Assignment - Sulu Sea (16 page)

Malachy said; “Yes, Tommy Lee decoded the warning of her
arrival. I hated to be left in charge just then—I’d planned a field trip
with Willi for some rare marine specimens."

Durell watched the horizon. “Do you trust Tommy Lee?”

“Why not? He’s been first secretary for seven years.”

“Ever check out his alleged family in Dendang?”

“His papers were handled routinely. Nobody foresaw pressure
on half the local Chinese from Peiping.“

“Why should this pressure have come just now?" Durell wondered.
“There must be a connection. They must have snatched the sub, and whatever
their method, it worked, or else how did Holcomb wind up raving and dying on
the beach?” He turned to study the rake of the Tarakuta’s masts. His boyhood
had been spent at sailing, from shrimp boats in the Gulf to racing sleek New
York sloops on Long Island Sound while at Yale. He did not like the look of
this sky. But then, he didn’t know these waters as a sailor, although his
instinct warned him of Weather trouble nearby. He turned back to Malachy. “The
Jackson
may seem like a big fish
to hide in these waters, but she never came out of the Bandjang Passage,
Malachy. And no one has heard her radio, or sonar, since the day she vanished.
Or was it at night?”

“Night, at 2210 hours, Tuesday, the twelfth,” McLeod said
briefly. “It was a routine check, planned when her cruise was first
charted. She was to call the Pandakan consulate by code to report her entry
into the shipping channel and the ETA off Pandakan Harbor. She wasn’t making
port, of course. Officially she was not in these waters, considering the local political
crisis. It would have iced the cake for our grabby new colonial powers down
here, to announce the arrival of a U.S. nuclear sub.”

Durell studied the sky again. “Was that the night the local
terrorists bombed out the Pandakan radio station?”

“Why, yes.”

“Was the
Jackson
using the station as a homing beacon?”

“I don’t know. Her inertial guidance system—”

“In these waters?" Durell indicated the shallow green
channels approaching the shores of Bangka. The horizon was harsh and hot.
“Old-fashioned dead reckoning with radar on the bridge would be safer. Maybe
the sub‘s captain thought so, anyway. He‘d be running on the surface at night, in
these shoals. And it’s odds on he used the Pandakan beacon as a
direction-finder—until it was bombed out, by happy coincidence.”

Malachy was aggressive. “What are you driving at?”

“I don’t believe in coincidence, that’s all. Was another radio
on the air that night? The local terrorists, perhaps?”

“Sure, the clandestine guerilla station began blabbing propaganda
the minute the civil radio tower went out.”

“And where is this guerilla station?”

“Anywhere on any one of these three hundred islands. I begin
to see what you mean, Cajun.”

“Right. Let’s look at some charts.”

There were U.S. Navy and Royal Admiralty charts in the big
cabin amidships of the schooner. As expected, below-decks was maintained with
the spit-and-polish of the rigging and gear above. Durell sat on a cushioned
bench before a mahogany chart table and shook out a cigarette and unrolled the
chart Malachy brought from the rack. Willi came in and sat silently, watching.
Her eyes looked abnormally bright in the shadowed cabin. Away from the breeze
on deck, the heat was suffocating; the little fans did little to dispel it.
Durell found himself sweating in places he had never sweated before, and his
waistband rapidly became sodden where the moisture collected at his belt. The
deck underfoot vibrated with the thud of the diesel cylinders. Now and then the
Malay boy in the bow called out the depth of water in a soft, amused voice, and
the schooner began to weave and twist as they entered new and sinuous channels.

The charts only proved what he had seen with his own eyes.
He had sailed many waters of the world, from the Gulf of Mexico to the North
Sea waters off Holland, but this area of drowned sea and mangrove islet, of
coral reef and brackish swamp, presented unfamiliar problems. All the depths on
the chart were questionable; the channels had no navigation aids such as buoys
or lights. And many of the channels were marked as obsolete or nonexistent or
of unknown depth of water and bottom.

There came a hail from above, and a Malay pattered down on
bare feet and spoke in rapid dialect to Malachy, who immediately arose and
left. “Excuse me, Cajun. I’m wanted above.”

“Is it trouble?"

Willi answered for the red-bearded man, who was gone instantly.
“Bangka Island where we buried your friend Holcomb is ten minutes off. We‘re on
the shore opposite Ch‘ing’s tin port. But he’s touchy about trespassers—like
with guns."

“Ch’ing gets more interesting by the moment.”

“We have digging tools," Willi went on, “and I’ve a
face mask, fins and tanks for you. Can you skin-dive?”

“I’ve had a little practice, here and there.”

“But you've never gone ashore on a Pacific island like
Bangka. You’ll find it interesting; maybe unnerving.” Her big eyes
appraised him. Her flimsy bikini emphasized the long, firm taper of
her legs. Sunlight bounced off the water through the cabin ports and made the
fine down of hair on her limbs gleam with soft gold. She got up with a
free, easy swing of hip and thigh. “Change in the cabin aft. Be ready in
five minutes.”

He halted her. “Willi, you're angry about something."

Her smile failed miserably. “It’s old Joseph. He’s never done
anything like this to me, before.”

“What’s he done?”

“He spoke to you about me, didn’t he?”

He said carefully: “Yes, and you resent being treated as a
child. You‘re not a child, Willi. I can see that.”

Her direct gaze made a cool shiver go down his spine. Her
eyes changed color and reflected the lime green of the sea. A man could happily
drown in them, he decided. She said:

“Well, let’s not complicate it with silly words. Hurry, get your
diving gear and swim suit.”

The cove lay beyond a long coral barrier reef, and past where
the mangroves sank their many claw-like roots into clods of mud, there was a
long, curving stretch of aching white beach, with an arc of coco palms just
above the pelagic litter. It seemed idyllic. He could hear birds and monkeys from
the jungle inland. There was a high spine to the island, the cone of a small,
old volcano, and a permanent cloud hung motionless there, attached to the dark
peak by a thin streamer. He knew the cloud would never change its shape or size
as long as the seasonal trade winds blew; it would tower huge and blinding, day
after day, and under it would be rain forest, damp and steamy and incredibly
hot. One step out of the cloud shadow might move you from its gray inferno into
harsh desert.

Again there was a distant bombardment of jets from the cobalt
sky. The admiral apparently had set off firecrackers under the search
teams’ tails, or Mr. Sukarno was getting bolder. The sun was a venomous,
glowing ball of yellow incandescence now, glimmering, overheated, making a haze
on the uncertain horizons. The anchor rattled and hooked on the bottom and the
Tarakuta swung to a halt, her engine silent. A murky white roil mixed with
gassy bubbles came up from the bottom.

Outside the cabin, Willi met him, wearing gear and her vestigial
bikini. She moved with soft grace, and with only a curt nod and a wave of her
tanned arm, she dropped overboard with scarcely a splash.

“I hate to see her go like this,” Malachy murmured. “I’d go
along, except for a punctured eardrum. When you dig up Holcomb, make Willi keep
away. The crabs might have worked on him.”

“Does she usually swim instead of using the dinghy?”

“She’s found some nice shell specimens along here. But Ch’ing
doesn’t like her prowling and ordered her away twice, and last time he took a
potshot at the boat. So Willi swims in now to keep from being spotted. Go on,
Cajun. She moves fast.”

Durell nodded and let himself fall overboard.

This pale green mist of wavering shapes, beautiful and terrifying,
was Willi Panapura’s world. He swam slowly after her along the coral reef,
through clouds of angelfish, groupers, a small squadron of sharks, an eel,
lizard fish, threadfish and Moorish idols, flickering like
rainbows around his face plate. The pure blues of the water ranged from azure to
a smoke-gray. The sea life along the phantasmagorical coral Walls ranged from
gorgonians and starfish to sea urchins and crabs, while outside the
lagoon he spotted the torpedo greys of barracuda, an albacore, a flick of
a wahoo’s tail and, among the coral caves, a rich yield of squid, sea slugs, a
giant clam, an army of crabs—all in a delicate natural balance with the streamers
of seaweed and algae floating in the pellucid water. Willi swam on, at
home among the flashing, savage life about them. It was like a twilight-green
Fourth of July fireworks. Once through the opening in the reef to the
cove, the bottom shelved rapidly upward to the shore. Sunlight made a smooth
blanket of the water surface above them. Willi turned and beckoned him on. Entering
the cove was like floating into a secret grotto, a place for love. It was
too bad, he thought grimly, they were going to dig up a dead man.

They stood up side by side in brackish salt water that was
hip-deep and considered the littered white beach, the long, fuming line of
thundering combers, the suggestive curve of the coconut palms. The girl was
like a pagan sea goddess, hugged and caressed about the waist by the milky sea.
But her eyes were hard and calm and careful. She kicked off her flippers,
unslung her oxygen tank, and slung the gear in the crook of her left arm.
Durell carried the small folding shovel.

“It was just under that double palm,” the girl said. “We were
hasty, burying him. There was Simon to consider, you see; he was so badly hurt
by
 
Holcomb, who was really amok with his
fear and his own injuries—”

“Don’t think about that,” Durell ordered.

He was struck forcibly by the odors of the beach. It was nothing
soft or muted, but a violent clash of sea and jungle, a rich and pungent
iodine, the reek of tidal life from rotting vegetation and crabs and palm rats,
or the gas from a Portuguese man-o’-war. Woven mercifully through it was the sea’s
ozone and the gentle sweetness of copra. Willi seemed reluctant to go on up the
beach. He led the way out of the water. The heat was stunning. Beyond the sand,
in the fringe of palms, he heard monkeys chattering and the calls of strange
birds, all undertoned by the endless, thunderous monotone of the sea. A misty
spray enveloped everything in an unreal, steamy haze. There was no sign of
humans, except for a single set of jeep tracks that circled the cove from the
east. Durell studied them to see if the jeep had halted near Holcomb’s grave,
but it was impossible to tell.

“If this is where you buried him," be told Willi, “stay
away a bit, while I dig. I think Holcomb’s body has been moved. But if so, then
we’ll know somebody thought it important enough to move his remains, and that
will merit consideration.”

She spoke coldly. “How can you be so callous? He was your
friend. When he died, he appealed to you for help.”

"It’s a tough world for the losers,” he said
flatly. “There’s no room for sentiment in my business, Willi.”

She drew a deep breath. “Are you trying to make me hate you,
to believe you are truly cruel?"

Her scanty swim suit emphasized the deep cleavage of her
breasts, her narrow waist and flare of soft hips held by a wisp of blue
cloth. She looked angry, and stubbornly pinned up her hair, loosened by the
swim. She was like a goddess charging him with some ancient, primeval crime.

He began to dig with anger and vehemence. How could he tell
this golden girl who belonged to sunlight and the sea what his life was like?
His world was dark and shadowy, a place of sudden death and terrible treachery.
It demanded infinite patience, loneliness, and a readiness for terror,
all to procure a bit of information here, a. statistic there, for the computers
and analyzers in Washington to synthesize into a balance of weight and
counter-weight in a world tenderly poised on the brink of self-destruction.

Someone had to do the work, but why did he stay with it? No
bugles rang for victory, no trumpets blew for battle. There was no sound for
victory except the hiss of a knife, or a sigh of relief at danger averted. He
had been in this world long enough to know it set him apart from the sun and
sea in which this girl lived.

The dream of two old men could never come to pass. This was
a century of technical miracles, not victories of the spirit.

His shovel grated on coral. He had been very careful as he
dug. The enormous, blinding sun brought out a trembling sweat. He looked up and
saw a signal flashing from the Tarakuta, the quick, imperative blink of a
mirror reflecting the sunlight. The girl followed his gaze and frowned,
drew in an alarmed breath.

“We have to go back. It means somebody is coming—a party of
Ch’ing’s men, probably. They‘ve chased me before. That’s Malachy’s signal that
they can see someone.”

Durell said: “Holcomb’s body isn’t here. Are you sure this is
where you buried him?”

“It’s the spot. Maybe a bit to the left, but—we’ve got to run
for it, Samuel.”

“Not yet.” He kept digging. “Better swim now, Willi.”

The
Tarakuta
was
moving, her anchor up again, sailing slowly east just
ofi
the barrier reef. The girl stood beside him, swinging her mask impatiently,
nervously.

“Samuel, please. I’m not going to leave you here
alone."

 
“I'm not going back
to the schooner, Willi. But you’d better, if there’s trouble coming, as you
say.”

“I won’t leave you,” she said stubbornly.