He landed backward, flattening his hands behind him, rolled over across the uneven sidewalk, and came up fast.
Nothing else happened. There was a rustling in the dark branches of the banyan tree above, and that was all. His arm burned and pained him, and he rolled back his coat sleeve to look at the long rip in his forearm. Blood flowed from the wound. He wondered briefly if the knife-point in the booby trap had been touched with poison; but there was no use worrying about that. He tore his shirt with his teeth, made a temporary bandage about the wound, and sat down again to catch his breath, leaning against the compound wall.
There were no other alarms. Inside the dark house he knew there would be an indicator panel showing that this deadly little device had gone off. Someone would come to investigate, but they would take their time and be careful.
The place was impregnable, he decided. Knowing McFee, he guessed that this knife trap was only one of dozens waiting for an unwelcome intruder.
He couldn't reach McFee this way.
There was only one other way he could do it
Twenty-one
Durell had known Deirdre Padgett almost from his first assignment with K Section. Through the years as a field officer, he had heard Deirdre declare her love in a hundred different ways. There was a time when he had considered marriage, and then dismissed it as impractical, as making him vulnerable in this business. He had not been able to bring himself to leave K Section when he could still live a normal life; and then it had been too late. He had known many women, but Deirdre, with her silken black hair and blue eyes, was special, something private and wonderful and beautiful in his otherwise grim and dangerous life. Eventually, Deirdre had taken a job with K Section, too, against all his arguments, and Dickinson McFee had made her a special assistant.
She had been here in Taipei when he left for mainland China, and if McFee were still here, she could be found, too.
He had never imagined using her for his own purposes before; but then, he thought, he had never been in such a desperate situation before.
She could be the key to unlocking McFee's defenses.
Dr. Ike Greentree came awake with a start, one arm flailing across his face in the darkness. Durell caught his wrist and pinned it to the pillow and sat on the edge of the bed.
"Keep quiet, Ike. It's all right."
"What? What?"
"I'm Sam. Cajun. Take it easy."
It was past midnight, and Durell had walked halfway across the city, keeping to dark, lonely alleys, to find the little bungalow where Greentree lived while attached to Haystead's E Branch in Taipei. He had been in luck to find the surgeon here, instead of at the Sun Moon cottage where the original plastic surgery had been performed. The bungalow, deep in the shadows of tropical shrubbery on a quiet street, had proved to be without gimmicks or alarms.
"Wait—wait a minute," Greentree said fuzzily.
"Take your time. Take ten seconds."
"Can I put on a light?"
"I'll do it."
There was a small bedside lamp, and Durell made sure the draperies were drawn securely before he put it on. Greentree blinked and grunted in the glare, and turned on one hip amid the tangled sheets to grope for his glasses. Durell handed them to him, and Greentree sat up, wiped a shaking hand across his mouth, and stared at him.
He asked at once, "Which Shan are you?"
"I'm Durell. Did you know the real Shan is alive?"
"I heard about it a few days ago."
"McFee told you?"
"Right. Glad you're back safely, Cajun. Really glad. The job I did looks good, eh? It took you to Peking and back."
"You did a fine job, Ike."
"Everything okay, then?"
"You know damned well it isn't," said Durell.
Greentree looked about the bedroom as if searching for something. His eyes behind his glasses slowly assumed the cool intellectuality that was usual with him. His hands stopped shaking.
"You scared hell out of me, Cajun."
"Why?"
"Well, you know—midnight awakening—intruder in the place " Greentree started to get out of bed, and
Durell eased him firmly back with a hand on his chest. "I'm not accustomed to your cloak-and-dagger methods, that sort of thing. I'm a surgeon, not a field agent, like you."
"And you know I'm persona non grata, is that it?"
"Have you reported to Haystead yet? Or to McFee?"
"You mean, have I stretched my throat for the butcher's knife? Not yet, Ike. I don't intend to."
"Now, look, I'm only part of the job in doing the plastic surgery on you and changing you back. That's all I know."
"Good. We'll keep it that way. But there's one thing I want from you, Ike, and I want it fast and honest. I have to find Deirdre, and I need her now."
"Your girl? But that doesn't make sense "
"Ike, I happen to know you have an I.Q. of 148 and a reputation for being a very cool customer. Don't play games with me. Tell me where to find Deirdre, and don't lie. You know where she lives in Taipei. She wouldn't be away from McFee during business hours, but McFee would set her up with living quarters out of that fort he has across town. So tell me where she lives. You've been there for cocktails more than once, haven't you?" Durell guessed.
"Well, yes, but "
"Give me her address."
"You sound off your rocker, Cajun. That may not be a very professional description, but I think you're suffering from exhaustion, an induced form of suppressed hysteria,
fatigue "
"Shut up, Ike. I want to find Deirdre." "What for? I don't care to be involved "
"You won't be. If you don't talk, I'll have to hurt you a bit, Ike. I don't want to do that."
"You wouldn't " The surgeon paused and stared at
Durell for a calculating moment. What he saw in Durell's face and eyes decided him. "Yes, I think you would. I thought we were friends."
"No man has friends in this business. Give, Ike."
Greentree muttered the address reluctantly. It was in a nearby residential quarter, a bungalow development similar to his own, almost entirely reserved for American personnel assigned to the Kuomintang government as liaison officers.
"Listen, Cajun, in your present state of mind—you wouldn't hurt her? I heard she's your girl."
"She is. Thanks, Ike. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to tie you up and tape your mouth, to keep you off the phone for a while. I'll apologize if I make it through this thing."
"I think you're out of your head, Cajun."
"Maybe I am. Get out of bed now."
"What's the matter with your arm? You've been cut "
"Never mind the professional interest. Let's have some surgical tape from your kit. For your mouth, not my arm."
Deirdre awoke more smoothly than Ike Greentree. Durell found two alarm systems around her bungalow, one a trip wire that he climbed over in the darkness, the other a monitor mike at the bedroom window. His arm began to throb from the knife wound of McFee's booby trap, but he paid no attention to it. It was after one o'clock in the morning now. Darkness was his ally. At dawn's light he would be a sitting duck for every counterintelligence apparatus on Taiwan. He thought wryly that matters had been simpler and more clearly defined in the heart of Peking.
It took ten minutes to jump the window bug, tracing the delicate wires to avoid alarm. He didn't doubt that the system ran straight to wherever McFee was waiting for him. But his entry into Deirdre Padgett's bedroom was as soundless as the movement of a dark shadow.
He stood over her bed for a quiet moment. A trace of silver moonlight touched her long, black hair spread over the white pillow. In her sleep, her face was a lovely oval, intimately familiar, dearly beloved; it showed her usual serenity, but she also frowned slightly, as if she were having a bad dream. He touched her bare shoulder lighdy, bent and kissed her. In the moonlight the dark fans of her lashes lifted and fluttered, then her blue eyes were wide, looking up at him. Her mouth opened,
and her lips trembled for a moment.
"Sam?" she whispered.
"Right," he said quietly. "Don't shout, don't cry out, don't raise an alarm."
"Why should I?" she asked.
He towered over her bed. She had made no effort to sit up. His Chinese face was immobile, implacable. "Why didn't you stay with McFee tonight?"
"He sent me home."
He felt danger. "To wait for me?"
"He didn't think you'd find me. Are you all right, Sam? You look—it must have been difficult."
"Yes, it was."
"What's the matter with your arm?"
"Never mind. Get up and get dressed, Dee."
"You sound strange."
"I feel strange. Get up."
She tried to smile. "Is that an order?"
"Yes."
"Sam, darling, let's not quarrel. I was foolish to be jealous of your going off with Jasmine."
"You don't have to worry about Jasmine any more. She's dead. She took a booby-trap bomb that was meant for me."
She was inexpressibly shocked. "Jasmine ?
"Yes, that's right."
"You talk about it as if it were just—just a change in the weather."
"It is, in a way. Get up," he said a third time.
"Sam, we've known each other—we've loved each other too long for you to talk to me like this."
"I'm sorry. I'm in the worst trouble of my life, and I need your help."
"Of course I'll help you."
"I have to get to McFee."
"But what's to stop you?"
"If he doesn't have the right answers," he said quietly, "I may have to kill him."
She had started out of bed, moving her long legs over the edge. She had a full, high-breasted body that the moonlight amply outlined. He was suddenly flooded with past intimacies of many close and tender days and nights he had spent with her. She knew him better, perhaps, than anyone else in the world. But now she stared at him with the cold eyes of a stranger.
"You don't mean that," she whispered.
"I do."
"So they got to you, after all?"
"Who are 'they'?"
"I don't know. You have more facts than I."
"I know only half-truths." He quoted the partial list of Sentinel code names to her. " 'Dragon, White Horse, Yellow Tiger, Blossom of Tranquillity, Pink Cloud, Far Mountain.' What do they mean, Dee?"
Her face froze. "Where did you get that?"
"Never mind. What's the other half of those names?"
"I don't know."
"Did you ever hear them before?"
"No, Sam."
"You never lied to me in the past," he said harshly.
"I'm not lying to you now."
"But they mean something to you!"
She was silent, then said, "In your present state of mind, Sam, I don't think I can take you to McFee. I can't let you do it. He'll kill you first if he guesses what you have in mind. He means to save K Section. Certain others want to destroy it, and McFee too, because he and K Section stand in their way. He's fighting for his life, just as you are. He'd hoped you would come back with proof of something that might help him, and at the same time, he's concerned with the false evidence that's been arranged around him. He was half certain you would be brainwashed by it. And you have been."
It was his turn to be still. Her voice was cold, the voice of an enemy. He stared at her in disbelief, feeling as if it were the end of his world. He loved her. He had often protcted her from the dangers of his work. He watched her get out of bed, moving with that lithe and supple grace he knew so well. He suddenly ached for her. But he did not move. She looked at the Chinese gun in his hand.
"If I refuse to help you, would you shoot me, Sam?"
"I can make you take me to McFee."
"Yes, you have ways of hurting, of imposing your will on someone's body."
"I'll do it if I have to," he said.
She stood very still, looking at him across the moonlite bedroom. He thought she had never looked so proud and beautiful. He ached with an illness he knew might never be cured. He wished for many,things, and most of all he wished he did not have to do this thing. But he knew he had to go ahead with it.
She dressed quietly and quickly, choosing a dark silk skirt, a dark blue blouse. Her brush crackled as she arranged her thick black hair with gestures he knew well. The silence and the distance grew between them, and he knew that soon the gulf he had created might never be bridged again.
She spoke only once more. "Did you love Jasmine so much, Sam?"
"No," he said. "But I won't accept the reason for her death."
Twenty-two
The night turned cool, a wind rustled the shrubbery and sent a scatter of brightly colored paper down the street. Deidre moved ahead in proud, angry silence. She had a little Japanese Toyota, and he made her park it some distance from K Section's Control. The Buddhist temple was dark now. The priests had ended their chanting, and the cymbals and gongs were silent. Only the sound of the cool wind came down the street.
Deirdre led him around a corner from the side where he had tried to enter before. The wall was blank, but she moved with assurance. Walking half a step behind her, he felt a sudden fear lest she might be hurt in a trap she might not know about.
"Wait, Dee."
She halted passively; her eyes scorned him.
"Tell me how to get in," he said.
"I have to do it myself. My configuration—portrait— call it what you wish, will match the scanners and admit me. The scanner is programmed to allow only certain personnel to enter at night without challenge."
"Suppose I went first?"
"There would be an alarm. If you pushed on, there would be weapons. You wouldn't make it, not even you, Sam."
"Yes, I know how clever McFee can be."
She passed the wall and crossed the street to the house on the next corner. It was a small souvenir shop, rather shabby. She went into the recessed doorway and touched an ugly ceramic dog that guarded the portal, turning its head slightly. The door opened silently. Durell could make out only the dim counters and stacked shelves inside.
"I want to go first," he said.
"You'll be killed if you do. Stand close behind me."
She walked straight through the shop to a beaded cur-
tain in the rear, turned left in the darkness, and went down a flight of wooden steps into the cellar. There were cartons of merchandise stored here, visible in the faint glow of a night light. Durell walked close on Deirdre's heels. The scanner might be confused that way, he thought. He hoped so. He listened for an alarm, but he heard nothing.
Behind the crates was a long, dim corridor and a flight of stairs going up, again lighted by a dim bulb. Deirdre walked in resentful silence. At the top of the second flight, she halted before a closed door.
"Sam, it won't work. He's ready for you."
"How do you know?"
"I know Dickinson McFee. Please, go back. Telephone him. Tell him you've thought things over. Tell him you want an explanation, that's all. Don't accuse him, don't threaten him. He's determined to survive."
"So am I," he said grimly. "Go on."
"I—I'm afraid for you," she confessed.
"I wonder. Maybe you're just afraid for McFee."
"Sam, put that gun away. I'm not afraid for myself, you understand. But it's foolish—you're not yourself, you're not thinking clearly, you've changed "
"Maybe I've really become Shan," he said grimly.
She sighed and pushed open the door.
McFee said: "That is quite far enough. Thank you, Deirdre. Step to one side, my dear."
They had entered a room furnished as an office, the sort that might be found anywhere in a fine building in the States. There was a massive desk, set against gold-curtained windows, several soft armchairs, a Victorian hat rack, straw Taiwanese rugs. McFee sat behind the desk. On the desk were gray metal cabinets, not very large, with rows of telltale lights and butto
ns on a sloping control board. One of the telltales blinked rapidly. McFee reached out slowly, his eyes on Durell's tall figure, and pushed a button. There was a click, and the light went out.
"Stay where you are, Dee," Durell said. He kept his gun in hand.
She stood still. McFee Looked small and gray and infinitely formidable behind the desk. His face had never seemed more hostile or dangerous, Durell thought— merely because it was so expressionless. His left hand still rested on the control panel; his right hand held his familiar and deadly blackthorn walking stick, which Durell knew was packed with a minute arsenal of deadly weapons. In the tip of it, he knew, were poison darts. And the tip was pointed directly at him.
"Samuel, you were always something of a Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, although you pride yourself on being a pragmatist. Our psychiatric configurations on you confirmed this some time ago. But I am not a windmill, Samuel. If you move to attack me, you will be killed. I promise you this. I do not threaten it. I have been ready for you, as you see. Don't blame Deirdre; she did not betray you. She did as you asked, and I expected you to ask her to bring you to me." McFee's gray eyes flicked to Durell's bandaged arm. "I am glad the knife did not hit anything vital."
Durell believed him. He saw Deirdre draw a deep breath. She stood ahead and a little to the left of him, but she was still between them. It was an impasse. But he was at a disadvantage. McFee knew he would not expose her to danger; and he already had, by forcing her here. At any moment, McFee might press this advantage somehow; and for the first time in his life, Durell was not sure how he would react. He swore silently at himself for thinking he could bluff this through; when he looked at McFee's icy eyes, he knew the little man realized his advantage.
Would he be killed? He saw death in McFee's face, a tiny spasm of anger at—betrayal?
He said quietly, "I've only come for facts, sir. I'm being hunted by people I don't know. Maybe they're from General Haystead, maybe they're from you, but "
"Those men who saved Shan and who killed Jasmine —however unwittingly—came from neither of us. I have no love for Harry Haystead. He means to destroy me and K Section. But he's only a tool, as you've become a tool, for other forces."
Assignment Peking Page 17
