Assignment - Cong Hai Kill (21 page)

“Time for a showdown,
Cajun?”

Anna-Marie had redressed
his wound, but under his dark jungle tan, which made his blond beard look
almost white, there was an exhausted pallor to his skin, and there were violet
shadows under the shrewd blue eyes.

“It’s time,” Durell
admitted. “You have a lot of talking to do. And you’re going to do it now.”

“Did they train you in
memory tricks?”

Durell nodded. “I’ll be
able to repeat verbatim‘ everything you have to say. Everything I’ve come here
to learn.”

“And your girl? Deirdre?
No sign of her?”

“No."

“You’ll leave her here?”

“If I must.”

Lantern shook his head
slowly. “You’re a bit scary, Cajun. That’s what Anna-Marie said about you, and
I begin to see what she means.”

Durell’s face was hard,
without expression. The other man sighed and hitched himself up on one elbow on
his cabin pallet. The lowering sun sent a single bar of hot light into the
stateroom. Through the square window—the glass was long broken or
removed—Durell saw deepening shadows on the shore and through the channel to
the river.

Lantern said: “All
right. Anna-Marie—and Papa—you’ll have to leave me alone with him. Don’t worry,
honey. He won’t kill me. He doesn’t know it yet, but we both work on the same
team.”

They were alone.

Durell said: “Explain
it.”

“About the team?”

“All of it.”

“You won’t want to
believe me. You think they’d tell you about me and trust you to handle it
right, because you've got triple-A clearance. But your orders were explicit,
weren’t they? General McFee knows you’d prefer to zap me, so he gave you strict
instructions: no killing. Bring me back alive, like an animal for the zoo.”

“How do you know about
McFee?”

“I don’t exactly work
for him, as you do. But my boss works with him. You know about
interdepartmental secrecy? Bane of a good man’s existence, in Washington.”
Lantern began to laugh, then went into a spasm of coughing. I’m a sleeper,” he
said. “
They
 use sleepers, so why shouldn’t we‘? I’m with the NSA
people.”

“You’re right about one
thing,” Durell said coldly.

“McFee would have told
me about you, if it was true.”

“McFee didn’t know, old
Cajun. Nobody but my boss knows. It was set up that way.”

Durell was angry. “That
doesn’t begin to make sense.”

Lantern’s yellow eyes
were fixed on his. “Maybe not to you. But it did to me, when they handed me the
job. I don’t trust anybody in this business. Not my boss, not any man on a
team, not you. I learned the hard way, over China. They flew me from Taipeh last
year, with a collaborator, a nice young fellow; and we had to drop. It was
going to be a piece of cake, picking up data on military installations and
making our way back to the coast near Macao to be picked up. It went well
enough, until this dependable young Chinese from San Francisco, who’d been put
through every mill we’ve got, every check and re-check and computer and psych
exam, tried to turn me in. It was sort of a shock.” Lantern paused. “I had to
kill him. The whole deal went sky-high. I was in the hospital for four months.
I turned in my resignation. My boss asked why and I told him I’d never work
with anyone again. I went back into the business when he agreed to my
stipulation: nobody, nobody at all, was to know who I really am. Not General
McFee. Not you, Cajun. No matter about your triple-A security clearance. No
matter what you’ve got on your dossier. Sorry if your feelings are hurt. It
isn’t that McFee didn’t trust you with the truth about me. He didn’t know it.”

Durell drew a deep
breath. His first shock at the thought that he had not been trusted began to
fade. But his deep-rooted suspicion still remained. Lantern’s story made sense,
of a sort. It was the sort of thing he might have done himself, under similar
circumstances. But he wasn’t ready yet to buy anything.

“Tell me about
NSA," he said tightly.

“You want to check me
out’! You’ve been down to the file room at our District HQ at Fort George
Meade?

Big, U-shaped place with
a high wire fence, and a Whirlwind Computer in the basement that can break any
code in the world, huh? You know Department ‘J’? ‘J’ for jokers, right? The
mugs, prints and dossiers, the pretty little bits of scandal, the tabs on
weaknesses-drink, women, sex habits, greeds. You worked over those ‘J’
files yourself, plenty of times.”

“How do you get down
there?”

“Well, your ID card is
no good without the day’s password. You get that from the fourth floor, Room
408. You get to 408 by two elevators. The first takes you to the sixth floor.
You give your ID to the Madison Avenue type there. We’re full up on Princeton
men, but you went to Yale, I hear. Kind of messes up your Cajun accent. Anyway,
you get the word from the Princeton lad. And a key. The key gets you into the second
elevator. You go through the Slot—electric eye, X-ray scanner, the works. At
the fourth floor, you’re still not finished. Another lad—also Princeton, I
think—makes a few telephone calls. You can watch yourself in the TV peeper, if
you know where to look.”

“Where is it hidden?”
Durell asked.

“In the football trophy
on the Princeton lad’s desk.”

“What about your
military record and the affidavits about what a bastard you were in that ambush
at Luc Bat?”

“I went through that bit
on orders, after I failed to get in through Taipeh, as I told you. But a
lot of it was doctored and leaked to Hong Kong when Peiping wanted to check me
out. It made good reading for the Chinese brass. I was at Luc Bat just for this
job. The ambush was genuine, just what I’d been waiting for. By then the defector
picture had been built up, so I walked as far as Chong Fo on their
Number 7 road and let their militia take me. I waved one of their pamphlets
that call us warmongers and imperialist murderers and convinced them that I
wanted to come over to their side.”

“And they believed you?”

“Not at first,
naturally. But I used to be an amateur actor, of sorts. Still, you can’t palm
off a quick Method job on those cats. They finally sent me up to the Grass
Basket, at Peiping. I puzzled them. I guess they wanted to believe they’d
caught a live one, and I convinced them. And finally became Yellow Torch, a
Cong guerrilla leader.”

“You’ve led terrorists
on village raids. . . .”

‘I'm not a bad
tactician. That was part of my qualifications for the job. But most of what you
heard about me was propaganda, for terror effect.”

“What about your
hillbilly background? I was briefed on your resentment of society.”

“All part of the picture
for my ‘defection.’ I’m a hill boy, right enough; like you were a bayou boy.
But I never had any real complaint.” Lantern sighed. “Are you sure you can
remember all I have to tell you? I came by it the hard and lonely way. My name
will be mud with people I care for, and that’s a lot to pay for doing this job.
I spent six months in these jungles. I know most of the ‘fortress areas’
prepared by the Congs. Places, provisions, munitions depots and factories,
all in caves and tunnels; ammo dumps in the jungle, military trails —the whole
works.”

“You said you don’t know
it all.”

“They watched me. They
gave me the name of Yellow Torch, but I was only the front man.”

“And the real boss of
the Cong Hai?”

The bearded man sighed
again. “I don’t know it. It worked out pretty good, otherwise—I
mean, your not knowing who I was. As long as you regarded me as a traitor,
they let me live. But no more. They’ll come to kill me, now. They’ve lost
face—and maybe a few heads will roll—because I fooled ‘em. And I’m hoping that
maybe I can get the boss if he comes after me. We’re in the ‘sudden death’
period of the play-off, right? But I better not waste any more strength. Start
your memory circuits going, Cajun. I’ve got facts and figures for you.”

It had not been easy to
learn, Durell recalled. The weeks of mental anguish at K Section’s ‘Farm’ in
Maryland had been exquisite torment. You learned to wipe your mind clean of
everything but the speaker’s voice, and you learned memory “chains” by which to
imprint the message verbatim on your mind. It did not work perfectly. But in
emergency situations, it was the best that could be done.

Durell listened while
the thin voice gave him the data on the Cong Hai. The “memory chains” gave
system and meaning to what he heard. Lantern spoke for five minutes without
pause. His breath came with quick irregularity, and beads of sweat stood out on
his bearded face. The effort was draining him of his last resources.

Durell neither believed
nor disbelieved. And when at last Orris Lantern sank back with a gasp
and lay with his face upturned to the cabin roof, his yellow eyes were dulled
and empty.

Durell waited a moment.

“Recheck,” he said.

“Go ahead.”

He spoke rapidly,
without accent or inflection, repeating all that Lantern had told him. He made
no errors. A flicker of admiration touched Lantern’s flat eyes, and that was
all, until Lantern said:

“Okay. I may not make
it. But you’ve got it. It you still don’t believe me, you can finish me
now."

“I’m not a murderer,”
Durell said.

Lantern coughed and
laughed again and turned his face to the wall and said bitterly: “I’d think
twice before I’d be sure of that, Cajun.”

                                  24

DURELL went into the
last cabin at the end of the corridor. The Thai soldier on guard stepped aside,
his liquid eyes regarding Durell with open curiosity. Anna-Marie and Danat had
gone back to attend to Lantern. There was one thing left for Durell to do before
he gave the order to move the steamboat.

Lao was in this aft
cabin. He was chained to a stanchion of a hog shaft that came up through the
deck just outside the broken window. He sat with his legs sprawled before him,
his lean face blank. Nothing changed in his eyes as Durell deliberately closed
the door behind him.

Underfoot, the deck
suddenly vibrated as the 
Lady’s
 engines came to life. Beyond
the window, the lagoon was now dark.

Time had run out.

Durell lit a cigarette
and leaned against the rusted bulkhead and stared down at the ragged, thin
prisoner.

There was nothing
servile about Sergeant Lao. His manner was arrogant and stubborn. Someone had
beaten him about the face, and the bruises made his young features look lumpy,
but he gave no evidence of suffering pain.

“Lao, you killed Major Muong,”
Durell began, “even though he was your friend. He trusted you and regarded you
almost as a son.”

Lao smiled and said
nothing.

“You also killed, or
arranged to kill, Uncle Chang. That was your job, too, I imagine.”

“Chang was a sentimental
old fool,” Lao spat.

“And his twin brother, Paio Chu?”

Silence.

“Where is Paio?”

Silence.

“And where is Deirdre
Padgett?”

Lao grinned. “She is
dead."

Durell betrayed no shock.
“You’re lying.”

“Stay here, and you will
be dead, too.”

“What kind of bargain do
you want for Deirdre’s life?”

Durell asked softly.

“We want the double
agent, Orris Lantern. We want him alive, for questioning.”

“And if I refuse?”

Lao shrugged. “You will
not refuse. We know you, Durell. We know all about you. At first, it was
decided to kill Yellow Torch. I tried, and failed, and it is best, after all.
It is now decided to keep him alive, for a time. You will not refuse to give him
to us. The lady will make you reconsider, and you do not have much time.”

“Neither do you, Lao.”

Lao shrugged.

“l’m going to kill
you,” Durell said. “Slowly.”

Lao made a spitting
sound. “You Americans are too soft and chivalrous. You would not torture a helpless
prisoner.”

“You’re mistaken, Lao.
Unfortunately, we’ve had to learn a few lessons from you people. I’ll ask you
once more. Where is Deirdre Padgett?”

Lao suddenly heaved up
at the end of his chin and screamed at the top of his voice: “Death to all imperialists!
Death to all white men! Long live the People’s Republic! Long live the Workers’
and Peasants’ Front!”

“You fool,” Durell said
softly.

He began to work.

Long ago, he had been
instructed in the knowledge of sensitive neural centers, the systems sensitive
to pain by which men are reduced to sobbing, babbling creatures anxious to
please. Durell had never used this knowledge

before in cold blood.
But he revealed none of the nausea and distaste he felt as he applied his
techniques to Lao’s stubborn body and mind. He knew of counter-systems by which
pain can be blocked and the mind sealed off from the body. Lao knew these
systems well. He endured, quietly. His muscles knotted and bunched, his face
twitched and jerked out of shape. But his mouth remained stubbornly closed, and
his eyes glared with a mad defiance.