Assignment - Ceylon

by Edward S. Aarons

  George was still breathing. Durell considered his open mouth, his long arms, and straightened, sighed.

  Someone was coming up the ladder of the stilt house. “Mister? Madame Aspara asks—”

  “We’re coming right out.”

  The attendant said, “The telephone doesn’t work, anyway.”

  “Yes.” Durell picked up George and carried him to the door of the hut. The air felt cool outside. The attendant’s brown face peered up at him from the foot of the ladder. “Mister George is ill,” Durell said.

  “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  “Sam?” Aspara said.

  “It’s all right.

  She started from the Rolls, her body fluid, swift, then checked herself and returned to the wheel. Durell carried George to the back seat, dropped him in, and took his place beside the girl. Aspara’s eyes were wide and questioning.

  “What was it?” she asked.

  “He’s a member of the PFM,” Durell said.

  The true name of Kandy, in the heart of Ceylon, was Kanda Uda Pas Rata—the Five-Kingdoms-On-The-Hill. The city was the real capital of the Sinhalese. The road to it crossed a river, the Mahaweli Ganga at Peradeniya, where another roadblock waited for them. But Aspara’s unique old Rolls-Royce was apparently above suspicion.

  A smart-looking lieutenant bent ceremoniously toward Aspara. “You go to attend the Essala Perahera, Madame?”

  “Yes. Is there any trouble?”

  “None at all. Please continue.”

  Aspara drove on. Durell sat beside her and said, “He never even looked at me.”

  “I am well known here,” she said.

  “But he was very careful not to look at me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I,” he said.

  “Is—is George all right?”

  “He’ll be out of it soon. What’s the Perahera?”

  “Sam, please. He’s a very confused young man. It’s not his fault he is the way he is. Ira neglected him. I was busy with my own political career. Between us, he didn’t know which way to turn. He is neither here nor there, do you understand? He is basically a gentle boy—

  “Not any more,” Durell said.

  Aspara said, “I could not bear it, if anything happened to him because of you and me—”

  “What is the Perahera?” he asked again.

  “Oh. It’s an annual pageant and festival at the Dalada Maligawa—the famous Temple of the Tooth. There is supposed to be an actual tooth of Buddha there. Each year, between your July and August—our lunar month of Esala—a replica of the Tooth is taken from the temple, in a procession of fabulously decorated elephants, with drummers and torchlights—everything. There is much feasting and joy. You are not a Buddhist, you might not understand how beautiful it all is. Buddhism came to Sri Lanka over 2,300 years ago. The Sacred Tooth is kept in an inner sanctuary of the Maligawa. The flowers are so lovely—frangipani and sapu and jasmine. The Tooth itself rests on a golden lotus under a very old bell casket, really many of them, each fitting on the other, all bejeweled. The ancient kings of Kandy were always independent, you know, here in the mountains. It is a beautiful place. Everything is reflected in the lake, in all the pools for bathing and reflections—”

  He interrupted again. “What about the Buddha Stone?” She frowned, her profile shadowed in the evening light. “I don’t think that legend is worth discussing.”

  “It’s been mentioned in regard to Ira.”

  “Oh, but that is nonsense.” She spoke too quickly, reflecting an inner disturbance that rejected his words. “It is just a myth, an old wives’ tale, I think.”

  “I’d like to hear about it,” Durell said.

  “Dear Sam, I think George is waking up.”

  They reached Kandy as the sun set, plunging the hills into abrupt, tropical darkness. But the city was alive with lights and the thin susurrations of music, the thumping of drums, the low but overwhelming murmur of throngs. They came in on the Peredeniya Road, passing the Botanic Gardens, the flicker of impossible flowers like jewels in the deepening dusk, which settled into the bowl of the surrounding mountains. Beyond the university buildings, the road went almost straight toward the glimmering Kandy Lake, built by the last local king, an islet in the center was once the royal harem. Aspara explained that they had to go through the town in order to reach Ira Sandersons walauwa—one of the old Sinhalese manor houses dating back to the feudal days of kings and pomp and recurrent wars.

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  “It’s rather broken down, of course, but still quite magnificent,” she said. “The government allowed him to keep quite a few of the antiquities he discovered there, with the

  proviso that they were irrevocable national treasures and not personal belongings.”

  George spoke up suddenly from the back seat. “Hell, what did you hit me with, spook?”

  Durell turned to look at him. “Not with a hammer, for sure. It was my hand.”

  “You’re a filthy murderer. Aspara, did you know that Durell probably has killed a dozen men? Maybe more? He’s an imperialist, colonialist lackey, a hired mercenary whom—”

  “Be quiet George,” she said calmly. “You are lucky to be alive.”

  “Maybe so. Are we in Kandy?”

  “It is the Perahera,” she said.

  “Bread and circuses for the masses,” the boy complained. “It’s just a hangover from the bad old days, trying to perpetuate the establishment through religious idolatry.” Aspara said sharply, “I will not have you talk like that.” George leaned forward, wincing as he touched his neck. “Mom, you don’t really believe they actually have Buddha’s tooth in the Dalada Maligawa, do you? That’s all right for the peasants, all these elephants and jewelry and torches. But you’re supposed to be a liberated, intelligent Sinhala woman, living in the twentieth century.”

  Durell turned on the front seat so he could keep George under observation. He wished again he hadn’t been saddled with such an obvious enemy. At the same time, there was information behind George’s mean eyes, glimpsed now and then through his mane of blowing dark hair. He meant to get that information, sooner or later.

  Now that he was in a city, his former feeling of being hunted and pursued returned in double strength. He wondered what had happened to Willie Wells. He had no illusions that Wells was too injured to give up his chase. He would follow orders implacably, and Durell now knew enough about him to totally respect Wells’ abilities. He seemed to see an enemy in every face among the throngs that filled the city’s streets. He reminded himself that there had to be a reason for the Swiss bank account in his name, a reason for the use of a man who looked enough like him to pass at a casual, distant glance. And reason, too, in making him an outlaw, with no refuge anywhere on earth, by senselessly murdering his two men here in Kandy.

  Someone wanted him dead, he thought.

  Or—

  Time stopped for a moment as another angle occurred to him. Someone wanted him outlawed, yes, a target for K Section. Someone wanted him homeless and helpless. Durell drew a deep breath, wished for a cigarette, wished for a drink—

  If the purpose of it all was to eliminate him, then the elaborate schemes of depositing money in his name in Geneva and killing his men here so he looked guilty had to have another aim. Given time and patience, it was not difficult to kill a man. No one was immune from assassins.

  There was more to it, therefore.

  Someone was waiting to take him in, to use him in some way, for something as yet undefined.

  Someone wanted him to feel desperate enough to be willing to accept any refuge. Somewhere. Soon. It had to be soon, he thought.

  “Sam?”

  He felt better. He looked at Aspara. She was more beautiful than ever. They had turned into the Tatinuwara Vidiya, near the Queen’s House, with another glimpse of the royal Kunda Salava, the Pleasure Pavilion, with its tiny drawbridge across the lake. Here in Kandy there was a strong Dravidian influence, exhib
ited by Hindu temples devoted to Vishnu. But this night in Kandy was completely given over to the celebration of the Sacred Tooth. Flowers were strewn everywhere, and a torchlight procession of coppery Kandyan dancers in white and scarlet held them up for a moment. He watched the crowd even as he glanced at Aspara. If he could hold out against Wells long enough, and avoid the PFM, contact would be made. He was sure of it.

  “Dear Sam?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “This man you say is looking for you—hunting you? This American—”

  “A black,” Durell said. “Very good at the job.”

  “A hired killer, you said.”

  “In a way.”

  “He can’t possibly know you’ve come to Kandy, can he?”

  “He can guess. He’s smart and fast, and he’ll be here soon enough—or he’s here already.”

  “Perhaps the police—”

  “They’re looking for me, too. My two men—”

  “What can you hope to had at Ira’s walauwa?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He felt impatient with the procession that blocked their way. The crowd was thicker, excited, filled with religious fervor that exploded in noise and chanting, in drums and reed flutes. The great gray elephants swayed by, their heads and trunks covered with red and gold and silver, their small eyes visible through ornate holes cut in their face masks. Miniature temples, all jingling silver bells and jeweled tassels and ornaments, moved on their backs, protected by parasols and canopies supported by men and women in white turbans and long white scarves that came forward over their right shoulders. The monks in their saffron robes and priests of the temple in flat red hats and embroidered shawls over their white skirts made a sudden line across the intersection.

  Far in the distance, a police siren hooted, coming around the Kiri Muhuda, the rectangular lake called the Milky Sea. In the black waters were reflected the lights from the creamy, octagonal dome of the Delada Maligawa, with its moat and high walls. From all the hillsides around the lake and its wide walk with flowering trees, the houses of the city sent down their own lights, reflecting in the black, silent water.

  “Back up,” Durell said suddenly. “Let’s get out of here.”

  George snickered.

  Aspara said, “I don’t think I can. The crowds—”

  George said, “The spook is scared of crowds, huh?” Aspara reversed the big Rolls and slowly backed up a few feet. The people shoved and shouted, swarming 66

  around the car to get to the avenue where the elephants lumbered by.

  “Sam?”

  “Keep going. Is there another way around—?”

  “Perhaps. The university grounds—”

  Durell said tightly, “Try it.”

  She eased the heavy, open car backward through the chanting, shouting crowd. Elephants in velvet, satin, and silk paced by, enormous, silvered and gilded, with dancers on every hand. A block or two behind them, the shops that normally sold everything from mangos to jeweled caskets were tightly shuttered, closed against this night that followed the full moon.

  At last Aspara found a side alley, turned the Rolls into it, eased her way down for another block, turned left, found a less crowded street beyond the King’s Pavilion, and accelerated toward the Mahaiyava Railway Station.

  A large black car waited for them at the next intersection. Headlights winked on and off. The signal was repeated from another car a block behind them.

  Aspara drew a quick breath. “Who can they be?” She touched the brake, and Durell said sharply, “Keep going.” “I can’t. That other car—

  “Then stop right here. Right now.”

  She slammed on the brakes so hard that George tumbled from the back seat with a yelp. Durell had the door open and was running around the Rolls before it quite stopped. The big car ahead nosed slowly forward, almost blocking the way. Durell could not see through the black windshield to identify anyone in it. Overhead, the full moon shone down on the celebrating city of the Five-Kingdoms-On-The-Hill. From far away, he heard the deep chanting of a processional crowd shouting, “Sadhu! Sadhu!Sadhu!”

  He saw the other car moving toward them from behind, down the narrow street Aspara had chosen. He felt a moment of sharp suspicion toward her, then put it aside, jumped in behind the wheel of the Rolls as the girl slid over on the front seat. Then he slammed his foot down on the gas pedal.

  The great old car leaped ahead. Aspara made a murmuring sound. The limousine that partially blocked their way was rolling forward to reach the middle of the intersection and leave no room to pass on either side. Durell swung the car to the right, as if he were automatically going to drive on the right-hand side of the street. Ceylonese traffic kept to the left. The limousine was moving that way to block him off. So that driver instinctively obeyed Ceylonese rules. It wouldn’t be Wells. But maybe it was. No way to tell. At the last possible moment, Durell swung the heavy touring car to the left again. There was not enough space to go through. Taillights flared red as the other driver braked. Behind him, the other car came up at a faster speed, only forty feet behind. Headlights blazed in the rear-vision mirror. Something made a sharp ping! along the side of the Rolls. Durell did not see the flicker of gun-flame from the car ahead. Then another bullet whipped the air overhead, and a third cracked the windshield. Aspara ducked and George yelled and stood up and swung one leg over the low rear door and stood on the running board. He waved his free arm and yelled something unintelligible to those in the car ahead. Durell wondered if, in spite of everything, he had managed to inform the PFM. He knew of no way George could have done so. At the same time, the young man apparently expected privileges from those in the cars ahead and behind. But he received none.

  There was a lurch, a crash, a pang of regret in Durell at the damage to the old Rolls as they came around the rear end of the big limousine. The car sawed back and forth, skewed half around, smashed into something in the rear, then responded beautifully as he swung the wheel to the right.

  He heard Aspara scream George’s name.

  George had vanished from the running board.

  Durell could not see him in the street behind them. He gave all his attention to handling the heavy car.

  “Stop, Sam! They have George! He fell off!”

  “No way. Not a chance.”

  “But you can’t just leave him here!”

  “I have to.”

  He saw the shock and dismay, the hostility in her slightly slanted eyes. Her pale brown face was a sudden mask, withdrawn, remote. He glimpsed a road sign, incongruously recalling British hegemony—Lady Horton’s Drive. He swung into it, disregarding Aspara now; she bent forward, a palm pressed to her forehead. Down another side street, there was a flash of bright lights, a glimpse of a Kandyan dance troupe; their bronzed bodies reflected white and scarlet and silver. Then the lake opened out below them, and he heard the thudding of the dancers’ drums recede. Near the Peak View Hotel Aspara said, “Left, now. Please. Be careful.”

  The two other cars rocketed doggedly along 3n their dust. The road curved between large private estates, some government buildings, a wooded area, then straightened for a rim uphill toward Katugastota Road and the bridge over the Mahaweli Ganga. The second car behind them vanished, its headlights cut off by intervening trees and houses.

  “There is a short cut to the top here. That one will try to beat us,” Aspara said. “Sam, I’m so worried about George.”

  “He can take care of himself.”

  “I know he’s apt to do you harm, dear Sam; but why does he hate you so?”

  “He hates himself really, not me.”

  The houses thinned out. The road lifted sharply again, with a ferny, bamboo-grown chasm to the left, and on the right the flickering groves of forest, the sudden iridescent gleam of the eyes of a tiny loris clinging to a branch overhead. Then they were out of the central area of the city.

  “We have to go over the bridge,” Aspara murmured. “If the police wait ther
e, we can’t escape.”

  But the bridge was not blocked. The second car did not appear to intercept them. The Rolls streaked across the shimmering river, which reflected a full moon over Katugastota, where elephants bathed during the day. Now they were on mountain roads, still climbing out of the bowl in the hills where Kandy nestled, far behind. The limousine clung persistently to their trail, headlights shining now and then around the twisting curves of the road. There was a sense of remoteness in the dark night, a feeling of towering mountains, plunging valleys, terraced tea farms, bamboo thickets, forests trailing weeping vines. The road became rough, bumping around tight curves where no guardrails existed. The road narrowed rapidly as they climbed toward the first summit. Although the Rolls had power to spare, the other car still clung to their trail.

  “It won’t do,” Aspara said finally. “We’ll lead them straight to Ira’s walauwa if we keep on.”

  Durell spotted a rough trail cut by bullock carts off to the right. At the last moment he twisted the wheel, glimpsed grassland to one side, swung off the rutted path, and whipped the wheel in a circle to come back headed the other way. He doused the lights and let the motor idle. The Rolls engine made a low murmuring sound that allowed the noises of insects in the field to mingle with the quiet rustle of the mountain wind. Moonlight flooded the hillside. To the left was a thick woods; to the right were pastures lifting to a thatched cluster of village houses. No lights showed there. He watched the road.

  The headlamps of the other car came on fast. Red flared from the taillights as the driver discovered the cart-track and glimpsed the waiting Rolls. Durell slid out from behind the wheel.

  “Get out, Aspara. Hurry. Get away from the car. Lie down in the grass over there, just past that rise.”