Assignment - Sulu Sea (9 page)

“Because of his parents here in Pandakan?”

She bit her lip, shook her head, said nothing.

Durell said: “You can’t back away now, Yoko. You'll have to
trust me. I’ll help Tommy, if I can. If it isn’t too late.” He paused. “What’s
wrong with Tommy’s family?”

“You will find out now,” she whispered. “Oh, I am a
fool! Tommy Warned me to stay away from here. But I begged him to free himself
of whatever it is that—that frightens and worries him so. You see, the people
Tommy calls his parents are not his true father and mother. They are his uncle
and aunt. His real parents live in a commune, near Shanghai, in Red China.”

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.