heat.”

“Then you’re getting along with him?”

She turned her head. “I did not say that. I simply thought of you and asked. He did not deny me.”

“He hates women, you know.”

“I am not concerned about that.”

“Have you seen the Buddha Stone yet??

“No.”

“Or George?”

She bit her Up. “Yes. He is aboard. He’s ill.”

“On drugs?”

“You are always so blunt, aren’t you?”

“I’m honest. Or try to be,” Durell said.

“Honesty can be so cruel.”

“You should face up to George and know what he is. It’s not your fault, not Ira’s. It’s the roll of the dice.”

“Life need not be a gamble.”

“But it often is,” he said.

The junk puttered along at only a few knots per hour. Flying fish broke the water in brilliant flashes of color. They had passed one nest of islets and were heading for another, slightly larger, that had been hidden by the first group. As far as Durell could guess, they had sailed south of the regular Colombo-Rangoon shipping lane to make Duncan Passage between Port Blair, on South Adaman, and Nachuge on Litde Adaman. Once past Cinque Islands and into the Andaman Sea, they had turned north toward Ritchie’s Archipelago, keeping the Andamans to port. When Barren Island was sighted, they turned west, with Mount Diavolo rising from the shimmering dawn and then, above Diligent Strait, their course became twisting and devious, through low mangrove channels where the water shoaled rapidly until the seaman in the junk’s bow was shouting constant warnings. They were in Indian territorial waters now, but in a desolate spate of islets and swampy shoals where only a few thatched houses on stilts proved that people actually inhabited the place.

After a time, Aspara said, “Dear Sam, do you believe Sinn’s statements? To do so is like admitting belief in the devil himself, is it not?”

“Perhaps.”

“He must be stopped. Will you join him?”

“No.”

“He will kill you, if you do not.”

“I know that. I don’t plan to let it happen.”

“But can you stop him?”

“You mean, get the Buddha Stone back?”

“I want you to destroy it,” she said.

“But it’s a priceless relic.”

“I don’t believe in it. The world is troubled enough. It can do no good, if Sinn plans to use it. Need we have another world-shaking—perhaps false—revelation now?”

He smiled grimly. “You dislike my violence. You’ve been remote ever since we started. Do you want me to use violence now, even if I could—which I doubt?”

“Dear Sam.” She paused. “Perhaps I’ve been wrong. Perhaps this world needs men like you to keep it sane.” “That’s against all your principles, Aspara.

She bowed her head. “Yes, it is.”

He waited a moment. The junk had turned into another channel where the wide sweep of the Andaman Sea was effectively cut off. A small village on stilts huddled under the glare of the sun. A fishing boat with a red trapezoid sail headed away from them. When the village fell astern, they headed for a rickety, deserted dock that looked as if it had been there since the first Dutch explorers sailed these seas.

“One more thing, Aspara. About Ira.” He made her look at him. “You know that he still loves you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

“That makes a difference, doesn’t it?”

“I am not certain,” she said.

More men poured out of the mangrove brush as the junk docked. Long sheets of woven matting were hauled up on blocks among the coconut trees to screen the wharf from any planes that might search for them. A truck rattled through the dense jungle growth from inland and took them aboard, under the watchful eyes of armed men. Colonel Skoll shambled up to the tailgate as if he were blind, his head battered, his face red and swollen in the suffocating heat. The other Russian, Kubischev, whistled a Volga tune as he herded them forward.

“It is not far now, my friends. But your real destination remains up to you.”

“I spit on you,” Skoll rumbled. “You are a piece of filth. I urinate on the memory of your mother.”

Kubischev laughed. “You can’t goad me again.” Mouquerana Sinn was not in sight. The fat man chose to remain aboard for a more regal, and private, debarkation. Perhaps the gross man did not care to let the others see him maneuver his unwieldy weight to shore. He filed the thought away for possible future use.

The island seemed uninhabited except for Dr. Sinn and his people. There were barrackslike stilt houses beside a small tumbling stream that flanked the road, but the village had been burned out and only a few wild pigs scampered away as they passed. The jungle seemed impenetrable. The trail twisted upward, although the island was not hilly, and for a time they followed the swamp, laced with tangled vines and rotting, fallen trees, inhabited by whitenecked crows of the sort seen in India. Rice paddies that had once been cultivated by the missing villagers were overgrown and neglected, filled with tidal saltwater. The island was not long, perhaps four miles north and south, and less than two miles in width. Its appearance was morbid and unhealthy. The tall trees shut out the sun, but not the humid heat. It was a place of dark shadows, of sucking mud, of desolation. Appropriate to Dr. Sinn, Durell thought.

They were skirting a salt pond on the eastern shore, heading for another dense grove of trees, when Willie Wells fell into step beside him.

“Sizing it all up, Cajun? Can you make it out?”

Durell looked at the black man. “It’s possible.”

“We’re in for it. We can’t get away.”

"‘We?”

Wells laughed silently. “It’s a problem. I’ve hired out to Mouquerana Sinn. Not much choice. And the profits look good.” Nothing moved in Willie Wells’ eyes. They looked bloody and tired. He smelled as if he hadn’t bathed for days. He didn’t seem to be armed; Sinn had taken his gun from him. But he still walked along with an easy, long stride that gave evidence of his dogged stamina. The fine bones in his face stuck out, shining with sweat. His hair was cropped close to his round skull. “You think I’m a rat, then?”

“A misguided rat,” Durell said.

“They say you saved my life when Dr. Sinn was ready to pop me off with his rifle.”

“And once before, at the
walauwa
.”

“That’s right. You could have wiped me right there when you jumped me. So why?”

“Dr. Sinn is my job, not you,” Durell said.

“But you know my orders. It wasn’t easy for McFee to direct me after you. Did you know that your girlfriend in his office, Deirdre Padgett, quit when she heard about it? Nobody’s seen her since. The boss cabled me to look for her, since she might be on her way to help you.”

“I hope not,” Durell said. “I don’t need any help.”

“But Dr. Sinn has plans for you. For me too. The best bet is for you to agree to work for him.”

“Go through interrogation? Sit at a table and spill everything I’ve ever known? Talk into tapes, over and over again, while they probe every thought I have?” Durell shook his head. “I’m not about to be opened by a can opener, Willie. In any case, he wouldn’t just take my word for it.”

“No, he’ll put you under hypnotics and let you talk into computer memory banks. You’ve been in K Section a long time. There’s a lot of stuff in your head that he’d like to put in his records. You’ll have to do it, Sam. I mean it. I urge you to give in to him.”

Wells’ voice was low and flat. A trickle of sweat ran down his forehead. After a time, he said, “Cajun?”

“Don’t do Dr. Sinn’s work for him, Willie.”

Wells said, “Look, I’m an easy convert. For some time now, I’ve called myself a citizen of the world. I don’t owe allegiance to platitudes or patriotic slogans. It’s the people who count, man. You know how I hired out as a mercenary to the Telek rebels in Africa. I know my business. So you did me a good turn there, and after Africa I signed a contract with your company. Well, now I’m quitting. I’ve got a new boss. Don’t underrate Dr. Sinn. Look, maybe my orders are wrong. I figure you might have been protecting Madame Aspara. I see Kubischev and how he looks like you, and I remember his dossier—he’s an expert forger. Maybe he set up that phony Geneva bank account in your name. I signaled all this to Washington. It’s possible that a mistake was made, too quick a judgment made.”

“Really?” Durell asked.

Well said, “All right, you’re sore, but—”

“Yes, I’m sore.”

“You still saved my life, Cajun.”

“Don’t make me regret it,” Durell said.

The ruins came into view around the next bend of the trail. The place stood on a knoll, surrounded by tall nipa palms and a few mahoganies, the crumbled walls overgrown by flowering creepers until it was difficult to pick out the essential rectangular lines of the house. Perhaps some local pirate chief had built it, or some petty rajah in years gone by. It might have been impressive once. But now, at noon, it looked depressing and forlorn, a place for jungle vipers and pond rats, scorpions and flies. There was a square tower, three stories high, and a cracked terrace with a crumbled stone balustrade that completely encircled the house, reached by a cracked series of broad steps. Durell noted, however, that the carved teak doors were still solid, and the windows were all securely boarded up.