Assignment tiger devil Read online

  Durell boarded a 5:30 commuter flight to Kennedy, then a BOAC 707 from New York direct to Guyana. It was shortly after midnight when he arrived.

  Chad Mitchell met him at Timehri International Airport twenty-five miles south of Georgetown. The steam one breathed for air here smelled ripely of the jungle that was all around. Chad was a brusque man with a yellow mat of oiled hair and moody brown eyes. His tan, tropical-weight suit was slightly rumpled, as if he had worked in it all day, and he looked tired and smoked too many cigarettes. He had begun his career with K Section back in the '60s, put in five years in Latin America and managed to pull strings to get switched to State and the Foreign Service. He hoped to win an ambassadorship someday. At the moment, he handled commercial affairs for Guyana and, because of his background, internal security for the embassy.

  "Damned sorry business; hope you can wrap it up quickly. Never thought embassy security would amount to anything; now my whole schedule has gone down the chute. Had to cancel a meeting with the Alcoa people today. God damn it."

  "Most vexing," Durell said.

  "You work your ass off, and what do you get?"

  "Constipated."

  "Don't be funny, Sam."

  "I mean if it doesn't grow back. You really have a problem, Chad."

  They drove in silence as the land opened onto cane-fields and coconut plantations. This was one of the few paved highways in the country, and the embassy Lincoln purred hungrily at the chance for a workout. Then they passed a sugar refinery and Radio Demerara and were in the sprawling wooden mix of Georgian to Victorian buildings that constituted most of Georgetown. Guyana was the size of Idaho, its population roughly equivalent to that of Indianapolis. A fourth of its people lived in the capital city, mixed together rich and poor where the original slave plantations had been subdivided and shanty patches sprung up among bamlike white manor houses and tossing palms. The sullen night was charged with expectancy. Durell sensed that almost anything could happen here.

  Finally, Chad said: "Dick had gone downhill since his glory days in the Far East. He blundered away his cover and paid the price. That news story was an invitation to murder for every kook in Guyana. I really don't know why you're here, Sam."

  "You're not expected to. Where did they find Dick's body?"

  "An Indian kid notified the police early Sunday morning. Said the man came there half-dead, expired on the porch. The kid tried to help him; didn't know what to do, of course."

  "Did Dick tell him anything?"

  Chad shook his head and blew out cigarette smoke. '*He's just a bushboy."

  "What's his name?"

  "Peta Gibaudan. Peta's an Amerindian name. But he's half-French."

  Durell cracked a window to let some cigarette smoke escape the air-conditioned car. "I'll want to talk with him."

  "No idea what took Dick there. He hadn't logged in at the embassy for almost a week, but he was gone often. No one thought much about it."

  "He always kept his own counsel."

  "Poor procedure," Chad said.

  Durell watched the colonial-pink parliament building glide past, then the concrete and half-timbered Victoria Law Courts, shorn since independence of the dumpy statue of its namesake. "Don't take me to my hotel just yet," he said. "Let's go to the morgue."

  "What for? Don't start makmg a case that doesn't exist. The police think the killer was an East Indian, acting alone. The ambassador's convinced, and he doesn't want you pushing anybody around. We've enough problems liere—you know the East Indians never forgave the CIA for knockmg their Marxist leader out of the prime minister's office with those labor riots in the '60s." Chad sighed wearily as his yellow fingers crumpled a cigarette butt in the ashtray, and said: "Just discuss it with the ambassador, Sam. Write your report and wrap it up."

  "I want to see Dick's body."

  "If you insist. First thing in the morning." Chad twisted the wheel and they turned past the Bank of Guyana Building, then to the right, down Main Street.

  "Tonight. Now." Durell's tone was stubborn,

  "The morgue's closed."

  "Get it opened. Wake the ambassador."

  Chad's brown eyes widened. "He's been asleep two hours. It wouldn't be wise."

  "Wake him up."

  Chad did not bother to conceal the contempt in his voice as he said: "Dick was your pal, so you see this as the beginning of World War IH."

  The smell of formaldehyde and antiseptics and death pmched Durell's nose. Chad made a grunace of distaste as a little African attendant took away the shroud. The black police sergeant who had escorted them here on special orders was impassive.

  Minutely, Durell regarded the long, white body. It did not look like Dick, was thin and disproportionately aged. Random bruises and bloodless scratches marred the flesh from thin, sandy hair to stiffened yellow toes.

  "He didn't get those bruises and lacerations sitting around Georgetown," Durell said. His voice echoed in the barren room. "He must have spent some time in the forest. Look at his feet." He pointed to where the skin was blotched and blistered by damp and fungus and hard use.

  'I don't know that it means anything," Chad said. 'Your duty is a sad one," said the white-clad attendant. His face wore a sorrowful smile. "Of course, I see death every night. It is my job. Eleven to seven."

  Durell's eyes continued to scour the wasted flesh. He had not moved from his place at the head of the enameled table.

  "When I go home to my wife and children in the Werk-en-Rust District, do they ask how was my work? They never mention it. It is like eleven to seven does not exist, only what happens the rest of the time. But eleven to seven is what I think about the rest of the time."

  "I've known others with similar problems," Durell said. He moved to the end of the table near the feet.

  "What did they do about it?" The little man leaned against the table and it rolled an inch.

  "They keep going, until they die."

  "You're thinking about your poor brother-in-law, yes? He had a job that weighed on his mind?"

  Durell said nothing.

  Chad said: "Are you finished? Are you satisfied? I'll have enough trouble sleeping as it is. The ambassador was really teed off."

  Durell indicated a large, discolored carbuncle on the calf of the corpse. "Why didn't they get this out?" he said. He turned to Chad. "Further confirmation of a stay in the jungle."

  The attendant peered at the nodule and curled his nose. "Ah, the seeka worm is dead, sir. At any rate, the dead man no longer feels it. Shall I lance it, sir?"

  "Don't bother."

  "I will," the black man insisted.

  "Leave him alone." Durell allowed his eyes to rove to a small blue exit hole under the sixth rib. A lung shot.

  The African followed Durell's gaze, and said: "He bled to death. The wound might not have been fatal, if he'd received treatment."

  Durell thought of Marie and the children. "Where's the wedding ring?" he asked.

  "Oh!" The attendant went briskly to a cabinet and withdrew a paper bag. "Wedding ring, wristwatch, wallet," he said. He gave a satisfied smile and handed the brown bag to Durell.

  Durell crumpled it into his jacket pocket, as his gaze lingered briefly on the sunken eyes of the body. The closed lids looked as if they had been dusted with pencil lead. More real than grief was a feeling of loss. The mathematical logic of K Section's computer was justified again—and the old hands continued to die violently.

  He felt an emptiness around him.

  A gulf of time and history was between him and most of those on the roster now.

  He walked to the door and nodded over his shoulder at the corpse. "Put it in a box," he said.

  Durell paused on the wooden steps outside the morgue. Houses and trees blocked the tradewind, and the air was humid and heavy. Fog crept out of a canal across the street. He took a deep breath, cut his eyes up and down the avenue, saw no sign of surveillance. Worry gnawed under his ribs, as he strode to the car.

  "The amba
ssador thinks a public show of grief is important—^he wants a ceremony tomorrow," Chad said. The hypocritical bastard," Durell said. Better be there—you're the brother-in-law, remember?"

  "Oh, hell," Durell said.

  Chad waited impatiently as Durell checked into his hotel, then drove him to the embassy at 31 Main Street. Durell glimpsed a big crepe bow on the front door, as Chad escorted him past a Marine guard and into a side entrance. Dick's cubbyhole office was in the basement, out of sight and hearing of anything else, behind double steel doors with all the standard entry prevention and detection devices of K Section Controls worldwide.

  "If you get in there, you'll be the first one besides Dick to see what it's like," Chad said.

  "I'll get in. Go home and get some sleep."

  "I've come this far; might as well hang around. Want some coffee?"

  "No, thanks. You'll have to leave, Chad."

  "Well, I was with you guys for five years, for chris-sakes."

  "You're not with us now."

  Chad would have been disappointed, Durell thought as he opened the door and turned on a ceiling light. The small, sparsely furnished office was out of the ordinary only in the immediate chill of its air-conditioning vent, the first on a conduit from the embassy's big cooling plant. There was a small steel desk with a picture of Marie and the boys; an electric typewriter with a stroke powerful enough to cut FIR mats; a wooden console of modem design with a hot plate and kettle for steaming letters open or making instant coffee; and enormous maps on two walls, one of Guyana and another of South America. Against a flimsy partition sat two six-drawer filing cabinets with combination locks. In them were logs, field reports, dossiers and dated lists of noteworthy passengers into and out of the country, obtained from airline and shipping sources. On the other side of the partition were a transmitter, receiver and encoding machine. Code discs and books were in a steel safe, where the wrong touch would ignite incinerating Thermit bombs.

  Durell took off his jacket, rinsed a cup, put water on to boil and started with the top drawer of the first filing cabinet.

  He paused only once, about four am, to call Chad, who was less than pleased.

  "You know Phil Gordon, the Toepfer Motors distributor here?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. I want you to give him a call for me."

  "Now? Call him yourself."

  Durell was tired, and his nerves were strained, and he gripped the phone very tightly, as he said in a low, even voice: "Chad, I don't like reminding yoii that you're under my orders. You know this man, so the chances of cooperation are better."

  "What do you want me to tell him?" Chad grumbled.

  "He's our cutout to Calvin Wilfred Eisler; get him to set up a meeting with Eisler for me."

  "Dick had Calvin Eisler on his string? The national assemblyman? Jesus. And old Phil, too."

  "Maybe Dick was sharper than you gave him credit for," Durell said. The files Durell had just read showed that Eisler was one of Dick Boyer's best sources. He was a member of one of the few aristocratic families remaining in Guyana and received a regular subsidy from K Section. Most significant, he was the only person mentioned in Dick's files or logbook in connection with the Warakabra Tiger.

  Durell worked through Dick's data, sorting, sifting, weighing and memorizing, for two more hours. Then he strolled back to his hotel through a clown-colored dawn and fell into an exhausted sleep.

  Chapter Four

  That afternoon they held the brief farewell ceremony. Dick's flag-draped casket was on the lawn of the embassy, a block from the stellings of the river. The sun's yellow heat pressed against the neatly clipped grass and weighed down the leaves of purple-flowered bougainvillaea and eucalyptus trees.

  Durell, at the edge of the small gathering, scanned youths who lounged about the wallaba-wood telephone poles and shoppers with packages under their arms. A disorderly stream of cars, yellow buses and mule carts clattered and roared on Main Street. The street was divided by a strip of lawn and flamboyant trees clustered with brilliant red blossoms. Small knots of Africans and East Indians, a sprinkling of Chinese and Caucasian faces watched from their shade.

  Sparkling cumulus clouds gathered above the muddy Atlantic to the north, preparing an assault over the ancient seawall that kept the city and much of the densely inhabited coastal strip from flooding. The air was gloomy beneath their violet undersides.

  It was not difficult to spot Otelo Antunes. Just to be sure, Durell lifted a brow toward Chad, and Chad nodded affirmation.

  Otelo's by-line had been over the story that revealed Dick's connection with the CIA.

  The dark Portuguese, clad in loose-tailed white shirt and blue trousers, stood beside the hearse, ballpoint pen poised over a stenographer's pad. His hps were tight and rejecting on an ascetic face, but the black eyes were ravenous. His whiplike frame seemed built for squeezing under doors, his pale hands startlingly big and grasping.

  He returned Durell's gaze with a willful stare.

  Durell clenched his fists in his pockets, as the ambassador's comments droned on.

  The squall line hit with a gale that flung surprised herons and street trash toward the rum shops on Water Street. The wind blew away the ambassador's words, and the gathering stirred on the verge of breaking up. A page of the Evening Post, competitor to Otelo's Guyana Sentinel, flopped and spun toward Durell and clung against his leg. He peeled it loose and saw a story announcing dedication soon of a new dam constructed deep in the interior by the People's Republic of China. The prime minister of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana would attend.

  Lightning banged. A white storm of raindrops lashed the street as the coffin was rushed to the rear of the hearse, red and white stripes sagging wetly down its sides. The crowd ran for cover.

  Durell yelled to Chad and they jumped into a yellow

  Fiat he had rented at Ratnahan's Esso Station, opposite Stabroek Market. He did not see where Otelo went.

  He wiped water from his face and cursed softly and decided Otelo could wait.

  "What about Eisler?" he asked.

  "I alerted the cutout. He hasn't been able to reach him," Chad said.

  "Did you try to contact Eisler directly? Every hour counts."

  "We have to maintain some discretion, Sam."

  "To hell with it; I'll go to him myself."

  "I advise against it. You may blow a good agent."

  "He's no good if he doesn't help us now."

  "He's got his career to think about, damn it. If it gets out he's worked for us, the scandal will ruin him. Give him some time—"

  "I can't afford to wait."

  "It's on your own head." Chad sounded angry.

  "That's where it usually is," Durell replied.

  Chad slammed the car door and ran through the rain into the embassy. Durell headed out of town to find the mud-trash shack of Peta Gibaudan.

  Peta's coppery face showed suspicion of Durell, and he came reluctantly out of the undergrowth that surrounded his stilted house. He carried a warishi rucksack of Amerindian basketwork behind his naked shoulders. The head of a pheasantlike maroudi swung from it. His hands held a wicked-looking twelve-gauge shotgun of ancient manufacture.

  The police and Americans had asked too many questions, he said. He wanted to answer no more. Still, Durell correctly judged that Peta relished an occasional visitor no less than others who spent much of their lives in the solitary backwaters of the world. Durell just sat quietly on the splintery steps of the porch and watched as Peta squatted, gutted the bird efficiently and tossed its entrails into the turbid river.

  Durell bided his time, as Peta roasted the bird. Peta paid him no attention. The aroma of an open fibre and sizzling fat filled the air. Then Peta lifted the fowl on its spit and, careful not to bum his fingers, twisted off a leg and shoved it at Durell. "Here. Maroudi is good," he said.

  The flesh was light and tasty, slightly gamy, and Durell thought of wild turkeys he had roasted as a boy in the Louisiana parish
es.

  They finished the meal as, with tropical abruptness, the sun pulled the vermilion-tinged gold of daylight's awning beneath the horizon. Peta sat on the porch, licking his fingers like a cat, and still they did not talk. Then Peta moved away through the darkness and returned with a gallon jug of high wine—^rum straight from the distillery,. in which a beefsteak had been suspended for a few days to soak up the acetone and fusel oil.

  It was pepper on the tongue and lay in the stomach like a wad of hot nettles.

  Finally, Durell tried once more. "Tell me about Dick, Peta. It's very important. What happened here?"

  Peta's green eyes regarded him thoughtfully, then he spoke slowly, telling how the man had stumbled out of the forest and collapsed on the porch where they sat. "I tried to help him, but he died. He was my friend."

  "Your friend?" Durell put a hand on the youth's shoulder. "You did all you could," he said.

  Peta's black hair shimmered iridescently as he shook his head. "No. I boiled trysil bark for a poultice to stop the bleeding. I should have run for help."

  "It was too late; he was dead on his feet. I've had to leave men like that behind. At least Dick didn't have to die alone."

  Peta looked down at the hands clasped between his banded calves.

  "Which way did he come from?" Durell asked.

  "Downstream." Peta pomted toward Georgetown. Durell was surprised, since he had supposed that Dick came from the interior.

  "And you heard nothing? No shots?"

  "No." Peta hesitated. "But he told me something. It puzzles me. I've kept it quiet, but you are not with the authorities; you are his relative."

  Gently, Durell prodded: "What, Peta?'* "He said binnacle. That was all. What does it mean?" "It's part of a ship, the post that holds the compass. Do you know what ship he could have been talking about?"

  Then Peta told him of the old wreck of the Peerless, not far downriver, and Durell thought it plausible. Dick had had a lifelong romance with boats and ships, and his curiosity might have taken him to the Peerless many times. "I know nothing of ships," Peta said. "Tell me how to find the binnacle."

  Take me there. I'll find it," Durell said.