Assignment Bangkok Read online

His left leg ached, and he limped as he favored it. Durell was a tall man, with thick black hair touched with gray at the temples. His face was sun-darkened, making his blue eyes look lighter than they were. He walked in a special isolation developed by his years with K Section. His hands were a gambler’s hands, inherited from his grandfather Jonathan, who had been one of the last devotees of the Mississippi riverboats. He had been raised by the old gentleman in the Louisiana delta country of Bayou Peche Rouge, where he learned the arts of the hunter and the hunted. He felt he was being stalked now.

  He turned left across the wide boulevard and then crossed Mutiwongse Road, with its Indian and Thai restaurants. He stopped to look into a window full of Japanese electronic gadgets and saw two shadows halt at the corner behind him. Not far off was the fashionable Rajprasong district, with its modern hotels and shops. His own hotel was not far from the old Oriental, with its riverside terrace, where Somerset Maugham once creamed up his yarns of another Asia. At the next corner, he crossed a bridge over the canal, which was crowded with darkened sampans and barges huddled under graceful areca palms. Gecko lizards croaked in the trees. A lute sounded briefly, like coins tossed into the oily waters. The plaintive notes were promptly drowned in a blare of transistor soul music, and he winced at the dissonant shrieking.

  He could define the two men behind him now. Big and burly against the slight shadows of passing Thais, they maintained their distance behind him.

  So his escape had not gone unnoticed. He had hoped for surprise on his return to Uncle Hu’s house, but there was no help for it now, he decided.

  Durell’s education at Yale had overlaid his Cajun accent with an indefinable New England tone. He spoke a number of languages of Europe and Asia, was fairly fluent in Japanese, but he felt rusty in Thai and the Lao and Meo dialects of the Thai speech. His training at K Section’s Maryland “Farm” had so far carried him successfully along for years in his business, which took him through the jungles of the world and the dangers of the world’s cities. He was a lonely man. He trusted no one. And he envied the simplicity of the people living on the sampans in the canal below.

  Two weeks ago, he sent Mike Slocum into the restless northeast provinces of Thailand to scout a new threat to Thai independence. The Meos up there—-barbarians to the cultivated Thai of the rich Bangkok delta area—were being influenced again by Chinese from Yunnan province, despite the alleged thaw in Peking. Mike Slocum had disappeared. In Washington, Durell had been sweating out his annual contract renewal, with a tricky leg as a souvenir from a job in Africa. He was not enamored by organizational work or by a desk loaded with synthesis and analysis reports. He preferred to work in the field; he found it safer to work alone. Mike Slocum’s disappearance in the upland jungles of Thailand gave him the reason to shelve his desk work and fly to Bangkok. He would not admit to himself that he was breaking his own rules of ignoring loyalty or becoming personally involved.

  Durell paused at the other side of the bridge over the klong. He was not far now from the house where he had been a prisoner. A hot breeze made the palm fronds clack overhead. He smelled salted fish, garlic, sweat, and cooking rice. Between the teak houses with their variegated pagoda-type roofs, there was a maze of footpaths and alleys. He heard the lute again.

  The lane he chose twisted between the dark houses. There were few lights. The footsteps behind him scraped in the dirt, then came on more eagerly. He was pleased by this. His long hours in the cell had not made him friendly toward his captors. Maybe they were shocked by his immediate return to Uncle Hu’s house. Since they had not bothered to search him, he still had his gun under his rumpled jacket. There was a narrow cul-de-sac to his left, a path that led back to the banks of the canal. He stepped into it and waited.

  At KGB headquarters in Moscow, at No. 2 Dzherzhinsky Square, his dossier was marked with a red tab. He was also on the kill list in the files of the Peacock Branch of the Black House, in Peking. As a chief field agent for K Section, the troubleshooting branch of the Central Intelligence Agency, Durell’s survival factor had long ago run out. He had seen many good men die, men who were competent in the business, merely because of a moment’s indiscretion, or an emotional diversion.

  “Mr. Durell?”

  His name was called in strangely accented notes. The two shadows now blocked the entrance to the lane. He could see Uncle Hu’s house, from which he had just escaped. The two men looked bulky and professional.

  He called back softly, coaxingly.

  “Come on, come on.”

  “You wish to die, Nai Durell?”

  “Who are you?”

  “We put you in the cage. You wish some more? Worse?”

  “Try it.”

  “You very stubborn man. We teach you fine lesson. You also foolish man. Why come back?”

  “Come closer,” Durell invited.

  They were twenty feet away. The alley would permit only one to come at him at a time. Durell felt pressure move along his nerves. He stepped back, favoring the abused tendon in his left leg. There was a splash of water in the klong behind him. A sampan creaked by, poled by a thin woman in a lampshade hat.

  “Come on,” he called again.

  The two shadows hesitated. He heard them muttering, too low to be understood.

  Then they came silently, in a smooth, fast rush. Durell could not see any weapons in their hands. He did not draw his own gun. The biggest came first, arms up, his head drawn down on his thick shoulders. In his eagerness to reach Durell, he bumped the teak side of the house to the right of the narrow lane, and his rush was thrown slightly off-balance. His arm shot out, and Durell caught his wrist, pulled him forward on his own momentum, tripped him, kicked him in the back of the knee, and sent him sprawling to the rear. The second kamoy faltered, and Durell drove a fist into the wide face, felt teeth splinter under his knuckles. The man stumbled. Durell brought up his knee and chopped down at the base of the man’s thick neck. He heard a rush of feet, labored breathing, and a grunt as the first man stumbled against his companion. Durell slid by. The way was clear for escape. But he did not want to escape. The first man reached for a knife, his face shadowed, eyes gleaming. Durell kicked at the knife, missed, felt arms encircle his knees. He went down. For a moment, there was a silent, breathless struggle. He used knees and elbows, broke free, saw the knife slash before his eyes in a wild swing. He rolled away toward the edge of the canal.

  They came at him again, more warily. There was a low stone wall along the klong embankment, and from a comer of his eye he saw a wink of light aboard the nest of sampans under the bushes. A woman ran across the bridge, calling in a low voice laced with alarm. He took the next rush on his shoulder, flipped the man’s weight over on his back, and sent him flying against the low stone wall. There was a thud, a low groan. The second man swung wildly and Durell ducked, came in hard, and drove him against the side of the wooden house. He slammed his forearm against the other’s throat and squeezed hard. The Chinese gasped, his eyes bulged, and his hands clawed up to free his breathing. Durell kneed him, chopped at the side of his neck, and dropped him face down in the dust alongside the canal. The man curled up in a ball, hugging his groin.

  The first kamoy had vanished, sliding over the wall into the klong.

  “All right,” Durell said. He drew a deep breath. His leg ached. He had tom the shoulder of his suit, but he felt eminently satisfied. His tensions were gone, eased by the conflict. The man he had dropped got slowly on all fours, retching in the dirt. Durell pulled him half erect by his thick hair. “What did you want?”

  The Chinese shook his head, his face anguished. He was young, wearing a striped lavender shirt and denim slacks. His broad face was bloody. Durell hit him hard in the belly. The man fell back, hair in a curtain over his face.

  “Where is Uncle Hu?” Durell asked quietly.

  The man’s mouth gaped open.

  “Why were you waiting for me there?” Durell asked.

  “No speak—”

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nbsp; “You’ll speak,” Durell promised. He hit the kamoy again. He remembered the concrete cell, the blow on the back of his head, the dreary hours in the narrow darkness. He put all his strength into the blow. The man’s breath came out with a gush and he fell and rolled over, legs twitching, then drew up his knees and lay on his side, his mouth open. Blood trickled from his big teeth.

  “Did you kill Uncle Hu?”

  “No. Not finished.”

  “Why were you there?”

  “Just ordered to go, to wait for you.”

  “Who ordered you?”

  “To teach you bad lesson.”

  “Just to rough me up? Warn me out of Bangkok?”

  “Yes, yes. But I just do orders.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “Muang Thrup Union.”

  “The labor organization?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Run by Chuk?”

  “Chuk, he boss.”

  “Chuk sent you to Hu’s to wait for me?”

  “I get orders. Not know from who.”

  “You’re one of the goons? The tong people?”

  “No tong. Legitimate union of oppressed laborers—” Durell did not think the man was lying too much. He stepped back. The Muang Thrup was a Chinese outfit that ran the labor forces in the sprawling rice and teak mills along the river in Bangkok and the delta.

  “All right,” he said. “Get going.”

  “My friend—in the canal—”

  “Tell Mr. Chuk I’m coming to see him.”

  The Chinese wiped his bloody mouth with the back ol his hand and sat up, wriggling away from Durell. He rubbed his throat. “Yankee imperialist spy, you die, you stay Bangkok.”

  “I won’t die alone,” Durell promised.

  Voices rang up and down the mirrored ribbon of the klong. Lights went on here and there. A royal police siren hooted, far away. The Chinese got on all fours, staggered to his feet, then stumbled up the lane and vanished into the larger alley beyond. Durell walked to the stone embankment of the canal. A man in a coolie hat on one of the moored sampans at the water gate called to him in an agitated voice. Durell stood in the shadow of a leaning palm and looked over the wall. The water was black and oily, speckled with refuse. A thin piling and sturdy bamboo stakes stood up from the surface, and one of the stakes was topped by a large, black sagging object like a giant insect skewered on a massive pin.

  It was the body of the first kamoy who had gone headlong over the wall. Durell watched it for a moment. The only movement was a faint swaying of the legs, hanging in the water up to the knees.

  The hooting of the siren came nearer. He sighed and walked back to the alley. Police lights flashed on the bridge. A babble of excited voices filled the night.

  He turned right and walked alongside the canal and came to the house of Uncle Hu, which he had entered almost twenty-four hours before.

  3

  The dark house stood a little apart from its neighbors on the crowded embankment. There was a tiny garden and a doll-like replica of the home, mounted on a pole at eye-level, known to Thais as the sal a phra phum, the abode of Chao Thi, who always faced north in his duties as guardian spirit of the house. It was a jewellike structure with a stone platform on which were offerings of tea and nuts and incense sticks to placate the phi spirits. Durell halted in the shadows just inside the low gate, under the straight trunk and fan-shaped top of an areca palm. Two klong jars stood on the porch under the sweeping eaves. The windows were shuttered and dark. A TV antenna marred the exquisite, sweeping lines of the thatched roof.

  The front door, built of studded teak planking, was partly open. Darkness yawned inside. Durell moved silently and quickly, a shadow among the shadows, and stepped in.

  He smelled cooking, spices, flowers, sweat, and agony. He remembered the room in which he had been attacked, off to the right. The floor with the hatch into the cell was there. He stopped and listened, standing among dark Western and Thai furniture. The scent of jasmine touched him, but he sensed something amiss.

  “Uncle Hu?” he whispered.

  Something scuttled softly away from him. He heard a patter of tiny rat’s claws, and let out a thin breath between ' his teeth. In the rafters overhead, he heard a thin rattle of dry reeds where little geckos croaked.

  It was a simple house, but it showed a certain affluence among canalmen. There were empty bottles of Green Spot and Coca Cola and a bowl of somnos, green juicy fruits, on the polished wooden kitchen table. There was a refrigerator of dubious vintage that gasped and wheezed on Bangkok’s erratic current. From the kitchen window, light came from the sampans and barges still moving on the canal.

  The house was empty. He could feel it. But something was here; he was not sure what. He went into the bedroom.

  The woman lay on the bed like a broken doll, her work-worn face suspended in a beam of apologetic light that came between the slats of the shuttered window. It was hot in here. The air smelled. The woman on the bed did not move.

  Her name had been Aparsa. She had been wearing a pasabai, a pink blouse of Thai silk, and above the collar her throat had been cut from ear to ear. The bed was soaked with dry, dark blood. Below the blouse she wore nothing. Her skirt of green flowered Chiengmai cotton lay on the floor at the foot of the bed. She had obviously been raped several times.

  Durell straightened with a long, slow sigh. He no longer felt any remorse about the man impaled on the canal pole.

  He remembered her laughing, smiling, giving him a deep wai when he first met her four years ago. She had been a woman dedicated to sanook, the sheer joy of living.

  “Sawadee, Aparsa,” he whispered, “goodbye.”

  He stepped outside. The incipient thunder of the mango storm had rolled away to the east. The air smelled hot and dry. Something fluttered briefly against the tiny, dark garden, and it had not been there before. He crossed the grass to the sala phra phum. A slip of paper had been weighted down on its offering platform, among the clay dolls and incense sticks. A small jug of rice whiskey held it in place. Durell reached for the slip of paper and read the note in the dim light that came from the nearby houses. He heard a brief blare of Thai music from the nearest house on the canal, then the sound was turned down. A baby cried somewhere. The heat of the night held dry electricity in it.

  The note was written in a shaky hand, in English.

  “My friend. I rest on my boat. Safe. You know where. I cannot help. What happened is a gift of the 'sonkran'."

  Sonkran was the Thai name for a madness that seized men during this hot, dry season, when thirst clawed at the land and it seemed as if it would never rain again.

  Durell put the note in his pocket and walked back to the edge of the canal.

  Uncle Hu’s face was seamed and wrinkled and emotionless, and his narrow black eyes showed no tears, showed nothing at all behind their obsidian facade. He gave Durell a wai, his hands veined and callused by his life as a river man. His English was simple, but effective, spoken flatly.

  “You have had difficult time, Nai Durell.” He wore blue denim slacks and jacket and straw sandals. In his bony temples, two blue veins throbbed. His age could have been forty or seventy. His wispy beard was white. “I apologize for what happen in my humble house.”

  Durell stared at him and accepted a cup of tea. The sampan rocked slightly as a boat passed by. The only light came from under the roof of the little cabin in the rear. There was a heap of pottery, piles of straw, and small boxes in the forward area, where Hu usually peddled his wares in the water market during the day.

  “You have seen your wife?” Durell asked gently.

  “Yes.”

  “You know what happened to her?”

  “Yes. They made me stand and witness.”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “Not yet. I know you, sir. I knew you would come back at once. So I waited here.”

  “You know it was Aparsa who helped me to escape?” “Yes, I know that. I told he
r to speak to you, when she had a chance. I was not permitted. It is my fault.”

  “One of them is now dead,” Durell said.

  The old sampan man blinked, his only reaction. Then he said, “Thank you.”

  “These men,” said Durell, “work for a certain Mr. Chuk, a Chinese who heads the labor union, the Muang Thrup.”

  “They are all criminals.”

  “How did they know I was coming to see you?”

  “They did not say. They came only a few minutes before you arrived, and they threatened us, Aparsa and me, and made us keep silent, and when you walked in, they attacked you and threw you into the klong jar cellar. Afterward, they did much drinking of Mekong whiskey, and made Aparsa cook for them. One went out and was gone for much time, maybe three-four hours. They ask who you are, what I know about you. I said only that you once befriended my nephew, young Kem, who has been in the Sangra, the Brotherhood, as you directed him four years ago.”

  “I’ve come to waken him,” Durell said quietly.

  “Yes. Kem said that one day you would need him.”

  Durell nodded. “I need him very much. I came to ask you where he can be found. There are so many bhikkhus, so many temples. A simple question, and two people are dead.”

  Uncle Hu poured more tea with his callused hands. His old eyes blinked briefly. He moved unerringly in the dark shadows of the sampan. In the distance, a police siren hooted, going away.

  “I do not know where Kem is. He meditates. He is a good Buddhist, a fine monk. He wishes to stay in the Sangra.”

  “He may stay, after he helps me.”

  Uncle Hu stirred. His wrinkled old face moved a little, but his black eyes did not turn away from Durell. “Sir, Nai Durell, we are all grateful, for the time when I was ill, and young Kem was hurt, and Tinh, his brother, was too young to work. Circumstances would have destroyed us, but you were generous and gave us much money, and we lived again.” The old man halted. “I know that you mourn for Aparsa. You believe it is your fault. But you must not feel so. You are a man who is different from us. Different from most men, I think. Aparsa has gone to another life, a better earthly shell, we believe. You are a stranger, a fahrang, to me, but I trust you, and you must carry no guilt for Aparsa. I will attend to the rest of it. You must go on and find Kem.”