Assignment- Tiger Devil

by Will B Aarons

  The door opened and a waiter, perspiring in a short, white mess jacket, asked for Durell's order.

  Ana interposed. "Bourbon and soda," she said.

  "I'm surprised you remembered."

  "I remember everything about us."

  "Is that so much?"

  "More than you know, dear Cajun." Her mouth arched smugly. "I have a diary full of you."

  "How did you know I was in town?"

  "Calvin Eisler told me. He knows about everything."

  "He did?"

  Ana nodded. Durell could not have said what she was thinking. "In fact," she said, "I am here as his emissary. He said to tell you to leave him alone." As Durell's face darkened, she added hastily, "But I knew you wouldn't. He's such an ass, really. He thinks of me as an American, although I was bom in Cuba. I told him you would listen to a fellow countryman—but I just wanted an excuse to see you again." She squeezed his hand, only a bit, and said, "Do you mmd?"

  ,"He shouldn't have known my name at this point," Durell said. "He certainly should not have discussed the matter with you."

  "Why not?" Her eyes went brassy. "I have an interest in this. Dick was my friend, and Calvin knows it. Dick introduced us at an embassy party, shortly after I arrived here."

  Her voice held no trace of her Cuban birth and infancy. Her upbringing in the U.S. seemed to have made her totally American, Durell thought. He said, "What's Eisler to you now?"

  "He wants me to marry him. I hope you're jealous."

  "Why don't you?"

  "I'm not ready for marriage—I want to explore life . while I can, all sides of it, everything, everywhere."

  "Some doors are better left closed. Remember Pandora?"

  Another smile bent her small mouth. "I would have loved to be Pandora—^not to loose the evils, but, once they were out anyway, to have made capital of them." She sighed, picked up her cigarette from the ashtray, saw that it had gone out and dropped it back carelessly. "Anyhow, Calvin's too unpredictable for my taste. Always popping off somewhere at odd hours, sometimes for days ' on end. He's something of a rebel, really."

  "He's got a lot to lose, for a rebel," Durell said.

  "His family's wealth is immense, if that's what you mean. But I gather that his personal share is relatively slight, what with brothers and sisters and uncles and cousins. They own several large sugar estates, timbering concessions—two or three shipping lines. His relatives find him a little eccentric—they sent him to Cambridge to study the classics and mellow into a proper gentleman, but he came back with degrees in botany and tropical forestry. He's written several papers and books on the flora and fauna of Guyana. He goes into the interior frequently. But lately he's been fanatical about politics. He's impatient to make his mark—he hopes for a ministerial appointment soon."

  Ana's remarks brought to Durell's mind the COMMENT section of Eisler's dossier:

  Subject volunteered collaboration in antigovem-ment labor agitation (1962-3) through Public Service International (U.S. cover affiliate: American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees). Subsequent action keyed through family-dominated holdings with house unions. After fall of Marxist prime minister, was switched to political orientation with view to penetration of National Assembly. Objective accomplished, 1973. Present objective: cabinet-level post Subject provides high-grade data on irregular basis (BUDGET subsidy: $1,200 U.S. a mo.). However, with deepening involvement, subject has displayed initiative for unauthorized pursuits on which control officer lacks information, e.g. sub rosa police connections, political dealing, influence peddling. Subject's tendency to self-aggrandizement and isolation from control are negative to sound operational procedures and planning. Prospects should be evaluated with care before committing present objective to budget.

  It was a side to Eisler known to few persons—and no Guyanese. Chad had been right, Durell reflected. If it got out, it would shatter the man's career—and Durell did not particularly care now if that happened.

  Ana was saying, "I know how you feel about what happened to Dick. I knew K Section would send someone down."

  "You know nothing about K Section, Ana," Durell said.

  "Would it frighten you if I did? I, who was reared among its people?"

  "Their families aren't aware of that much. It's to their own benefit."

  "And their foster children even less, right?"

  "We did what we could for you, after your father was lost at the Bay of Pigs. He was one of the most capable of Cuban exile leaders, and we owed him that. Jim and Marge gave you a normal home; you were more than a foster child to them."

  "I know, Sam. I didn't mean to sound resentful." She turned her face to the windows, where the reflected jaguars floated in savage constellation above Georgetown's trees and rooftops. There came a distant rummaging noise of wind and traffic, the spicy fragrance of Portuguese garlic pork.

  Durell wondered where the waiter was and considered the Volkswagen parked below. He thought about the intentions of its occupants and whether they would be content to wait outside or come in here. If they became impatient, Ana's life could be endangered. His .38 was a comforting lump on his belt, just below his right kidney, but this room, with its globe lamps and white cedar cabinets, was a cage high in the air, a potential death trap.

  Ana's eyes found his. "I want to know what you plan to do about Dick. I have a right."

  "No you don't," Durell said flatly.

  She took a deep breath, arrogant breasts puffing against the neckline of her dress, and crossed the long curves of her taut thighs. She looked offended, and spoke to Durell as if he were to be pitied. "You question every person, every little motive, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "I wonder how I could like a man such as you. Yon make me so mad." She put a gold lighter to another j cigarette and blew smoke at the high ceiling. "How is Deirdre?" she asked. "You haven't married her yet, i have you?" "No."

  "And you never will." "She knows that."

  "Not in her heart. But that's her problem, isn't it. Do you remember that weekend on the skipjack? You thought of me as a child, but I wanted so much for you to ... " She dropped the thought, and said, "It seems so long ago, that weekend on Chesapeake Bay."

  "Only three years. It was just before you inherited your uncle's plantation and came to Guyana," Durell said. A Caribbean rhythm had begun thudding from the speaker box. The breeze stured quiet eddies in the room, and cigarette ashes fluttered on the bottom of the ashtray. ....

  Durell's eyes slid from Ana's beauty to the iron railing of a narrow balcony outside the room.

  He wondered how one got onto it.

  "I'd better go now," he said, and rose from his chair.

  Her slender body moved in front of him. "Wait," she said, and slid her arms up over his shoulders. Her lips were a moist invitation; her eyes had turned to caramel. "Please don't shut me out. Dick was like an uncle to me, more than ever since I came down here. Let me help. When you are ready."

  Durell regarded her eyes. She seemed able to close off her thoughts so that you could see nothing in them. He blew out a short breath. "All right," he said, "there is one thing. Go back to Eisler and try to talk him into seeing me voluntarily—I'll get to him one way or the other. Maybe you can convince him to do it the easy way."

  "Of course. I'll do what I can."

  The kiss she gave him was more than a quick thanks.

  Durell denied the appetite it provoked and broke away. "I'll give you an hour," he said.

  "That isn't very long."

  "I'll be waiting at the hotel. I'll leave here first."

  He opened the door and stepped onto a dusky landing at the top of the stairs and found something lying there.

  It was the waiter, either dead or imconscious.

  Someone was running down the stairs.

  Chapter Eight

  The rickety old stairs creaked and quaked as Durell bounded down, angered that Ana had spoken Calvin Eisler's name openly, angered with himself
because he hadn't taken her to a more secure place when he'd realized she wanted to discuss business. The waiter had been disposed of with professional competence. There had been no sound of a struggle, no cry of pain or alarm, not even the thump of a falling body.

  Whoever had been listening beyond that door knew now that Durell placed a lot of importance on a meeting with Eisler.

  Which meant that Eisler's cover had been blown.

  And that Eisler might not live to tell Durell anything.

  Durell saw a flash of yellow, jumped the last six risers, hit the floor, taking the impact on bent knees, and angled into the bar, where an antique jukebox pumped out the clangor of a steel band recording. The bar attracted an unpretentious clientele. Fresh sputum glistened like molasses in the spittoons. They were laborers, balata bleeders, lumberjacks, prospectors in town for a day or maybe a week, a congregation that reminded you of the immense wUdemess beginning some ten miles south and stretching clear across the Amazon basin to the Tropic of Capricorn.

  Seen from the rear, the man Durell chased was tall, with lean hips and overdeveloped shoulders. His oily black hair was cut short above the collar of a loose-tailed yellow shirt. Then he paused just an instant to push open a rear exit and looked back, and Durell almost recoiled as the face was imprinted horribly on his memory—two pinpoints of black luminosity that were eyes in a featureless, gouty swirl of burn scars.

  In back of the Toucan Patio the wind was angry and just on the cool side of tepid. The air was weighted with the reek of garbage and flowers and impending rain. Insects rattled against pumpkin-colored window panes.

  Durell's dark eyes switched back and forth, his breathing light. His hand shd under his jacket and around his waist to rest on the butt of the .38 in its scabbard, and his shirt felt tight and moist beneath his armpits. The man had betrayed an overweening self-confidence up there in the wind tower, listening to the final dribble of conversation, waiting mitil the last moment to flee. He could be waiting to attack Durell out here in the windy gloom.

  But then there came a leafy clash of branches, and Durell glimpsed the yellow shirt just as it rounded a comer to the right.

  He ran hard, not knowing if the man had come here alone.

  The VW still was parked where he had last seen it on the street named Orange Walk. Behind the streetlamp glaze on its windshield was the dim figure of a head. Durell started for the VW, then was aware of a slap of running feet that diminished to his left. He followed, heard the Vokswagen's engine sputter, and shook away thoughts that he had been lured into a pincers.

  Near the Public Hospital two blocks away the man doubled back over a sea of mud that was crazed with plank walks and ran through a collection of stilt-supported shanties made with junk lumber and packing cases. The wet ground was checkered with light from doors and windows opened to the breeze, and Durell glimpsed people dancing inside to the tinny music of cheap radios. He smelled fried plantain foo-foo cakes, as he moved confidently around stilt poles and puddles, bushes and junk.

  The man broke from cover near the East Coast

  Railway tracks and ran past the Government Technical Institute, headed north on Camp Road.

  Durell gained on him, glanced back, saw the Volkswagen puttering up the street, sinister in its lack of hurry. The wind hurled flocks of sticky pink saman blossoms like bursts of sparks.

  Then Durell was on the stone rampart of the old seawall, where he saw the thin, cloud-reflected light on treacherous flats of fine mud stretched a quarter of a mile to the Atlantic, tufted with grass, heaped with seaweed. A dull, flickering belt was the ocean, dirt-brown by day with sediment from the Amazon, Oiapoque, Courantyne and countless other rivers.

  The yellow shirt was a dim flag that beckoned him onward, with Georgetown to his right sprawled out on a drained marsh four feet below high tide. He tripped over necking couples, burst through knots of revelers. The smell of ozone was in the air.

  A pistol made a flat sound, and people yelled and scattered. Durell threw himself prone, unlimbered his .38 S&W, fired twice, shooting high to cover himself as he rolled to the seaward lip of the wall. He hoped to catch the man from the rear.

  He did not want to kill.

  He wanted information.

  Lightning stroked the sky, flared against human forms and white-painted gingerbread buildings down on the street. It made a bizarre moon of the blighted face that peered above an old Dutch Watergate some thirty yards away.

  Then a drumming torrent of rain lashed them, and Durell's eyes filled with water, his nose with mist. The cold cataract obliterated distance. Frustration roweled Durell, since he knew the man would be gone when the rainsquall had passed. He breathed a low curse and descended the seawall to the sheltered doorway of a small souvenir shop.

  And there was Otelo Antunes.

  The reporter stood his ground, startled black eyes fixed on Durell. Durell normally attempted to suppress his emotions as distracting and dangerous, but he did nothing to check the surge of loathing and rage now.

  He wanted to punish the man for Dick's death, maybe kill him, although logic told him that would be a gross error, and logic, detached, impersonal, refined, was what he Hved by. The hatred he welcomed quickened his pulse and sharpened his eyes and made him want to do violent things with his hands. The voice of reason was faint, but he would try to hsten to it. He was surprised the skinny Portuguese didn't break and run, but reporters could be arrogant behind the skirts of a press that told aU.

  Durell's tone was bitter, as he said: "Snooping out a story on me, Otelo?"

  "You're newsworthy enough," Otelo replied.

  "And that's all that counts, isn't it."

  "The people have a right to know." Otelo scowled.

  "Sure. Do I get killed, like Dick?"

  "Maybe. I didn't ..."

  Before the reporter could finish, Durell's right fist smashed into his cheek, and his body twisted from the ankles like rubber and crashed through a small display window. His knees sagged and he slid out with a debris of stuffed alligators, jam jars and seashell knickknacks. Things clinked and tinkled above the howling wind. Blood smeared the comer of Otelo's thin, loose mouth, and a red welt swelled on the side of his face. His eyes rolled, then focused on Durell towering in the blowing rain mist, fists crumpled.

  Durell remembered McFee's admonition not to cause trouble with the media and suddenly concluded he did not give a damn. He spoke down at the man with solemn menace: "I want to know who leaked Dick Boy-er's identity to you, and you're going to tell me, Otelo. Now."

  "That's privileged information," Otelo argued.

  Durell reached for the man with a fury that was contemptuous and uncharacteristically careless. Too late he saw what looked to be a flashlight in a square plastic case, heard an immediate snapping report as something tapped lightly against his chest and abdomen.

  All his muscles seemed to knot, and he slumped to the ground in incredible pain.

  Otelo bent over him with the Taser. Now Durell recognized the unconventional weapon. Its wired darts could transmit 50,000 volts of electricity, but it was very inaccurate and could not kill. It had a range of only fifteen feet, and should have been useless against Durell, who now lay writhing on the concrete. His heartbeat was light; his head swam; punished muscles cramped his frame.

  "You don't fool me, Mr. Durell," Otelo said. "You and Boyer were cut from the same bolt of cloth—and you will end as he did. We have no need of your kind in Guyana."

  "You may have more need than you think," Durell panted.

  Against shocked muscles, Durell attempted to lunge for Otelo. Another paralyzing current rapped through his frame. He lurched onto his side, squirming against the torment. Then it stopped, and he struggled for breath. The rain had ended; the air was soggy and cold. .

  "I can give you as many jolts as you ask for," Otelo said. His narrow smile glittered in the low light of the dress shop, and he spoke quickly. "It's only a matter of time before I have the facts on you."
>
  "I'll get the name of your source out of you," Durell said with a groan. He clinched his teeth and blinked through cold sweat.

  "You don't give up, do you," Otelo said. The look on Durell's face brought a hard swallow to the reporter's throat, and he added, "Well, I don't give up, either. Remember that."

  He jettisoned the Taser cartridges and ran across the steamy street. His car was the Volkswagen that had followed Durell, and DureU realized why the tail had been so obvious. Otelo was just an amateur at Durell's game—but an amateur who had reminded Durell forcibly never to give way to anger; never underestimate anyone.

  The Taser might just as easily have been a pistol, and Durell concluded he was lucky the lesson hadn't cost him his life.

  He pushed himself to his knees, still wobbly, and his mind turned to another professional, the man with the fire-ravaged face. He wondered whose team that one played on.

  The mysterious Warakabra Tiger's?

  Chapter Nine

  "Are you all right, sir?'

  "I thmk so. Yes."

  The policeman offered his hand and helped Durell to his feet. There were two oflBcers, both big men with broad black faces and eyes that hid their thoughts. One had a small patch of beard in the center of his heavy chin. He made notes on damage done to the shop window. They wore short-sleeved shirts and straw hats, the wide brims tacked to one side of the crown with shining emblems. Both were armed with Webley .455 revolvers inherited from the British. They had driven up seconds after Otelo left.

  "Hold onto my arm," the beardless one said.

  "I can manage, thanks," Durell said. A taste of copper soured his tongue. The ocean made no sound beyond the seawall. A small cluster of people stood up there, watching. The squall had sent most home. No one was on the street.