Assignmnt - Ceylon

by Edward S. Aarons

  “There may be more than a bird watching us.”

  Durell stepped farther into the dark hole. He smelled centuries-old rot, the decay of mud, noisome odors he could not define, and did not wish to. He touched the stone wall with his left hand that held the torch, but he did not use the lamp. The mud sucked at his shoes. There was an almost immediate lift to the floor of the cave, and he slipped a little, making a small sound. He paused and waited. The stone walls of the cave had once been carved, but again the action of water in the reservoir had smoothed it out. He took a few more steps from the cave entrance and then felt a turn to the right and followed it for a dozen paces. He looked back. The entrance was now cut off from sight, and he snapped the button on the torch, pointing it ahead.

  The light leaped dazzlingly before him, and a grotesque masked face seemed to jump back at him. His nerves screamed briefly; then he realized it was only an eroded statue of a Hindu guard deity. Above it was coiled the form of a Naga, the Cobra’s Bow, very old, almost unrecognizable now.

  He went on, wondering if the place was a trap, but prepared to present himself as bait to spring it.

  He was above the old water level now, and although the air in this cave temple was still humid and clammy, the way underfoot was dry. A ramp reached upward before him, the steps worn very smooth. He wondered how many pilgrims had walked or crawled up here in ages gone by. Now that he was in the upper area, into the slope of the mountain, he noted the remains of peeling frescoes on the walls. Great chunks of the plaster had long crumbled and fallen into dust, but the colors of gods and goddesses in complicated sexual attitudes were still vivid enough to identify. He dried his palm on his thigh. It was cold in the cave-temple. He paused to study a particularly active god, with an enormous phallus, being attended by three maidens in jeweled diadems and nothing else. His glance caught on a new piece of timber, a rough two-by-four, and a scaffold of sorts that had been erected nearby. Ira Sanderson’s work, he guessed. Glass glittered underfoot. Spent flashbulbs, crumpled wax paper was evidence of a sandwich lunch, eaten less than a week ago. A crate filled with excelsior stood open, ready to be packed with treasures.

  A half-round moon gate led him up a small flight of steps into a larger cavern. Here were the rudiments of a typically formal Buddhist temple of today, a pratimaghara consisting of three chambers, the madapaya, or porch, and now he stood in the anteroom, the atarala. This davala, set in the mountainside unthinkable generations ago, had probably been dedicated in its origin to some prehistoric deity, judging by the grotesque idols of gods and goddesses still on their pedestals or remotely carved in the walls. Obviously it had been assimilated and sanctified as subservient to the Hindu pantheon under the invading Dravidian influence. He stood now in what had been the Dancing Women’s Hall, made obvious by the faded, sinuous paintings still evident on the walls. Beyond was another arched doorway, where the avudha, or god’s insignia, would be placed. In this case, he thought, the inner sanctum, the garbhaya, should contain no other image but that of Buddha.

  He stepped through the third doorway.

  A hidden world of treasures greeted him, flashing and flickering back in the red of rubies and blues and yellows of countless other gems encrusting the large pedestal that stood in solitary, remote splendor in the center of the sanctum.

  His pause was a pure reflex.

  And disastrous.

  His first impression of the jeweled pedestal was that it was empty. Whatever had once been placed there was gone.

  His torch was unnecessary. A small electric lamp illuminated the big, echoing chamber, set on the base of what had once been the life-size image of some god. The comers of the room were webbed in shadows. But the man who sat casually on one hip upon a comer of the central pedestal was plain enough to see.

  “Ah. Mr. Durell, of K Section.”

  He was big, with a strong face carved in flat, muscular planes, with thick black hair and dark blue eyes and heavy shoulders. He wore a khaki shirt and a knitted sweater-vest and heavy corduroy slacks with a wide belt. He seemed to be unarmed. When he stood up, smiling, a steel tooth flashed in his mouth. He was as tall as Durell, the same height, the same general conformation of body and face.

  Durell said, “I owe you something, Kubischev.”

  “Ah. Ah. You know of me, then. You have worked very quickly to get here so soon.”

  “Not quick enough, I think.” Durell listened to the man’s precise English, with its flat mechanical perfection, and recognized the teaching methods of the KGB in Moscow. He said, “I suppose you have been waiting for me.”

  “Naturally. Ah—your gun, Mr. Durell. It is quite useless. You are covered, of course, from there—-” The tall man pointed gently toward an opening in the rear of the garbhaya, and then to another “—and there. Moreover, our people have taken your Madame Aspara and my—ah— former superior, Colonel Cesar Skoll, by now.”

  Durell saw the shadowy shapes of other men in the rear entrances to the cave-temple. Kubischev slid his hip off the jeweled pedestal and came forward, his hand extended.

  “I regret the inconvenience I caused you, Mr. Durell. You are a sensible man, however, and know the necessities of our profession. It was I, of course, who went to Geneva and deposited the incriminating funds in your name in the Swiss bank. It was quite simple. We are an efficient organization. You will understand that. Papers, documents, are most easily executed. We will have long talks, you and I. You will see that everything will turn out for the best.”

  There were sounds behind Durell, the scuffling of feet, a sudden roar of outrage from Skoll’s deep voice.

  Aspara screamed.

  Durell turned his head. He did not think that Kubischev could move that fast. He was still aware of the man’s smile, his outstretched hand, when he was hit.

  Pain burst behind his eyes, spread down one shoulder, made his right hand numb. He dimly heard his gun hit the floor. He tried to turn, and another blow smashed him to his knees. He wondered dimly why he had come here, after all, only to find this; but he had invited it; he could not complain.

  Then a foot kicked him, and he went over; and something else hit his head again, and he fell through reality into an appalling, echoing place of darkness.

  fourteen

  “My dear Durell,” someone said. “How can I express my regrets over our Andrei’s enthusiastic behavior?”

  He kept his eyes closed. He made his breathing sound slow and shallow.

  “You do not fool me,” said the voice. “You are quite awake. Open your eyes, sir.”

  Durell lay still. He allowed sensory awareness to slide back into his muscles and nerves. Light shone through his closed lids. There was a rope over his ankles and wrists, which were stretched high overhead. He heard the sound of thick, asthmatic breathing. The soft shuffle of feet.

  “Durell, do not try my patience.” The soft, heavy voice tightened a bit. “In this world, all things are measured by the great arbiter of time. Time is precious, it is a friend, it is an enemy. It is our greatest gift. It is your gift, for the moment. It can be removed. In two hours, you will be useless to me. So come. Do not pretend. Speak.”

  “To hell with you,” Durell said.

  His head ached. The light through his eyelids sent pain through his temples. When he breathed, he felt the deep bruise along his ribs where he had been kicked.

  “Open your eyes when you speak to Dr. Sinn.” That was Kubischev’s voice. The words were followed by a stinging slap that knocked Durell’s head aside. “Show respect to your new boss, eh?”

  Durell opened his eyes to blinding light. He winced, and someone murmured and a hand appeared and swung the lamp away. He lay on something hard and cold, not a bed, something that felt like polished stone. One of the pedestals in the garbhaya. He could not see the owner of the unctuous voice. The man sat beyond his head, where he could not be glimpsed. But he heard the steady, heavy, asthmatic breathing.

  “All things,” said the voice, “are subject
to time. The life of Ira Sanderson hangs on it. So does the life of your woman, Aspara.”

  “Is she safe?” Durell asked.

  “No. 'Are you interested?”

  “I’d like to know.”

  “Her safety depends on you.”

  “And Skoll?”

  “Why should you be concerned about your rival?” “Did you kill my rival?”

  “Not yet. He is an unexpected surprise. Perhaps he too can be recruited. Poor Andrei does not approve of this. He says he knows Colonel Skoll too well to believe he would ever desert the KGB and Mother Russia. Skoll is a patriot. I think otherwise. All men have their price.”

  “What happens in two hours?” Durell asked.

  “The time limit, sir, runs out on the delivery of the ransom money and the plane for Mr. Sanderson. I would hate to execute the fool. But perhaps I must, if merely to illustrate that I mean what I say, in future deals I mean to have with your government in Washington.”

  “Let me sit up,” Durell said.

  “Yes. Riches and power can be yours, if you are reasonable. Andrei?”

  He felt a knife slice through his bonds. It was a relief to lower his arms. His head still throbbed. He sat up carefully, resisting the sudden nausea that cramped his stomach.

  It passed. He turned slowly on the slab of stone and looked at the source of the voice directed at him.

  The room was not the cave-temple after all. It was a painted chamber, the walls covered with more erotic postures of dancing girls long dead and tumescent men, the colors faded but still vigorous after all the ages gone by. A rich carpet had been spread on the stone floor. The b! ck of stone on which he rested was carved with intricate, devilish beasts, but none of the satanic faces on the car mgs could match that of the stout man who sat, knees apart, a turban on his head, a silk robe like a tent around his gross body, smiling at him.

  He had once thought of his enemy, Madame Hung, as the epitome of evil.

  But this man was possessed by it.

  It was an essence, a fluid, an aura of darkness that surrounded the round face, the small head on grotesque shoulders, the swollen, slippered feet, the jeweled hands folded complacently over a bulging paunch. Durell could not tell the color of the eyes. The entire eye seemed dark, so that the iris was not clearly defined, and over them were heavy arched brows that seemed firmly fixed in satanic arrogance.

  “Dr. Sinn?” Durell asked.

  “Dr. Mouquerana K.V. Sinn, my dear man. A messenger of the All-Powerful. I am what you see in me. I can tell. You may believe what you see, sir. No, do not approach me. You may do so only under pain of death.”

  There were six or seven other men in the big room, all carrying Russian AK-47 automatic rifles. They wore a kind of uniform, gray trousers and tennis shoes and gray turbans, together with cartridge belts and clips slung over their bare brown torsos. PFM terrorists, Durell thought. They looked sharp and alert and dangerous. He checked his step toward the enormous fat man.

  “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get me here.” Durell said. “Just tell me why. You’ve put my own people on my heels, set to kill me. Why?”

  Mouquerana Sinn chuckled. “But you are here and alive, yes? It speaks very well for you. It verifies judgment. My dear sir, I need men like you. I can use you.”

  “I’m not for sale, like Kubischev.”

  “All men are for sale. The prices may differ, the method of payment vary. But for sale you are, and you shall be mine. It is that simple.”

  “Not at any price,” Durell said.

  “Not for almost any price, my dear sir. I have checked your background most thoroughly. You are a patriot, like Colonel Skoll, although you may deny it. You would sacrifice Madame Aspara, if necessary. But your own survival? It is the essence of your being. You are not a coward—far from it. You have risked your life many times. But to survive through it—ah, that is your true essence. A careful man, you are, and a dangerous and marvelous creature whom I can use, yes, use to the fullest. And you will survive with riches and power, with the true and marvelous goal far beyond your mercenary activities for your government—this, as you shall see, shall buy you.”

  Dr. Sinn clapped his fat, jeweled hands. “Andrei, send in the woman, that foolish politician. And you may as well let Skoll hear what I have to say.”

  “I won’t change my mind,” said Durell.

  “Indeed? We shall see.”

  'Kubischev left the big room quickly. None of the guards stirred. Durell rubbed the back of his head, trying to relieve his headache. The room seemed more like the audience chamber of some medieval royalty than a cave grotto. The old underground temple certainly dated back at least two millennia, he thought. He considered the entrance Sanderson had discovered, when the water burst from the tank during the fighting. But Dr. Sinn had been here before that. Since the first entrance had always been hidden under water, Sinn must have used another when establishing his quarters here; there was evidence that Sinn’s use of this place had been for much longer than the time since the PFM battle. He kept the thought of another exit in mind, for future use.

  In this setting of faded splendor, Aspara looked proud and regal, her eyes challenging the gross man seated on his massive chair. Skoll shambled in after her like a shaggy bear, his face like broken stone.

  “Ah, Madame Aspara.” Sinn's voice piped a bit higher.

  His small eyes in his fleshy face were contemptuous. “Where a woman meddles, there are unnecessary problems. The world is still the world of men, my dear. My predecessor in this affair was a woman, you know, a certain creature named Hung. Your companions dispatched her some time ago. Durell and Skoll are very competent men. I mean to have them for my own. Hung was a fool. True, I worked for her and performed certain chores for the Black House in Peking. You are concerned about my presence in your country? Yes, I see you are. But Sri Lanka has no importance to me. I am here. I wish to depart. Your former husband provides the key. But I forget my manners, ah.” Sinn turned his huge body slightly in the chair. “Tea and cakes for everyone. Chinese cakes, please.”

  One of the guards vanished through the rear entrance. Sinn sighed. Durell could not see any teeth in the man’s mouth.

  Durell said, “You pretend to be your own boss, but you mentioned being someone’s messenger. Who is that?”

  “Ah. Ah.” Sinn began to laugh, a thin sound that shook his chest and pendulous belly. The smell of incense came from somewhere, filling the chamber. The servant came back with a silver tea service trundled on a large-wheeled Victorian tea-cart. The sound of Sinn’s amusement abruptly ended. “A messenger? A lackey for another man? Sir, I served an apprenticeship to the devil’s own mistress, Madame Hung. But no more, no more. Her death, thanks to you, ended that bondsman’s status. I promoted myself to the service of the Superior One himself.”

  Skoll said heavily, “Then you do have a superior?”

  “Ah, yes, yes.” Sinn stood up ponderously, urging his massive weight up with a thrust of his arms. He would weigh, Durell guessed, at least four hundred pounds, but whether there was muscle under all that fat remained to be seen. He watched the man and felt the evil in him, the aura that emanated from him. Sinn’s high, thin voice was stretched taut with sudden nervous strength. “Sir, I be!ieve sincerely that there are true forces of evil in our universe, Perhaps you will think I am mad when I say this. Through the ages, however, this evil has been recognized in all its various forms—Light and Dark, Satan and God, the goodness of the Great Wheel of Life and Death. I have long believed that this world, because of its ills, because of all the grief and pain, the wars and pestilence, the very wickedness of man—this little planet of ours, my dear sir, belongs to Satan.”

  Sinn seemed to catch his breath. His strange eyes, almost all black, gave an impression of revealing the open chasms of Hell itself. The authority and conviction in his words could not be denied.

  “I repeat, this world is ruled by the Evil One, whatever his name. What exists in the
rest of the universe is not our concern. But I have chosen to serve the Dark Master himself. I, Mouquerana Sinn, am his Messenger. And I shall openly establish his rule, irrevocably, and so gain Satan’s pleasures and rewards.”

  Colonel Skoll drew a deep voice. His deep voice was rumble in contrast to Sinn’s thin piping. “You’re mad, eh?”

  Sinn waved a fat, jeweled hand. “So says the whole world. But ponder on it, and in a short time, we shall continue our discussion. You will be fed and made comfortable. When I wish to see you again, you will be summoned.”

  fifteen

  The hour before dawn was cold, and the wind whistled through the barred hole in the wall that served as a window. Only the dimmest of starlight Outlined the opening in the wall. The cell was empty except for a chair. The door was of heavy planking, and when Durell and Aspara were thrust without ceremony into the cell, he heard the double click of bolts being thrust solidly home. Skoll was not taken to the same cell.

  For a long time, Aspara was silent, standing at the window bars to stare across the little valley with its scarred mud bottom. Now and then, her splendid figure moved as she shivered. She hugged herself against the chill.

  Durell wished for a drink, a cigarette, an aspirin. He was hungry. Slowly, his headache eased. He tested the door, he paced the floor, he found nothing of interest. There was no way out. Then Aspara spoke from the little window.

  “He is quite insane, of course.”

  “But brilliant,” Durell returned.

  “Perhaps the whole world is insane. Terror and violence are the syndromes of today.”

  “Did you ever hear of Dr. Sinn before?”

  “No.” She shuddered and paused. “And I am glad of it. He is so—so—She paused again. “I could almost believe him. Perhaps this helpless little w rid of ours is truly the domain of evil. How else can one explain the wars, the wickedness of men? Are we the devil's puppets, then? Does he play his evil game with us? Is Dr. Sinn right?” “No,” Durell said. “And I don’t think his madness interferes with his thinking.”