Ana said, "Sam, please—send Rick away."
"Better listen to her, old boy," Eisler said. "I will guarantee your safety." His lank hand grasped Durell's upper arm. He saw the danger in Durell's eyes and released his grip immediately.
"If you refuse to leave with Mr. Eisler," Su said, "you will be held until the proper authorities arrive to take you into custody. It would be foolish to allow you to leave by yourself; you would only find other ways to make trouble. The police ordered you out of the country, and I predicted you would not obey them. You conduct yourself like the international outlaw that you are."
Durell's voice went ti^t with urgency. "At 'east postpone the ceremony. Or move it from the dam down here to your camp."
"You have something in mind," Su snorted. "You wish to manipulate me through fear. The snake tells the sparrow its nest may fall from the branch, hoping it will sleep in the grass. I'm not such a fool."
Durell regarded the impenetrable hatred in Su's eyes, considered the possibilities. If the dam wasn't rigged for destruction, it still could happen. There were other means—^underwater mines, mortars zeroed in on the weak points, even aerial bombardment. It had not been constructed with defense in mind.
It—and those atop it tomorrow—would be completely vulnerable.
He saw plainly that the Chinese would not help him; that he must do it all himself.
"Rick can leave," he said. "I'll take my chances in the jungle."
"How desperate you must be, Mr. Durell. But I see." Su's teeth winked a smile, the damp quills of his hair seemed to lie back. "Yes, I understand. You were dispatched here to prevent the success of our project in any way you could, as was Richard Boyer before you. Our presence in the Western Hemisphere threatens the interests of your imperialist masters much more than in Africa and Asia. The sharp point of our progress is aimed at the heart of your empire, now. It puts your prestige at a crisis. And you've failed in your mission to stop us. Perhaps you hope to flee to Venezuela or Brazil and escape the wrath of your capitalist bosses. I assure you, Mr. Durell: without provisions or weapons you will die out there."
"I said I'd take my chances."
"It would be most agreeable to rid myself of you with such certainty. As you well know, my bureau has had for many years a standing order pertaining to the, ah, correct disposition of your case."
"I know." Durell remembered the red tab on his dossier in the Black House in Peking.
Colonel Su's voice was laden with implacable enmity, as he said: "It would give me boundless pleasure to execute that order directly and personally, but the present circumstances preclude such satisfaction." He glanced at Ana and Eisler. "However, if you volunteer against the jungle ..."
Everybody watched as he thought about it.
Durell was better equipped than most men to survive out there. He'd had jungle training in the Canal Zone and experience all over the world, including a trek across the Amazon Basin in search of the Zero Formula. Su would know of his background, Durell thought, but he also would be aware of the near impossibility of barehanded survival.
Su's eyes were sly. "You should know," he said, "that if you return to the camp perimeter, you might be shot. It would be unfortunate. An accident ..." 'You don't have to spell it out," Durell said. Come." Su waved his pistol.
"No!" Ana's face went white beneath the visor of her cap, and she stepped in front of Durell. "Sam, you mustn't. It's sure death!"
"The choices are all used up. Ana," Durell said.
"Not for me—I'm going with you." She clung to him like the damp heat and miasmic odors that rippled down invisibly from the forest wall.
"Ana! Get in our plane this minute!" Eisler bellowed.
His eyes flickered with rage.
"Do what he says," Durell urged. "I don't have time to discuss it."
Ana did not raise her voice, but her tone was unequivocal. "I wanted to help," she said. "I'm in this to stay "You've played me for a fool," Eisler shouted. "This is the end for us, if you go."
Su chortled, "Ah, you westerners, with your romantic notions." He shrugged. "It's not my affair:. Mr. Durell, Miss Morera. Come with me."
Ana placed her hand in Durell's as if it were a charm to take them both to safety. Durell was opposed to taking her, but dared not chance a squabble that would give Su time or reason for second thoughts.
A hundred dark eyes followed the small party across the rocky yellow ground toward the shadowed forest. The racket of engmes'sputtered from the lake. Durell ^oked back, saw Eisler's Grumman taxi away from the pier as Rick threw his cigar butt into the water and watched
A crowd of rough-looking laborers m dirty workmg clothes drifted around the clot of Chinese as they ushered Durell and Ana to the jungle's edge. They were drawn by curiosity, glad for a taste of excitement, growing rowdy. Su's flat face showed worry-he could not abide disorder —and he suddenly fired into the air, A red and green macaw screamed harshly and flapped away as Su turned to Durell and Ana.
"If you have changed your mmds, say so now, he said in a stern voice.
"Very well." He grinned wickedly at Durell. "May fortune save her favors for one more worthy than you. Durell pushed aside the first sheaf of leaves and spoke over his shoulder.
"I'm used to making my own luck. Colonel.
Twenty-four
Durell moved immediately through the sunlight-fed fringe of rank jungle and into the gloomy vault of the high forest. The going was easier here, but still slow and wearying among the endless columns of great buttressed trees. The slope of the valley punished ankles and thighs; fallen trees hulked across their path; decaying wood vented an odor of rotten teeth; ill-tempered spider monkeys pelted them with nuts and twigs. They fought their way past one obstacle after another, alert for tarantulas, scorpions, anacondas—a countless variety of things poisonous or predatory.
"Sam, let's rest," Ana gasped.
"Not yet."
"I've got to get my breath." She knelt against the soggy leaves and ferns, slapped at a kabaura fly that had raised a blood blister with its bite.
Durell yanked her up, regarded her with annoyed eyes, cursed under his breath. Her small figure was a reed that swayed in the gloom, her cap askew, an ebony tendril of hair swinging across the red flush of her cheek. Her breasts heaved as she struggled to breathe the sticky air. They had been going uphill, and it had been diflBcult, and Durell sympathized with her, but he would not stop until he reached the guns. He could not see the rocky knob where they had been dropped.
The noise of an airplane rose above the chatter of monkeys and greenheart birds and kisects.
"What's the hurry, Sam?"
"I've got to find the Warakabra Tiger." Durell stepped off, and she followed.
'But there is no Warakabra Tiger," she said.
Durell spoke gently. "Why don't you go back to the dam? They'll let you."
"Even if there were such a thing, how would you find it out here in this awful wilderness?"
Durell's eyes were grim as they swung left and right. "I have a feeling," he said, "that it will find me."
Ana shivered and peered into the dusky growth that Durell recognized as a climax rain forest. It was dominated by immense, red-barked morabukea trees and even taller greenhearts with golden trunks, innumerable and ancient, enormous shafts aimed at a sky completely blotted out by leaves.
They strained on up the flank of the valley, and Ana spoke to Durell's back. "I'm already lost; it all looks alike. If you'd go back. Colonel Su would let you fly out."
"Don't talk nonsense."
Durell glanced over his shoulder. She looked very young and defenseless. He was worried about her, but there was nothing he could do.
"Did you kill Otelo, Sam?" Her words were thin and shaken by missteps on the rough earth.
"No."
"Then who did?"
"I'll find out."
Durell wiped sweat from his face, flicked it from his fingertips, looked back, beyond Ana. There were only specklings of butterflies,
bees, mosquitos, flying ants. The trickle of seeping water was everywhere, the tattoo of falling husks, leaves, fruit.
They grunted and gasped, stumbled and fell, clawed their way up slippery ravines and over crumbling, spider-infested windfalls. The earth became more uneven, and large, mossy boulders appeared among the trees.
Then, out of breath, legs aching, Durell was surprised by open sunlight that showed a scramble of house-size boulders and realized that he had reached the rotting ironstone of the ridge. The parachute would be nearby. He pulled himself onto a boulder near the top of the scree. The rocky debris was intergrown with vines, ferns, banana-leaved heliconias that sparkled with Vermillion.
The sky was open here and its glare hammered at his eyes as he looked down the hill, barely able to see over the treetops that were frothed here and there with suds-like masses of blossoms. The lake was out of sight. He could see nothing in the trees down below, turned his eyes to the point of the ridge, found a glossy snatch of white— the parachute.
At first, Durell thought the impact of the fall had sprung the suitcase open.
Then he saw Peta. The youth moved out of the bushy shadows with the big Browning pistol in his hand. I was counting on your help," Durell said. I wasn't waiting to help you," Peta replied.
Durell looked at the gun and then the youth's hooded eyes. He did not doubt that Peta had intended to shoot him. "Too bad Ana came along," he said. "You'll have to help her. It'll take both of us to keep her from the Warakabra Tiger."
Durell knelt to the suitcase, expertly snapped the AK's steel folding stock into place, shoved the ammunition clip home. Peta did not stop him.
The mosquitoes and kabaura flies seemed not to bother his bare chest and legs. His jade eyes swept to Ana, and she returned his stare uncertainly, her hauteur gone in this deep jungle where Peta was at ease. Their roles were reversed now, Durell thought: it was she who did not fit, her kind who must depend on his.
"I'm sorry about last night," she said.
Peta replied frankly. "I'm not."
"Then can we be friends?"
"Maybe."
Another voice drawled from the shadows. "Just one happy family."
Durell's head jerked up, and he saw Rick Kirby come out of the trees. Ana and Peta gave him shocked stares. He grinned from under his handlebar mustache, his eyes still hidden behind sunglasses. "I set old Becky down on the lake," he said, "She'll still be there when we need her."
"What are you doing here?" Durell asked.
"I figured you could use another hand when I saw those Chinks take off into the jungle after you."
Ana spoke through her fingers. "Sam, they've tricked us—they're going to catch us out here and murder us, where no one will ever know!"
"Calm down," Durell said. He kept his eyes on Rick. "How many?"
"A dozen, maybe more. They dispersed the laborers fiirst. Guess they didn't want anybody to know."
It did not surprise Durell that Su had come after him, out here where all the rules were suspended, but that did not accoimt for Rick's presence. "You have other reasons," he said.
Rick shrugged. "Well—more than one old porkknocker back in Bartica recognized Peta as Claudius Gibaudan's kid. I didn't think you were coming out here for a picnic. ..."
"So you smell diamonds." Durell's voice was flat. "They're out of bounds; they belong to Peta and his father."
"Wait a minute. I'm offering to help you." "You'll be paid for it when we return to civilization— combat mercenary, officer per diem: it's more than I make."
"Shit! Per diem!"
"Take it or leave it. There's no time to argue." Rick brushed at a cloud of gnats. "How about we settle it when we get to the claim?"
"It's settled, as far as I'm concerned." Durell turned to Peta. "What do you think? We need all the help we can get." "No."
"I flew spotters in Nam. Shot down twice and made it back through the lines both times," Rick said. "I'd be handy."
"No," Peta repeated.
"Yes," Durell said. He tossed the hammer-shrouded Colt to Rick, brushed sweat from his eyes, pressed a button in the suitcase. A thermite bomb planted in its lining burst into a white blaze that would destroy trans-
mitter and cipher materials. He spoke to Peta. "The smoke will draw the Chinese. Let's get out of here."
Peta hesitated. Durell knew what he was thinking, and said: "You don't stand a chance of helping your father without us—you're too smart to think otherwise."
Peta led off.
Chapter Twenty-five
Peta moved them more swiftly through the jungle, but there was no help for the treacherous clay that might suddenly loosen its hold on a pallet of leaves and send one sliding and rolling; the betrayal of a tacouba, a fallen log, that might twist and dash one into a stream; the strained nerves of constant vigilance against snakes and bugs and backlashing branches.
Piles of green dung signified that the youth had picked up the dim outline of a tapir trail. It wound cunningly around the worst obstructions, and the small party put more distance between them and the Chinese with every step. Ana's slight, pampered figure had unsuspected stamina, and Durell wondered if she had been as winded as she had seemed on that first mad dash away from the lakeshore.
He kept an anxious watch for the Chinese as the sun dipped lower and the false twilight of the forest deepened.
He called a rest on the bank of a dark stream that slithered over simken leaves, and they sat on a crescent of sand at a wide bend, where blue flowers drifted down from a petraea vine and floated away. There Durell saw the first evidence of prospecting activity, old trenches, weed-grown piles of white quartz, tent posts and remains of a wooden batelle pan for washing gravel.
A prospector had tacked his notice on a tree, near where Ana lay amid ferns and wild ^nger. Painted in black on a flattened tin can, it read:
BASIL SAMPSON
Lie. No. 5520 A Sept. 17, 1975
It was a relatively recent claim, Durell noted. If it had paid well enough to file, its owner should still be working it. But the decaying implements clearly said that it had been abandoned.
Rick removed his sunglasses, revealing assertive gray eyes, and dropped into one of the trenches. He scooped up a few handfuls of gravel, spread them on his palm and discarded them in eager succession. Then he called to Durell: "Hey, look at this," and held out two stones. They were small and irregular, but they definitely were raw diamonds.
Durell surveyed the undergrowth as parrots squawked and a large bumblebee fussed along the streambank. This was a paying claim: no one would have left it voluntarily. His cheeks tightened.
"Put them back," he said. .
"Sure thing." Rick's tone was cynical. He stuck the diamonds into his pocket, grinned at Durell. "It isn't exactly stealing, old pardner. The owner won t have any use for them."
"You don't know that."
"Oh yeah?" He hoisted himself from the trench with a grunt, 'strode to the clearing's edge, parted the thick foliage of purple-berried melastomes. His curled finger beckoned Durell.
Human bones lay scattered among red-tinged spikes and spears of congo cane. They found the skull a few feet away The bones had a raw look, as if the flesh had not decomposed, but had been chewed away. To judge by the moldering boots and tattered clothing the man might have died as recently as a month ago, Durell thought. He gingerly probed for a wallet, found one, opened it.
Rick had been right.
This was Basil Sampson—or what was left of him. Peta approached and Rick said, "Spooky, huh, boy?"
Peta did not reply. He touched Durell's shoulder and waved for him to follow, and went around the edge of the clearing parting leaves and pointing to scarred tree boles Some had the bark ripped off to the height of a man. Saplings had been torn in two or ripped from the earth.
"Warakabra Tiger did this," Peta intoned. But Durell did not have to be told.
Fear seemed to draw the little group closer together m the blue-green dusk of the rem
nant clearing The muggy air quivered to the echoing shouts of greenheart birds. The creek chuckled.
Ana spoke. "Let's go back, Sam, before it's too late. We don t have to face the Chinese -Rick will fly us out. "You seem to believe there is a Warakabra Tiger now " Durell said.
She lowered her eyes dismally. "Yes."
"I told you I intended to find it."
"And end up like that?" She pointed to the bones, then swung around to Peta. "Don't take him any further" she pleaded. "If you have any feeling for me, you won't go another step."
Peta's eyes showed his confusion. Ana leaned against him, cheek on his shoulder, body trembling, and he looked amazed and slid his arms around her, hands awkward and loose. "Please, Peta," Ana said.
His gaze went to Durell.
Durell just watched.
Peta spoke to the upturned oval of Ana's face. "I wiU take you back to the dam," he said in a gentle voice.
"It isn t just me, you idiot!" She beat against his chest and broke away. Her voice rose with fury and frustration. "You'll all be killed. Don't you see?"
"Hey, doll," Rick said, "settle down. If that Wara-tabra Tiger is still around, you'll have its skin for a nice coat by tomorrow—maybe your pockets full of diamonds to boot." He turned puzzled eyes to Durell. "What the hell is the Warakabra Tiger, anyhow?"
"We'll know when we find it," Durell replied. He turned to Peta. "Well, son?"
Peta regarded Ana, then said: "We must do the business we came for."
A rush of breath came through Ana's frowning lips.
Durell smiled without humor. "You're learning," he said.
Suddenly there came a distant thrashing, the mutter of Chinese voices.
Everyone stood frozen.
Durell concluded he had timed it about right. "Let's move out," he said.
The tapir trail played out, the slope steepened and the forest floor turned corrugated and littered with blocks of jj stone. Each moment challenged everyone's patience, sapped their strength. The pace ground down as they ' slowed for Ana, who did not have the physical size and muscle to keep up, and they were reduced to crawling up ravines on hands and knees, plagued by betes rouges that sought to burrow into the skin, giant wasps and odorous muniri ants, two inches long, black and bristly. They had a sting that could disable a man for a week. The air turned fetid with the musk of white-lipped peccaries, and Peta motioned for silence and led them deftly around the unseen herd. They were feared for their concerted attacks and cutlass tusks, Peta said.
Assignment- Tiger Devil Page 14
