Assignmnt - Ceylon (18 page)

The last boat on the beach looked more promising. He ran across to it, halted in its shadow, glanced again at the dense foliage that fringed this eastern shore of the island; then he vaulted aboard. There was some old fishnetting, which he took, and then a heap of line, which he quickly coiled in a large loop and slung over his bare shoulder.

As he straightened beside the leaning mast on the beached boat, the first shot slammed into the rotted wood and showered splinters over his shoulders and face.

His reaction was swift and sure and powerful. His first leap took him to the far side of the canted boat. He heard the report of the first shot a split second after the slug hit. The second shot tore a chunk of the boat’s old railing as he vaulted over it and dropped to the sand and warm shallow water beneath. He fell to his knees, scraped his right leg on a plank lying in the sand, and called, “Aspara?”

“I am here.”

“Can you get around the stern?”

“Yes. Where is he?”

“Some distance away. Maybe up a tree.”

The sun was in his eyes as he searched the low profile of the island’s growth. The third shot smacked harmlessly into the sand near the boat’s high prow on the beach. Aspara came scrambling through the water around the stern and dropped, gasping, on the sand beside him.

“Are you all right?”

“He missed. Overeager. Too sure of himself.”

“Can you see him?”

“No.”

He measured the distance to the fringe of brush and coconut palms beyond the narrow strip of sand. There was a small rift in the wall of green bushes, and then he saw the slight glimmer of water running in a tiny stream behind one of the leaning stilt houses. His guess had been correct. The fishermen who had lived here before Mouquerana Sinn took over the island would have settled near fresh water. He had to fill that five-gallon can, he thought. He lay still, and listened, and let his instincts command.

“Is he coming?” Aspara whispered. “Does he think he hit you?”

“We’ll soon find out. Stay here.”

“He—he didn’t fire at me, Sam. He could have hit me. I was exposed to him on the other side of the boat.”

“That’s right, but—”

“Let me go first,” she urged. “Maybe he won’t consider me as his target.”

Three shots suddenly slammed in rapid succession into the sand near the bow of the boat that sheltered them. The reports of the high-powered rifle sounded about a quarter of a mile away. As the last echo died, Durell gathered himself and raced for the line of darkly shadowed foliage. He was almost there when another shot caught him. He felt a tug at his ankle, tripped, fell, rolled over and over, and came up in the thick, prickly undergrowth. He looked back and saw Aspara running after him, carrying the blanket and tin can, her hips swaying in the awkward way that women run. No shots followed her. His ankle burned, and he flexed his leg and saw blood over his foot and swore softly.

“Oh, Sam . . .”

“It’s all right. Just a scratch. A nick.”

With the foliage hiding them, they made it to the little stream without any further attack. Durell washed his ankle and saw that the wound was truly only superficial, but it would be painful later. Then he helped Aspara rig a length of the rope around the tin can as a shoulder strap with which to carry then water easily. He did not stop to drink until he had arranged the line and the netting and the blanket in a tight pack that he could sling over his shoulder. He gave the broken piece of paddle back to Aspara, to carry as a club.

“Sam, I—I feel desperate.”

“No more desperate than Willie Wells, remember. He has that poison in him. He knows that Sinn will show him no pity if he falls.”

“It’s like a nightmare.”

“Worse.” He tried to grin. “It’s for real.”

Her face was pale. Her large, dark eyes showed signs of fatigue already. He looked at the sun and judged there were still more than two hours before the sudden tropic night came to help them. He put his hand under her elbow and helped her to her feet. Her body swayed against him, and he felt the warmth and softness of her and remembered the poya nights they had shared. He knew that she was remembering too, and he softened his voice.

“We’ll look for a place to hole up now. He’ll be heading this way, but he’ll be careful, worrying about what we might have picked up here. He won’t be so sure of himself now, and that will slow him down.”

He started off, following the little stream, walking on the flat stones and in the sandy shallows, carefully pushing through the vines and creepers that made a tunnel out of the route. Insects plagued them, biting and stinging, swarming in increasing numbers as evening drew near, getting in their eyes and ears. Every few steps he paused to listen, but there was no sign that Wells was close by. The little stream went only a short distance and ended in a low-lying swampy area that seemed to extend all across the northern perimeter of the island. He recalled that the junk that had brought them here from Ceylon had landed on the southwest shore, which had been forested. The swamp here was a problem. The mud clung to their feet, sucking them backward, making Aspara slip, fall, and stumble. Each step of the way was a struggle against the tangled vines that closed in around them. Now and then he had to use the knife to hack a passage through the barriers ahead.

Every fifty paces he paused to look back and listen. But the swamp was full of small sounds from the creatures that lived here, large and small, birds and amphibians, and he could not tell if any of the noises behind them might be the sounds of Wells’ passage after them. He swore softly. The sun was only a dim guide through the leafy canopy overhead. The smells of the swamp were nauseating.

Then suddenly he came upon a rotting plank walk among the mangrove roots, a path that someone had laid down many years ago. The local people that Sinn had eliminated, he thought. He stood up on the end of the walk and paused to .pull the girl up after him. She looked exhausted, covered with mud, scratched by branches, bitten by the myriad insects that swarmed hungrily around them when they stopped and which followed them in eager clouds when they pressed on.

“Sam . . . ”

“It’s all right. We’ll find ourselves some cover before dark.”

“I feel he’s right behind us, or ahead of us, all around us.”

“He’s only one man,” Durell said.

“But he has the rifle.”

“We’ll manage.”

Aspara wondered at Durell’s confidence. She knew she was disheveled and probably ugly-looking in his eyes at this moment, and she pondered this man, to whom she had made love on two occasions now. She had accepted him, although she knew he would come and go, that nothing was permanent with him; this big man, for all his capacities, his strength and tenderness, his brutality and sentiment, was essentially homeless, a wanderer, and yet he was at home anywhere in the world, able to adjust, to blend with his surroundings, capable of dealing with enemies both natural and man-made in just about any environment.

She both envied and resented him. Long ago, as a small girl, she remembered going on a tiger hunt with her father, in India, and she never forgot how the huge beast had led them deeper and deeper into the dark forests, knowing the way, moving with powerful, machinelike precision, only occasionally glimpsed, with those great green malevolent eyes. Durell, this big, brutal, lithe man, was like that tiger. He seemed to enjoy being hunted, playing this terrible game, pitting his wit and his strength, his cunning and his training, against an enemy possessed of overwhelming odds in the hunting rifle. Overwhelming? She remembered how the huge beast had suddenly sprung, out of a darkness that was nowhere, and took her father down, clawing, growling, the huge fangs ripping at her father’s throat, releasing the life blood in a great red gushing torrent. . . .

Following Durell on the rickety plank walk, she suddenly slipped and fell to one knee, shook her head, and lifted herself again. Durell had not paused at all. He didn’t even look back at her now. He was moving faster, heading for the western shore of the island.

She had practiced yoga for most of her adult life, both in body and mind, and she knew she could use prana to make her body keep up with him somehow. It was a matter of mental and physical discipline. But deep inside, something trembled weakly within her. All her life, she had put her faith in the gentle and peaceful teachings of the Buddha. Suppose this stone, this new declaration from Buddha himself, stated other precepts, perhaps indicated that Sinn was right, that the world was always in the grip of evil and always would be a domain of darkness? Where would her faith be then—and the faith of a hundred million others? Her world, yes, her mind and her spirit, would be destroyed. And what would Durell—this stranger whom she had clasped in her body, accepting and yearning and crying out for him—what would Durell do- about it?

Everything in her life seemed to have gone wrong: her marriage to Ira Sanderson, her son George, everything. The ambition she had nurtured in politics and statesmanship, her struggle to rise in the vortex of politics that engulfed her new, beloved nation—it all seemed a hollow effort now. Other men and other powers sought to make a mockery of independence and dignity. There was Colonel Skoll, who probably died in agony. And Durell, whose purposes she could not guess, sometimes. And this cold malignancy, this gross, fat, evil thing who called himself Dr. Mouquerana Sinn.

She wanted to stop and weep. Her legs suddenly felt watery, her muscles trembled, she ached and pained all through her body. Her spirit felt dead. She could go no farther. She was only a burden to Durell, and she did not know why he had accepted her.

His brooding strength appalled and frightened her. He was like a machine, like that tiger in India, all-knowing, wise, his blue eyes hiding a blaze of power and will. He would not be easily defeated. But it was hopeless. What could they do?

Ahead of her, Durell paused on the end of the broken-board walk. The placid green sea shone ahead of them. The sun was a huge, intolerable bail of heat low on the empty horizon.

Empty?

She saw him point, and looked in that direction.

A small boat drifted languidly on the oily sea. Two men were in it, watching them.

Willie Wells could feel the poison moving in him. It wasn’t bad yet, only a minor ache along his nerves, a dullness in the nape of his neck. But he knew he would never be at the peak of efficiency as he was now. Each minute, each hour, that the poison remained without its antidote, he lost a bit of his strength, some of his power, minuscule at the moment, but growing steadily, numbing his senses and sapping at his strength. It had to be done quickly, he thought. Now. Or tonight. He had plenty of time left, of course. All day tomorrow, all of tomorrow night. But how would he be then? He couldn’t guess. No use taking chances. It had to be now, as soon as possible, or Durell would slip away from him while he weakened steadily, lost his cunning, lost the determination to live.

Dog eat dog, he thought. It had always been that way with him, all through his life, even as a kid in the wrecked slums of Philadelphia. He had tried to put those early years of frustration and anguish out of his mind long ago. As an adult, aware of himself, of his strength and his intellectual capacities, he thought he had succeeded in shoving those rotten memories out of his thoughts, washing himself clean, so to speak, in a lonely and fierce independence. Hatred had helped. It gave him a measure o: strength to carry on through those early years, although later that strength turned out to be false and undependable. The behavior of the people he had met in the army in Vietnam, and later as a mercenary in Africa, turned out to be surprising and unpredictable. Those who should have understood and sympathized with him as a brother turned out to be his worst enemies. On the other hand, a man like Durell had helped and encouraged him. Even the chief of K Section’s operations, that strange little man in gray named General Dickinson McFee, had proved cooperative in giving him a boost upward. But now there was this, and you were back to basics again, the fundamental problem of staying alive.

Willie Wells sighed. He knew he had lost the first round. The poison that Dr. Sinn had injected in him ate like the slow drip of some vitriolic acid. From his perch in the tree, he had watched Durell explore the deserted fishing village and the boats, picking up this and that, getting water, the length of rope, the blanket, the club. The woman didn’t seem to be slowing him down any. Wells wondered if he could use the woman somehow, but then dismissed it. Durell was a professional. His prime motivation here was survival. He would sacrifice the woman, if necessary. He tried to put himself in Durell’s place for the next twenty-four hours but could not imagine himself in such a situation. Was his nerve going? He slid his fingers along the smooth, warm stock of the rifle. A good machine, he thought. He had plenty of cartridges, but the rifle might not be enough, there would have to be something more to trap Durell, this man who had been his friend. He shook his head, felt perspiration run stinging into his eyes, and dried his hands on his thighs to keep a better grip on his weapon. How had he missed? It should have been a clean shot, seeing Durell on the deck of the wrecked, beached fishing boat. He had never missed such a shot before. Maybe, he thought, there was something in him that kept him from wanting to kill Durell, and some trick of the subconscious had made his aim go bad. He hoped it wouldn’t happen again. Dog eat dog, he thought again. No time now for sentimentality. No profit in allowing the mind to play tricks on him. It was kill or be killed. He knew that Durell would show him no mercy, if Durell had such a possibility.

Wells moved slowly through the late afternoon heat of the island. Mouquerana Sinn was probably watching from that tower in his palace. Enjoying all of it. A perverted sense of amusement, that monster had. But his offer had been good. Sinn had played very effectively on his old memories, recalling the bad days of childhood and his early youth in the black ghetto, making him remember the bad times in Vietnam, building on his resentment, promising, promising him everything he had ever dreamed of achieving back in those rotten days.