Assignmnt - Ceylon (22 page)

“Down in the cellars,” Durell said.

“What about Sinn? I need that stuff for the poison he put in me.” Wells was sweating. His mouth drooped. His dark eyes looked rebellious. “It’s every man for himself.”

Durell nodded. “All right. Get him.”

“What’s Skoll to you, anyway?”

“He’s in the business,” Durell said. He took one of the two remaining grenades. I'll use this one.”

Wells licked his lips. “I can’t kill him until I get the stuff from him. If he can be killed at all, that is.”

“You’ll make it.”

Durell left him and ran across the main entrance hall. No one was in sight. He guessed that most of Sinn’s men had rushed off to fight the fire. Down the stairs, the light from the flames was cut off, and he moved through inky blackness. The corridor smelled foully. He felt his way along, counting the doors to the prison cells, and in a few moments came to one that was open.

“Cesar?” he called softly.

There were no guards here. He thought he heard someone take a deep breath. He wasn’t sure. He wondered what had happened to Ira Sanderson and his son George, and then he stepped into the open cell, gaining a little light from the high window that admitted some of the fire’s glare.

“Skoll,” he said gently.

There was a snort, a rush of animal strength, a collision that threw Durell back against the stone wall. He smelled the blood and sweat on the tortured man and fought off the great bearlike arms that tried to strangle him.

“It’s me. Cajun. It’s all right, Cesar.”

“Eh?”

“We thought you were dead.”

The Siberian’s weight was still enormous, pinning him to the wall. Durell did not want to use force on the man in any way. “Let up. I’ve come to get you out.”

“What is happening? They thought they killed me, the devils. That Kubischev did his damnedest to strip me to the bone.” The Russian’s breath went in and out like a great wheezing bellows. “
Da. Da
. You are the Cajun. You have a gun? What started the fire?”

“Wells did that. It’s a long story. Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

“
Da
. Good. My feet—they are in bad shape—very burned. My fingernails—three pulled out.” There was a spitting sound in the dark. “Also three good teeth. For no reason. Kubischev knew I would tell nothing, nothing at all. I—” He began to spit blood again and dropped his arms, stood swaying. His bald head was outlined against the small cell window. His face was a dark mask, thrust forward angrily to flare out of slitted, puffed eyes. “
Da
. We will go.”

“Can you walk?”

“I will walk. I told you about Siberia, when I was a boy. I will do anything. I want Andrei Kubischev.”

A voice behind them said, “You have him, Colonel.”

Light jumped at them from the torch held in the defector’s hand. Kubischev looked enormous behind it, a menacing shadow that blocked their escape from the cell. In his right hand he held a long-barreled pistol, like a Luger. He loomed alone, with no one behind him in the corridor. Everything about his shape and manner implied tremendous confidence and arrogance.

“I see that you survived, Durell,” the Russian said. “I told Dr. Sinn that you would. I warned him. I told him you would kill Wells and come back to kill him. And now you have set everything on fire. I warned him about you.”

“Where is Dr. Sinn now?”

“You will never find him. Never see him again. He has his ways. He cannot be destroyed, that one.”

Skoll growled. “You scum, you traitor, you sold yourself to that spawn of hell.”

Kubischev laughed. “Save your breath, Colonel. It will be your last, this time. You are a hard one to kill, I see. I shall make certain of it myself, now.”

Durell was aware of Skoll shambling forward, his arms swinging like a great ape. He was a bit to the left. He needed no other signal. They jumped Kubischev together, with Skoll roaring, “He’s mine! Leave him to me, Cajun!” Kubischev’s gun roared, echoing like thunder in the narrow underground passage. He fired again as he went down under their combined weight, struggling. He suddenly screamed as Skoll’s massive paws caught at his throat. Durell rolled free to retrieve his AK-47. Acrid smoke drifted down the corridor. In an exhibition of tremendous strength, Skoll dragged Kubischev to his feet, picked him up bodily, and hurled him against the stone cell wall. His curses in Russian came in an endless stream as his naked body pounded again and again at the other man.

Durell scooped up the pistol.

“Hold it, Cesar. Don’t kill him yet.”

“I must. I will,” the giant panted.

Durell drilled the pistol muzzle against the nape of Skoll’s neck. “Do as I say. Can you understand me, Cesar?”

“Eh? You turn his gun on me too?”

“Let him live a bit longer.”

“Ask him about Dr. Sinn. Where did he go? And more important, where is the Buddha Stone?”

“Ah,” Skoll breathed. “Yes. I was too angry.” He hauled the other Russian to his feet. “Well, you putridheaded piece of muck? Answer the questions!”

An unintelligible garble came from Kubischev’s broken mouth. The electric torch had fallen to the stone floor, and in its bright glare, the man looked only semiconscious. Blood suddenly gushed from between his twisted lips. His eyes rolled, showed white. Cesar Skoll let out a long, sorrowful sigh.

“He is dead.” He released the man, and Kubischev crashed to the floor. “Give me your pistol, Cajun. He made a mistake with me. I shall not repeat it with him.”

“A bullet through his head?”

“You owe this to me. Never mind your American morality. True, he did you great harm, when he worked for Dr. Sinn and framed you. He almost had you killed, eh? But he has hurt me far worse. Once I trusted him. He was my friend. And he betrayed me. Your gun, Cajun.”

Durell gave Skoll the Luger. The big Siberian swayed on his feet for a moment, staring down at the man. Kubischev was already dead, his neck broken. But Skoll aimed carefully at the back of Kubischev’s head and fired once. The shot slammed back and forth and gave way to the sound of flames crackling somewhere above him.

“Let us go now,” Skoll said. “We will finish our work here. There is much to clean up, but I believe Kubischev was right. We will not find Dr. Sinn.”

It was two days later.

“We couldn’t find him,” Dickinson McFee said. “Samuel, I have apologized several times already. Must I express my regrets once more? I know you have had a most difficult time. When you are feeling better, we will talk again. After all, you humiliated me, leaving me in that net.”

“You deserved worse than that.”

“So you are resigning from K Section?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Durell said.

“Nonsense. Impossible.”

“Why not? Wouldn’t you send someone to spot me again someday?”

McFee moved quietly around the large hotel room in the Royal Lanka, back in Colombo. The ceiling fans stirred the warm, humid air around, and from outside came the sounds of traffic, cars and motorcycles and buses, all the noises of normal pedestrian crowds moving to and from the fort district. Durell had been in bed a long

day and night, and most of this day too. He had slept, waking only to eat. He had finished most of a bottle of bourbon. The little gray man had seen to it that he lacked for nothing, and Durell enjoyed the reversal of their normal roles. McFee had found a gray suit and from somewhere, perhaps on the helicopter that had come in to pick them up from the burning island, he had retrieved his knobby blackthorn stick. Durell remembered very little of their escape. He watched McFee waggle the blackthorn stick at him, and he stiffened slightly.

“Don’t point that at me. I know all the lethal gadgets you have in it.”

“Samuel, my dear man, I need you.”

“I didn’t notice that lately.”

“I need you to find Dr. Sinn for me.”

“Go find him yourself. You seem to enjoy taking the field on your own.”

“I should not have done that,” McFee admitted. “But surely it shows the measure of my concern for you.”

“You son of a bitch,” Durell said. “You ordered Wells to kill me. You wanted me dead. You didn’t even try to believe I was innocent. There’s nothing more to say.” McFee went on, “I cannot accept the fact that you are simply sulking. Do you want more money? We can rewrite your contract. Do you want to move into other operations? We need someone in—well, no matter. You can write your own ticket.”

“I’m not that valuable,” Durell said.

“Ah.”

“But I’m curious.”

“Ah,” McFee said again.

“I just think you owe it to me to tell me what happened finally on that island.”

“Are you still working for me?” McFee asked.

“No.”

“Then the information is classified.”

“All I know is,” Durell said flatly, “that I had to drag Skoll up out of the prison-cell alley, and then something hit me. I was looking for you and Aspara. I wanted to find Dr. Sinn. I wanted to find the Buddha Stone. I wanted to get at his computer tapes.”

“Ah,” said McFee, a third time.

“You sound as if you’re sitting in a dentist’s chair Don’t be so smug. I can find out.”

“I suppose you can. First, of course, Skoll is alive. He i in the General Hospital at Ward Place, not far from th Burmese embassy. I never thought a man could surviv what he went through. He is most grateful. But it wouL have been better—McFee waggled his deadly walkin stick “—if he hadn’t killed Kubischev. It would have bee: interesting to talk to that man.”

“You’re greedy,” Durell said.

“As for the computer, I’m sorry to say it was smashed—presumably by Dr. Sinn himself. The tapes were gone So was he. A most elusive gentleman. We combed the island and the sea, afterward.” McFee paused. “Does he really consider himself a messenger of Satan?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s insane. But I don’t think so. Certainly he’s brilliant. And dangerous. He’ll give us trouble another time, I’m sure of that.”

McFee said, “How could he have escaped?”

“In a puff of smoke smelling of brimstone,” Durell suggested.

“I see that your spirits are reviving.”

“And the Buddha Stone?”

McFee looked regretful again. “Alas. Gone.”

“Alas. How, gone?”

“The Indian authorities are conducting a quiet search for it in the rubble of the old palace, of course. But it will not be found. Mr. Ira Sanderson insists the heat of the fire would have cracked and destroyed it. He made another confession to me, by the way.”

“I know,” Durell said. “The stone was illegible, completely useless, and he’d faked a partial translation of it to please his captor, Dr. Mouquerana Sinn. That’s all there is to it. The Buddha Stone remains a myth, a fable, an unattainable goal. And maybe it’s just as well.”

McFee said, “Are you still quitting?”

“Yes.”

McFee sighed. “Well, we have Mr. Sanderson back. Everything else was lost on this job. My fault, of course.” Durell didn’t answer.

He watched the sunlight lowering through the wooden shutter-blinds of the hotel room. He felt drained, as if something had eroded his spirit. The traffic outside went on, people lived, worked, ate, made love, as they always did and always would, as long as the world of man lasted. It was a thought that these days now held the possibilities of a finite end. The world of man might not last forever.

He said, “So Dr. Sinn got away with his computer tapes and dossiers. He’ll still have an organization, then. He’ll go on trying to peddle information, the data that every nation in the world seems to need, or thinks they need, in order to survive.”

“We have been warned, at any rate,” McFee said.

Durell drew a deep breath. He did not want to ask his next question. He felt regret, even sorrow, although in his business he had long learned to put such things aside, to be professional about grief and losses. He watched the fans turning against the ceiling. The air was hot, stifling. It would soon be night again. The bottle of bourbon was almost empty. He drew another breath. His ribs hurt. He ached all over.

“And Willie Wells?” he asked.

Dickinson McFee pointed the blackthorn stick at him again, and Durell said, “You little bastard, what about Wells?”

“Alive,” McFee said. “Do you care?”

“Yes, I care. How did he make it?”

“We found the antidote. Ira Sanderson knew where it was. We weren’t sure it would save Willie’s life, of course, but it did.”

“Where is he?”

“I sent him away. On the first plane. He’ll be touching down in Washington, just about this time.”

“I wanted to see him,” Durell said.

“Why?”

“I’m not sure why.”

“Well, you will have to go to Washington, if that is what you want. Make up your mind.”

McFee waggled his stick once more, walked to the hotel room door, and went out.

A Sinhalese doctor came at dusk, put on a few lamps, muttered and poked and bandaged and applied salves and ointments and gave Durell a shot of penicillin. During the ten minutes the doctor worked over him, Durell sat up on the bed and picked up the telephone and dialed Aspara’s number at Negombo. He waited through several long, empty rings that seemed to echo inside his head, until the instrument suddenly clicked and he heard her voice. “Yo. Sam here.”

“Dear Sam?”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Quite well. As well as can be expected. Is it all over now, Sam?”

“For now, yes. Nothing more to bother your land of Sri Lanka. I believe. How is Ira?”

“He is at the embassy. Making out reports. He is being transferred next week, to somewhere in Africa, I think. I am not sure.”

“He’s not with you?”

“There is nothing left, I told you that, Sam.”

“What about George?”

“He is with me.”

“Awake and alert?”

“He is sleeping.”

He sat up straighter. “Aspara, you must keep him there. I’m driving out tonight—” he saw the doctor shake his head in disapproval "—and I must talk to George.”

“Can you not leave the poor boy alone?”

“I must talk to him,” Durell insisted. “It’s possible that he knows where we can find Dr. Sinn. He must know. He’s part of Sinn’s outfit.”