Assignment - Cong Hai Kill (19 page)

He spoke gently.

“Can you be trusted now, Giralda?”

“Yes,” the woman gasped.
“I did not deserve—all this. I have been—faithful—and loyal —”

“You are a whore and a
slut, and you belong neither to them nor to us. But you will serve me, or this
life will end for you now.”

“I will serve you,” she
whispered.

“You will go with me to
the boat,” Lao said gently. “We will somehow get aboard, although Durell
forbids it. It will be difficult, but together we will get past the guards.”

“Yes. That can be done.”

He smiled briefly. He regarded
her with care, and decided she had learned her lesson.

“When we are aboard, Giralda,
you will find out exactly where the American renegade is kept a prisoner. You
must make no mistakes. It is the greatest task ever asked of you. You must be
quick and efficient. After that, if you can escape, you will do so.”

“And when you find
Yellow Torch?” Giralda asked.

“I will kill him,” Lao
said.

21

DURELL Suddenly looked
at his watch. He had lost all sense of time for the past two hours, and he was
shocked to see it was three in the afternoon. He had searched everywhere in the
village, ransacking the peasant houses and the storage cribs on the river
front, the rice paddies on the nearest terraces above the town. He had not
found Deirdre. He had the feeling she was not in Dong Xo.

His anxiety made his
legs feel leaden as he walked back to the lagoon. Muong’s men had
helped, but their fear of the jungle made them almost useless. They did not
like to separate and look in places where they had to go alone. No one had seen
Deirdre or heard anything about her since he had left her that morning.

The sun branded the back
of his neck as he crossed the open space near the little steamer. The old men
had cleared the channel to the river, and he could see through it as if through
a tunnel, to the wide glitter of the stream that carried jungle waste down from
the mountains on the frontier. Far up the valley, the loom of the hills made a
heavy green pattern against the copper sky. The leaves of the jungle were
still; even the crickets and frogs were silent, along with the parrots and
monkeys. He caught the scent of forest flowers. His shirt was plastered to his
body, sodden with sweat about his waist, and the heat hammered at him without
mercy.

The herons were gone
from the reeds on the other side of the river.

Durell paused. He told
himself that Deirdre knew all the risks they faced, and that she had been
adequately trained for the business. If it were anyone else, he would have
followed the rules and ignored her absence. The job always came first. There
was no room for sentiment if it threatened the success of the mission.

But he knew he was only
fooling himself.

He was sick with worry
over her.

He believed she knew
better than to go off on some project of her own. The only alternative was that
she had been taken somewhere by force. But where? And by whom? He knew the
village might be riddled with Cong Hal sympathizers, terrorized into obedience
by the enemy. But how could he pick them out from among the patient, plodding
faces of the men and women working on the boat? It was impossible. He did not
know where to begin. And time was running out.

When and if the 
Dong
Xo Lady
 could be made to move, then his decision would have to be
made. He would have to leave with Orris Lantern, whether Deirdre was
aboard or not.

He would have to abandon
her.

A gangplank had been
built over the swampy edge of the lagoon to permit easier access to the
steamer’s boiler deck. Firewood was now stacked in adequate amounts, and the
last bundles of wood chips were being brought aboard by the plodding line of
old men and women. Two of Muong‘s uniformed soldiers stood guard,
their eyes uneasily scanning the jungle edge at the far side of the lagoon.

Thinking of Deirdre, he
absently watched Sergeant Lao and Giralda walk up the gangplank
beside the line of workers. The guards let them by, and for the moment, nothing
registered in Durell’s mind. They were already heading for the cabin deck when
he realized that Giralda had been forbidden access to the boat.

He started forward,
trying to shake off the troubled worry about Deirdre that clouded his mind.

Lao walked with a
purposeful stride, straight and arrogant, as he pushed the woman ahead of him. Giralda seemed
to be limping. Durell saw her turn for a moment back to the Chinese, and her
eyes shone with a quick terror.

Then they vanished
through the cabin doorway.

Durell ran.

The line of old people
loading wood on the deck got in his way. He wasn’t sure if any of it was
deliberate. He drew his gun and shouted to the soldiers, but they turned blank
brown faces toward him. Then he saw Papa Danat stagger from the
doorway where Lao and the woman had disappeared. The fat man held the side of
his head and yelled something, and Durell saw blood streaming down his face.

At the same time, Major Muong came
up from the engine hatchway and looked about uncertainly. They almost collided
as Durell vaulted the rusty deck rail and started for the cabins where he had
imprisoned Orris Lantern.

“What is it?” Muong asked.

“Did you send for Lao,
your sergeant?”

“No, he has duties on
the perimeter—"

“He just came aboard
with Giralda.” Durell ran for the door as Papa Danat staggered
in his way. “Who slugged you, Danat? What happened?”

Danat
 
mumbled
something and stared vaguely at the blood on his hand. “Giralda—”

“Is Lantern in there?”

“He was in his cabin,
yes—”

It was a certainty, now.
Cursing, Durell shoved by Danat into the shadowy cabin corridor.
There were four steps down into the dusty, rotting salon. He was momentarily
blinded by the abrupt change from brilliant sunlight to dark shadow. Muong ran
lightly behind him. Across the salon there was a flicker of movement, and then
a door opened and sunlight slanted across the narrow corridor. He saw Giralda and
Lao. The woman had seized the sergeant’s arm and was struggling with him. Lao
held something in his fist. Durell saw it was a grenade. The Chinese screamed
furiously and hurled the woman aside as her fingernails raked his arm. And then
Lao threw his grenade into Orris Lantern’s cabin.

"Down!” Durell
yelled.

The explosion was
thunderous.

Flying splinters of wood
whined through the air. The cabin wall bulged, and an overhead timber came down
with an agonized cracking sound. Smoke filled the salon. Durell heard a
sibilant sound from Major Muong.

“I trusted him. I saved
his life, two years ago. The Cong Hai were killing everyone in his
village—”

“Shut up,” Durell said.

A whimpering came
through the smoke that filled the air. It was Giralda. Then he heard a
ululating wail of despair that could only have come from Lao’s throat. Muong started
up. His face was bleak, his eyes savage. Durell jumped to hold him back,
expecting another grenade, but Muong eluded him and ran into the
smoke. Durell followed hard after him.

Giralda
 
was
seated on the corridor floor, her hair tumbled before her face. There was blood
all over her, but he could not see how seriously she had been hurt.

He heard Lao wail again,
but Muong blocked his way and gasped, “He is for me. I trusted him
and made him my friend—"

They both saw Lao now.
The Chinese had gone into the wrecked, smoke-filled cabin. From outside came
shouts of alarm and the thud of running feet. Lao staggered around to face
them. His face was distorted with hatred. He had another grenade in his left
hand, a knife in his right. As Muong leaped for him, the knife
flashed and made a sound like a butcher’s blade chunking into a slab of meat.

Muong
 
fell
against Lao. The Chinese tried to avoid him and tripped over Giralda’s legs.
Durell jumped him.

There was a furious
strength in the assassin’s half-naked body. Durell did not know if the pin had
been pulled on Lao’s second grenade or not. He ripped it from Lao’s fingers and
threw it away, but it did not roll far down the corridor. Lao sobbed. His face
was blackened with smoke. More smoke curled from the shattered cabin. Durell
stepped over Muong’s body and chopped at Lao's throat and staggered
him backward.

“Kill him!” Giralda shrieked.
“Kill him!”

But even then, Durell
knew that a dead Lao would be no good to him. Only Lao could answer his
questions.

He chopped again at the
Chinese and saw the man’s round head snap back, and Lao spun and staggered
away. Durell leaped for his back and bore him down and slammed his skull
against the solid deck. Lao heaved and tried to knife him, his breath hissing
between bared teeth. Durell caught his shoulders, lifted him, slammed his head
again on the deck. Lao‘s lean, snakelike body shuddered and was still.

All at once, silence
returned.

Durell drew a deep, slow
breath. A tremor went all through him. Slowly, with great care, he raised
himself from Lao’s inert form and stood up. The deck seemed to heave and sway
under his feet. He looked down at Muong. The man was almost decapitated by
the frantic slash and thrust of Lao’s knife. The blood that had gushed made the
place look like a madman’s slaughterhouse.

Giralda
 
was
whimpering. He paid no attention to her. He was reluctant to go into the cabin
where Orris Lantern had been imprisoned. The grenade had done its
work too well, he supposed. And everything in the job had come apart at the
seams. He was supposed to have kept Lantern alive. And Muong had paid
with his life to stop Lao. But it had all been too late. He looked at Giralda and
saw the ruin of her face and battered body and wondered briefly about Deirdre.
He shuddered.

Then he went into the
shattered cabin.

The wreckage done by the
grenade was complete. But it had all been for nothing.

There was no body.

Orris
 
Lantern
wasn’t there.

                                  22

PAPA DANAT applied a
dirty rag to his head and groaned gratefully as Durell lit a cigarette and put
it between his puffed, battered lips. The Frenchman sucked at it greedily. The
jollity was gone from his eyes, suddenly sunk deep into his facial fat. He
shook his head, with its tonsure surrounded by gray hair, in dark bitterness.

“It is all my fault. I
have been a bad father, a weak and self-indulgent old fool.”

“Listen to me,” Durell
said. “Can you understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand nothing. I
do not know what has been happening.”

“Muong is dead. Someone
must be in charge now. The soldiers may not obey me. They’ll probably vanish,
take off into the jungle, to escape the Congs. And the Cong Hai will
only wait now until nightfall. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“For the last time, do
you know where Deirdre is?”

“No.”

“And your daughter?
Where is Anna-Marie?”

“I do not know.”

“And Yellow Torch?”

Papa Danat held
up a fat, shaking hand. “Please. How can I know these things? I am sick, Lao
cracked my head, I am filled with pain—”

“Aren’t you worried
about your daughter?”

“She must be with
Lantern.”

“And you think she is
Safe?”

“He loves her.”

Durell snapped:
“You 
are
 a fool.”

A fury seized him, and
he knew this was bad, since it obscured his judgment. He pulled Danat to
his feet. The man swayed and would have fallen, but Giralda supported  She
had, after all, escaped with only light injuries.

“Let him be,” she
whispered. “I will take care of him.”

“He must be made to
understand. We’re all dead if we wait here for the Cong Hai to take
us.”

“You would leave without
your woman?”

“If I can find
Lantern—yes.”

“It was all a trick, I
think. Lantern has gone back into the jungle to his terrorist friends. He led
them for months, so why should he desert them now? I do not know many things.
It is very puzzling. I do not know why Lao made me come with him to try to kill
Lantern. But Lantern must have taken the two ladies with him.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know nothing. But it
is a sensible explanation.”

Durell had no answers.
He told Danat to come with him to the engine room. Danat protested
he was in too much pain, but Giralda murmured to him and he got
grumblingly to his feet. The woman spoke with a small, pained smile. “We do
wish to help, Mr. Durell. After all, they will kill every one of us now, if we
stay.”