Assignment Bangkok (22 page)

“Uncle Hu.”

“Ah, it is the
fahrang
once again, with his mixed blessings.”

“You sound bitter, Uncle.”

“Should I not be?” the old man whispered. “My wife Aparsa, the two nephews . . .”

“Kem is alive and meditating in the mountains.”

The old man’s eyes blinked again. “You have seen him?”

“He has been very helpful. The debt is discharged.” “Ah.”

“Are you all right, Uncle?”

“I am not well. I am lonely. I am thinking of another wife. But you should not come to my house again. You should go away.”

Durell felt a shock at the old man’s words. It was not in the Thai tradition to be inhospitable, whatever the situation. He stared at Hu’s wrinkled face, but he could read nothing in its lined and seamy contours. He smelled the tea, smelled dried fish. The ancient lizard eyes blinked again.

“Go,” Hu said.

“I am looking for a man.”

“You looked before. You found him.”

“A
fahrang
,” Durell persisted. “My boss, in a way. His name is James D. James.”

“Go away,” said Hu.

“Have you seen such a
fahrang
?”

“There is nothing but death here, nothing but desolation in my house. I do not say that it was you who brought it, Nai Durell. It is not for me to say that one dies because of another’s acts. It is the will of Buddha, and it is sometimes cruel and inscrutable, this work of Heaven, and I am not a man who likes to turn the other cheek, as you Christians claim that one must do. I do not see you doing so, in any case. You axe all barbarians. And you think that we Thai are barbarians, in our way. We do not understand each other. Go away.”

“Have you seen James? Did he come here?”

“Yes.”

“When? How?”

“Today. Not long ago. You persist? I have warned you to leave. I have seen too many evil things in my life.” The old man sighed and put down his teacup. His twisted hands were steady now. It was as if he had been sitting here on his sampan, not knowing who or what to expect, and now that he saw it was Durell who had come aboard his boat, he felt better. But there was little of this in his brown face and dark old eyes. He said, “I am not alone here. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Durell said.

“There is no help to be had anywhere. A man must gain his own revenge. It is not written that one should act in cruelty or vengeance, but man is what he is, and evil lives in him as well as good, and so he is always torn, first this way and then that, and afterward he does not know what he has done to his soul.”

“Is James still here?” Durell asked.

“He came to look for you, and said you were a bad man, a traitor to your country. Or so he thought. He also looked for another
fahrang
, a man named Mike Slocum. He said you had both tried to betray him.”

“Where is James now?”

“He is in the
klong
jar pit,” said Uncle Hu.

Durell got up and walked to the bow of the sampan, balancing himself against the rocking of the light boat. Lights made ribbons of yellow on the waters of the canal. He looked at the opposite bank of the waterway. The edges of the
klong
were fringed with dense shrubbery and trees, small docks and poles and boats. Life on the
klongs
had a rhythm of its own, a way that was distinct from the rest of the big, sprawling city. He stood for a moment, studying the darkness across the canal. He spotted one man, then another. One wore a pale shirt, and it showed as a light patch against the shrubbery shadows that should not have been there. The other man was careless enough to be smoking a cigarette. The smoker took one last drag that made the end glow red suddenly, and then he flipped the smoke into the water. Durell watched it arc toward him. It fell halfway across the canal, in his direction.

He did not turn as Uncle Hu came out of the sampan cabin. He said, “Is James still alive?”

“I do not know.”

“Who put him in the pit?”

“I did. To keep him safe.”

“Who is in the house?”

“Chuk.”

“Chuk?” Durell stared at the wizened little Thai. “Uncle, how many men does he have with him this time?” “Six. Possibly seven. I have tried to count them, but I am not sure. They are all armed. They are waiting for you. I do not know why he is certain you would come here, but he is here, waiting.”

“Does he know you were waiting for me, too?”

The old man blinked. “They have not troubled me. When I heard them coming, I put Nai James in the pit. Then I walked here to my boat for my tea. They have not come to talk to me yet.”

Durell looked at the two men across the canal. They had a small boat moored near their watch posts. He scanned the tiny garden of Uncle Hu’s house. No other men were visible. So there were four, maybe five in the house, with the fat and vindictive Mr. Chuk. He drew a deep breath. He should call the Embassy, he thought, and let them handle it. Or the police. But it was too late for that. He had walked into the trap. Chuk knew he had arrived. Like a fat spider, he was waiting and watching. If Durell left the sampan and tried to cross the garden to regain the alley, they would come for him. He looked at the canal. He might try swimming for it, but the two kamoys across the waterway could easily overtake him in their boat. He would be playing Chuk’s game if he took either option.

He thought about it for another moment. If there was no way out, then he had to go in.

The sampan was moored to a small wooden dock, secured by bamboo mooring poles thrust into the mud bed of the canal. Two stone steps led to a short path, no more than thirty feet long, between thick garden shrubs that opened toward the back of the house. Windows stared blankly and darkly toward him. There was a back door, a narrow veranda overhanging the water where the canal curved immediately beyond the mooring poles. He looked at the water. There was a slight drift of current down toward the veranda. He considered several alternatives—the back door, the porch, the wide sweep of the Thai roof eaves. In the darkness, he could not see anyone on the veranda or the roof, but he was sure that Chuk’s men were posted up there, too. He wished again that he could go quietly away and let the Embassy or the Bangkok Police handle it. He owed James D. James nothing. James might be dead by now, anyway.

He had one other alternative, the old tunnel that led into the
klong
jar pit, from which he had escaped the other night. It was too far away. The men across the canal would get to him before he could reach the escape hatch up near the Watergate market. He dismissed the idea. “Uncle?”

“You are thinking,” said the old man.

“We will pay you for the damages to your house.”

Hu nodded slowly. “You will build me a new one?”

“I promise.”

“What can I do?” the old man asked. “It was Mr. Chuk who killed my wife. He killed my youngest nephew, Tinh. Such a man is worse than a stinking toad. I will agree to whatever you say.”

“Good.”

“But you should not be too long. They will surely come here to the sampan if you wait here much longer.”

Like most other small peddler boats on the
klong
, Uncle Hu’s sampan had a low-powered outboard motor at the stern. Durell moved aft, under the low, curved overhead of the cabin, and picked up the gasoline can that rested on the bottom planking. There was at least a gallon still in the can—more than enough. In the cabin, he found a clay jar with a mouth small enough to be stuffed with a wick, which he fashioned quickly from a piece of rag among Uncle Hu’s poor treasures. The old man watched him in silence, and poured another cup of tea for himself.

Durell filled the small clay jar with gasoline, quickly braided a length of wick, and stuffed it down into the jar, plugging it tightly. He had matches in his pocket. To fashion the Molotov cocktail had taken only four minutes. Uncle Hu finished his tea.

“I agree. It is best if the house goes,” the old man said quietly. “I am insured, in any case, with the Wu Fat Assurance Company of Sampeng.”

“One of Chuk’s outfits?”

“No.”

“That’s good. Then you might be paid. If not, I’ll arrange for it in Washington. You stay here, Uncle.”

The old man nodded. “And Mr. James?”

“If he is still alive, I’ll get him out. If not, it makes no difference.”

Durell stepped off the sampan onto the tiny dock, and went up the two stone steps in the dark garden. He thought he saw a movement in one of the windows. It took only a moment to light the match and touch it to the soaked wick. The flare of the match was like a bright little bomb in the night,, but nothing to the effect of the thrown clay jar filled with Uncle Hu’s gasoline. Durell aimed the bomb up at the veranda, watched the wick spark and bum as it flew through the air, and then he ran quickly to the right, around the tiny spirit house in the garden, toward the front of the building. The Molotov cocktail burst on the veranda and exploded with a mighty gush of flame. Instantly he heard a yell of alarm from someone inside the house. Footsteps thudded, halted, pounded toward the back. The night glared with yellow and red fire against the dry teak framework of Hu’s house. Durell reached the front door, running fast, and crashed through. It was not locked. He found himself in darkness filled with the sound of excited breathing, curses, mutterings. He took his gun and fired blindly into the dark room, twice, and heard a shriek of pain and the stumbling thud of a body going down. He had been lucky. From the back of the house came the crackle and roar of the growing fire. Most of Chuk’s men had rushed there from the vantage points where he had been waiting for his entry. Durell headed for the kitchen door, outlined against the glare of fire.

“Not so,” said someone. “Very clever. But not clever enough. If you move, you die. If you wish to live a little longer, you will stand precisely still.”

The trouble with Mr. Chuk, Durell thought later, was that he liked to practice his English too much. Nor was he as expert as he liked to think. He did not hold his heavy Colt .45 properly. He stood in the kitchen doorway, his vast frame silhouetted against the growing blaze on the veranda. Feet slid on the roof, scrabbling for a grip. There was none, and there came a sharp yell and the thud of a body falling outside. Durell smiled. He did not move at all, obeying Chuk’s unwavering gun. He could get the gun, he thought, if Chuk remained poised like that.

“Come,” said Chuk in his almost flawless accent. “We will leave. My car is at the end of the lane. I owe you a great deal, Mr. Durell, none of it good. You have dismayed me, I admit, by dismantling and destroying the results of a year’s hard effort.”

“Your caravan?” Durell asked softly.

“General Savag’s.”

“No, it was yours. Savag worked for you. And Miss Ku worked for you.” He paused, as if struck by a thought. “I have a souvenir from Miss Ku, by the way. It has your chop on it.”

The vast bulk of the Chinese quivered slightly. “We will go-”

“Allow me to reach to my knee,” Durell said. “It will be important to you, this memento I saved.” Smoke billowed into the room behind the fat man, and two of his kamoys dashed inside and halted, then grinned and drew back as Chuk waved them aside. “I promise you, no tricks,” Durell said.

“You have seen Ku?” Chuk asked.

“Oh, yes. Rather, she came to visit me, with the idea of framing James D. James. I didn’t buy it, and she became annoyed enough with me to to try to persuade me otherwise.” Durell reached up his left leg and slid out of his knee-band the thin-bladed dagger he had taken from Ku Tu Thiet. He held it, palm up, hilt forward, for Mr. Chuk to see in the brightening light of the fire. “She tried to kill me with this.”

Chuk licked his lips. His great moon face shook. “She would never give that to you willingly. It has been the property of my ancestors for many generations.”

“Is Ku your daughter?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. And you planted her with Jimmy, to help you organize your drug-smuggling caravans. You used Savag as your front man and only pretended to be a subordinate yourself. But you, Chuk, were always the head of the dragon. It’s not in you to take orders from anyone, or to settle for a small slice of the pie when you can gobble it all.”

“What did you do with Ku?” Chuk whispered.

“I killed her,” Durell said.

They were speaking in English, and the two kamoys who watched, their eyes glistening red with reflections from the fire, did not understand what was said. Above the crackling of the flames, Durell heard the distant wail of a siren, coming nearer. He looked down the muzzle of Mr. Chuk’s heavy gun, which was dwarfed by the man’s huge paw, and knew that at last the man’s mind had snapped. He tossed the delicately carved dagger, hilt forward, toward the Chinese.

Instinctively, because the knife was precious to him, the fat man tried to catch it before it fell and was damaged on the floor. The tentative move was enough for Durell. He drove forward, caught at the man’s .45, twisted it downward. The gun went off, its crash sounding enormous above the crackling flames. The bullet smashed harmlessly into the teak floor. Trying to knock aside Chuk’s arm was like trying to break an oaken limb. He moved it just enough, and then drove his left into the man’s big belly, feeling hard muscle under all the heavy layers of fat. Chuk grunted and took a small pace backward. The flames outlined his huge form. Durell got his own gun in hand and started to bring it up, and Chuk raised one massive forearm and smashed at it, knocking it aside. The little knife fell to the floor. Durell heard the two kamoys shouting and he thought he heard another shot, and then he desperately drove his stiffened fingers into the fat man’s throat before Chuk’s men could interfere.

His efforts went home. Chuk’s eyes bulged. He gagged and half twisted away, moving back into the kitchen, grunting and choking. Durell saw the two kamoys leap for him and fired once, and then again. There was an astonishing halo of flames around Mr. Chuk’s big figure. He had caught fire from the flames that now enveloped Uncle Hu’s kitchen. Still choking, he fell to his knees, outlined in a bright red aura. His hair scorched and burst into flames, along with his clothes. Durell saw the two thugs on the floor. His shots had put them out of the picture. There were others, he knew; he heard them shouting outside. Then he saw Uncle Hu’s slight, aged figure come through the fire in the kitchen, moving fast, a large knife in his hand. The blade flashed, red, reflecting the fire, and then came up carmine with Chuk’s blood.