Assignmnt - Ceylon (4 page)

Wells only shrugged.

The papers looked authentic. Incredibly, it was his signature on the account in the Suisse Banque Cantonale de Geneve. He knew the manager there. The manager’s name was Fouquier. The name was on the papers, under his own name. The writing looked genuine. It was the best forgery Durell had ever seen. His face did not betray the manner in which he was shaken.

“I’d have to study these carefully—when I don’t have to keep an eye on you, Willie.”

Wells shrugged again. “Sorry.”

“Who is supposed to have paid me all this?” His mind turned on what other weapon Wells had concealed here.

“The Russians? The Black House? And McFee really believes all this?”

“He’s not infallible. But there’s more.” Wells paused “Do you deny these are your signatures?”

“Of course I deny it.”

“There is also King and Thompson,” Wells added. “They’re up in Kandy,” Durell said. “I sent them of three days ago, and I haven’t heard from them since. Art they in this lunatic scheme with you, Willie?”

“No. They’re in Kandy, all right. For good. And that’s why I’m not sorry to do what I have to do, Sam. You sen’ them up to be killed. I don’t know what else this is al about. I don’t give a damn about Sanderson, who’s beer kidnapped. It happens almost every day now. Routine. A new tool of the lunatic terrorists. But you don’t kill youi own men every day, do you? It turns my gut over, thinking you did that.”

Durell spoke with deadly calm. “Are you saying thai King and Thompson have been murdered?”

“You ought to know. You sent them into an ambush up there. I don’t know why, and I don’t ask questions aboui it. You did it yourself. You shot them, two days ago.”

“But I wasn’t—” Durell began. Then he was silent thinking of Aspara. Wells said, “So where have you beer for the past weekend? You’ve got an alibi, Sam?”

He couldn’t destroy Aspara. “No, no alibi.” he said. “Dhapura doesn’t know where you went. He can’t 01 won’t say. I know you’ve been in Kandy.”

“I haven’t been to Kandy.”

“Ah. Somewhere else?”

Durell had felt anger before, but nothing like this.

Wells persisted, “It’s important. Can’t you say when you’ve been?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s nothing to do with you.”

“Or with Ira Sanderson? Look, your two men wer< boxed near Sanderson’s house at Kandy. You sent then there to see what they could learn about Ira’s activities be fore the PFM snatched him. They were boobied, they were smeared, man, and they were good fellows, both of them. You’re the only one who knew what they were up to. Did they learn something about you that made them dangerous to you? Hey? You look funny, Sam.”

“I feel funny,” Durell said.

“So you went to Kandy and dropped ’em because they knew you’d gone over the wire? Is that it?”

“No.”

“Then where were you?”

He couldn’t tell Wells he had been with Aspara. He didn’t trust Wells. He didn’t know what to believe. It was incredible that General McFee had put him on the extinction list. He couldn’t accept it. But here was Wells, big as life and twice as lethal. If he betrayed his tryst with Aspara, the woman would be destroyed politically. The times were antiforeign; her career would be ended. He couldn’t do that to her.

He looked at the mask, the ves mahuna that Wells had put on the floor beside the easy chair.

“I want to talk to Washington,” he said..

“No way, man.”

“I don’t believe Harry and Joe are dead,” he said.

“They are. You killed ’em.”

“And the signature on that numbered Swiss account is a forgery,” Durell said.

“They’ve been checked by the experts at No. 20 Annapolis Street. You signed that account. That half-million is yours.” Wells’ hands were quiet on his thighs. “I’m really sorry, Cajun. You’re very good at your job. There’s no use going around in circles over this. I’m taking a chance just , talking to you. I tried for you three times, and no go, you’re too fast and too smart. But I thought you had a right to know why I’m doing this to you, for old time’s sake, for the time you helped me in Boganda.”

“You’re insane,” Durell said.

“Aren’t we all? So goodbye, Sam.”

He heard a small click and got out of the chair an instant before the bomb went off. There was an electronic whir a fractional second before the explosion came. The wooden chair, with its padded back, had been rigged for an execution.

The explosion was not loud. It was a fragmentatioi device, designed to burst into Durell’s back as he sat in the chair. He felt the heat and shock of the blast as h( dropped to one side, landing on his knees, his gun loose ir his fingers. The force of the explosion, without Durell tc cushion it, lashed out at Wells. He went over backward ir his armchair, his face suddenly a startled mask of blood There was no time to think. Durell scrambled forwarc through the smoke and the noise, aware of a pain in hi; right shoulder; he retrieved his gun. Wells was crawling or all fours, trying to reach into a pocket. He kicked at the man, felt his heel impact on the other’s ribs. Wells grantee and fell to one side and came up with his Luger. Durell hi him with the butt of his .38, desperate now, aware of fire crackling behind him. Wells had done a good job, his best But it was not good enough. He was still alive. He felt the black man claw at his ankle as he struggled up, felt i numbness in his shoulder. Wells’ eyes were desperate angry. There was blood on his neat white shirt. Several fragments of the small bomb had hit him full on as he had faced Durell’s chair. Durell hit him again. The man’s grip was stubborn. Durell kicked at his clawing hand, stamped on it, swayed erect. The room was full of smoke. The execution chair in which he had been sitting was splintered the padding on fire. There was no time to think. He hi Wells once more, and the man collapsed, tried to lift and crawl forward a bit, then collapsed again.

Durell stood uncertainly, aware of pain and anger, of incredulity that this had happened to him.

He looked at Wells, on his face on the floor. He wanted to kill the man. His finger tightened on the trigger. He trembled from head to foot. Wells rolled over on hi back, groaning. The man’s teeth gleamed between tight lips. He looked up at Durell’s figure towering over him.

“Lucky,” he gasped. “You’re lucky, traitor.”

“I haven’t gone over the wire,” Durell rasped. “Not ye1 anyway.”

He forced his finger to ease its tension on the trigger Wells stared at him from pain-clouded eyes. The rest o his face was hidden with blood. Durell turned and went to the door and left the hotel room.

Mr. Dhapura wrung his hands.

“I am sorry, please, I assure you, oh, please—”

“Your radio,” Durell said. “Quickly, now.”

“Forgive me, yes, sir, certainly—” Dhapura paused. “You need a doctor, sir. What happened? I heard something upstairs. I believe there was a lire—”

“Your staff put out the fire. How long did you know that Wells was here?”

“I did not know, I swear it, I apologize, please, your back is all bloody, it is terrible—”

“Let’s try the radio.”

“Of course. Come. Can you tell me what happened?” “No. Let’s go.”

Mr. Dhapura rolled his eyes and backed toward the rear door of his hotel manager’s office. The excitement in the lobby of the Royal Lanka had died away. No one had called the police. As far as Durell knew, no one had found Wells in his room. The man had gotten away somehow, despite his wounds from the bomb blast—an exhibition of pure willpower.

There was a small file room behind the main office, then a narrow corridor and a flight of stairs.

“The staff’s quarters,” Dhapura explained. “And the supply lockers. Beyond is the communications room.” “What’s in the supply lockers?”

“Everything. China, linen—”

“Bandages?”

“A first-aid kit, yes.”

“Get it.”

“You will need new clothes, sir. What happened?”

“Stay calm, Mr. Dhapura,” Durell said.

“But I did not expect all this here, sir. I run a quiet establishment. My job with your people was a—a sedentary one, sir. Collecting data, listening to conversations in the lobby. Sending in reports. I have never seen a man like you, sir, with a gun. I did not guess it would come to this—”

Mr. Dhapura’s hands shook as he took out a shiny first-aid kit from a locker and thrust it at Durell. Then he hurried up the flight of steps, looking back with frightened eyes. The communications room was in the rear of the hotel, in a small wing beyond the rooms where the hotel servants were quartered. Dhapura worked at a ring of keys, and at last the door was open. Durell felt a momentary dizziness as he followed the man inside.

The TK-12 transceiver gleamed against the wall in the hot, shadowed little room. Durell was aware of the pressure of time, of Wells, who had vanished, but who certainly would not give up his objective. He felt exposed on all sides, hunted by Wells, perhaps by the PFM, an outcast from the world in which he had lived and worked for so long. He did not want to think about it. It was too much to accept.

He waved Dhapura aside, paused a moment to collect the Q Code in his mind, and snapped on the. transceiver. The world-wide radio transmissions established by K Section would reach Washington in seconds, his message confirmed by his code call. He began working out a Q inquiry directly to General Dickinson McFee at No. 20 Annapolis Street. Mr. Dhapura made small moaning sounds -and tentatively pushed the first-aid kit toward him across the table. Durell nodded and shrugged out of his shirt. The Sinhala made shocked clucking sounds as he looked at Durell’s back.

“A doctor, sir. All these metallic fragments—”

“From a bomb,” Durell said.

“But—why, sir?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

“But who did it, sir?”

“One of our people,” he said grimly.

“S-sir?”

“Put a bandage on it, please.”

“Yes, but I am not a doctor, I know nothing of wounds, it might be serious and get infected.”

“Do as I say.”

He sent his Q inquiry and waited, sent it again. Silence. The transceiver hummed. Mr. Dhapura attended to his shoulder, patting fearfully at the flesh wounds.

He sent his message a third time.

Nothing happened.

“Are you sure this is operative?”

Mr. Dhapura patted his hands together. “Yes, sir. Only the other day—”

He stared at the radio. It was working, all right. His message had gone through. But there was no reply.

He was cut off from Washington.

He was outcast.

His Q code should have received a reply in no more than ten seconds. But Washington did not want to talk to him. There was no court, no judge, nowhere to appeal.

He snapped off the radio.

“Sir?”

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where, sir?”

“Come with me.”

“Sir, that man in the room—did you kill him?”

“No. I didn’t want to. He was mistaken in his orders.” He urged Mr. Dhapura out of the little cubicle and along the corridor back to the staff’s quarters. From the end of the hall, he could see into the lobby. Things had quieted down, but there was a uniformed policeman questioning the clerk at the desk. The clerk turned and pointed back toward Dhapura’s office, and Durell took Dhapura’s thin arm and urged him out through a side door.

“Sir, I cannot leave the Royal Lanka. There is too much to be done here—clerical work—and my wife’s brother-in-law is coming to dinner, all the way from Jaffna, to stay with us. Besides, I am not accustomed to your sort of—ah—work, sir, and I would only be a hindrance to your efforts—”

“Is your car outside?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll get it.”

The parking lot behind the Royal Lanka was hot and stifling, boxed in by buildings on every side. Durell moved with Dhapura across the hot pavement. The car was a Toyota that had seen better days. Mr. Dhapura nervously unlocked it. There was a streak of dark sweat-stain soaked through the back of his drip-dry coat. He was growing bald on the top of his head. Durell was certain he carried no weapons. The parking lot seemed empty of any interested spectators.

“Where to, sir?”

“The general post office, at the fort. Stop on Queen Street, near Air India.”

“The traffic makes it difficult to park there.”

“We’ll find a place. See to it.”

Mr. Dhapura drove with care through Colombo’s seething traffic, weaving the little car quickly among the pillarbox-red double-decker buses. He seemed calmer behind the familiar wheel of his car.

“You do seem to be in grave trouble, sir.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Nothing, except that obviously someone is after you, someone very determined to kill you. This affair of Ira Sanderson’s kidnapping must be more important than you thought.”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why Washington did not answer your emergency call?”

“I’m persona non grata,” Durell told him.

“Sir, that is not possible. I do not meet many men like you, men who have been forged, so to speak, in the fires of your profession.” Mr. Dhapura seemed pleased with his speech. “You could not have done anything wrong. I have an instinct for people, sir, my wife always says so, I rarely make an error in judging personality and character. To me, if I may say so, you are an exemplar of your business. I would trust you with my life, sir.”

“You may have to,” Durell said simply.

In the general post office, amid Colombo’s smart new business buildings, Durell asked the Sinhala to stand watch in the center of the crowded floor, and then went to a pay phone, and went through the complicated business of placing an overseas call to Geneva, Switzerland. Monsieur Fouquier, the manager of the Suisse Banque Canton-ale de Geneve, would be just starting his business day in his office overlooking the gleaming Lac Leman, with its towering fountain. Durell had met the man twice on other occasions involving K Section business. He knew he certainly did not have a numbered account with M. Fouquier.

He waited with some impatience while the operators whispered, chanted, and crooned their lexicon of formal signals. Luckily there was no extraordinary delay. The overseas cables were clear. He watched for ten minutes from the phone box while Mr. Dhapura nervously paced the crowded post office floor. Then at last the crisp tones of the Swiss banker reached him.