Assignment - Sulu Sea

by Edward S. Aarons

  “One more leg to this trip,” Willi said, as they disembarked. “We‘ll be more comfortable in my own plane, right there. Another three hours, and we’re home safe.”

  The commercial flights to Pandakan, since guerilla war in Borneo between Indonesia and Malaysia had erupted, were erratic and dangerous these days. At best, Garuda and Qantas Airways made only two scheduled stops in the Tarakuta Islands, and even these had been discontinued by the uncertain status of the sultanate being sought for nationalization by the two quarreling republics.

  "The Tarakutans want nothing much to do with either side,” Willi said bitterly. “The people of Pandakan are a mixed lot—Dyaks and Dusuns, Malays, of course, some Hindus and quite a few Chinese. The Oceanic Chinese aren’t sure which Way to go—to Peiping’s new imperialism, or to be noncommittal. They just look vague and obscure if you ask them a political question. But these days the tables are turned, Samuel, and the former colonial powers raise hell trying to thrust other people under their thumbs now.

  It would be a lot better for Pandakan if the world just let us be.”

  “That’s not likely to happen."

  “I know, and it burns me, the brazen greed with which the former colonial powers claim the Tarakutans. I hate to think what Will happen if the wrong parties get control next week.”

  The heat was stunning, stupefying, as they walked across the strip to a rickety dock Where her twin-engined amphibian plane was tied. The nipa huts of the village at the edge of the airstrip made a familiar pattern: there was the tin roof of a Chinese trader‘s hut, a whitewashed school where children played, and dogs panting in the dusty shade of the single street. Offshore, the striped, triangular sails of Moro fishing boats shimmered against the hot leaden color of the Sulu Sea. The horizon was lost in the haze of unbelievable eat.

  The airport Filipinos greeted Willi by name and with cheerful grins. The plane was fueled, and from the way the local mechanics scurried about to help, Durell realized that Willi commanded special service wherever she went in this corner of the world-—which might be useful, he thought, in the next two days.

  The amphibian’s cabin was oddly equipped. There were two comfortable seats with twin controls in the nose, but the rest of the ship was stripped of its plush interior to accommodate an assortment of fish tanks, animal cages, and miscellaneous cages stuffed with cotton to hold, presumably, rare shell specimens.

  Durell gave her a small smile. “Ever since I was a boy, I’ve heard what a bright girl you are, Willi.”

  “Which galled you, huh?”

  “Beauty and brains is a rare combination. Do you think anything as big as a nuclear sub could get lost in the Tarakutas?"

  “You could lose anything, in or off Borneo.” She frowned. “I see what bothers you, though, I flew over Poelau Bangka, the island where we found Pete Holcomb, so low that I knocked some coconuts off the trees. I saw no sign of a sub. But you must realize what these islands are like. They float in a sea of milky channels, and the water is pretty shallow all around, with only a few navigable channels between coral reefs and mangrove swamp. Believe me, you need everything: fathometers, radar, radio-beacon equipment, to keep a boat from going aground. It can get pretty Weird, even to me, and I’ve spent my life in Borneo. Of course, old Joseph knows every little channel like the back of his hand, and nobody alive, not even poor Simon, can navigate the passages as he does. But just how a boat like the Jackson could disappear—well, I just don’t know. Most of the sea is so shallow that when you fly over it, it's hard to distinguish land from water. If your sub was heading toward Pandakan through the Bandjang Passage, though, she shouldn’t have had any trouble at all. But the Bandjang freighter routes are forty miles from Bangka, where I found Holcomb."

  Durell frowned “It doesn't make sense. The Polaris boats are equipped with the most advanced navigational and internal guidance systems possible. It couldn't go off-course by accident"

  “Pete Holcomb didn’t die of torture by accident, either," “mi said. “Some pretty crude things were done to him, and that's why he was half out of his mind when poor Simon met him on the beach. Simon had to use his machete to keep him off, and thought he was the cause of Holcomb’s death. But when Malachy examined the body, he said the only case like it was when he did a post-mortem on a Chinese gambler, last year, in Fishtown.”

  “Fishtown?”

  “It's really named Dendang, a part of Pandakan. The place was originally settled by Dyaks from the Borneo mainland, not far off, but now it’s practically autonomous, run by Prince Ch’ing—the richest and most loathsome man in the islands. The prince claims descent from a claimant to the throne of the dowager empress Tzu H’si, of China, but whose great-grandfather was born ‘on the wrong side of the blanket,’ as our Victorian ancestors used to say. In any case, besides holding a monopoly on the local tin sluice mines, he’s the head of the neighborhood Mafia, or whatever the Chinese opium-cum-gambling rings call themselves.”

  Durell settled back thoughtfully. “I’m afraid our own grandfathers were right. You’re both beautiful and bright, Willi.”

  “You don‘t like it?”

  “I’ll reserve judgment."

  With that, Willi gunned the plane away from the dock and across the shallow waters of the bay as if they were jet-assisted. He decided not to irritate her again until they were safely on the ground once more.

  The flight to Pandakan took up most of the remaining daylight hours. There Were sandwiches, with coffee and bourbon, in a tiny refrigerator located in the tail of the plane, and Durell served them while Willi flew over the seemingly endless expanse of Water and island of the Sulu Archipelago. He noticed that she had the latest World Aeronautical Charts put out by the U.S. Air Force. and now and then, over an obscure light or radio beacon, she waggled her wings briefly. Now and then an oil tanker or ore carrier was visible on the glittering ocean surface. But he was surprised by the number of islands that lifted and fell over the horizon. They put down to refuel before dusk at Balabuco, taking off without delay. Now and then the girl spoke briefly into her throat mike and listened to radio direction signals, and then, slanting in a more southerly direction to parallel the looming purple mountains of what had once been Dutch Borneo, she set the automatic pilot and dozed, ignoring Durell and leaving him to his thoughts.

  He tried to imagine what could have happened to a nuclear submarine in these waters. He thought of a number of disastrous things, but all of them were noisy and certain to have been noticed by somebody, somewhere. He gave it up and decided to wait until he could ask a few questions at Pandakan.

  chapter five

  PANDAKAN was hot, dirty and decaying. Its streets were pitted with holes and the canals clotted with refuse. Under the old colonial administration, the waterfront had been kept reasonably clean and efficient, with white government buildings and warehouses bulging with tin ore, rubber and copra. The boulevards radiating toward the low hills surrounding the harbor had been well maintained, adorned with royal palms and decorated with a central mall of green lawns and flower beds. The main streets of the European section had boasted fine old Victorian structures, all painted white, with government missions and business offices of trading companies in neat, well-tended rows.

  The buildings and boulevards were still there, with the palm trees and flower beds, but everything had wilted slightly around the edges since the colonial administration had been given forty-eight hours recently to pack up and get out; There were chuckholes in the street that nobody bothered to fill, some cornices of masonry had fallen from some of the Victorian facades and allowed to remain there, the grass in the central malls had gone to jungle weeds, and where white-gloved Malay policemen had stood on their little wooden platforms under umbrellas to direct the tonga, bicycle and auto traffic, there were now battle-helmeted, uniformed soldiers with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders, patrolling the crowded sidewalks in pairs and cautiously considering the sidewalk cafes that seemed to have lost consider
able clientele since the most recent wave of Red and Indonesian terrorist bombing.

  But no city and harbor could have had a lovelier setting, Durell thought. A narrow river bisected the town, flowing from the green jungly uplands of the island. There was a green promontory capped by a hotel and several gleaming consulates to the north. On the other arm enfolding the harbor was a native quarter built out over the placid waters, a vast, tangled jumble of reed and thatch-roofed huts, nipa shacks, Dyak houses and shanties built on piers in a labyrinthine maze of waterways crowded with native canoes and fishing praus and of plank walks that swayed and twisted precariously over the harbor water, without plan or rhyme or reason.

  “Dendang, otherwise known as Fishtown,” Willi said briefly as she circled toward the airport landing strip and let down the amphibian’s wheels. There was a high radio tower to be avoided, several more beacon towers whose lights blinked in the last rays of daylight-apparently the local technicians left them on all day—and then a bumpy landing on the plane’s fat rubber tires, not because of any clumsiness on Willi’s part, but because there were mortar potholes from recent fighting in the center of the main runway. “Most of the local Chinese,” Willi went on casually, “live out over the water. The Malays live in town, and the European whites, who get fewer every day, live on the South Point. In between are the indigenous natives who never seem to have a say in what's going to happen to them, one way or another.”

  She paused and taxied the amphibian in front of the tin hangar sheds and leaned across him to open his door. “If you don’t mind, I’ll drop you off here and fly on down to see Grandpa Joseph. I’m worried about him. A man in his nineties—well, you never know. I’ll be back in Pandakan before morning, if you trust me. And I used the radio to reserve a room for you at the Hotel des Indes. It’s still got running water, but I suggest you stick to tonic or Evian water-—which you can still get here, oddly enough, all the way from Paris.”

  “Thanks,” he said drily. “And what did you tell the local radio people I Was? A spy?"

  “I said you were an oil salesman from New Orleans."

  “Fair enough.”

  “So you do trust me?”

  "Have I a choice?" he smiled.

  She grinned in return. “Not much, really. All I need to do is say one word, and the local commandos would pop you into the old Dutch dungeons, across town.”

  “Don’t say it then. I’m on your side.”

  “Good luck,” she called.

  Before he reached the knot of customs men outside the terminal, she had gunned her plane, which was obviously familiar enough to the local people to cause no interest, and had taken off into the clear evening sky again.

  A car waited for him from the consulate, and he was given diplomatic clearance for his single piece of luggage. The local officials, small brown-skinned men backed up by inevitable khaki-uniformed soldiers with sub-machine guns, seemed disappointed when he was waved through. The man from the consulate was Chinese.

  “Mr. Durell? Please, come this way.”

  The heat here was worse, if possible, than at the landing strip at Balabuco, since they were only a few degrees above the equator. It was the humidity, Durell told himself, and he wished he could stop at the airport bar for a cool drink. But this obviously was not on the agenda. The air-conditioning in the terminal had broken down, and the modem glass windows made to be kept sealed had been forced open to admit the dust and heat of the landing field, and nobody seemed surprised.

  The Chinese from the consulate was tall, broad of face, a smiling young man in an impeccable gray suit with an Ivy League necktie, thick black hair that glistened with vitality, and an easy, bouncy, athletic stride. His handshake was quick and strong. His teeth gleamed.

  “This way, Mr. Durell. I have a car waiting to take you to the consulate.”

  “Thank you. Is Mr. Kiehle, the consul, back from Singapore?"

  “He is not expected until next week—until after the plebiscite, that is—if there is a plebiscite.” Mr. Lee showed his white teeth. “One never knows from day to day the future course of these islands.”

  “Then is the vice-consul, Dr. McLeod, in Pandakan?”

  “No, sir, he has gone to Tarakuta Island. He will be back tomorrow or the next day. It is uncertain.”

  “Then who is minding the store?" Durell asked,

  Young Mr. Lee’s intelligent sloe eyes blinked. "It seems that I am, as first secretary in the consulate."

  “I see. Well, I’ll accept a lift to the Hotel des Indes, since I've got a room reserved there. I’m not staying at the consulate here."

  “But I understood, sir—the guest room is prepared—”

  “Do oil salesmen get such preferential treatment?” Durell asked. “We’ll make it the Hotel des Indes."

  Mr. Tommy Lee bit his lip and seemed frustrated, but his expression passed as quickly as the shadow of a vulture over the baking airport. “As you wish, Mr. Durell. It may be a bit dangerous, since two bombs have already gone off in Salangapur Square. That’s in the center of town. Several women were killed by the terrorists at a sidewalk cafe, and there have been rumors of guerilla invasions at any moment.”

  “From where, Mr. Lee?"

  The young man shrugged. “One never knows. Indonesia and the Malaysians would both prefer the plebiscite to be forgotten. And this may well happen. A U.N. commission member was wounded yesterday by a grenade thrown into the Europa Hotel bar, and some Indian shops, including the Mekassar Silver Shop, were bombed out. Hence I suggest you stay at the consulate, with us.”

  “Thanks,” Durell said, “but the Hotel des Indes sounds just right for me.”

  Although the airport had no obvious traffic, it was crowded and busy. The GIA Airways—Garuda Indonesia Line—had offices cheek by jowl with the Lembaga Kebudajaan Indonesia—the Indonesian Cultural Institute, an open center for propaganda from Djakarta. Across the field, the Qantas Empire Airline hangar was empty and deserted. There was a row of shops along the road immediately beyond the hangars, predominantly Chinese, such as Lee Cheong’s, for jade; Mui Fong’s restaurant; and next to them, an Indian store selling batik, a shop specializing in wood-carvings with a Dutch name above the door, Vos & VanKamp, but with a smiling Indonesian in charge. The air was filled with the chatter of a dozen animated tongues, dominated by Bahasa, a refined Malay, but Durell also identified Dutch, Sudanese, Madurese and even some English. Despite the heat, the crowds along the road were animated, in brightly colored clothing, and apparently untroubled by the political tensions that loomed like thunderheads over the jewel-like island.

  Pandakan was not the largest of the Tarakuta Group, but was certainly the loveliest, not more than ten miles long and five in breadth. The slopes of the interior highland were devoted to neat rice fields, chinchona and tea plantations, and teakwood forests. Young Mr. Lee was polite and instructive on the swift drive through the city from the airport. He handled the car himself, with Durell beside him in the front seat, and he did not linger at traffic signals that seemed to work with a peculiarly sporadic timing, since terrorists enjoyed hurling grenades at cars halted at intersections; and he managed to avoid the potholes in what had once been a broad, smooth boulevard.

  Pandakan’s architecture reflected the island’s history for three centuries. There was a ruined and picturesque fortress on the harbor front built by the Portuguese in the seventeenth century; there were Dutch and British administrative buildings from the Victorian era, mingled with native Malay, Moslem mosques and Catholic churches and Buddhist temples, and a great sprawling mass of a palace owned by the former Sultan of Pandakan, when the East India Company dominated the islands. Along the seawall flanking the harbor were dozens of sidewalk cafes under brightly colored, slightly dilapidated awnings that sheltered wire chairs and metal tables. Traffic was mainly bicycles that flowed in tidal waves around corners and down the main arteries of the city. Here and there were trishaws, a three-wheeled bicycle taxi, and an occasional dokar, or c
arriage. There were double-decker buses that reminded Durell of London and New York’s old Fifth Avenue line, but painted a brilliant orange and green, the newly proposed national colors. Chinese tea shops, Moslem coffee houses and European cafes shared the waterfront boulevard. Here and there a building showed the black scars of a bombing. But the life of the city surged and flowed brightly in the streets, and despite the number of posters, banners and signs exhorting the populace to vote for one new expansionist Asian power in Borneo or another, there seemed no overt hysteria.

  But hysteria was here, Durell thought, manifested in the hatreds expressed by bomb scars and bullet-pitted walls. Some of the Hindu shops were shuttered with steel, and the local policemen at the intersections, standing on high wooden pedestals under bright umbrellas, wore white gauntlets and stubby, Russian-made automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. There Was the usual contradiction of tin-shack and mat-walled slum houses next to impressive public buildings, of natives cooking noodles, shrimp or curry on the sidewalks, of canals where people bathed and did laundry and brushed their teeth in water used as a lavatory.

  Tommy Lee pointed out the sprawl of the Sultan’s former palace, a building with clean, fat white columns supporting carved eaves overhanging wide verandahs and interior courts. The palace was now used as a government house, where Colonel Mayubashur, head of the militia, was the highest resident official, ruling by military fiat until the U.N. commission, its presence indicated by a limp blue and white flag at the palace masthead, decided to which new imperialism the island population should belong.

  Tommy Lee slowed the car to allow yellow-robed Buddhist priests with shaven heads cross the boulevard. “The situation is most explosive, both literally and politically,” Tommy Lee said glibly. “The Europeans still here are detached, and although colonialism was never an issue here, it is used to trigger a few atrocities, Mr. Durell, in the name of merdeka—freedom. Most of the Western consulates are run these days by a skeleton force only, and European and American branch business offices are all practically deserted, since most of their personnel have left for ‘extended vacations’ until the dust settles.”