Assignment Bangkok (7 page)

He heard the sliding movement of feet outside the office door.

Durell held his hand out, palm down, to keep Benjie from moving. Her face was blank. He slid his gun free and took two silent steps toward the door. There was nothing more to hear. Turning, he saw that Benjie had taken an old Colt .45 revolver from her battered desk. There was a photo of Mike Slocum on the green steel files next to the closed door. Straw hair awry, a grin on his freckled face, he looked amused and careless. Durell looked at Benjie again; then he yanked open the door.

There was a squawk of alarm from the three men out there on the crowded stair platform above the loading dock. He glimpsed brown faces, heavy iron peaveys in their hands for controlling the logs in the canal. Two of them wore reddish sweatbands around their heads, from which their black hair stood up in thick shocks. The third man was a squat, muscular Chinese in a white Western suit; he wore horn-rimmed glasses.

Durell came out of the doorway fast, asking no questions. The nearest man with the iron peavey tried to raise it for a thrust into his belly with the barb. Durell kicked him low down and drove him back against the railing, which cracked apart, and the man fell through to the concrete floor below. The second armed man jabbed ineffectually with his peavey and screamed in a high, ululating voice, meaning to paralyze him. Durell smashed his gun across the other’s face. Blood spurted, a broken tooth flipped out.

Behind Durell, a gun roared. It was Benjie. She held it as if she meant business.

“Wait! Wait!” said the Chinese wearing glasses.

The man who had fallen from the landing was a dim lump of sprawled limbs on the concrete. The second man had dropped his peavey and was on his hands and knees, shaking his head. The Chinese said, “You ask no questions, you attack first—like the sneak imperialist exploiter of the people that you are!” He had backed a few steps down the stairs and held his hands out to show he was unarmed. He paid no attention to the two injured laborers. “Please, you must be reasonable!”

“Who sent you?” Durell asked. “Was it Mr. Chuk?”

“Ah, sir, Mr. Chuk is trying to help the oppressed working classes here, and he—”

“What do you want?”

“We came only to discuss with Miss Slocum the terms on which the men in the sawmill will go back to work. A hundred percent wage increase, fringe benefits for hospitalization, a pension to the wives of injured men—like Tan Yui Phan, who lost an arm tonight—and paid vacations, permission to allow the men to listen to political lectures on company time—”

“To hell with you,” Benjie said coldly. “Go back to Chuk and tell him I’ll close the place down before I let myself be blackmailed by terrorists.”

“You may not have to close it down, Miss Slocum. You have much dry timber here. The men smoke a great deal. A careless cigarette, a spark in the sawdust—”

Benjie’s voice was flat and deep. “Get out! Get out, before I ventilate you.”

“Of course, Miss Slocum. But the Board of Trade and Labor Relations will hear of your unwarranted attack on the poor workmen, your heartless treatment of the people . . .”

Benjie cursed like a man. In the dim light, she stood spread-legged, her big revolver against her thigh. She looked tough, competent, totally unfeminine. “You tell Chuk—”

“No,” said the Chinese sharply. His glasses glinted as he lifted his head. “I shall tell
you
, Miss Slocum. There are notes held by the Aw San Fu Commercial and Mercantile Bank, where you—or your brother—owe a matter of one hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars. It is Mr. Chuk who holds the controlling interest in that bank, and your notes—”

“Sam!”
Benjie shouted.

Durell was a split-second late for the warning. He felt a blow across his back with an iron peavey. The man with the broken mouth had picked himself up and swung hard. Pain was an explosion all across his shoulder-blades. He lost his footing, stumbled, went down, slammed into the Chinese, grabbed at the rail, and fell the rest of the way down the wooden staircase. The man with the peavey screamed and jumped down after him. Durell rolled, got one leg up, and caught the flying attacker in the belly. Pain burned through his left knee. He stepped back, the leg buckling momentarily; then it held him. The iron barb lay a few feet away. He caught it up, rammed it hard into his opponent’s body, and heard the bellowing roar of Benjie’s big gun. The stocky Chinese tumbled down the stairs in a tight ball. The man with the sweatband groaned and went down, holding his gut.

“Benjie?”

“I’m all right, Sam.”

“Come down here. Lights out. Lock the office.”

“Did you hurt your leg?”

“Just a bit. Hurry.”

She was not fast enough. He did not know where the other men came from. He could not count them all. They ran up the ramp from the canal in a dark, overwhelming wave. Benjie’s gun went off again, but he had no chance to help himself. Bodies came over him in a bruising, crushing torrent. Fists and clubs rained upon him, and he went down alongside the Chinese. He kicked at one face, and hopefully broke another’s neck with a karate chop, but there were too many of them. There was a roaring in his ears, and he thought he heard Benjie yelp in sudden anguish, and then he was picked up and hurried away among a thick knot of panting men. He still tried to struggle, but his arms and legs were tightly pinioned. They swept him across the sawmill yard toward the dark sheds where the saws were silent. They had Benjie, too. He heard her cursing like a man among the dark mass of their opponents.

Light blinded him. He was thrown down on a steel table. There was sweat and blood in his eyes, and he could not see well. Something began to whine, whipping up a deafening scream of spinning steel. He twisted his head. One of his captors grinned and pointed. The huge circular saw blade in the shed was going, not more than a few inches from his stomach.

“Wait,” he gasped.

He smelled teak sawdust and saw the loom of sawed logs around him, and steps going up into the darkness of high rafters overhead. One of the men laughed. There was a spate of Thai, the smells of sweat and garlic. The spinning saw was a huge steel blur before his eyes. He tasted blood in his mouth.

“Wait,” he said again.

“Yes?”

The reply was quiet under the whine of the roaring blade. The Chinese in the Western suit bent over him on the saw table. The man’s glasses were broken, and there was blood on his coat. He held his side, where Benjie’s bullet had nicked him. Durell looked for the girl, but the men who held him would not let him turn his head.

“Tell us,” said the Chinese, “Tell us everything.”

“About what?”

“Why did you go to Hu Gan Tranh’s house?”

“To hell with you,” Durell said.

The Chinese raised his voice against the scream of the saw. The steel table vibrated. “You wish to die?”

“Let me see Mr. Chuk again.”

“You had your opportunity to talk to Chuk. Now you talk to me. Why did you go to Hu’s house? Why did you speak to Hu’s nephew?”

“I’m a friend of the family,” Durell said.

The Chinese said, “I have no time to waste.” He nodded to one of the men standing out of Durell’s sight. The speed of the saw suddenly increased. The hands that pinned Durell to the table tightened, began to shove him toward the blurred arc of shining steel. He felt the hot wind from the revolving blade against his face. Suddenly he knew there was no hope. There was an implacability in the Chinese face that backed away from him.

Above the scream of the saw he heard the hooting of a siren, shouts, a series of shots. Feet shuffled uneasily around the saw table. The faces retreated. Several of the men who held him loosened their grip. Their faces wavered. The Chinese shouted angrily, but one spoke back, chattering with alarm. There were more shots. Footsteps pounded in the compound yard. Durell suddenly bunched his muscles and heaved up and away from the spinning saw. He broke free on one side, twisted, slid partly off the table. The hands that held him grabbed for new grips and slid away. He fell to the floor, ducked under the table, choking in the sawdust. There were more shots, more yells. The gang of sawyers around him ran away. Durell rested for a moment on hands and knees. His mouth ached where he had been clobbered by someone’s fist, but none of his teeth were loosened. He heard a shouted order, and the great saw blade slowly whined down to a moaning halt.

He heard Benjie say, “Oh, Sam . . .”

He stood up and looked into the muzzle of a gun pointed squarely between his eyes.

“You are under arrest, Mr. Durell.”

“What for?”

“Let us say you have been disturbing the peace.”

“I’m an innocent bystander.”

“Not so innocent, we think. Come, we’ll give you medical attention.”

“Stop pointing that gun at me, Major.”

“Of course. Sorry. You were inciting a riot?”

Durell said, “I do my best.”

The Thai wore a military uniform with the pips of his rank. A number of Thai soldiers stood about in the sawmill yard. Someone had put on all the floodlights. There was no sign of the wounded Chinese or his men. Durell was not surprised.

“You didn’t find the men who attacked Miss Slocum?” “We understand there was a labor disturbance here. The men are on strike, we believe. But your presence is another matter. And you have been quite active in Bangkok tonight, Mr. Durell. We are advised that your presence in Thailand is that of an undesirable alien. I am sorry.”

Durell walked out with the Thai officer through the wide doors near the concrete ramp to the
klong
. His ribs ached and the back of his shoulders felt as if he spent an intimate time with a medieval torture rack. Walking, he tested his left leg. It was all right, except for some new twinges.

“Where are we going?”

“You are under security arrest. Protective custody.” The Thai’s English was smooth and melodious. He was a small man with graying hair and a smooth, boyish face. He introduced himself as Major Luk Ban Long of the Thai Third Army Security Forces. His smile was apologetic. “I am truly sorry about the difficulties you have been having in our country, Mr. Durell.”

“You’re a long way from home. You’re supposed to be chasing guerrillas out of the mountains, Major Luk.”

“My work takes me everywhere. Come, please. I shall try to intercede for you.”

“With whom?”

“General Uva Savag. Do you know him?”

“That bastard,” Durell said.

“Then you have heard of him,” Luk said calmly.

Durell said, “He wiped out three villages up in Nan province, last year. Charged the tribesmen with being insurgents, without trial, just lined them up, men, women, and children, and shot them.”

“Do not mention that to him, Mr. Durell.”

Durell saw Benjie walking amid a squad of other Thai soldiers. The girl looked angry, but she gave him a wry, lopsided grin as they met at the main gate to the sawmill. “You’re pretty good, Cajun. A real tiger.”

“You’re not bad yourself, Benjie.”

“Are we under arrest?”

“For disturbing the peace.”

The road outside the sawmill led away from the
klong
. The gravel crunched under their feet. The moon was rising over the palms that lined the canal. Across the water were low, thatched houses, each with its own landing. The aii felt cooler. He favored his left leg again as he walked.

A small convoy of army trucks was parked just around the first bend in the road. A heavy limousine stood at the head of the column. As Major Luk hastened to open the door, the light went on inside and Durell stared at the cruelest face he had ever seen.

“General Uva Savag,” Major Luk murmured.

“I’ve had enough,” Durell said.

It was an hour later.

“We have not yet begun, Mr. Durell,” said Savag.

“I want the American Embassy, and the Ambassador.”

“What you will get is a quiet, unmarked grave, if you do not cooperate. You did not confide in the man you call Uncle Hu. You did not talk much to the man we know as Mr. Chuk. You found the young boxer, Tinh, dying of poison. You destroyed government property in removing a microphone from your hotel room.”

“Ah. It was you.”

“And this is enough for us to hold you forever, under our military laws,” Savag went on smoothly. “However, I believe you prefer to tell me your real mission in my country.”

“It’s to confirm your own job,” Durell told him.

“My job?”

“The insurgents in your frontier district seem to have a free hand.”

“My job is intelligence.” General Uva Savag paused. “As is yours. But there is something special about you, I think. It troubles me. I do not like to be troubled, eh? So you will be frank and cooperative with me.”

“I’ll give you the same answer I gave Chuk,” said Durell. “To hell with you.”

General Savag did not look like the ordinary Thai. There was none of the pleasant geniality of the Thai peo-pie in him. Somewhere in his ancestry was northern blood, Chinese or Mongol, from ancient conquerors of Indochina’s tortured land. Perspiration shone on his round, brown face. Unlike most Thais, he sported a moustache. His uniform was extremely neat, the brass polished, and he had a swagger stick laid across the top of an empty, immaculate desk.

A fan whirred noisily in the little office. They were in an empty barracks on the outskirts of Sampeng, not far from a highway from which came the rumble and racket of diesel trucks. The soldiers under Savag’s command were tightly disciplined, and they kept out of sight. A blue porcelain teapot steamed on the desk near Savag’s elbow. He drank noisily, and his obsidian eyes never left Durell’s face. He did not offer Durell any of the tea.

“Are you concerned about Miss Slocum?”

“Not particularly,” Durell said.

“But she is an old friend, I understand.”

“I don’t think she’s any man’s friend.”

“Ah. You do not like her? And her brother? A rascal, a whorechaser, improvident, living on his sister’s hard and persistent labor.”

“It’s not my problem.”

“Is not Mike Slocum your problem?”

“I’ve been looking for him,” Durell admitted. “He does odd jobs for me. We’re all trying to help your country—if Thailand is your country, General.”