Assignment - Ceylon

by Edward S. Aarons

  She said tightly, “What are you doing to do?”

  He gave no reply. He walked forward with his gun hanging loosely from his fingers. The heavy limousine was trying to turn around. He ducked to avoid its headlights. He still did not know how many of his pursuers were in the other car, but he allowed himself some anger now, thinking of the impossible situation in which he’d been placed, knowing that someone was responsible, someone he meant to find and settle accounts with. He did not think Wells was in the limousine. Wells would be much more careful now. He thought he heard another car, the second one, which had vanished back in the city; but he paid no attention to it.

  Car doors slammed. Shadows moved among the trees along the bullock path. The full moon of the Perahera gleamed on a small temple set on the other side of the track, about five hundred yards to the east, nestled among tall banyan trees. The place seemed deserted. The moonlight showed him the crumbled flight of steps leading up to the open, broken temple doors, and he moved sidewise in that direction, parallel to the road. He did not look back for Aspara.

  There were three of them.

  The flat sound of a shot broke the quiet night. A leaf fluttered down over his head. Their intentions were plain. He continued retreating along the cart path, sliding through the thin line of trees toward the deserted temple.

  They were eager enough. Two of them came on too fast, exposing themselves on the path. Another shot snapped through a bush just behind him. Durell flattened against the trunk of a tree and leveled his .38 at the nearest running man. He took his time, fired once. The sound of his S&W seemed louder than the others’ shots. The first man on the path tumbled, yelping, and sprawled flat as if diving into a pool. The farther man shouted something in Tamil dialect. Durell was halfway to the temple now. He put on a burst of speed, crossed the path, ran up the opposite bank into the weedy hillside. Bullets whistled after him. At least, he thought, he had drawn them away from Aspara. He was worried about the third man, and hoped that one wouldn’t get the bright idea of going after the girl and using her as a hostage. He didn’t consider what he might do in that case.

  At the temple steps he crouched behind the crumbled stone image of a legendary beast. The mountain wind was cool on his face, blowing his thick, black hair. The two others had paused beside the man he had hit, but only briefly. They were more careful now, breaking from shadow to shadow, coming at him.

  The steps led up into the open temple doorway. He thought he saw a faint light deep in the recesses of the old temple. The two pursuers had separated to come at him from different sides. He took aim at the nearest, not the leader, and paused at the sound of the second motor car coming up the mountain road. Headlights glared against the full spread of the moonlight, bouncing in the ruts of the bullock path. The wind soughed around the ornate eaves of the little temple. He retreated halfway up the steps, aimed again, fired as the first man came up at him with a rush, yelling violently. He did not miss. The man came on a few more paces, climbed the lowest steps of the temple entrance, then sank down on his knees, clutching his belly.

  The second car rocked to a halt beside the limousine. Men tumbled out of it, quick and efficient forms.

  “Sir! Mr. Durell?”

  He felt a moment of fear- or Aspara. They might recognize the Rolls, know she was nearby, and fan out across the pasture to locate her. He did not think she could evade them for long.

  “Durell!"

  The voice echoed back and forth from the dark hillside. Durell jumped from the steps into thick brush alongside. Shots slammed from the men in the second car. The last one from the limousine ran in a wild, zigzag pattern down the hill and away from the road. In a moment, he was gone. Durell moved very carefully back toward the road. The second man he had shot was dead. The newcomers were gathered about the first one. He listened to his name being called for a third time and tried to identify the voice, aware of its familiarity, and then he swore softly and walked out into sight on the path, letting his gun dangle from his hand at his side.

  “Mr. Dhapura?” he called.

  “Of course. Sir, are you safe?”

  “Safe enough. Get Madame Aspara, please.”

  “Naturally. A pleasure. I was so worried we might be too late. We had an eye on you all the time, but you drove so well, and so deviously, I might add, that I thought for a time we had lost you and the PFMs might have their way with you.”

  There was a note of authority in the Sinhalese that had not been present in Colombo. They met on the path, and Mr. Dhapura formally shook his hand, smiled apologetically, and waved to the three men who had arrived with him.

  “My people, sir. All very good men.”

  Durell said, “It was you who told the cops at the roadblocks up here that we were to be allowed through?” “Naturally, sir.”

  “You know now where I spent the last poya day?”

  “I know, and I have forgotten it. I will be most discreet, sir. Sir, Madame Aspara is safe. She will be here in a moment. I will pretend to know nothing. She is a great lady, and I would not embarrass her. One must be sophisticated, to say the least, in such delicate matters. But since I learned you could not possibly have been in Kandy when your two men were killed, I thought I would lend you assistance.”

  Durell wondered why Mr. Dhapura was always so verbose. He said, “And your true rank, Mr. Dhapura?”

  The Sinhalese said, “I am a major in the Ceylon counterintelligence, the DS-7 department. Are you angry about it?”

  “You are supposed to be working for us.”

  The man bowed slightly. “In our profession, sir, one must expect—ah—deception. I am ashamed of it. Of course, the salary that K Section paid me to maintain my listening post as manager of the Royal Lanka Hotel has been carefully accounted for and will be returned in due time.”

  “So you were a double agent,” Durell said.

  “Ah. Sir, you are angry.”

  “Not at all. I’m glad you’ll be along.”

  Dhapura shook his head. “My excuses, sir. I will not go on with you. The walauwa of Ira Sanderson is not far from here. We will be unseen and unheard, if you are willing to go on as a lamb for bait, when the tiger appears. You may count on me, sir. My curiosity as to what has been happening to you truly consumes me. Do you mind?” Durell watched Aspara being escorted up the hillside from her hiding place. Dhapura’s men were most solicitous. He waved a hand at the wounded man and the dead man on the road.

  “What about them?”

  “PFM terrorists. Murderers. You will not be troubled by the affair here.”

  “My thanks. So you want me to go on?”

  “Please do. As I say, we will be on hand—unseen, but present to assist you. I am honored to cooperate with you. Your name has not been unknown in the DS-7 department.”

  Durell said, “Somebody in my department obviously slipped up about you.”

  “Please. Madame Aspara is waiting.”

  Durell walked away toward the waiting woman.

  nine

  Aspara drove again, returning part way along the mountain road; then she took a more clearly defined highway that followed a valley, then climbed another slope. The Rolls purred along smoothly. The woman’s face was a pale mask in the moonlight. Durell looked at his watch. He was surprised to find it was not yet ten o’clock.

  “Did you ask that man about George?” she inquired.

  “No.”

  “But you realize I am concerned about my son.”

  “George is all right. He’s where he wants to be—with his friends of the PFM. He’s young and a revolutionary like most of the young the world over. He’s just doing his thing. As long as he hasn’t harmed us, we can forget about him.”

  “Perhaps you can forget. I cannot.”

  “I’m sorry, Aspara.”

  “I have never seen or thought about you in the way I saw you act tonight. You killed two men, and you simply forget about it?”

  “Only one,” Durell said.

&
nbsp; “It does not trouble you?”

  “It troubles me.”

  “I find that difficult to believe.”

  “Aspara—”

  She said abruptly, “We are here.”

  The walauwa was one of the few remaining medieval manor houses going back to the old kingdoms of Kandy. It sat graciously on a terrace cut into the mountainside, and below it in the moonlight were tea terraces, some rubber, and two small villages which lay in the valley along the silvery ribbon of a stream that flowed from the rectangular irrigation tank built at a higher level along the mountain. The house itself, touched with kindness by the night shadows and the moon, looked aristocratic and delicate, but it reflected the strength of the feudal lords who had lived here long ago and ruled the domains below.

  One wing of the manor had crumbled, and the white blocks of stones were heaped in a high pile of carved masonry, spilling over the low wall that surrounded the estate. The wind bent the tall trees slightly. The garden was unkempt, gone wild from years of neglect, although flowers still bloomed in the tangled shrubs, vines, and creepers massed on either side of the crushed-stone entrance drive. “Shall I go all the way in?” Aspara asked coolly.

  “Stop here. We’ll walk. It might be best if you waited in the car again.”

  “No, I’ll feel safer with you—even if you are a murderer. I’m sorry—I’m confused about you.” She said it simply, and her manner remained distant. “I have not known any violent men before. Ceylon is a peaceful land. True, Sri Lanka was cursed with its share of wars, but the Sinhala people want only peace.” She paused, looked at the wide sweep of the walauwa. “Ira and I lived here for almost two years, you know, when we were first married. George was bom here. George—”

  “I’m sorry I got you involved,” he said.

  “I am not. Not about you and what is happening. It is my duty to know what goes on in my country.”

  “Is that why you’re with me in this?”

  She said quietly, “I thought I was falling in love with you again.”

  “Don’t,” he told her.

  “You need not worry. I know I would only be a burden to a man like you. Your world is not mine. But I was beginning to dream a little.”

  Durell eyed the black, rectangular windows of the manor house- and considered the open, double-leafed doorway that seemed to invite them in. Insects hummed and clicked in the unkempt brush nearby. Somewhere a night bird called out on a querulous note.

  “It seems empty,” Aspara murmured.

  “Nothing is what it seems to be. Mr. Dhapura is a case in point. I think he’s somewhere about, behind us.”

  He went up the steps, paused near the yawning black doorway, returned, and asked Aspara for a flashlight. She had a torch in the square, big trunk of the Rolls. He took it and returned to the door and stepped inside.

  No one leaped, shouted, or attacked him.

  He waited, pulling Aspara in against the wall beside the door, in a central hallway where moonlight sent fingers of silver down through broken tiles in the high roof. Her fingers were cool in his, but trembling a little.

  “It’s been so long .. . I have so many memories . . .

  “The past is dead,” Durell said.

  King and Thompson had died here, a bullet for each in the back of the head. The place had been an unexpected trap when they came to conduct a routine check on this old mansion where Ira Sanderson escaped his diplomatic duties to conduct the archeological explorations that were his true interests. He drew a deep breath and snapped on the big flashlight. Its beam shot out like a soundless explosion touching dusty marble stairs, wide doors opening to right and left, dusty furniture of antique Kandyan style.

  There was no reaction from anyone.

  He moved forward silently with Aspara, knowing that if anyone was here, that person was expecting him. It was a chance he had to take. He had no crew of experts from K Section to go in and take this place apart.

  The rooms to the right were like museum pieces, filled with court chairs of gilt and mahogany, low tables of both Moorish and Sinhala design, crumbled fragments dug up out of jungle cave-fortresses. He looked for Sanderson’s living quarters. There was a kitchen in the back, with charcoal and oil stoves, a modem table, a gas-run refrigerator. The box had stopped, the fuel emptied, and there were only scraps of food left inside. At least Ira hadn’t expected to be kidnapped. The photographs of the missing man that Durell had seen had shown Sanderson to be tall, stooped, with rather weak eyes, horn-rimmed glasses, and thinning blond hair that was probably more gray than blond. He was still addicted to Ivy League suits, narrow charcoal-gray neckties, a habit of stooping and peering at people less tall than he.

  But there was nothing personal of the man downstairs. Durell moved up the broad stone stairs. Aspara’s footsteps were swift whispers as she tried to keep up with his long pace.

  “Ira’s bedroom-workshop was up here,” she whispered.

  He touched her mouth. “Don’t speak.”

  “But no one is here—”

  “Wrong,” he said.

  He could feel it, that indefinable sense of someone’s presence, somewhere in this ancient house, in the shadows, waiting. He wondered if it was Willie Wells. Aspara gestured to the right, and he moved swiftly and silently down the hall.

  A large room, which had once seen medieval dancers perform for the lord of the manor, was directly above the main entrance below. He flicked off the torch. Moonlight came through tall, filigreed windows. He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the pale light. There was a work table strewn with artifacts of stone and bronze, broken pieces of old statues, tools, a microscope, fine brushes, sorting bins, glue, the smell of age-old antiquities. He could see a rumpled bed to the right, where Ira Sanderson had risen one morning a few days ago, and met his kidnappers.

  To the left was a small scatter of furniture, new and old, and under an arched doorway leading to another room, was a massive old throne, a regal chair supported by four small trumpeting elephants carved of ivory, with a ragged, faded parasol and canopy above its high, carved back.

  The man who sat in the chair smiled and raised his Russian handgun and said, “Ho, Comrade Cajun. Hello, Madame Aspara. I have been waiting for you.”

  ten

  Durell said, “Put away the gun, Cesar.”

  Colonel Cesar Skoll, of the KGB in Moscow, nodded his shaven head. “A moment. Do not shoot, please, old friend.”

  “We’re not friends,” Durell said. “Do it now.”

  “As you wish.” The big Siberian carefully put his weapon aside. “But I may still have to kill you, Comrade Cajun.”

  “Everybody wants to kill me,” Durell said.

  “You are not surprised to find me here?”

  “Nothing surprises me any more.”

  “Ho. True. We have been in the business too long, old friend. And now you are out of it.”

  The Russian was enormous, like a Siberian bear, whose habitat was the frozen, icy wasteland that had bred this man. Skoll had a shaven head and slanted eyes that were pale, pale blue, almost white in the uncertain moonlight; his massive body suggested incredible strength and speed.

  He wore climbing boots, tucked into the legs of a baggy gray jumpsuit.

  “Who else is here?” Durell asked.

  “Only myself, tovarich.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “I walked.”

  Durell wondered about Mr. Dhapura. “From Kandy?”

  “Once, when I was a boy in Siberia, where I lived in a lumber camp, I was with all the grown men in the forest, and when a sudden snowstorm came, they packed up and got into their trucks and drove off, back to the base. They forgot me.” Skoll’s stomach rumbled, and he belched and waved a massive paw. “Forgive me, dear lady. There is no vodka in this house, and I drank some disagreeable English whiskey. For that night and the next day, in Siberia, I walked through the storm, which turned to ice very soon, and I kept on walking, for if I stopped, I
would be a very dead lad, very quickly. I made it back to the base camp— obviously.”

  “And why are you here, in the middle of Ceylon?” Durell asked.

  “My old friend and competitor, I was looking for you and Andrei Kubischev. That bastard.” Skoll waved his big hand again. “Forgive me once more, dear Madame Aspara.”

  “And why are you looking for me?” Durell demanded.

  “You defected from K Section. Kubischev has also defected from the KGB. He was one of my most trusted men—as I am sure you were once considered, by your General McFee. I was embarrassed. I am enraged. I feel to find him and kill him. And I traced him this far, and no farther.”

  Durell stared at the man on the ancient Lanka throne. The house was quiet. Outside, crickets fiddled in the tall weeds. He truly felt beyond surprise. Through his years of walking the lonely paths of the world, watching every corner, every face, he had crossed Colonel Skoll several times, in the Moroccan desert and in Japan, on Malta and in Malaysia. It was difficult to say which had scored the most in this silent war for information, a war where no medals were handed out for success. He knew—and Skoll knew—about the red tab on his dossier in KGB headquarters. One day, he supposed, one or the other might be forced to kill. He did not want to be the victim. He remained careful. Survival went to the quick and the cautious in this business.

  He said suddenly, “Cesar, does your man Kubischev look like me?”

  Skoll scowled. “No. Yes. In a general way. Yes, one might say so.”

  Durell said, “I’d like to find him too.”

  Very carefully, the Russian leaned forward on the big chair. The old ivory elephants that served as feet creaked under his massive weight. Skoll’s pale eyes gleamed white as Siberian ice in the tropical moonlight.

  “Now. May I ask you why?”

  “He’s working for somebody. I don’t know who it is, but it’s the somebody who used Kubischev to frame me.” “Ho!”

  “Do you think your man is in Sri Lanka?”

  “I am sure of it,” Skoll said.