Assignment - Sulu Sea (24 page)

He felt a fear in him he had not known before. He knew the
full meaning of the words of the Chinese technician off the freighter. Peiping
would have sent men who knew how to handle the A-3 missiles, young scientists
who had been trained in Moscow before the split between the two empires. He
could understand the desperate choice faced by Prince Ch’ing. Failure could not
be tolerated. Out of defeat, some form of victory had to be snatched. He felt a
twist of sweaty fear go through him again. Somewhere in this place there was a
warhead taken from the Jackson. If Ch’ing had his way, the warhead would be
armed and in seconds, there would be nothing left of this place, nothing left
of the island but a vast, mushrooming cloud. . . .

Fong and his four men worked their way silently through the
wrecked garden with Durell. Under Fong’s wide coolie hat, the Hakka’s face was
grim. His Sten was held on a taut shoulder strap. His wet face glistened in the
faint glow of the stone lanterns, and he whispered an order to his men. The wind
had died. There was only the sodden hiss of the rain and the distant, eerie
boom of the island surf, breaking over reefs in smothering foam.

 
Fong pointed ahead,
spoke again to his four men, and spoke to Durell. “You see the—how you say it?—the
moat? It is usually dry, but tonight it is filled with water. And this is
good.” He touched one of the Hakka. “Hui Chi says we can cross without sound,
because otherwise branches in the moat make much crackling noise to. warn
guards on the wall. They already know something bad happens at the compound, they
see the fighting and hear the guns. They will he very nervous, ready to
shoot.”

“Then how do we get in?”

“Hui Chi knows a way.”

A torch flickered overhead. The ripping sounds of Sten
guns still came from the prison compound below. Durell held in his mind an
image of Malachy, falling as he ran through the wire gate. He could not
find Willi anywhere in his mental picture of the scene. He looked back
through the rain at the lagoon. The
Andrew
Jackson
, with the big 727 on her sleek sail, seemed unharmed. And now he
could hear dim shouts of jubilation and saw the movement of men dancing with
wild relief at their rescue from the compound. amid still he could not pick out
the figures of Malachy or Willi.

Now Ch’ing would know that his attempt to hijack the submarine
had failed. The alternative would be considered, even at this moment. He felt
it was hopeless. He could not get into the fort in time.

The water flooding the moat was filled with
broken tree limbs, a thick layer of torn foliage, and a dead man who had
somehow slipped from the top of the wall above and broken his neck. Fong went
into the moat first, wading with his snubby gun held high. The water only
reached to the Hakka’s chest. There was little to be seen for a few moments as
Fong, muttering softly to himself, felt his way along the moss-grown coral base
of the wall. Durell checked his impatience. Three centuries of tropical weather
had deposited a matting of vines that defied all attempts to cut and destroy
it. Fong meant to make good use of it.

Afterward, Durell thought he could not have gotten far without
the Hakka. They climbed up side by side, clinging to the rough vines, and just
as Durell reached the top, one of Ch’ing’s thugs appeared and yelled and
slammed down at his head with a rifle butt. At that moment, Durell could only
try to duck out of range. But Fong managed to free one hand to grab the
sweeping thrust of the gun butt, and then the Hakka yanked hard and the enemy
lost his balance. The man pitched headlong into the moat below, with a long, wailing
scream.

Fong grinned and scrambled over the top of the wall with Durell.
“This way now, very quickly, please. I know where the fat monster is hiding.”

They ran down a flight of old steps. ‘Durell wished
fleetingly he could have glimpsed Malachy’s figure rising from the
tumble of fighting in the prison compound behind them; and he wished,
too, he could have kept Willi free of the danger zone. He was filled with
a raging anger that was like the storm sweeping the islands. When half a dozen
armed men trotted across a courtyard, he was only just able to check his
trigger finger on the Sten and throw up a hand to halt Fong’s men. They
ducked into a stone archway, heavy with age, and Pong opened a door to lead the
way into the central building.

Stepping from the weight of the warm rain and threat of Wild
new Winds into the luxurious rooms beyond was uncanny. It was like moving
through a movie dissolve, an unreal curtain that divided violence and tumult
with soft silks and gray curling incense and the rich opulence of very ancient
treasures. Ch’ing had a taste for art that was reflected in the quiet
jade pieces, the silken wall paintings, the carpets and Tang furniture, the
priceless porcelains from the time of the
Mings
, the
ancient scrolls in glass cases. Perfume cloyed the air from old bronze censers
on heavy, black teak stands.

Durell was driven forward by his urgency. With Fong and his
men, they looked like ragged creatures lost in a palace of luxury, dripping
rain from their clothes, their snubby Stens weaving this way and that like the
heads of angry cobras. Fong gestured and they ran across the entry room and up
a wide flight of carpeted stone steps toward the sound of anxious voices
above. Within the solid walls built three centuries ago by Portuguese
adventurers, the storm might as well not exist, Durell thought. No wind or rain
could touch this place or disturb the Oriental peace of these rooms. Ch’ing
must have reveled in his security here, in his mastery over the Hakka workers
who labored in his sluice mines and loaded his ships. . . .

A girl’s sudden shriek of pain echoed from all directions as
Durell and Fong, with the other Hakka men behind them, came to the head of the
stairs. Footsteps ran down a hidden corridor nearby. The place was as much of a
labyrinth as the pleasure houses in Dendang.

A thin voice spoke in Mandarin, a woman‘s voice, old and
quavering, but filled with a dripping malice and anger that reminded
Durell of the old harridan he had encountered in Fishtown. He touched Fong
lightly on the shoulder, asked a question.

Fong shook his head under his wet coolie hat. “I do not understand
them. They speak of destroying everything—the island itself. The old
woman-—Ch’ing’s mother—loves life too much. She argues against it and says the
girl will speak. The girl knows something of you, and they question her. Her
name is Paradise, I think.”

It was not beyond Ch’ing, Durell thought, to use the A-3 warheads
to blow Bangka off the map. His hunch had been right about the technician they
had intercepted from the Peiping freighter. But there were others already here,
apparently. Footsteps hammered away in response to a command from beyond the
next doorway. The stairway where he crouched with Fong and his ragged men was
dimly lighted. No one came their way. Yet a trick of acoustics made the voices
beyond seem louder than normal, even though a heavy door, black with age,
barred their way. He pressed his fingers lightly against the barrier. It
did not move. There was an old iron handle, pitted with rust, and he tested the
lock, and then Fong touched his shoulder carefully. The Hakka’s face glistened
with sweat.

“They question the girl, Paradise, about you. The old woman—the
one Who claims royalty in her blood-—she knows how to hurt girls. I will kill
them both.”

“No, I want Ch’ing alive." Durell rubbed a hand over
his mouth. “We'll need Ch‘ing later. He mustn’t be killed.”

He knew that without Prince Ch’ing nothing could be proved
in the eyes of the world. Americans had been killed and tortured, outright
piracy had to be aired, and there had been interference with the Pandakan plebiscite.
Without Ch’ing, the balance of propaganda could be twisted any way, even to
charge American intrusion.

Fong could not whisper translations of Ch’ing’s words. Apparently
there were technicians in the next room who were able to discuss the complexities
of arming an A-3 warhead. But one of the missiles, Fong whispered, was in a
back courtyard.

There was no time left, then. When the girl named Paradise
screamed again, Durell turned the door handle and the heavy panel creaked
inward. He ran forward with Fong.

A pistol cracked, an automatic rifle ripped the fabric
of the air. Fong sucked in air with a hiss of confusion. They had not burst
into a room, as expected, but found themselves on a high stone gallery
overlooking what had once served the old fort as a central council chamber.
Below, on the flagstone floor, was a long teak table inlaid with fruitwood
and ivory, with high, carved chairs neatly ranged around it. A huge photograph
of Mao hung like a red and yellow banner over the president’s chair. There was
a massive cabinet behind this that dated back to the old Portuguese
merchant-adventurers. On a dais before the cabinet was a
thronelike
affair, with the massive, enormous figure of Prince Ch’ing seated before
a small, angry, and anxious group of Chinese in civilian clothes. They were not
Oceanic Chinese, to judge by their Peiping-style suits.

On the floor at Ch’ing’s feet was the girl, Paradise, stripped
to her skin, her back a series of clawed welts. The old woman, grotesque in a
gorgeous blue and gold brocaded gown of heavy silk, stood over the tormented
girl like a vicious crone.

And there were a dozen or more armed men alerted and ranged
against the walls of the big room. One of these, more ready to react than the
others, had been staring directly up at the gallery where Durell and Fong and
the other Hakka erupted. The man’s trigger finger tightened in spasmodic
reflex.

The racket and clamor of the shots and ricocheting slugs stunned
the senses. There was a thin shriek from the old woman, and a hoarse order from
Ch’ing as his vast weight lurched upward in surprise. Fong grunted and
staggered and caught the iron rail of the gallery and squeezed off a long, raking
burst with his Sten. The other Hakka men triggered their guns with him,
spraying the scene below. Men shouted, fell, turned awkwardly, faces upward.
Durell called to Fong to follow and swung along the balcony at a running crouch
and started down a flight of narrow stone steps built into the wall.
There was no railing. There were
crashings
and
shrieks and splintering sounds and another burst of fire in reply from
below. The old woman fell away from the naked body of the girl as if kicked.
She skittered awkwardly, her silk gown jumping and jerking as if self-animated,
a horrible puppet dragged and punched across the floor. She was dead long
before the bullets finished hitting her.

“Fong, this way!” Durell shouted.

But there was only a falling body, a toppling bundle of arms
and legs, spilling blood and brains from under a head shattered by a dozen
slugs. The wide-brimmed straw hat of the coolie fluttered like a broken
bird to the floor below. Fong's body made an ugly sound as it struck the stone.
At the same moment, Ch’ing turned with a sign to two of the Peiping men and
vanished through a doorway beside the mahogany cabinet. Durell hit the bottom
of the stairway and jumped for the dais. Something tapped his shoulder and spun
him off balance. There was more shooting from the gallery, a deadly fire
fight that was suicidal between Ch’ing’s men and the survivors of Fong’s
little platoon. Durell slammed through the doorway after Ch‘ing. Only two of Fong’s
men survived to follow him.

It was still raining. The dark downpour was heavy and endless,
filling the night with its hissings and
chucklings
.
Floodlights turned the rain into vertical silver curtains. A gate in the
courtyard wall yawned blackly, but closer to hand was a long, stake-body truck,
a dual-trailer affair originally designed to haul supplies for the tin sluice
mines and Bangka’s docks. Its load tonight was quite different.

The A-3 Polaris looked monstrously sleek and deadly, secured
under canvas to the fiat truck body. Several side plates had been
removed, and two civilian Chinese were busy delving into the missile’s
interior. Their faces looked unnaturally tight, their eyes agleam with a
suppressed hysteria that implied a knowledge of impending suicide.
Ch’ng
stood with them, heedless of the rain, speaking with
rapid urgency in his round face.

As he recognized the meaning of what he saw, Durell wondered
how many times recently the world had balanced on such a fine edge of
madness. If the wrong word were spoken, if the wrong man were in the wrong
place, humanity faced a holocaust. And there it was—the missile, the imperialist
enemy, the new dynasty of emperors in Peiping. Missile and madman were
together, willing to fire the earth’s atmosphere with terrible death.
Durell could not wish the missile out of existence; it was a fact, woven into
the fabric of his life for too long, and his dedication to divert its awful
power over the minds of evil men had taken him out of the normal way of life
long ago.

He felt heavy-minded, reluctant to do anything. What happened
was inevitable. He felt a hypnotic fascination with this headlong rush toward
self-destruction, overcome by a desire to stop and let these men do what they
were doing until it was ended, until the circuits clicked shut, the warhead was
armed, and the inevitable surge of current triggered the explosion. He told
himself to move. But he could not move. He began to sweat, standing there in
the dark silvery rain; the weight of the Sten gun on its shoulder strap pulled at
his bleeding wound. He had forgotten the injury taken in the room above. It did
not hurt. The enormity of that sleek monster on the truck filled his
mind, and he saw that the men were working desperately on it, changing its
inert darkness into incredible force. They were ready and willing to die and be
transmitted into flaming, whirling atoms, to dance in the mushroom cloud,
entwined with it like lovers at the height of their desire. . . .