Assignment Nuclear Nude

by Edward S. Aarons

  A pebbled path led him off at a right angle, between the shadows of two compound buildings that looked like temples. There were no windows available. No one was in sight. There was a dim babble of voices from the gate far on the other side of the island, however. The architecture of the buildings was old style Imperial, a maze of twisting courtyards, roofed corridors, small gardens, an occasional carp pond. The island complex seemed to be a state unto f itself, beyond the law, with eager clients consisting of the rich and the riffraff of Southeast Asia. To these, Madame Hung pandered her witch's brew of lascivious and perverted pleasures that went far beyond ordinary gambling, sex, and drugs. An ideal spy center, Durell thought grimly. He tried to work his way through the maze toward the towering, ominous pagoda in the very heart of it all.

  A curious darkness brooded over this inner isle. The moon grew brighter, and he was forced to pick and choose the densest shadows as he proceeded toward the curved overhanging roofs of the pagoda. He saw that it had seven levels, each with heavily tiled, ornate gables. It drew him like a magnet—or like a fly proceeding helplessly toward the inner trap of a fat spider's web.

  The bell tolled its deep notes again. The sound shivered on the warm air. He crossed a formal pebbled garden with a Buddha under a curved roof and a stone lantern in the center. Then he saw an open door with dim light ebbing out of it. It was a small bungalow, and he looked inside and glimpsed a number of nude boys, squatting on the floor, playing a game in listless fashion. None of them looked up or took any notice of him for the moment he paused in the doorway. Durell backed out quietly and moved toward the towering pagoda. The lower floor was a columned court, thick with shadow. He saw no sign of the guards at the opposite compound gate, but he felt himself watched, and he knew that eyes were upon him, following each move he made. There was no help for it now. If he tried to retreat, he would be overwhelmed by the unseen dangers that darkened every shadow.

  As if in answer to his thought, a voice, oddly vibrant and electronic, spoke to him.

  "Cajun?"

  He paused among the pagoda columns.

  "Durell," the voice cajoled, "I have been waiting so long for you!"

  The sound of the words was oddly sweet, coaxing, siren syllables that whispered on the warm breeze. He looked all about him, and could not see its source.

  He called softly. "Madame Hung?"

  "It is I."

  He spoke to the darkness, to the ceiling above. "It's been a long time, you bitch."

  "Ah, but I have cherished every moment of the waiting. You may now proceed to the third door."

  He saw the doors now, in the central core of the pagoda. Stone dragons guarded them, antiques that time had softened throughout China's tormented history. The third door on the right was open, dark and expectant. He tried the first two. They were firmly locked.

  Laughter sang on the breeze. He hadn't remembered the woman's voice as being so young and seductive. Suddenly Durell felt no fear. Nothing would happen to him at this moment. He stepped inside.

  Light glowed down a stone staircase before him. He went up, past priceless porcelains and wall hangings that

  were museum pieces, if genuine—and he didn't doubt that they were. He paused to look at a painting at the head of the broad steps leading to the first level.

  "Did you really think to fool me with that sailor's costume, Durell?"

  "No."

  The voice seemed to come from everywhere. "I have known of your every move since you arrived in Singapore."

  "I was aware of that."

  "Ah, you are such a clever man!"

  He walked into a vast hexagonal-walled art gallery that filled the entire second level of the tower. There were a number of French impressionists, including a Renoir, a collection of engravings from Italian Renaissance masters, all mingled with Indian and Persian art. Each object was tastefully illuminated. Not another soul was in sight. Incense drifted on the air. Then, explosively, like an incredibly jarring note, he heard the beat and electronic drone of American hip music. He stopped in his tracks. The music swelled until he felt deafened, thrashing and pounding at the air, touching a responsive vibration in his chest cavity. He halted again. The music grew muted.

  There was laughter in the air. "Go on, Mr. Durell. Oh, how I am amused by this moment!"

  "Suppose I try to leave?"

  "You know you cannot."

  "Did you think I'd walk in like this without some line of retreat?"

  "Yes, I do." The woman's laughter was like the hissing of a snake. "I know you, I have studied you and learned all there is to know about you, Durell. Your hatred and your fear, which echoes mine, brought you here. You had to come to me. I planned for this, and I have a surprise for you that pleases me, just as it will interest you. Please go on up and see the latest addition to my art collection."

  He felt apprehension coil in his belly. "The painting isn't in Singapore yet."

  "It will soon arrive. But for the moment, I have a most charming substitute. The next floor, please."

  He wondered if she had TV peepers monitoring him. Nothing could surprise him about Madame Hung. He went up to the third level of the pagoda.

  All at once the music of electronic guitars and organs crashed and pulsed at a new level of decibel output. The beat was hypnotic. He expected anything from Madame Hung, but what he saw still shocked and sickened him, filling him with a burst of rage and horror.

  The upper gallery was empty except for one exhibit. Across the wide floor, planked with antique teak boards, two spotUghts changed color seductively, to the accompaniment of crackUng tongues of electric arcs.

  There was a large frame set in a tall niche, like a giant shadow box. In it was a replica of the painting of the Nuclear Nude as he had last seen it days ago in Harry's studio around the world in Key West.

  The background of atomic symbols looked like hasty reproductions, but they had never been the primary focus of attention.

  The naked girl in the painting was alive.

  Slowly, as if in a dream of incomprehensible wickedness, the nude swayed and gyrated and danced, like a puppet on the strings of the music that swelled and droned and burst in explosive sound, compelling, demanding irresistible. Hips and arms and torso swayed and jounced, although the girl's feet never left the floor that was the base of the shadow box.

  Durell closed his hand around the medallion in his pocket.

  The girl in the shadow box, the living Nuclear Nude, was Linda Riddle. She was dancing her life away.

  14

  Linda's eyes were closed as she gyrated on and on with her interminable dance. Her young face was totally without expression, a mask of self-delusion devoted to the rhythm that moved her limbs and torso. Her head swayed from side to side, endlessly, and her long blond hair swept back and forth across the silken-smooth jut of her breasts.

  Durell halted a dozen paces from her and looked up.

  "Linda?" He spoke to the giant living painting through the droning, incessant music. "Linda?"

  "She cannot hear you," came the voice of Madame Hung.

  Durell made his voice harsh and imperative. "Come down out of there, Linda!"

  "She cannot, or she will die. There are electric circuits of high voltage all about the frame. If she tries to step through them, or if you try to reach for her to take her out of there, the charge will be lethal."

  Durell turned and surveyed the emptiness of the pagoda's wooden floor and dark, red-lacquered walls. "How long has that girl been here?"

  "Not for very long. Under an hour."

  "How did you get her?"

  "I sent a message, in your name, to her, at your hiding place. She thought it was from you. Youth is bold and rash and confident."

  "And she's been dancing like that since you brought her here?"

  "Yes, since I put her in the box. She will continue to dance as long as I wish. It will be up to you. Perhaps it will be for just a few hours. Or perhaps through the night."

  "I
s she drugged?"

  "Yes."

  "Hypnotics?"

  "Yes."

  "It will kill her."

  The woman's voice seemed to shrug. "What does it matter? She is of no importance."

  "She's Riddle's daughter—perhaps the richest heiress in the world."

  Madame Hung's answer was precise. "She is important to me only as long as she can make you and Mr. Riddle comply with my requests."

  "What do you want?"

  "The real painting, of course, when it arrives. Your promise of no interference with its delivery. Not that you can really trouble me. You know me well enough to know that I plan well. I also want a photocopy of what was cabled to you some hours ago."

  "I haven't received any cables."

  "You will. From Washington. As for Linda's living painting, you must forgive my whimsy, Durell. My technicians did the best they could. It was so amusing to see your face when you recognized it."

  Durell watched Linda dancing sinuously in the shadow box above him. Her movements were already heavy with fatigue.

  "Let her go," he said.

  "Ah. It disturbs your sense of chivalry?"

  "She can't help you."

  "I think she will no, don't touch her, Durell!"

  Madame Hung's voice became a sharp cry as he stepped toward the great shadow box. His intention was to pick the gyrating girl bodily out of the painting frame. But as he reached for her, great arcs of sputtering electricity leaped from one edge of the opening to the other. He jumped back instinctively. The picture of the Nuclear Nude was complete now.

  "Shut it off," he said hoarsely. "She'll be killed."

  "No harm will come to the girl, as long as you don't try to seize her."

  He felt a helpless dismay. "All right."

  The girl kept dancing, her eyes closed, completely oblivious to the lethal bolts of electricity being discharged inches from her nude body.

  "All right," Durell said again.

  He heard the bell tolling again. The voice of Madame Hung was like a brazen echo of the sound.

  "And now, Mr. Durell, I shall at last have my pleasure with you."

  He backed away from the dancing girl and turned in a complete circle to survey the empty pagoda floor. The beat and rhythm of the music crashed incongruously in this ancient setting. The lights went out. He could see nothing in the darkness, nor could he hear anything above the continuing drone of the music. It was as if the world had ended.

  And it did.

  He felt a sharp stinging sensation in the nape of his neck. Instinctively, he clapped a hand to his skin and pulled out a small needle that had been fired from some invisible aperture in the wall. The darkness exploded into light and the sound of enormous laughter.

  "Goodbye and hello, Mr. Durell."

  He cursed as he fell to his knees on the teak planking. He tumbled forward and hit his face on the floor, telling himself to get up, to get out, swearing at the way he had been taken by surprise over Linda, which had caused this mortal moment of carelessness.

  Then there was nothing left of him.

  He guessed that an hour had passed. But it could have been two hours, or ten, or a whole day. There was no way for him to tell, except for his inner sense of time's passage.

  For a few minutes he was sick, his stomach rebeUing vi iently against the drug that had been injected with the dart. He had awakened to blackness that was absolute, pitiless. The silence rang with its own echoes. He felt cold. He felt hot. He tried to stand, and fell down. The floor was of stone. The walls were of stone. He could find no door into or out of his prison cell. But there had to be a door. He shouted, and his voice slammed hke a maniac's back and forth in its close confinement. He felt rage. He felt fear. Rather than let Madame Hung have her way with him, he would kill himself. He sought the gun he'd had in his belt. It was gone, of course. So was his belt. He was naked, clothed only by the darkness.

  How much time was left before the painting arrived in Singapore? Interesting, he thought, that Madame Hung was unsure of herself there. Perhaps that was why she wanted leverage with Riddle. The echo of electric guitars twanged and moaned in his ears. Was Linda still imprisoned in her shadow box, gyrating through her mindless dance? Young and strong as she was, there was a limit to her endurance. Her death would mean nothing to the Hung woman. But from Hung's viewpoint, she held all the aces now. Here he was, and she could control Riddle's syndicate through the girl, and Levy Liscomb was laid up in the cUnic.

  It was useless to speculate, he decided finally. He began to crawl around his little prison cell, trying to estimate his chances of escape. The walls were solid, and he still could find no door. His chances, then, were nil. There had to be an air intake, he reflected, but it was probably high up in the invisible ceiling, beyond reach. His nakedness added to his sense of being helpless, and he knew it was a neat psychological trick.

  "Oh, Mr. Durell?"

  The voice echoed oddly in the stone chamber.

  "How do you feel, Mr. Durell?"

  "Fine," he said.

  "But you are not a man of the marshes, Mr. Durell. You cannot escape, however beautiful and strong you are."

  "Can you see me?"

  "Of course."

  Infrared light, he thought. "What time is it?" he asked the darkness.

  "Too late for you. Time has run out for you, sir."

  "I'd like to talk with you," he said.

  "You may talk now."

  "I'd like to see you, too."

  "Very well."

  There was silence for a few moments, filled with a sense of something imminent. Then a faint glow of violet light appeared at his left, above eye level, at an indeterminate distance in the darkness. The light brightened, thickened, and abruptly the face he dreaded seemed to float, disembodied, in the black air above him. It was a cute electronic illusion, he decided. He stood up.

  "Sit still, Mr. Durell."

  So she could see him, truly. He stared, fascinated, feeling like a bird fixed by a serpent's eye. How many times in the past year had he sweated out nightmares about that face? He could not guess her age. She could be as old as the evil in Eden, or as young as yesterday. Dark hair, pulled smoothly back from a triangular, oddly smooth face, Chinese eyes that seemed lidless, unblinking, staring at and through him with an intensity of hatred that made him shudder. Long jade earrings dangled beside a slender throat tightly encased in a small jeweled tunic collar. The wide, thin mouth opened, closed, and opened again. It might have been meant for a smile. The carefully plucked, extraordinarily long eyebrows lifted.

  "You thought I was dead in Iran?" she said. "I had hoped so," he said.

  She almost crooned. "I have waited so long, thinking of you, remembering you, imperialist lackey, touched by so much good luck and good fortune "

  "I beat you then, and I'll beat you again."

  "Naked and helpless now, as you are?"

  "I was helpless then, in the desert," he said.

  "I relied on fools, at that time. Now I shall attend to you personally. First I shall let you dwell on your fears, and wonder what I have planned for you."

  "You don't frighten me," Durell said, and he wondered if he were lying to himself. "You'll make a mistake, and there will be no one to attend your tomb at the next Ch'ing Ming Festival."

  "Bah! Am I superstitious? You should be lighting joss sticks before Kuan Yin, begging the goddess for mercy. It will do no good to beg for release from me!" The face turned in profile away from him, as if distracted momentarily by something off the television screen. Durell shifted his position slightly. If he jumped, he could smash the TV screen up there with his fist, open the aperture in which it was set . . . He sat still as those eyes of infinite black cruelty pinned him down again. "Truly, you were foolish to come here like this! Yet you are not a stupid man. Why did you do it?"

  "Perhaps I was hoping it was all a mistake, Madame Hung. Hoping you were dead, that it was someone else here." He paused. "None of us is infallible.
I'll have help soon."

  "From the Five Rubies? But I own half of them."

  "And the other half are loyal to Han. You forget, I'm still one of the five Tiger Generals. They will not let you get away with this."

  "But no one knows you are here, except the boatman, and he is taken care of." She smiled. "It was all arranged, and your boatman is silenced. The German girl is a silly dreamer who is both cruel and intelligent, like her father. Han, himself, will always obey me. Love strands are stronger than steel or greed. Your Control, Levy Liscomb, has had a relapse. An unfortunate error in administering medication. Who will miss you? You are only a hired lackey, after all. A nuisance, a mere annoyance. I look forward to your slow death."

  "Do it now. Get it over with," he said.

  The woman looked angry. The change in her expression seemed to dissolve some of the flesh from her bones, and for a moment, Durell had an impression of skeletal features twisted by violent hatred. Then the screen went blank. The cell was silent. He didn't understand what he had said or done. But it was a start, he thought. He found himself shivering. But the cell was not cold.

  15

  He had a headache, and the back of his neck was stiff where the dart had stung him. He wondered how much he heard and saw was illusion, and how much was reality. He explored the cell again, and this time thought he could trace the outline of a door. There was no handle, no way to open it from the inside. He pushed against that area of the wall, but nothing happened. He sat back then, hugging his bare knees, and waited and thought about Madame Hung. She would be back soon.

  Instead, when the door opened at last, the light blinded him, and then he saw two men, naked to the waist, their muscular torsos outlined against the glare. Their heads were shaven, and they wore Manchu pigtails. Heavy, archaic broadswords hung from wide leather belts about their waists. Durell glanced at the weapons casually, then looked away and rose slowly to his feet. Both men carried long knotted whips looped about their wrists. The larger ^ of the two—^both were enormous—moved in on his toes.

  "You speak to us now," he rumbled in a reasonable facsimile of English.