Assignment - Sulu Sea (8 page)

“Yes. And how well do you know Mr. Tommy Lee?”

“We are to be married,” the nurse said quietly.

A shouting in the corridor reminded him he had only moments
to spare if he expected to stay out of Colonel Mayubashur’s hands. He caught
the nurse’s arm and said,
 
“Lead the way,
and hurry,” and opened the hall door. He was pleased to see that everything was
in confusion, with a crowd of doctors. nurses and patients gathered around the
Chinese whom Durell had shot, and others who stared in awe at the chipped
plaster where the gunman’s bullets had smashed all about the corridor.

“This way," said Yoko Hanamutra. “Quickly.”

“Your uniform is bloody.”

“I’ll change it. I must talk with you. I wanted to see you,
anyway, but not like this, of course. And poor Dr. Jaiga-”

Durell said harshly: “The world is full of innocent
bystanders. Let’s go.”

She led him quickly through the crowd in the corridor. Two
uniformed police were pushing through the excited patients. and the girl’s fingers
tightened convulsively on his wrist Durell wondered why she was afraid of the cops.
On the lower floor they again had to buck a tide of excited visitors and
bomb victims. The girl finally ducked into what served as a linen closet.
She slammed the door behind her and turned on a very dim, ten-watt saffron
bulb. The closet was small and the quarters were crowded. The girl’s dark
slanted eyes glowed luminously in the dimness.

“I must get out of this damaged uniform,“ she whispered.

“My street clothes are hanging here. Do you mind? I will
change, and then we must find Tommy. You will help me, won‘t you?”

“Is Tommy Lee mixed up in the bombing?”

“I don’t know. Everything has been like a nightmare. Please
be patient with me, Mr. Durell.”

“Tommy has a big mouth, telling you about consulate
business,” he said quietly.

“I coaxed it out of him, because he’s been in such an odd
state of mind lately. With the consul gone to the SEATO meeting and Dr. McLeod
spending so much time on Tarakuta, it all fell on Tommy’s shoulders, as first
secretary. At first I thought it was wonderful for him, but he—I don‘t know,
I just feel he is in terrible trouble, and I know you will help him. Please
turn around.”

“I can't,” he said. “There isn’t room."

"All right.”

She stripped out of the bloody nylon uniform with swift,
slithering sounds. Her dark hair, cut like a China doll’s, was perfumed, and
she was not as plump as he had thought, when he glimpsed a flash of her
narrow waist and flaring hips. She struggled into a Palembang sarong of
rare, dark blue silk with silver embroidery, rather than a Chinese chamseong.
She lost her balance and toppled against him as he stood squeezed against the
linen shelves, and he caught her and held her up.

“I’m sorry. Please don’t think—”

“Thinking is my only privilege at the moment.”

“How can you joke at a time when bombs are killing—”

“I'm not joking. Are you ready?”

She shrugged the blue sarong in place, tossed back her
thick, straight black hair, and the change was remarkable. The anonymous and efficient
nurse was gone, replaced by an unusual flowerlike beauty. She leaned on his arm
as she stepped into high-heeled shoes. “We can go now. I don't think we will be
noticed like this.”

“Why are you so anxious to avoid the police, Yoko?”

She stared at him. “But aren’t you?”

“I simply don’t want to be delayed. But you were a witness
to murder and kidnapping—”

“Yes, and they may ask me things about Tommy Lee that I
don’t want to tell anyone except you.”

She held her head high, walking with firm, quick steps
as they left the tiny closet and crossed the hospital lobby a moment later. The
local Pandakan militia had taken over the plaza, and a line of steel-helmeted
soldiers was posted in front of the Hotel des Indes. On the sparkling green
near the gingerbread, Victorian bandstand, a T-35 Russian Tank had clawed up
the lawn and waited with its long cannon tilted upward, pointed at the evening
sky. There was no one to fight, no visible enemy about. The terrorists
had gotten safely away into the tangle of alleys and canals of the island city.
A semblance of normalcy had even come back to the big square. A few of the
shops had opened their iron shutters and were ready for business again, and the
sidewalk sellers of ices and watermelon were back to hawk their wares. A boy
was hosing clown the blood-stained sidewalk in front of the bombed-out cafe.

“My car is in the hospital lot,” the girl said.

A siren wailed not far away. Durell wondered how soon
Colonel Mayubashur would start hunting for him. A number of people had seen him
in the hospital outside Simon Smith’s room, and the colonel would have lots of
time and many questions to put to him. Durell wished he had the answers
himself. But at the moment, he lacked both the time and the information.

Yoko Hanamutra’s car was an expensive blue Renault Floride,
a rarity in this island corner of the world. She slid familiarly behind the
wheel, the silk of her blue sarong slipping smoothly across her hips and
thighs. He got in beside her.

“Is this your car?"

“Yes. But I could not afford it on my nurse’s salary.

Tommy bought it for me, as an engagement gift.”

“On his salary as first secretary?”

“Please, I don‘t know how much he earns.”

“That’s not very practical, Yoko, for a girl with her mind
on matrimony.”

She bit her lip. “I doubt if he will ever marry me now.”

She eased the little French sports car smoothly into the
steam of bicycle and trishaw and bus traffic. The life of had hem diverted only
momentarily by the terrorist growing dark now, but the tropical heat had not
anything, the humidity was even worse, but the momentum of the car as the girl
drove along the Peninsular Heights was pleasant.

He let her take him where she pleased.

                                                                                               
chapter seven

THE American consulate occupied a select site on the
promontory above Pandakan. Unlike the European residencies, which dated back to
the previous century in Georgian and Victorian design, the United States had
recently built——with foreign-aid blocked funds-—a sparkling modern cube behind
a high concrete wall and a severe, diamond-patterned steel gate opening onto
the main drive. The marine guard knew the girl and nodded a good evening and
opened the gate with only a casual glance at Durell. The sweeping drive brought
the bright blue car to a quick, dusty halt in front of the vaultlike entrance.

The westward sky over the sea was a spray of surrealist
colors, making sharp, deep shadows on the consulate lawn among the massed
oleander, frangipani and palms that failed to offset the severity of the modern
building. A boy in a green Malay head-cloth was taking down the hag from its
high pole on the lawn. No ceremony attended its lowering.

Miss Hanamutra led the way with familiar, clicking high heels
across the circular lobby, and an Indian clerk in a seersucker suit jumped to
his feet as they passed an office doorway.

“Oh, Miss Hanamutra, a message for you, please!”

She halted. “Yes?”

“Mr. Thomas Lee asked that if you come here, you are to wait
for him. He had a most urgent message to run.”

Durell said: “Do you know where Mr. Lee went?”

“You are Mr. Durell? But of course. We were advised of your
arrival. No other American national is reported visiting Pandakan in these
troubled times. We have discouraged tourists and managed to evacuate all except
a few stubborn businessmen. So—” The Hindu smiled and bowed. “You are a new
face and I deduce you are Mr. Samuel Durell, the oil technician from New
Orleans mentioned in our advisory cables.”

The consulate was air-conditioned to a point where it felt chilly
in contrast to the torpid heat outside. Durell asked:

“Where is Mr. Lee’s office, please?”

“The last down the corridor, sir. Mr. Kiehle’s suite is locked,
and Dr. McLeod uses Mr. Lee’s office when he is here.”

“Which isn‘t often, is it?”

"That is not for me to comment upon, sir.”

The girl hesitated, and Durell guided her firmly down
the

hall. He had the feeling that, not having found her fiancé, she
was regretting the impulse that had led her to bring him here. But he did not mean
to release her easily.

The office was lighted, and Durell went directly to the corner
windows and closed the Wooden inner shutters against the black shrubbery of the
lawn outside. The girl stood uneasily, biting her full underlip, and he asked
quietly:

“Do you know where Tommy Lee might have gone?“

“No, I don’t. Perhaps I was too hasty. The bombing, and all—he
might he at the Hotel des Indes, looking for you.”

“Or perhaps he's looking for Simon Smith’s kidnappers?”

“Why should he do that?” she asked defensively.

“I thought you might be able to answer that one.”

“No, it’s nothing so tangible—nothing I can put my
finger on so easily, Mr. Durell. I’m sorry, I am afraid of you, I think.
You are not what I expected. Mr. Kiehle is rather kind and bumbling, and Dr.
McLeod is rather erratic, and not a diplomat, by any means.”

“But I’m different?”

Frightening, I should say."

You have no reason to be afraid,” he said, “as long as “you
make an even swap—my help for yours."

But I don’t want Tommy hurt, you see.”

“If he’s in trouble, he’s already been hurt, and if you back
out now, Miss Hanamutra, it‘s possible he might be hurt worse than Simon Smith.”
He watched her with dark, hard eyes. A muscle twitched at the comer of her
mouth and she looked away. He said: “You’ve been in this office many times
before, right?”

‘Yes, but there was never any problem of security—"

‘Then tell me about Tommy and your plans to marry him and
Why you think he’s in trouble and what it has to do with Simon’s abduction from
the hospital where you work. While you talk, I'm going to look around, so don’t
mind my movements."

“What will you look for?”

“I'll know it.” he said, “if I find it."

He put on more lamps, which shed a soft but efficient light
over the shining desk used by Thomas C. Lee. There Was a polished brass
name-plate on the desk, and Yoko Hanamutra offered the information that she had
given it to her fiancé
 
on his last
birthday. Durell nodded and went through the desk files. Several native
consulate employees came curiously to the door, and Durell went to the Indian clerk
outside and showed his I.D. card to dispel them and went on with his work.

He could find nothing incriminating in the desk until
he came across a small slip of red tissue notepaper with Chinese ideographs on
it, tucked between the pages of a Day Book which itemized the comings and
goings of the absent Mr. Kiehle and the wandering Dr. Malachy McLeod, Durell held
the bit of red paper up between his fingers. “What is this, Yoko?”

 
She considered it
with round eyes. “A gambling chit, I think.
 
But Tommy doesn’t gamble."

“According to his initials here, he owes somebody some
money, doesn’t he? About eight hundred dollars, American?”

She walked quickly toward the desk. She had a nice walk,
nice hips and nice legs, and very black, dangerous eyes.

I asked you for help, Mr. Durell, and I aided you to escape embarrassing
questions by police, did I not? But you only suspect my Tommy, in exchange!”
She snatched the scrap of red paper from his fingers. “Yes, it is a
promissory note, a gambling chit, to Prince Ch’ing.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Durell said drily.

“He’s the boss—in Dendang, anyway. Maybe through all the
islands. The plebiscite will tell the truth, but he owns tin mines as well as
gambling dens and some say he owns the opium trade and palaces in Fishtown and
even some houses of women.” She paused and flushed. “I am not very well
advised of these things. All I know is that people say Prince Ch’ing is very
rich, very powerful, and a terrible man.”

“You‘ve never met him yourself?”

“Oh, no. Very few people have ever seen him.”

“Has Tommy Lee?”

“I don’t know. He never said so.”

“But your Tommy owes him eight hundred dollars and is missing
tonight. Does that make sense to you?”

She looked tearful. “No more sense than other things happening
in Pandakan lately. Tommy is changed—everyone has changed. It is a madness that
seized us all at once, and it is not just the plebiscite. Most of the people
don’t care about politics. They just want to be left alone. ”

"If it isn't the vote, what’s bugging everybody?”

“They are afraid,” she whispered.

“Of what?”

“Something has changed,” she repeated. There are whispers
and fear in the air, but no one talks about it.”

“But your friend, Tommy Lee, is involved in it?”

“Tommy is a loyal American, Mr. Durell!"

“You protest too much,” Durell guessed. “How do you suppose
a security check on his family might work out?”

She stared with eyes suddenly white with terror, then looked
down, her dark lashes fanning her apricot cheeks. But she could not hide the
fact that he had hit something vulnerable.

“Do you know his family, Yoko?” he asked gently,

“Yes, they live here in Pandakan.”

“Both parents?”

She was silent.

“Both?”

She drew a deep, shaken breath. “Mr. Durell, I am both glad
and frightened that you are here. It has not been easy to help and be cheerful
when the one you love refuses such help and is in despair. I warned Tommy that
someone like you would come here some day and find his secret and make trouble
for him. I begged him to tell the truth on his records. But he was afraid. He
is a naturalized American, Mr. Durell, and loyal, as I said. But the air is
poisoned with suspicion these days, and he was sure he would lose his job.”