Assignment - Sulu Sea

by Edward S. Aarons

  Durell was silent.

  A bird cried outside in the night, and the surf crashed on the rocks below Promontory Heights. Somewhere in the consulate a typewriter clicked briefly. The girl considered her hands, folded lotus-fashion in her lap. Her hair looked glossy black in the lamplight. Durell said gently:

  “Yoko, you must love Tommy very much, to tell me such a thing as this. You know what it could mean to his career?”

  “Of course I know!" she cried. “And I know you are

  not here on some economic mission, Mr. Durell. I know you are here for some security reason, and it must have to do with Tommy. Tommy was very upset when he decoded the cable saying you were coming. He’s communications officer here, too, and he knew who you were. He was afraid of you and told me he might be in trouble if you found out certain things. I begged him to tell you the truth, even if he did not tell me about it. I begged and begged, Mr. Durell, so he would be free of this fear he has. Tommy is a good man, and what he does is because of pressure applied—”

  “Blackmail? Because his parents are in Shanghai?"

  She nodded. “He is not alone in this problem. Many of ‘he Oceanic Chinese here have relatives in Red China. They need help, but, like Tommy, will not admit it. Will you help him?”

  “That depends,” Durell said.

  Her eyes were fearful. “On what?”

  “Tommy Lee, first secretary and communications officer of this consulate, knew that Simon Smith, an obscure sailor on an obscure trading schooner, was going to be snatched from the hospital this afternoon. He did his best to keep me from the Hotel des Indes, where I might see what happened. If Simon was kidnapped by, let us say: Prince Ch’ing’s men then Simon has something important to tell me. Do you know what it might be?”

  She shook her head. “I cannot even guess.”

  “You were assigned as Simon's nurse, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “And you are right in your guesses. Tommy was interested in Simon. He asked me to arrange to be assigned to his floor, and to pay special attention to him."

  “In what way?”

  “He wanted me to listen to anything that Simon might say in his delirium. But I could not hear anything intelligible. He spoke in his island tongue, in Papuan. No one could understand him.”

  “Did Dr. McLeod visit him?”

  “Once.”

  He said: “We can make a deal. The first thing you can do is take me to Dendang, to the house where Tommy’s uncle and aunt—his alleged parents-—live. Maybe he’s there. If Simon was snatched, as I say, it’s because he had something that somebody wanted to know about. Tommy seemed to know the snatch was coming. Therefore we’ll go to Fishtown and try to find Simon by finding Tommy 'first. If you help me, I’ll help Tommy Lee, when the right time comes.”

  She said: "I don‘t know. You frighten me.”

  “How?”

  “You look so cruel,” she said.

  “One of the first laws of survival is that you must adapt,” he told her. “Sometimes you have to be cruel.”

  chapter eight

  MISS HANAMUTRA might have no idea of his real mission, but he could not be sure, and he knew better than to jump to conclusions where a pretty face was involved. His coded briefing back in Hawaii, from General McFee, had not mentioned her relationship with Lee, the communications officer for the Pandakan office. He had only her word for it, and she had admitted some damning evidence against a man she claimed to love.

  He asked her to wait, and went out to speak to the Hindu typist in the outer office. The woman clerk said the code books were kept in Mr. Kiehle’s safe, and only the consul and Dr. McLeod and Mr. Lee had access to them. Her eyes were big when she spoke to Durell. None of the three was here to tell him the combination. Given time, he could cable Washington for it. He rubbed his teeth with his finger, annoyed. Every consulate and embassy of the United States carried a small red book with a Top Priority Code—usually referred to as Teepee—evolved by the Whirlwind Computer in the National Security Agency’s headquarters in Maryland. The NSA machines encoded the emergency signals on a monthly basis, changing them regularly and at random. The ciphers could not be broken, even if a team of mathematicians worked on it for a score of years. But the computers in NSA’s basement clicked out new Teepee Alert Codes in less than five minutes, every first of each new month.

  Durell would have given a lot to know if Tommy Lee had been privileged to look at this month’s Teepee Alert signal.

  He went back into Lee’s office and took off his jacket and sat down at the desk to frame cabled messages to the consul, attending the SEATO meeting, and another back to Washington. Miss Hanamutra sat quietly watching him, her dark eyes enigmatic. The office staff of the consulate was quick, quiet and efficient. While he worked, he asked Yoko Hanamutra what she knew about the missing communications officer’s duties, and listened to her soft, somewhat timid voice While he worded his queries to Kiehle and to the home office in Washington.

  “Tommy handled all cables and radio messages, of course,” she said. “And he was in charge of the USIS—the Information Service programs—over the local radio station in Pandakan before it was bombed out. That happened just two or three days ago. The terrorists did it. Tommy and I had been there just a few minutes before they seized the station. But they didn’t have good technicians, and the damage they did was repaired in twenty-four hours.”

  “Did you help Tommy with his information programs?"

  “Sometimes. It was fun. And useful work.”

  “He didn’t pay you for it, though?”

  “Oh, no. It was just something we did together."

  Durell wondered how much more of Tommy Lee’s work was shared with Miss Hanamutra. Her face was blank, naive. But you couldn't ever tell. He said: "Did Lee ever broadcast himself? Use the mike, I mean?”

  “Oh, yes. Now and then. He was-—what do you call it? —a ham, really very expert at it.”

  “He knew the technical end of radio, too?”

  “Yes, he enjoyed being communications officer.”

  “Did he operate the consulates station himself?” he asked casually.

  “Most often,” the girl said proudly. Then she became aware of his quiet gaze and bit her lip. “Did I say anything in error, Mr. Durell?”

  “Not exactly. Have you been in the consulate’s radio room, ever? Don’t lie to me, now. There’s nothing to worry about, if Tommy took you in there.”

  “I was a guest, once or twice. Mr. Kiehle knew about it,” she said defensively. “He did not object when Tommy took me with him, when it was late and he had a few routine messages to encode and send off."

  He stood up again and said: “Come with me, please.”

  The radio room in the consulate was on the second floor, The native clerks fluttered and hesitated, not knowing how far this tall stranger’s authority went. No one seemed to know where the key to the room might he. Durell sent them all away, down the hushed corridor and pattering down the stairs to their desks below, and then he took a small instrument from his pocket that resembled a fountain pen, but which came apart into a complex little tool at a twist of his finger. It was a highly professional picklock, among other things, and he used it in the radio door lock for less than ten seconds before he got the door open.

  Miss Hanamutra watched him with big eyes. He stood aside. “After you, please.”

  The radio room was gray, cluttered, but efficient, with a single window overlooking the dark harbor. The light switch at the door turned on fluorescent lamps over the small, compact transmitter and receiving station of the Pandakan consulate. He went to the window and looked out over the city before closing the blind against the dark garden below. Pandakan‘s power system was erratic, and many of the streets were blacked out. Yet even from this distance he could see they were crowded, lighted by thousands of small kerosene lamps, swarming with the mixed Malay, Chinese and Indonesian population.

  He closed the blind. The radio
room seemed normal. There was nothing out of place except a tightly rolled Oceanographic chart on a gum-metal table near the transmitter. Durell unrolled the chart and saw it depicted the Borneo coast and the Tarakuta Islands. The navigable channels extending through the shallow seas of the Sunda Shelf were marked in soft red grease pencil. Some of the red wax came off under his thumbnail.

  “Was this Tommy’s chart?" he asked the nurse.

  Miss Hanamutra looked uncertain. “I don’t know. It might have been Dr. McLeod’s.”

  “Bur Dr. McLeod was not communications officer. He wouldn’t come in here, would he? Have you ever seen him here?”

  “Oh. yes. Many times. I mean—I don’t mean to imply I was here often. But Tommy said Dr. McLeod often used the consulate radio to call Miss Wilhelmina, on Tarakuta.”

  “I see. Do you know the call letters there?”

  She pointed to the black leather notebook Durell had already seen. "In there, I think.“

  “Thank you.”

  Durell sat in the swivel chair and snapped on the power. He had no trouble finding the Tarakuta’s call letters in the leather-bound book. It fell open at the proper page from frequent usage. A moment later he had the signal going out over the air.

  Miss Hanamutra stirred uneasily. “Mr. Durell—”

  “In a moment, please.”

  “If you’ll just help me find Tommy, I’m sure—”

  “I intend to find Mr. Lee,” he said. “And through Mr. Lee, I also hope to find a sailor named Simon, out of your hospital.”

  “But Tommy had nothing to do with Simon—!”

  “We’ll see."

  The key began to clatter in response to his open signal. He made no attempt to encode his conversation with Malachy McLeod. His identification Was quick and businesslike, and after a brief pause, Dr. McLeod answered in like fashion. Durell did not know if the listening girl could read the rapid-fire clicking of the key, but it did not matter. He asked McLeod to return to Pandakan Harbor at once, with Willi, aboard the schooner. He repeated the message and added a single key code word for urgent emphasis. There was no argument. The replying Morse announced that the Tarakuta would be back in Pandakan in a matter of hours.

  Durell turned off the power then and stood up. Miss Hanamutra got nervously to her feet, also.

  “Let’s find Tommy Lee, if we can. And Simon,” he said.

  He walked with the trim nurse to her little blue Floride and let her do the driving. The descent from the cool heights of the promontory to the waterfront boulevard added fifteen degrees to the heat and sent the temperature soaring. Occasional thunder rumbled over the mountainous spine of the island, but no one on the sidewalks, teahouses, stalls or gaudy cinemas where Sinatra's latest was being exhibited, along with Indian art films, seemed perturbed by the chanting students in a snake dance, carrying paper dragons and signs that screamed for merdeka! Freedom! Most of the posters spoke for Djakarta’s claims in the name of racial, economic and ancient feudal ties for national hegemony over all of Borneo, including the Tarakuta Islands—a commonality that had never existed except in the new imperialists’ avid imagination. Durell could feel the forces of ferment ready to boil over into bloody violence long before a decision might he made at the U.N. polls.

  Dendang looked quite different at night. He‘d had only a glimpse of its tangled huts and plank walks and crowded canals crammed with sampans, its maze of structures built out over me harbor. At night, the flickering glow of yellow lanterns softened the harsh outlines of poverty and added to the mystery of its byways and lanes. Yoko halted her little car near the somber ruins of a seventeenth-century Portuguese fortress on the waterfront.

  “We must walk from this point,” she said. “But are you sure you wish to proceed? Not many Europeans or Americans go into Dendang after sunset. I warn you, it may be dangerous.”

  “Everything is dangerous today,” he said.

  The hot night was filled with indescribable odors that moved on the slight Wind from the harbor. Only a few ships were in sight, where once there would have been a P & O liner, tankers, freighters, thick clusters of native fishermen and junks. Now only sampans and a few rusty, seagoing tugs of Dutch design remained. There was no sign as yet of Willi or her schooner or Malachy McLeod.

  The girl led him across a plank bridge above a canal crowded with moored barges and houseboats with thatched huts astern. Charcoal cookfires made the air a bit more aromatic, but under the cooking smells was the pungency of poor sanitation and the accumulated odors of hundreds of families crowded into tiny one-room dwellings built of gasoline cans, packing crates and rotten palm matting.

  As they crossed the bridge, they seemed to step backward several centuries, into a community built on a quaking maze of plank runways, shops, godowns, and the intricate connections of one structure supporting another. Kerosene lanterns shed a yellow glow over the tiny bridges and small windows of the native houses. Noise was everywhere: the music of samisens, the talk of old Chinamen playing mah-jongg on reed balconies, the tinkle of wind bells over teahouses, the calls of hawkers. Yoko Hanamutra walked with swift familiarity through the teeming crowds. If Durell’s presence caused a stir, he could not detect it. An old Chinese with a wrinkled face and wispy beard called to Yoko, and the nurse paused and bowed slightly and replied in quick Cantonese before she moved on. She spoke in English to Durell.

  “He was a patient of mine five years ago, and he never forgets. A very nice old man. He sells opium for a living—but it is controlled, and not against the law here. On my birthday, he always sends me tea-cakes."

  Durell made a mental map of the twists and turns they took through the maze of alleys, bridges and broadwalks. The route was intricate, and he Wondered if the girl was deliberately trying to mislead him. She would have to do better, even in this nightmarish community, to succeed. Other men might have been quickly lost here; but his training in mnemonics made the route routine. He noted a line of wash here, a peculiarly twisted pole there, a bridge with a carved Chinese lion’s head in gnarled wood, a teahouse with yellow banners hanging over the roof.

  “Do the police ever venture in here?” he asked.

  The girl smiled ironically. “Hardly ever. The Chinese are very law-abiding, though. They run their own affairs pretty much as they please.”

  “Or as Prince Ch’ing pleases?” he suggested.

  She bit her soft lip. “I suppose so. This way now.”

  There came a faraway explosion from the European quarter of the city. Nobody here in Dendang paid attention to it. Yoko paused and called familiarly to a family settled around a charcoal cookfire on their sampan, leaning over a bamboo bridge rail to see them. A man in blue denims and tattered shirt pointed down the canal. His eyes touched Durell’s in the dim light of oil lamps, and there was momentary hostility in his gaze. Durell touched Yoko’s arm.

  “Let’s go. I gather we’re almost there."

  Another bridge brought them to a cluster of larger thatched houses. Through the maze of byways he glimpsed the harbor again. Still no sign of Willi and her schooner, the Tarakuta. He hoped it showed up soon. Somewhere a gong reverberated softly. A radio erupted passionate propaganda from Djakarta, directed against Malaysia. The vituperative tone was clear, if the words were not. Then Miss Hanamutra halted.

  “The house is dark. It was never so before.”

  Durell pointed ahead. “That one? Rather elegant, for this neighborhood.”

  “You must know that Tommy’s American salary permitted his uncle and aunt to live like—like millionaires, here.”

  “Did they pay tribute to your local Mafia, too?”

  She smiled tightly. “To Prince Ch‘ing? I don’t know. The man in the sampan said they were here, that many people had been here, and now it is too silent, too dark, do you understand?”

  He felt the danger, too. The house stood apart from its neighbors, built of woven reed siding behind a low palisade of bamboo. The sluggish equatorial tide made a dim chuckling again
st the pilings that supported the structure. A lantern swung gently on a long pole over the open gate. No one was in sight.

  The girl shivered beside Durell. “I don’t like it. Perhaps it was a mistake to look for Tommy here.”

  “I think not. You admitted that Tommy knew about the snatch plan for Simon. And we can’t go back now, in any case. Look behind you, honey, but take it easy.”

  She turned too quickly. Durell had been aware of the dogged footsteps behind them. Yoko drew in a soft hissing breath.

  “Don’t look again,” he warned. “Do you know them?”

  “One, I saw’-took Simon from the hospital.”

  “Good.” He was pleased. Whoever took Simon didn’t want him found, and was adamant enough to have Durell and the nurse openly tailed. He said: “Let’s call on your Tommy’s phony parents.”

  He urged her through the bamboo gate. A paper fish totem for fertility blessings hung from a bobbing pole on the roof. The plank door was open. There was no light inside.

  The girl halted. “I am afraid—" She looked back a second time. “They must be Ch’ing’s men. We can’t go that way. And there is no other way out of here, unless we swim.”

  Durell said grimly: “We may do that, yet, before this delightful evening is over. Since there is no retreat, let‘s go inside."

  He led the way. As he stepped over the threshold, he turned slightly to look back down the alley without seeming to watch for the men behind them. Shadows moved briefly on the plank walk between the neighboring houses. As the girl moved by, he caught the fresh scent of her perfume. The persistence of Ch‘ing, the local boss, in the picture ever since his arrival in Pandakan was intriguing. He followed the girl into the house.

  He felt the emptiness at once. He could see nothing at first, but then, through the small windows facing the harbor —Mr. Tommy Lee‘s “parents” had a remarkable view of all the shipping in Pandakan—he saw the navigation lights and blinking channel buoys and the red winks atop the distant radio tower. A boat was moving in slowly past the breakwater; there were two masthead lights, the dim shape of a schooner. He hoped it was Willi and Malachy McLeod, obeying his radioed instructions to stand by in the harbor.