Assignment - Cong Hai Kill

by Edward S. Aarons

  A few minutes later he returned to Deirdre’s room. Anna-Marie had washed and changed and bound up her long blonde hair in a sleek casque. She looked almost smug, until Durell announced that he knew where Orris Lantern was.

  “Anna-Marie hasn’t told you where we meet him, has she?" he asked Deirdre.

  “You really shouldn’t have frightened her so, darling,” Deirdre said, and shook her head.

  “No matter. We’re meeting the riverboat in the morning. Muong thinks Orris is on it. Let’s hope Muong lets him stay alive until then.”

  One look at the blonde girl’s shocked face told him that Muong’s information was correct.

  8

  THE river steamer was some minutes upstream when Muong turned his battered Army jeep into the crowded waterfront streets. Durell could see the boat, its twin stacks belching smoke as it floated down on the muddy breast of the river. It looked like an anachronism against the brassy sky and breathless, tropic lands of this delta country—an illustration out of Currier & Ives, he thought, a riverboat lifted from America’s Midwest of the last century.

  He knew it well. It was like seeing his boyhood again, spent aboard the decaying wonders of the Trois Belles, that hulk thrust fast into the mud of Bayou Peche Rouge which served as a home for old Jonathan and himself. As a boy, he had spent long hours exploring the mysteries of engine room and pilothouse, plush stateroom and dusty, elegant salon. Nostalgia twitched at him, and then Muong said carefully:

  “I have two men here and two at the market sheds. They will go to the gangplank. Here on the waterfront, the Cong Hai have many eyes. If our best hope is confirmed, then Lantern is in great danger from the people he once led. If he defects to us as he once defected to them, they will kill him before our eyes. We must be very careful, therefore. A show of force may raise suspicion. It you wish, I shall go aboard alone.”

  “I prefer to meet him first myself,” Durell said.

  “That may be dangerous, but—very well. We will cover you thoroughly, of course.”

  Durell crossed the wide embankment with a long stride. The hot sun stung the nape of his neck, and the sea to his left looked sheeted with lead in the early ting light. Leaving the dusty garden area in front of the Palace, he went into the shade of the Mauritius pains and through a stone gateway carved with dragons. This brought him to the riverside markets and the steamer landing, into a teeming, milling mass of Thais, Indians, Chinese, in a mélange of color, noise, and smells, with here and there a Buddhist monk in a brilliant yellow robe making his way placidly among the sheds with his begging bowl, his shaven head gleaming in the hot sun. Food vendors were busy selling hot curries on rice, and a restaurant with bamboo walls advertised “Bamboo Bar Grill Dancing" in English. He wondered what sort of clientele they attracted.

  A young Chinese stood in his way at the market gate. “You buy pet, sir? No danger, very tame, easy to handle. You surprise folks back home, very exotic pet, sir.”

  The youth had wide black eyes, innocent of all guile. Around his naked, coppery shoulders, wrapping itself in cold love, was a slithering young boa constrictor.

  The symbol of the Cong Hai was a snake.

  “Only two bahts, sir,” the boy insisted. “Very cheap, special, because business is slow, no tourists, very rare see Americans here.”

  “No, thanks.” Durell thought the snake’s eyes were as cold as the boy’s. But the young Chinese was persistent. “I make special bargain today, sir. Only one baht. It is a young snake, sir, bring best of good luck. Ladies think you very brave man, brave as a wild bull—”

  Was it a brazen warning from the Cong Hai? Durell didn’t know. “No sale,” he said.

  He crossed the marketplace to the steamer dock. Naked children erupted in a race around the sheds; the air reverberated with the cackling of cooped fowl, the grunts of pigs, the thin shouts of Hindu hawkers trying to sell their brassware, the jingling of samlor bells, and the brazen gong of a temple bell as a procession of monks made a serpentine of saffron through the crowd. There were Arabs burned black by the sun and slender Thai women as exotic as dolls, and Chinese elders smoking and drinking tea. As usual, the Chinese merchants had the best booths in the market area.

  Durell walked onto the wharf. Two uniformed police loitered nearby. Muong’s jeep was parked between two food stalls, and Muong stood in plain sight beside his driver. The steamer, far out in the channel, screeched for the sampans and barges to get out of its way.

  The air smelled explosive.

  Durell felt like a fly on a wall. He looked for the boy with the pet snake, but could not locate him in the crowd. More gongs vibrated in the sultry air. Sampans loaded with vegetables, chickens, and wooden furniture splashed up and down beyond the dock. The calls of the Hindu vendors and the clack of ivory counters in the tea shops made a wave of sound as a surge of people moved to the dockside.

  The riverboat bumped its pilings. The forward deck swarmed with people from the jungle villages upstream. Lines writhed out and made the steamer fast and there was a mass movement toward the gangplank. From the port wing of the pilothouse a slender Thai in immaculate white uniform and the gold braid of the river captain called down to him. The man’s broad face was knotted with anger. He came sliding down the ladder, still calling something to Durell, whose size made him obvious in the crowd.

  There was a flash of steel, a glitter of light, and the chunk of a blade penetrating flesh and bone.

  The Thai looked incredulously at the knife that stuck out of his white uniform. There was time for horror to dawn in his black eyes before he tumbled down the gangway.

  A wave of banging filled the market sheds. It was as if a thousand tin pans were suddenly clashed together. The din was enormous. The murder of the riverboat captain seemed to be a signal for organized confusion, a planned uproar for everyone crowding the dockside.

  Durell checked himself beside the fallen man. Major Muong materialized silently at his side and knelt by the man whose eyes were already glazed in death.

  “Was the knife meant for the captain?” Muong asked softly. “Perhaps you were the intended victim.”

  “I’m not sure. Let’s find Lantern. He should be aboard.”

  A scuffling broke out in the caverns of the market sheds. A single shot broke the rhythmic rattle of pots and pans. The air rang with the sound, which punctuated the noise, bringing an abrupt silence.

  Durell stepped over the dead captain and pushed through the crowd of sullen passengers on the deck. He felt someone tug at his arm. When he turned, he saw it was a frantic and tearful Anna-Marie Danat, breathless from running after him.

  “Please, m’sieu. Let me come with you.”

  “You were to stay at the hotel with Deirdre.”

  “But I had to come, don’t you see?” Her voice was agonized. “I must find Orris.”

  “All right. Stay close to my side.”

  He had the feeling he was regarded as an enemy by all the wide, Asiatic eyes that followed him aboard. Someone among them was an assassin who had tried for him and gotten the riverboat captain instead. But maybe it hadn’t been a mistake. The Thai had been angry, as if he wanted to shout something to someone in authority ashore.

  “This way,” Anna-Marie gasped. “I know this boat.”

  The crowd on the lower decks silently opened an aisle for them. Durell took out his gun. It felt hot and solid in his fingers.

  There were only four private cabins aboard the paddlewheeler. The paint on the upper deck was peeling from the planks, and the brass-work was green with jungle verdigris. A Frenchman with a pink and angry face under a dirty visored engineer’s cap came swinging down from the pilothouse, yelling in Thai. He wore a white uniform of shorts and singlet which was soot-blackened. He switched to French when he saw Durell, bitterly demanding to know what he meant to do with his gun.

  “Your captain was just killed,” Durell returned sharply. “I’m looking for an American aboard named Lantern.”

  “Never he
ard of him. You are from the police?”

  “Do you have a Chinese aboard named Chang?”

  “Chang Chu? Yes, in cabin four. But you—" The Frenchman finally saw Anna-Marie and was startled. “But Mademoiselle Danat, forgive me. I have a message from your father—”

  “Later,” Durell said.

  He pulled the girl with him, anxiety knotting in his stomach. A corridor bisected the first-class deck. There were two cabins on each side. The first doors were open, and a community lavatory also stood open. beyond. The facilities were primitive. Durell was aware of the heat that radiated from the wooden bulkheads as he pushed open the last door.

  “M’sieu Durell-Sam—I am afraid—” Anna-Marie whimpered. “Why is not my Orris aboard?”

  “Maybe he is,” Durell said grimly.

  The girl’s elfin face and enormous eyes made her seem vulnerable. She breathed shallowly as she looked beyond him into the cabin. It seemed to Durell that there couldn’t be enough clean air left in the world to keep her alive.

  There was another dead man in the cabin.

  She tried to pull back, but he caught her wrist and held her there. “Who is he?” Durell rasped. “Do you know him?”

  “I think—oui—it must be-”

  “The man you call Uncle Chang?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is——it was-”

  Her teeth chattered as if she were freezing in that oven-like heat. Nothing would ever look pure to her again.

  There was an obscenity about the old Chinaman’s death that shocked even Durell; and he had seen the obscene killing methods of desert Arabs, jungle tribesmen, and the sophisticated Nazis of Germany. “Uncle Chang” had been a stout, bald man, possibly of a kind and jolly disposition; what was left of his face reminded Durell of the little carved Buddha old Grandpa Jonathan had given him for his nook in the cabin of the Trois Belles back in the bayous. There was a fat paunch and a prosperous bulge to arms and limbs in the fine, expensive white linen suit.

  The killing had been a fast and bloody butcher’s job, with nothing professional about it. It was a job done by a madman, a dancing maniac who had showered the cabin walls with gore. Chang had been partially stripped and crudely mutilated, and what had been done with the organs hacked from his torso was nothing for Anna-Marie to see.

  But there was one more thing in the stateroom.

  It was the‘ head of a large snake, severed about ten inches from the open, gaping fangs, and it was several days old, to judge by the stench of rot that oozed from it. The cold, dead eyes regarded Durell with deadly malignancy.

  The snake’s head had been placed at the throat of the fat Chinaman’s crumpled body, and it transformed him into an effigy out of a lunatic’s nightmare, half man and half serpent—and all dead.

  9

  FOOTSTEPS slammed down the ladder from the pilothouse, and there was loud shouting in Thai and French. A child walled. Woven through these sounds as in an antiphony was the continued clashing of tin pans and tubs, sticks and gongs from the rioters in the market. The noise wove a primeval web of violence in the hot, angry air.

  Durell forced Anna-Marie about to avert her hypnotized gaze from the Chinaman. She was like a bird, frozen by the massive, ugly snake’s head. “Anna-Marie, that’s enough. Stay near me, but don’t look any more.”

  “Poor Chang! He was such a gentle old man. . . .”

  “Did he once live at your father’s plantation?”

  “He was a co-manager with Uncle Paio, for Papa. But Chang left to go into business here, when I was quite little. Oh, I cried when he left. He always had little gifts for me. He never harmed anyone. Why did they kill him?”

  “I don’t see Orris Lantern aboard.”

  Her head twisted in sudden alarm. “But he was supposed to come down with Chang and give himself up to you.”

  “And he didn’t, did he?” Durell said.

  She searched his face. “Has something happened to Orris? Do you think they—they did the same things—”

  “It’s too soon to guess. It could be either way.”

  She stiffened. “I know what you really think. You think Orris helped with this awful thing, for some reason; you think Orris changed his mind and won’t come back-”

  She was near hysteria, and he gave her a cigarette and made her stand facing the door. She resisted for a moment, then did as he asked, while he searched the cabin. He knew he could expect Muong and others here at any moment.

  There were two bunks in the cramped, hot cabin, but only one seemed to have been used on the trip downriver. The Chinaman’s single piece of luggage was the only pathetic remnant of the living man. He stepped into the tiny bath and saw that the big, square window opening onto the passenger deck had been left ajar. He checked the crude shower stall, the rusty washbasin, the medicine cabinet. Everything had been cleaned out. So Chang had packed before he was slaughtered. An hour or so ago, Chang had still been alive.

  But he had been alone. Orris Lantern had not kept his promise to tum himself in and abandon the Cong Hai.

  Then why had Chang been killed?

  He examined the steel Windowsill in the bath. The paint was scratched and showed gleaming metal underneath. In this climate, a single day would show rust. So the murderer had fled through this window—and might still be aboard.

  Major Muong and several of his men crowded into the stateroom. The organized uproar on the docks continued.

  “Major, has anyone been allowed ashore yet?” he asked.

  The Thai regarded him with blank eyes. “No. The gangway has been sealed.”

  “Then everyone should be screened. You might spot a known assassin from the Cong Hai.”

  “Precisely. As for Mademoiselle Danat—”

  “I suggest one of your men escort her back to the hotel and keep her with Miss Deirdre Padgett.”

  “It will be done.”

  But there were results even sooner than Durell expected. He heard a slight scuffling below, on the cargo deck. The passengers from upriver were massed in a noisy tidal wave against the rail, held back from the dock by a handful of uniformed police whose round faces reflected a growing fear of losing control. The center of the scuffle was a dark little East Indian in a shabby seersucker suit. He was trying to reach the rail, pushing against two saffron—robed Buddhist monks. A spasm of terror twisted the man’s ratty face when he was pushed back. He turned his head and looked up at Durell and Major Muong, and the Thai made a small hissing sound.

  “It is Doko Dagan. You see him, Mr. Durell? He has a record and does not belong here. He comes from Bangkok and We have a difficult dossier on him as a labor agitator, a dope runner, and a politically unreliable hoodlum.”

  “Let’s pull him in,” Durell said.

  “Precisely. Yes.”

  But the man they wanted had enough warning. He didn’t hesitate. Clutching a cheap straw suitcase, he jumped overboard into the muddy river and vanished among the sampans and barges pressed against the steamer’s side.

  “Don’t kill him,” Durell warned quickly. “Maybe he did the job on Uncle Chang.”

  He leaned forward over the rail. The fugitive hadn’t hit the water, after all. He had landed in a sampan that obviously had maneuvered to receive him, and now the coolies were poling frantically for shore to get him away. The water presented a milling pattern of organized confusion. Doko Dagan still held his cheap suitcase. Durell dropped down the ladder and plunged for the gangplank, with Major Muong at his heels as they battered through the crowd.

  The clashing of tin pans and chanting under the market sheds had died away. People were running out of the open square of sunlight. It was not the first time Durell felt conspicuously alone in a hostile mob. Hatred flashed from the alien eyes around him. Dagan had jumped ashore from the sampan, and Durell glimpsed him heading for an alley where an ancient Renault waited for him.

  He swung for Muong’s jeep. “He’s got a running start,” he snapped. “Can we stop him?”

  “He will
not get away,“ Muong promised grimly.

  The jeep driver replied to Muong’s snapped order and started recklessly through the crowd between themselves and the Renault. The other car disappeared down the alley with a roar of sound. Muong’s eyes were white crescents as he leaned forward to speak to the driver.

  “He heads for the Menam Phao bridge, Lao. Take the Embankment Road and cut him off.”

  They worked their way through the tides of bicycles in the narrow streets and swept around the Government House, a mirage of green gardens in the shimmering heat. The waterfront was left behind. People scattered before the two cars, and a brightly plumaged funeral procession of yellow-robed monks was broken in two as they gave chase. Muong settled back, his face expressionless.

  “We will catch him. He cannot get away.”

  The jeep bucked and bounced after the Renault, but despite Muong’s confidence, they began to lose ground. The town was built around the curve of the long, shallow bay, then spread in a tangle of thatched houses on stilts along the riverside. There was no pattern to the narrow streets; but Muong apparently knew the way well. He gave another brief order to the driver and settled back.

  “The steamer captain is dead. We will never know what he wanted to say. But obviously, he knew of Chang’s murder. Why the Cong Hai killed the old gentle, man is a most difficult question--except that he was to escort your Orris Lantern here, is it not so? So we must face the question that either your American renegade had a change of heart, to which Chang objected, or he was retaken by the Cong Hai who refuse to let him go.”

  “Have the Cong Hai been so bold before?”

  “Not here along the coast. Inland, in the high country, it is What you call a witch’s brew.” Muong’s English was very precise. Sweat shone on his brown face. “We know that the Cong Hai ‘fortress areas’ are being built in the jungles, financed by opium brought down from the north where the renegade Kuomintang Army units have settled since the Japanese occupation. And we suspected Doko Dagan of being one of their prime distributors.”