Assignment Unicorn (2 page)

Charley Lee knocked and immediately came in. It was a
dangerous thing to do. But Lee did not notice the quick, arrested movement
Durell made; or chose not to mention it. The Chinese wore a fresh batik shirt
with a gaudy flower print and pale-gray
doubleknit
slacks. The man’s round face and almond eyes behind his steel-rimmed glasses
seemed more composed than at the cemetery.

“All right, Sam? Can we talk about it now?”

“Not here,” Durell said. “The walls have ears."

“Time’s a-
wastin
’, to coin a
phrase.”

“We’ll have lunch.”

Lee blinked. “Shouldn’t we have it sent up? Of course, I
want you to be careful, Sam, but—”

“I am. It’s part of my business.”

“And my business is to keep you alive.”

Durell’s blue eyes turned dark, almost feral. “I know your
business, Charley. I don’t want you holding my hand. I don’t know why I’ve been
saddled with you.”

“I’ve seen your dossier. It isn’t every man who works
directly for General McFee—”

“Shut up,” Durell said.

It was too late.

The microphone behind the Gauguin print on the wall had
picked him up.

Durell took Charley Lee to the Willem Van Huyden, where wide
porches, set with round metal tables and bowls of hibiscus, overlooked the
harbor and several of the crowded
klongs
. The death of Premier Shang had not inhibited the
water merchants in their sampans, which glided like smooth bugs under the
wooden bridges and along the tin-roofed warehouses that lined the old wharves.

Durell ordered the
rijstaffel
and ate hungrily, aware that he’d eaten only a
prepackaged breakfast on Air Garuda from Hong Kong. Charley Lee did not like
spicy food. In the dim lobby of the old hotel, a gamelan orchestra played
softly, the bamboo instruments making sounds like a dozen subdued xylophones.

“You going to keep your date with Ko?” Lee asked.

If I don’t, I doubt that I’ll be able to leave the country,”
Durell said calmly.

“You haven’t broken the law here. Hell, Madame Shang knows
you. You’ve only just arrived.”

“For the moment, I think the laws are what Colonel Ko says
they are.”

“Okay, Okay. He’s got you running scared already?”

Durell’s eyes again darkened. “You haven't been out in the field
much, have you, Charley?”

“An unkind cut, Sam. You know I’m Far Eastern Affairs. The
home office keeps me busy. I know you don't like me, and my job is thankless.
Who watches the watchman, hey? But I'm not about to let you out of my sight.”

“This is my job,” Durell said. “Do you supervise?”

Durell stared at him. “I won’t work here, if you’re the
boss.”

“Jesus, you’re a touchy one.”

“You just don’t know anything about it.”

I’m only supposed to help you and keep an eye on you Sam,
while you make the report on Donaldson’s killing.”

“An accident,” Durell commented. “Donaldson was just an
innocent bystander when they cut up Premier Shang.”

“So they say. But do you believe it?”

“No. It could be the other way around.”

Lee’s round glasses reflected the river scene beyond
the dining veranda. He leaned elbows on the table. “You think maybe
Shang
was the innocent victim? That
would be real tough to prove.”

“I may never really prove it,” Durell said. “But I’d like to
know.”

“You really think they were after poor Donaldson?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Charley sighed. “Let’s drop it and go down to the District
and get us some real Chinee poontang, Sam.”

“Go ahead,” Durell said.

“Maybe we’re all a bit overly sensitive.”

Durell said, “You get that way in K Section, or you get
yourself killed.”

3

THE ASSASSINATION had taken place at high noon, the day
before.

Premier Shang had not been a man to hide behind palace
walls. His appointment with Hugh Donaldson was made at Donaldson’s request. The
reason for the appointment was still unknown. The premier had suggested the
south terrace of the palace as a pleasant place for the meal.

The south terrace of the palace was open to the hillside,
above the winding road that climbed beyond to the soaring white cube of the
Palingpon International. A wall protected the lower lawns and shrubbery from
passing traffic, and the wall was over twelve feet high and topped with
spikes and barbs and electronic warning devices. Still, the terrace was open to
the sun and the cooling breeze that blew eastward from the Straits, shaded by
umbrellas and a line of tall bamboo on one side, with a giant old rubber tree
just between the terrace and the highway wall.

Hugh Donaldson was an old Far East hand. There had been a
time, during the Cold War, when he had run a string of networks up through
British Malaysia, when the Communists there first began sharpening their
tactics for guerrilla warfare; he had run his people out of Kuala Lumpur, in
the days when anything went and cash was unlimited. His cover then had been as
a rubber planter, the odd man out among the colonial British who had been in
the plantation business for several generations before. His other networks
later ran through Indonesia during the Sukarno years, and finally into
French Indo-China, where he was covered as an import-export man and also
handled foreign aid. When the French left after
Dien
Bien
Phu
and turmoil followed, before the U.S.
blundered into its own agony in South Vietnam, Donaldson had quite properly
headed detachments of Green Berets among the hill people and afterward enjoyed
certain privileges as adviser to Saigon’s GGK, the intelligence apparatus
designed to help check the tide of
matériel
flowing
south along Uncle Ho’s jungle trail from Hanoi.

Donaldson had grown old in the business.

The dossiers that Durell had seen back at No. 20 Annapolis
Street, headquarters for K Section in D.C., also indicated that Hugh Donaldson
had grown rich.

K Section was still troubleshooting Donaldson’s varied
missions, but because Donaldson was now like a weary old bull buffalo, he was
given the job of K Section Central officer at Palingpon, which seemed peaceful
and cooperative enough.

But maybe Donaldson, shaggy and near extinction like the
buffalo he resembled, was doing more than just keeping books on his coconut
plantation over at Jikram Bo.

Maybe he was just an incidental victim of the premier’s
assassination. Or maybe he was doing something that made someone want very much
to kill him. In any case, he had been killed.

They came over the wall from the highway like a band of
Malays running amok. What they did was incredible. With effortless ease they
scaled the twelve-foot wall, barbed wire, spikes and all, and screamed up the
bright-green lawn toward the terrace table, set for luncheon for Premier Shang
and Hugh Donaldson, in the golden sunshine and restless breeze off the Straits.
Their bloodiness made the red hibiscus shrubs look anemic. The two Palingpon
Marine guards were cut down without a chance. A gardener, who was working on
his knees at a flower bed near the wall, and who was probably one of
Colonel Ko’s people, had his head lopped off with one stroke of a flashing
parang
. A
maidservant coming toward the terrace was literally run over and trampled and
kicked to death, her throat crushed, her ribs smashed. Some said there were a
dozen assassins. Durell thought it unlikely. That many men debouching on the
far side of the wall would have been noticed in time for a warning to be given.

However few their numbers, they made up for it in ferocity.
They did not use their long knives on Shang or Donaldson. They literally tore
both men apart at the luncheon table. The whole affair took place in an
unbelievably short space of time. Shang and the bearded Donaldson were killed
with bare hands and left as bloody, dismembered carcasses sprawled in the
gentle shade of the bamboo hedge on the terrace.

There was a certain amount of screaming and shouting. One
Palingpon Marine came to an upper window of the palace, saw what was happening,
and fired a single shot that knocked down one of the attackers. The man
fell, got up, and ran on again. On a broken leg. But he was unable to scale the
wall, which the others did with extraordinary rapidity to make good their
escape.

The wounded man was captured and subdued by eight Marines,
who almost had to kill him to control his thrashing body.

Colonel Ko had the suspect in custody.

What had not yet reached the eager press was the fact that
at the same time the assassinations had taken place, another attack had been
launched at Donaldson’s coconut plantation at Jikram Bo, twelve miles south of
the city.

4

DURELL RENTED a car from the hotel agency and drove with
Charley Lee to the plantation. They arrived a few minutes after two o’clock
that afternoon.

A gray atmosphere shadowed the place. Durell took the trail
that followed the coast, with its superb white beaches drenched in sunshine,
crossing small wooden bridges over lazy, muddy streams that cut through the
sandy level stretches. They passed several fishing villages, stilt houses
built high above the muck along the river banks, thatched huts with roofs
tilting up like the prows of the two-
masted
boats
drawn up on the beach. At this hour, most of the boats were offshore, seining
the turquoise waters. The sea was calm. Inland, the mountains of Palingpon,
with tea terraces carved out of the slopes, looked lavender and black in the
shadowed upland valleys. Along the shore, the land was flat and swampy for the
most part, until it lifted slightly at the coconut plantation. The trees had
been planted in long dusky rows that stretched out of sight, away from the
quiet, debris-strewn beach. The sun did not penetrate to the ground here, and the
earth was spongy and gray under the coconut fronds.

Charley Lee murmured, “Queer thing. Like it’s haunted."

Durell had already smelled the place before it came into
sight. The rented car was a small Toyota, and they bounced badly on the rutted
plantation trail.

Charley sniffed. “What is it?”

“Charred wood. Wet wood.”

“They didn’t say the place was burned.”

Durell drove over a rattling wooden bridge and the sea came
into sight again, beyond a long promontory planted with more coconut palms in
mathematically neat rows. On a small knoll was Hugh Donaldson’s plantation
house.

One wing had been leveled by fire, but the recent
rains must have checked the flames from spreading. The place stank,
fouling the clean sea breeze. There were broad tire marks from the police car
that had been here, but no sign of life at the moment.

Durell stopped the car fifty yards from the ruins. For
a long moment, he simply studied the area. Then he took the .38 from his belt
and stepped out and stood still again, smelling the charred wood and the
occasional hint of the sea that blew through the miasmic smell. Sunlight flickered,
dappling the trail ahead.

“Don’t slam the door,” he told Lee.

“Nobody is here. What’s the matter, Sam?”

“I don’t know.”

“You expect something?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“I don’t see anything wrong.”

“There’s plenty wrong,” Durell said.

He walked up the trail toward the plantation house. Nothing
stirred except an occasional palm frond clacking in the wind. Then he heard the
radio, dimly muffled from the interior of the ruined house. The veranda ran the
width of the structure, which had a high thatched roof in the native style,
almost like the original long houses of the natives who had suffered their
tyrannical rajahs and exploiting colonial rulers. A
chi-chi
, a small red tree
squirrel with enormous luminous eyes, suddenly screeched at them and scampered
away across the gray shadowed earth. The door to the house, big teak panels
with bronze hinges, stood open before him.

Donaldson had lived richly and well in this place. There
were animal trophies on the paneled walls, a Malay tiger’s head above a huge fireplace—which
obviously was rarely used except to get the damp out during the rainy season
and fine Sheraton furniture copied in mahogany from English patterns.
There were
Khomsan
rugs on the teak floor, and
a huge mirrored bar against one wall, behind Empress wicker chairs and a long
oval wicker table. The bar was well stocked. From the doorway, Durell could see
his reflection and most of the room at an angle in the mirror behind the
bar. A woman’s brightly colored
samsur
, a kind of scarf, was crumpled on the wicker table. A
white cotton bra lay draped over the back of one of the Empress chairs. Durell
lifted his gun a bit.

The wet smell of
woodsmoke
drifted
in the wind.

The
chi-chi
had gone silent.

A tokay lizard moved along one of the rafters of the beamed
ceiling, watching him.

He stepped inside.

This room was untouched. The destruction began in the
hallway and went on from there.

It was as if a band of wild animals had gone on a rampage.
Furniture was smashed, hangings ripped from the walls, mirrors broken, food
smeared and hurled to the floor, windows broken. The kitchen was a
shambles. The big room, facing the sea, was windowless now. The freezer doors
had been left open and defrosted food dripped soggily everywhere.

And there was the blood.

Blood had been daubed on the table and lay in pools on the
floor and was painted on the walls.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Charley Lee murmured.

“There were two servants,” Durell said.