Assignment - Ceylon

by Edward S. Aarons

  Durell scooped up the pistol.

  “Hold it, Cesar. Don’t kill him yet.”

  “I must. I will,” the giant panted.

  Durell drilled the pistol muzzle against the nape of Skoll’s neck. “Do as I say. Can you understand me, Cesar?”

  “Eh? You turn his gun on me too?”

  “Let him live a bit longer.”

  “Why?”

  “Ask him about Dr. Sinn. Where did he go? And more important, where is the Buddha Stone?”

  “Ah,” Skoll breathed. “Yes. I was too angry.” He hauled the other Russian to his feet. “Well, you putridheaded piece of muck? Answer the questions!”

  An unintelligible garble came from Kubischev’s broken mouth. The electric torch had fallen to the stone floor, and in its bright glare, the man looked only semiconscious. Blood suddenly gushed from between his twisted lips. His eyes rolled, showed white. Cesar Skoll let out a long, sorrowful sigh.

  “He is dead.” He released the man, and Kubischev crashed to the floor. “Give me your pistol, Cajun. He made a mistake with me. I shall not repeat it with him.”

  “A bullet through his head?”

  “You owe this to me. Never mind your American morality. True, he did you great harm, when he worked for Dr. Sinn and framed you. He almost had you killed, eh? But he has hurt me far worse. Once I trusted him. He was my friend. And he betrayed me. Your gun, Cajun.”

  Durell gave Skoll the Luger. The big Siberian swayed on his feet for a moment, staring down at the man. Kubischev was already dead, his neck broken. But Skoll aimed carefully at the back of Kubischev’s head and fired once. The shot slammed back and forth and gave way to the sound of flames crackling somewhere above him.

  “Let us go now,” Skoll said. “We will finish our work here. There is much to clean up, but I believe Kubischev was right. We will not find Dr. Sinn.”

  twenty-four

  It was two days later.

  “We couldn’t find him,” Dickinson McFee said. “Samuel, I have apologized several times already. Must I express my regrets once more? I know you have had a most difficult time. When you are feeling better, we will talk again. After all, you humiliated me, leaving me in that net.”

  “You deserved worse than that.”

  “So you are resigning from K Section?”

  “I’m thinking about it,” Durell said.

  “Nonsense. Impossible.”

  “Why not? Wouldn’t you send someone to spot me again someday?”

  McFee moved quietly around the large hotel room in the Royal Lanka, back in Colombo. The ceiling fans stirred the warm, humid air around, and from outside came the sounds of traffic, cars and motorcycles and buses, all the noises of normal pedestrian crowds moving to and from the fort district. Durell had been in bed a long

  day and night, and most of this day too. He had slept, waking only to eat. He had finished most of a bottle of bourbon. The little gray man had seen to it that he lacked for nothing, and Durell enjoyed the reversal of their normal roles. McFee had found a gray suit and from somewhere, perhaps on the helicopter that had come in to pick them up from the burning island, he had retrieved his knobby blackthorn stick. Durell remembered very little of their escape. He watched McFee waggle the blackthorn stick at him, and he stiffened slightly.

  “Don’t point that at me. I know all the lethal gadgets you have in it.”

  “Samuel, my dear man, I need you.”

  “I didn’t notice that lately.”

  “I need you to find Dr. Sinn for me.”

  “Go find him yourself. You seem to enjoy taking the field on your own.”

  “I should not have done that,” McFee admitted. “But surely it shows the measure of my concern for you.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Durell said. “You ordered Wells to kill me. You wanted me dead. You didn’t even try to believe I was innocent. There’s nothing more to say.” McFee went on, “I cannot accept the fact that you are simply sulking. Do you want more money? We can rewrite your contract. Do you want to move into other operations? We need someone in—well, no matter. You can write your own ticket.”

  “I’m not that valuable,” Durell said.

  “Ah.”

  “But I’m curious.”

  “Ah,” McFee said again.

  “I just think you owe it to me to tell me what happened finally on that island.”

  “Are you still working for me?” McFee asked.

  “No.”

  “Then the information is classified.”

  “All I know is,” Durell said flatly, “that I had to drag Skoll up out of the prison-cell alley, and then something hit me. I was looking for you and Aspara. I wanted to find Dr. Sinn. I wanted to find the Buddha Stone. I wanted to get at his computer tapes.”

  “Ah,” said McFee, a third time.

  “You sound as if you’re sitting in a dentist’s chair Don’t be so smug. I can find out.”

  “I suppose you can. First, of course, Skoll is alive. He i in the General Hospital at Ward Place, not far from th Burmese embassy. I never thought a man could surviv what he went through. He is most grateful. But it wouL have been better—McFee waggled his deadly walkin stick “—if he hadn’t killed Kubischev. It would have bee: interesting to talk to that man.”

  “You’re greedy,” Durell said.

  “As for the computer, I’m sorry to say it was smashed—presumably by Dr. Sinn himself. The tapes were gone So was he. A most elusive gentleman. We combed the island and the sea, afterward.” McFee paused. “Does he really consider himself a messenger of Satan?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s insane. But I don’t think so. Certainly he’s brilliant. And dangerous. He’ll give us trouble another time, I’m sure of that.”

  McFee said, “How could he have escaped?”

  “In a puff of smoke smelling of brimstone,” Durell suggested.

  “I see that your spirits are reviving.”

  “And the Buddha Stone?”

  McFee looked regretful again. “Alas. Gone.”

  “Alas. How, gone?”

  “The Indian authorities are conducting a quiet search for it in the rubble of the old palace, of course. But it will not be found. Mr. Ira Sanderson insists the heat of the fire would have cracked and destroyed it. He made another confession to me, by the way.”

  “I know,” Durell said. “The stone was illegible, completely useless, and he’d faked a partial translation of it to please his captor, Dr. Mouquerana Sinn. That’s all there is to it. The Buddha Stone remains a myth, a fable, an unattainable goal. And maybe it’s just as well.”

  McFee said, “Are you still quitting?”

  “Yes.”

  McFee sighed. “Well, we have Mr. Sanderson back. Everything else was lost on this job. My fault, of course.” Durell didn’t answer.

  He watched the sunlight lowering through the wooden shutter-blinds of the hotel room. He felt drained, as if something had eroded his spirit. The traffic outside went on, people lived, worked, ate, made love, as they always did and always would, as long as the world of man lasted. It was a thought that these days now held the possibilities of a finite end. The world of man might not last forever.

  He said, “So Dr. Sinn got away with his computer tapes and dossiers. He’ll still have an organization, then. He’ll go on trying to peddle information, the data that every nation in the world seems to need, or thinks they need, in order to survive.”

  “We have been warned, at any rate,” McFee said.

  Durell drew a deep breath. He did not want to ask his next question. He felt regret, even sorrow, although in his business he had long learned to put such things aside, to be professional about grief and losses. He watched the fans turning against the ceiling. The air was hot, stifling. It would soon be night again. The bottle of bourbon was almost empty. He drew another breath. His ribs hurt. He ached all over.

  “And Willie Wells?” he asked.

  Dickinson McFee pointed the blackthorn stick
at him again, and Durell said, “You little bastard, what about Wells?”

  “Alive,” McFee said. “Do you care?”

  “Yes, I care. How did he make it?”

  “We found the antidote. Ira Sanderson knew where it was. We weren’t sure it would save Willie’s life, of course, but it did.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I sent him away. On the first plane. He’ll be touching down in Washington, just about this time.”

  “I wanted to see him,” Durell said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure why.”

  “Well, you will have to go to Washington, if that is what you want. Make up your mind.”

  McFee waggled his stick once more, walked to the hotel room door, and went out.

  A Sinhalese doctor came at dusk, put on a few lamps, muttered and poked and bandaged and applied salves and ointments and gave Durell a shot of penicillin. During the ten minutes the doctor worked over him, Durell sat up on the bed and picked up the telephone and dialed Aspara’s number at Negombo. He waited through several long, empty rings that seemed to echo inside his head, until the instrument suddenly clicked and he heard her voice. “Yo. Sam here.”

  “Dear Sam?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Quite well. As well as can be expected. Is it all over now, Sam?”

  “For now, yes. Nothing more to bother your land of Sri Lanka. I believe. How is Ira?”

  “He is at the embassy. Making out reports. He is being transferred next week, to somewhere in Africa, I think. I am not sure.”

  “He’s not with you?”

  “There is nothing left, I told you that, Sam.”

  “What about George?”

  “He is with me.”

  “Awake and alert?”

  “He is sleeping.”

  He sat up straighter. “Aspara, you must keep him there. I’m driving out tonight—” he saw the doctor shake his head in disapproval "—and I must talk to George.”

  “Can you not leave the poor boy alone?”

  “I must talk to him,” Durell insisted. “It’s possible that he knows where we can find Dr. Sinn. He must know. He’s part of Sinn’s outfit.”

  “Oh, no . . .” Aspara whispered.

  “Keep him there. Please.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Very well,” she said. “I will be waiting for you.”

  Mr. Dhapura said, “Sir, I am happy beyond belief, and your good fortune at surviving is incredible. Sir, you have my deepest admiration. I only sorrow that your work on behalf of my country cannot be publicized, and in fact, it had been decided that you had best leave Colombo as soon as you are physically able. Mr. Durell, sir, in certain government circles they fear that you may actually be an embarrassment. Explanations have been drawn up, ready for the press, as to the events in which you were involved. It would be awkward, you see, sir, if you were available for official questioning, and if you had to admit your capacity on behalf of the US—”

  “I have no official capacity,” Durell said. “Not anymore.”

  It was night, but the hotel room in the Royal Lanka was as hot as it had been before. Mr. Dhapura put on a pair of tinted, heavily framed glasses and peered at him with his round, brown face. Durell had found a fresh dark-blue suit in his luggage, a washable doubleknit, a new striped shirt, a dark solid necktie, and had changed into buckled shoes. Freshly showered and shaved, he felt infinitely better. He moved around the room, picking up his wallet and loose change and currency and keys. Mr. Dhapura’s eyes followed him with mild curiosity.

  “Sir, you are going out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does the doctor think it advisable?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps another day of rest, sir ... I have obtained tickets, for you on a CAA jet flight from Bandaranaike Airport for tomorrow morning, sir. You understand, I regret the necessity. But there have been so many strange rumors flying in government circles—and Madame Aspara has not been available for a cabinet conference, to determine the official communique regarding the purported Buddha Stone and this Dr. Mouquerana Sinn—”

  “There is no Buddha Stone,” Durell said. “You don’t have any cause for alarm. I’ll be back to check out. It’s just some unfinished business, that’s all.”

  “Sir, I am concerned. My responsibilities, sir—”

  “I promise you, everything will be quiet.”

  “Will you see Colonel Skoll in the hospital?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Tell me, sir, this Mr. William Wells—”

  “He’s flown back to the States, as you know. General Dickinson McFee and I will fly out too, as you suggest.”

  “That is good. Very good. I regret what may seem like an inhospitable attitude—”

  “I understand.”

  Mr. Dhapura—Durell could still think of him as the manager of the Royal Lanka, not as a major in the security police—waved his small brown hands. His eyes were enigmatic behind his black-rimmed, tinted glasses.

  “I shall expect, sir, to see you back here in time for the scheduled flight. I bend the rules a bit, you see. For your sake. Are you sure you feel well enough to venture into the streets?”

  “I’d feel better if I had my gun back.”

  “Oh, sir. No, sir.”

  Durell said, “I didn’t think you would.”

  He took his rented car from the garage behind the Royal Lanka and drove north out of the city across Victoria Bridge and out on Road 3A toward Negombo. At nine o’clock in the evening, the traffic was reasonably fight, and the trip took less than thirty minutes. The little fishing village was asleep beside its old Dutch canals and the softly splashing moonlit beach. Fishing nets hung on high poles to dry near the row of high-prowed catamaran fishing boats hauled up above the tide fine. The moon was not as full as it had been three days ago, but its pale light still reminded him of the nightmare of Dr. Sinn’s island in the Andamans.

  Only one light shone inside the house, in a room toward the front, facing the beach. He parked behind the old Rolls-Royce touring car. She must have retrieved it from where it had been abandoned above Kandy, although it would need a considerable amount of body work to restore it as it had been. He felt the long, sleek hood. The engine was cold. He looked to see if the ignition was in the lock. It was not. Finally he walked around to the front door and rang the old-fashioned thumb-screw bell.

  Aspara opened the door almost immediately. She had been waiting for him. She wore a silver-embroidered saree and a silver-filigreed comb in the back of her long, silken hair, which was done up in an extravagant knot on the nape of her neck. She had never, he thought, looked more beautiful or exotic. She held out her hand to him.

  “Dear Sam.”

  Her face was pale, her fingers were cool. Something strange moved in her eyes. She was afraid of him now. He knew at once that their relationship had changed, perhaps permanently. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  She said, “I did not think you would be up and about so soon.”

  “Things have to be done. Is George at home?”

  “The poor boy has been so ill. Just a few moments ago. He has not said a word to me, ever since we were taken off the island by your friends. He—he has withdrawn, taken himself somewhere else. He is completely changed.”

  “I’d still like to talk to him,” Durell said.

  “I wish you would not trouble the boy.”

  “I told you. It has to be done.”

  “Dear Sam, the boy is very disturbed, he acts utterly crushed, very subdued—”

  “He’s a drug addict,” Durell said. “Dr. Sinn recruited him that way, was his source of supply. Now the supply is cut off.”

  She clasped her hands before her. Her great eyes sorrowed. “Yes, I can see that. I am not sure what you can get out of him. I’m afraid. Yes, I’m afraid for him. Not a word to me, nothing at all. As if he’s thinking—thinking of something terrible—”


  Durell said, “Aspara, Dr. Sinn managed to escape with all his computer tapes and records. He had taken over Madame Hung’s organization, a private espionage outfit that was totally immoral. If there is no crisis in the world at the moment, Dr. Mouquerana Sinn will manufacture one. Data, information, those are his commodities. I need to know, Aspara. It’s true that George was never very high in the organization—he was simply a useful pawn now and then—but whatever facts he may have, I must have, too. I need a thread, something to hang on it, to go after the man.”

  “George cannot help you. As you say, he was never important to Dr. Sinn.”

  “We can’t tell,” he said urgently. “It could be some lit-— tie thing. A hint, a clue. Enough to give us a start.”

  She paused. “Yes. I would feel better if that monster were not loose in the world.”

  “Then let me see George.”

  She drew a deep breath. Her eyes were tragic. “Very well.”

  The room in the back of the cottage looked as if a wild animal had gone into a total frenzy in it, silent and utterly destructive. Durell moved inside quickly, aware of Aspara’s soft, sibilant intake of shocked breath. The closets were empty except for a battered suitcase with customs tags, a pair of dirty socks, a paint-stained pair of blue jeans, sneakers, a scarlet-flowered shirt. Durell snapped open the suitcase, tossing it on the bed to do so. Aspara started to speak, then was silent. Inside the suitcase, amid a jumble of dirty linen, was a small tin box containing several syringes, a needle, an empty aspirin bottle that contained only a fine dusting of white powder.

  The window was open.

  “Where would he go?”

  Aspara said, “The beach, perhaps. Or the canal. I am not certain.”

  “Stay here.”

  “No. I must go with you.”

  He did not waste time in argument. He went out the back door, circled the garage shed where the battered Rolls and his own rental car were parked, and went through a brake of tall bamboo. The beach was just beyond. Moonlight flooded the placid sea. He walked with a long impatient stride, and Aspara half ran to keep up with him. The fishing nets made graceful, shadowed patterns, hanging from their tall poles dug into the sand. There was phosphorescence out on the sea where fish jumped and splashed. The nets were only a few hundred yards to the left. Durell turned that way, his eyes searching for the boy’s slight figure. He was filled with a mixture of pity and anger—pity for Aspara, for what she might be feeling; anger at an impending loss, a certain knowledge that he would have to start all over again with nothing in his hands to guide him. There would surely be grief and suffering and death before he heard from Dr. Mouquerana Sinn again. It was a cycle that the world had known before —and would know again.