Assignmnt - Ceylon (3 page)

For a count of three breaths, he waited.

The woman whispered, “Please go. The back way.”

He shook his head, watching the stairway door. The man on the stairs was careful. The game was even now.

Durell was a tall man, with a heavy musculature, which belied his speed. His black hair was touched with gray at the temples. His gun hand was steady. All of his being was spent on listening now for a telltale sound from the creaky steps out there. He heard nothing, except for the woman’s breathing in the heavy heat of the room. She had clamped a -thin brown hand over the child’s mouth. No one crossed the opening of the broken doorway. It was a stalemate. Either could retreat. But Durell no longer looked for escape. As a boy, brought up by his Grandpa Jonathan in the deep recesses of the Louisiana bayous, he had been taught the ways of the hunter and the hunted. He knew the silent patience of wild things when trapped, the silent waiting for time to present a way out.

Shadows flickered as people in the street rushed by. Smoke drifted into the room. A man screamed, close to the building entrance. Durell breathed lightly. He could have waited forever; but he knew the woman and the child might break at any moment. He took a step forward. The woman shuddered. The man with the Luger would be waiting for this move, balancing his patience against Durell’s. Durell was three steps from the sill. Silently he started down to his knees, reaching forward for the doorjamb that tilted inward toward him.

The child broke away from his mother and began to screech in a high, thin falsetto.

Too late.

He heard the scrape -of feet on the steps and charged forward through the opening to spin around and turn to the stairs. Footsteps whispered. He raised the gun, held his fire, went up the stairs two at a time. Nothing to be seen. The building had three floors, and the landing above was empty. A door was swinging slowly shut. He flattened against the wall, considered the IDE techniques taught at the Maryland Farm. This man with the Luger knew them all. He wished he’d seen more of him than just the brief silhouette of blackness he’d glimpsed from the foot of the ramshackle stairway. The sounds of the mob were muted now. He slid toward the closing door, sniffed the air, exercising all his senses for a clue. Tobacco. American cigarettes. He looked for the butt of the cigarette the man must have smoked while waiting up here. Nothing. He had pocketed the evidence, but he hadn’t been able to dispel the trace of tobacco smoke.

He went through the door in a rush, crouching low, jumped to one side in the shadowed darkness. Two terrified old men were on their haunches against the wall.

“Which way?”

One of them pointed a skinny, shaking hand toward painted windows that gave no view of the outside. One of the windows, was open. A flight of wooden steps led down to an alley below, cluttered with crates and boxes. Any number of hiding places. Durell stood well back from the window. The man could move fast. And quietly. He turned, ran back down the inner steps. The woman from -the room below stood in her broken doorway. Durell plunged out into the street. The bulk of the mob had passed, leaving a wreckage of carts and stalls, a few trampled banners on the pavement. He ran through the stragglers to the alley entrance. He saw no one who remotely fitted the looks of his assailant. The alley was empty. Perhaps the -other end. He moved forward, watching the broken crates and junk in the narrow passage. The suffocating heat hammered at the back of his neck. He was bathed in sweat. He was halfway through the alley when he heard the police sirens, late as usual, dispelling the mob. He halted. His opponent was gone. He felt the sudden lift of oppressive intuition; the weight and pressure of danger had vanished.

He came out the other end of the alley. The woman and the old men in the house would rush to tell the police about him. He hoped their descriptions would be as vague as the usual amateur’s. In the business, you avoided publicity, shunned the news, made no contact with local police. His opponent would feel the same way.

Durell pocketed the gun and looked for a taxi.

Mr. H. K. D. Dhapura fluttered his hands.

“Nothing, sir. I have nothing on it. I am so sorry, sir. I have done my best in this job, I have been happy with the employment, it is certainly in a good cause, I am sure of that. But at the moment, I fear I am a failure.”

Durell said, “You received no signal at all from King or Thompson?”

“I have told you, Mr. Durell—”

“All right. There hasn’t been any trouble up at Kandy, has there?”

“No, sir. Of course, the telephone does not reply at Mr. Sanderson’s house there, but naturally, no one would answer, since the time he has been kidnapped—”

“No servants in the house?”

“I would not know, sir.”

Durell said, “You’re supposed to know, Mr. Dhapura.” The Sinhala looked anguished. “About this man whom you say is trying to kill you—” He paused and swallowed. “Is it safe for you here?”

“It’s supposed to be.”

“I have done everything I could, I assure you on my honor, everything, everything; I have thought and thought and considered all eventualities.”

“I’ll want to code a message to Washington in about an hour,” Durell said. “Make certain the transceiver is working.”

“Yes, sir, I am very good at electronics.”

“In an hour,” Durell repeated.

The Royal Lanka Hotel did not quite live up to its resplendent title; but it was not meant to, and had been chosen by K Section, along with Mr. Dhapura, because it was shabby, seedy, and more than rundown. It was across the channel from Beira Lake, not far from Galle Road that ran south through the city toward Dehiwala Zoo and eventually to the posh old-style colonial resort of Mt. Lavinia on the beaches. The Royal Lanka was favored by third-rate salesmen from India, Japan, and the Mideast, and its lobby was flavored by Arab burnooses, and a Sikh’s tall turban, the toothy chatter of Tokyo Honda dealers. Big wooden fans turned idly in the tiled ceilings of the public rooms. The hotel served K Section as a safe house, a Ceylon Central, and a place for industrious young men from Washington to formulate their analyses of economic and political and foreign influences in the newly renamed nation of Sri Lanka. Until now, Mr. Dhapura had functioned with efficiency in the job of running the Central, but at the moment, Durell was not so certain.

The elevator was an open-cage affair. He avoided it and took the broad staircase to the second floor. Whoever was after him surely knew about Royal Lanka. He went up to the third floor, moved down the wide corridor, stood under a slowly rotating fan, then returned down the wooden staircase to the second level. No one was in sight. The hotel was built in pre-airconditioning Victorian days, and the ceilings were high. There was a sand urn for cigarettes at the open bird-cage elevator. An American filter cigarette had been stuck into the urn. He pulled it out carefully. The end was cold. It didn’t have to mean anything.

His room was at the other end of the hall. He heard a radio playing next door. A man talked urgently in a room he passed. He heard a woman loose a spate of Urdu on a companion behind another door. Everything seemed normal.

He took out his gun, tried the old lever handle very slowly, pressing down on it. The door was not locked. He had left it with the latch on. His gun felt solid and reassuring in his hand—and then he suddenly backed off, kicked the door open, and sprang inside.

“Hold it. Just like that. Don’t move.”

The figure waiting for him in the armchair that faced the entrance was grotesque, startling, unnatural.

He lolled at ease, but his face was enclosed in a brilliantly painted ritual mask of the sort carved by the craftsmen at Ambalangoda.

Durell almost squeezed the trigger.

The voice behind the mask was muffled. “It’s a gag, Cajun. Your nerves are very, very good.”

Durell said, “Take if off. Now.” He looked at the man’s hands. They were empty. “You’re a black man.”

“Reckon so. I was just funnin’ you, Cajun.”

The voice tickled his memory again. “Willie?”

“The former Major William Wells, rank dispensed by the Boganda People’s Revolutionary Army. Once a mercenary, the idea kind of gets into your blood.”

“Take off the mask,” Durell said again.

“Sure thing.”

It was Wells. Even lounging in the chair, Durell remembered the magnificent, competent figure of the man, the intelligent brown face, the sad and secretive eyes. Memories of the incidents in Boganda last year flickered and flashed through Durell’s mind. He did not let his gun waver. Wells, as a mercenary, had been on the opposite side that time, hiring his capacities to an uprising that had given Durell some difficulty during a siege of the Getoba district in the African capital. In the end Willie had changed sides and had been offered a job with K Section. Durell had never expected to see the man again,

“What are you doing in Sri Lanka?” he asked.

“Working, man. Like you.”

“For whom?”

“After Africa I went home to DC and took you up on your offer. Went to see your boss, General Dickinson McFee. Strange little fellow. No nerves in him. He hired me, allowed I might be useful in K Section.”

“You once said you were a citizen of the world.”

The black man shrugged. “I’ve got to eat.”

“And you’ve been tailing me?”

“Yup.”

“And trying to kill me?”

“It makes me sad. I like you, Cajun.”

“Why are you trying to kill me?”

“Sit down, Sam,” Wells said gently. “Relax. I’m very, very good at my job.”

“I know that. Answer me.”

“It’s orders. I’ve been sent by K Section—by your former boss, General McFee.”

“Former?”

“He gave me the orders to kill you, Cajun.”

Durell’s face did not change. “Why?”

“You’re a traitor. I was told to eliminate you. Don’t move, Sam. I'm sorry. If you take another step, the gun goes off. It’s right behind you, over the door. Taped good and tight. The line goes across the floor, there, you can see it. Step on it, any place, and your head gets blown off.”

Durell stared at the black man. He did not believe anything Willie Wells said. He was aware of a vast confusion. “I could kill you first,” he said finally.

“You’re not the type. Sit down in that chair next to the door, right behind you— and face me. I’m sorry, buddy. I really like you. I really do. As much as I can like anyone in this world.”

“I’m not a traitor,” Durell said.

“McFee thinks you are.”

“That little bastard. After all the times—”

“I’ve seen the evidence, Sam.”

“There can’t be any evidence.”

“I saw it. Airtight.”

He thought of something. “Does Dhapura know about you?”

“No. I showed him my credentials. Told him we were old friends. Told him I wanted to surprise you. Sit down like I said. We’ll talk first.”

Durell turned his head finally. Wells’ gun was there, aimed at him. It was not such an effective trap. One step either way, and the gun would miss. It was childish. It was another game Willie was playing, like the startling Ambalangoda mask that now rested on the floor beside Wells’ chair. He looked around the room. Everything had been moved, searched, taken apart and put together with a certain arrogant carelessness. Through the tall windows and beyond the iron balcony came the normal street sounds of Colombo’s traffic. But everything seemed suddenly tilted, thrown out of normal perspective.

It wasn’t possible to come to this, he thought, after all his years in the business. There was sometimes the problem of defectors, who had to be eliminated, yes. Misguided or greedy, men, or those who had cracked under the strain and gone over the wire to the other side, to seek sanctuary, money, another world that existed only in their tormented minds. It was not possible to accept. But suddenly he believed Wells, this lounging, ominous and professional figure, who spoke with a mortal simplicity.

“How much time do I have, Willie?”

“As long as you like—within reason.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“You’re a cool one, Cajun. Don’t play for extra time. You know all about it, anyway.”

“I’d like to hear the evidence against me. I tell you now, there’s been a mistake.”

“Does General McFee often make mistakes like this?” “No,” Durell admitted. “Never. But tell me.”

“Okay.” Wells hitched himself up in the chair, using his elbows on the arms. He still looked relaxed, but not in his eyes. There has to be another weapon, Durell thought. One that was not a gag. He sat down carefully in the straight-backed chair beside the door and kept his S&W on his knee, the muzzle pointed at Willie Wells’ stomach. A gut shot frightened any man. But Wells did not look frightened. He still seemed sad and quietly confident. It was just a job for him. A contract. All of which made Wells the most dangerous predator of them all.

“I’m curious,” Durell said, urging him to talk.

“You sold out. A man like you, Cajun, in the business so long that you couldn’t quit even if you wanted to—a man might get tired of it and lose his nerve, knowing the odds get longer and longer against him every day he sticks with it—it could be that. So you sold yourself.”

“To whom? For how much?”

Well sighed. “I have to reach in my pocket.”

“Go ahead.”

“Take care of the wire under the carpet.”

“I could kill you right now,” Durell said.

“You really should. Because my contract calls for wiping you, Sam. And I’m going to do it too.”

“If you can.”

“I can,” Wells said.

He was cautious taking the papers from his pocket. He put them on the rush carpet and toed them toward where Durell could pick them up. Durell thought of contact poison in the papers, of thermite impregnation, of a booby trap. The papers looked clean enough. He bent forward, keeping his gun trained on the black man, and touched the papers with his fingertips, not taking his eyes from Wells. Wells said, “It’s all right. Just Xerox copies of Swiss bank accounts. Your signature is on them all. For secret accounts amounting to half a million dollars.”

“Chicken feed,” Durell said. “Would I sell out for that little? I could get much more.”