Assignmnt - Ceylon
Page 19
“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.
He halted suddenly.
“That’s far enough, Aspara.”
“But where is he?”
“Did you tell him I was coming?”
“No. But he might have been listening, when you telephoned.”
“I’m sure he listened. Don’t look at him.”
Aspara put her hands to her mouth as she stared to where he pointed. Something dark and slender dangled limply from among the graceful, lovely pattern of fishing nets hanging from the poles near the water’s edge. It moved slowly, rotating from the rope around its neck. “George?” she whispered. “George?”
“He did it himself,” Durell said gently. “We’ll probably never really know why.”
Aspara stared at the hanged body of her son.
“Please go away, Sam.”
“Will you call the police?”
“I will attend to everything. Please go.”
He walked back alone toward his car.
twenty-five
Colonel Cesar Skoll looked up at him from the hospital bed near Ward Place. His grin was savage. “You are certain he hanged himself?”
“I’m certain.”
“Perhaps we can get a lead from the PFM, this Cobra’s Bow, or from some of the men Mr. Dhapura took into custody.”
“I doubt it.”
“You are up against a blank wall, then?”
“I have nothing,” Durell said.
“Well, we are both still alive.”
The hospital room was quiet, immaculately clean, air-conditioned against the humid heat of Colombo’s night. Durell stood quietly at the foot of Skoll’s bed. The Russian had an IV needle in one thick, massive arm, a tube up his nose, a splint on his other arm, bandages that swathed his long, powerful legs, more bandages on his scalp and chest. The room smelled of ointments. His fingers, where he had lost his fingernails, were also in bandages. The KGB man was as helpless as Durell had ever seen him. Only the ice-blue Siberian eyes seemed normal, watching Durell’s stolid face.
“Comrade Cajun, it is a truth that sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.”
“Yes. But it’s only begun,” Durell said.
“Da, Comrade Cajun. I will not be in this damned bed for long. It is terrible here. Naturally, my own people will come to fly me back to Moscow for treatment there. They would not like to see me here for long. But perhaps, until morning—could you possibly get me a drink of vodka? Just a sip would be a help.”
Durell put his paper bag on the table beside the hospital bed. “I’ve brought you a whole bottle, Cesar.”
“Ho. If you were not an imperialist, capitalist spy, I would say that there is still hope for you, Cajun.”
Durell said, “I’ll have to leave Sri Lanka too. Mr. Dhapura’s orders.”
“You will work again for your little General McFee?”
“I suppose so.”
“He would have had you killed.” The Russian grinned. “Why not work with me? You would be safe, Never, never, would I send one of your comrades to kill you.”
“Is that right?”
“You do not smile, Comrade Cajun. It was only a little joke. I know you will not come over the wire. I know you will return to Washington. I know the kind of man you are.”
Durell said, “They tell me you’re going to be fine, Cesar.”
“Ho. Of course I will survive. But I am so thirsty at the moment. It tires me to talk, I must admit.”
“There’s nothing much more to say,” Durell agreed. “I think we’ve lost the first round.”
“Not altogether. Much was done.”
Durell got two hospital glasses, rinsed them in the sink across the room, dragged a chair up to Skoll’s bedside, and very carefully filled both glasses with vodka and held one to the Russian’s lips. When Skoll finished and sighed and belched, Durell started to drink along with him.
It was going to be a long night.