“Is he coming here, for Miss Kamuru?”
Durell laughed painfully. “I thought you were saving your questions for a place in the Black House in Peking.”
“Will Freeling be here?” Po repeated flatly.
“No.”
“Please do not lie to me now. You are naked and helpless. It is foolish for you to antagonize me. I might— we might reach an accommodation.”
“A deal? What sort?”
“Dr. Freeling—in exchange for you.”
“They’ll never do it.”
“Perhaps we can arrange it to give your authorities no choice. A kind of enforced exchange, eh? You, for your eminent Dr. Freeling. It would be a pleasure for my associate, Dr. Tung, to discuss the problems of virological warfare with him.”
“In Peking, naturally?”
“Of course.”
“And you’d set me free, if I give you Freeling?”
“I regret to abuse your self-esteem, Durell, but I would certainly consider it a greater triumph to take Dr. Freeling with me to Peking, along with Miss Kamuru, rather than you. That would indeed be a triumph for the thought of Mao, I would say.”
“And for yourself,” Durell agreed.
“As I said, it is all arranged. Transport will be available. When Dr. Tung arrives—and he will be with us in a matter of minutes—we will take samples of Yoko’s blood, keep our promise and try to save her young friend’s life—Churchill is truly very ill, as you see—”
“I haven’t seen him yet.”
“He is across the room from you. In a coma induced by the fever. If you will listen, you can hear his distressed breathing.”
“We’re all open to the plague,” Durell said flatly.
“I trust Dr. Tung. He will immunize me. In any case, tell me where and when you are to meet Dr. Freeling. I have no doubt you contacted him in Tokyo, and that he is on his way here at this very moment. Am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then you will cooperate?”
“No.”
The boot prodded Durell’s ribs again. A cold wind swept across the floor of the shrine. Durell shivered. There was a rustling of silk, and a robe was thrown over him.
“It can be easy or hard for you, Durell.”
“Why did you kill Miss Pruett?”
“Ah, that. It troubles your conscience? But she was simply a nuisance, and I eliminated her.”
“And the old man, Kamuru? Why kill him?”
“He lied about his granddaughter and said she was not at his cottage. I do not tolerate lies, you see. It may be a fault, but I shall not remedy it. In your case I am being lenient. When and where will Dr. Freeling arrive?”
“Let me see Bill Churchill first.”
“Ah, no.”
“Then it’s no deal.”
There was an interruption, a clatter of feet beyond Durell’s limited range of vision. He heard a quick spate of Mandarin Chinese, but the low, urgent voices were unintelligible. Two sets of feet returned to him.
“This is Dr. Tung, Durell.”
Another Chinese face moved into Durell’s sight. Lean and hard, it was a Szechuan face from the southern provinces of China, middle-aged and taut as old leather, with heavy black-rimmed glasses and narrow eyes and a long, thin moustache that drooped around a downward-curving, thin-lipped mouth.
“Dr. Fu Manchu, I presume,” Durell said.
“You jest?” Po asked. “I have read your literature—”
“Let me see Bill. Then we’ll talk about a deal.”
There was a brief exchange between the two Chinese. Po made a signal with his hand. More footsteps approached, and Durell felt a release of pressure on his forehead as the leather strap was loosened. He did not move until his hands and feet were equally free. When he looked up, he saw two young Japanese holding guns on him. They were Zengakurens, he guessed. They knew enough to stand back out of his reach.
“You may sit up,” Po said. “Please put on the robe.” Durell had been fastened to several planks on the teak floor with ringbolts and crossbars, and he admired Po’s ingenuity in finding the equipment so readily.
Then Po said mildly, “Now, comrades.”
Durell felt a blow on the back of his neck, and pitched forward to his knees. Something struck his forehead, and blood ran into one eye. He tried to reach the nearest guard with the gun, and a boot kicked him in the shoulder, another in the ribs, and he fell over, sprawling on his face as more and more blows rained over his body.
Dimly, he heard Po say, “Please, my friends. It is too crude. I do believe he may cooperate.”
Durell fought a wave of nausea in the pit of his stomach. A whimper of sympathy came from Yoko, and he felt her hands on him, trying to help. Someone pulled her roughly away and she fell, and then he heard Po’s sharp protest to the man who had thrown her aside.
“Do not harm the girl. . . . Durell? It was simply a foretaste of what you may expect, but there will be nothing quite so simple and brutal. I have exquisite ideas for you. If you do not talk and I lose the chance to take Dr. Freeling with me, it will not matter so much. I will console myself with questioning you at the Black House.” Po laughed softly. “You may see your sick friend now.”
He was lifted and shoved across the polished floor of the shrine. Deliberately he let his weight and legs go heavy. He muttered, groaned, and fell again.
Bill Churchill was in a small storeroom behind the huge bronze gong. Someone unlocked the door and stepped back.
“Bill?” Durell said.
There was no doubt that the young American architect was in trouble. Churchill lay on a pallet in one corner of the room amid dusty Shinto relics. His face was the color of old wax, beaded by great drops of perspiration. He was shuddering, although some old blankets had been heaped on his long, thin frame. His eyes were glazed, and his breath rasped and rattled in his throat. He looked as if he were dying.
Durell shrugged his robe back on his shoulders. There was a sash sewn to it, and he drew it tight, testing its strength as he did so. Po pushed Yoko across the room from him.
“As you see, he is very ill,” Po said maliciously. “Only our young lady can save him, with Dr. Tung’s help.” The other Chinese with his black-rimmed glasses and drooping Mandarin moustache looked mournful.
“Bill?” Durell said again.
Surprisingly, Churchill opened his pale eyes, focused them on Durell, and a smile quivered on his mouth. “Yo, Cajun. Knew you would come . . .”
“Yoko is here too.”
“I—I know.”
“Can you sit up?”
“Too weak ...”
“Try,” Durell urged. “Try!”
Churchill struggled to get his weight on his arms. The effort was feeble, heart-wrenching. Yoko made a small sound. “Why do you torture him, Sam?”
“He must want to live,” said Durell. “Otherwise, we’re wasting our time and selling ourselves for nothing.”
“Precisely,” Po chuckled. “It is quite a dreadful disease. Of course, its release was premature—no one planned it, except some hotheads left over from the Cultural Revolution. We had not realized they had infiltrated the Peacock Branch. I have had to answer for it at the Black House. Peking was quite annoyed with me—hence my utter determination to succeed in this mission.”
“You had Red Guards in Peacock?”
“Yes, what was left of them. When we fired our missile from our Kunlun base, no one suspected sabotage. Of course, it will work out for the best, now that we have Yoko and her mutated, precious virus in her blood.
The perfect weapon, eh? None of us planned to infect Japan—as yet. But the radical element—those who prematurely wish to effect a confrontation with you imperialist enemies of our glorious Chinese People’s Republic—they felt the time was ripe for a—ah—showdown.”
“They sabotaged your Kunlun missile?”
Po looked wry. “Now that I have Yoko—and when I bring her with me to Peking—they will prob
ably be feted as heroes, ironically enough. But I have marked them well—General T. K. Wang, Colonel Tu-Tze, and all the others.” Po shrugged. “After all, China can wait. You Westerners are so impatient, we need only calculate on a time when you make a mistake. That will be the proper moment to strike. But not now. The Hatashima episode is regrettable—we did not wish to kill workers and fishermen, innocent proletariat—but all things have two sides, like a coin. With Yoko, we will be even better off than before the sabotage at Kunlun.”
“The missile was made to misfire?” Durell asked.
“You seek information, still hoping it will be useful to you? You are curious?”
“Why not? We all live on hope.”
“True. Well, why not? I shall feed your ego. Of course, it was an error on the part of overly enthusiastic officials of our own CBW department. They hoped, naturally, that your country would be blamed for infecting Honshu with this deadly plague. And in the outcry and international uproar over it—regardless of the innocent lives lost—Peking would see an opportunity to regain Taiwan and end the dishonor of the ‘two Chinas’ policy your State Department advocates so persistently. To throw you out of Asia entirely! Simply as a first step, of course, in ridding the world of the pestilence of your system, your oppressive, war-mongering policies—”
“You needn’t make a speech,” Durell said mildly. “We’ve all heard it too many times before.”
“Yes. So. Between us there is simply business. In any case, the missile was misdirected deliberately, and loaded with a canister of our Lichi-10 virus. Similar to your Pearl Q. Why do those technicians pick such foolish names for such deadly little germs? Yoko, poor child, is a fortunate miracle for all of us. Through her, we not only have the weapon, but the defense for it all to ourselves.”
Durell spoke quietly. “You’re mistaken. The antibodies from Yoko’s blood are on their way to Tokyo right now. The whole world will have a defense against your weapon.”
Po’s face changed subtly. “It is written in your dossier that you are a gambler, given to bluffing—”
“Before I brought Yoko here,” Durell said, “I gave one sample of her blood to the Russian KGB man, Cesar Skoll. And another to the local police, to be sent at once to Tokyo.”
The Chinese turned to Yoko. His face showed his struggle to deny what he was impelled to believe. Anger glittered in his narrow, cruel eyes. “Miss Kamuru? Is it true?”
“Yes, but—”
Durell said, “She’s only interested in Bill. Go on, Bill, keep trying to sit up.”
Dr. Tung spoke for the first time, in a thin, high voice. “I think it would be unfortunate if the patient exerted himself. His heart—well, in any case, we should go to work. I am quite prepared, Comrade Po, to begin. Time is precious.”
Po’s yellow face was congested as he stared at Durell. “Yes, it must be that he is bluffing.”
At that moment, what happened was what Durell had planned and hoped for. Bill Churchill had persisted in his efforts to rise from the low cot. Perhaps Bill had caught the urgent command in Durell’s voice, and without reasoning why, he tried to obey. But the fever had sapped too much of his strength. He gave a hoarse cry as his arm collapsed under his weight and he tumbled, face down, off the pallet. Yoko could not restrain herself. She broke free from where she had been ordered to stand and ran across the storeroom to Bill’s fallen body. As she did so, she came close to Durell again. Close enough, he judged. With a swift gesture, he tore the sash loose from the robe Po had given him, and holding it in both hands, he whipped it around the girl’s slender throat and tightened it in his fists at the nape of her neck. It was the only weapon he had been able to get. Yoko’s cry was cut off abruptly in her throat. She choked and gagged and struggled briefly.
“Take it easy,” Durell said harshly. “Everyone relax.”
Po said tightly, “What do you imagine you are doing?”
“I’m going to kill the girl,” Durell announced.
28
"YOU ARE mad," Po whispered.
“I think not.”
Bill groaned, “Sam, you can’t kill her.”
“I can. I will.”
“You son of a bitch, all you can think of is your job!” Bill’s voice was stronger as anguish for Yoko took command of him. “Po is right. You’re insane.”
“I’ll kill her, rather than let Po take her to Peking.”
Po said, “Impossible.”
“Try me,” Durell said.
He stood tall behind the quiescent girl, whose body sheltered him from the weapons of the Chinese. Po called something, and there came the quick patter of running feet, and Durell tightened the noose a little. Yoko started to go limp.
“Call off your fanatics, Po. Quick!”
The Chinese hesitated, then barked an order, and there was a pause out in the main room of the shrine. Then the steps retreated. Po drew a deep breath. Dr. Tung murmured something that no one paid attention to. Po’s face was a mask of bitter frustration. “I believe you really would kill the young lady.”
“I would,” said Durell. “You can believe it. Now, get two of your men in here to help Bill to his feet. Tell them not to bring their guns. One mistake, and everything is finished for you.”
“Do you not understand,” Po said with forced calm, “that I would shoot through the girl’s body to kill you, rather than let you escape from me now, with the girl?” “You can, if you wish,” Durell admitted. “But then you could never go back to Peking, could you? You had Yoko; you lost her; you will have to kill me, instead of taking me to the Black House for interrogation; and, of course, you’ll never get Dr. Freeling, to crown your imagined triumph.”
Po said again, “It is all a bluff.”
“No. You pushed your hand too far. If you take me to Peking, I’m dead, anyway. If you get Yoko to your laboratories there, she’ll be dead, too. And you’ll have the virus and the serum against it. But I’ve nothing to lose, as you see.”
Bill tried to stand and lunge toward Durell and the girl, but he fell again, shaking with weakness, his face drawn and beaded with great drops of fevered sweat. Po looked at his shaking figure with contempt, then watched Durell and spoke calmly, with a great effort. “Come, we can make an arrangement—a deal. I will release you, Durell. You can return in safety.”
“I don’t intend to leave Yoko or Churchill with you.” “Those terms are impossible.”
“Exactly.”
“You would force me to kill you all?”
“That would be suicide for you, wouldn’t it? If you went empty-handed to Peking?” Durell moved sidewise, taking Yoko with him. “Tell your men to help Bill. No weapons, remember.”
Po made his decision, and it was plain he was only playing for time. Shrugging expressively, he spread his hands in resignation and called an order to his men outside.
Two young Zengakurens entered, their manner sullen. Durell ordered them to help Bill to his feet and carry him outside. At the same time, Yoko shuddered in his grip as her predicament at last came home to her. He did not ease the noose around her neck. He knew, and Po knew, that she could be dead in a moment. He did not question himself, or ask himself if it were a real bluff, or what he might do if Po called his hand. He backed off with the girl, following the two men who helped Bill. For a moment Po did not move. He stood beside the tall doctor from Szechuan, his mouth pursed, his eyes blank.
They stood on the portico of the Shobu-en shrine. The wind off the dark, frozen lake seemed milder. The night was still very dark. No lights shone across the lake from the deserted inn where he had left Skoll. The stone steps of the shrine led directly down to the water through the frozen Iris Garden. A boat sat there in the shadows, covered with thin snow, almost indistinguishable from the dock. The motion of the wind and water had broken the skin of ice around it, and the water looked black and cold. There was an outboard engine astern, covered with a snowy canvas hood.
“That way,” Durell said, directing the men wit
h Bill.
“No,” Po barked. His harsh cry, as he recognized Durell’s plan, was defiant, filled with the adamant desperation of defeat. “You cannot go. I will not permit it. Release the girl, Durell. It is your last chance. I will not ask again.”
“No,” Durell said.
“Then her death is yours.”
Po’s gun came up. Durell held Yoko between them, and, suddenly, the wind between them seemed darker and colder. Yoko’s body jerked as Durell tightened the sash slightly. In that moment he decided he would have to kill her. She knew it and did not struggle. Her eyes were fixed on Bill, whom the men had dropped on the lake shore near the boat.
Po made his decision, too. Between him and Durell there could be no compromise. He brought up his gun, aimed it at Durell and the girl, and squeezed the trigger.
There was an infinite moment when everything stopped for Durell—the wind, the turning of the earth, the slow rotation of the stars. With only an ounce more pressure, Yoko’s neck would be broken. And Po’s bullets would come through her and tear through his own body.
The sharp clatter of an automatic rifle started the world moving again. The fusillade came a fraction of an instant before Po fired.
Durell had no time to think about it. He snapped the noose from around Yoko’s neck and threw her aside and down beside him. She stumbled and fell on Bill, beside the boat. Her small scream was drowned in a second burst of automatic fire. This time Durell saw the source. It came from the birch trees near the Shobu-en, the muzzle spitting vindictive fire. Po’s men scattered, yelling, not even bothering to return the shots. Dr. Tung threw up his hands and fell.
But Po Ping Tao was tougher. He fired again at Durell, missed, tinned his gun toward the woods, suddenly lurched, dropped to one knee, got up and backed away, shooting at the birches. All in a moment, he was gone, out of sight behind the shrine.
The echoes of gunfire slowly died away across the lake.
Lights suddenly shone from the inn on the opposite shore. The glare, even at half a mile, made the thin skin of ice on the water flicker and dance with a blue radiance. Durell slowly picked himself up and walked toward the birch trees.
Assignment Tokyo Page 17
