Assignment Golden Girl

by Edward S. Aarons

  Durell's business with K Section had taken him to many strange and obscure corners of the world. The war in which he was engaged as field agent for the troubleshooting branch of K Section of the Central Intelligence Agency was silent and unsung, conducted in a dark and dangerous world. You did not turn a corner without care, enter a room without precaution, accept a stranger at face value. Durell was equally at home in the jungles of Asia or Africa, the sands of the Sahara, and the cosmopolitan centers of the world's huge cities. Danger lived with him in luxury hotels in London and the slum quarters of Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur. It had become a way of life with him that set him off from other men, and perhaps this was what Colonel Abdundi saw as they drank their beer together. Durell had a gambler's instinct about the men and women he met in his business, a heritage from his old Grandpa Jonathan, who had been one of the last of the Mississippi riverboat gamblers. He had been brought up by the old gentleman on the hulk of the old sidewheeler, the Trois Belles, in the bayous of Louisiana at Peche Rouge. He had learned about men, gambling, and hunting from the old man, and had not forgotten his lessons even after he went on to Yale and a law degree that eventually brought him to K Section's innocuous looking headquarters at 20 Annapolis Street.

  "What will you do about Sansom?" he asked.

  Abdundi shrugged his heavy shoulders. His medals and ribbons glittered on his broad chest. "My country is at war. One death, even the death of an American, is of no importance."

  Their eyes met, blue and brown. "I see," Durell said. "Of course, the police are not functioning too well, under these—ah—unusual circumstances." Durell added flatly, "Will Pakuru fall. Colonel?"

  "It seems inevitable. The Neighbors are well armed—from Peking, of course—and we have only primitive tribal weapons. I am a soldier, not a miracle worker or a witch doctor to effect peace with incantations at the UN."

  "How much time do we have?"

  Abdundi smiled. "None at all."

  Four

  "THIS way, Cajun," said Harvey.

  "What are you nervous about?"

  "I'm not nervous."

  "Afraid? Worried?"

  "No, no. It's my wife."

  "She's a beautiful woman," said Durell.

  Harvey stopped and sighed. "You, too?"

  "I didn't mean anything."

  "No. No, I suppose not. Sorry."

  The heat haze hung over the valley like smog from the New City to the kraals of the royal compound across the river. From the veranda of Harvey Gladstone's bungalow Durell could see the people bicycling along the wide, modern boulevard as if nothing were happening. Perhaps they don't care, he thought. They haven't been educated long enough to democracy to give a damn about it. Paku-ru was not the only place in the world to suffer from such a malaise.

  Gladstone had a nervous laugh. "I never really expected to see one of you fellows here, you know."

  "Why not?" Durell asked.

  "Well, you know—an obscure place like Pakuru— nothing ever seemed to happen here—"

  "A lot has been happening this morning."

  "Yes, of course, but—I can't see that Prince Tim is important to anyone, really. He's not even the confirmed constitutional monarch of this silly country."

  "Why do you call Pakuru silly?" Durell asked.

  "Why is it important?" Harvey countered.

  "The Chicoms think it's important. If they seize Pakuru land for their railroad right-of-way, they'll make big strides with their invective and propaganda, maybe turn a big part of Africa against the West just as Moscow managed to do in the Middle East by building the Aswan Dam for Egypt."

  "Oh, possibly, possibly. In any case there seems litde we can do about it."

  "Where is your Central?" Durell asked.

  "Right. Of course. This way."

  Harvey Gladstone led him back into the bungalow. Gloria was seated in a fine Bombay chair in one corner of the big living room, painting her fingernails. Her young face was set, hard, and angry. She had her long legs tucked up under her generous, curved haunch; her pale eyes regarded Durell objectively with a cool appraisal that went without inhibition from his face to his boots. She managed a small smile.

  "Are you really going to get us out of here, Mr. Durell?"

  "I've just come for a bit of help from Harvey."

  "A fat lot of good Harvey'll do you," she snapped.

  "Gloria—" Harvey began.

  "Oh, shut up. You make me sick, you're such a coward."

  She lowered her head and concentrated on her fingernails. Durell felt slightly embarrassed for Harvey, whose flushed face reflected a mute, inner agony. Harvey shrugged and muttered "Come on" and led the way up steep, ladderlike stairs that began near his glass-encased model of Old 79. Durell paused to examine and admire the gleaming, meticulously polished brass model of the old eight-wheeler.

  "Where did you get this?"

  "Oh, I made it," Harvey said. His eyes, however, lit up immediately. "Took four years. Occupational therapy you might call it. Do you know anything about locomotives?"

  "A little. I worked as a boy in the Bayou Peche Rouge roundhouse for the L&GD," Durell said. "In my high school summers. But there were no engines like this there, of course, and they were switching to diesels even then."

  "Yes, this one's pretty old. Built by Pittsburgh and Western, consolidation type, a 4-4-0. Lots of power for a wood burner. She dates from 1885. She has seventeen-by-twenty-four-inch cylinders and sixty-six-inch drivers. Wagon-top boiler, extended front end, wooden stave pilots. An amazing history, this locomotive had, long ago—"

  "Where did you get the prints for her?"

  "Oh, she ran on the Hawthorne Coal & Oil Company line in West Virginia on her first service, then was sold to the D&RG, and retired to yard work on the MK&T. Pakuru National Railroad bought her thirty-five years ago when the Jukiwati copper mines were first exploited. She was still running when I came here. Marvelous machine, marvelous. She'd still do fine if she hadn't been neglected by lack of decent engineers and roundhouse workers. There was a master mechanic named McKutch-in who completely overhauled her, broke her down and put on a new stack to replace the diamond stack she originally had, built all new water injection valves in her—"

  Harvey paused, wiped away the sweat on his round, eager face. "I'm sorry. I'm apt to run on too much about old locos. You've got a lot to do this morning, and I'm afraid I haven't been too close to the actual rolling stock of the Pakuru National from my manager's office these last few years. You're not interested, I'm sure. You have a busy morning."

  The secret room under the attic eaves was unbearably hot, dark and stifling, airless, and filled with the smell of rotting thatchwork on the bungalow roof directly overhead. The bare rafters grazed Durell's head as he entered through a hatchway, and he had to duck.

  "This way," Harvey said. He turned his head, again apologetic. "Not the most comfortable of places, but my instructions were to maintain secrecy, and the radio and all the equipment sent up to me from Cape Town by the Shawnee had to be kept somewhere."

  Durell had seen worse. Gladstone's engineering habits had kept the Httle cubicle immaculate, impressively organized with an almost paranoid tidiness. There were a large filing cabinet, a desk with a gooseneck lamp, a cleanly swept floor, and a GK-12 transceiver with which Gladstone had sent in his reports for the past four years while on K Section's payroll. An old wooden swivel chair stood beside the radio. A faded souvenir cushion from Johannesburg with the date 1947 on it made the chair a little more comfortable.

  Harvey was eager to please. "Everything all right? You're the first to actually inspect the place. Actually, I somQtimes felt as if I was quite forgotten, you know. I sent off my reports into a void for all I could tell."

  "They were received, appreciated—and paid for," Durell said quietly.

  "Well, yes." Harvey's face gleamed with sweat again as he turned on the gooseneck lamp and took a pipe from one of the desk drawers. "Can't really smoke up here. The roof thatch
ing, you know."

  "May I see your recent files?" Durell asked.

  "Matter of fact, I received a message early last evening. Have a buzzer next to the bed, wakes me up. Gloria thinks it's all nonsense. Calls me a boy playing at secret agent stuff."

  "Been married long?"

  "What? Uh, of course, just a few years. Wonderful at first. But Gloria isn't meant for Africa. Took her out of her milieu—^New York, you see—and things are pretty dull for her here. You must forgive her if she says anything a bit snappish."

  "The message," Durell said.

  "Uh? Oh, right, right. Here."

  Harvey Gladstone kept his files in neat, engineer's order, precisely labeled in his precise typescript. Durell noted that the HV-4 lock was kept shut, that the cabinet that contained the coding device was secure and clean.

  "Here it is," said Harvey.

  He stepped back a bit, sucking on his empty pipe. Durell scanned the sheet of flimsy paper:

  FROM: BROKEN AX TO: WOODCHOPPER CLASSIFICATION: URGENT III

  Can you bring home cordwood soonest? The ranch is anxious. Iron horse must be stopped. Powwow next moon may upset tribal peace. Our sachem needs Great White Father backing at council in sky.

  "Funny, isn't it?" Harvey Gladstone said. "Cape Town has a sense of humor."

  Durell looked at him without smiling. Johnny Redwing, the Shawnee, was K Section's man down there in South Africa, calling himself Broken Ax. Woodchopper was Harvey. He understood that the ranch, which was the State Department, and the White House (Great White Father) had something lined up to recognize Prince Tim— the cordwood—in a session of the UN (council in the sky) as the legitimate head of the Pakuran government. Military and economic aid could then be offered. It would give weight to a solid effort to stop the Neighbors from seizing the railroad right-of-way.

  "It's a bit like a bad TV western," Durell said.

  "That part about tribal peace and the next powwow," said Harvey. "You've heard that the Queen Elephant still refuses to recognize Atimboku Mari Mak as the next king? The chiefs have been coming into the compound at a great rate the last few days. While Prince Tim is missing, the opposition is making plans to kick him off the royal stool."

  "Why?"

  Harvey shrugged. "Old Ngatawana IV had lots of other children, you know—mostly girl children, it seems, but in Pakuru society a woman could succeed to the ruler-ship, too. It's even been written into the new constitution." Harvey paused. "Would you like some tea?"

  "No, thanks."

  "I come up here often," he said. "To think about things. Broken Ax isn't sore at me, is he?'*

  "Why should he be?" Durell asked.

  "Well, they had to send you in. I've been paid for years and seem to have failed. Couldn't come through when finally needed. I feel badly about it. Sort of guilty, as if I haven't earned my salt, so to speak."

  "You'll earn it, Harvey."

  "But you and Hank Sansom will fly Prince Tim out—"

  "Hank is dead," Durell said.

  Harvey Gladstone lifted his round head with a jerk, took the pipe from between his teeth, and stared at Durell's tall figure. "Yes," he said sighing. "I heard the explosions at the airport. A pity."

  "He was murdered," Durell said. "Carefully and deliberately. Someone didn't want him to fly that last plane out of Pakuru. So they blew up the Mooney and sliced Hank from crotch to chin."

  "Oh my," Gladstone murmured.

  Durell waited, but the engineer added nothing, looking down into the empty bowl of his pipe. From outside the bungalow came the sound of a single car going down the street. Durell listened to it. The engine sounded like that of a military truck. He waited until he was sure it kept going.

  "So someone knows I'm here to pick up Prince Atim-boku, if he ever comes out of the bush. Three Neighbor goons also tried to get me at the hotel."

  Harvey rubbed his face nervously with the flats of both hands, squeezing his cheeks up and down.

  "That's bad. I'm sorry about Hank. I didn't know this business would be violent when I first agreed to do this work. It's—really not my line, you know. I'm managerial. I know railroads. I'm more Pakuru than American now, actually. Don't know much about your sort of thing."

  "It was all explained to you," Durell said, "when you agreed to go on the payroll."

  "Yes, but I didn't think it would be like this. Murders, bombings—"

  "You didn't have much to do for some years," Durell said. "Now we need you."

  "Yes, yes, I understand that, but—I don't see what I can do, really. Not really."

  "State thinks that we need Prince Tim," Durell said drily. "Ours is not to reason why . . . You may be the only man who can help me get him out of Pakuru and to the UN. It's just an idea. We'll see. But I'd like to radio to Broken Ax first to see if he can send in a replacement for Hank Sansom and a new plane to carry the cordwood out."

  "Right." Harvey was obviously relieved to have something specific to do. "I'll get on it now." As he turned to the radio, he looked curiously at Durell. "Were you thinking of using Old 79 if it doesn't work—about the plane, I mean?"

  "Possibly."

  "No, sir. Impossible. She hasn't been fired up for ten years."

  "Nothing is impossible," Durell said. "You may have to make her run somehow." He touched the radio. "See if you can raise Broken Ax."

  "Yes. Yes, but—"

  The single electric bulb hanging from the roof beams suddenly flickered and dimmed.

  Then it went out altogether, and they stood for a moment in darkness.

  "Batteries?" Durell asked quietly.

  "No. Too far a range. I've always had to use public power," Harvey whispered.

  "Then the radio is dead?"

  "We're cut off," Harvey said. "I think we're all dead."

  Five

  GLORIA Gladstone was drinking pink gin when they came down from under the roof. It felt relatively cooler on ground level. The bungalow was large and airy, and although the air conditioners were dead, Gloria used a large ceiling fan which she moved back and forth with her big toe hooked into a lanyard. Her extended legs were tanned, firm, and well fleshed. She saw Durell look at them and smiled.

  "Everything in Pakuru is going to pot. Are you two boys finished playing your little games?"

  "Not quite," said Durell.

  "Harvey," she said, "all the servants have gone, did you know that?"

  "Yes, yes," he told her. "The people are upset, they don't know what's going to happen."

  "Do you know?" she asked pointedly. "After all, you are the Minister of Transportation, right? You ought to know. You're in charge of lots of things."

  "There is no transportation." Harvey flapped his arms helplessly. "Please don't get on my back now, Gloria."

  Again Durell heard the sound of roaring truck motors on the wide, palm-planted boulevard near the bungalow. Some shots were fired, but there seemed to be an exuberance to the noise, which was underlined by distant shouting. Gloria stood up and smoothed her skirt and slid long eyes toward Durell as he went to the door. "It never seems to end this morning," she complained.

  Harvey was nervous. "Are they coming this way?"

  The noise of the trucks and the random shooting at the blue African sky was definitely louder. Durell stepped out on the veranda and saw the first of the vehicles rock toward the bungalow, raising a plume of red dust behind it. Gloria moved so close to him that he could sense the heat of her body.

  "What do you suppose they want here?" she murmured.

  "Me, I think," Durell said.

  The trucks were filled with a ragtag platoon of wild looking soldiers armed with Russian-made Kalashnikov rifles. They looked as if they had just come out of the jungles and swamps. Some wore tattered bandages over their wounds, and there was a look of fever that glittered in their eyes. The second truck followed, and both jolted to a halt in front of the Gladstone place. Seeing Durell and the Gladstones on the veranda, several of the half-naked troopers with bandoli
ers over their black chests jumped off the tailgate and began shouting threats in Banda and pointing their guns at them. Gloria took the opportunity to press even closer to Durell in apparent fear.

  "What do they want?"

  "Take it easy," he said. He watched the powerful figure of Colonel Armand Abdundi climb down from the truck cab. It didn't make DureU feel any easier to note that the French-speaking colonel had drawn a pistol from his holster.

  "Durell?" Abdundi called. "You, Gladstone! Et toi, chere Madame Gladstone. Come, vitement!"

  "What is it?" Durell asked.

  "Arrest, if you please."

  Harvey spoke up with surprising force. "But we do not please, Armand. I'm the Minister of Transport and have certain rights—"

  "Precisely, M'sieu Minister. There is no transport in Pakuru, and therefore you have no further rights. For your safety's sake do not argue."

  "Any charges?" Durell asked quietly.

  "It is precautionary. Protective custody, let us say."

  There was no arguing with those gims and the fevered, bloodshot yellow eyes. Gloria began to protest that she needed certain things from the house, and Harvey looked grimly satisfied when Abdundi refused her. In a moment they were shoved and herded into the second truck, and they roared off into Pakuru's blinding, mid-morning heat.

  A row of thorn trees looked dusty along the railroad tracks that ran along the river's edge. High above them loomed the thick green forest of the valley's side, crowned by the white cubicle of the Casino. Along the tracks were native shanties built of tin and rags and bamboo and a few genuine beehive huts. The river was a muddy brown. The tracks were torn up and rusty. No one stood at the switchman's gate, no one was at the grimy little station, no one worked in the engine sheds and yard spurs. There were a few bomb craters here and there that had done much damage. The repair shops were open sided for the most part with high roofs of corrugated tin on tall poles under which the vague shapes of forges, repair pits, overhead cranes, and machine benches looked dusty and deserted, like ancient monsters. The trucks bounced angrily over the tracks, turned right along a line between two spurs empty of freight cars, and roared under a signal bridge that obviously had no power to light the round telltales. Harvey Gladstone stared about him with sad interest.