Assignmnt - Ceylon (7 page)

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

The boy snickered. “The spook will never find old Ira anyway.” Then he subsided into the back seat again.

The landscape changed abruptly. Beyond Kagalla the road climbed steeply. The wide paddies and little villages where country girls sold cadjanuts and pineapples to tourists gave way to sudden, dark gorges, where water rushed down from the towering mountains. Here and there were pools, and in one a herd of working elephants were being bathed by their keepers. The huge gray beasts lay on their sides in shallow water while the men in white breechcloths splashed and scrubbed them with soap. The sun was lower now. The flanks of the mountains were bathed in dark shadow. Near Kadugannawa, with its vast view of the distant table mountain called the Bible Rock, Aspara had to stop for gasoline.

The valley far below was terraced in rice; the hillsides were sharp with the green of cropped tea plants. The air felt clearer than it had been down on the tropical coast.

The gas pump attendant was a small man in a violent red shirt, with a toothy white smile. He recognized Aspara and bowed exaggeratedly.

“Madame Aspara! May I offer condolences in regard to your former husband, Mr. Sanderson? Ah, it is young George—”

“Thank you,” Aspara said calmly. Then she added abruptly, “George, please stay in the car.”

George grinned. “I have to use the facilities.”

The boy got but of the Rolls with a quick, vaulting motion, landed on the dusty ground, clapped his hands together. The station was only a thatched hut standing on stilts above the slopes, which dropped down toward the tea fields below. Farther down, more elephants plodded homeward along a dirt track. The high shouts of their attendants came dimly through the echoing mountain stillness.

Durell got out of the car quietly. Aspara’s face was pale. “Yes, you must stop him,” she said quickly. “It is true he acts strangely, so hostile—”

George was already gone, scrambling up the rough ladder to the thatched stilt house. Durell followed quickly, paused in the interior gloom. A quick suck of breath from George warned him. Something whirred through the air, smashed against a bamboo pole. The boy’s face was a pale blob in the shadows of the hut. The floor creaked as he rushed at Durell, a heavy wrench in his hand. The tool whistled past Durell’s ear as he ducked the wide, swinging blow.

“George, I meant it. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You bastard, shacking up with my mother—”

“You don’t know anything about it. Who sent for you
¹
; Why did you come back here?”

The wild-haired boy came at him again. The heavy spanner grazed Durell’s- shoulder as he jumped back. He did not reach for his gun. The floor shook and dust rose about their feet as he caught George’s arm, twisted, bent il backward. George yelped, but he was surprisingly strong Durell forced him backward until they struck a crude workbench. The boy’s hands scrabbled for another tool to use as a weapon. Durell pinned him against the sharp edge of the bench.

“Now talk,” he said thinly. “Tell me what you’re doin^ here.”

“I—I’m a patriot,” George gasped. “Let go—”

“For which side?”

“The People’s Freedom Movement—I’ve been working in it, raising money back in the states—”

“And your father? The PFM took him, right?”

“No, no—”

“Who did, then? Who’s asking for the ransom?”

“They’re using the leader—the Cobra’s Bow—but it’s all a front, I can’t tell you—”

Durell bent him farther back. The boy groaned, reached out, found a hammer, swung it at Durell’s head. Durell drove the edge of his hand against the other’s neck. It could have been a lethal blow, but he held back at the last moment, aware of his anger and frustration at his own situation. The shock of the blow snapped George’s head to one side. The pale blob of his face, under his wildly swinging hair, slid way. All resistance went out of his thin, muscular body. Durell caught him before he hit the floor and eased him gently down.

George was still breathing. Durell considered his open mouth, his long arms, and straightened, sighed.

Someone was coming up the ladder of the stilt house. “Mister? Madame Aspara asks—”

“We’re coming right out.”

The attendant said, “The telephone doesn’t work, anyway.”

“Yes.” Durell picked up George and carried him to the door of the hut. The air felt cool outside. The attendant’s brown face peered up at him from the foot of the ladder. “Mister George is ill,” Durell said.

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

“Sam?” Aspara said.

“It’s all right.

She started from the Rolls, her body fluid, swift, then checked herself and returned to the wheel. Durell carried George to the back seat, dropped him in, and took his place beside the girl. Aspara’s eyes were wide and questioning.

“What was it?” she asked.

“He’s a member of the PFM,” Durell said.

The true name of Kandy, in the heart of Ceylon, was Kanda Uda Pas Rata—the Five-Kingdoms-On-The-Hill. The city was the real capital of the Sinhalese. The road to it crossed a river, the Mahaweli Ganga at Peradeniya, where another roadblock waited for them. But Aspara’s unique old Rolls-Royce was apparently above suspicion.

A smart-looking lieutenant bent ceremoniously toward Aspara. “You go to attend the Essala Perahera, Madame?”

“Yes. Is there any trouble?”

“None at all. Please continue.”

Aspara drove on. Durell sat beside her and said, “He never even looked at me.”

“I am well known here,” she said.

“But he was very careful not to look at me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” he said.

“Is—is George all right?”

“He’ll be out of it soon. What’s the Perahera?”

“Sam, please. He’s a very confused young man. It’s not his fault he is the way he is. Ira neglected him. I was busy with my own political career. Between us, he didn’t know which way to turn. He is neither here nor there, do you understand? He is basically a gentle boy—

“Not any more,” Durell said.

Aspara said, “I could not bear it, if anything happened to him because of you and me—”

“What is the Perahera?” he asked again.

“Oh. It’s an annual pageant and festival at the Dalada Maligawa—the famous Temple of the Tooth. There is supposed to be an actual tooth of Buddha there. Each year, between your July and August—our lunar month of Esala—a replica of the Tooth is taken from the temple, in a procession of fabulously decorated elephants, with drummers and torchlights—everything. There is much feasting and joy. You are not a Buddhist, you might not understand how beautiful it all is. Buddhism came to Sri Lanka over 2,300 years ago. The Sacred Tooth is kept in an inner sanctuary of the Maligawa. The flowers are so lovely—frangipani and sapu and jasmine. The Tooth itself rests on a golden lotus under a very old bell casket, really many of them, each fitting on the other, all bejeweled. The ancient kings of Kandy were always independent, you know, here in the mountains. It is a beautiful place. Everything is reflected in the lake, in all the pools for bathing and reflections—”

He interrupted again. “What about the Buddha Stone?” She frowned, her profile shadowed in the evening light. “I don’t think that legend is worth discussing.”

“It’s been mentioned in regard to Ira.”

“Oh, but that is nonsense.” She spoke too quickly, reflecting an inner disturbance that rejected his words. “It is just a myth, an old wives’ tale, I think.”

“I’d like to hear about it,” Durell said.

“Dear Sam, I think George is waking up.”

They reached Kandy as the sun set, plunging the hills into abrupt, tropical darkness. But the city was alive with lights and the thin susurrations of music, the thumping of drums, the low but overwhelming murmur of throngs. They came in on the Peredeniya Road, passing the Botanic Gardens, the flicker of impossible flowers like jewels in the deepening dusk, which settled into the bowl of the surrounding mountains. Beyond the university buildings, the road went almost straight toward the glimmering Kandy Lake, built by the last local king, an islet in the center was once the royal harem. Aspara explained that they had to go through the town in order to reach Ira Sandersons
walauwa
—one of the old Sinhalese manor houses dating back to the feudal days of kings and pomp and recurrent wars.

“It’s rather broken down, of course, but still quite magnificent,” she said. “The government allowed him to keep quite a few of the antiquities he discovered there, with the

proviso that they were irrevocable national treasures and not personal belongings.”

George spoke up suddenly from the back seat. “Hell, what did you hit me with, spook?”

Durell turned to look at him. “Not with a hammer, for sure. It was my hand.”

“You’re a filthy murderer. Aspara, did you know that Durell probably has killed a dozen men? Maybe more? He’s an imperialist, colonialist lackey, a hired mercenary whom—”

“Be quiet George,” she said calmly. “You are lucky to be alive.”

“Maybe so. Are we in Kandy?”

“It is the Perahera,” she said.

“Bread and circuses for the masses,” the boy complained. “It’s just a hangover from the bad old days, trying to perpetuate the establishment through religious idolatry.” Aspara said sharply, “I will not have you talk like that.” George leaned forward, wincing as he touched his neck. “Mom, you don’t really believe they actually have Buddha’s tooth in the Dalada Maligawa, do you? That’s all right for the peasants, all these elephants and jewelry and torches. But you’re supposed to be a liberated, intelligent Sinhala woman, living in the twentieth century.”

Durell turned on the front seat so he could keep George under observation. He wished again he hadn’t been saddled with such an obvious enemy. At the same time, there was information behind George’s mean eyes, glimpsed now and then through his mane of blowing dark hair. He meant to get that information, sooner or later.

Now that he was in a city, his former feeling of being hunted and pursued returned in double strength. He wondered what had happened to Willie Wells. He had no illusions that Wells was too injured to give up his chase. He would follow orders implacably, and Durell now knew enough about him to totally respect Wells’ abilities. He seemed to see an enemy in every face among the throngs that filled the city’s streets. He reminded himself that there had to be a reason for the Swiss bank account in his name, a reason for the use of a man who looked enough like him to pass at a casual, distant glance. And reason, too, in making him an outlaw, with no refuge anywhere on earth, by senselessly murdering his two men here in Kandy.

Someone wanted him dead, he thought.

Or—

Time stopped for a moment as another angle occurred to him. Someone wanted him outlawed, yes, a target for K Section. Someone wanted him homeless and helpless. Durell drew a deep breath, wished for a cigarette, wished for a drink—

If the purpose of it all was to eliminate him, then the elaborate schemes of depositing money in his name in Geneva and killing his men here so he looked guilty had to have another aim. Given time and patience, it was not difficult to kill a man. No one was immune from assassins.

There was more to it, therefore.

Someone was waiting to take him in, to use him in some way, for something as yet undefined.

Someone wanted him to feel desperate enough to be willing to accept any refuge. Somewhere. Soon. It had to be soon, he thought.

“Sam?”

He felt better. He looked at Aspara. She was more beautiful than ever. They had turned into the Tatinuwara Vidiya, near the Queen’s House, with another glimpse of the royal Kunda Salava, the Pleasure Pavilion, with its tiny drawbridge across the lake. Here in Kandy there was a strong Dravidian influence, exhibited by Hindu temples devoted to Vishnu. But this night in Kandy was completely given over to the celebration of the Sacred Tooth. Flowers were strewn everywhere, and a torchlight procession of coppery Kandyan dancers in white and scarlet held them up for a moment. He watched the crowd even as he glanced at Aspara. If he could hold out against Wells long enough, and avoid the PFM, contact would be made. He was sure of it.

“Dear Sam?”

“Yes,” he said.

“This man you say is looking for you—hunting you? This American—”

“A black,” Durell said. “Very good at the job.”

“A hired killer, you said.”

“In a way.”

“He can’t possibly know you’ve come to Kandy, can he?”

“He can guess. He’s smart and fast, and he’ll be here soon enough—or he’s here already.”

“Perhaps the police—”

“They’re looking for me, too. My two men—”

“What can you hope to had at Ira’s
walauwa
?”

“I don’t know.”

He felt impatient with the procession that blocked their way. The crowd was thicker, excited, filled with religious fervor that exploded in noise and chanting, in drums and reed flutes. The great gray elephants swayed by, their heads and trunks covered with red and gold and silver, their small eyes visible through ornate holes cut in their face masks. Miniature temples, all jingling silver bells and jeweled tassels and ornaments, moved on their backs, protected by parasols and canopies supported by men and women in white turbans and long white scarves that came forward over their right shoulders. The monks in their saffron robes and priests of the temple in flat red hats and embroidered shawls over their white skirts made a sudden line across the intersection.

Far in the distance, a police siren hooted, coming around the Kiri Muhuda, the rectangular lake called the Milky Sea. In the black waters were reflected the lights from the creamy, octagonal dome of the Delada Maligawa, with its moat and high walls. From all the hillsides around the lake and its wide walk with flowering trees, the houses of the city sent down their own lights, reflecting in the black, silent water.

“Back up,” Durell said suddenly. “Let’s get out of here.”

George snickered.

Aspara said, “I don’t think I can. The crowds—”

George said, “The spook is scared of crowds, huh?” Aspara reversed the big Rolls and slowly backed up a few feet. The people shoved and shouted, swarming 66