Assignment Black Gold

by Edward S. Aarons

  Durell saw something huge flicker above him and heard the thrust and beat of rotors, and then he plunged between the drug-crazed man and Kitty. He used the edge of his hand to chop at the Apgak’s throat, arm, and belly. The man fell to his knees. Durell kicked him off balance, jumped, spread-eagled the man, slammed a knee into his groin, hammered at the open-mouthed face. It seemed to take forever to overcome the spastic drive that the drug gave his opponent. He heard yelling and then he felt hands on his back and Kitty called, “Sam, stop, it’s all right now! Lepaka is here!”

  His rage surprised him. But he let himself be pulled away from the Apgak, who was bleeding from nose and mouth and had a broken wrist and whose breath rasped like steam in the overheated air.

  “Stand quietly, Mr. Durell.”

  He straightened slowly. A Bell chopper had landed on the heliport deck. The machine looked like a giant, bubble-eyed insect, the Plexiglas glinting in the hot sunlight. Two of Colonel Komo Lepaka’s men, dressed in their khaki shorts and natty Sam Browne belts over dark shirts, held him.

  He turned and looked at the colonel.

  “A welcome surprise. What brought you here?”

  “It was simple to deduce where you had gone. Was this man trying to kill you?”

  “He was after Kitty. Better send one of your people to help Matt Forchette. He's been shot in the leg.” Durell flapped a hand to port. “Around the other side of the derrick.”

  “Mr. Forchette is being cared for. We will get him to the hospital in Lubinda.” Komo Lepaka still looked like a giant stork, his long thin legs sticking out from his neatly pressed shorts. “You may tell me what happened here.”

  Durell walked to Kitty. She sat up, her eyes still dazed. “They were trying to kill her. Not me, not Matty. The girl. Those were their orders.”

  “Why, Mr. Durell?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is the crew supposed to be aboard here?”

  Durell told him briefly what had happened since their arrival on the Lady. The colonel listened, his small, bony face impassive. The helicopters rotors idled in long, sweeping arcs over the forward deck. Durell helped Kitty to her feet and said, "Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m just beginning to get seared” She managed a crooked grin. “Just now, when it’s all over.”

  Lepaka said, “Did you find Mr. Cotton?”

  “Up there.” Durell pointed to the tiny cab on the derrick arm high overhead. “He’s dead. Murdered.”

  Lepaka listened to the rest of it with the same lack of emotion he had shown before. Now and then his eyes touched the Apgak who had been thrown flat on his face on the deck, arms and legs splayed, held there by his two men.

  “We will take care of everything, Mr. Durell. It seems to be a great mystery, does it not? Perhaps this man you captured will give us some answers.”

  Kitty said, “He’s piped to the eyes with luitha.”

  “That can be cured,” Lepaka said quietly. “Perhaps you should go to the helicopter now, Mrs. Cotton. Please accept my condolences.”

  Kitty looked up at Brady’s dead body dangling from the tiny cab of the derrick mast. Suddenly she began to quake, and she clung to Durell as if he were the only stable object in a world that had turned upside down.

  “Go to the chopper,” Durell said gently.

  “No. I’ll stay with you.”

  He saw that Lepaka and his two guards were only waiting to handle the Apgak lying on his face before them. The colonel shrugged and knelt very carefully beside the man.

  “Butithi?” He gave the last syllable a clicking sound with his tongue, in the Lubindan manner. Then he spoke in English. “Butithi, I know you. You work for Madragata, correct? How many people did you kill here?”

  The man spat. He said something in Apgak and Lepaka looked up at Kitty, who still did not understand what was about to happen. Then Lepaka nodded to one of his men, who took a military knife from a scabbard at his hip, knelt, looked into the prisoner‘s eyes, and cut off one of the man’s thumbs. Blood spurted on the rust-streaked deck. The man‘s arm did not jerk, and he did not make a sound.

  “How many, Butithi?” Click. “As many as there are fingers on your hand?”

  “None.”

  “Ah. You found your tongue before you lost it. Where are the Americans who were aboard?”

  “They were not harmed.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They were taken ashore. They will be kept as hostages against the government. We will collect many millions in ransom for each of them.”

  Komo Lepaka said, “You will collect a rhinoceros horn up your intestines if you think so. Where can they be found?”

  “I do not know.”

  The policeman cut off another finger. The Apgak squinted a little this time, staring at the long digit of flesh lying on the deck before his face. More blood dribbled from his hand. Durell looked at Kitty. There was nothing he could do to stop what was happening. He knew what would be the end of it, eventually, and he did not know if she knew it; but she would not move away. She stared at the Apgak as if he were a deadly captured snake.

  Two more fingers were cut oil before Komo Lepaka was satisfied, A smell came from the captured man that was difficult to define. Whatever drug he had been given was not wearing off; it apparently rendered the pain tolerable. It seemed to Durell that it would have been better to Wait a few hours until the man could respond normally; but he could no-t interfere. He was not sure he wanted to, when he thought of how the man had tried, against all odds, to reach Kitty and kill her.

  “Butithi,” Lepaka said with a click of his tongue. “Butithi, when did you come to this place?”

  “In the night, Colonel.”

  “Ah. And you killed Mr. Cotton up there?”

  “No.”

  “Your companions did it, then?”

  “No. He was dead.”

  “When was he dead.”

  “He was dead when we came here and took the crew away.”

  Durell interrupted to tell Lepaka of the searched and torn-up offices. Lepaka listened to him and watched him with his hooded, muddy eyes that gave nothing away. Finally, he turned back to the prisoner.

  “Butithi, you heard all that?“

  “I heard it, you capitalistic running dog.”

  “Who did the searching?”

  “We did not."

  “You did not go into the offices?"

  “We were waiting, we were left here, the three of us, to wait for and kill the white girl.”

  “Why?”

  “We were told to do so. We are disciplined.”

  “How did you know she would come here?”

  Lepaka looked angry, waiting for an answer. The prisoner said, “I am not told everything. We were ordered to wait aboard the platform, and when she carne, to kill her.”

  Lepaka stared at Kitty. “Do you know why the Apgaks have suddenly chosen you for a victim?”

  “No.”

  “Brady told you nothing, gave you no clues?”

  “None.”

  Lepaka turned again. “Butithi, you knew there was no escape for you? You knew that when your comrades left you here, to kill and murder, that you would never leave this place alive?”

  “We knew, Komo. Yes, we knew.”

  “You wished to die?”

  “No man wishes to die.”

  “But you were given luitha?”

  “It helps.”

  “Then you will die, Butithi.”

  “I wait.”

  “Do you know what your noble leader, Madragata, the hireling of the Maoists, did this morning, Butithi? It may explain why he left you, in particular, to do this work of suicide.”

  The captive waited. He had rolled over on his back, his face upturned to the sun, his eyes wide open, the retinas burning in the glare. He said nothing. He moved one hand up before his face briefly, to look at the bloody stumps where his fingers had been amputated, and then he lowered his han
d and let the blood run slowly over his naked, sweaty chest.

  “Butithi?”

  “I hear you, traitor to our people.”

  “Butithi, your noble leader this morning, to keep us busy and our attention distracted from this place, attacked your village and killed your wife and three of your children and many others. And also Senhor Fernandez, the Portuguese shopkeeper there, and his wife and children, too.”

  “Good.”

  “Do you understand me, Butithi?"

  “It is good that Senhor Fernandez is dead. He was a colonialist, imperialist oppressor of our people.”

  “And your wife and children, Butithi? What were they?”

  “You lie, Komo.”

  “You know that I never lie.” Lepaka paused. “Have you anything more to tell me?”

  “I wish to die.”

  “You shall.”

  Lepaka took the bloody knife from his patrolman and knelt beside the prisoner. He thrust the point of the blade under Butithi’s left ear, twisted it, then cut across the man‘s throat in a swift movement and stepped back as the blood spurted and gouted from the severed artery, pumping like a small fountain of thick bright red into the hot, sunlit silence. Lepaka continued to work with the knife, handling-it deliberately, expertly cutting through to the bone of the spinal column and around to the base of the neck. He did not sweat or show any effort at the butchering work. The body jerked several times, the limbs twitched, the dead eyes rolled. When the head was completely severed Lepaka stood up and threw the knife overboard and turned back to the patrolmen, who watched what had been done with no expression on their faces.

  “Take the head back to his village. Put it on a pole in front of his house, and leave it there.”

  Durell suddenly realized that Kitty Cotton had buried her face against his chest and had not watched the execution.

  Chapter 10.

  Hobe Tallman said, “It’s been a bad morning for Lubinda. Madragata’s people slip in and out of the city like ghosts. Today is their worst work yet. Kitty, I have some air tickets for tonight’s flight to Luanda, and you can transfer from there for São Tomé and then go on to Lisbon. I can charge it to the company’s expense account. Hell, we don’t have much cash left, but there’s enough for that. I’ll make all the arrangements about Brady, don’t give it a thought." Hobe was very much the efficient executive. It was a side of the man that Durell had not seen before. “I’ll take care of everything, Kitty. You just do as I say. Get out of here while you can.”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “I want to stay with Sam.”

  “But, Kitty—”

  "Brady worked for Sam—or Sam’s people, anyway. I think I should stick it out. Anyway, I have no other place to go. I don’t have anyone, anywhere, in the whole world. And I have work to do in Lubinda.”

  “You poor child, you’ll get yourself killed,” Hobe said.

  “I’ll take my chances with Sam.”

  They were in Hobe’s office at the oil company dock. A pall of dark smoke drifted in the sky above the low jungled hills to the west. The air conditioner in Hobe’s office worked only fitfully, and the man’s pink-brown face was shiny with sweat. Still, Hobe looked neat and tidy, like a city man on his way to the commuter train. He looked at Durell and said urgently, “Take her out of it, Sam.”

  “I can’t. I’m not sure I want to.”

  “I’ve already cabled the home office about the kidnapped men, and I’ve ordered all the rest of our people to stay close to the compound. I think there’s going to be a revolution in this country any hour. We only have a few weapons on hand, and Lepaka won’t give us more. Says he can’t spare them. You don’t have to worry about Matt the Fork, though. I hear he’ll be up and around and out of the hospital in a couple of days. I’ve taken care of all that, too. But Kitty—”

  “What would they want to steal from your office out on the rig?” Durell asked quietly.

  “I don’t know, I can’t even guess.”

  “Did you know that Brady was out there?”

  “I certainly did not. No one was authorized to go out to the Lady except Matt and myself.”

  “You didn’t take him out there?”

  “I told you, no. Absolutely not.”

  “Then the only people who can tell us about Brady’s death,” said Durell, “are the maintenance crew who were on the Lady. And the Apgaks have them.”

  Hobe said, “Poor devils.”

  “I’d like a list of the men who were aboard. Brady was murdered about two days ago, before the Apgak attack.”

  Hobe’s eyes grew round. “What does that mean? None of my men are murderers, Durell.”

  “That remains to be seen. They surely knew about Brady’s death—one of them knew, anyway.”

  Hobe grunted. “Matt can give you the list. I didn’t assign men to their specific jobs. Matt took care of that.”

  Durell felt frustrated. “What about your records that were destroyed’? Why would anyone ransack your office on the Lady and take away some of the records and destroy the rest?”

  “I can’t even guess,” the man said helplessly. “Those papers can’t be replaced, you know. They were highly confidential and not in duplicate. You don’t understand the oil business, Durell. It’s cutthroat competition, and trade data is one of the most highly guarded commodities on the agenda. It could have been a competing company, anxious to know what we had achieved here. Maybe one of the crew was an industrial spy, say, for G.P. Gina. They originally wanted these offshore leases real bad." Hobe looked pleased that he had come up with a plausible theory. “I’m sure that was it. Or maybe Brady destroyed the records himself.”

  “Why would he do that?” Durell asked.

  Hobe shrugged impatiently. “I can’t begin to guess right now. Everything’s turned upside down. Did you know that the Apgaks killed Henrique, my servant, out at the bungalow? Put a‘ spear through his belly end pinned him to the back door and left him there to die, very slowly. I’m sorry, Kitty, but you have to face the truth around here. If you saw that poor old fellow with his guts hanging out—”

  “I saw enough on the rig,” Kitty said flatly.

  “Then you ought to go home.”

  “I’ll still stay with Sam. How is Betty?”

  “Hysterical, naturally." Hobe put his palms out as if thrusting something away. He seemed defenseless, suddenly. “Betty is in the next room. She’s been drinking too much. I don’t know what she’s up to, she‘s not quite herself. I want her to fly home tonight, too. With you, Kitty.”

  Then Betty’s voice came from the office door behind them. “I’m not going no place, you sad shit. Hobart Mandrake Tallman! Wish you were a magician, at that.”

  “Betty, please."

  “Go to hell.” Her face was loose, her eyes uncertain, her hair disheveled. She looked at Durell. “Hi, Sam baby. You bastard. You prefer the little Puritan maid, hey? Gives you kicks to break her down?”

  “Betty,” Hobe said again.

  “You.” Her voice was savage whenever she addressed her husband. “You screwed up everything again. I heard you call the home office, begging them to quit, to give up the job, saying there’s no oil, nothing just killings and dirt. You want to fail again, don’t you?” Her voice lifted to just below a scream. “That’s what you do best—fail at your work, fail with people, fail in bed with me. I do everything in the books to turn you on, and you’re just a limp little twiddly, all the time, you—you failure!"

  “Take it easy," Durell intervened.

  “It’s all right,” Hobe said. “She's just drunk and homesick. Homesick for the gutter where I found her.”

  “Yeah. Right on. And where did you bring me’? To this mess, this black gutter, where poor old Henrique gets his guts pulled out and everybody caters to this—this”—she swung to Kitty, who watched her soberly—“this prissy-faced excuse for a woman, who picked poor Brady to death. So you did rue a big favor, Hobart M
andrake the Non-Magician Tallman! Big oil man, ’way up on the management level, lots of bread in the old oil, the whole world’s swimming in it and you’re going to pump it out right here in Lubinda, terrific stuff, sweet oil—”

  Hobe slapped her. “Shut up.”

  The sound of the slap punctuated the end of her tirade. She stared helplessly at her smaller husband, a. tall woman just beginning to get flabby around the edges, her big eyes suddenly swimming with tears, eyes that were accustomed to the blue sparkle-makeup of nightclubs. The tears came silently, running down her suddenly ravaged face, streaking the pancake around her nostrils.

  The drops trembled in the fine golden hairs along her upper lip, clinging to the corners of her mouth.

  She gestured helplessly.

  “Oh, Hobe,” she whispered as she wept. “Hobe, it was all just a dream, wasn’t it? A beautiful, silly dream."

  Hobe Tallman turned away from her.

  “Drunk,” he said to Durell. “Just as I said. She’s drunk.”

  Chapter 11.

  Durell took Kitty with him to the Lopodama Hotel. The city was quiet, the Pequah’s shops were all shuttered, and the open-‘air market on the waterfront was swept clean as if by an invisible, ominous wind. The heat and the silence made the afternoon seem intolerable. All the vagrant odors that clung to a tropical city were magnified into a sullen miasma. He asked the girl if she wanted to go back to Brady’s shop and her apartment for anything. She shook her head and said she didn’t ever want to see it again. There was nothing in it she wanted.

  His hotel room was shadowed, fractionally cooler than the city’s streets. The girl sat down on the edge of the bed land folded her hands in her lap and considered her fingers as if she had never seen them before. He was concerned about her. Perhaps she was thinking of the amputations on the captured Apgak before Lepaka had cut off the man’s head. Durell left her where she sat and went silently around the room and quickly and deliberately tore out every microphone bug he knew was there. The girl finally watched him, but her eyes were still apathetic.